I might say that his passion is a proof of his guilt; and there is an action which is more odious than the crimes he attempts to cover,--_for he has murdered this man by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey_; and if his counsel should be unwise enough to endeavor to detract from the credit of this man by the pretended punishment to which he was brought, we will open that dreadful scene to your Lordships, and you will see that it does not detract from his credit, but brings an eternal stain and dishonor upon the justice of Great Britain: I say nothing further of it. As he stood there, as he gave that evidence that day, the evidence was to be received; it stands good, and is a record against Mr. Hastings,--with this addition, that he would not suffer it to be examined. He railed at his colleagues. He says, if the charge was false, they were guilty of a libel. No: it might have been the effect of conspiracy, it might be punished in another way; but if it was false, it was no libel. And all this is done to discountenance inquiry, to bring odium upon his colleagues for doing their duty, and to prevent that inquiry which could alone clear his character.
Mr. Hastings had himself forgotten the character which he had given of Nundcomar; but he says that his colleagues were perfectly well acquainted with him, and knew that he was a wretch, the basest of mankind. But before I read to you the character which Mr. Hastings gave of him, when he recommended him to the Presidency, (to succeed Mahomed Reza Khân,) I am to let your Lordships understand fully the purpose for which Mr. Hastings gave it. Upon that occasion, all the Council, whom he stated to lie under suspicion of being bought by Mahomed Reza Khân, all those persons with one voice cried out against Nundcomar; and as Mr. Hastings was known to be of the faction the most opposite to Nundcomar, they charged him with direct inconsistency in raising Nundcomar to that exalted trust,--a charge which Mr. Hastings could not repel any other way than by defending Nundcomar. The weight of their objections chiefly lay to Nundcomar's political character; his moral character was not discussed in that proceeding. Mr. Hastings says,--
"The President does not take upon him to vindicate the moral character of Nundcomar; his sentiments of this man's former political conduct are not unknown to the Court of Directors, who, he is persuaded, will be more inclined to attribute his present countenance of him to motives of zeal and fidelity to the service, in repugnance perhaps to his own inclinations, than to any predilection in his favor. He is very well acquainted with most of the facts alluded to in the minute of the majority, having been a principal instrument in detecting them: nevertheless he thinks it but justice to make a distinction between the violation of a trust and an offence committed against our government by a man who owed it no allegiance, nor was indebted to it for protection, but, on the contrary, was the minister and actual servant of a master whose interest naturally suggested that kind of policy which sought, by foreign aids, and the diminution of the power of the Company, to raise his own consequence, and to reëstablish his authority. He has never been charged with any instance of infidelity to the Nabob Mir Jaffier, the constant tenor of whose politics, from his first accession to the nizamut till his death, corresponded in all points so exactly with the artifices which were detected in his minister that they may be as fairly ascribed to the one as to the other: their immediate object was beyond question the aggrandizement of the former, though the latter had ultimately an equal interest in their success. The opinion which the Nabob himself entertained of the services and of the fidelity of Nundcomar evidently appeared in the distinguished marks which he continued to show him of his favor and confidence to the latest hour of his life.