their marked detestation of that novel and base sophism in the principles of judicial inquiry (constantly the language of the Governor-General's servile dependents), that crimes might be compounded, that the guilt of Mr. Hastings was to be balanced by his successes, that fortunate events were a full and complete set-off against a base system of oppression, corruption, breach of faith, peculation, and treachery; and finally their solemn and awful judgment that, in the case of Benares, Mr. Hastings' conduct was a proper object of parliamentary impeachment, had covered them with applause, and brought them forward in the face of all the world as the objects of perpetual admiration.

Not less unquestionably just then highly virtuous, was the assertion of the Commons of Great Britain, that there were acts which no political necessity could warrant; and that amidst flagrances of such an inexpiable description was the treatment of Cheit-Sing. To use the well-founded and emphatic language of a right hon. gentleman (Mr. Pitt), the committee had discovered in the administration of Mr. Hastings proceedings of strong injustice, of grinding oppression, and unprovoked severity. In this decision, the committee had also vindicated the character of his right hon. friend (Mr. Burke) from the slanderous tongue of ignorance and perversion. They had by this vote on the question declared that the man who brought the charges was no false accuser, that he was not moved by envy, by malice, nor by any unworthy motives to blacken a spotless name; but that he was the indefatigable, persevering, and at length successful, champion of oppressed multitudes against their tyrannical oppressor.

With sound justice, with manly firmness, with unshaken integrity, had his right hon. friend upon all occasions resisted the timid policy of mere remedial acts; even the high opinion of Mr. Hastings' successor, even the admitted worth of Lord Cornwallis' character, had been deemed by his right hon. friend an inadequate atonement to India for the wrongs so heavily inflicted upon that devoted country.

Animated with the same zeal, the committee had by that memorable vote given a solemn pledge of their further intentions. They had said to India, "You shall no longer be reduced into temporary acquiescence by sending out a titled governor or a set of vapouring resolutions; it is not with stars and ribands, and with all the badges of regal favour, that we atone to you for past delinquencies. No; you shall have the

solid consolation of seeing an end to your grievances by an example of punishment for those that have already taken place."

The House had set up a beacon which, while it served to guide their own way, would also make their motions conspicuous to the world which surrounded and beheld them. He had no doubt but in their manly determination they would go through the whole of the business with the same steadiness which gave such sterling brilliance of character to their outset. They might challenge the world to observe and judge of them by the result.

Impossible was it for such men to become improperly influenced by a paper bearing the signature of "Warren Hastings," and put not many minutes before into their hands, as well as his own, on their entrance into the House. This insidious paper he felt himself at liberty to consider as a second defence and a second answer to the charge he was about to bring forward a charge replete with proof of criminality of the blackest dye, of tyranny the most vile and premeditated, of corruption the most open and shameless, of oppression the most severe and grinding, of cruelty the most unmanly and unparalleled. But he was far from meaning to rest the charge on assertion, or on any warm expressions which the impulse of wounded feelings might produce. He would establish every part of the charge by the most unanswerable proof, and the most unquestionable evidence; and the witness he would bring forth to support every fact he would state should be, for the most part, one whom no man would venture to contradict, Warren Hastings himself; yet this character had friends, nor were they blamable. They might believe him guiltless because he asserted his integrity. Even the partial warmth of friendship, and the emotions of a good, admiring, and unsuspecting heart, might not only carry them to such lengths, but incite them to rise with an intrepid confidence in his vindication. Again would. he repeat that the vote of the last session, wherein the conduct of this pillar of India, this corner-stone of our strength in the East, this talisman of the British territories in Asia, was censured, did the greatest honour to this House, as it must be the forerunner of speedy justice on that character, which was said to be above censure, and whose conduct we were given to understand was not within the reach even of suspicion, but whose deeds were indeed such as no difficulties, no necessity could justify; for where is the situation, however elevated, and

in that elevation however embarrassed, that can authorize the wilful commission of oppression and rapacity? If, at any period, a point arose on which inquiry had been full, deliberate, and dispassionate, it was the present. There were questions on which party conviction was supposed to be a matter of easy acquisition; and if this inquiry were to be considered merely as a matter of party, he should regard it as very trifling indeed; but he professed to God that he felt in his own bosom the strongest personal conviction, and he was sensible that many other gentlemen did the same. It was on that conviction that he believed the conduct of Mr. Hastings, in regard to the Nabob of Oude and the Begums, comprehended every species human offence. He had proved himself guilty of rapacity at once violent and insatiable-of treachery cool and premeditated-of oppression useless and unprovoked-of breach of faith unwarrantable and base-of cruelty unmanly and unmerciful. These were the crimes of which, in his soul and conscience, he arraigned Warren Hastings, and of which he had the confidence to say he should convict him. As there were gentlemen ready to stand up his advocates, he challenged them to watch if he advanced one inch of assertion for which he had not solid ground; for he trusted nothing to declamation. He desired credit for no fact which he did not prove, and which he did not indeed demonstrate beyond the possibility of refutation. He should not desert the clear and invincible ground of truth throughout any one particle of his allegations against Mr. Hastings, who uniformly aimed to govern India by his own arbitrary power, covering with misery upon misery a wretched people whom Providence had subjected to the dominion of this country; while, in the defence of Mr. Hastings, not one single circumstance grounded upon truth was stated. He would repeat the words, and gentlemen might take them down. The attempt at vindication was false throughout.

Mr. Sheridan, now pursuing the examination of Mr. Hastings' defence, observed that there could not exist a single plea for maintaining that that defence against the particular charge now before the committee was hasty; Mr. Hastings had had sufficient time to make it up; and the committee saw that he thought fit to go back as far as the year 1775, for pretended ground of justification from the charge of violence and rapacity. Mr. Sheridan here read a variety of extracts from the defence, which stated the various steps taken by Mr. Bristow in 1775 and 1776, to procure from the Begums aid to the Nabob. "Not one of these facts, as stated by Mr. Hastings, was true;

groundless, nugatory, and insulting were the affirmations of Mr. : Hastings, that the seizure of treasures from the Begums, and 1 the exposition of their pilfered goods to public auction (unparalleled acts of open injustice, oppression, and inhumanity!), were in any degree to be defended by those encroachments on their property which had taken place previous to his administration, or by those sales which they themselves had solicited as a favourable mode of supplying a part of their aid to the Nabob. The relation of a series of plain, indisputable facts would irrevocably overthrow a subterfuge so pitiful, a distinction so ridiculous. It must be remembered, that at that period, the Begums did not merely desire, but they most expressly stipulated, that of the thirty lacs promised, eleven should be paid in sundry articles of manufacture. Was it not obvious, therefore,

that the sale of goods, in the first place, far from partaking of the nature of an act of plunder, became an extension of relief, of indulgence, and of accommodation? But, however, he would not be content, like Mr. Hastings, with barely making assertions, or when made against his statement, with barely denying them; on the contrary, whenever he objected to a single statement, he would bring his refutation, and almost in every instance Mr. Hastings himself should be his witness. By the passages which he should beg leave to read, Mr. Hastings wished to insinuate that a claim was set up, in 1775, to the treasure of the Begums, as belonging of right to the Nabob." Mr. Sheridan from a variety of documents, chiefly from the minutes of the Supreme Council, of which Mr. Hastings had been the president, explained the true state of that question. Treasure, which was the source of all cruelties, was the original pretence which Mr. Hastings had made to the Company for the proceeding, and through the whole of his conduct he had alleged the principles of Mahometanism in mitigation of the severities he had sanctioned; as if he meant to insinuate that there was something in Mahometanism which rendered it impious in a son not to plunder his mother. But to show how the case precisely stood, when Mr. Hastings began the attacks, Mr. Sheridan read the minutes of General Claverly, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, who severally spoke of a claim which had been made by the Nabob on the Bhow Begum, in 1775, amounting to two and a half lacs. The opinion contained in those minutes was, that women were, on the death of their husbands, entitled by the Mahometan law only to the property within the zenana where they lived. This opinion was deci sive; Mr. Bristow used no threats; no military execution or

rigour was ever menaced; the Begum complied with the requisitions then made, and the disputed property then claimed was given up. After this, the further treasure, namely, that which was within the zenana, was confessedly her own; no fresh right was set up; no pretence was made of any kind to the residue; nay, a treaty was signed by the Nabob, and ratified be the resident, Mr. Bristow, that, on her paying thirty lacs, she should be freed from all further application, and the Company were bound by Mr. Bristow to guarantee this treaty. Here, then, was the issue: after this treaty thus ratified, could there be an argument as to the right of the treasure of the Begums? And if the Mahometan law had ever given a right, was not that right then concluded? To prove, however, the reliance which the princesses of Oude had entertained, even in 1775, of receiving protection and support from the British Government-an expectation so fatally disappointed in later times, Mr Sheridan read an extract of a letter from the Begum, the mother of the Nabob, to Mr. Hastings, received at Calcutta, December 22nd, 1775, wherein she says, "If it is your pleasure that the mother of the late Nabob, myself, and his other women and infant children, should be reduced to a state of dishonour and distress, we must submit ; but if, on the contrary, you call to mind the friendship of the late blessed Nabob, you will exert yourself effectually in favour of us who are helpless." And again "If you do not approve of my remaining at Fyzabad, send a person here in your name, to remove the mother of the late Nabob, myself, and about two thousand other women and children, that we may reside with honour and reputation in some other place."

Mr. Sheridan, in a regular progression of evidence, proceeded to state the successive periods, and finally to bring down the immediate subject in question to the day on which Mr. Hastings embraced the project of plundering the Begums; and to justify which he had exhibited in his defence four charges against them, as the grounds and motives of his own conduct: "1. That they had given disturbance at all times to the government of the Nabob, and that they had long manifested a spirit hostile to his and to the English Government; 2. That they excited the Zemindars to revolt at the time of the insurrection at Benares and of the resumption of the Jaghires; 3. That they resisted by armed force the resumption of their own Jaghires; and, 4. That they excited and were accessory to the insurrection at Benares." To each of these charges Mr. Sheridan gave distinct and separate answers. First, on the