"The means by which our government acquired this influence," says Mr. Hastings, "and its right to exercise it, will require a previous explanation." He then proceeds,--"With his death [Sujah Dowlah's] a new political system commenced, and Mr. Bristow was constituted the instrument of its formation, and the trustee for the management of it. The Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah was deprived of a large part of his inheritance,--I mean the province of Benares, attached by a very feeble and precarious tenure to our dominions; the army fixed to a permanent station in a remote line of his frontier, with an augmented and perpetual subsidy; a new army, amphibiously composed of troops in his service and pay, commanded by English officers of our own nomination, for the defence of his new conquests; and his own natural troops annihilated, or alienated by the insufficiency of his revenue for all his disbursements, and the prior claims of those which our authority or influence commanded: in a word, he became a vassal of the government; but he still possessed an ostensible sovereignty. His titular rank of Vizier of the Empire rendered him a conspicuous object of view to all the states and chiefs of India; and on the moderation and justice with which the British government in Bengal exercised its influence over him many points most essential to its political strength and to the honor of the British name depended." Your Lordships see that the system which is supposed to have reduced him to vassalage did not make, as he contends, a violent exercise of our power necessary or proper; but possessing, as the Nabob did, that high nominal dignity, and being in that state of vassalage, as Mr. Hastings thought proper to term it, though there is no vassalage mentioned in the treaty,--being, I say, in that situation of honor, credit, and character, sovereign of a country as large as England, yielding an immense revenue, and flourishing in trade, certainly our honor depended upon the use we made of that influence which our power gave us over him; and we therefore press it upon your Lordships, that the conduct of Mr. Hastings was such as dishonored this nation.