There remains nothing for the Directors but the shell and husk of a dry, formal, official correspondence, which neither means anything nor was intended to mean anything.
These are some of the methods by which he has defeated the purposes of the excellent institution of a recorded administration.

But there are cases to be brought before this court in which he has laid the axe at once to the root,--which was, by delegating out of his own hands a great department of the powers of the Company, which he was himself bound to execute, to a board which was not bound to record their deliberations with the same strictness as he himself was bound.

He appointed of his own usurped authority a board for the administration of the revenue, the members of which were expressly dispensed from recording their dissents, until they chose it; and in that office, as in a great gulf, a most important part of the Company's transactions has been buried.
Notwithstanding his unwearied pains in the work of spoliation, some precious fragments are left, which we ought infinitely to value,--by which we may learn, and lament, the loss of what he has destroyed.

If it were not for those inestimable fragments and wrecks of the recorded government which have been saved from the destruction which Mr.
Hastings intended for them all, the most shameful enormities that have ever disgraced a government or harassed a people would only be known in this country by secret whispers and unauthenticated anecdotes; the disgracer's of government, the vexers and afflicters of mankind, instead of being brought before an awful public tribunal, might have been honored with the highest distinctions and rewards their country has to bestow; and sordid bribery, base peculation, iron-handed extortion, fierce, unrelenting tyranny, might themselves have been invested with those sacred robes of justice before which this day they have cause to tremble.
Mr.Hastings, sensible of what he suffers from this register of acts and opinions, has endeavored to discredit and ruin what remains of it.

He refuses, in his defence to the House of Commons, in letters to the Court of Directors, in various writings and declarations, he refuses to be tried by his own recorded declarations; he refuses to be bound by his own opinions, delivered under his own hand.