I must here state to your Lordships, that it was the duty of the Resident to transact the money concerns of the Company, as well as its political negotiations. You will now see how Mr. Hastings divided that duty, after he became apprehensive that the Court of Directors might be inclined to assert their own authority, and to assert it in a proper manner, which they so rarely did. When, therefore, his passion had cooled, when his resentment of those violent indignities which had been offered to him, namely, the indignity of being put in mind that he had any superior under heaven, (for I know of no other,) he adopts the expedient of dividing the Residency into two offices; he makes a fair compromise between himself and the Directors; he appoints Mr. Middleton to the management of the money concerns, and Mr. Bristow to that of the political affairs. Your Lordships see that Mr. Bristow, upon whom he had fixed the disqualification for political affairs, was the very person appointed to that department; and to Mr. Middleton, the man of his confidence, he gives the management of the money transactions. He discovers plainly where his heart was: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. This private agent, this stifler of correspondence, a man whose costive retention discovers no secret committed to him, and whose slippery memory is subject to a diarrhoea which permits everything he did know to escape,--this very man he places in a situation where his talents could only be useful for concealment, and where concealment could only be used to cover fraud; while Mr. Bristow, who was by his official engagement responsible to the Company for fair and clear accounts, was appointed superintendent of political affairs, an office for which Mr. Hastings declared he was totally unfit. My Lords, you will judge of the designs which the prisoner had in contemplation, when he dared to commit this act of rebellion against the Company; you will see that it could not have been any other than getting the money transactions of Oude into his own hands. The presumption of a corrupt motive is here as strong as, I believe, it possibly can be.