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.

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 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 Cheit Sing has so long been a wanderer, while the man who drove him from his dominions is still unpunished. are sorry that Nobkissen 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.

We

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 com

plaints, 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 This, my lords, is the

did not even encourage his departure. 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

£30,000 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 £14,000, although the expense of the prosecutor is generally greater than that of the defendant, and public proceedings more expensive than private onės.

Lord