And here I close what I had to say upon this subject,--wishing and hoping, that, when I open before your Lordships the case more particularly, so as to state rather a plan of the proceeding than the direct proof of the crimes, your Lordships will hear me with the same goodness and indulgence I have hitherto experienced,--that you will consider, if I have detained you long, it was not with a view of exhausting my own strength, or putting your patience to too severe a trial, but from the sense I feel that it is the most difficult and the most complicated cause that was ever brought before any human tribunal.

Therefore I was resolved to bring the whole substantially before you.

And now, if your Lordships will permit me, I will state the method of my future proceeding, and the future proceeding of the gentlemen assisting me.
I mean first to bring before you the crimes as they are classed, and are of the same species and genus, and how they mutually arose from one another.

I shall first show that Mr.Hastings's crimes had root in that which is the root of all evil, I mean avarice; that avarice and rapacity were the groundwork and foundation of all his other vicious system; that he showed it in setting to sale the native government of the country, in setting to sale the whole landed interest of the country, in setting to sale the British government and his own fellow-servants, to the basest and wickedest of mankind.
I shall then show your Lordships, that, when, in consequence of such a body of corruption and peculation, he justly dreaded the indignation of his country and the vengeance of its laws, in order to raise himself a faction embodied by the same guilt and rewarded in the same manner, he has, with a most abandoned profusion, thrown away the revenues of the country to form such a faction here.
I shall next show your Lordships, that, having exhausted the resources of the Company, and brought it to extreme difficulties within, he has looked to his _external_ resources, as he calls them; he has gone up into the country.

I will show that he has plundered, or attempted to plunder, every person dependent upon, connected, or allied with this country.
We shall afterwards show what infinite mischief has followed in the case of Benares, upon which he first laid his hands; next, in the case of the Begums of Oude.
We shall then lay before you the profligate system by which he endeavored to oppress that country: first by Residents; next by spies under the name of British Agents; and lastly, that, pursuing his way up to the mountains, he has found out one miserable chief, whose crimes were the prosperity of his country,--that him he endeavored to torture and destroy,--I do not mean in his body, but by exhausting the treasures which he kept for the benefit of his people.
In short, having shown your Lordships that no man who is in his power is safe from his arbitrary will,--that no man, within or without, friend, ally, rival, has been safe from him,--having brought it to this point, if I am not able in my own person immediately to go up into the country and show the ramifications of the system, (I hope and trust I shall be spared to take my part in pursuing him through both,) if I am not, I shall go at least to the root of it, and some other gentleman, with a thousand times more ability than I possess, will take up each separate part in its proper order.