Thus your Lordships see what Mr. Hastings's opinion of Debi Sing was. We shall prove it at another time, by abundance of clear and demonstrative evidence, that, whether he was bad or no, (but we shall prove that bad he was indeed,) _even he_ could hardly be so bad as he was in the opinion which Mr. Hastings entertained of him; who, notwithstanding, now disowns this mock Committee, instituted by himself, but, in reality, entirely managed by Gunga Govind Sing. This Debi Sing was accepted as an unexceptionable man; and yet Mr. Hastings knows both his power of doing mischief and his artifice in concealing it. If, then, Mr. Goodlad is to be acquitted, does it not show the evil of Mr. Hastings's conduct in destroying those Provincial Councils which, as I have already stated, were obliged to book everything, to minute all the circumstances which came before them, together with all the consultations respecting them? He strikes at the whole system at once, and, instead of it, he leaves an Englishman, under pretence of controlling Gunga Govind Sing's agent, appointed for the very purpose of giving him bribes, in a province where Mr. Hastings says that agent had the power of committing such enormities, and which nobody doubts his disposition to commit,--he leaves him, I say, in such a state of inefficiency, that these iniquities could be concealed (though every one true) from the person appointed there to inspect his conduct! What, then, could be his business there? Was it only to receive such sums of money as Debi Sing might put into his hands, and which might have been easily sent to Calcutta? Was he to be of use as a communication between Debi Sing and the Committee, and in no other way? Here, then, we have that English authority which Mr. Hastings left in the country,--here the native authority which he settled, and the establishment of native iniquity in a regular system under Gunga Govind Sing,--here the destruction of all English inspection. I hope I need say no more to prove to your Lordships that this system, taken nakedly as it thus stands, founded in mystery and obscurity, founded for the very express purpose of conveying bribes, as the best mode of collecting the revenue and supplying the Company's exigencies through Gunga Govind Sing, would be iniquitous upon the face and the statement of it. But when your Lordships consider what horrid effects it produced, you will easily see what the mischief and abomination of Mr. Hastings's destroying these Provincial Councils and protecting these persons must necessarily be. If you had not known in theory, you must have seen it in practice.