sound like the public voice; it will put it to silence, by showing that your Lordships have proceeded upon the strongest evidence, active and passive. First, Mr. Hastings received a positive order to seize upon Mahomed Reza Khan. That order he executed with a military promptitude of obedience, which will show your Lordships what are the services which are congenial to his own mind, and which find in him always a ready acquiescence, a faithful agent, and a spirited instrument in the execution. The very day after he received the order, he sent up, privately, without communicating with the Council, from whom he was not ordered to keep this proceeding a secret,--he sent up, and found that great and respectable man and respectable magistrate, who was in all those high offices which I have stated: and if I was to compare them to circumstances and situations in this country, I should say he had united in himself the character of First Lord of the Treasury, the character of Chief-Justice, the character of Lord High-Chancellor, and the character of Archbishop of Canterbury: a man of great gravity, dignity, and authority, and advanced in years; had once 100,000_l._ a year for the support of his dignity, and had at that time 50,000_l._ This man, sitting in his garden, reposing himself after the toils of his situation, (for he was one of the most laborious men in the world,) was suddenly arrested, and, without a moment's respite, dragged down to Calcutta, and there by Mr. Hastings (exceeding the orders of the Company) confined near two years under a guard of soldiers. Mr. Hastings kept this great man for several months without even attempting the trial upon him. How he tried him afterwards your Lordships may probably in the course of this business inquire; and you will then judge, from the circumstances of that trial, that, as he was not tried for his crime, so neither was he acquitted for his innocence;--but at present I leave him in that situation. Mr. Hastings, unknown to the Council, having executed the orders of the Company in the last degree of rigor to this unhappy man, keeps him in that situation, without a trial, under a guard, separated from his country, disgraced and dishonored, and by Mr. Hastings's express order not suffered either to make a visit or receive a visitor.