One of the counsel for the Prisoner (I think it was one who has comported himself in this Cause with decency), has told your Lordships, that we have come here on account of some doubts entertained in the House of Commons, concerning the conduct of the Prisoner at your bar; that we shall be extremely delighted when his defence, and your Lordship's judgment shall have set him free, and shall have discovered to us our error; that we shall then mutually congratulate one another, and that the Commons, and the Managers who represent them here, will be the first to rejoice in so happy an event, and so fortunate a discovery.

Far, far from the Commons of Great Britain be all manner of real vice; but ten thousand times further from them, as far as from pole to pole, be the whole tribe of false, spurious, affected, counterfeit, hypocritical virtues. These are the things which are ten times more at war with real virtue, these are the things which are ten times more at war with real duty, than any vice known by its name, and distinguished by its proper character.

My Lords, far from us, I will add, be that false and affected candour, that is eternally in treaty with crime; that half virtue, which, like the ambiguous animal that flies about in the twilight of a compromise between day and

night, is to a just man's eye an odious and disgusting thing. There is no middle point, in which the Commons of Great Britain can meet tyranny and oppression. No, we never shall (nor can we conceive that we ever should) pass from this bar, without indignation, without rage and despair, if the House of Commons should, upon such a defence as has here been made against such a Charge as they have produced, be foiled, baffled, and defeated. No, my Lords, we never could forget it; a long, lasting, deep, bitter memory of it would sink into our minds.

My Lords, the Commons of Great Britain have no doubt upon this subject. We came hither to call for justice, not to solve a problem; and if justice be denied us, the accused is not acquitted, but the Tribunal is condemned. We know, that this man is guilty of all the crimes which he stands accused of by us. We have not come here to you, in the rash heat of a day, with that fervor which sometimes prevails in popular assemblies, and frequently misleads them. No; if we have been guilty of error in this Cause, it is a deliberate error; the fruit of long, laborious inquiry; an error founded on a procedure in Parliament, before we came here; the most minute, the most circumstantial, and the most cautious, that ever was instituted. Instead of coming, as we did in Lord Strafford's B 3

case,

case, and in some others, voting the impeachment, and bringing it up on the same day, this impeachment was voted from a general sense prevailing in the House, of Mr. Hastings's criminality, after an investigation begun in the year 1780, and which produced, in 1782, a body of resolutions condemnatory of almost the whole of his conduct. Those resolutions were formed by the Lord Advocate of Scotland, and carried in our House by the unanimous consent of all parties. I mean the then Lord Advocate of Scotland, now one of His Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, and at the head of this very Indian department.

Afterwards, when this defendant came home in the year 1785, we re-instituted our inquiry. We instituted it, as your Lordships and the world know, at his own request made to us by his agent then a Member of our House. We entered into it at large; we deliberately moved for every paper, which promised information on the subject. These papers were not only produced on the part of the prosecution, as is the case before Grand Juries; but the friends of the Prisoner produced every document, which they could produce for his justification. We called all the witnesses, which could enlighten us in the Cause, and the friends of the Prisoner likewise called every witness, that could possibly throw

throw any light in his favour. After all these long deliberations, we referred the whole to a Committee. When it had gone through that Committee and we thought it in a fit state to be digested into these charges, we referred the matter to another Committee, and the result of that long examination and the labour of these Committees is the Impeachment now at your bar.

If therefore we are defeated here, we cannot plead for ourselves, that we have done this from a sudden gust of passion, which sometimes agi. tates and sometimes misleads the most grave popular assemblies. No, it is either the fair result of twenty-two years deliberation that we bring before you; or what the Prisoner says is just and true; that nothing but malice in the Commons of Great Britain could possibly produce such an accusation as the fruit of such an Inquiry. My Lords, we admit this statement, we are at issue upon this point, and we are now before your Lordships, who are to determine whether this man has abused his power in India for fourteen years, or whether the Commons has abused their power of inquiry, made a mock of their inquisitorial authority, and turned it to purposes of private malice and revenge. We are not come here to compromise matters, we do not admit that our fame,

our honours, nay, the very inquisitorial power of the House of Commons is gone, if this man be not guilty.

My Lords, great and powerful as the House of Commons is, (and great and powerful I hope it always will remain), yet we cannot be insensible to the effects produced by the introduction of forty millions of money into this country from India. We know, that the private fortunes which have been made there pervade this kingdom so universally, that there is not a single parish in it unoccupied by the partisans of the Defendant. We should fear, that the faction which he has thus formed by the oppression of the people of India would be too strong for the House of Commons itself, with all its power and reputation, did we not know, that we have brought before you a Cause which nothing can resist.

I shall now, my Lords, proceed to state what has been already done in this Cause, and in what condition it now stands for your judgment.

An immense mass of criminality was digested. by a Committee of the House of Commons; but although this mass had been taken from another mass still greater, the House found it expedient to select twenty specific charges, which they afterwards directed us their managers to bring to your Lordships' Bar. Whether that which

has