press can stand; and I shall never defend any man from a temporary imprisonment by the permanent loss of my own liberty, and the ruin of my country. I mean, therefore, to submit to you that though you should find a few lines in page thirteen or twenty-one; a few more in page fiftyone, and some others in other places; containing expressions bearing on the House of Commons, even as a body, which, if written as independent paragraphs by themselves, would be indefensible libels, yet, that you have a right to pass them over in judgment, provided the substance clearly appears to be a bona fide conclusion, arising from the honest investigation of a subject which it was lawful to investigate, and the questionable expressions, the visible effusion of a zealous temper, engaged in an honorable and legal pursuit. After this preparation, I am not afraid to lay the book in its genuine state before you.

Comments

presuming to question either the right or duty of but it would be the surrender of the very princithe Commons of Great Britain to impeach; nei-ple on which alone the liberty of the English ther am I arraigning the propriety of their selecting, as they have done, the most extraordinary persons for ability which the age has produced, to manage their impeachment. Much less am I censuring the managers themselves, charged with the conduct of it before the Lords, who are undoubtedly bound, by their duty to the House and to the public, to expatiate upon the crimes of the persons whom they had accused. None of these points are questioned by me, nor are in this place questionable. I only desire to have Recapitulation. it decided whether, if the Commons, when national expediency happens to call in their judgment for an impeachment, shall, instead of keeping it on their own records, and carrying it with due solemnity to the Peers for trial, permit it, without censure and punishment, to be sold like a common newspaper in the shop of my client, so crowded with their own members that no plain man, without privilege of Parliament, can hope even for a sight of the fire in the winter's day, every man buying it, reading it, and commenting upon it-the gentleman himself who is the object of it, or his friend in his absence, may not, without stepping beyond the bounds of English freedom, put a copy of what is thus published into his pocket, and send back to the very same shop for publication a bona fide, rational, able answer to it, in order that the bane and antidote may circulate together, and the public be kept straight till the day of decision. If you think, gentlemen, that this common duty of self-preservation to the accused himself, which nature writes as a law upon the hearts of even savages and brutes, is nevertheless too high a privilege to be enjoyed by an impeached and suffering Englishman; or if you think it beyond the offices of humanity and justice, when brought home to the hand of a brother or a friend, you will say so by your verdict of guilty; the decision will then be yours; and the consolation mine, that I have labored to avert it. A very small part of the misery which will follow from it is likely to light upon me; the rest will be divided among yourselves and your children.

Transition to an

The pamphlet begins thus: "The House of Commons has now given its final decision with regard to the merits and de- thereon. merits of Mr. Hastings. The Grand Inquest of England have delivered their charges, and preferred their impeachment; their allegations are referred to proof; and, from the appeal to the collective wisdom and justice of the nation in the supreme tribunal of the kingdom, the question comes to be determined, whether Mr. Hastings be guilty or not guilty?"

Now if, immediately after what I have just read to you-which is the first part charged by the information-the author had said, "Will accusations, built on such a baseless fabric, prepossess the public in favor of the impeachment? What credit can we give to multiplied and accumulated charges, when we find that they originate from misrepresentation and falsehood?" every man would have been justified in pronouncing that he was attacking the House of Commons; because the groundless accusations mentioned in the second sentence could have no reference but to the House itself mentioned by name in the first and only sentence which preceded it.

But, gentlemen, to your astonishment I will now read what intervenes between these two

Gentlemen, I observe plainly and with infinite satisfaction, that you are shocked and examination of offended at my even supposing it passages. From this you will see, beyond a the pamphlet. possible you should pronounce such possibility of doubt, that the author never meant a detestable judgment; and that you only require to calumniate the House of Commons, but to of me to make out to your satisfaction, as I prom- say that the accusations of Mr. Hastings before ised, that the real scope and object of this book the whole House grew out of a Committee of is a bona fide defense of Mr. Hastings, and not a Secrecy established some years before, and was cloak and cover for scandal on the House of Com- afterward brought forward by the spleen of primons. I engage to do this, and I engage for vate enemies and a faction in the government. nothing more. I shall make an open, manly de- This will appear not only from the grammatical fense. I mean to torture no expressions from construction of the words, but from what is bettheir natural constructions, to dispute no innuen- ter than words, from the meaning which a perdoes on the record, should any of them have a son writing as a friend of Mr. Hastings must be fair application; nor to conceal from your notice supposed to have intended to convey. Why any unguarded, intemperate expressions, which should such a friend attack the House of Com may, perhaps, be found to chequer the vigorous mons? Will any man gravely tell me that the and animated career of the work. Such a con- House of Commons, as a body, ever wished to duct might, by accident, shelter the defendant; | impeach Mr. Hastings? Do we not all know

that they constantly hung back from it, and hard- | their being the authors of twenty volumes in foly knew where they were, or what to do when lio, which will remain a secret to all posterity, they found themselves entangled with it? My as nobody will ever read them. The same conlearned friend, the Attorney General, is a mem- struction is equally plain from what immediately ber of this Assembly: perhaps he may tell you follows: "The report of the Committee of Secrecy by-and-by what He thought of it, and whether he also states that the happiness of the native inhabever marked any disposition in the majority of itants of India has been deeply affected, their conthe Commons hostile to Mr. Hastings. But why fidence in English faith and lenity shaken and imshould I distress my friend by the question? the paired, and the character of this nation wantonly fact is sufficiently notorious; and what I am go- and wickedly degraded." ing to read from the book itself—which is left out in the information—is too plain for contro

versy.

Here, again, you are grossly misled by the omission of nearly twenty-one pages. For the author, though he is here speaking of this com

"Whatever may be the event of the impeach-mittee by name, which brought forward the ment, the proper exercise of such power is a valuable privilege of the British Constitution, a formidable guardian of the public liberty and the dignity of the nation. The only danger is, that, from the influence of faction, and the awe which is annexed to great names, they may be prompted to determine before they inquire, and to pronounce judgment without examination."

charges to the notice of the House, and which he continues to do onward to the next selected paragraph, yet, by arbitrarily sinking the whole context, he is taken to be speaking to the House as a body, when, in the passage next charged by the information, he reproaches the accusers of Mr. Hastings; although, so far is he from considering them as the House of Commons, that in the very same page he speaks of the articles as the

Burke alone, the most active and intelligent member of that body, having been circulated in India by a relation of that gentleman: "The charges of Mr. Burke have been carried to Calcutta, and carefully circulated in India."

Now if we were considering these passages of the work as calumniating a body of gentlemen, many of whom I must be supposed highly to respect, or as reflecting upon my worthy friend whose name I have mentioned, it would give rise to a totally different inquiry, which it is neither my duty nor yours to agitate. But surely, the more that consideration obtrudes itself upon us, the more clearly it demonstrates that the author's whole direction was against the individual accusers of Mr. Hastings, and not against the House of Commons, which merely trusted to the matter they had collected.

Here is the clue to the whole pamphlet. The author trusts to, and respects, the House of Com-charges not even of the committee, but of Mr. mons, but is afraid their mature and just examination may be disturbed by faction. Now, does he mean government by faction? Does he mean the majority of the Commons by faction? Will the House, which is the prosecutor here, sanction that application of the phrase; or will the Attorney General admit the majority to be the true innuendo of faction? I wish he would; I should then have gained something at least by this extraordinary debate. But I have no expectation of the sort; such a concession would be too great a sacrifice to any prosecution, at a time when every thing is considered as faction that disturbs the repose of the minister in Parliament. But, indeed, gentlemen, some things are too plain for argument. The author certainly means my friends, who, whatever qualifications may belong to them, must be contented with the appellation of faction, while they oppose the minister in the House of Commons; but the House having given this meaning to the phrase of faction for its own purposes, can not in decency change the interpretation, in order to convict my client. I take that to be beyond the privilege of Parliament.

The same bearing upon individual members of the Commons, and not on the Commons as a body, is obvious throughout. Thus, after saying, in page ninth, that the East India Company had thanked Mr. Hastings for his meritorious services which is unquestionably true-he adds, "that mankind would abide by their deliberate decision, rather than by the intemperate assertion of a committee."

Although, from a caution which my situation dictates, as representing another, I have thought it my duty thus to point out to you the real intention of the author, as it appears by the fair construction of the work, yet I protest, that in my own apprehension it is very immaterial whether he speaks of the committee or of the House, provided you shall think the whole volume a bona fide defense of Mr. Hastings. This is the great point I am, by all my observations, endeavoring to establish, and which, I think, no man who reads the following short passages can doubt. Very intelligent persons have, indeed, considered them, if founded in facts, to render every other amplification unnecessary. The first of them is as follows: "It was known at that time that Mr. This he writes after the impeachment was Hastings had not only descended from a public found by the Commons at large. But he takes to a private station, but that he was persecuted no account of their proceedings; imputing the In 1782, the committees having made their reports, whole to the original committee- - that is, the which were exceedingly voluminous, Mr. Dundas, Committee of Secrecy-so called, I suppose, from the chairman of the Secret Committee, moved no 'The Secret Committee and the Select Commit-less than one hundred and eleven resolutions, and tee for inquiring into the general management of the concluded with a censure on the conduct of Warren state of affairs in India were first appointed in 1781. Hastings.

with accusations and impeachments. But none | spoiler, with tears and imprecations. It was not of these suffering millions have sent their complaints to this country; not a sigh nor a groan has been wafted from India to Britain. On the contrary, testimonies the most honorable to the character and merit of Mr. Hastings have been transmitted by those very princes whom he has been supposed to have loaded with the deepest injuries."

Here, gentlemen, we must be permitted to pause together a little; for, in examining whether these pages were written as an honest answer to the charges of the Commons, or as a prostituted defense of a notorious criminal, whom the writer believed to be guilty, truth becomes material at every step. For if, in any instance, he be detected of a willful misrepresentation, he is no longer an object of your attention.

of the case of

by the eloquence of the orator, but by the cries and tears of the miserable, that Cicero prevailed in that illustrious cause. Verres fled from the oaths of his accusers and their witnesses, and not from the voice of Tully. To preserve the fame of his eloquence, he composed his five celebrated speeches, but they were never delivered against the criminal, because he had fled from the city, appalled with the sight of the persecuted and the oppressed. It may be said that the cases of Sicily and India are widely different; perhaps they may be; whether they are or not, is foreign to my purpose. I am not bound to deny the possibility of answers to such questions; I am only vindicating the right to ask them.9

Gentlemen, the author, in the other passage which I marked out to your attention, goes on thus: Lord Cornwallis and Sir John Macpherson, his successors in office, have given the same voluntary tribute of approbation to his measures as Governor General of India. A letter from the former, dated the 10th of August, 1786, gives the following account of our dominions in Asia: 'The native inhabitants of this kingdom are the happiest and best protected subjects in India; our native allies and tributaries confide in our protection; the country powers are aspiring to the friendship of the English; and from the King of Tidore, toward New Guinea, to Timur Shah, on the banks of the Indus, there is not a state that has not lately given us proofs of confidence and respect.'"

Still pursuing the same test of sincerity, let us examine this defensive allegation.

Will the Attorney General say that he does not believe such a letter from Lord Cornwallis ever existed? No: for he knows that it is as

Will the Attorney General proceed, then, to Comparison detect the hypocrisy of our author, by Hastings with giving us some details of the proofs that of Verres. by which these personal enormities have been established, and which the writer must be supposed to have been acquainted with? I ask this as the defender of Mr. Stockdale, not of Mr. Hastings, with whom I have no concern. I am sorry, indeed, to be so often obliged to repeat | this protest; but I really feel myself embarrassed with those repeated coincidences of defense which thicken on me as I advance, and which were, no doubt, overlooked by the Commons when they directed this interlocutory inquiry into his conduct. I ask, then, as counsel for Mr. Stockdale, whether, when a great state criminal is brought for justice at an immense expense to the public, accused of the most oppressive cruelties, and charged with the robbery of princes and the destruction of nations, it is not open to any one to ask, Who are his accusers? What are the sour-authentic as any document from India upon the ces and the authorities of these shocking complaints? Where are the embassadors or memorials of those princes whose revenues he has plundered? Where are the witnesses for those unhappy men in whose persons the rights of humanity have been violated? How deeply buried is the blood of the innocent, that it does not rise up in retributive judgment to confound the guilty! These, surely, are questions which, when a fellow-citizen is upon a long, painful, and expensive trial, humanity has a right to propose; which the plain sense of the most unlettered man may be expected to dictate, and which all history must provoke from the more enlightened. When CicERO impeached VERRES before the great tribunal of Rome, of similar cruelties and depredations in her provinces, the Roman people were not left to such inquiries. All Sicily surrounded the Forum, demanding justice upon her plunderer and

Verres, as prætor and governor of Sicily, was guilty of such extortion and oppression, that the Sicilian people brought an accusation against him in the Senate, and Cicero conducted the impeachment. Verres was defended by Hortensius, the celebrated Roman orator; but, aware of the justice of the accusation, he left Rome without waiting the result.

table of the House of Commons. What, then, is the letter? "The native inhabitants of this kingdom, says Lord Cornwallis (writing from the very spot), are the happiest and best protected subjects in India," &c., &c., &c. The inhabitants of this kingdom! Of what kingdom? Of the very kingdom which Mr. Hastings has just returned from governing for thirteen years, and for the misgovernment and desolation of which he stands every day as a criminal, or rather as a spectacle, before us. This is matter for serious reflection, and fully entitles the author to put the question which immediately follows: "Does this authentic account of the administration of Mr. Hastings, and of the state of India, correspond with the gloomy picture of despotism and despair drawn by the Committee of Secrecy ?"

Had that picture been even drawn by the House of Commons itself, he would have been

This passage was probably suggested by one in Mr. Sheridan's speech on the Begum Charge (page 409), where he is showing the difficulties under which the Managers labored in procuring their evidence. Nothing could be happier than Mr. Erskine's application of the case of Verres to illustrate the point-nothing more vivid than his picture of the

scene.

This passage, which is charged as a libel on the Commons, when thus compared with its immediate antecedent, can bear but one construction. It is impossible to contend that it charges misrepresentation on the House that found the impeachment, but upon the Committee of Secrecy just before adverted to, who were supposed to have selected the matter, and brought it before the whole House for judgment.

fully justified in asking this question; but you | the rank of Zemindar. About four years after observe it has no bearing on it; the last words not the death of Bulwart Sing, the Governor General only entirely destroy that interpretation, but also and council of Bengal obtained the sovereignty the meaning of the very next passage, which is paramount of the province of Benares. On the selected by the information as criminal, namely, transfer of this sovereignty the governor and "What credit can we give to multiplied and ac- council proposed a new grant to Cheyte Sing, cumulated charges, when we find that they orig- confirming his former privileges, and conferring inate from misrepresentation and falsehood ?" upon him the addition of the sovereign rights of the Mint, and the powers of criminal justice with regard to life and death. He was then recognized by the Company as one of their Zemindars : a tributary subject, or feudatory vassal, of the British empire in Hindostan. The feudal system, which was formerly supposed to be peculiar to our Gothic ancestors, has always prevailed in the East. In every description of that form of gov ernment, notwithstanding accidental variations, there are two associations expressed or understood; one for internal security, the other for ex ternal defense. The King or Nabob confers protection on the feudatory baron as tributary prince, on condition of an annual revenue in the time of peace, and of military service, partly commutable for money, in the time of war. The feudal incidents in the Middle Ages in Europe, the fine paid to the superior on marriage, wardship, relief, &c., correspond to the annual tribute in Asia. Military service in war, and extraordinary aids in the event of extraordinary emergencies, were common to both."

I do not mean, as I have often told you, to vindicate any calumny on that honorable committee, or upon any individual of it, any more than upon the Commons at large; BUT THE DEFENDANT IS

NOT CHARGED BY THIS INFORMATION WITH ANY
SUCH OFFENSES.

Let me here pause once more to ask you, whether the book in its genuine state, as far as we have advanced in it, makes the same impression on your minds now as when it was first read to you in detached passages; and whether, if I were to tear off the first part of it which I hold in my hand, and give it to you as an entire work, the first and last passages, which have been se"When the Governor General of Bengal, in lected as libels on the Commons, would now ap- 1778, made an extraordinary demand on the pear to be so, when blended with the interjacent Zemindar of Benares for five lacks of rupees, parts? I do not ask your answer; I shall have the British empire, in that part of the world, it in your verdict. The question is only put to was surrounded with enemies which threatened direct your attention in pursuing the remainder its destruction. In 1779, a general confederacy of the volume to this main point-IS IT AN HON- was formed among the great powers of HindosEST, SERIOUS DEFENSE ? For this purpose, and tan for the expulsion of the English from their as an example for all others, I will read the au- Asiatic dominions. At this crisis the expectation thor's entire answer to the first article of charge of a French armament augmented the general caconcerning Cheyte Sing, the Zemindar of Bena- lamities of the country. Mr. Hastings is charged res, and leave it to your impartial judgments to by the committee with making his first demand determine whether it be a mere cloak and cover under the false pretense that hostilities had comfor the slander imputed by the information to the menced with France. Such an insidious attempt concluding sentence of it, which is the only part to pervert a meritorious action into a crime is attacked; or whether, on the contrary, that con- new, even in the history of impeachments. On clusion itself, when embodied with what goes the 7th of July, 1778, Mr. Hastings received before it, does not stand explained and justified? private intelligence from an English merchant "The first article of impeachment," continues at Cairo, that war had been declared by Great Case of our author, "is concerning Cheyte Britain on the 23d of March, and by France on Cheyte Sing Sing, the Zemindar of Benares. Bul- the 30th of April. Upon this intelligence, conwart Sing, the father of this Rajah, was merely an sidered as authentic, it was determined to attack aumil, or farmer and collector of the revenues for all the French settlements in India. The informSujah ul Dowlah, Nabob of Oude, and Vizier of ation was afterward found to be premature; but the Mogul empire. When, on the decease of his in the latter end of August a secret dispatch was father, Cheyte Sing was confirmed in the office received from England, authorizing and appointof collector for the Vizier, he paid £200,000 asing Mr. Hastings to take the measures which he a gift, or nuzzeranah, and an additional rent of £30,000 per annum.'

"As the father was no more than an aumil [agent], the son succeeded only to his rights and pretensions. But by a sunnud [decree] granted to him by the Nabob Sujah Dowlah in September, 1773, through the influence of Mr. Hastings, he acquired a legal title to property in the land, and was raised from the office of aumil to

had already adopted in the preceding month. The Directors and the Board of Control have expressed their approbation of this transaction by liberally rewarding Mr. Baldwyn, the merchant, for sending the earliest intelligence he could procure to Bengal. It was two days after Mr. Hastings's information of the French war, that he formed the resolution of exacting the five lacks of rupees from Cheyte Sing, and would

have made similar exactions from all the depend- | who is brought to what he thinks a just concluencies of the company in India, had they been [sion in argument, which, perhaps, becomes offensin the same circumstances. The fact is, that ive in proportion to its truth. Truth is undoubtthe great Zemindars of Bengal pay as much to edly no warrant for writing what is reproachful government as their lands can afford. Cheyte of any private man. If a member of society lives Sing's collections were above fifty lacks, and his within the law, then, if he offends, it is against rent not twenty-four." God alone, and man has nothing to do with him; and if he transgress the laws, the libeler should arraign him before them, instead of presuming to try him himself. But as to writings on general subjects, which are not charged as an infringement on the rights of individuals, but as of a seditious tendency, it is far otherwise. When, in the progress either of legislation or of high national justice in Parliament, they who are amenable to no law are supposed to have adopted, through mistake or error, a principle which, if drawn into precedent, might be dangerous to the public, I shall not admit it to be a libel in the course of a legal and bona fide publication, to state that such a principle had in fact been adopted. The people of England are not to be kept in the dark touching the proceedings of their own representatives. Let us, therefore, coolly examine this supposed offense, and see what it amounts to.

"The right of calling for extraordinary aids and military service in times of danger being universally established in India, as it was formerly in Europe during the feudal times, the subsequent conduct of Mr. Hastings is explained and vindicated. The Governor General and Council of Bengal having made a demand upon a tributary Zemindar for three successive years, and that demand having been resisted by their vassal, they are justified in his punishment. The necessities of the company, in consequence of the critical situation of their affairs in 1781, calling for a high fine-the ability of the Zemindar, who possessed near two crores of rupees in money and jewels, to pay the sum required his backwardness to comply with the demands of his superiors-his disaffection to the English interest, and desire of revolt, which even then began to appear, and were afterward conspicuous, fully justify Mr. Hastings in every subsequent step of his conduct. In the whole of his proceedings, it is manifest that he had not early formed a design hostile to the Zemindar, but was regulated by events which he could neither foresee nor control. When the necessary measures which he had taken for supporting the authority of the company, by punishing a refractory vassal, were thwarted and defeated by the barbarous massacre of the British troops, and the rebellion of Cheyte Sing, the appeal was made to arms, an unavoidable revolution took place in Benares, and the Zemindar became the author of his own destruction."

Here follows the concluding passage, which is arraigned by the information:

First, was not the conduct of the right honorable gentleman, whose name is here mentioned, exactly what it is represented? Will the Attorney General, who was present in the House of Commons, say that it was not? Did not the minister vindicate Mr. Hastings in what he had done,10 and was not his consent to that article of the impeachment founded on the intention only of levying a fine on the Zemindar for the service of the state, beyond the quantum which he, the minister, thought reasonable? What else is this but an impeachment of error in judgment in the quantum of a fine?

So much for the first part of the sentence, which, regarding Mr. Pitt only, is foreign to our purpose. And as to the last part of it, which "The decision of the House of Commons on imputes the sentiments of the minister to the this charge against Mr. Hastings is one of the majority that followed him with their votes on most singular to be met with in the annals of the question, that appears to me to be giving Parliament. The minister, who was followed handsome credit to the majority for having votby the majority, vindicated him in every thing ed from conviction, and not from courtesy to the that he had done, and found him blamable only for minister. To have supposed otherwise, I dare what he intended to do; justified every step of not say, would have been a more natural libel, his conduct, and only criminated his proposed but it would certainly have been a greater one. intention of converting the crimes of the Zemin- The sum and substance, therefore, of the paradar to the benefit of the state, by a fine of fifty graph is only this-that an impeachment for an lacks of rupees. An impeachment of error in error in judgment is not consistent with the thejudgment with regard to the quantum of a fine, ory or the practice of the English government. and for an intention that never was executed, So say I. I say, without reserve, speaking mereand never known to the offending party, charac-ly in the abstract, and not meaning to decide terizes a tribunal of inquisition rather than a upon the merits of Mr. Hastings's cause, that an court of Parliament." impeachment for an error in judgment is contraGentlemen, I am ready to admit that this sen-ry to the whole spirit of English criminal justice, timent might have been expressed in language more reserved and guarded; but you will look to the sentiment itself, rather than to its dress to the mind of the writer, and not to the bluntness with which he may happen to express it. It is obviously the language of a warm man, engaged in the honest defense of his friend, and

|

which, though not binding on the House of Commons, ought to be a guide to its proceedings. I say that the extraordinary jurisdiction of impeach

10 Mr. Pitt expressed his opinion that, admitting the right of Mr. Hastings to tax the Zemindar, his general conduct in the business had been unnecessarily severe.