was a malignantly rapacious determination to seize, with lawless hands, upon the treasures of devoted, miserable, yet unoffending victims.

“Mr. Sheridan now adverted to the affidavit made by Mr. Middleton; and after stating how futile were the grounds upon which he had, to the satisfaction of his conscience, proceeded to the utmost extremity of violence against the Begums, he exclaimed, The God of Justice forbid that any man in this House should make up his mind to accuse Mr. Hastings on the ground which Mr. Middleton took for condemning the Begums; or to pass a verdict of guilty' for the most trivial misdemeanour against the poorest wretch that ever had existed. He then revised and animadverted on the affidavits of Colonel Hannay, Colonel Gordon, Major M'Donald, Major Williams, and others. Major Williams, among the strange reports that chiefly filled these affidavits, stated one that he had heard-namely, that fifty British troops, watching two hundred prisoners, had been surrounded by six thousand of the enemy, and relieved by the approach of nine men. And of such extraordinary hearsay evidence were most of the depositions composed. Considering, therefore, the character given by Mr. Hastings to the British army in Oude, ‘that they manifested a rage for rapacity and peculation,' it was extraordinary that there were no instances of stouter swearing. But as for Colonel Gordon, he afforded a flagrantly conspicuous proof of the grateful spirit and temper of affidavits designed to plunge these wretched women in irretrievable ruin. Colonel Gordon was, just before, not merely released from danger, but preserved from imminent death, by the very person whose accuser he thought fit to become; and yet, incredible as it may appear, even at the expiration of two little days from his deliverance, he deposes against the distressed and unfortunate woman who had become his saviour, and, only upon hearsay evidence, accuses her of crimes and rebellion. Great God of justice! (exclaimed Mr. Sheridan,) canst thou from thy eternal throne look down upon such premeditated turpitude of heart, and not fix some mark of dreadful vengeance upon the perpetrators?-Of Mr. M'Donald, he said, that he liked not the memory which remembered things better at the end of five years, than at the time, unless there might be something so relaxing in the climate of India, and so affecting the memory as well as the nerves, the soft figures melting away,' and the images of immediate action instantaneously dissolving, men must return to their native air of England, to brace up the mind as well as the body, and have their memories, like their sinews, restrung.

"Having painted the loose quality of the affidavits, he said, that he must pause a moment, and particularly address himself to one description of gentlemen, those of the learned profession, within those walls. They saw that that House was the path to fortune in their profession; that they might soon expect that some of them were to be called to a dignified situation, where the great and important trust would be reposed in them of protecting the lives and fortunes of their fellow-subjects. One right honourable and learned gentleman, in particular, (Sir Lloyd Kenyon,) if rumour spoke right, might suddenly be called to succeed that great and venerable character who

long had shone the brightest luminary of his profession, whose pure and steady light was clear even to its latest moment, but whose last beam must now too soon be extinguished. That he would ask the supposed successor of Lord Mansfield, to calmly reflect on these extraordinary depositions, and solemnly to declare, whether the mass of affidavits taken at Lucknow would be received by him as evidence to convict the lowest object in this country? If he said it would, he declared to God he would sit down and not add a syllable more to the too long trespass which he had made on the patience of the committee."

Mr. Sheridan went further into the exposure of the evidence, into the comparison of dates, and the subsequent circumstances, in order to prove that all the enormous consequence which followed from the resumption, in the captivity of the women, and the imprisonment and cruelties practised on their people, were solely to be ascribed and to be imputed to Mr. Hastings. After stating the miseries which the women suffered, he said that "Mr. Hastings had once remarked, that a mind touched with superstition might have contemplated the fate of the Rohillas with peculiar impressions. But if, indeed, the mind of Mr. Hastings could yield to superstitious imagination; if his fancy could suffer any disturbance, and, even in vision, image forth the proud spirit of Sujah Dowlah, looking down upon the ruin and devastation of his family, and beholding that place which Mr. Hastings had first wrested from his hand, and afterwards restored, plundered by that very army with which he himself had vanquished the Mahrattas; seizing on the very plunder which he had ravaged from the Rohillas; that Middleton, who had been engaged in managing the previous violations, most busy to perpetrate the last; that very Hastings whom, on his death-bed, he had left the guardian of his wife, and mother, and family, turning all those dear relations, the objects of his solemn trust, forth to the merciless seasons, and to a more merciless soldiery! A mind touched with superstition must indeed have cherished such a contemplation with peculiar impressions! That Mr. Hastings was regularly acquainted with all the enormities committed on the Begums, there was the clearest proof. It was true that Middleton was rebuked for not being more exact. He did not, perhaps, descend to the detail; he did not give him an account of the number of groans which were heaved; of the quantity of tears which were shed; of the weight of the fetters; or of the depth of the dungeons; but he communicated every step which he took to accomplish the base and unwarrantable end. He told him, that, to save appearances, they must use the name of the Nabob, and that they need go no further than was absolutely necessary: this he might venture to say without being suspected by Mr. Hastings of too severe a morality. The Governor-general also endeavoured to throw a share of the guilt on the Council, although Mr. Wheeler had never taken any share, and Mr. Macpherson had not arrived in India when the scene began. After contending that he had shrunk from the inquiry ordered by the Court of Directors, under a new and pompous doctrine, that the majesty of Justice was to be approached with supplication,

and was not to degrade itself by hunting for crimes; forgetting the infa mous employment to which he had appointed an English chief-justice, to hunt for criminal charges against innocent, defenceless women; Mr. Sheridan said, he trusted that that House would vindicate the insulted character of justice; that they would demonstrate its true quality, essence, and purposes-they would demonstrate it to be, in the case of Mr. Hastings, active, inquisitive, and avenging.

of factions and parties in that scarcely a subject upon which The prerogative of the Crown

"Mr. Sheridan remarked that he heard House, and knew they existed. There was they were not broken and divided into sects. found its advocates among the representatives of the people. The privileges of the people found opponents even in the House of Commons itself. Habits, connexions, parties, all led to diversity of opinion. But when inhumanity presented itself to their observation, it found no division among them: they attacked it as their common enemy; and, as if the character of this land was involved in their zeal for its ruin, they left it not till it was completely overthrown. It was not given to that House, to behold the objects of their compassion and benevolence in the present extensive consideration, as it was to the officers who relieved, and who so feelingly described the ecstatic emotions of gratitude in the instant of deliverance. They could not behold the workings of the heart, the quivering lips, the trickling tears, the loud and yet tremulous joys of the millions whom their vote of this night would for ever save from the cruelty of corrupted power. But, though they could not directly see the effect, was not the true enjoyment of their benevolence increased by the blessing being conferred unseen? Would not the omnipotence of Britain be demonstrated to the wonder of nations, by stretching its mighty arm across the deep, and saving, by its fiat, distant millions from destruction? And would the blessings of the people thus saved dissipate in empty air? No! if I may dare to use the figure, we shall constitute Heaven itself our proxy, to receive for us the blessings of their pious gratitude, and the prayers of their thanksgiving. It is with confidence, therefore, Sir, that I move you on this charge, That Warren Hastings be impeached.'"

6

The effect of this speech on the House was such, that an adjournment was carried without a division, in order to allow time for the mind of the committee to cool, as it was impossible, after the eloquence displayed by Mr. Sheridan, to act dispassionately.

66

Mr. Burke declared the speech to be the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition. Mr. Fox said, All that he had ever heard, all that he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapour before the sun;" and Mr. Pitt acknowledged that "it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate or control the human mind."

The debate was resumed on the following day, when the motion for the impeachment on this charge was carried by 175 to 68.

SPEECH on opening the seventh charge against Warren Hastings, accusing him of corruptly receiving presents, in direct violation of the Regulation Act of 1773-2nd April, 1787; the House being in committee.

Mr. Sheridan rose, and desired that a clause of the act of 1773 might be read. It was accordingly read as follows:-"No Governor-general, nor any of the Council, shall, directly or indirectly, accept, receive, or take from any person or persons, on any account whatsoever, any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward, pecuniary or otherwise, or any promise or engagement for any of the aforesaid."

The preceding abstract having been read, Mr. Sheridan "begged leave to call to the recollection of the committee the favour which a right honourable friend (Mr. Burke) had conferred upon him, when he informed them that it was his (Mr. Sheridan's) intention to use as much brevity in opening the charge upon the subject of the presents, as possible. In this declaration his right honourable friend had certainly spoken his sentiments; and, as a part of the evidence given during the course of the preceding Friday threw a decided light upon some of the facts which were, previously to the intervention of that complete elucidation, in some degree obscured and doubtful, he felt, with redoubled force, his early and indisputable conviction, that brevity and perspicuity were the only matters necessary to imprint the truth of the facts contained in the charge upon the perceptions of the committee; and to press home to their minds a lively and indignant sense of the enormity of the crime of Mr. Hastings, as exemplified in these several and distinctly alleged accusations, if either the one or the other point remained yet to be accomplished. Honoured, upon a former occasion, with the almost unprecedented indulgence of the committee, he would not offer so ungrateful a return to the liberality of their feelings, as to suppose that they would not do him the justice to believe that it was far indeed from any great willingness on his part that he had been induced to trespass a second time upon their patience; but when he remembered that it would ill become him to refuse his feeble aid to those who had, with equal zeal in this momentous cause, stepped forward, as much as it was possible, under the inevitable restraints of an attention divided by occupations more multiplied and varied than his own; when he considered the importance of the proceeding with respect to the impeachment of Mr. Hastings; when he reflected how much the character of that House and its honour, and (what was still more material) the honour and the justice of the country, were implicated in the business; when he consulted his own serious and sincere feelings on the subject, he could not refuse to lend himself to the occasion, and discharge his duty, by exerting his best endeavours to accelerate the progress of this interesting business, by assisting to draw it nearer to that conclusion, of which the distance appeared, at last, considerably diminished. The subject, which, at present, demanded an investigation, was necessarily much colder and drier than that which, upon a preceding occasion, he had been so liberally permitted to state to the committee. No horrible accounts of the sacrilegious plunder of defenceless parents, were now to be addressed

to their painfully-excited notice; no enumeration of barbarities perpetrated against the aged and guiltless mothers by their unnatural offspring; but the narration was nevertheless equally, if not still more important, as it went to establish the stubborn fact, that corruption had been the leading principle of all the actions of Mr. Hastings in India; though, heaven forbid that Mr. Hastings should prove guilty to the extent set up by his friends, in what had been denominated his defence! Perhaps more hostile, than truly serviceable, was the anxiety with which the advocates of this gentleman met the deserved attack upon his flagrantly-reprehensible administration in the East Indies. They seemed mortally to have wounded the cause, by the rash eagerness which they discovered to support it, and by the firmness with which they were determined to bring resistance against every endeavour to assail it. They appeared unwilling to admit, that Mr. Hastings in India was a man of unbounded power; and that by this power he kept the whole body of natives in awe and terror. Once, indeed (Mr. Sheridan added) he thought him free from the vices of avarice and corruption; but, now, he had changed his opinion. These most unfortunate vindicators, themselves demolishing their own frail plans of exculpation, had, indeed, already anticipated the accusation in that House; and in no particular did their zeal so far outstrip their discretion. Such rash defenders of his conduct, aware that scarcely any attainment was wanting except a conviction of the receipt of presents, and of an accumulation of private douceurs, to blacken the catalogue of his crimes, and to destroy all those pretensions which could in the minds of men soften their asperity, and allay their indignation at his enormities, had violently affirmed that Mr. Hastings did not amass treasures for his own use; was not corrupt for interested purposes; and, although, perhaps, improvident and profuse, was not mercenary, and, by a natural consequence, not rich.* But it indispensably behoved them to go beyond the frivolous attempt to establish such positions by mysterious excuses, and language so implicated as to become nearly unintelligible. They should have placed their vindications of him upon the broad and immovable corner-stone of truth; upon downright fair and absolute proofs; and this the more especially, because, if the points for which they, with so blind a vehemence, had contended, were open to the admission of proofs, the means of introducing them were certainly in their power. Vainly, indeed, had these imprudent friends of Mr. Hastings exerted the faculties of their invention, to puzzle and to confound the mind; nor was it astonishing that such extraordinary pains had proved the cause of raising a proportionate suspicion; for in this, as in the generality of similar instances, when genius became racked under the consciousness of guilt, the ardour of defence left its propriety at an irrecoverable and shameful distance. There was an infirmity, a weakness, a something not to be described in human nature, which almost insensibly led men to think less of the foibles or the crimes of such individuals, whilst it could be proved that they had not been

Major Scott, a zealous defender of Warren Hastings, had on one occasion positively asserted that the Governor-general's fortune did not exceed £50,000.