Fox relative to the proceedings in which they were then engaged, and which was an inquiry what evidence could be obtained, rather than a judicial process. Mr. Bearcroft could not avoid expressing his astonishment at the illiberal obloquy with which Mr. Fox had treated a whole profession. He said, that if he was to lay his finger upon the particular point that had raised the practice of law in this country so high in the estimation of all the world, it would be upon the law of evidence. He took notice of Mr. Fox having said he was bred in that House, and declared, if his late speech was to be taken as a proof of that breed- | ing, he desired no more of it. He justified gentlemen of his profession from the charge of being actuated on the present occasion by an esprit du corps. Was it, he said, to be wondered at, that lawyers should appear anxious to attend the agitation of a charge against a lawyer of long standing and unsullied character, and that charge as black a one as ever was imputed to any man or even any lawyer? the Court of Chancery would not be evidence in the Court of King's-bench, nor would that testimony that was good evidence on a trial for felony be admissible on a trial for high treason. At length Mr. Farrer was desired to proceed. He continued to give his evidence until eleven o'clock; when Mr. St. John adjourned the committee, and asked leave to sit again to-morrow. Mr. Farrer continued his evidence on the 12th, and closed it on the 20th. It went to prove the full approbation of the judges of the Supreme Court in the condemnation of Nundcomar, and the wish of the jury and judges to prosecute the witnesses for Nundcomar, who had evidently perjured themselves most grossly. It also stated, that all favour in the power of the Court, had been extended towards Nundcomar, who had experienced every huma nity from sir Elijah Impey particularly. Mr. Rous then rose in his place, and having signified his consent to undergo an examination, proceeded to state to the committee a narrative of the prosecutions carried on against Nundcomar for forgery' in the Sudda Dewannee Adaulet, of which he (Mr. Rous) had been president, previous to the Supreme Court being esta capital indictment being preferred for that forgery against Nundcomar. Having concluded the narrative of those proceedings, he had several questions put to him. After which, the Chairman reported progress, and asked leave to sit again. Feb. 26. The House having resolved itself again into the Committee, Mr. Windham in the Chair, Mr. Sheridan said, that the learned gentleman, he perceived, was desirous of not only teaching the House law, but breeding, and he wished still farther to teach them French. He could not but ad-blished, and consequently prior to the mire the comical sort of argument which the learned gentleman had used in justification of his profession. He had said every thing handsome of them, and had followed his encomium, by adding whimsically, that the charge against sir Elijah Impey was as black as could be brought against any man, nay, against any lawyer. Mr. Sheridan declared that he could not pass over in silence the reflections cast on his right hon. friend for a speech, which did him infinite honour. He was sure his right hon. friend had meant nothing personal; but was it to be wondered at, that in his zeal to defend the privileges of that House, he should reprobate the attempt to mix the practice of the law courts in their proceedings, to which they were utterly inapplicable? The paper in question was, in the true sense of the words, good evidence; for what was good evidence, but that which was applicable to the end to which it was applied, and which the court, before whom it was exhibited, was competent to receive. Different courts, it was well known, had different powers; and what would be evidence in one court, would not be evidence in another. Thus, what, was evidence in Mr. Francis expressed his concern that there was not a more full attendance, and especially that some gentlemen were not present who had heard sir Elijah deliver that speech at the bar, in which he had thought fit to pass a censure on the conduct of general Clavering, colonel Monson, and himself. After premising thus much, he addressed himself to the Chairman, in nearly the words which follow: Mr. Windham; I flattered myself, Sir, that when the House thought proper to exclude me from the Committee of Managers, whether that resolution was meant to be a discharge from a service, or a relief from a duty, it would have had this effect, at all events-that from thenceforward I should be suffered to remain in a state of neutrality; and that, as I was leave to the sensations of those who have stood in the same situation themselves. Much has been said of my character, much of my temper. I have, by one learned gentleman (the Master of the Rolls) been accused of comparing myself with him, and with others of his profession. Such a comparison I never presumed to make. Arrogance is one thing, passion is another; passion I have ever conceived to be an honest, open, and manly emotion of the mind; arrogance, on the contrary, I take to be a cold, deliberate, thoughtful thing. I may have made use of warm or passionate language perhaps, but I was never guilty of the presumption and arro stand up now as defendant against a charge: as such I hope to be heard patiently, and with a fair and liberal construction; that is all I desire. deprived of the honour, I should also be exempted from the cares and censures, to which the managers of an impeachment must unavoidably submit. But much more had I reason to expect that, after the public declaration, which I made in Parliament almost two years ago, "that I would never sit in judgment upon sir Elijah Impey, and that I would never give a judicial vote in any cause, in which he might be a party, unless I could safely give it for him;" having avowed that declaration in print; having since repeatedly declared to my friends, and particularly to my hon. friend (sir Gilbert Elliot) near me, that I would never take a part of any kind in the prosecution of sir Elijah Im-gance which has been imputed to me. I pey, and having strictly adhered to the spirit of those declarations, I should not have been implicated in any shape in the impeachment of that gentleman. Least of all did I expect that I should be accused by him of having borne testimony to his good conduct, and compelled by him to answer as a criminal, for declarations, which he tells you I have heretofore made in his favour. I do not mean to deny his right of mixing accusation with defence, if to criminate others be in any degree material, or even useful to his own exculpation. In some cases, undoubtedly, the weapons of attack are the best, perhaps the only weapons of defence. Whether the use he has made of those weapons, and the manner in which he has availed himself of his undisputed right, on this occasion, be perfectly prudent or not, can only be determined by the event. All I assert and contend for is, that I, in my turn, may be allowed the same latitude which he has taken, and which I allow him. It is not my direct object this day to criminate him or any man. But it may be necessary to my defence. It may be unavoidable. Defence and accusation, in this particular case may be inseparable. If that should happen, I desire it should be remembered, that, besides the general right which, for myself, I admit, I stand upon the specific use which he has made of it, and follow the precedent which he has himself specifically set me. Sir, the situation in which I have lately stood in this House has been equally painful and invidious. I have been repeatedly the personal object of debate; the middle passive subject between the action and the re-action of the powers of the House; between the hammer and the anvil. How irksome such a situation must have been, I The charge brought against sir John Clavering, colonel Monson, and myself, by sir Elijah Impey, as I understand it, amounts to this:-"That whereas we had by sundry declarations and minutes, both before and after the event, expressed or strongly intimated our opinion, that the prosecution, trial, and execution of Nundcomar were founded on political motives, and pursued for the sole purpose of saving Mr. Hastings from the effect of that man's evidence, no credit ought to be given to the same, because we had, in a few days after the execution, ordered a paper, purporting to be a petition from Nundcomar against the Judges, to be burnt, the entries of it to be expunged, and the translations to be destroyed: and, because I had, on that occasion, declared, that I considered the insinuations contained in it as wholly unsupported, and of a libellous nature, and that to send a copy of it to the Judges would be giving it much more weight than it deserved." If this be the charge, I admit the facts and deny the conclusion. I request the House to divide the charges into two parts, and to consider it: 1. As it regards us collectively: 2. As it personally regards general Clavering in par ticular. But, first, to consider how this paper came into sir Elijah Impey's hands, and in what state, and with what proof of its authenticity it is now brought before the House. Here Mr. Francis read an extract from the Bengal Appendix, p. 585. dated 26th August, 1775.] On that day we resolved that the original should be burnt by the hands of the common hang man; to which Mr. Hastings repeatedly said he had no objection; but observed, that this would not be enough, as the paper stood on our records, and would that way become public. To remove that objection, I proposed that the entry should be expunged, and it was agreed that it should be, and that the translations should be destroyed. The resolution was unanimous. Mr. Hastings approved of it, and was party to it. On the 28th of August the Judges wrote to us in the following words: "A paper containing a false, scandalous, and malicious charge against the Judges of the Supreme Court, produced at your board, having been by you declared a libel, and ordered to be burnt by the hands of the common hangman, we return you our thanks for having shown so due a sense of this outrage to public justice; but, as we must be interested as well in the minutes introducing and condemning the paper, as in the paper itself, we find ourselves obliged to desire that you will furnish us with a copy of the libel, and of such minutes, which relate to it, as stand on your consultations, and must, therefore, be conveyed to England, that we may judge whether they contain any matters necessary for us to take notice of." The following was our reply, dated Sept. 11, 1775. "We shall be much obliged to you, if you will be pleased to acquaint us, from whom you received the imperfect information which appears to have been conveyed to you, on this and other occasions, of the proceedings of this Board in our secret department; such communications cannot regularly be made to you but by the authority of the Board, nor can they be obtained without a breach of trust in some of our officers, which we are persuaded you would not encourage. With respect to the libel, it is not possible for us to furnish you with a copy of that paper, having ordered the original and translations to be destroyed, and no copy to be kept of either." This letter was signed by Mr. Hastings, who knew that he alone had given the information. It is true he disapproved of the draft, but not for the true reason, which he ought to have assigned and which would have prevented our writing that paragraph; neither can he pretend, that he held himself bound by the sense of the majority to sign the letter, because, on the 16th of June, 1775, he positively refused to sign a letter to the judges, of which he disapproved. Sir Elijah Impey tells you, on another occasion, that he knew nothing of the contents of the charges of Nundcomar against Mr. Hastings."How should he? They were produced before a secret council; they were examined by a secret committee of which all the members, their clerks and secretaries were sworn to secresy." Mr. Hastings nevertheless communicates this paper to him, and through his channel to the other judges. I shall presently show that he imparted many other parts of our proceedings to him. Sir Elijah affirms, that although the paper was imparted to him, he never saw the minutes till very lately, when he procured a copy of them from the India House. This is very extraordinary, and indeed it is incredible, that Mr. Hastings should show him the one and not the other; especially as it appears that in January following, he communicated to him several other minutes signed by us, in which charges against him were certainly expressed, and especially as these very minutes were printed by the Directors and in possession of many people in Bengal, in the course of 1777, or 1778, and, I believe, read by every body in Calcutta. I know they were by many. Mr. Hastings takes upon him not only to communicate the paper, after he had agreed that the entry should be expunged, and the translations destroyed, but even alters the translations in many parts. Who will say that a paper so communicated, sc altered, and so produced, deserves any credit? What is a secret committee? The name sufficiently speaks its character; and in respect to the secret committee of council in Calcutta, not only Mr. Hastings and every member was bound by an oath of secresy, but the secretaries and clerks, and every one of their officers. Even if there had been no oath, Mr. Hastings was bound in truth and honour by his own agreement. I for my part, hold such an agreement to be equally binding with an oath. The original paper, I have no doubt, contained insinuations against the judges, and that those insinuations, being wholly unsupported, deserved no weight; the description I gave of it was exact:-it was a libel on the whole court of justice, in the strict and proper sense of that word. The question is, whether by these declarations I contradict many others in which I have charged the prosecution and execution of Nundcomar against sir Elijah, as a political measure of the most atrocious kind. At first sight, it is not very likely that we, $ or any men who were not absolute ideots, should enter such contradiction on the same records, and place ourselves before the Directors in a point of view which must utterly annihilate their confidence in us: that without any apparent reason we should deliberately contradict ourselves, and record our own condemnation on the face of our proceedings. Is it a thing to be believed, that having advanced such a charge, we should lightly abandon it; and that having abandoned, we should resume and reassert it, without once attempting to reconcile or explain the inconsistency, if it was one? Let the House judge of the following declarations made by us, before and after the execution of Nundcomar. Minute of Mr. Francis." April 24, 1775. I beg leave to observe, that a prosecution for a conspiracy is now instituted, or is intended to be instituted, against Maha Rajah Nundcomar and others; the tendency of which seems to me to be to prevent, or deter him from proceeding in making good those discoveries which he has laid before the Board: I cannot but think that the East India Company, and consequently this Board, have a very great concern in every step taken in that prosecution, whether it be actually begun or intended." Minute of General Clavering." May 8, 1775. In reply to what the Governor General has just said, I conceive that the protection of the inhabitants of Bengal is immediately trusted to our care, and that it properly belongs to us to represent to the judges such matters as may appear to us, wherein they have acted improperly, either wilfully or ignorantly. In the present instance, they probably are ignorant how much a close confinement may endanger the life of this man, which is of so much importance to the public, for proving an accusation, which he has made, of venality in the Governor General. Minute of Clavering, Monson, and Francis." Sept. 15, 1775. After the death of Nundcomar, the Governor, we believe, is well assured, that no man who regards his safety, will venture to stand forth as his accuser. On a subject of this delicate nature, it becomes us to leave every honest man to his own reflexion. It ought to be made known, however, to the English nation, that the forgery, of which the Rajah was accused, must have been committed several years; that in the interim he had been employed and protected by Mr. Hastings; that his son was appointed to one of the first offices in the Nabob's household, with a salary of one lack of rupees; that the accusation, which ended in his destruction, was not produced till he came forward, and brought a specific charge against the Governor General, of corruption in his office." Ditto" Nov. 21, 1775. It seems probable, such embezzlements may have been universally practised. In the present circumstances it will be difficult, if not impracticable to obtain direct proofs of the facts. The terror impressed on the minds of the natives, by the execution of Maha Rajah Nundcomar is not to be effaced; for, though he suffered for the crime of forgery, yet the natives conceive he was executed for having dared to prefer complaints against the Governor General. This idea, however destitute of founda tion, is prevalent amongst the natives, and will naturally deter them from making discoveries which may be attended with the same fatal consequences, to themselves. Punishment is usually intended as an example, to prevent the commission of crimes; in this instance, we fear, it has tended to prevent the discovery of them." Ditto March 21, 1776. Some of the facts with which he (Mr. Hastings) has been personally charged, have been proved. The presumptive evidence in support of the rest, will, we apprehend, lose none of its force, by the precipitatę removal of Maha Rajah Nundcomar." The petition was brought before us after the man's death. It charged the judges with having murdered him, for having accused Mr. Hastings, or to that effect. It came before us without a responsible accuser, without a witness to prove, or evidence to support it; the fabrication of a man publicly executed for a crime, and consequently no longer capable of proving his allegation. This being the case, it was what I called it, a libel, and nothing else. I called it so then, I call it so still; though I was not then, nor am I now convinced, that the substance of it was untrue. But it included all the judges; concerning two of whom (justice Hyde and sir Robert Chambers) we never had a suspicion of corrupt motives: and concerning another of whom (Mr. Justice Le Maistre), we had then no ground of suspicion, excepting his intimacy with sir Elijah Impey, and the vehemence with which, at that period, he supported that gentleman's opinions. We therefore treated it as a libel against a whole court of justice ought to be treated. This is no new distinction in me; no after-thought, no ex post facto vindication. When Mr. Hastings accused me personally, about three months before, of presenting a libel to the Board, what was my answer on that occasion? Extract of a Minute of Mr. Francis"March 21, 1775. The Governor, Geperal, who had long expected the appearance of such a letter, and was apprized of the contents of it, made no objection, however, to its being received and read at the Board. When the man who advances a specific charge, declares himself ready to come forward and support it, and to hazard the consequences of failing in his proofs, it may still indeed be presumed that the charge is false; but it does not partake of the nature of a libel. A libeller advances charges which he does not intend, or is unable to make good:-When called upon to appear and produce his evidence, he shelters himself, sometimes in the obscurity, sometimes in the superiority of his situation, and leaves the accusation without an accuser, to operate as far as it can, in the opinions of men, against the honour and reputation of the party accused. Rajah Nundcomar is not an obscure person in this country, nor does he in this instance act the part of a libeller. He is himself of very high rank; he publicly accuses the Governor General of misconduct in his office, and desires to be heard in person in support of his charge." This is my defence against the charge, as it affects us collectively on the face of our proceedings. But we had other motives for our conduct, which do not appear upon the records, and which I shall now lay before the House. This concerns general Clavering and not myself. In this part he is properly the defendant, and not I, If favour, protection, and indulgence are due to a man who is here to defend himself (and they have been shown in an eminent degree to sir Elijah Impey) how much more are they due to a man of great character, who is not here, who is not only absent but dead, and who died in the service of his country; not in an honourable but a most odious service; not in the field of battle, where his gallant mind would have led him, but in an odious, unprofitable contest, with men; I will not qualify them. It is sufficient to say, that he thought him self dishonoured by the contest. I cannot undertake to answer for all the motives of his conduct in this transaction, but I think I can for some of them. Let gentlemen recollect the general temper of the settlement. The union between the Governor General, Mr. Barwell, and the judges, or some of them, and the general combination amongst them against us. That we were considered in the settlement as the common enemy, and Mr. Hastings looked up to as their common protector. That sir Elijah, in one of his letters to us, had already declared, that reports were publicly circulated in Calcutta, that if the judges could not be prevailed upon to release Nundcomar, he would be delivered by force, manu forti, by the Commander-in-chief. Against this imputation, general Clavering thought it necessary for his safety to exculpate himself by oath. I say safety,' because I am firmly of opinion, that he would have been in as great danger as Nundcomar, if the judges could have found any thing to lay to his charge. Colonel Monson and I did the same. The general says in his Minute of the 14th of August, 1775, "that he was resolved not to make any application whatever in favour of Nundcomar." He knew, by experience, that all such applications would be useless; that they would be much more likely to injure than to serve Nundcomar, and that our intercessions would rather hasten than delay his execution. In support of this assertion, I beg leave to read to you some passages from our records. The House will observe, that we had often applied to sir Elijah for some indulgence to this unfortunate man in the mode of his imprisonment, particularly that he would not suffer him to perish for want of sustenance. Sir Elijah says, in reply, in his letter of the 9th of May 1775: I must make it my request, that the Maha Rajah may be acquainted by the Board, that if he has any farther application to make for relief, that he must address himself immediately to the judges, who will give all due attention to his representations; for should he continue to address himself to the Board, that which will, and can only be obtained from principles of justice, may have the appearance of being obtained by the means of influence and authority, the peculiar turn of mind of the natives being to expect every thing from power, and little from justice." In another letter, dated May |