have done in our Committee, into all the circumstances of these allegations; I hope your Lordships will do so, and will give the Commons an opportunity of attending and assisting at this most momentous and important inquiry.

The next recriminatory charge made upon us by the Prisoner, is, that merely to throw an odium upon him we have brought forward a great deal of irrelevant matter, (which could not be proved regularly in the course of examination at your Bar;) and particularly in the opening speech, which I had the honour of making on the subject.

Your Lordships know very well, that we stated in our Charge, that great abuses had prevailed in India: that the Company had entered into covenants with their servants respecting those abuses that an Act of Parliament was made to prevent their recurrence, and that Mr. Hastings still continued in their practice. Now, my Lords, having stated this, nothing could be more regular, more proper and more pertinent, than for us to justify both the covenants required by the Company, and the Act made to prevent the abuses which existed in India. We therefore went through those abuses; we stated them, and were ready to prove every material word and article in them. Whether they were personally relevant or irrelevant to the Prisoner, we cared

nothing.

nothing. We were to make out from the records of the House, (which records I can produce whenever I am called upon for them,) all these articles of abuse and grievance: and we have stated these abuses as the grounds of the Company's provisional covenants with its servants, and of the Act of Parliament. We have stated them under two heads, violence and corruption; for these crimes will be found, my Lords, in almost every transaction with the Native Powers; and the Prisoner is directly or indirectly involved in every part of them. If it be still objected, that these crimes are irrelevant to the charge, we answer, that we did not introduce them as matter of charge. We say they were not irrelevant to the proof of the preamble of our charge, which preamble is perfectly relevant in all its parts. That the matters stated in it are perfectly true, we vouch the House of Commons; we vouch the very persons themselves, who were concerned in the transactions. When Arabic authors are quoted, and Oriental tales told about flashes of lightning and three seals, we quote the very parties themselves giving this account of their own conduct to a Committee of the House of Commons:

Your Lordships will remember, that a Most reverend Prelate, who cannot be named without every mark of respect and attention, conveyed a petition

a petition to your Lordships, from a gentleman concerned in one of those narratives. Upon your Lordships table that petition still lies. For the production of this narrative we are not answerable to this House; your Lordships could not make us answerable to him; but we are answerable to our own House, we are answerable to our own honour, we are answerable to all the Commons of Great Britain, for whatever we have asserted in their name. Accordingly, General Burgoyne, then a member of this Committee of Managers, and myself, went down into the House of Commons; we there re-stated the whole affair; we desired that an inquiry should be made into it, at the request of the parties concerned. But, my Lords, they have never asked for inquiry from that day to this. Whenever he or they who are criminated, not by us, but in this volume of Reports that is in my hand, desire it, the House will give them all possible satisfaction upon the subject.

A similar complaint was made to the House of Commons by the Prisoner, that matters irrelevant to the Charge were brought up hither. Was it not open to him, and has he had no friends in the House of Commons, to call upon the House during the whole period of this proceeding, to examine into the particulars adduced in justification of the preamble of the Charge against

against him; in justification of the covenants of the Company; in justification of the Act of Parliament? It was in his power to do it, it is in his power still; and if it be brought before that Tribunal, to which I and my Fellow Managers are alone accountable, we will lay before that Tribunal such matters as will sufficiently justify our mode of proceeding, and the resolution of the House of Commons. I will not, therefore, enter into the particulars (because they cannot be entered into by your Lordships,) any further than to say, that if we had ever been called upon to prove the allegations which we have made, not in the nature of a charge, but as bound in duty to this Court, and in justice to ourselves, we should have been ready to enter into proof. We offered to do so, and we now repeat the offer.

There was another complaint in the Prisoner's petition, which did not apply to the words of the preamble, but to an allegation in the Charge, concerning abuses in the revenue, and the ill consequences which arose from them. I allude to those shocking transactions which nobody can mention without horror, in Rampore and Dinagepore, during the government of Mr. Hastings, and which we attempted to bring home to him. What did he do in this case? Did he endeavour to meet these charges fairly, as he might have done?

done? No, my Lords, what he said merely amounted to this; ---examination into these charges would vindicate my reputation before the world; but " I, who am the guardian of my own honour, and my own interests," choose to avail myself of the rules and orders of this House, and I will not suffer you to enter upon that examination.

My Lords, we admit you are the interpreters of your own rules and orders. We likewise admit that our own honour may be affected by the character of the evidence which we produce to you. But, my Lords, they who withhold their defence, who suffer themselves, as they say, to be cruelly criminated by unjust accusation, and yet will not permit the evidence of their guilt or innocence to be produced, are themselves the causes of the irrelevancy of all these matters. It cannot justly be charged on us; for we have never offered any matter here, which we did not declare our readiness upon the to prove. Your Lordships did not think fit to spot receive that proof. We do not now censure your Lordships for your determination; that is not the business of this day. We refer to your determination for the purpose of shewing the falsehood of the imputation, which the Prisoner has cast upon us, of having oppressed him by delay and irrelevant matter. We refer to it,