This treaty did not contain one word which could justify any interference in the Nabob's government. That evil system, as Mr. Hastings calls it, is not even mentioned or alluded to; nor is there, I again say, one word which authorized Warren Hastings, or any other person whatever, to interfere in the interior affairs of his country. He was legally constituted Viceroy of Oude; his dignity of Vizier of the Empire, with all the power which that office gave him, derived from and held under the Mogul government, he legally possessed; and this evil system, which Mr. Hastings says led him to commit the enormities of which you shall hear by-and-by, was neither more nor less than what I have now stated. But, my Lords, the prisoner thinks, that, when, under any pretence, any sort of means could be furnished of interfering in the government of the country, he has a right to avail himself of them, to use them at his pleasure, and to govern by his own arbitrary will. The Vizier, he says, by this treaty was reduced to a state of vassalage; and he makes this curious distinction in proof of it. It was, he says, an optional vassalage: for, if he chose to get rid of our troops, he might do so and be free; if he had not a mind to do that, and found a benefit in it, then he was a vassal. But there is nothing less true. Here is a person who keeps a subsidiary body of your troops, which he is to pay for you; and in consequence of this Mr. Hastings maintains that he becomes a vassal. I shall not dispute whether vassalage is optional or by force, or in what way Mr. Hastings considered this prince as a vassal of the Company. Let it be as he pleased. I only think it necessary that your Lordships should truly know the actual state of that country, and the ground upon which Mr. Hastings stood. Your Lordships will find it a fairy land, in which there is a perpetual masquerade, where no one thing appears as it really is,--where the person who seems to have the authority is a slave, while the person who seems to be the slave has the authority. In that ambiguous government everything favors fraud, everything favors peculation, everything favors violence, everything favors concealment. You will therefore permit me to show to you what were the principles upon which Mr. Hastings appears, according to the evidence before you, to have acted,--what the state of the country was, according to his conceptions of it; and then you will see how he applied those principles to that state.