Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to the manner in which he defends himself and these proceedings. He says, "I rejected this offer of twenty lacs, with which the Rajah would have compromised for his guilt when it was too late." If by these words he means too late to answer the purpose for which he has said the fine was designed, namely, the relief of the Company, the ground of his defence is absolutely false; for it is notorious that at the time referred to the Company's affairs were in the greatest distress. I will next call your Lordships' attention to the projected sale of Benares to the Nabob of Oude. "If," says Mr. Hastings, "I ever talked of selling the Company's sovereignty over Benares to the Nabob of Oude, it was but _in terrorem_; and no subsequent act of mine warrants the supposition of my having seriously intended it." And in another place he says, "If I ever threatened" (your Lordships will remark, that he puts hypothetically a matter the reality of which he has got to be solemnly declared on an affidavit, and in a narrative to the truth of which he has deposed upon oath)--"if I ever threatened," says he, "to dispossess the Rajah of his territories, it is no more than what my predecessors, without rebuke from their superiors, or notice taken of the expression, had wished and intended to have done to his father, even when the Company had no pretensions to the sovereignty of the country. It is no more than such a legal act of sovereignty as his behavior justified, and as I was justified in by the intentions of my predecessors. If I pretended to seize upon his forts, it was in full conviction that a dependant on the Company, guarantied, maintained, and protected in his country by the Company's arms, had no occasion for forts, had no right to them, and could hold them for no other than suspected and rebellious purposes. None of the Company's other zemindars are permitted to maintain them; and even our ally, the Nabob of the Carnatic, has the Company's troops in all his garrisons. Policy and public safety absolutely require it. What state could exist that allowed its inferior members to hold forts and garrisons independent of the superior administration? It is a solecism in government to suppose it." Here, then, my Lords, he first declares that this was merely done _in terrorem_; that he never intended to execute the abominable act. And will your Lordships patiently endure that such terrific threats as these shall be hung by your Governor in India over the unhappy people that are subject to him and protected by British faith? Will you permit, that, for the purpose of extorting money, a Governor shall hold out the terrible threat of delivering a tributary prince and his people, bound hand and foot, into the power of their perfidious enemies?