in performing; but the resident, who took upon himself the chief share in this business, acknowledges, that he suffered considerably in his feelings, when he came to touch on the pension list. Some hundreds of persons of the antient nobility of the country, excluded, under our government, from almost all employments, civil or military, had, ever since the revolution, depended on the bounty of the nabob; and near ten lacks were bestowed that way. It is not that the distribution was always made with judgment or impartial, and much room was left for a reform; but, when the question was to cut off entirely the greatest part, it could not fail to be accompanied with circumstances of real distress. The resident declares, that even with some of the highest rank he could not avoid discovering, under all the pride of eastern manners, the manifest marks of penury and want. There was, however, no room left for hesitation; to confine the nabob's expenses within the limited sum, it was necessary, that pensions should be set aside."

Here, my lords, is a man sent to execute one of the most dreadful offices, that was ever executed by man, to cut off, as he says himself, with a bleeding heart the only remaining allowance made for hundreds of the decayed nobility and gentry of a great kingdom, driven by our government from the offices, upon which they existed. In this moment of anxiety and affliction, when he says, he felt pain and was cut to the heart to do it, at this very moment, when he was turning over fourteen hundred of the antient nobility and gentry of this country to downright want of bread; just at that moment, while he was doing this act, and feeling this act in this manner, from the collected morsels forced from the mouths of that indigent and famished nobility, he gorged his own ravenous maw with an allowance of two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment. As we see him in this business, this man is unlike any other he is also never corrupt but he is cruel; he never dines without creating a famine; he does not take from the loose superfluity of standing greatness, but falls upon the indigent, the oppressed, and ruined; he takes to himself double what would maintain them. His is unlike the generous rapacity of the noble eagle, who preys upon a

living, struggling, reluctant, equal victim; his is like that of the ravenous vulture, who falls upon the decayed, the sickly, the dying, and the dead, and only anticipates nature in the destruction of its object. His cruelty is beyond his corruption but there is something in his hypocrisy, which is more terrible than his cruelty; for at the very time, when with double and unsparing hands he executes a proscription, and sweeps off the food of hundreds of the nobility and gentry of a great country, his eyes overflow with tears; and he turns the precious balm, that bleeds from wounded humanity, and is its best medicine, into fatal, rancorous, mortal poison to the human race.

You have seen, that when he takes two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment, he tells you, that in this very act, he is starving fourteen hundred of the antient nobility and gentry. My lords, you have the blood of nobles, if not you have the blood of men in your veins; you feel as nobles, you feel as men. What would you say to a cruel Mogul exacter, by whom after having been driven from your estates, driven from the noble offices, civil and military, which you hold, driven from your bishopricks, driven from your places at court, driven from your offices as judges, and after having been reduced to a miserable flock of pensioners, your very pensions were at last wrested from your mouths; and who, though at the very time when those pensions were wrested from you he declares them to have been the only bread of a miserable decayed nobility, takes himself two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment, and continues it till it amounts to sixteen thousand pounds? I do think, that of all the corruptions, which he has not owned, but has not denied, or of those, which he does in effect own, and of which he brings forward the evidence himself, the taking and claiming under colour of an entertainment, is ten times the most nefarious.

I shall this day only further trouble your lordships to observe, that he has never directly denied this transaction. I have tumbled over the records, I have looked at every part to see whether he denies it; he did not deny it at the time, he did not deny it to the court of directors on the

contrary, he did in effect acknowledge it, when, without directly acknowledging it, he promised them a full and liberal explanation of the whole transaction. He never did give that explanation. Parliament took up the business; this matter was reported at the end of the eleventh report. But though the House of Commons had thus reported it, and made that publick, which before was upon the company's records, he took no notice of it. Then another occasion arises he comes before the House of Commons; he knows he is about to be prosecuted for these very corruptions he well knows these charges exist against him; he makes his defence (if he will allow it to be his defence ;) but though thus driven he did not there deny it, because he knew, that if he had denied it, it could be proved against him. I desire your lordships will look at that paper, which we have given in evidence, and see if you find a word of denial of it; there is much discourse, much folly, much insolence, but not one word of denial. Then, at last, it came before this tribunal against him. I desire to refer your lordships to that part of his defence to the article, in which this bribe is specifically charged; he does not deny it there; the only thing, which looks like a denial, is one sweeping clause inserted (in order to put us upon the proof,) that all the charges are to be conceived as denied; but a specifick denial to this specifick charge, in no stage of the business, from beginning to end, has he once made and, therefore, here I close that part of the charge, which relates to the business of Nundcomar. Your lordships will see such a body of presumptive proof, and positive proof, as never was given yet of any secret corrupt act of bribery; and there I leave it with your lordships' justice.

I beg pardon for having detained you so long; but your lordships will be so good as to observe, that no business ever was covered with more folds of iniquitous artifice than this, which is now brought before you.

TRIAL-SATURDAY, 25th APRIL 1789.

(MR. BURKE.)

MY LORDS, When I last had the honour of addressing your lordships, I endeavoured to state with as much perspicuity as the nature of an intricate affair would admit, and as largely as in so intricate an affair was consistent with the brevity, which I endeavoured to preserve, the proofs, which had been adduced against Warren Hastings upon an inquiry, instituted by an order of the court of directors, into the corruption and peculation of persons in authority in India. My lords, I have endeavoured to show you by anteriour presumptive proofs, drawn from the nature and circumstances of the acts themselves inferring guilt, that such actions and such conduct could be referrible only to one cause, namely, corruption. I endeavoured to show you afterwards, my lords, what the specifick nature and extent of the corruption was, as far as it could be fully proved and lastly, the great satisfactory presumption, which attended the inquiry with regard to Mr. Hastings; namely, that contrary to law, contrary to his duty, contrary to what is owed by innocence to itself, Mr. Hastings resisted that inquiry, and employed all the power of his office to prevent the exercise of it, either in himself or in others.-These presumptions, and these proofs, will be brought before your lordships, distinctly and in order, at the end of this opening.

The next point, on which I thought it necessary to proceed, was relative to the presumptions, which his subsequent conduct gave with regard to his guilt: because, my lords, his uniform tenour of conduct, such as must attend guilt, both in the act, at the time of the inquiry, and subsequent to it, will form such a body of satisfactory evidence as, I believe, the human mind is not made to resist. My lords, there is another reason why I choose to enter into the presumptions drawn from his conduct and the fact, taking his conduct in two parts, if it may be so expressed,

omission and commission, in order that your lordships should more fully enter into the consequences of this system of bribery. But, before I say any thing upon that, I wish your lordships to be apprized, that the Commons, in bringing this bribe of three lacks and an half before your lordships, do not wish by any means to have it understood, that this is the whole of the bribe, that was received by Mr. Hastings, in consequence of delivering up the whole management of the government of the country to that improper person, whom he nominated for it.

My lords, from the proofs, that will be adduced before you, there is great probability, that he received very nearly a hundred thousand pounds there is positive proof of his receiving fifty; and we have chosen only to charge him with that, of which there is such an accumulated body of proof as to leave no doubt upon the minds of your lordships. All this I say, because we are perfectly apprized of the sentiments of the publick upon this point when they hear of the enormity of Indian peculation, when they see the acts done, and compare them with the bribes received, the acts seem so enormous, and the bribes comparatively so small, that they can hardly be got to attribute them to that motive. What I mean to state is this, that from a collective view of the subject your lordships will be able to judge, that enormous offences have been committed, and that the bribe, which we have given in proof, is a specimen of the nature and extent of those enormous bribes, which extend to much greater sums than we are able to prove before you in the manner your lordships would like and expect.

I have already remarked to your lordships, that after this charge was brought and recorded before the council in spite of the resistance made by Mr. Hastings, in which he employed all the power and authority of his station, and the whole body of his partizans and associates in iniquity dispersed through every part of these provinces: after he had taken all these steps, finding himself pressed by the proof and pressed by the presumption of his resistance to the inquiry, he did think it necessary to make something like a defence. Accordingly he has made what he calls a justifi