gross, after having condemned each act in detail. His actions are all, every one, censured
one by one as they arise. I do not recollect any one transaction, few there are, I am sure, in
the whole body of that succession of crimes now brought before you for your judgment, in
which the India Company have not censured him. Nay, in one instance he pleads their
censure in bar of this trial;[27] for he says, "In that censure I have already received my
punishment." If, for any other reasons, they come and say, "We thank you, Sir, for all your
services," to that I answer, Yes; and I would thank him for his services, too, if I knew them.
But I do not;—perhaps they do. Let them thank him for those services. I am ordered to
prosecute him for these crimes. Here, therefore, we are on a balance with the India
Company; and your Lordships may perhaps think it some addition to his crimes, that he has
found means to obtain the thanks of the India Company for the whole of his conduct, at the
same time that their records are full of constant, uniform, particular censure and reprobation
of every one of those acts for which he now stands accused.
He says, there is the testimony of Indian princes in his favor. But do we not know how seals
are obtained in that country? Do we not know how those princes are imposed upon? Do we
not know the subjection and thraldom in which they are held, and that they are obliged to
return thanks for the sufferings which they have felt? I believe your Lordships will think
that there is not, with regard to some of these princes, a more dreadful thing that can be said
of them than that he has obtained their thanks.
I understand he has obtained the thanks of the miserable Princesses of Oude, whom he has
cruelly imprisoned, whose treasure he has seized, and whose eunuchs he has tortured.[28]
They thank him for going away; they thank him for leaving them the smallest trifle of their
subsistence; and I venture to say, if he wanted a hundred more panegyrics, provided he