My Lords, I shall now call your attention to a part of the evidence which we have produced to prove the terrible effects of Colonel Hannay's operations. Captain Edwards, an untainted man, who tells you that he had passed through that country again and again, describes it as bearing all the marks of savage desolation. Mr. Holt says it has fallen from its former state,--that whole towns and villages were no longer peopled, and that the country carried evident marks of famine. One would have thought that Colonel Hannay's cruelty and depredations would have satiated Mr. Hastings. No: he finds another military collector, a Major Osborne, who, having suffered in his preferment by the sentence of a court-martial, whether justly or unjustly I neither know nor care, was appointed to the command of a thousand men in the provinces of Oude, but really to the administration of the revenues of the country. He administered them much in the same manner as Colonel Hannay had done. He, however, transmitted to the government at Calcutta a partial representation of the state of the provinces, the substance of which was, that the natives were exposed to every kind of peculation, and that the country was in a horrible state of confusion and disorder. This is upon the Company's records; and although not produced in evidence, your Lordships may find it, for it has been printed over and over again. This man went up to the Vizier; in consequence of whose complaint, and the renewed cries of the people, Mr. Hastings was soon obliged to recall him. But, my Lords, let us go from Major Osborne to the rest of these military purveyors of revenue. Your Lordships shall hear the Vizier's own account of what he suffered from British officers, and into what a state Mr. Hastings brought that country by the agency of officers who, under the pretence of defending it, were invested with powers which enabled them to commit most horrible abuses in the administration of the revenue, the collection of customs, and the monopoly of the markets. _Copy of a Letter from the Nabob Vizier to the Governor-General._ "All the officers stationed with the brigade at Cawnpore, Futtyghur, Darunghur, and Furruckabad, and other places, write purwannahs, and give positive orders to the aumils of these places, respecting the grain, &c.; from which conduct the country will become depopulate. I am hopeful from your friendship that you will write to all these gentlemen not to issue orders, &c., to the aumils, and not to send troops into the mahals of the sircar; and for whatever quantity of grain, &c., they may want, they will inform me and the Resident, and we will write it to the aumils, who shall cause it to be sent them every month, and I will deduct the price of them from the tuncaws: this will be agreeable both to me and to the ryots." _A Copy of a subsequent Letter from the Vizier to Rajah Gobind Ram_.