My Lords, what shall we say to this demeanor? With regard to the charge of using him with ingratitude, there are two points to be considered. First, the charge implies that he had rendered great services; and, secondly, that he has been falsely accused.

My Lords, as to the great services, they have not, they cannot, come in evidence before you. If you have received such evidence, you have received it obliquely; for there is no other direct proof before your Lordships of such services than that of there having been great distresses and great calamities in India during his government. Upon these distresses and calamities he has, indeed, attempted to justify obliquely the corruption that has been charged upon him; but you have not properly in issue these services. You cannot admit the evidence of any such services received directly from him, as a matter of recriminatory charge upon the House of Commons, because you have not suffered that House to examine into the validity and merit of this plea. We have not been heard upon this recriminatory charge, which makes a considerable part of the demeanor of the prisoner; we cannot be heard upon it; and therefore I demand, on the part of the Commons of Great Britain, that it be dismissed from your consideration: and this I demand, whether you take it as an attempt to render odious the conduct of the Commons, whether you take it in mitigation of the punishment due to the prisoner for his crimes, or whether it be adduced as a presumption that so virtuous a servant never could be guilty of the offences with which we charge him. In whichever of these lights you may be inclined to consider this matter, I say you have it not in evidence before you; and therefore you must expunge it from your thoughts, and separate it entirely from your judgment. I shall hereafter have occasion, to say a few words on this subject of merits. I have said thus much at present in order to remove extraneous impressions from your minds. For, admitting that your Lordships are the best judges, as I well know that you are, yet I cannot say that you are not men, and that matter of this kind, however irrelevant, may not make an impression upon you. It does, therefore, become us to take some occasional notice of these supposed services, not in the way of argument, but with a view by one sort of prejudice to destroy another prejudice. If there is anything in evidence which tends to destroy this plea of merits, we shall recur to that evidence; if there is nothing to destroy it but argument, we shall have recourse to that argument; and if we support that argument by authority and document not in your Lordships' minutes, I hope it will not be the less considered as good argument because it is so supported.

I must now call your Lordships' attention from the vaunted services of the prisoner, which have been urged to convict us of ingratitude, to another part of his recriminatory defence. He says, my Lords, that we have not only oppressed him with unjust charges, (which is a matter for your Lordships to judge, and is now the point at issue between us,) but that, instead of attacking him by fair judicial modes of proceeding, by stating crimes clearly and plainly, and by proving those crimes, and showing their necessary consequences, we have oppressed him with all sorts of foul and abusive language,—so much so, that every part of our proceeding has, in the eye of the world, more the appearance of private revenge than of public justice.

Against this impudent and calumnious recriminatory accusation, which your Lordships have thought good to suffer him to utter here, at a time, too, when all dignity is in danger of being trodden under foot, we will say nothing by way of defence. The Commons of Great Britain, my Lords, are a rustic people: a tone of rusticity is therefore the proper accent of their Managers. We are not acquainted with the urbanity and politeness of extortion and oppression; nor do we know anything of the sentimental delicacies of bribery and corruption. We speak the language of truth, and we speak it in the plain, simple terms in which truth ought to be spoken. Even if we have anything to answer for on this head, we can only answer to the body which we represent and to that body which hears us: to any others we owe no apology whatever.

The prisoner at your bar admits that the crimes which we charge him with are of that atrocity, that, if brought home to him, he merits death. Yet, when, in pursuance of our duty, we come to state these crimes with their proper criminatory epithets, when we state in strong and direct terms the circumstances which heighten and aggravate them, when we dwell on the immoral and heinous nature of the acts, and the terrible effects which such acts produce, and when we offer to prove both the principal facts and the aggravatory ones by evidence, and to show their nature and quality by the rules of law, morality, and policy, then this criminal, then his counsel, then his accomplices and hirelings, posted in newspapers and dispersed in circles through every part of the kingdom, represent him as an object of great compassion, because he is treated, say they, with, nothing but opprobrious names and scurrilous invectives.

To all this the Managers of the Commons will say nothing by way of defence: it would be to betray their trust, if they did. No, my Lords, they have another and a very different duty to perform on this occasion. They are bound not to suffer public opinion, which often prevents judgment and often defeats its effects, to be debauched and corrupted. Much less is this to be suffered in the presence of our cooerdinate branch of legislature, and as it were with your and our own tacit acquiescence. Whenever the public mind is misled, it becomes the duty of the Commons of Great Britain to give it a more proper tone and a juster way of thinking. When ignorance and corruption have usurped the professor's chair, and placed themselves in the seats of science and of virtue, it is high time for us to speak out. We know that the doctrines of folly are of great use to the professors of vice. We know that it is one of the signs of a corrupt and degenerate age, and one of the means of insuring its further corruption and degeneracy, to give mild and lenient epithets to vices and to crimes. The world is much influenced by names. And as terms are the representatives of sentiments, when persons who exercise any censorial magistracy seem in their language to compromise with crimes and criminals by expressing no horror of the one or detestation of the other, the world will naturally think that they act merely to acquit themselves in its sight in form, but in reality to evade their duty. Yes, my Lords, the world must think that such persons palter with their sacred trust, and are tender to crimes because they look forward to the future possession of the same power which they now prosecute, and purpose to abuse it in the manner it has been abused by the criminal of whom they are so tender.

To remove such an imputation from us, we assert that the Commons of Great Britain are not to receive instructions about the language which they ought to hold from the gentlemen who have made profitable studies in the academies of Benares and of Oude. We know, and therefore do not want to learn, how to comport ourselves in prosecuting the haughty and overgrown delinquents of the East. We cannot require to be instructed by them in what words we shall express just indignation at enormous crimes; for we have the example of our great ancestors to teach us: we tread in their steps, and we speak in their language.

Your Lordships well know, for you must be conversant in this kind of reading, that you once had before you a man of the highest rank in this country, one of the greatest men of the law and one of the greatest men of the state, a peer of your own body, Lord Macclesfield. Yet, my Lords, when that peer did but just modestly hint that he had received hard measure from the Commons and their Managers, those Managers thought themselves bound seriatim, one after another, to express the utmost indignation at the charge, in the harshest language that could be used. Why did they do so? They knew it was the language that became them. They lived in an age in which politeness was as well understood and as much cultivated as it is at present; but they knew what they were doing, and they were resolved to use no language but what their ancestors had used, and to suffer no insolence which their ancestors would not have suffered. We tread in their steps; we pursue their method; we learn of them: and we shall never learn at any other school.

We know from history and the records of this House, that a Lord Bacon has been before you. Who is there, that, upon hearing this name, does not instantly recognize everything of genius the most profound, everything of literature the most extensive, everything of discovery the most penetrating, everything of observation on human life the most distinguishing and refined? All these must be instantly recognized, for they are all inseparably associated with the name of Lord Verulam. Yet, when this prodigy was brought before your Lordships by the Commons of Great Britain for having permitted his menial servant to receive presents, what was his demeanor? Did he require his counsel not "to let down the dignity of his defence"? No. That Lord Bacon, whose least distinction was, that he was a peer of England, a Lord High Chancellor, and the son of a Lord Keeper, behaved like a man who knew himself, like a man who was conscious of merits of the highest kind, but who was at the same time conscious of having fallen into guilt. The House of Commons did not spare him. They brought him to your bar. They found spots in that sun. And what, I again ask, was his behavior? That of contrition, that of humility, that of repentance, that which belongs to the greatest men lapsed and fallen through human infirmity into error. He did not hurl defiance at the accusations of his country; he bowed himself before it. Yet, with all his penitence, he could not escape the pursuit of the House of Commons, and the inflexible justice of this Court. Your Lordships fined him forty thousand pounds, notwithstanding all his merits, notwithstanding his humility, notwithstanding his contrition, notwithstanding the decorum of his behavior, so well suited to a man under the prosecution of the Commons of England before the Peers of England. You fined him in a sum fully equal to one hundred thousand pounds of the present day; you imprisoned him during the King's pleasure; and you disqualified him forever from having a seat in this House and any office in this kingdom. This is the way in which the Commons behaved formerly, and in which your Lordships acted formerly, when no culprit at this bar dared to hurl a recriminatory accusation against his prosecutors, or dared to censure the language in which they expressed their indignation at his crimes.

The Commons of Great Britain, following these examples and fortified by them, abhor all compromise with guilt either in act or in language. They will not disclaim any one word that they have spoken, because, my Lords, they have said nothing abusive or illiberal. It has been, said that we have used such language as was used to Sir Walter Raleigh, when he was called, not by the Commons, but by a certain person of a learned profession, "a spider of hell." My Lords, Sir Walter was a great soldier, a great mariner, and one of the first scholars of his age. To call him a spider of hell was not only indecent in itself, but perfectly foolish, from the term being totally inapplicable to the object, and fit only for the very pedantic eloquence of the person who used it. But if Sir Walter Raleigh had been guilty of numberless frauds and prevarications, if he had clandestinely picked up other men's money, concealed his peculation by false bonds, and afterwards attempted to cover it by the cobwebs of the law, then my Lord Coke would have trespassed a great deal more against decorum than against propriety of similitude and metaphor.

My Lords, the Managers for the Commons have not used any inapplicable language. We have indeed used, and will again use, such expressions as are proper to portray guilt. After describing the magnitude of the crime, we describe the magnitude of the criminal. We have declared him to be not only a public robber himself, but the head of a system of robbery, the captain-general of the gang, the chief under whom a whole predatory band was arrayed, disciplined, and paid. This, my Lords, is what we offered to prove fully to you, what in part we have proved, and the whole of which I believe we could prove. In developing such a mass of criminality and in describing a criminal of such magnitude as we have now brought before you, we could not use lenient epithets without compromising with crime. We therefore shall not relax in our pursuits nor in our language. No, my Lords, no! we shall not fail to feel indignation, wherever our moral nature has taught us to feel it; nor shall we hesitate to speak the language which is dictated by that indignation. Whenever men are oppressed where they ought to be protected, we called [call?] it tyranny, and we call the actor a tyrant. Whenever goods are taken by violence from the possessor, we call it a robbery, and the person who takes it we call a robber. Money clandestinely taken from the proprietor we call theft, and the person who takes it we call a thief. When a false paper is made out to obtain money, we call the act a forgery. That steward who takes bribes from his master's tenants, and then, pretending the money to be his own, lends it to that master and takes bonds for it to himself, we consider guilty of a breach of trust; and the person who commits such crimes we call a cheat, a swindler, and a forger of bonds. All these offences, without the least softening, under all these names, we charge upon this man. We have so charged in our record, we have so charged in our speeches; and we are sorry that our language does not furnish terms of sufficient force and compass to mark the multitude, the magnitude, and the atrocity of his crimes.

How came it, then, that the Commons of Great Britain should be calumniated for the course which they have taken? Why should it ever have been supposed that we are actuated by revenge? I answer, There are two very sufficient causes: corruption and ignorance. The first disposes an innumerable multitude of people to a fellow-feeling with the prisoner. Under the shadow of his crimes thousands of fortunes have been made; and therefore thousands of tongues are employed to justify the means by which these fortunes were made. When they cannot deny the facts, they attack the accusers,—they attack their conduct, they attack their persons, they attack their language, in every possible manner. I have said, my Lords, that ignorance is the other cause of this calumny by which the House of Commons is assailed. Ignorance produces a confusion of ideas concerning the decorum of life, by confounding the rules of private society with those of public function. To talk, as we here talk, to persons in a mixed company of men and women, would violate the law of such societies; because they meet for the sole purpose of social intercourse, and not for the exposure, the censure, the punishment of crimes: to all which things private societies are altogether incompetent. In them crimes can never be regularly stated, proved, or refuted. The law has therefore appointed special places for such inquiries; and if in any of those places we were to apply the emollient language of drawing-rooms to the exposure of great crimes, it would be as false and vicious in taste and in morals as to use the criminatory language of this hall in drawing and assembling rooms would be misplaced and ridiculous. Every one knows that in common society palliating names are given to vices. Adultery in a lady is called gallantry; the gentleman is commonly called a man of good fortune, sometimes in French and sometimes in English. But is this the tone which would become a person in a court of justice, calling these people to an account for that horrible crime which destroys the basis of society? No, my Lords, this is not the tone of such proceedings. Your Lordships know that it is not; the Commons know that it is not; and because we have acted on that knowledge, and stigmatized crimes with becoming indignation, we are said to be actuated rather by revenge than justice.

If it should still be asked why we show sufficient acrimony to excite a suspicion of being in any manner influenced by malice or a desire of revenge, to this, my Lords, I answer, Because we would be thought to know our duty, and to have all the world know how resolutely we are resolved to perform it. The Commons of Great Britain are not disposed to quarrel with the Divine Wisdom and Goodness, which has moulded up revenge into the frame and constitution of man. He that has made us what we are has made us at once resentful and reasonable. Instinct tells a man that he ought to revenge an injury; reason tells him that he ought not to be a judge in his own cause. From that moment revenge passes from the private to the public hand; but in being transferred it is far from being extinguished. My Lords, it is transferred as a sacred trust to be exercised for the injured, in measure and proportion, by persons who, feeling as he feels, are in a temper to reason better than he can reason. Revenge is taken out of the hands of the original injured proprietor, lest it should be carried beyond the bounds of moderation and justice. But, my Lords, it is in its transfer exposed to a danger of an opposite description. The delegate of vengeance may not feel the wrong sufficiently: he may be cold and languid in the performance of his sacred duty. It is for these reasons that good men are taught to tremble even at the first emotions of anger and resentment for their own particular wrongs; but they are likewise taught, if they are well taught, to give the loosest possible rein to their resentment and indignation, whenever their parents, their friends, their country, or their brethren of the common family of mankind are injured. Those who have not such feelings, under such circumstances, are base and degenerate. These, my Lords, are the sentiments of the Commons of Great Britain.

Lord Bacon has very well said, that "revenge is a kind of wild justice." It is so, and without this wild austere stock there would be no justice in the world. But when, by the skilful hand of morality and wise jurisprudence, a foreign scion, but of the very same species, is grafted upon it, its harsh quality becomes changed, it submits to culture, and, laying aside its savage nature, it bears fruits and flowers, sweet to the world, and not ungrateful even to heaven itself, to which it elevates its exalted head. The fruit of this wild stock is revenge regulated, but not extinguished,—revenge transferred from the suffering party to the communion and sympathy of mankind. This is the revenge by which we are actuated, and which we should be sorry, if the false, idle, girlish, novel-like morality of the world should extinguish in the breast of us who have a great public duty to perform.

This sympathetic revenge, which is condemned by clamorous imbecility, is so far from being a vice, that it is the greatest of all possible virtues,—a virtue which the uncorrupted judgment of mankind has in all ages exalted to the rank of heroism. To give up all the repose and pleasures of life, to pass sleepless nights and laborious days, and, what is ten times more irksome to an ingenuous mind, to offer oneself to calumny and all its herd of hissing tongues and poisoned fangs, in order to free the world from fraudulent prevaricators, from cruel oppressors, from robbers and tyrants, has, I say, the test of heroic virtue, and well deserves such a distinction. The Commons, despairing to attain the heights of this virtue, never lose sight of it for a moment. For seventeen years they have, almost without intermission, pursued, by every sort of inquiry, by legislative and by judicial remedy, the cure of this Indian malady, worse ten thousand times than the leprosy which our forefathers brought from the East. Could they have done this, if they had not been actuated by some strong, some vehement, some perennial passion, which, burning like the Vestal fire, chaste and eternal, never suffers generous sympathy to grow cold in maintaining the rights of the injured or in denouncing the crimes of the oppressor?

My Lords, the Managers for the Commons have been actuated by this passion; my Lords, they feel its influence at this moment; and so far from softening either their measures or their tone, they do here, in the presence of their Creator, of this House, and of the world, make this solemn declaration, and nuncupate this deliberate vow: that they will ever glow with the most determined and unextinguishable animosity against tyranny, oppression, and peculation in all, but more particularly as practised by this man in India; that they never will relent, but will pursue and prosecute him and it, till they see corrupt pride prostrate under the feet of justice. We call upon your Lordships to join us; and we have no doubt that you will feel the same sympathy that we feel, or (what I cannot persuade my soul to think or my mouth to utter) you will be identified with the criminal whose crimes you excuse, and rolled with him in all the pollution of Indian guilt, from generation to generation. Let those who feel with me upon this occasion join with me in this vow: if they will not, I have it all to myself.

It is not to defend ourselves that I have addressed your Lordships at such length on this subject. No, my Lords, I have said what I considered necessary to instruct the public upon the principles which induced the House of Commons to persevere in this business with a generous warmth, and in the indignant language which Nature prompts, when great crimes are brought before men who feel as they ought to feel upon such occasions.

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I now proceed, my Lords, to the next recriminatory charge, which is delay. I confess I am not astonished at this charge. From the first records of human impatience down to the present time, it has been complained that the march of violence and oppression is rapid, but that the progress of remedial and vindictive justice, even the divine, has almost always favored the appearance of being languid and sluggish. Something of this is owing to the very nature and constitution of human affairs; because, as justice is a circumspect, cautious, scrutinizing, balancing principle, full of doubt even of itself, and fearful of doing wrong even to the greatest wrong-doers, in the nature of things its movements must be slow in comparison with the headlong rapidity with which avarice, ambition, and revenge pounce down upon the devoted prey of those violent and destructive passions. And indeed, my Lords, the disproportion between crime and justice, when seen in the particular acts of either, would be so much to the advantage of crimes and criminals, that we should find it difficult to defend laws and tribunals, (especially in great and arduous cases like this,) if we did not look, not to the immediate, not to the retrospective, but to the provident operation of justice. Its chief operation is in its future example; and this turns the balance, upon the total effect, in favor of vindictive justice, and in some measure reconciles a pious and humble mind to this great mysterious dispensation of the world.

Upon the charge of delay in this particular cause, my Lords, I have only to say that the business before you is of immense magnitude. The prisoner himself says that all the acts of his life are committed in it. With a due sense of this magnitude, we know that the investigation could not be short to us, nor short to your Lordships; but when we are called upon, as we have been daily, to sympathize with the prisoner in that delay, my Lords, we must tell you that we have no sympathy with him. Rejecting, as we have done, all false, spurious, and hypocritical virtues, we should hold it to be the greatest of all crimes to bestow upon the oppressors that pity which belongs to the oppressed. The unhappy persons who are wronged, robbed, and despoiled have no remedy but in the sympathies of mankind; and when these sympathies are suffered to be debauched, when they are perversely carried from the victim to the oppressor, then we commit a robbery still greater than that which was committed by the criminal accused.

My Lords, we do think this process long; we lament it in every sense in which it ought to be lamented; but we lament still more that the Begums have been so long without having a just punishment inflicted upon their spoiler. We lament that Cheyt Sing has so long been a wanderer, while the man who drove him from his dominions is still unpunished. We are sorry that Nobkissin has been cheated of his money for fourteen years, without obtaining redress. These are our sympathies, my Lords; and thus we reply to this part of the charge.

My Lords, there are some matters of fact in this charge of delay which I must beg your Lordships will look into. On the 19th of February, 1789, the prisoner presented a petition to your Lordships, in which he states, after many other complaints, that a great number of his witnesses were obliged to go to India, by which he has lost the benefit of their testimony, and that a great number of your Lordships' body were dead, by which he has lost the benefit of their judgment. As to the hand of God, though some members of your House may have departed this life since the commencement of this trial, yet the body always remains entire. The evidence before you is the same; and therefore there is no reason to presume that your final judgment will be affected by these afflicting dispensations of Providence. With regard to his witnesses, I must beg to remind your Lordships of one extraordinary fact. This prisoner has sent to India, and obtained, not testimonies, but testimonials to his general good behavior. He has never once applied, by commission or otherwise, to falsify any one fact that is charged upon, him,—no, my Lords, not one. Therefore that part of his petition which states the injury he has received from the Commons of Great Britain is totally false and groundless. For if he had any witnesses to examine, he would not have failed to examine them; if he had asked for a commission to receive their depositions, a commission would have been granted; if, without a commission, he had brought affidavits to facts, or regular recorded testimony, the Commons of Great Britain would never have rejected such evidence, even though they could not have cross-examined it.

Another complaint is, that many of his witnesses were obliged to leave England before he could make use of their evidence. My Lords, no delay in the trial has prevented him from producing any evidence; for we were willing that any of his witnesses should be examined at any time most convenient to himself. If many persons connected with his measures are gone to India, during the course of his trial, many others have returned to England. Mr. Larkins returned. Was the prisoner willing to examine him? No: and it was nothing but downright shame, and the presumptions which he knew would be drawn against him, if he did not call this witness, which finally induced him to make use of his evidence. We examined Mr. Larkins, my Lords; we examined all the prisoner's witnesses; your Lordships have their testimony; and down to this very hour he has not put his hand upon any one whom he thought a proper and essential witness to the facts, or to any part of the cause, whose examination has been denied him; nor has he even stated that any man, if brought here, would prove such and such points. No, not one word to this effect has ever been stated by the prisoner.

There is, my Lords, another case, which was noticed by my honorable fellow Manager yesterday. Mr. Belli, the confidential secretary of the prisoner, was agent and contractor for stores; and this raised a suspicion that the contracts were held by him for the prisoner's advantage. Mr. Belli was here during the whole time of the trial, and six weeks after we had closed our evidence. We had then no longer the arrangement of the order of witnesses, and he might have called whom he pleased. With the full knowledge of these circumstances, that witness did he suffer to depart for India, if he did not even encourage his departure. This, my Lords, is the kind of damage which he has suffered by the want of witnesses, through the protraction of this trial.

But the great and serious evil which he complains of, as being occasioned by our delay, is of so extraordinary a nature that I must request your Lordships to examine it with extraordinary strictness and attention. In the petition before your Lordships, the prisoner asserts that he was under the necessity, through his counsel and solicitors, "of collecting and collating from the voluminous records of the Company the whole history of his public life, in order to form a complete defence to every allegation which the Honorable House of Commons had preferred against him, and that he has expended upwards of thirty thousand pounds in preparing the materials of his defence."

It is evident, my Lords, that the expenditure of this thirty thousand pounds is not properly connected with the delay of which he complains; for he states that he had incurred this loss merely in collecting and collating materials, previous to his defence before your Lordships. If this were true, and your Lordships were to admit the amount as a rule and estimate by which the aggregate of his loss could be ascertained, the application of the rule of three to the sum and time given would bring out an enormous expenditure in the long period which has elapsed since the commencement of the trial,—so enormous, that, if this monstrous load of oppression has been laid upon him by the delay of the Commons, I believe no man living can stand up in our justification. But, my Lords, I am to tell your Lordships some facts, into which we trust you, will inquire: for this business is not in our hands, nor can we lay it as a charge before you. Your own Journals have recorded the document, in which the prisoner complains bitterly of the House of Commons, and indeed of the whole judicature of the country,—a complaint which your Lordships will do well to examine.

When we first came to a knowledge of this petition, which was not till some time after it was presented, I happened to have conversation with a noble lord,—I know not whether he be in his place in the House or not, but I think I am not irregular in mentioning his name. When I mention Lord Suffolk, I name a peer whom honor, justice, veracity, and every virtue that distinguishes the man and the peer would claim for their own. My Lord Suffolk told me, that, in a conversation with the late Lord Dover, who brought the prisoner's petition into your House, he could not refrain from expressing his astonishment at that part of the petition which related to the expense Mr. Hastings had been at; and particularly as a complaint had been made in the House of the enormous expense of the prosecution, which at that time had only amounted to fourteen thousand pounds, although the expense of the prosecutor is generally greater than that of the defendant, and public proceedings more expensive than private ones. Lord Dover said, that, before he presented the petition, he had felt exactly in the same manner; but that Mr. Hastings assured him that six thousand pounds had been paid to copying clerks in the India House, and that from this circumstance he might judge of the other expenses. Lord Dover was satisfied with this assurance, and presented the petition, which otherwise he should have declined to do, on account of the apparent enormity of the allegation it contained. At the time when Lord Suffolk informed me of these particulars, (with a good deal of surprise and astonishment,) I had not leisure to go down to the India House in order to make inquiries concerning them, but I afterwards asked the Secretary, Mr. Hudson, to whom we had given a handsome reward, what sums he had received from Mr. Hastings for his services upon this occasion, and the answer was, "Not one shilling." Not one shilling had Mr. Hudson received from Mr. Hastings. The clerks of the Company informed us that the Court of Directors had ordered that every paper which Mr. Hastings wanted should be copied for him gratuitously,—and that, if any additional clerks were wanting for the effectual execution of his wishes, the expense would be defrayed by the Directors. Hearing this account, I next inquired what expedition money might have been given to the clerks: for we know something of this kind is usually done. In reply to this question, Mr. Hudson told me that at various times they had received in little driblets to the amount of ninety-five pounds, or thereabouts. In this way the account stood when I made this inquiry, which was at least half a year after the petition had been presented to your Lordships. Thus the whole story of the six thousand pounds was absolutely false. At that time there was not one word of truth in it, whatever be the amount of the sums which he has paid since. Your Lordships will now judge whether you have been abused by false allegations or not,—allegations which could scarcely admit of being true, and which upon the best inquiry I found absolutely false; and I appeal to the testimony of the noble lord, who is now living, for the truth of the account he received from the worthy and respectable peer whose loss the nation has to bewail.

There are many other circumstances of fraud and falsehood attending this petition, (we must call things by their proper names, my Lords,)—there are, I say, many circumstances of fraud and falsehood. We know it to have been impossible, at the time of presenting this petition, that this man should have expended thirty thousand pounds in the preparation of materials for his defence; and your Lordships' justice, together with the credit of the House of Commons, are concerned in the discovery of the truth. There is, indeed, an ambiguous word in the petition. He asserts that he is engaged for the payment of that sum. We asked the clerks of the India House whether he had given them any bond, note, security, or promise of payment: they assured us that he had not: they will be ready to make the same assurance to your Lordships, when you come to inquire into this matter, which before you give judgment we desire and claim that you will do. All is concealment and mystery on the side of the prisoner; all is open and direct with us. We are desirous that everything which is concealed may be brought to light.

In contradiction, then, to this charge of oppression and of an attempt to ruin his fortune, your Lordships will see that at the time when he made this charge he had not been, in fact, nor was for a long time after, one shilling out of pocket. But some other person had become security to his attorney for him. What, then, are we to think of these men of business, of these friends of Mr. Hastings, who, when he is possessed of nothing, are contented to become responsible for thirty thousand pounds, (was it thirty thousand pounds out of the bullock contracts?)—responsible, I say, for this sum, in order to maintain this suit previous to its actual commencement, and who consequently must be so engaged for every article of expense that has followed from that time to this?

Thus much we have thought it necessary to say upon this part of the recriminatory charge of delay. With respect to the delay in general, we are at present under an account to our constituents upon that subject. To them we shall give it. We shall not give any further account of it to your Lordships. The means belong to us as well as to you of removing these charges. Your Lordships may inquire upon oath, as we 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 honor 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. 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 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 honor, 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 restated 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 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 endeavor to meet these charges fairly, as he might have 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 honor 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 honor 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 spot to prove. Your Lordships did not think fit to 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 showing 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 in order to show that the oppression rests with himself, that it is all his own.

Well, but Mr. Hastings complained also to the House of Commons. Has he pursued the complaint? No, he has not; and yet this prisoner, and these gentlemen, his learned counsel, have dared to reiterate their complaints of us at your Lordships' bar, while we have always been, and still are, ready to prove both the atrocious nature of the facts, and that they are referable to the prisoner at your bar. To this, as I have said before, the prisoner has objected; this we are not permitted to do by your Lordships: and therefore, without presuming to blame your determination, I repeat, that we throw the blame directly upon himself, when he complains that his private character suffers without the means of defence, since he objects to the use of means of defence which are at his disposal.

Having gone through this part of the prisoner's recriminatory charge, I shall close my observations on his demeanor, and defer my remarks on his complaint of our ingratitude until we come to consider his set-off of services.

* * * * *

The next subject for your Lordships' consideration is the principle of the prisoner's defence. And here we must observe, that, either by confession or conviction, we are possessed of the facts, and perfectly agreed upon the matter at issue between us. In taking a view of the laws by which you are to judge, I shall beg leave to state to you upon what principles of law the House of Commons has criminated him, and upon what principles of law, or pretended law, he justifies himself: for these are the matters at issue between us; the matters of fact, as I have just said, being determined either by confession on his part or by proof on ours.

My Lords, we acknowledge that Mr. Hastings was invested with discretionary power; but we assert that he was bound to use that power according to the established rules of political morality, humanity, and equity. In all questions relating to foreign powers he was bound to act under the Law of Nature and under the Law of Nations, as it is recognized by the wisest authorities in public jurisprudence; in his relation to this country he was bound to act according to the laws and statutes of Great Britain, either in their letter or in their spirit; and we affirm, that in his relation to the people of India he was bound to act according to the largest and most liberal construction of their laws, rights, usages, institutions, and good customs; and we furthermore assert, that he was under an express obligation to yield implicit obedience to the Court of Directors. It is upon these rules and principles the Commons contend that Mr. Hastings ought to have regulated his government; and not only Mr. Hastings, but all other governors. It is upon these rules that he is responsible; and upon these rules, and these rules only, your Lordships are to judge.

My Lords, long before the Committee had resolved upon this impeachment, we had come, as I have told your Lordships, to forty-five resolutions, every one criminatory of this man, every one of them bottomed upon the principles which I have stated. We never will nor can we abandon them; and we therefore do not supplicate your Lordships upon this head, but claim and demand of right, that you will judge him upon those principles, and upon no other. If once they are evaded, you can have no rule for your judgment but your caprices and partialities.

Having thus stated the principles upon which the Commons hold him and all governors responsible, and upon which we have grounded our impeachment, and which must be the grounds of your judgment, (and your Lordships will not suffer any other ground to be mentioned to you,) we will now tell you what are the grounds of his defence.

He first asserts, that he was possessed of an arbitrary and despotic power, restrained by no laws but his own will. He next says, that "the rights of the people he governed in India are nothing, and that the rights of the government are everything." The people, he asserts, have no liberty, no laws, no inheritance, no fixed property, no descendable estate, no subordinations in society, no sense of honor or of shame, and that they are only affected by punishment so far as punishment is a corporal infliction, being totally insensible of any difference between the punishment of man and beast. These are the principles of his Indian government, which Mr. Hastings has avowed in their full extent. Whenever precedents are required, he cites and follows the example of avowed tyrants, of Aliverdy Khan, Cossim Ali Khan, and Sujah Dowlah. With an avowal of these principles he was pleased first to entertain the House of Commons, the active assertors and conservators of the rights, liberties, and laws of his country; and then to insist upon them more largely and in a fuller detail before this awful tribunal, the passive judicial conservator of the same great interests. He has brought out these blasphemous doctrines in this great temple of justice, consecrated to law and equity for a long series of ages. He has brought them forth in Westminster Hall, in presence of all the Judges of the land, who are to execute the law, and of the House of Lords, who are bound as its guardians not to suffer the words "arbitrary power" to be mentioned before them. For I am not again to tell your Lordships, that arbitrary power is treason in the law,—that to mention it with law is to commit a contradiction in terms. They cannot exist in concert; they cannot hold together for a moment.

Let us now hear what the prisoner says. "The sovereignty which they [the subahdars, or viceroys of the Mogul empire] assumed, it fell to my lot, very unexpectedly, to exert; and whether or not such power, or powers of that nature, were delegated to me by any provisions of any act of Parliament I confess myself too little of a lawyer to pronounce. I only know that the acceptance of the sovereignty of Benares, &c., is not acknowledged or admitted by any act of Parliament; and yet, by the particular interference of the majority of the Council, the Company is clearly and indisputably seized of that sovereignty. If, therefore, the sovereignty of Benares, as ceded to us by the Vizier, have any rights whatever annexed to it, and be not a mere empty word without meaning, those rights must be such as are held, countenanced, and established by the law, custom, and usage of the Mogul empire, and not by the provisions of any British act of Parliament hitherto enacted. Those rights, and none other, I have been the involuntary instrument of enforcing. And if any future act of Parliament shall positively or by implication tend to annihilate those very rights, or their exertion, as I have exerted them, I much fear that the boasted sovereignty of Benares, which was held up as an acquisition almost obtruded on the Company against my consent and opinion, (for I acknowledge that even then I foresaw many difficulties and inconveniences in its future exercise,)—I fear, I say, that this sovereignty will be found a burden instead of a benefit, a heavy clog rather than a precious gem to its present possessors: I mean, unless the whole of our territory in that quarter shall be rounded and made an uniform compact body by one grand and systematic arrangement,—such an arrangement as shall do away all the mischiefs, doubts, and inconveniences (both to the governors and the governed) arising from the variety of tenures, rights, and claims in all cases of landed property and feudal jurisdiction in India, from the informality, invalidity, and instability of all engagements in so divided and unsettled a state of society, and from the unavoidable anarchy and confusion of different laws, religions, and prejudices, moral, civil, and political, all jumbled together in one unnatural and discordant mass. Every part of Hindostan has been constantly exposed to these and similar disadvantages ever since the Mahometan conquests. The Hindoos, who never incorporated with their conquerors, were kept in order only by the strong hand of power. The constant necessity of similar exertions would increase at once their energy and extent. So that rebellion itself is the parent and promoter of despotism. Sovereignty in India implies nothing else. For I know not how we can form an estimate of its powers, but from its visible effects; and those are everywhere the same from Cabool to Assam. The whole history of Asia is nothing more than precedents to prove the invariable exercise of arbitrary power. To all this I strongly alluded in the minutes I delivered in Council, when the treaty with the new Vizier was on foot in 1775; and I wished to make Cheyt Sing independent, because in India dependence included a thousand evils, many of which I enumerated at that time, and they are entered in the ninth clause of the first section of this charge. I knew the powers with which an Indian sovereignty is armed, and the dangers to which tributaries are exposed. I knew, that, from the history of Asia, and from the very nature of mankind, the subjects of a despotic empire are always vigilant for the moment to rebel, and the sovereign is ever jealous of rebellious intentions. A zemindar is an Indian subject, and as such exposed to the common lot of his fellows. The mean and depraved state of a mere zemindar is therefore this very dependence above mentioned on a despotic government, this very proneness to shake off his allegiance, and this very exposure to continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, which are consequent on the political state of Hindostanic governments. Bulwant Sing, if he had been, and Cheyt Sing, as long as he was, a zemindar, stood exactly in this mean and depraved state by the constitution of his country. I did not make it for him, but would have secured him from it. Those who made him a zemindar entailed upon him the consequences of so mean and depraved a tenure. Aliverdy Khan and Cossim Ali fined all their zemindars on the necessities of war, and on every pretence either of court necessity or court extravagance."

I beseech your Lordships seriously to look upon the whole nature of the principles upon which the prisoner defends himself. He appeals to the custom and usage of the Mogul empire; and the constitution of that empire is, he says, arbitrary power. He says, that he does not know whether any act of Parliament bound him not to exercise this arbitrary power, and that, if any such act should in future be made, it would be mischievous and ruinous to our empire in India. Thus he has at once repealed all preceding acts, he has annulled by prospect every future act you can make; and it is not in the power of the Parliament of Great Britain, without ruining the empire, to hinder his exercising this despotic authority. All Asia is by him disfranchised at a stroke. Its inhabitants have no rights, no laws, no liberties; their state is mean and depraved; they may be fined for any purpose of court extravagance or prodigality,—or as Cheyt Sing was fined by him, not only upon every war, but upon every pretence of war.

This is the account he gives of his power, and of the people subject to the British government in India. We deny that the act of Parliament gave him any such power; we deny that the India Company gave him any such power, or that they had ever any such power to give; we even deny that there exists in all the human race a power to make the government of any state dependent upon individual will. We disclaim, we reject all such doctrines with disdain and indignation; and we have brought them up to your Lordships to be tried at your bar.

What must be the condition of the people of India, governed, as they have been, by persons who maintain these principles as maxims of government, and not as occasional deviations caused by the irregular will of man,—principles by which the whole system of society is to be controlled, not by law, reason, or justice, but by the will of one man?

Your Lordships will remark, that not only the whole of the laws, rights, and usages, but the very being of the people, are exposed to ruin: for Mr. Hastings says, that the people may be fined, that they may be exiled, that they may be imprisoned, and that even their lives are dependent upon the mere will of their foreign master; and that he, the Company's Governor, exercised that will under the authority of this country. Remark, my Lords, his application of this doctrine. "I would," he says, "have kept Cheyt Sing from the consequences of this dependence, by making him independent, and not in any manner subjecting him to our government. The moment he came into a state of dependence upon the British government, all these evils attached upon him.—It is," he adds, "disagreeable to me to exert such powers; but I know they must be exerted; and I declare there is no security from this arbitrary power, but by having nothing to do with the British government."

My Lords, the House of Commons has already well considered what may be our future moral and political condition, when the persons who come from that school of pride, insolence, corruption, and tyranny are more intimately mixed up with us of purer morals. Nothing but contamination can be the result, nothing but corruption can exist in this country, unless we expunge this doctrine out of the very hearts and souls of the people. It is not to the gang of plunderers and robbers of which I say this man is at the head, that we are only, or indeed principally, to look. Every man in Great Britain will be contaminated and must be corrupted, if you let loose among us whole legions of men, generation after generation, tainted with these abominable vices, and avowing these detestable principles. It is, therefore, to preserve the integrity and honor of the Commons of Great Britain, that we have brought this man to your Lordships' bar.

When these matters were first explained to your Lordships, and strongly enforced by abilities greater than I can exert, there was something like compunction shown by the prisoner: but he took the most strange mode to cover his guilt. Upon the cross-examination of Major Scott, he discovered all the engines of this Indian corruption. Mr. Hastings got that witness to swear that this defence of his, from which the passages I have read to your Lordships are extracted, was not his, but that it was the work of his whole Council, composed of Mr. Middleton, Mr. Shore, Mr. Halhed, Mr. Baber,—the whole body of his Indian Cabinet Council; that this was their work, and not his; and that he disclaimed it, and therefore that it would be wrong to press it upon him. Good God! my Lords, what shall we say in this stage of the business? The prisoner put in an elaborate defence: he now disclaims that defence. He told us that it was of his own writing, that he had been able to compose it in five days; and he now gets five persons to contradict his own assertions, and to disprove on oath his most solemn declarations.

My Lords, this business appears still more alarming, when we find not only Mr. Hastings, but his whole Council, engaged in it. I pray your Lordships to observe, that Mr. Halhed, a person concerned with Mr. Hastings in compiling a code of Gentoo laws, is now found to be one of the persons to whom this very defence is attributed which contains such detestable and abominable doctrines. But are we to consider the contents of this paper as the defence of the prisoner or not? Will any one say, that, when an answer is sworn to in Chancery, when an answer is given here to an impeachment of the Commons, or when a plea is made to an indictment, that it is drawn by the defendant's counsel, and therefore is not his? Did we not all hear him read this defence in part at our bar?—did we not see him hand it to his secretary to have it read by his son?—did he not then hear it read from end to end?—did not he himself desire it to be printed, (for it was no act of ours,) and did he not superintend and revise the press?—and has any breath but his own breathed upon it? No, my Lords, the whole composition is his, by writing or adoption; and never, till he found it pressed him in this House, never, till your Lordships began to entertain the same abhorrence of it that we did, did he disclaim it.

But mark another stage of the propagation of these horrible principles. After having grounded upon them the defence of his conduct against our charge, and after he had got a person to forswear them for him, and to prove him to have told falsehoods of the grossest kind to the House of Commons, he again adheres to this defence. The dog returned to his vomit. After having vomited out his vile, bilious stuff of arbitrary power, and afterwards denied it to be his, he gets his counsel in this place to resort to the loathsome mess again. They have thought proper, my Lords, to enter into an extended series of quotations from books of travellers, for the purpose of showing that despotism was the only principle of government acknowledged in India,—that the people have no laws, no rights, no property movable or immovable, no distinction of ranks, nor any sense of disgrace. After citing a long line of travellers to this effect, they quote Montesquieu as asserting the same facts, declaring that the people of India had no sense of honor, and were only sensible of the whip as far as it produced corporal pain. They then proceed to state that it was a government of misrule, productive of no happiness to the people, and that it so continued until subverted by the free government of Britain,—namely, the government that Mr. Hastings describes as having himself exercised there.

My Lords, if the prisoner can succeed in persuading us that these people have no laws, no rights, not even the common sentiments and feeling of men, he hopes your interest in them will be considerably lessened. He would persuade you that their sufferings are much assuaged by their being nothing new,—and that, having no right to property, to liberty, to honor, or to life, they must be more pleased with the little that is left to them than grieved for the much that has been ravished from them by his cruelty and his avarice. This inference makes it very necessary for me, before I proceed further, to make a few remarks upon this part of the prisoner's conduct, which your Lordships must have already felt with astonishment, perhaps with indignation. This man, who passed twenty-five years in India, who was fourteen years at the head of his government, master of all the offices, master of all the registers and records, master of all the lawyers and priests of all this empire, from the highest to the lowest, instead of producing to you the fruits of so many years' local and official knowledge upon that subject, has called out a long line of the rabble of travellers to inform you concerning the objects of his own government. That his learned counsel should be ignorant of those things is a matter of course. That, if left to himself, the person who has produced all this stuff should, in pursuit of his darling arbitrary power, wander without a guide, or with false guides, is quite natural. But your Lordships must have heard with astonishment, that, upon points of law relative to the tenure of lands, instead of producing any law document or authority on the usages and local customs of the country, he has referred to officers in the army, colonels of artillery and engineers, to young gentlemen just come from school, not above three or four years in the country. Good God! would not one rather have expected to hear him put all these travellers to shame by the authority of a man who had resided so long in the supreme situation of government,—to set aside all these wild, loose, casual, and silly observations of travellers and theorists? On the contrary, as if he was ignorant of everything, as if he knew nothing of India, as if he had dropped from the clouds, he cites the observations of every stranger who had been hurried in a palanquin through the country, capable or incapable of observation, to prove to you the nature of the government, and of the power he had to exercise.

My Lords, the Commons of Great Britain are not disposed to resort to the ridiculous relations of travellers, or to the wild systems which ingenious men have thought proper to build on their authority. We will take another mode. We will undertake to prove the direct contrary of his assertions in every point and particular. We undertake to do this, because your Lordships know, and because the world knows, that, if you go into a country where you suppose man to be in a servile state,—where, the despot excepted, there is no one person who can lift up his head above another,—where all are a set of vile, miserable slaves, prostrate and confounded in a common servitude, having no descendible lands, no inheritance, nothing that makes man feel proud of himself, or that gives him honor and distinction with others,—this abject degradation will take from you that kind of sympathy which naturally attaches you to men feeling like yourselves, to men who have hereditary dignities to support, and lands of inheritance to maintain, as you peers have; you will, I say, no longer have that feeling which you ought to have for the sufferings of a people whom you suppose to be habituated to their sufferings and familiar with degradation. This makes it absolutely necessary for me to refute every one of these misrepresentations; and whilst I am endeavoring to establish the rights of these people, in order to show in what manner and degree they have been violated, I trust that your Lordships will not think that the time is lost: certainly I do not think that my labor will be misspent in endeavoring to bring these matters fully before you.

In determining to treat this subject at length, I am also influenced by a strong sense of the evils that have attended the propagation of these wild, groundless, and pernicious opinions. A young man goes to India before he knows much of his own country; but he cherishes in his breast, as I hope every man will, a just and laudable partiality for the laws, liberties, rights, and institutions of his own nation. We all do this; and God forbid we should not prefer our own to every other country in the world! but if we go to India with an idea of the mean, degraded state of the people that we are to govern, and especially if we go with these impressions at an immature age, we know, that, according to the ordinary course of human nature, we shall not treat persons well whom we have learnt to despise. We know that people whom we suppose to have neither laws or rights will not be treated by us as a people who have laws and rights. This error, therefore, for our sake, for your sake, for the sake of the Indian public, and for the sake of all those who shall hereafter go in any station to India, I think it necessary to disprove in every point.

I mean to prove the direct contrary of everything that has been said on this subject by the prisoner's counsel, or by himself. I mean to prove that the people of India have laws, rights, and immunities; that they have property, movable and immovable, descendible as well as occasional; that they have property held for life, and that they have it as well secured to them by the laws of their country as any property is secured in this country; that they feel for honor, not only as much as your Lordships can feel, but with a more exquisite and poignant sense than any people upon earth; and that, when punishments are inflicted, it is not the lash they feel, but the disgrace: in short, I mean to prove that every word which Montesquieu has taken from idle and inconsiderate travellers is absolutely false.

The people of India are divided into three kinds: the original natives of the country, commonly called Gentoos; the descendants of the Persians and Arabians, who are Mahometans; and the descendants of the Moguls, who originally had a religion of their own, but are now blended with the other inhabitants.

The primeval law of that country is the Gentoo law; and I refer your Lordships to Mr. Halhed's translation of that singular code,—a work which I have read with all the care that such an extraordinary view of human affairs and human constitutions deserves. I do not know whether Mr. Halhed's compilation is in evidence before your Lordships, but I do know that it is good authority on the Gentoo law. Mr. Hastings, who instructed his counsel to assert that the people have "no rights, no law," ought to be well acquainted with this work, because he claimed for a while the glory of the compilation, although Nobkissin, as your Lordships remember, was obliged to pay the expense. This book, a compilation of probably the most ancient laws in the world, if we except the Mosaic, has in it the duty of the magistrate and the duty of all ranks of subjects most clearly and distinctly ascertained; and I will give up the whole cause, if there is, from one end to the other of this code, any sort of arbitrary power claimed or asserted on the part of the magistrate, or any declaration that the people have no rights of property. No: it asserts the direct contrary.

First, the people are divided into classes and ranks, with more accuracy of distinction than is used in this country, or in any other country under heaven. Every class is divided into families, some of whom are more distinguished and more honorable than others; and they all have rights, privileges, and immunities belonging to them. Even in cases of conquest, no confiscation is to take place. A Brahmin's estate comes by descent to him; it is forever descendible to his heirs, if he has heirs; and if he has none, it belongs to his disciples, and those connected with him in the Brahminical caste. There are other immunities declared to belong to this caste, in direct contradiction to what has been asserted by the prisoner. In no case shall a Brahmin suffer death; in no case shall the property of a Brahmin, male or female, be confiscated for crime, or escheat for want of heirs. The law then goes on to other castes, and gives to each its property, and distinguishes them with great accuracy of discrimination.

Mr. Hastings says that there is no inheritable property among them. Now you have only to look at page 27, chapter the second, the title of which, is, Of the Division of Inheritable Property. There, after going through all the nicety of pedigree, it is declared, that, "when a father, or grandfather, a great-grandfather, or any relations of that nature, decease, or lose their caste, or renounce the world, or are desirous to give up their property, their sons, grandsons, great-grandsons, and other natural heirs, may divide and assume their glebe-lands, orchards, jewels, corals, clothes, furniture, cattle, and birds, and all the estate, real and personal." My Lords, this law recognizes this kind of property; it regulates it with the nicest accuracy of distinction; it settles the descent of it in every part and circumstance. It nowhere asserts (but the direct contrary is positively asserted) that the magistrate has any power whatever over property. It states that it is the magistrate's duty to protect it; that he is bound to govern by law; that he must have a council of Brahmins to assist him in every material act that he does: in short, my Lords, there is not even a trace of arbitrary power in the whole system.

My Lords, I will mention one article, to let you see, in a very few words, that these Gentoos not only have an inheritance, but that the law has established a right of acquiring possession in the property of another by prescription. The passage stands thus:—"If there be a person who is not a minor," (a man ceases to be a minor at fifteen years of age,) "nor impotent, nor diseased, nor an idiot, nor so lame as not to have power to walk, nor blind, nor one who, on going before a magistrate, is found incapable of distinguishing and attending to his own concerns, and who has not given to another person power to employ and to use his property,—if, in the face of any such person, another man has applied to his own use, during the space of twenty years, the glebe-land or houses or orchards of that person, without let or molestation from him, from the twenty-first year the property becomes invested in the person so applying such things to his own use; and any claim of the first person above mentioned upon such glebe-[land or?] houses or orchards shall by no means stand good: but if the person before mentioned comes under any of the circumstances herein before described, his claim in that case shall stand good." Here you see, my Lords, that possession shall by prescription stand good against the claims of all persons who are not disqualified from making their claims.

I might, if necessary, show your Lordships that the highest magistrate is subject to the law; that there is a case in which he is finable; that they have established rules of evidence and of pleading, and, in short, all the rules which have been formed in other countries to prevent this very arbitrary power. Notwithstanding all this, the prisoner at the bar, and his counsel, have dared to assert, in this sacred temple of justice, in the presence of this great assembly, of all the bishops, of all the peers, and of all the judges of this land, that the people of India have no laws whatever.

I do not mean to trouble your Lordships with more extracts from this book. I recommend it to your Lordships' reading,—when you will find, that, so far from the magistrate having any power either to imprison arbitrarily or to fine arbitrarily, the rules of fines are laid down with ten thousand times more exactness than with us. If you here find that the magistrate has any power to punish the people with arbitrary punishment, to seize their property, or to disfranchise them of any rights or privileges, I will readily admit that Mr. Hastings has laid down good, sound doctrine upon this subject. There is his own book, a compilation of their laws, which has in it not only good and excellent positive rules, but a system of as enlightened jurisprudence, with regard to the body and substance of it, as perhaps any nation ever possessed,—a system which must have been composed by men of highly cultivated understandings.

As to the travellers that have been quoted, absurd as they are in the ground of their argument, they are not less absurd in their reasonings. For, having first laid it down that there is no property, and that the government is the proprietor of everything, they argue, inferentially, that they have no laws. But if ever there were a people that seem to be protected with care and circumspection from all arbitrary power, both in the executive and judicial department, these are the people that seem to be so protected.

I could show your Lordships that they are so sensible of honor, that fines are levied and punishment inflicted according to the rank of the culprit, and that the very authority of the magistrate is dependent on their rank. That the learned counsel should be ignorant of these things is natural enough. They are concerned in the gainful part of their profession. If they know the laws of their own country, which I dare say they do, it is not to be expected that they should know the laws of any other. But, my Lords, it is to be expected that the prisoner should know the Gentoo laws: for he not only cheated Nobkissin of his money to get these laws translated, but he took credit for the publication of the work as an act of public spirit, after shifting the payment from himself by fraud and peculation. All this has been proved by the testimonies of Mr. Auriol and Mr. Halhed before your Lordships.

We do not bring forward this book as evidence of guilt or innocence, but to show the laws and usages of the country, and to prove the prisoner's knowledge of them.

From the Gentoo we will proceed to the Tartarian government of India, a government established by conquest, and therefore not likely to be distinguished by any marks of extraordinary mildness towards the conquered. The book before me will prove to your Lordships that the head of this government (who is falsely supposed to have a despotic authority) is absolutely elected to his office. Tamerlane was elected; and Genghis Khan particularly valued himself on improving the laws and institutions of his own country. These laws we only have imperfectly in this book; but we are told in it, and I believe the fact, that he forbade, under pain of death, any prince or other person to presume to cause himself to be proclaimed Great Khan or Emperor, without being first duly elected by the princes lawfully assembled in general diet. He then established the privileges and immunities granted to the Tunkawns,—that is, to the nobility and gentry of the country,—and afterwards published most severe ordinances against governors who failed in doing their duty, but principally against those who commanded in far distant provinces. This prince was in this case, what I hope your Lordships will be, a very severe judge of the governors of countries remote from the seat of the government.

My Lords, we have in this book sufficient proof that a Tartarian sovereign could not obtain the recognition of ancient laws, or establish new ones, without the consent of his parliament; that he could not ascend the throne without being duly elected; and that, when so elected, he was bound to preserve the great in all their immunities, and the people in all their rights, liberties, privileges, and properties. We find these great princes restrained by laws, and even making wise and salutary regulations for the countries which they conquered. We find Genghis Khan establishing one of his sons in a particular office,—namely, conservator of those laws; and he has ordered that they should not only be observed in his time, but by all posterity; and accordingly they are venerated at this time in Asia. If, then, this very Genghis Khan, if Tamerlane, did not assume arbitrary power, what are you to think of this man, so bloated with corruption, so bloated with the insolence of unmerited power, declaring that the people of India have no rights, no property, no laws,—that he could not be bound even by an English act of Parliament,—that he was an arbitrary sovereign in India, and could exact what penalties he pleased from the people, at the expense of liberty, property, and even life itself? Compare this man, this compound of pride and presumption, with Genghis Khan, whose conquests were more considerable than Alexander's, and yet who made the laws the rule of his conduct; compare him with Tamerlane, whose Institutes I have before me. I wish to save your Lordships' time, or I could show you in the life of this prince, that he, violent as his conquests were, bloody as all conquests are, ferocious as a Mahometan making his crusades for the propagation of his religion, he yet knew how to govern his unjust acquisitions with equity and moderation. If any man could be entitled to claim arbitrary power, if such a claim could be justified by extent of conquest, by splendid personal qualities, by great learning and eloquence, Tamerlane was the man who could have made and justified the claim. This prince gave up all his time not employed in conquests to the conversation of learned men. He gave himself to all studies that might accomplish a great man. Such a man, I say, might, if any may, claim arbitrary power. But the very things that made him great made him sensible that he was but a man. Even in the midst of all his conquests, his tone was a tone of humility; he spoke of laws as every man must who knows what laws are; and though he was proud, ferocious, and violent in the achievement of his conquests, I will venture to say no prince ever established institutes of civil government more honorable to himself than the Institutes of Timour. I shall be content to be brought to shame before your Lordships, if the prisoner at your bar can show me one passage where the assumption of arbitrary power is even hinted at by this great conqueror. He declares that the nobility of every country shall be considered as his brethren, that the people shall be acknowledged as his children, and that the learned and the dervishes shall be particularly protected. But, my Lords, what he particularly valued himself upon I shall give your Lordships in his own words:—"I delivered the oppressed from the hand of the oppressor; and after proof of the oppression, whether on the property or the person, the decision which I passed between them was agreeable to the sacred law; and I did not cause any one person to suffer for the guilt of another."[95]

My Lords, I have only further to inform your Lordships that these Institutes of Timour ought to be very well known to Mr. Hastings. He ought to have known that this prince never claimed arbitrary power; that the principles he adopted were to govern by law, to repress the oppressions of his inferior governors, to recognize in the nobility the respect due to their rank, and in the people the protection to which they were by law entitled. This book was published by Major Davy, and revised by Mr. White. The Major was an excellent Orientalist; he was secretary to Mr. Hastings, to whom, I believe, he dedicated this book. I have inquired of persons the most conversant with the Arabic and Oriental languages, and they are clearly of opinion that there is internal evidence to prove it of the age of Tamerlane; and he must be the most miserable of critics, who, reading this work with attention, does not see, that, if it was not written by this very great monarch himself, it was at least written by some person in his court and under his immediate inspection. Whether, therefore, this work be the composition of Tamerlane, or whether it was written by some persons of learning near him, through whom he meant to give the world a just idea of his manners, maxims, and government, it is certainly as good authority as Mr. Hastings's Defence, which he has acknowledged to have been written by other people.

From the Tartarian I shall now proceed to the later Mahometan conquerors of Hindostan: for it is fit that I should show your Lordships the wickedness of pretending that the people of India have no laws or rights. A great proportion of the people are Mahometans; and Mahometans are so far from having no laws or rights, that, when you name a Mahometan, you name a man governed by law and entitled to protection. Mr. Hastings caused to be published, and I am obliged to him for it, a book called "The Hedaya": it is true that he has himself taken credit for the work, and robbed Nobkissin of the money to pay for it; but the value of a book is not lessened because a man stole it. Will you believe, my Lords, that a people having no laws, no rights, no property, no honor, would be at the trouble of having so many writers on jurisprudence? And yet there are, I am sure, at least a thousand eminent Mahometan writers upon law, who have written far more voluminous works than are known in the Common Law of England, and I verily believe more voluminous than the writings of the Civilians themselves. That this should be done by a people who have no property is so perfectly ridiculous as scarcely to require refutation; but I shall endeavor to refute it, and without troubling you a great deal.

First, then, I am to tell you that the Mahometans are a people amongst whom the science of jurisprudence is much studied and cultivated; that they distinguish it into the law of the Koran and its authorized commentaries,—into the Fetwah, which is the judicial judgments and reports of adjudged cases,—into the Canon, which is the regulations made by the emperor for the sovereign authority in the government of their dominions,—and, lastly, into the Rawaj-ul-Mulk, or custom and usage, the common law of the country, which prevails independent of any of the former.

In regard to punishments being arbitrary, I will, with your Lordships' permission, read a passage which will show you that the magistrate is a responsible person. "If a supreme ruler, such as the Caliph for the time being, commit any offence punishable by law, such as whoredom, theft, or drunkenness, he is not subject to any punishment; but yet if he commit murder, he is subject to the law of retaliation, and he is also accountable in matters of property: because punishment is a right of God, the infliction of which is committed to the Caliph, or other supreme magistrate, and to none else; and he cannot inflict punishment upon himself, as in this there is no advantage, because the good proposed in punishment is that it may operate as a warning to deter mankind from sin, and this is not obtained by a person's inflicting punishment upon himself, contrary to the rights of the individual, such as the laws of retaliation and of property, the penalties of which may be exacted of the Caliph, as the claimant of right may obtain satisfaction, either by the Caliph impowering him to exact his right from himself, or by the claimant appealing for assistance to the collective body of Mussulmans."[96]

Here your Lordships see that the Caliph, who is a magistrate of the highest authority which can exist among the Mahometans, where property or life is concerned has no arbitrary power, but is responsible just as much as any other man.

I am now to inform your Lordships that the sovereign can raise no taxes. The imposing of a tribute upon a Mussulman, without his previous consent, is impracticable. And so far from all property belonging to the sovereign, the public treasure does not belong to him. It is declared to be the common property of all Mahometans. This doctrine is laid down in many places, but particularly in the 95th page of the second volume of Hamilton's Hedaya.

Mr. Hastings has told you what a sovereign is, and what sovereignty is, all over India; and I wish your Lordships to pay particular attention to this part of his defence, and to compare Mr. Hastings's idea of sovereignty with the declaration of the Mahometan law. The tenth chapter of these laws treats of rebellion, which is defined an act of warfare against the sovereign. You are there told who the sovereign is, and how many kinds of rebels there are. The author then proceeds to say,—"The word baghee (rebellion), in its literal sense, means prevarication, also, injustice and tyranny; in the language of the law it is particularly applied to injustice, namely, withdrawing from obedience to the rightful Imaum (as appears in the Fattahal-Kadeen). By the rightful Imaum is understood a person in whom all the qualities essential to magistracy are united, such as Islamism, freedom, sanity of intellect, and maturity of age,—and who has been elected into his office by any tribe of Mussulmans, with their general consent; whose view and intention is the advancement of the true religion and the strengthening of the Mussulmans, and under whom the Mussulmans enjoy security in person and property; one who levies tithe and tribute according to law; who out of the public treasury pays what is due to learned men, preachers, kazees, muftis, philosophers, public teachers, and so forth; and who is just in all his dealings with Mussulmans: for whoever does not answer this description is not the right Imaum; whence it is not incumbent to support such a one; but rather it is incumbent to oppose him and make war upon him, until such time as he either adopt a proper mode of conduct or be slain."[97]

My Lords, is this a magistrate of the same description as the sovereign delineated by Mr. Hastings? This man must be elected by the general consent of Mussulmans; he must be a protector of the person and property of his subjects; a right of resistance is directly established by law against him, and even the duty of resistance is insisted upon. Am I, in praising this Mahometan law, applauding the principle of elective sovereignty? No, my Lords, I know the mischiefs which have attended it; I know that it has shaken the thrones of most of the sovereigns of the Mussulman religion; but I produce the law as the clearest proof that such a sovereign cannot be supposed to have an arbitrary power over the property and persons of those who elect him, and who have an acknowledged right to resist and dethrone him, if he does not afford them protection.

I have now gone through what I undertook to prove,—that Mr. Hastings, with all his Indian Council, who have made up this volume of arbitrary power, are not supported by the laws of the Moguls, by the laws of the Gentoos, by the Mahometan laws, or by any law, custom, or usage which has ever been recognized as legal and valid.

But, my Lords, the prisoner defends himself by example; and, good God! what are the examples which he has chosen? Not the local usages and constitutions of Oude or of any other province; not the general practice of a respectable emperor, like Akbar, which, if it would not fatigue your Lordships, I could show to be the very reverse of this man's. No, my Lords, the prisoner, his learned counsel here, and his unlearned Cabinet Council, who wrote this defence, have ransacked the tales of travellers for examples, and have selected materials from that mass of loose remarks and crude conceptions, to prove that the natives of India have neither rights, laws, orders, or distinction.

I shall now proceed to show your Lordships that the people of India have a keen sense and feeling of disgrace and dishonor. In proof of this I appeal to well-known facts. There have been women tried in India for offences, and acquitted, who would not survive the disgrace even of acquittal. There have been Hindoo soldiers, condemned at a court-martial, who have desired to be blown from the mouth of a cannon, and have claimed rank and precedence at the last moment of their existence. And yet these people are said to have no sense of dishonor! Good God! that we should be under the necessity of proving, in this place, all these things, and of disproving that all India was given in slavery to this man!

But, my Lords, they will show you, they say, that Genghis Khan, Kouli Khan, and Tamerlane destroyed ten thousand times more people in battle than this man did. Good God! have they run mad? Have they lost their senses in their guilt? Did they ever expect that we meant to compare this man to Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, or Kouli Khan?—to compare a clerk at a bureau, to compare a fraudulent bullock-contractor, (for we could show that his first elementary malversations were in carrying on fraudulent bullock-contracts; which contracts were taken from him with shame and disgrace, and restored with greater shame and disgrace,) to compare him with the conquerors of the world? We never said he was a tiger and a lion: no, we have said he was a weasel and a rat. We have said that he has desolated countries by the same means that plagues of his description have produced similar desolations. We have said that he, a fraudulent bullock-contractor, exalted to great and unmerited powers, can do more mischief than even all the tigers and lions in the world. We know that a swarm of locusts, although individually despicable, can render a country more desolate than Genghis Khan or Tamerlane. When God Almighty chose to humble the pride and presumption of Pharaoh, and to bring him to shame, He did not effect His purpose with tigers and lions; but He sent lice, mice, frogs, and everything loathsome and contemptible, to pollute and destroy the country. Think of this, my Lords, and of your listening here to these people's long account of Tamerlane's camp of two hundred thousand persons, and of his building a pyramid at Bagdad with the heads of ninety thousand of his prisoners!

We have not accused Mr. Hastings of being a great general, and abusing his military powers: we know that he was nothing, at the best, but a creature of the bureau, raised by peculiar circumstances to the possession of a power by which incredible mischief might be done. We have not accused him of the vices of conquerors: when we see him signalized by any conquests, we may then make such an accusation; at present we say that he has been trusted with power much beyond his deserts, and that trust he has grossly abused.—But to proceed.

His counsel, according to their usual audacious manner, (I suppose they imagine that they are counsel for Tamerlane, or for Genghis Khan,) have thought proper to accuse the Managers for the Commons of wandering [wantoning?] in all the fabulous regions of Indian mythology. My Lords, the Managers are sensible of the dignity of their place; they have never offered anything to you without reason. We are not persons of an age, of a disposition, of a character, representative or natural, to wanton, as these counsel call it,—that is, to invent fables concerning Indian antiquity. That they are not ashamed of making this charge I do not wonder. But we are not to be thus diverted from our course.

I have already stated to your Lordships a material circumstance of this case, which I hope will never be lost sight of,—namely, the different situation in which India stood under the government of its native princes and its own original laws, and even under the dominion of Mahometan conquerors, from that in which it has stood under the government of a series of tyrants, foreign and domestic, particularly of Mr. Hastings, by whom it has latterly been oppressed and desolated. One of the books which I have quoted was written by Mr. Halhed; and I shall not be accused of wantoning in fabulous antiquity, when I refer to another living author, who wrote from what he saw and what he well knew. This author says,—"In truth, it would be almost cruelty to molest these happy people" (speaking of the inhabitants of one of the provinces near Calcutta); "for in this district are the only vestiges of the beauty, purity, piety, regularity, equity, and strictness of the ancient Hindostan government: here the property as well as the liberty of the people is inviolate." My Lords, I do not refer you to this writer because I think it necessary to our justification, nor from any fear that your Lordships will not do us the justice to believe that we have good authority for the facts which we state, and do not (as persons with their licentious tongues dare to say) wanton in fabulous antiquity. I quote the works of this author, because his observations and opinions could not be unknown to Mr. Hastings, whose associate he was in some acts, and whose adviser he appears to have been in that dreadful transaction, the deposition of Cossim Ali Khan. This writer was connected with the prisoner at your bar in bribery, and has charged him with detaining his bribe. To this Mr. Hastings has answered, that he had paid him long ago. How they have settled that corrupt transaction I know not. I merely state all this to prove that we have not dealt in fabulous history, and that, if anybody has dealt in falsehood, it is Mr. Hastings's companion and associate in guilt, who must have known the country, and who, however faulty he was in other respects, had in this case no interest whatever in misrepresentation.

I might refer your Lordships, if it were necessary, to Scrafton's account of that ancient government, in order to prove to you the happy comparative state of that country, even under its former usurpers. Our design, my Lords, in making such references, is not merely to disprove the prisoner's defence, but to vindicate the rights and privileges of the people of India. We wish to reinstate them in your sympathy. We wish you to respect a people as respectable as yourselves,—a people who know as well as you what is rank, what is law, what is property,—a people who know how to feel disgrace, who know what equity, what reason, what proportion in punishments, what security of property is, just as well as any of your Lordships; for these are things which are secured to them by laws, by religion, by declarations of all their sovereigns. And what, my Lords, is opposed to all this? The practice of tyrants and usurpers, which Mr. Hastings takes for his rule and guidance. He endeavors to find deviations from legal government, and then instructs his counsel to say that I have asserted there is no such thing as arbitrary power in the East. Good God! if there was no such thing in any other part of the world, Mr. Hastings's conduct might have convinced me of the existence of arbitrary power, and have taught me much of its mischief.

But, my Lords, we all know that there has been arbitrary power in India,—that tyrants have usurped it,—and that, in some instances, princes otherwise meritorious have violated the liberties of the people, and have been lawfully deposed for such violation. I do not deny that there are robberies on Hounslow Heath,—that there are such things as forgeries, burglaries, and murders; but I say that these acts are against law, and that whoever commit them commit illegal acts. When a man is to defend himself against a charge of crime, it is not instances of similar violation of law that is to be the standard of his defence. A man may as well say, "I robbed upon Hounslow Heath, but hundreds robbed there before me": to which I answer, "The law has forbidden you to rob there; and I will hang you for having violated the law, notwithstanding the long list of similar violations which you have produced as precedents." No doubt princes have violated the law of this country: they have suffered for it. Nobles have violated the law: their privileges have not protected them from punishment. Common people have violated the law: they have been hanged for it. I know no human being exempt from the law. The law is the security of the people of England; it is the security of the people of India; it is the security of every person that is governed, and of every person that governs. There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity,—the Law of Nature and of Nations. So far as any laws fortify this primeval law, and give it more precision, more energy, more effect by their declarations, such laws enter into the sanctuary, and participate in the sacredness of its character. But the man who quotes as precedents the abuses of tyrants and robbers pollutes the very fountain of justice, destroys the foundations of all law, and thereby removes the only safeguard against evil men, whether governors or governed,—the guard which prevents governors from becoming tyrants, and the governed from becoming rebels.

* * * * *

I hope your Lordships will not think that I have unnecessarily occupied your time in disproving the plea of arbitrary power, which has been brought forward at our bar, has been repeated at your Lordships' bar, and has been put upon the records of both Houses. I hope your Lordships will not think that such monstrous doctrine should be passed over, without all possible pains being taken to demonstrate its falsehood and to reprobate its tendency. I have not spared myself in exposing the principles avowed by the prisoner. At another time I will endeavor to show you the manner in which he acted upon these principles. I cannot command strength to proceed further at present; and you, my Lords, cannot give me greater bodily strength than I have.