"An impeachment of errour in judgment with regard to the quantum of fine, and for an intention that never was executed and never known to the offending party, characterizes a tribunal of inquisition rather than a court of parliament."

From this passage, by another vault, he leaps over one and thirty pages more, to page fifty-one; where he reads the following sentence, which he mainly relies on, and upon which I shall by and by trouble you with some observations.

"Thirteen of them passed in the house of commons, not only without investigation but without being read; and the votes were given without inquiry, argument, or conviction. A majority had determined to impeach; opposite parties met each other, and justled in the dark, to perplex the political drama, and bring the hero to a tragick catastrophe."

From thence deriving new vigour from every exertion, he makes his last grand stride over forty-four pages, almost to the end of the book, charging a sentence in the ninety-fifth page.

So that out of a volume of one hundred and ten pages, the defendant is only charged with a few scattered fragments of sentences, picked out of three or four. Out of a work, consisting of about two thousand five hundred and thirty lines, of manly spirited eloquence, only forty or fifty lines are culled from different parts of it, and artfully put together, so as to rear up a libel, out of a false context by a supposed connexion of sentences with one another which are not only entirely independent, but which, when compared with their antecedents bear a totally differ. ent construction.

In this manner the greatest works upon government, the most excellent books of science, the sacred scriptures themselves, might be distorted into libels, by forsaking the general context, and hanging a meaning upon selected parts:-Thus, as in the text put by Algernon Sidney, "The fool has said in his heart there is no God." The attorney general on the principle of the present proceeding against this

pamphlet, might indict the publisher of the Bible for blasphemously denying the existence of heaven, in printing "There is no God." For these words alone, without the context, would be selected by the information; and the bible, like this book, would be underscored to meet it. Nor could the defendant in such a case have any possible defence, unless the jury were permitted to see, by the book itself, that the verse, instead of denying the existence of the Divinity, only imputed that imagination to a fool.

Gentlemen, having now gone through the attorney general's reading, the book shall presently come forward and speak for itself.

But before I can venture to lay it before you, it is proper to call your attention to how matters stood at the time of its publication; without which the author's meaning and intention cannot possibly be understood.

The commons of Great Britain in parliament assembled, had accused Mr. Hastings, as governour general of Bengal, of high crimes and misdemeanors; and their jurisdiction for that high purpose of national justice, was unquestionably competent. But it is proper you should know the nature of this inquisitorial capacity.-The commons in voting an impeachment, may be compared to a grand jury, finding a bill of indictment for the crown: neither the one nor the other can be supposed to proceed, but upon the matter which is brought before them; neither of them can find guilt without accusation, nor the truth of accusation without evidence.

When, therefore, we speak of the accuser or aceusers, of a person indicted for any crime, although the grand jury are the accusers in form, by giving effect to the accusation; yet in common parlance we do not consider them the responsible authors of the prosecution. If I were to write of a most wicked indictment, found against an innocent man, which was preparing for trial, nobody who read it would conceive I meant to stigmatize the grand jury that

found the bill; but it would be inquired immediately, who was the prosecutor, and who were the witnesses on the back of it. In the same manner I mean to contend, that if this book is read with only common attention, the whole scope of it will be discovered to be this:

That in the opinion of the author, Mr. Hastings had been accused of malicious administration in India, from the heat and spleen of political divisions in parliament, and not for any zeal for national honour or justice; that the impeachment did not originate from government, but from a faction banded against it, which, by misrepresentation and violence, had fastened it on an unwilling house of commons; that prepossessed with this sentiment (which however unfounded, makes no part of the present business, since the publisher is not called before you for defaming individual members of the commons, but for a contempt of the commons as a body) the author pursues the charges, article by article; enters into a warm and animated vindication of Mr. Hastings, by regular answers to each of them; and that as far as the mind and soul of a man can be visible, I might almost say embodied in his writings, his intention throughout the whole volume appears to have been to charge with injustice the private accusers of Mr. Hastings, and not the house of commons as a body; which, undoubtedly, rather reluctantly gave way to, than heartily adopted the impeachment.

This will be found to be the palpable scope of the book; and no man who can read English, and who at the same time, will have the candour and common sense to take up his impressions from what is written in it, instead of bringing his own along with him to the reading of it, can possibly understand it other

wise.

'But it may be said, that admitting this to be the scope and design of the author, what right had he to canvass the merits of an accusation upon the records of the commons; more especially while it was in the course of legal procedure. This I confess might

VOL. III.

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have been a serious question; but the commons as prosecutors of this information, seem to have waved, or forfeited their right to ask it.

Before they sent the attorney general into this place, to punish the publication of answers to their charges, they should have recollected that their own want of circumspection in the maintenance of their privileges, and in the protection of persons accused before them, had given to the publick the charges themselves, which should have been confined to their own journals. The course and practice of parliament might warrant the printing of them for the use of their own members, but there the publication should have stopt, and all further progress been resisted by authority.

If they were resolved to consider answers to their charges as a contempt of their privileges, and to punish the publication of them by such severe prosecutions, it would have well become them to have begun first with those printers, who, by publishing the charges themselves throughout the whole civilized kingdom, or rather throughout the whole civilized world, were anticipating the passions and judgments of the publick against a subject of England upon his trial, so as to make the publication of answers to them not merely a privilege, but a debt and duty to humanity and justice.

The commons of Great Britain claimed and exercised the privileges of questioning the innocence of Mr. Hastings by their impeachment; but as, however questioned, it is still to be presumed and protected, until guilt is established by judgment, he whom they had accused, had an equal claim upon their justice, to guard him from prejudice and misrepresentation until the hour of trial.

Had the commons therefore, by the exercise of their high, necessary, and legal privileges, kept the publick aloof from all canvass of their proceedings, by an early punishment of printers, who without reserve or secrecy, sent out the charges into the world from a thousand presses, in every form of publication, they would have then stood upon ground to day from

whence no argument of policy or justice could have removed them; because nothing can be more incompatible with either, than appeals to the many upon subjects of judicature, which by common consent a few are appointed to determine, and which must be determined by facts and principles, which the multitude have neither leisure nor knowledge to investigate. But then let it be remembered, that it is for those who have the authority to accuse and punish, to set the example of, and to enforce this reserve, which is so necessary for the ends of justice.

Courts of law therefore in England never endure the publication of their records; and a prosecutor of an indictment would be attached for such a publication; and upon the same principle, a defendant would be punished for anticipating the justice of his country, by the publication of his defence, the publick being no party to it until the tribunal appointed for its determination be open for its decision.

Gentlemen, you have a right to take judicial notice of these matters, without the proof of them by witnesses; for jurors may not only without evidence found their verdicts on facts that are notorious, but upon what they know privately themselves, after revealing it upon oath to one another; and therefore you are always to remember, that this book was written when the charges against Mr. Hastings, to which it is an answer, were, to the knowledge of the commons (for we cannot presume our watchmen to have been asleep) publickly hawked about in every pamphlet, magazine, and newspaper in the kingdom.

Gentlemen, you well know with what a curious ap petite these charges were devoured by the whole publick, interesting as they were, not only from their importance, but from the merit of their composition; certainly not so intended by the honourable and excellent composer to oppress the accused, but because the commonest subjects swell into eloquence under the touch of his sublime genius.

Thus by the remissness of the commons who are now the prosecutors of this information, a subject of