He is full of his idea of dignity. It is right for every man to preserve his dignity. There is a dignity of station, which a man has in trust to preserve; there is a dignity of personal character, which every man by being made man is bound to preserve. But you see Mr. Hastings's idea of dignity has no connection with integrity; it has no connection with honest fame; it has no connection with the reputation which he is bound to preserve. What, my Lords, did he owe nothing to the Company that had appointed him? Did he owe nothing to the legislature,--did he owe nothing to your Lordships, and to the House of Commons, who had appointed him? Did he owe nothing to himself? to the country that bore him? Did he owe nothing to the world, as to its opinion, to which every public man owes a reputation? What an example was here held out to the Company's servants! Mr. Hastings says, "This may come into a court of justice; it will come into a court of justice: I reserve my defence on the occasion till it comes into a court of justice, and here I make no opposition to it." To this I answer, that the Company did not order him so to reserve himself, but ordered him to be an inquirer into those things. Is it a lesson to be taught to the inferior servants of the Company, that, provided they can escape out of a court of justice by the back-doors and sally-ports of the law, by artifice of pleading, by those strict and rigorous rules of evidence which have been established for the protection of innocence, but which by them might be turned to the protection and support of guilt, that such an escape is enough for them? that an Old Bailey acquittal is enough to establish a fitness for trust? and if a man shall go acquitted out of such a court, because the judges are bound to acquit him against the conviction of their own opinion, when every man in the market-place knows that he is guilty, that he is fit for a trust? Is it a lesson to be held out to the servants of the Company, that, upon the first inquiry which is made into corruption, and that in the highest trust, by the persons authorized to inquire into it, he uses all the powers of that trust to quash it,--vilifying his colleagues, vilifying his accuser, abusing everybody, but never denying the charge? His associates and colleagues, astonished at this conduct, so wholly unlike everything that had ever appeared of innocence, request him to consider a little better. They declare they are not his accusers; they tell him they are not his judges; that they, under the orders of the Company, are making an inquiry which he ought to make. He declares he will not make it. Being thus driven to the wall, he says, "Why do you not form yourselves into a committee? I won't suffer these proceedings to go on as long as I am present." Mr. Hastings plainly had in view, that, if the proceedings had been before a committee, there would have been a doubt of their authenticity, as not being before a regular board; and he