Volume XI Part 10 (1/2)

MAY AND JUNE, 1794.

SPEECH

IN

GENERAL REPLY.

FIRST DAY: WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1794

My Lords,--This business, which has so long employed the public councils of this kingdom, so long employed the greatest and most august of its tribunals, now approaches to a close. The wreck and fragments of our cause (which has been dashed to pieces upon rules by which your Lords.h.i.+ps have thought fit to regulate its progress) await your final determination. Enough, however, of the matter is left to call for the most exemplary punishment that any tribunal ever inflicted upon any criminal. And yet, my Lords, the prisoner, by the plan of his defence, demands not only an escape, but a triumph. It is not enough for him to be acquitted: the Commons of Great Britain must be condemned; and your Lords.h.i.+ps must be the instruments of his glory and of our disgrace. This is the issue upon which he has put this cause, and the issue upon which we are obliged to take it now, and to provide for it hereafter.

My Lords, I confess that at this critical moment I feel myself oppressed with an anxiety that no words can adequately express. The effect of all our labors, the result of all our inquiries, is now to be ascertained.

You, my Lords, are now to determine, not only whether all these labors have been vain and fruitless, but whether we have abused so long the public patience of our country, and so long oppressed merit, instead of avenging crime. I confess I tremble, when I consider that your judgment is now going to be pa.s.sed, not on the culprit at your bar, but upon the House of Commons itself, and upon the public justice of this kingdom, as represented in this great tribunal. It is not that culprit who is upon trial; it is the House of Commons that is upon its trial, it is the House of Lords that is upon its trial, it is the British nation that is upon its trial before all other nations, before the present generation, and before a long, long posterity.

My Lords, I should be ashamed, if at this moment I attempted to use any sort of rhetorical blandishments whatever. Such artifices would neither be suitable to the body that I represent, to the cause which I sustain, or to my own individual disposition, upon such an occasion. My Lords, we know very well what these fallacious blandishments too frequently are.

We know that they are used to captivate the benevolence of the court, and to conciliate the affections of the tribunal rather to the person than to the cause. We know that they are used to stifle the remonstrances of conscience in the judge, and to reconcile it to the violation of his duty. We likewise know that they are too often used in great and important causes (and more particularly in causes like this) to reconcile the prosecutor to the powerful factions of a protected criminal, and to the injury of those who have suffered by his crimes,--thus inducing all parties to separate in a kind of good humor, as if they had nothing more than a verbal dispute to settle, or a slight quarrel over a table to compromise. All this may now be done at the expense of the persons whose cause we pretend to espouse. We may all part, my Lords, with the most perfect complacency and entire good humor towards one another, while nations, whole suffering nations, are left to beat the empty air with cries of misery and anguish, and to cast forth to an offended heaven the imprecations of disappointment and despair.

One of the counsel for the prisoner (I think it was one who has comported himself in this cause with decency) has told your Lords.h.i.+ps that we have come here on account of _some doubts_ entertained in the House of Commons concerning the conduct of the prisoner at your bar,--that we shall be extremely delighted, when his defence and your Lords.h.i.+ps' judgment shall have set him free, and shall have discovered to us our error,--that we shall then mutually congratulate one another,--and that the Commons, and the Managers who represent them here, will be the first to rejoice in so happy an event and so fortunate a discovery.

Far, far from the Commons of Great Britain be all manner of real vice; but ten thousand times further from them, as far as from pole to pole, be the whole tribe of false, spurious, affected, counterfeit, hypocritical virtues! These are the things which are ten times more at war with real virtue, these are the things which are ten times more at war with real duty, than any vice known by its name and distinguished by its proper character. My Lords, far from us, I will add, be that false and affected candor that is eternally in treaty with crime,--that half virtue, which, like the ambiguous animal that flies about in the twilight of a compromise between day and night, is to a just man's eye an odious and disgusting thing! There is no middle point in which the Commons of Great Britain can meet tyranny and oppression. No, we never shall (nor can we conceive that we ever should) pa.s.s from this bar, without indignation, without rage and despair, if the House of Commons should, upon such a defence as has here been made against such a charge as they have produced, be foiled, baffled, and defeated. No, my Lords, we never could forget it; a long, lasting, deep, bitter memory of it would sink into our minds.

My Lords, the Commons of Great Britain have no doubt upon this subject.

We came hither to call for justice, not to solve a problem; and if justice be denied us, the accused is not acquitted, but the tribunal is condemned. We know that this man is guilty of all the crimes which he stands accused of by us. We have not come here to you, in the rash heat of a day, with that fervor which sometimes prevails in popular a.s.semblies, and frequently misleads them. No: if we have been guilty of error in this cause, it is a deliberate error, the fruit of long, laborious inquiry,--an error founded on a procedure in Parliament before we came here, the most minute, the most circ.u.mstantial, and the most cautious that ever was inst.i.tuted. Instead of coming, as we did in Lord Strafford's case, and in some others, voting the impeachment and bringing it up on the same day, this impeachment was voted from a general sense prevailing in the House of Mr. Hastings's criminality after an investigation begun in the year 1780, and which produced in 1782 a body of resolutions condemnatory of almost the whole of his conduct. Those resolutions were formed by the Lord Advocate of Scotland, and carried in our House by the unanimous consent of all parties: I mean the then Lord Advocate of Scotland,--now one of his Majesty's princ.i.p.al Secretaries of State, and at the head of this very Indian department. Afterwards, when this defendant came home, in the year 1785, we renst.i.tuted our inquiry. We inst.i.tuted it, as your Lords.h.i.+ps and the world know, at his own request, made to us by his agent, then a member of our House. We entered into it at large; we deliberately moved for every paper which promised information on the subject. These papers were not only produced on the part of the prosecution, as is the case before grand juries, but the friends of the prisoner produced every doc.u.ment which they could produce for his justification. We called all the witnesses which could enlighten us in the cause, and the friends of the prisoner likewise called every witness that could possibly throw any light in his favor. After all these long deliberations, we referred the whole to a committee. When it had gone through that committee, and we thought it in a fit state to be digested into these charges, we referred the matter to another committee; and the result of that long examination and the labor of these committees is the impeachment now at your bar.

If, therefore, we are defeated here, we cannot plead for ourselves that we have done this from a sudden gust of pa.s.sion, which sometimes agitates and sometimes misleads the most grave popular a.s.semblies. No: it is either the fair result of twenty-two years' deliberation that we bring before you, or what the prisoner says is just and true,--that nothing but malice in the Commons of Great Britain could possibly produce such an accusation as the fruit of such an inquiry. My Lords, we admit this statement, we are at issue upon this point; and we are now before your Lords.h.i.+ps, who are to determine whether this man has abused his power in India for fourteen years, or whether the Commons has abused their power of inquiry, made a mock of their inquisitorial authority, and turned it to purposes of private malice and revenge. We are not come here to compromise matters; we do not admit [do admit?] that our fame, our honors, nay, the very inquisitorial power of the House of Commons is gone, if this man be not guilty.

My Lords, great and powerful as the House of Commons is, (and great and powerful I hope it always will remain,) yet we cannot be insensible to the effects produced by the introduction of forty millions of money into this country from India. We know that the private fortunes which have been made there pervade this kingdom so universally that there is not a single parish in it unoccupied by the partisans of the defendant. We should fear that the faction which he has thus formed by the oppression of the people of India would be too strong for the House of Commons itself, with all its power and reputation, did we not know that we have brought before you a cause which nothing can resist.

I shall now, my Lords, proceed to state what has been already done in this cause, and in what condition it now stands for your judgment.

An immense ma.s.s of criminality was digested by a committee of the House of Commons; but although this ma.s.s had been taken from another ma.s.s still greater, the House found it expedient to select twenty specific charges, which they afterwards directed us, their Managers, to bring to your Lords.h.i.+ps' bar. Whether that which has been brought forward on these occasions or that which was left behind be more highly criminal, I for one, as a person most concerned in this inquiry, do a.s.sure, your Lords.h.i.+ps that it is impossible for me to determine.

After we had brought forward this cause, (the greatest in extent that ever was tried before any human tribunal, to say nothing of the magnitude of its consequences,) we soon found, whatever the reasons might be, without at present blaming the prisoner, without blaming your Lords.h.i.+ps, and far are we from imputing blame to ourselves, we soon found that this trial was likely to be protracted to an unusual length.

The Managers of the Commons, feeling this, went up to their const.i.tuents to procure from them the means of reducing it within a compa.s.s fitter for their management and for your Lords.h.i.+ps' judgment. Being furnished with this power, a second selection was made upon the principles of the first: not upon the idea that what we left could be less clearly sustained, but because we thought a selection should be made upon some juridical principle. With this impression on our minds, we reduced the whole cause to four great heads of guilt and criminality. Two of them, namely, Benares and the Begums, show the effects of his open violence and injustice; the other two expose the principles of pecuniary corruption upon which the prisoner proceeded: one of these displays his pa.s.sive corruption in receiving bribes, and the other his active corruption, in which he has endeavored to defend his pa.s.sive corruption by forming a most formidable faction both abroad and at home. There is hardly any one act of the prisoner's corruption in which there is not presumptive violence, nor any acts of his violence in which there are not presumptive proofs of corruption. These practices are so intimately blended with each other, that we thought the distribution which we have adopted would best bring before you the spirit and genius of his government; and we were convinced, that, if upon these four great heads of charge your Lords.h.i.+ps should not find him guilty, nothing could be added to them which would persuade you so to do.

In this way and in this state the matter now comes before your Lords.h.i.+ps. I need not tread over the ground which has been trod with such extraordinary abilities by my brother Managers, of whom I shall say nothing more than that the cause has been supported by abilities equal to it; and, my Lords, no abilities are beyond it. As to the part which I have sustained in this procedure, a sense of my own abilities, weighed with the importance of the cause, would have made me desirous of being left out of it; but I had a duty to perform which superseded every personal consideration, and that duty was obedience to the House of which I have the honor of being a member. This is all the apology I shall make. We are the Commons of Great Britain, and therefore cannot make apologies. I can make none for my obedience; they want none for their commands. They gave me this office, not from any confidence in my ability, but from a confidence in the abilities of those who were to a.s.sist me, and from a confidence in my zeal,--a quality, my Lords, which oftentimes supplies the want of great abilities.

In considering what relates to the prisoner and to his defence, I find the whole resolves itself into four heads: first, his demeanor, and his defence in general; secondly, the principles of his defence; thirdly, the means of that defence; and, fourthly, the testimonies which he brings forward to fortify those means, to support those principles, and to justify that demeanor.

As to his demeanor, my Lords, I will venture to say, that, if we fully examine the conduct of all prisoners brought before this high tribunal, from the time that the Duke of Suffolk appeared before it down to the time of the appearance of my Lord Macclesfield, if we fully examine the conduct of prisoners in every station of life, from my Lord Bacon, down to the smugglers who were impeached in the reign of King William, I say, my Lords, that we shall not, in the whole history of Parliamentary trials, find anything similar to the demeanor of the prisoner at your bar. What could have encouraged that demeanor your Lords.h.i.+ps will, when you reflect seriously upon this matter, consider. G.o.d forbid that the authority either of the prosecutor or of the judge should dishearten the prisoner so as to circ.u.mscribe the means or enervate the vigor of his defence! G.o.d forbid that such a thing should even appear to be desired by anybody in any British tribunal! But, my Lords, there is a behavior which broadly displays a want of sense, a want of feeling, a want of decorum,--a behavior which indicates an habitual depravity of mind, that has no sentiments of propriety, no feeling for the relations of life, no conformity to the circ.u.mstances of human affairs. This behavior does not indicate the spirit of injured innocence, but the audacity of hardened, habitual, shameless guilt,--affording legitimate grounds for inferring a very defective education, very evil society, or very vicious habits of life. There is, my Lords, a n.o.bleness in modesty, while insolence is always base and servile. A man who is under the accusation of his country is under a very great misfortune. His innocence, indeed, may at length s.h.i.+ne out like the sun, yet for a moment it is under a cloud; his honor is in abeyance, his estimation is suspended, and he stands, as it were, a doubtful person in the eyes of all human society. In that situation, not a timid, not an abject, but undoubtedly a modest behavior, would become a person even of the most exalted dignity and of the firmest fort.i.tude.

The Romans (who were a people that understood the decorum of life as well as we do) considered a person accused to stand in such a doubtful situation that from the moment of accusation he a.s.sumed either a mourning or some squalid garb, although, by the nature of their const.i.tution, accusations were brought forward by one of their lowest magistrates. The spirit of that decent usage has continued from the time of the Romans till this very day. No man was ever brought before your Lords.h.i.+ps that did not carry the outward as well as inward demeanor of modesty, of fear, of apprehension, of a sense of his situation, of a sense of our accusation, and a sense of your Lords.h.i.+ps' dignity.

These, however, are but outward things; they are, as Hamlet says, ”things which a man may play.” But, my Lords, this prisoner has gone a great deal further than being merely deficient in decent humility.

Instead of defending himself, he has, with a degree of insolence unparalleled in the history of pride and guilt, cast out a recriminatory accusation upon the House of Commons. Instead of considering himself as a person already under the condemnation of his country, and uncertain whether or not that condemnation shall receive the sanction of your verdict, he ranks himself with the suffering heroes of antiquity.

Joining with them, he accuses us, the representatives of his country, of the blackest ingrat.i.tude, of the basest motives, of the most abominable oppression, not only of an innocent, but of a most meritorious individual, who, in your and in our service, has sacrificed his health, his fortune, and even suffered his fame and character to be called in question from one end of the world to the other. This, I say, he charges upon the Commons of Great Britain; and he charges it before the Court of Peers of the same kingdom. Had I not heard this language from the prisoner, and afterwards from his counsel, I must confess I could hardly have believed that any man could so comport himself at your Lords.h.i.+ps'

bar.