1778. He also acknowledged signing some others of a different date, but could not recollect the authority by which he did it! These treaties were recognized by Mr. Hastings, as appears by the evidence of Mr. Purling, in the year 1780. In that of October, 1778, the jaghire was secured, which was allotted for the support of the women in the Khord Mahal. But still the prisoner pleads that he is not accountable for the eruelties which were exercised. His is the p.ea which tyranny, aided by its prime minister, treachery, is always sure to set up. Mr. Middleton has attempted to strengthen this ground by endeavoring to claim the whole infamy in those transactions, and to monopolize the guilt! He dared even to aver, that he had been condemned by Mr. Hastings for the ignominious part he had acted. He dared to avow this, because Mr. Hastings was on his trial, and he thought he never would be arraigned; but in the face of this court, and before he left the bar, he was compelled to confess that it was for the lenience, and not the severity of his proceedings, that he had been reproved by the prisoner. he did not order by name. 1135 It will not, I trust, be concluded, that, beNo excuse that cause Mr. Hastings has not marked these cruelties every passing shade of guilt, and because he has only given the bold outline of cruelty, he is therefore to be acquitted. It is laid down by the law of England, that law which is the perfection of reason, that a person ordering an act to be done by his agent is answerable for that act with all its consequences, "quod facit per alium, facit per se.' Middleton was appointed, in 1777, the confidential agent, the second self of Mr. Hastings. The Governor General ordered the measure. Even if he never saw, nor heard afterward of its consequences, he was therefore answerable for every pang that was inflicted, and for all the blood that was shed. But he did hear, and that instantly, of the whole. He wrote to accuse Middleton of forbearance and of neglect! He commanded him to work upon the hopes and fears of the princesses, and to leave no means untried, until, to speak his own language, which was better suited to the banditti of a cavern, "he obtained possession of the secret hoards of the old adies." He would not allow even of a delay of two days to smooth the compelled approaches of a son to his mother, on this occasion! His orders were peremptory. After this, my Lords, can it be said that the prisoner was ignorant of the acts, or not culpable for their consequences? It is true, he did not direct the guards, the famine, and the bludgeons; he did not weigh the fetters, nor number the lashes to be inflicted on his victims; but yet he is just as guilty as if he had borne an active and personal share in each transaction. It is as if he had commanded that the heart should be torn from the bosom, and enjoined that no blood should follow. He is in This adage, though often quoted thus, is, proprly "Qui facit per alium, facit per se." He who acts through anotner does the thing himself the same degree accountable to the law, to his country, to his conscience, and to his GCD! on the council, ceived. The prisoner has endeavored also to get rid of a part of his guilt, by observing His measure: that he was but one of the supreme not chargeable council, and that all the rest had sanc- who were de tioned those transactions with their approbation. Even if it were true that others dil participate in the guilt, it can not tend to diminish his criminality. But the fact is, that the council erred in nothing so much as in a reprehensible credulity given to the declarations of the Governor General. They knew not a word of those transactions until they were finally concluded. It was not until the January following that they saw the mass of falsehood which had been pub lished under the title of "Mr. Hastings' Narrative." They were, then, unaccountably duped to permit a letter to pass, dated the 29th of November, intended to seduce the Directors into a belief that they had received intelligence at that time, which was not the fact. These observations, my Lords, are not meant to cast any obloquy on the council; they undoubtedly were deceived; and the deceit practiced on them is a decided proof of his consciousness of guilt. When tired of corporeal infliction, Mr. Hastings was gratified by insulting the understanding. The coolness and reflection with which this act was managed and concerted raises its enormity and blackens its turpitude. It proves the prisoner to be that monster in nature, a deliberate and reasoning tyrant! Other tyrants of whom we read, such as a Nero, or a Caligula, were urged to their crimes by the impetuosity of passion. High rank disqualified them from advice, and perhaps equally prevented reflection. But in the prisoner we have a man born in a state of mediocrity; bred to mercantile life; used to system; and accustomed to regularity; who was accountable to his masters, and therefore was compelled to think and to deliberate on every part of his conduct. It is this cool deliberation, I say, which renders his crimes more horrible, and his character more atrocious. ordered dep When, my Lords, the Board of Directors re.ceived the advices which Mr. Hastings The inquiry thought proper to transmit, though un- recated by furnished with any other materials to Mr. Hastings. form their judgment, they expressed very strongly their doubts, and properly ordered an inquiry into the circumstances of the alleged disaffection of the Begums, declaring it, at the same time, to be a debt which was due to the honor and justice of the British nation. This inquiry, however, Mr. Hastings thought it absolutely neces. sary to elude. He stated to the council, in answer, "that it would revive those animosities that subsisted between the Begums and the Nabob [Asoph Dowlah], which had then subsided If the former were inclined to appeal to a foreign jurisdiction, they were the best judges of their own feeling, and should be left to make their own complaint." All this, however, my Lords, is nothing to the magnificent paragraph which concludes this communication "Besides," says about the Justice. On that Justice I rely: deliberate and sure, abstracted from all party purpose and Peroration political speculation; not on words, but on facts. You, my Lords, who hear me, I conjure, by those rights which it is your best priv. ilege to preserve; by that fame which it is your best pleasure to inherit; by all those feelings which refer to the first term in the series of ex he, "I hope it will not be a departure from offi- | would be perfect in the spirits and the aspirings His remarks cial language to say, that the Majesty of men!-where the mind rises; where the Majesty of of Justice ought not to be approached heart expands; where the countenance is ever without solicitation. She ought not to placid and benign; where her favorite attitude descend to inflame or provoke, but to withhold is to stoop to the unfortunate; to hear their cry her judgment until she is called on to determ- and to help them, to rescue and relieve, to suc ine." What is still more astonishing, is, that cor and save; majestic, from its mercy; venerSir John Macpherson, who, though a man of able, from its utility; uplifted, without pride; sense and honor, is rather Oriental in his imagin- | firm, without obduracy; beneficent in each prefation, and not learned in the sublime and beau-erence; lovely, though in her frown! ural from the immortal leader of this prosecution, was caught by this bold, bombastic quibble, and joined in the same words, "that the majesty of justice ought not to be approached without solicitation." But, my Lords, do you, the judges of this land, and the expounders of its rightful laws, do you approve of this mockery, and call it the character of justice, which takes the form of right to excite wrong? No, my Lords, jus-istence, the original compact of our nature, our tice is not this halt and miserable object; it is not the ineffective bawble of an Indian pagod; it is not the portentous phantom of despair; it is not like any fabled monster, formed in the eclipse of reason, and found in some unhallowed grove of superstitious darkness and political dismay! No, my Lords. In the happy reverse of all this, I turn from the disgusting caricature to the real image! Justice I have now before me august and pure! The abstract idea of all that controlling rank in the creation. This is the call on all to administer to truth and equity, as they would satisfy the laws and satisfy themselves, with the most exalted bliss possible or conceiv able for our nature; the self-approving con sciousness of virtue, when the condemnation we look for will be one of the most ample mercies accomplished for mankind since the creation of the world! My Lords, I have done CHARLES JAMES FOX. CHARLES JAMES Fox was born on the 24th of January, 17 19, and was the second en of Henry Fox (the first Lord Holland), and Lady Georgiana Lennox, daugh ter of the second Duke of Richmond. The father, as heretofore mentioned, was the great antagonist of Lord Chatham. He was a man of amiable feelings, but dissolute habits; poor (as the natural consequence) during most of his life, and governed in his politics by the master principle of the Walpole school-love of power for the sake of money. In 1757, he obtained the appointment of Paymaster of the Forces. This office, as then managed, afforded almost boundless opportunities for acquiring wealth; and so skillfully did he use his advantages, that within eight years he amassed a fortune of several hundred thousand pounds. A part of this money he spent in erecting a magnificent house on his estate at Kingsgate, in the Isle of Thanet. "Upon a bleak promontory," says one of his contemporaries, "projecting into the German Ocean, he constructed a splendid villa worthy of Lucullus, and adorned it with a colonnade in front of the building, such as Ictinus might have raised by order of Pericles." Here Charles spent a portion of his early years, and the estate fell to hin as a part of his patrimony, after his father's death. Nay," re Lord Holland's oldest son, Stephen, being affected with a nervous disease which impaired his faculties, Charles, who gave early proofs of extraordinary talent, became the chief object of pride and hope to the family. His father resolved to train him up for public life, and to make him what he himself had always endeavored to be, a leader in fashionable dissipation, and yet an orator and a statesman. He had lived in the days of Bolingbroke, and it would almost seem as if he intended to make that gifted but profligate adventurer the model of his favorite child. He began by treating him with extreme indulgence. His first maxim was, "Let nothing be done to break his spirit," and with this view he permitted no one either to contradict or to punish the boy. On the contrary, he encouraged him in the wildest whims and ca prices. When about five years old, Charles was standing one day by his father as he wound up his watch, and said, "I have a great mind to break that watch." No, Charles, that would be foolish." "But indeed I must do it-I must." plied the father, "if you have so violent an inclination, I won't balk it," giving the watch to the boy, who instantly dashed it on the floor. Amid all this indulgence, however, his studies were not neglected; he showed surprising quickness in performing his tasks, and the same ready and retentive memory for which he was remarkable in after life. His father made him, from childhood, his companion and equal, encouraging him to converse freely at table, and to enter into all the questions discussed by public men who visited the family. Charles usually acquitted himself to the admiration of all, and was no doubt indebted to this early habit of thinking and speaking with freedom, for that frankness and intrepidity, amounting often to rashness, which distinguished him as an orator. Lord Holland, in the mean time, was steadily aiming at the object he had in view. He wrought upon his son's pride; he inflamed him with that love of superiority which is usually the most powerful excitement of genius; he continually pointed him to public life, as the great theater of his labors and triumphs. Under such influences, his progress at a private school of distinction, where he wa sent from childhood, was uncommonly rapid; the severe discipline pursued having the effect at once to repress his irregularities, and to turn his passion for superiority in the right direction. Here he laid the foundation of that intimate acquaintance with the classics, for which he was distinguished beyond most men of his age. He can hardly be said to have studied Latin or Greek after he was sixteen years old. So thoroughly was he grounded in these languages from boyhood, that he read them throughout life much as he read English, and could turn to the great authors of an. tiquity at any moment, not as a mental effort, but for the recreation and delight he found in their pages. This was especially true of the Greek writers, which were then less studied in England than at present. He took up Demosthenes as he did the speeches of Lord Chatham, and dwelt with the same zest on the Greek tragedians as on the plays of Shakspeare. As an instance of this, Mr. Trotter, who attended him at the close of life, mentions, that Mr. Fox once entered the room, just as he was beginning to read the Alcestis of Euripides. "You will soon find something you like," said he; "tell me when you come to it." Mr. Fox, who had not opened the book for many years, watched the reader's countenance till he came to the description of Al cestis, after praying for her children, as she mourned so pathetically over her lot, when he broke out with a kind of triumph at the effect produced by the exquisite tenderness of the passage. In the wildest excesses of his life, the classics were still his companions; in the midst of public business, he corresponded with Gilbert Wakefield on the nicest questions of Greek criticism; he usually led to the subject in conversation with literary men; and we see in the Memoirs of the poet Campbell what delight he expressed at their first interview, in finding how perfectly they agreed on some disputed points in Virgil. As an orator, he was much indebted to his study of the Greek writers for the simplicity of his taste, his severe abstinence from every thing like mere ornament, the terseness of his style, the point and stringency of his reasonings, and the all-pervading cast of intellect which distinguishes his speeches, even in his most vehement bursts of impassioned feeling. Charles was next sent to Eton, where he joined associates who were less advanced than himself in classical literature. This made him a leader in their studies and amusements. In every thing that called for eloquence, especially, whether in public meetings or private debate, or the contentions of the play-ground, he held an acknowl edged pre-eminence. On such occasions, he always manifested those kind and gen erous feelings for which he was distinguished throughout life; espousing the cause of the weaker party, and exerting all his powers of oratory in behalf of those who were injured or neglected through prejudice or partiality for others. Never content with mediocrity, he endeavored to surpass his companions in every thing he under took; and his habits of self-indulgence unfortunately taking a new direction, he now became a leader in all the dissipation of the school. To complete the mischief, his father took him, at the age of fourteen, on a trip to the Spa in Germany, at that time the great center of gambling for Europe; and, incredible as it may seem, he there initiated him in all the mysteries of the gaming-table! At the end of three months, Charles returned to Eton with that fatal passion which so nearly proved his ruin for life, and immediately introduced gambling among his companions to an extent never before heard of in a public school. Under his influence, one of the boys, it is said, contracted debts of honor to the amount of ten thousand pounds, which he felt bound to pay when he arrived at manhood!. At the end of six years Charles was removed to Oxford, where he continued two years, still maintaining the highest rank as a scholar. Notwithstanding his love of pleasure, he must have devoted most of his time at the university to severe study; for his tutor, Dr. Newcombe, remarks, in a letter which Mr. Fox was fond of showing in after life, "Application like yours requires some intermission, and you are the only person with whom I have ever had connection, to whom I could say this." Hu studies were confined almost entirely to the classics and history; he paid but little attention to the mathematics, a neglect which he afterward lamented as injurious to his mental training; and perhaps for this reason he never felt the slightest interest, at this or any subsequent period, in those abstract inquiries which are designed to settle the foundations of moral and political science. Charles Butler having once mentioned to him that he had never read Smith's Wealth of Nations, “To tell you the truth," said Mr. Fox, "nor have I either. There is something in all these subjects which passes my comprehension; something so wide that I could never embrace them myself, nor find any one that did." This was one of the greatest defects in his character as a statesman. His tastes were too exclusively literary. With those habits of self-indulgence so unhappily created in childhood, he rarely did any thing but what he liked-he read poetry, eloquence, history, and elegant literature. because he loved them, and he read but little else. He had never learned to grapple with difficulties, except in connection with a subject which deeply interested his feelings. To secure some favorite object, he would now and then submit to severe drudgery, but he soon reverted to his old habits; and, with powers which, if rightly disciplined, would have enabled him to enter more easily than almost any man of his age into the abstrusest inquiries, he never mastered the principles of his own profession; he was not, in the strict sense of the term, a scientific statesman. He could discuss the Greek meters with Porson; and when a friend once insisted that a certain line in the Iliad could not be genuine because it contained measures not used by Homer, he was able, from his early recollections of the poet, instantly to adduce nearly twenty examples of the same construction. But he had no such acquaintance with the foundations of jurisprudence or the laws of trade; and at a period when the labors of Adam Smith were giving a new science to the world, and establishing the principles of political economy, the true source of the wealth of nations, he was obliged to say, "it is a subject which passes my comprehension." His deficiency in this respect was indeed less seen, because, being in opposition nearly all his life, he was rarely called to propose measures of finance; his chief business was to break down, and not to build up; yet he always felt the want of an early training in scientific investigation, correspondent to that he received in classical literature. Mr. Fox left the University at the age of seventeen, and entered at once upon manhood. The light restraints imposed during his education being now removed, he became sole master of his own actions; and the prodigal liberality of his father supplied him with unbounded means of indulgence. For two years he traveled on the Continent, making great proficiency in Italian and French literature, and plunging, at the same time, into all the extravagance and vice of the most corrupt capitals of Europe. His father had succeeded, even beyond his intentions, in making him a 'leader in fashionable dissipation;' and he now began to fear that he had thus defeated his main design, that of training him up to be an 'orator and a statesman.' He recalled him from the Continent, and was compelled, in doing so (as afterward appeared from his banker's accounts), to pay one hundred thousand pounds of debt, contracted in two years! To wean him from habits which he had himself engendered, Lord Holland now resorted to the extraordinary expedient of having his son returned as a member of Parliament from Midhurst, a borough under his control, in May, 1768, being a year and eight months before he was eligible by law! Under this return, Mr. Fox took his seat in the House, at the opening of Parliamen in November, 1768. His deficiency in age was perhaps unknown; at all events, nɔ one came forward to dispute his right. By education he was a Tory; he had dis tinguished himself when at Paris by some lively French verses reflecting severely on Lord Chatham; and in all his feelings, habits, and associations, he was opposed to |