plaints? Where are the ambassadours 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 spoiler, with tears and imprecations. It was not 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; who to preserve the fame of his eloquence, published the five celebrated speeches which 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; 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. Gentlemen, the author, in the other passage which I marked out to your attention, goes on thus:

"Sir John Macpherson, and lord Cornwallis, his successours in office, has given the same voluntary tribute of approbation to his measures as governour 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 sub

jects 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, towards New Guinea, to Timur Shaw, 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 authentick as any document from India, upon the table of the house of commons. What then is the letter? The native inhabitants of this kingdom, says lord Corwallis, (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? Why, of the very kingdom which Mr. Hastings had 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 authentick 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 commons itself, he would have been fully justified in asking this question; but you observe it has no bearing on it; the last words not only entirely destroys that interpretation, but also the meaning of the very next passage, which is selected by the information as criminal, viz.

"What credit can we give to multiplied and ac"cumulated charges when we find that they originate from misrepresentation and falsehood?

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 im

possible to contend that it charges misrepresentation on the house of commons 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.

I do not mean, as I have often told you, to vindicate any calumny on that honourable 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 offences.

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 selected as libels on the commons, would now appear to be so when blended with the interjacent parts. I do not ask your answer. I shall have it in your verdict. The question is only put to direct your attention in pursuing the remainder of the volume to this main point: Is it an honest, serious defence? For this purpose, and as an example for all others, I will read the author's entire answer to the first article of charge concerning Cheit Sing, the Zemindar of Benares, and leave it to your impartial judgments to determine; whether it be a mere cloak and cover for the slander imputed by the information to the concluding sentence of it, which is the only part attacked; or whether, on the contrary, that conclusion itself, when embodied with what goes before it, does not stand explained and justified?

"The first article of impeachment (continues our author) is concerning Cheit Sing, the Zemindar of Benares. Bulwant Sing, the father of this rajah, was merely an aumil, or farmer and collector of the revenues for Sujah ul Doulah, nabob of Oude, and vizier of the Mogul empire. When, on the decease of his father, Cheit Sing was confirmed in the office of collector for the vizier, he paid 200,000 pounds as

gift of Nuzzeranah and an additional rent of 30,000 pounds per annum.

"As the father was no more than an aumil, the son succeeded only to his rights and pretensions. But by a sunnud granted to him by the nabob Sijah 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 the rank of Zemindar. About four years after the death of Bulwant Sing, the governour general and council of Bengal obtained the sovereignty paramount of the province of Benares. On the transfer of this sovereignty the governour and council proposed a new grant to Cheit Sing, confirming his former privileges, and conferring 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 recognised by the company as one of their Zemindars; a tributary subject, or feudatory vassel of the British empire in Indostan. The feudal system, which was formerly supposed to be peculiar to our Gothick ancestors, has always prevailed in the east. In every description of that form of government, notwithstanding accidental variations, there are two associations expressed or understood; one for internal security, the other for external defence. 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 superiour 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. ---

"When the governour general of Bengal in 1778, made an extraordinary demand on the zemindar of Benares for five lacks of rupees, the British empire, in that part of the world, was surrounded with enemies which threatened its destruction. In 1779 a general confederacy was formed among the great powers of Indos

tan, for the expulsion of the English from their Asiatick dominions. At this crisis the expectation of a French armament augmented the general calamites of the country. Mr. Hastings is charged by the committee with making his first demand under the false pretence that hostilities had commenced with France. Such an insidious attempt to pervert a meritorious action into a crime, is new even in the history of impeachments. On the 7th of July 1778, Mr. Hastings received private intelligence from an English merchant at Cairo, that war had been declared by Great Britain on the 23d of March, and by France on the 30th of April. Upon this intelligence, considered as authentick, it was determined to attack all the French settlements in India. The information was afterwards found to be premature; but in the latter end of August, a secret despatch was received from England, authorizing and appointing Mr. Hastings to take the measures which he 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. Baldwin, the merchant, for sending the earliest intelligence he could to Bengal. It was two days after Mr. Hastings information of the French war, that he formed the resolution of exacting the five lacks of rupees from Cheit Sing, and would have made similar exactions from all the dependencies of the company in India, had they been in the same circumstances. The fact is, that the great zemindars of Bengal pay as much to government as their lands can afford: Cheit Sing's collections were above fifty lacks, and his rent not twenty-four.

"The right of calling for extraordinary aids and military service in times of danger being universally established in India, as it was formally 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