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ruptor and the corrupted; might make it manifest with what invincible fatality the torrent of outrageous vice broke down and dashed away each obstacle before it, yet kept the vicious individuals entirely concealed from human penetration; and, in a word, might imitate the verdict of a coroner declare that murder had taken place, but add, that it was committed by persons unknown. For the pur pose of tracing peculation to the peculator, corruption to the corruptor, and vice to the vicious, were the various committees employed from time to time in obedience to the votes and orders of the House; and the result was, that the committee, at which a spirited and truly irreproachable individual presided during the course of three successive years, did (as well as two subsequent committees) declare, that it was impossible for the government in the East Indies to be foul, and the head of that government pure. Under all these circumstances, and keeping in his view the resolution of the House accusatory of Mr. Hastings, Mr, Burke declared that he should consider himself justified in all his succeeding motions, of which the first would be, "That there be laid before this House copies of all correspondence, since the month of January 1782, between Warren Hastings, Esq., late governor-general of Bengal, and the court of directors, as well before as since the return of the said governor-general, relative to the presents and other money privately received by the said governorgeneral."

The motion was seconded by Mr. Windham, and supported by Mr. Fox; and was opposed principally by Mr. Dundas and Major Scott. In reply to what fell from these gentlemen,

Mr. BURKE said, that he never failed to preserve the utmost calmness of temper, if attacked merely by personalities; but he could not hear that the Rohillas were extirpated, and a whole people deprived of their existence,

Mr. Gregory.

The

without considerable warmth and indignation. Doubtless, it was wrong; it was a weakness in him to give way to his feelings upon such a trifling occasion, and he would endeavour to amend his fault. The honourable major, he said, had most certainly explained the matter of the Rohillas very curiously, and satisfactorily to the House. The Rohillas were strangers, and therefore they had no right to the country in which they lived. Undoubtedly, the English had a better right, and a clearer title; they were not strangers, but the aboriginal natives, men with swarthy complexions, children of the sun, and, from their infancy, possessors of the soil! This being the case, to be sure they did wisely to extirpate the Rohilla race, and extinguish a whole people! The honourable major's declaration, that he had refuted all his charges, and that if he made twice as many he would refute them also, reminded him of the gallant Bobadil in the play, "Twenty more! Kill them!-Twenty more! Kill them too!" champion, doubtless, was invincible, or he would not have talked so valiantly. His threat was similar to a reply once published to a sermon on the 30th of January, and which was entitled, " A Reply to all the Sermons that ever have been, and to all that ever shall be preached on the 30th of January." As to his having omitted any of the evidence received by the select committee, the report in question had not been drawn up by him; but if it had, the fact might have been the same, as every committee, in drawing up their reports, enjoyed a right to exercise their own judgments, and insert or omit just as much of the evidence as they might think proper: but if there was cause for complaint, an opportunity would offer for urging it. As to his acting upon feelings of private enmity, he felt no malice against any man: if any lurked in his mind, it was unknown to him, and was a vice of disposition with which nature cursed him, and which he had neither yet discovered, nor, of course, subdued and eradicated. As to his having sent out writers to India, as a right honourable

or how did it disqualify him from calling the conduct of Mr. Hastings in question? The misfortune was, that in truth, though he had lived so much in the world, and enjoyed so large a circle of acquaintance of all sorts and degrees, he never once had made a director, nor sent out, or procured to be sent out, a single writer to India; no, not one! The right honourable gentleman was, therefore, out in his conjecture. Again, the right honourable gentleman "knew him by his style," and had discovered him in the dispatches of the board of directors in 1783. What a miserable judge of style must the right honourable gentleman be, when it so happened, that he never had written a line in any one dispatch of the board of directors in the whole course of his life!

The question was put and carried; as were also motions for a variety of other papers. On Mr. Burke's moving, "That there be laid before this House copies of all other correspondence during the residence of John Bristow, Esq. together with the documents therewith transmitted from the province of Oude, and also the answers thereto, and of all proceedings relative to his conduct during the said residency, from the month of October, 1782," Mr. Pitt contended, that the motion went to the production of new matter, and must, if carried, stretch out the subject unnecessarily into a wider field. Mr. Dundas remarked, that it behoved Mr. Burke to explain the nature of every new point, in order to illustrate which, he might think it proper to call for papers. The Speaker now complained of illness; in conse quence of which, the House adjourned.

February 20.

The adjourned debate being resumed,

Mr. BURKE desired to acquaint the House, that, în order to obviate the imputation of prolixity, he would withdraw the last motion he had made on Friday, and substitute the following, "That there be laid before this House, copies or duplicates of all correspondence, minutes of the governor-general and members of the council, and instruc

tions relative to the state and condition of the country of Oude and its dependencies, and of the reigning family thereof, together with all charges made by the late governor-general of Bengal against the resident Middleton, and the assistant resident Johnson, and the resident Bristow, as well as all correspondence, minutes of the governorgeneral and members of the council, and instructions which may not be comprehended in the foregoing, relative to Almas Ali Kahn."

Mr. Dundas contended, that the reports of the select committee were not sufficiently decisive to warrant a determination of the House to prosecute Mr. Hastings criminally; and therefore he wished to be convinced how far the right honourable gentleman would insist on calling for a number of papers, without giving any precise idea to the House, how far those papers related to the subject of criminality which he intended to bring forward.

Mr. BURKE begged leave to remind the right honourable, gentleman, that, in every criminal inquiry, the accuser, who, by becoming such, took upon himself the onus probandi, had a right to assume two things; of which the first was, that a supposition of guilt in a person who filled a station of consequence and honour, entitled the accuser to a hearing; and the next, that such documents, proofs, or papers, as the person accusing saw or esteemed necessary to support the charge which he undertook to bring on, ought to be free and accessible. A refusal must be attended with a double injustice. If the accuser wanted collateral or explanatory aid, he ought not to be denied it; for by such aid he could digest, explain, simplify, or methodize those facts of which he was in prior possession: or if, on the other hand, the grounds of accusation could be extenuated, if the severity of the charge could be abated, nay, annihilated, a denial of that opportunity to the accuser was an injustice to the accused. Were the hand of power to deny him such documents as he called for, he must then rest himself upon the sole conviction of having done his duty. He felt it a

heavy and painful task, that the burthen should have fallen to his lot, who was connected only with acquired power, the friends he had being such as those upon whom Heaven had bestowed some of the greatest talents which nature could possess; a concurrence of circumstances had rendered that task to him inevitable, and a collection of proof made it also upon him a duty. He had heard, and he was convinced of it, that he had to encounter some of the first weight and opulence of this country; he foresaw all this, and relying upon the justice of his cause, he would persevere. The people would not, he was informed, follow at his heels: this was a question which he never asked himself, or, at least, never put in competition with the awful sense which he entertained of that duty, which he owed to the interests of humanity." He was not to be popular; the people of England would reject him in such a pursuit." In what pursuit? In the pursuit of the cause of humanity? What! for having taken up the cause of the injured and oppressed fellow-subjects of the people of England in India; for attempting to procure an atonement to Indian nations, who had been scourged by their iniquitous servants—was he to be unpopular? O! miserable public! Let him, then, remain the object of persecution, he entreated, and practise a lesson which he had learned in his earliest infancy, and which he would remember to his latest breath, "Blessed are they who are persecuted for justice sake, for they shall have their reward;" that reward which he should endeavour to enjoy a conscious possession of. And if those people who raised monuments to their benevolence, by providing asylums and receptacles for human misery, were justly ranked for such deeds amongst the benefactors to mankind, did not the man who pulled down tyranny, eradicated cruelty, and avenged the oppressed, deserve a title to the good opinion of his fellow-creatures? The downfall of the greatest empire which this world ever saw, had been universally agreed upon to have originated in the maladministration of its provinces. Rome never felt within herself the seeds of decline, till corruption from foreign