It may be thought, and not unnaturally, that, in this sort of corrupt and venal appointment to high trust and office, Mr. Hastings has no other consideration than the money he received. But whoever thinks so will be deceived. Mr. Hastings was very far from indifferent to the character of the persons he dealt with. On the contrary, he made a most careful selection; he had a very scrupulous regard to the aptitude of the men for the purposes for which he employed them, and was much guided by his experience of their conduct in those offices which had been sold to them upon former occasions. Except Gunga Govind Sing, (whom, as justice required, Mr. Hastings distinguished by the highest marks of his confidence,) there was not a man in Bengal, perhaps not upon earth, a match for this Debi Sing. He was not an unknown subject, not one rashly taken up as an experiment. He was a tried man; and if there had been one more desperately and abandonedly corrupt, more wildly and flagitiously oppressive, to be found unemployed in India, large as his offers were, Mr. Hastings would not have taken this money from Debi Sing. Debi Sing was one of those who in the early stages of the English power in Bengal attached himself to those natives who then stood high in office. He courted Mahomed Reza Khan, a Mussulman of the highest rank, of the tribe of Koreish, whom I have already mentioned, then at the head of the revenue, and now at the head of the criminal justice of Bengal, with all the supple assiduity of which those who possess no valuable art or useful talent are commonly complete masters. Possessing large funds, acquired by his apprenticeship and novitiate in the lowest frauds, he was enabled to lend to this then powerful man, in the several emergencies of his variable fortune, very large sums of money. This great man had been brought down by Mr. Hastings, under the orders of the Court of Directors, upon a cruel charge, to Calcutta. He was accused of many crimes, and acquitted, 220,000_l._ in debt: that is to say, as soon as he was a great debtor, he ceased to be a great criminal. Debi Sing obtained by his services no slight influence over Mahomed Reza Khan, a person of a character very different from his. From that connection he was appointed to the farm of the revenue, and inclusively of the government of Purneah, a province of very great extent, and then in a state of no inconsiderable opulence. In this office he exerted his talents with so much vigor and industry that in a very short time the province was half depopulated and totally ruined.