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FOOTNOTES:

Institutes of Timour, p. 165.

SPEECH

GENERAL REPLY.

SECOND DAY: FRIDAY, MAY 30, 1794.

My lords,--On the last day of the sitting of this court, when I had the honor of appearing before you by the order of my fellow Managers, I stated to you their observations and my own upon two great points: one the demeanor of the prisoner at the bar during his trial, and the other the principles of his defence. I compared that demeanor with the behavior of some of the greatest men in this kingdom, who have, on account of their offences, been brought to your bar, and who have seldom escaped your Lordships' justice. I put the decency, humility, and propriety of the most distinguished men's behavior in contrast with the shameless effrontery of this prisoner, who has presumptuously made a recriminatory charge against the House of Commons, and answered their impeachment by a counter impeachment, explicitly accusing them of malice, oppression, and the blackest ingratitude.

My Lords, I next stated that this recriminatory charge consisted of two distinct parts,--injustice and delay. To the injustice we are to answer by the nature and proof of the charges which we have brought before you; and to the delay, my Lords, we have answered in another place. Into one of the consequences of the delay, the ruinous expense which the prisoner complains of, we have desired your Lordships to make an inquiry, and have referred you to facts and witnesses which will remove this part of the charge.

With regard to ingratitude, there will be a proper time for animadversion on this charge. For in considering the merits that are intended to be set off against his crimes, we shall have to examine into the nature of those merits, and to ascertain how far they are to operate, either as the prisoner designs they shall operate in his favor, as presumptive proofs that a man of such merits could not be guilty of such crimes, or as a sort of set-off to be pleaded in mitigation of his offences. In both of these lights we shall consider his services, and in this consideration we shall determine the justice of his charge of ingratitude.

My Lords, we have brought the demeanor of the prisoner before you for another reason. We are desirous that your Lordships may be enabled to estimate, from the proud presumption and audacity of the criminal at your bar, when he stands before the most awful tribunal in the world, accused by a body representing no less than the sacred voice of his country, what he must have been when placed in the seat of pride and power. What must have been the insolence of that man towards the natives of India, who, when called here to answer for enormous crimes, presumes to behave, not with the firmness of innocence, but with the audacity and hardness of guilt!

It may be necessary that I should recall to your Lordships' recollection the principles of the accusation and of the defence. Your Lordships will bear in mind that the matters of fact are all either settled by confession or conviction, and that the question now before you is no longer an issue of fact, but an issue of law. The question is, what degree of merit or demerit you are to assign by law to actions which have been laid before you, and their truth acknowledged.

The principle being established that you are to decide upon an issue at law, we examined by what law the prisoner ought to be tried; and we preferred a claim which we do now solemnly prefer, and which we trust your Lordships will concur with us in a laudable emulation to establish,--a claim founded upon the great truths, that all power is limited by law, and ought to be guided by discretion, and not by arbitrary will,--that all discretion must be referred to the conservation and benefit of those over whom power is exercised, and therefore must be guided by rules of sound political morality.

We next contended, that, wherever existing laws were applicable, the prisoner at your bar was bound by the laws and statutes of this kingdom, as a British subject; and that, whenever he exercised authority in the name of the Company, or in the name of his Majesty, or under any other name, he was bound by the laws and statutes of this kingdom, both in letter and spirit, so far as they were applicable to him and to his case; and above all, that he was bound by the act to which he owed his appointment, in all transactions with foreign powers, to act according to the known recognized rules of the Law of Nations, whether these powers were really or nominally sovereign, whether they were dependent or independent.

The next point which we established, and which we now call to your Lordships' recollection, is, that he was bound to proceed according to the laws, rights, laudable customs, privileges, and franchises of the country that he governed; and we contended that to such laws, rights, privileges, and franchises the people of the country had a clear and just claim.

Having established these points as the basis of Mr. Hastings's general power, we contended that he was obliged by the nature of his relation, as a servant to the Company, to be obedient to their orders at all times, and particularly where he had entered into special covenants regarding special articles of obedience.

These are the principles by which we have examined the conduct of this man, and upon which we have brought him to your Lordships' bar for judgment. This is our table of the law. Your Lordships shall now be shown the table by which he claims to be judged. But I will first beg your Lordships to take notice of the utter contempt with which he treats all our acts of Parliament.

Speaking of the absolute sovereignty which he would have you believe is exercised by the princes of India, he says, "The sovereignty which they assumed it fell to my lot, very unexpectedly, to exert; and whether or not such power, or powers of that nature, were delegated to me by any provisions of any act of Parliament I confess myself too little of a lawyer to pronounce," and so on. This is the manner in which he treats an act of Parliament! In the place of acts of Parliament he substitutes his own arbitrary will. This he contends is the sole law of the country he governed, as laid down in what he calls the arbitrary Institutes of Genghis Kh?n and Tamerlane. This arbitrary will he claims, to the exclusion of the Gentoo law, the Mahometan law, and the law of his own country. He claims the right of making his own will the sole rule of his government, and justifies the exercise of this power by the examples of Aliverdy Kh?n, Cossim Ali Kh?n, Sujah Dowlah Kh?n, and all those Kh?ns who have rebelled against their masters, and desolated the countries subjected to their rule. This, my Lords, is the law which he has laid down for himself, and these are the examples which he has expressly told the House of Commons he is resolved to follow. These examples, my Lords, and the principles with which they are connected, without any softening or mitigation, he has prescribed to you as the rule by which his conduct is to be judged.

Another principle of the prisoner is, that, whenever the Company's affairs are in distress, even when that distress proceeds from his own prodigality, mismanagement, or corruption, he has a right to take for the Company's benefit privately in his own name, with the future application of it to their use reserved in his own breast, every kind of bribe or corrupt present whatever.

I have now restated to your Lordships the maxims by which the prisoner persists in defending himself, and the principles upon which we claim to have him judged. The issue before your Lordships is a hundred times more important than the cause itself, for it is to determine by what law or maxims of law the conduct of governors is to be judged.

On one side, your Lordships have the prisoner declaring that the people have no laws, no rights, no usages, no distinctions of rank, no sense of honor, no property,--in short, that they are nothing but a herd of slaves, to be governed by the arbitrary will of a master. On the other side, we assert that the direct contrary of this is true. And to prove our assertion we have referred you to the Institutes of Genghis Kh?n and of Tamerlane; we have referred you to the Mahometan law, which is binding upon all, from the crowned head to the meanest subject,--a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned, and most enlightened jurisprudence that perhaps ever existed in the world. We have shown you, that, if these parties are to be compared together, it is not the rights of the people which are nothing, but rather the rights of the sovereign which are so. The rights of the people are everything, as they ought to be, in the true and natural order of things. God forbid that these maxims should trench upon sovereignty, and its true, just, and lawful prerogative!--on the contrary, they ought to support and establish them. The sovereign's rights are undoubtedly sacred rights, and ought to be so held in every country in the world, because exercised for the benefit of the people, and in subordination to that great end for which alone God has vested power in any man or any set of men. This is the law that we insist upon, and these are the principles upon which your Lordships are to try the prisoner at your bar.

Let me remind your Lordships that these people lived under the laws to which I have referred you, and that these laws were formed whilst we, I may say, were in the forest, certainly before we knew what technical jurisprudence was. These laws are allowed to be the basis and substratum of the manners, customs, and opinions of the people of India; and we contend that Mr. Hastings is bound to know them and to act by them; and I shall prove that the very condition upon which he received power in India was to protect the people in their laws and known rights. But whether Mr. Hastings did know these laws, or whether, content with credit gained by as base a fraud as was ever practised, he did not read the books which Nobkissin paid for, we take the benefit of them: we know and speak after knowledge of them. And although I believe his Council have never read them, I should be sorry to stand in this place, if there was one word and tittle in these books that I had not read over.

Having established the falsehood of the first principle of the prisoner's defence, that sovereignty, wherever it exists in India, implies in its nature and essence a power of exacting anything from the subject, and disposing of his person and property, we now come to his second assertion, that he was the true, full, and perfect representative of that sovereignty in India.

In opposition to this assertion we first do positively deny that he or the Company are the perfect representative of any sovereign power whatever. They have certain rights by their charter, and by acts of Parliament, but they have no other. They have their legal rights only, and these do not imply any such thing as sovereign power. The sovereignty of Great Britain is in the King; he is the sovereign of the Lords and the sovereign of the Commons, individually and collectively; and as he has his prerogative established by law, he must exercise it, and all persons claiming and deriving under him, whether by act of Parliament, whether by charter of the Crown, or by any other mode whatever, all are alike bound by law, and responsible to it. No one can assume or receive any power of sovereignty, because the sovereignty is in the Crown, and cannot be delegated away from the Crown; no such delegation ever took place, or ever was intended, as any one may see in the act by which Mr. Hastings was nominated Governor. He cannot, therefore, exercise that high supreme sovereignty which is vested by the law, with the consent of both Houses of Parliament, in the King, and in the King only. It is a violent, rebellious assumption of power, when Mr. Hastings pretends fully, perfectly, and entirely to represent the sovereign of this country, and to exercise legislative, executive, and judicial authority, with as large and broad a sway as his Majesty, acting with the consent of the two Houses of Parliament, and agreeably to the laws of this kingdom. I say, my Lords, this is a traitorous and rebellious assumption, which he has no right to make, and which we charge against him, and therefore it cannot be urged in justification of his conduct in any respect.

He next alleges, with reference to one particular case, that he received this sovereignty from the Vizier Sujah Dowlah, who he pretends was sovereign, with an unlimited power over the life, goods, and property of Cheyt Sing. This we positively deny. Whatever power the supreme sovereign of the empire had, we deny that it was delegated to Sujah Dowlah. He never was in possession of it. He was a vizier of the empire; he had a grant of certain lands for the support of that dignity: and we refer you to the Institutes of Timour, to the Institutes of Akbar, to the institutes of the Mahometan law, for the powers of delegated governors and viceroys. You will find that there is not a trace of sovereignty in them, but that they are, to all intents and purposes, mere subjects; and consequently, as Sujah Dowlah had not these powers, he could not transfer them to the India Company. His master, the Mogul emperor, had them not. I defy any man to show an instance of that emperor's claiming any such thing as arbitrary power; much less can it be claimed by a rebellious viceroy who had broken loose from his sovereign's authority, just as this man broke loose from the authority of Parliament. The one had not a right to give, nor the other to receive such powers. But whatever rights were vested in the Mogul, they cannot belong either to Sujah Dowlah, to Mr. Hastings, or to the Company. These latter are expressly bound by their compact to take care of the subjects of the empire, and to govern them according to law, reason, and equity; and when they do otherwise, they are guilty of tyranny, of a violation of the rights of the people, and of rebellion against their sovereign.

We have taken these pains to ascertain and fix principles, because your Lordships are not called upon to judge of facts. A jury may find facts, but no jury can form a judgment of law; it is an application of the law to the fact that makes the act criminal or laudable. You must find a fixed standard of some kind or other; for if there is no standard but the immediate momentary purpose of the day, guided and governed by the man who uses it, fixed not only for the disposition of all the wealth and strength of the state, but for the life, fortune, and property of every individual, your Lordships are left without a principle to direct your judgment. This high court, this supreme court of appeal from all the courts of the kingdom, this highest court of criminal jurisdiction, exercised upon the requisition of the House of Commons, if left without a rule, would be as lawless as the wild savage, and as unprincipled as the prisoner that stands at your bar. Our whole issue is upon principles, and what I shall say to you will be in perpetual reference to them; because it is better to have no principles at all than to have false principles of government and of morality. Leave a man to his passions, and you leave a wild beast to a savage and capricious nature. A wild beast, indeed, when its stomach is full, will caress you, and may lick your hands; in like manner, when a tyrant is pleased or his passion satiated, you may have a happy and serene day under an arbitrary government. But when the principle founded on solid reason, which ought to restrain passion, is perverted from its proper end, the false principle will be substituted for it, and then man becomes ten times worse than a wild beast. The evil principle, grown solid and perennial, goads him on and takes entire possession of his mind; and then perhaps the best refuge that you can have from that diabolical principle is in the natural wild passions and unbridled appetites of mankind. This is a dreadful state of things; and therefore we have thought it necessary to say a great deal upon his principles.

My Lords, we come next to apply these principles to facts which cannot otherwise be judged, as we have contended and do now contend. I will not go over facts which have been opened to you by my fellow Managers: if I did so, I should appear to have a distrust, which I am sure no other man has, of the greatest abilities displayed in the greatest of all causes. I should be guilty of a presumption which I hope I shall not dream of, but leave to those who exercise arbitrary power, in supposing that I could go over the ground which my fellow Managers have once trodden, and make anything more clear and forcible than they have done. In my humble opinion, human ability cannot go farther than they have gone; and if I ever allude to anything which they have already touched, it will be to show it in another light,--to mark more particularly its departure from the principles upon which we contend you ought to judge, or to supply those parts which through bodily infirmity, and I am sure nothing else, one of my excellent fellow Managers has left untouched. I am here alluding to the case of Cheyt Sing.

My honorable fellow Manager, Mr. Grey, has stated to you all the circumstances requisite to prove two things: first, that the demands made by Mr. Hastings upon Cheyt Sing were contrary to fundamental treaties between the Company and that Rajah; and next, that they were the result and effect of private malice and corruption. This having been stated and proved to you, I shall take up the subject where it was left.

My Lords, in the first place, I have to remark to you, that the whole of the charge originally brought by Mr. Hastings against Cheyt Sing, in justification of his wicked and tyrannical proceedings, is, that he had been dilatory, evasive, shuffling, and unwilling to pay that which, however unwilling, evasive, and shuffling, he did pay; and that, with regard to the business of furnishing cavalry, the Rajah has asserted, and his assertion has not been denied, that, when he was desired by the Council to furnish these troopers, the purpose for which this application was made was not mentioned or alluded to, nor was there any place of muster pointed out. We therefore contended, that the demand was not made for the service of the state, but for the oppression of the individual that suffered by it.

But admitting the Rajah to have been guilty of delay and unwillingness, what is the nature of the offence? If you strip it of the epithets by which it has been disguised, it merely amounts to an unwillingness in the Rajah to pay more than the sums stipulated by the mutual agreement existing between him and the Company. This is the whole of it, the whole front and head of the offence; and for this offence, such as it is, and admitting that he could be legally fined for it, he was subjected to the secret punishment of giving a bribe to Mr. Hastings, by which he was to buy off the fine, and which was consequently a commutation for it.

We contend in favor of Cheyt Sing, in support of the principles of natural equity, and of the Law of Nations, which is the birthright of us all,--we contend, I say, that Cheyt Sing would have established, in the opinions of the best writers on the Law of Nations, a precedent against himself for any future violation of the engagement, if he submitted to any new demand, without what our laws call a continual claim or perpetual remonstrance against the imposition. Instead, therefore, of doing that which was criminal, he did that which his safety and his duty bound him to do; and for doing this he was considered by Mr. Hastings as being guilty of a great crime. In a paper which was published by the prisoner in justification of this act, he considers the Rajah to have been guilty of rebellious intentions; and he represents these acts of contumacy, as he calls them, not as proofs of contumacy merely, but as proofs of a settled design to rebel, and to throw off the authority of that nation by which he was protected. This belief he declares on oath to be the ground of his conduct towards Cheyt Sing.

Now, my Lords, we do contend, that, if any subject, under any name, or of any description, be not engaged in public, open rebellion, but continues to acknowledge the authority of his sovereign, and, if tributary, to pay tribute conformably to agreement, such a subject, in case of being suspected of having formed traitorous designs, ought to be treated in a manner totally different from that which was adopted by Mr. Hastings. If the Rajah of Benares had formed a secret conspiracy, Mr. Hastings had a state duty and a judicial duty to perform. He was bound, as Governor, knowing of such a conspiracy, to provide for the public safety; and as a judge, he was bound to convene a criminal court, and to lay before it a detailed accusation of the offence. He was bound to proceed publicly and legally against the accused, and to convict him of his crime, previous to his inflicting, or forming any intention of inflicting, punishment. I say, my Lords, that Mr. Hastings, as a magistrate, was bound to proceed against the Rajah either by English law, by Mahometan law, or by the Gentoo law; and that, by all or any of these laws, he was bound to make the accused acquainted with the crime alleged, to hear his answer to the charge, and to produce evidence against him, in an open, clear, and judicial manner. And here, my Lords, we have again to remark, that the Mahometan law is a great discriminator of persons, and that it prescribes the mode of proceeding against those who are accused of any delinquency requiring punishment, with a reference to the distinction and rank which the accused held in society. The proceedings are exceedingly sober, regular, and respectful, even to criminals charged with the highest crimes; and every magistrate is required to exercise his office in the prescribed manner. In the Hedaya, after declaring and discussing the propriety of the K?zi's sitting openly in the execution of his office, it is added, that there is no impropriety in the K?zi sitting in his own house to pass judgment, but it is requisite that he give orders for a free access to the people. It then proceeds thus:--"It is requisite that such people sit along with the K?zi as were used to sit with him, prior to his appointment to the office; because, if he were to sit alone in his house, he would thereby give rise to suspicion."

In this absence of evidence, My Lords, let us have recourse to probability. Is it to be believed that the Zemindar of Benares, a person whom Mr. Hastings describes as being of a timid, weak, irresolute, and feeble nature, should venture to make war alone with the whole power of the Company in India, aided by all the powers which Great Britain could bring to the protection of its Indian empire? Could that poor man, in his comparatively small district, possibly have formed such an intention, without giving Mr. Hastings access to the knowledge of the fact from one or other of the numerous correspondents which he had in that country?

As to the Rajah's supposed intrigues with the Nabob of Oude: this man was an actual prisoner of Mr. Hastings, and nothing else,--a mere vassal, as he says himself, in effect and substance, though not in name. Can any one believe or think that Mr. Hastings would not have received from the English Resident, or from some one of that tribe of English gentlemen and English military collectors who were placed in that country in the exercise of the most arbitrary powers, some intelligence which he could trust, if any rebellious designs had really existed previous to the rebellion which did actually break out upon his arresting Cheyt Sing?

But, my Lords, although Mr. Hastings swore to the truth of this charge, when he came before the House of Commons, yet in his Narrative he thus fairly and candidly avowed that he entertained no such opinion at the time. "Every step," says he, "which I had taken before that fatal moment, namely, the flight of Cheyt Sing, is an incontrovertible proof that I had formed no design of seizing upon the Rajah's treasures or of deposing him. And certainly, at the time when I did form the design of making the punishment that his former ill conduct deserved subservient to the exigencies of the state by a large fine, I did not believe him guilty of that premeditated project for driving the English out of India with which I afterwards charged him." Thus, then, he declares upon oath that the Rajah's contumacy was the ground of his suspecting him of rebellion, and yet, when he comes to make his defence before the House of Commons, he simply and candidly declares, that, long after these alleged acts of contumacy had taken place, he did not believe him to be guilty of any such thing as rebellion, and that the fine imposed upon him was for another reason and another purpose.

In page 28 of your printed Minutes he thus declares the purpose for which the fine was imposed:--"I can answer only to this formidable dilemma, that, so long as I conceived Cheyt Sing's misconduct and contumacy to have me rather than the Company for its object, at least to be merely the effect of pernicious advice or misguided folly, without any formal design of openly resisting our authority or disclaiming our sovereignty, I looked upon a considerable fine as sufficient both for his immediate punishment and for binding him to future good behavior."

Now, my Lords, observe who his models were, when he intended to punish this man for an insult on himself. Did he consult the laws? Did he look to the Institutes of Timour, or to those of Genghis Kh?n? Did he look to the Hedaya, or to any of the approved authorities in this country? No, my Lords, he exactly followed the advice which Longinus gives to a great writer:--"Whenever you have a mind to elevate your mind, to raise it to its highest pitch, and even to exceed yourself, upon any subject, think how Homer would have described it, how Plato would have imagined it, and how Demosthenes would have expressed it; and when you have so done, you will then, no doubt, have a standard which will raise you up to the dignity of anything that human genius can aspire to." Mr. Hastings was calling upon himself, and raising his mind to the dignity of what tyranny could do, what unrighteous exaction could perform. He considered, he says, how much Sujah Dowlah would have exacted, and that he thinks would not be too much for him to exact. He boldly avows,--"I raised my mind to the elevation of Sujah Dowlah; I considered what Cossim Ali Kh?n would have done, or Aliverdy Kh?n, who murdered and robbed so many, I had all this line of great examples before me, and I asked myself what fine they would have exacted upon such an occasion. But," says he, "Sujah Dowlah levied a fine of twenty lacs for a right of succession."

When this man had elevated his mind according to the rules of art, and stimulated himself to great things by great examples, he goes on to tell you that he rejected the offer of twenty lacs with which the Rajah would have compounded for his guilt when it was too late.

My Lords, I must again beg leave to call your attention to his mode of proceeding in this business. He never entered any charge. He never answered any letter. Not that he was idle. He was carrying on a wicked and clandestine plot for the destruction of the Rajah, under the pretence of this fine; although the plot was not known, I verily believe, to any European at the time. He does not pretend that he told any one of the Company's servants of his intentions of fining the Rajah; but that some hostile project against him had been formed by Mr. Hastings was perfectly well known to the natives. Mr. Hastings tells you, that Cheyt Sing had a vakeel at Calcutta, whose business it was to learn the general transactions of our government, and the most minute particulars which could in any manner affect the interest of his employer.

Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to the manner in which he defends himself and these proceedings. He says, "I rejected this offer of twenty lacs, with which the Rajah would have compromised for his guilt when it was too late." If by these words he means too late to answer the purpose for which he has said the fine was designed, namely, the relief of the Company, the ground of his defence is absolutely false; for it is notorious that at the time referred to the Company's affairs were in the greatest distress.

The terror occasioned by threatening to take from him his forts can only be estimated by considering, that, agreeably to the religion and prejudices of Hindoos, the forts are the places in which their women are lodged, in which, according to their notions, their honor is deposited, and in which is lodged all the wealth that they can save against an evil day to purchase off the vengeance of an enemy. These forts Mr. Hastings says he intended to take, because the Rajah could hold them for no other than rebellious and suspected purposes. Now I will show your Lordships that the man who has the horrible audacity to make this declaration did himself assign to the Rajah these very forts. He put him in possession of them, and, when there was a dispute about the Nabob's rights to them on the one side and the Company's on the other, did confirm them to this man. The paper shall be produced, that you may have before your eyes the gross contradictions into which his rapacity and acts of arbitrary power have betrayed him. Thank God, my Lords, men that are greatly guilty are never wise. I repeat it, men that are greatly guilty are never wise. In their defence of one crime they are sure to meet the ghost of some former defence, which, like the spectre in Virgil, drives them back. The prisoner at your bar, like the hero of the poet, when he attempts to make his escape by one evasion, is stopped by the appearance of some former contradictory averment. If he attempts to escape by one door, there his criminal allegations of one kind stop him; if he attempts to escape at another, the facts and allegations intended for some other wicked purpose stare him full in the face.

Quacunque viam sibi fraude petivit, Successum Dea dira negat.

The paper I hold in my hand contains Nundcomar's accusation of Mr. Hastings. It consists of a variety of charges; and I will first read to you what is said by Nundcomar of these forts, which it is pretended could be held for none but suspicious and rebellious purposes.

"At the time Mr. Hastings was going to Benares, he desired me to give him an account in writing of any lands which, though properly belonging to the Subah of Bahar, might have come under the dominion of Bulwant Sing, that they might be recovered from his son, Rajah Cheyt Sing. The purgunnahs of Kera, Mungrora, and Bidjegur were exactly in this situation, having been usurped by Bulwant Sing from the Subah of Bahar. I accordingly delivered to Mr. Hastings the accounts of them, from the entrance of the Company upon the dewanny to the year 1179 of the Fusseli era, stated at twenty-four lacs. Mr. Hastings said, 'Give a copy of this to Roy Rada Churn, that, if Cheyt Sing is backward in acknowledging this claim, Rada Churn may answer and confute him.' Why Mr. Hastings, when he arrived at Benares, and had called Rajah Cheyt Sing before him, left these countries still in the Rajah's usurpations it remains with Mr. Hastings to explain."

This is Nundcomar's charge. Here follows Mr. Hastings's reply.

"I recollect an information given me by Nundcomar concerning the pretended usurpations made by the Rajah of Benares, of the purgunnahs of Kera, Mungrora, and Bidjegur." "I do not recollect his mentioning it again, when I set out for Benares; neither did I ever intimate the subject, either to Cheyt Sing or his ministers, because I knew I could not support the claim; and to have made it and dropped it would have been in every sense dishonorable. Not that I passed by it with indifference or inattention. I took pains to investigate the foundation of this title, and recommended it to the particular inquiry of Mr. Vansittart, who was the Chief of Patna, at the time in which I received the first intimation. The following letter and voucher, which I received from him, contain a complete statement of this pretended usurpation."

These vouchers will answer our purpose, fully to establish that in his opinion the claim of the English government upon those forts was at that time totally unfounded, and so absurd that he did not even dare to mention it. This fort of Bidjegur, the most considerable in the country, and of which we shall have much to say hereafter, is the place in which Cheyt Sing had deposited his women and family. That fortress did Mr. Hastings himself give to this very man, deciding in his favor as a judge, upon an examination and after an inquiry: and yet he now declares that he had no right to it, and that he could not hold it but for wicked and rebellious purposes. But, my Lords, when he changed this language, he had resolved to take away these forts,--to destroy them,--to root the Rajah out of every place of refuge, out of every secure place in which he could hide his head, or screen himself from the rancor, revenge, avarice, and malice of his ruthless foe. He was resolved to have them, although he had, upon the fullest conviction of the Rajah's right, given them to this very man, and put him into the absolute possession of them.

But the fact is, my Lords, that his predecessors never did propose to deprive Bulwant Sing, the father of Cheyt Sing, of his zemindary. They, indeed, wished to have had the dewanny transferred to them, in the manner it has since been transferred to the Company. They wished to receive his rents, and to be made an intermediate party between him and the Mogul emperor, his sovereign. These predecessors had entered into no compact with the man: they were negotiating with his sovereign for the transfer of the dewanny or stewardship of the country, which transfer was afterwards actually executed; but they were obliged to give the country itself back again to Bulwant Sing, with a guaranty against all the pretensions of Sujah Dowlah, who had tyrannically assumed an arbitrary power over it. This power the predecessors of Mr. Hastings might also have wished to assume; and he may therefore say, according to the mode of reasoning which he has adopted,--"Whatever they wished to do, but never succeeded in doing, I may and ought to do of my own will. Whatever fine Sujah Dowlah would have exacted I will exact. I will penetrate into that tiger's bosom, and discover the latent seeds of rapacity and injustice which lurk there, and I will make him the subject of my imitation."

In order to bind himself to a strict fulfilment of this resolution, he has laid down another very extraordinary doctrine. He has laid it down as a sort of canon, that, whatever demand, whether just or unjust, a man declares his intention of making upon another, he should exact the precise sum which he has determined upon, and that, if he takes anything less, it is a proof of corruption. "I have," says he, "shown by this testimony that I never intended to make any communication to Cheyt Sing of taking less than the fifty lacs which in my own mind I had resolved to exact." And he adds,--"I shall make my last and solemn appeal to the breast of every man who shall read this, whether it is likely, or morally possible, that I should have tied down my own future conduct to so decided a process and series of acts, if I had secretly intended to threaten, or to use a degree of violence, for no other purpose than to draw from the object of it a mercenary atonement for my own private emolument, and suffer all this tumult to terminate in an ostensible and unsubstantial submission to the authority which I represented."

My Lords, I will now assume the hypothesis that he at last discovered sufficient proof of rebellious practices; still even this gave him no right to adduce such rebellion in justification of resolutions which he had taken, of acts which he had done, before he knew anything of its existence. To such a plea we answer, and your Lordships will every one of you answer,--"You shall not by a subsequent discovery of rebellious practices, which you did not know at the time, and which you did not even believe, as you have expressly told us here, justify your conduct prior to that discovery." If the conspiracy which he falsely imputes to Cheyt Sing, if that wild scheme of driving the English out of India, had existed, think in what miserable circumstances we stand as prosecutors, and your Lordships as judges, if we admit a discovery to be pleaded in justification of antecedent acts founded upon the assumed existence of that which he had no sort of proof, knowledge, or belief of!

My Lords, we shall now proceed to another circumstance, not less culpable in itself, though less shocking to your feelings, than those to which I have already called your attention: a circumstance which throws a strong presumption of guilt upon every part of the prisoner's conduct. Having formed all these infernal plots in his mind, but uncertain which of them he should execute, uncertain what sums of money he should extort, whether he should deliver up the Rajah to his enemy or pillage his forts, he goes up to Benares; but he first delegates to himself all the powers of government, both civil and military, in the countries which he was going to visit.

Now we do deny that there is by this act given, or that under this act there can be given, to the government of India, a power of dividing its unity into two parts, each of which shall separately be a unity and possess the power given to the whole. Yet, my Lords, an agreement was made between him and Mr. Wheler, that he should have every power, civil and military, in the upper provinces, and that Mr. Wheler should enjoy equal authority in the lower ones.

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