But even if these papers contained a full and faithful account of the correspondence, what we charge is its not being delivered to the Council as it occurred from time to time. Mr. Hastings kept the whole government of Oude in his own hands; so that the Council had no power of judging his acts, of checking, controlling, advising, or remonstrating. It was totally annihilated by him; and we charge, as an act of treason and rebellion against the act of Parliament by which he held his office, his depriving the Council of their legitimate authority, by shutting them out from the knowledge of all affairs,--except, indeed, when he thought it expedient, for his own justification, to have their nominal concurrence or subsequent acquiescence in any of his more violent measures. Your Lordships see Mr. Hastings's system, a system of concealment, a system of turning the vassals of the Company into his own vassals, to make them contributory, not to the Company, but to himself. He has avowed this system in Benares; he has avowed it in Oude. It was his constant practice. Your Lordships see in Oude he kept a correspondence with Mr. Markham for years, and did alone all the material acts which ought to have been done in Council. He delegated a power to Mr. Markham which he had not to delegate; and you will see he has done the same in every part of India. We first charge him not only with acting without authority, but with a strong presumption, founded on his concealment, of intending to act mischievously. We next charge his concealing and withdrawing correspondence, as being directly contrary to the orders of the Court of Directors, the practice of his office, and the very nature and existence of the Council in which he was appointed to preside. We charge this as a substantive crime, and as the forerunner of the oppression, desolation, and ruin of that miserable country. Mr. Hastings having thus rendered the Council blind and ignorant, and consequently fit for subserviency, what does he next do? I am speaking, not with regard to the time of his particular acts, but with regard to the general spirit of the proceedings. He next flies in the face of the Company upon the same principle on which he removed Mr. Fowke from Benares. "I removed _him_ on political grounds," says he, "against the orders of the Court of Directors, because I thought it necessary that the Resident should be a man of my own nomination and confidence." At Oude he proceeds on the same principle. Mr. Bristow had been nominated to the office of Resident by the Court of Directors. Mr. Hastings, by an act of Parliament, was ordered to obey the Court of Directors. He positively refuses to receive Mr. Bristow, for no other reason that we know of but because he was nominated by the Court of Directors; he defies the Court, and declares in effect that they shall not govern that province, but that he will govern it by a Resident of his own.