£40,000 in bribes for Dinagepore and its annexed provinces, that from the people nothing more than £40,000 is extorted. I speak within compass, four times forty must be levied on the people; and these violent sales, fraudulent purchases, confiscations, inhuman and unutterable tortures, imprisonment, irons, whips, fines, general despair, general insurrection, the massacre of the officers of revenue by the people, the massacre of the people by the soldiery, and the total waste and destruction of the finest provinces in India, are things of course, and all a necessary consequence involved in the very substance of Mr. Hastings's bribery.

I, therefore, charge Mr. Hastings with having destroyed, for private purposes, the whole system of government by the six provincial councils, which he had no right to destroy.

I charge him with having delegated to others that power which the act of parliament had directed him to preserve unalienably in himself.

I charge him with having formed a committee to be mere instruments and tools, at the enormous expense of £62,000 per annum.

I charge him with having appointed a person their dewan, to whom these Englishmen were to be subservient tools; whose name, to his own knowledge, was by the general voice of India, by the general recorded voice of the Company, by recorded official transactions, by everything that can make a man known, abhorred, and detested, stamped with infamy; and with giving him the whole power which he had thus separated from the council-general and from the provincial councils.

I charge him with taking bribes of Gunga Govin Sing. I charge him with not having done that bribe service which fidelity even in iniquity requires at the hands of the worst of men.

I charge him with having robbed those people of whom. he took the bribes.

I charge him with having fraudulently alienated the fortunes of widows.

I charge him with having, without right, title, or purchase, taken the lands of orphans, and given them to wicked persons under him.

1 charge him with having removed the natural guardians

of a minor Rajah, and with having given that trust to a stranger, Debi Sing, whose wickedness was known to himself and all the world; and by whom the Rajah, his family and. dependants were cruelly oppressed.

I charge him with having committed to the management of Debi Sing three great provinces; and thereby, with having wasted the country, ruined the landed interest, cruelly harassed the peasants, burnt their houses, seized their crops, tortured and degraded their persons, and destroyed the honour of the whole female race of that country.

In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villany upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to you.

My lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of national justice? Do we want a cause, my lords? You have the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms.

Do you want a criminal, my lords? When was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one ?—No, my lords, you must not look to punish any other such delinquent from India.-Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent.

My lords, is it a prosecutor you want ?-You have before you the Commons of Great Britain as prosecutors; and, I believe, my lords, that the sun in his beneficent progress round the world does not behold a more glorious sight than that of men, separated from a remote people by the material bounds and barriers of nature, united by the bond of a social and moral community;-all the Commons of England resenting, as their own, the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people of India.

Do we want a tribunal? My lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. My lords, here we see virtually in the mind's eye that sacred majesty of the crown, under whose authority you sit, and whose power you exercise. We see in that invisible authority, what we all feel in reality and life, the beneficent powers and protecting justice of his Majesty. We have here the heir-apparent to the crown, such as the fond wishes of the people of England wish an heir-apparent of the

crown to be. We have here all the branches of the royal family in a situation between majesty and subjection, between the sovereign and the subject, offering a pledge in that situation for the support of the rights of the crown and the liberties of the people, both which extremities they touch. My lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here; those who have their own honour, the honour of their ancestors, and of their posterity, to guard; and who will justify, as they have always justified, that provision in the constitution by which justice is made an hereditary office. My lords, we have here a new nobility, who have risen and exalted themselves by various merits, by great military services, which have extended the fame of this country from the rising to the setting sun: we have those who by various civil merits and various civil talents have been exalted to a situation which they well deserve, and in which they will justify the favour of their sovereign, and the good opinion of their fellow-subjects, and make them rejoice to see those virtuous characters, that were the other day upon a level with them, now exalted above them in rank, but feeling with them in sympathy what they felt in common with them before. We have persons exalted from the practice of the law, from the place in which they administered high though subordinate justice, to a seat here, to enlighten with their knowledge and to strengthen with their votes those principles which have distinguished the courts in which they have presided.

My lords, you have here also the lights of our religion; you have the bishops of England. My lords, you have that true image of the primitive church in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions. You have the representatives of that religion which says that their God is love, that the very vital spirit of their institution is charity; a religion which so much hates oppression, that when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, he did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, but in sympathy with the lowest of the people,—and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle, that their welfare was the object of all government; since the person, who was the Master of Nature, chose to appear himself in a subordinate situation. These are the consider

ations which influence them, which animate them, and will animate them, against all oppression; knowing, that He who is called first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed and of those who feed it, made Himself "the servant of all."

My lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of this House. We know them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands. Therefore, it is with confidence that, ordered by the Commons,

I impeach Warren Hastings, Esq., of high crimes and misdemeanours.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonoured.

I impeach him in the name of the people in India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated.

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life.

After Mr. Burke had concluded these opening speeches, the first article of the impeachment was brought forward on the 22nd of February, 1788, by Mr. Fox, and supported by Mr. Grey on the 25th. After the evidence upon this article had been adduced, it was summed up and enforced by Mr. Anstruther on the 11th day of April following.

The next article with which the Commons proceeded, was brought for ward on the 15th of April, 1788, by Mr. Adam, and supported by Mr. Pelham; and the evidence, in part upon the second article of charge, was summed up and enforced on the 3rd of June, by Mr. Sheridan.

On the 21st of April, 1789, Mr. Burke opened the sixth charge, bribery and corruption, in the following speech, which was continued on the 21st of April, and on the 5th and 7th of May, in the same session.

TRIAL.

TUESDAY, 21ST APRIL, 1789.

(MR. BURKE.)

MY LORDS,-An event which had spread for a considerable time an universal grief and consternation through this kingdom, and which, in its issue, diffused as universal and transcendent a joy, has, in the circumstances both of our depression and of our exaltation, produced a considerable delay, if not a total suspension of the most important functions of government.

My lords, we now resume our office; and we resume it with new and redoubled alacrity, and we trust under not less propitious omens than when we left it in this House, at the end of the preceding session. We come to this duty with a greater degree of earnestness and zeal, because we are urged to it by many and very peculiar circumstances. This day we come from a House where the last steps were taken, and I suppose something has happened similar in this, to prepare our way to attend with the utmost solemnity in another place a great national thanksgiving for having restored the sovereign to his parliament, and the parliament to its sovereign.

But, my lords, it is not only in the house of prayer that we offer to the First Cause the acceptable homage of our rational nature—my lords, in this House, at this bar, in this place, in every place where His commands are obeyed, His worship is performed. And, my lords, I must boldly say (and I think I shall hardly be contradicted by your lordships, or by any persons versed in the law which guides us all), that the highest act of religion, and the highest homage which we can and ought to pay, is an imitation of the Divine perfections as far as such a nature can imitate such perfections; and that by this means alone we can make our homage acceptable to Him.

My lords, in His temple we shall not forget that His most distinguished attribute is justice, and that the first link in