Here Mr. Hastings confesses that the emoluments affixed to office were not only sufficient for the purposes and ends which the nature of his office demanded, and the support of present dignity, but that they were sufficient to secure him, in a very few years, a comfortable retreat; but his object in wishing to hold his office long was _to catch applause in public life_. What an unfortunate man is he, who has so often told us, in so many places, and through so many mouths, that, after fourteen years' possession of an office which was to make him a comfortable fortune in a few years, he is at length bankrupt in fortune, and for his applause in public life is now at your Lordships' bar, and his accuser is his country! This, my Lords, is to be unfortunate: but there are some misfortunes that never do or ever can arrive but through crimes. He was a deserter from the path of honor. At the turning of the two ways he made a glorious choice,--he caught at the applause of ambition: which though I am ready to consent is not virtue, yet surely a generous ambition for applause for public services in life is one of the best counterfeits of virtue, and supplies its place in some degree; and it adds a lustre to real virtue, where it exists as the substratum of it. Human nature, while it is made as it is, never can wholly repudiate it for its imperfection, because there is something yet more perfect. But what shall we say to the deserter of that cause, who, having glory and honor before him, has chosen to plunge himself into the downward road to sordid riches? My Lords, I have shown the grievances that existed. I have shown the means that existed to put Mr. Hastings beyond a temptation to those practices of which we accuse him, even in his own opinion,--if he will not follow his example in the House of Commons, and disavow this letter, as he has done his defence before them, and say he never wrote it. That situation which was to afford him a comfortable fortune in a few years he has held for many years, and therefore he has not one excuse to make for himself; but I shall show your Lordships much greater and stronger proofs, that will lean heavy upon him in the day of your sentence. The first, the peculiar, trust that was put in him, was to redress all those grievances.