revenge an injury; reason tells him, that he ought not to be a judge in his own cause. From that moment revenge passes from the private to the public hand; but in being transferred it is far from being extinguished. My lords, it is transferred as a sacred trust to be exercised for the injured, in measure and proportion by persons who, feeling as he feels, are in a temper to reason better than he can reason. Revenge is taken out of the hands of the original injured proprietor, lest it should be carried beyond the bounds of moderation and justice. But, my lords, it is in its transfer exposed to a danger of an opposite description. The delegate of vengeance may not feel the wrong sufficiently; he may be cold and languid in the performance of his sacred duty. It is for these reasons, that good men are taught to tremble even at the first emotions of anger and resentment for their own particular wrongs; but they are likewise taught, if they are well taught, to give the loosest possible rein to their resentment and indignation, whenever their parents, their friends, their country, or their brethren of the common family of mankind are injured. Those, who have not such feelings under such circumstances, are base and degenerate. These, my lords, are the sentiments of the Commons of Great Britain.

Lord Bacon has very well said, that "revenge is a kind of wild justice." It is so, and without this wild austere stock, there would be no justice in the world. But when by the skilful hand of morality and wise jurisprudence a foreign scion, but of the very same species, is grafted upon it, its harsh quality becomes changed, it submits to culture, and laying aside its savage nature it bears fruits and flowers, sweet to the world, and not ungrateful even to Heaven itself, to which it elevates its exalted head. The fruit of this wild stock is revenge regulated, but not extinguished; revenge transferred from the suffering party to the communion and sympathy of mankind. This is the revenge by which we are actuated, and which we should be sorry if the false, idle,

girlish, novel-like morality of the world should extinguish in the breast of us, who have a great public duty to perform.

This sympathetic revenge, which is condemned by clamorous imbecility, is so far from being a vice, that it is the greatest of all possible virtues; a virtue which the uncorrupted judgment of mankind has in all ages exalted to the rank of heroism. To give up all the repose and pleasures of life, to pass sleepless nights, and laborious days, and, what is ten times more irksome to an ingenuous mind, to offer oneself to calumny and all its herd of hissing tongues and poisoned fangs, in order to free the world from fraudulent prevaricators, from cruel oppressors, from robbers and tyrants, has I say the test of heroic virtue, and well deserves such a distinction. The Commons, despairing to attain the heights of this virtue, never lose sight of it for a moment. For seventeen years they have, almost without intermission, pursued, by every sort of inquiry, by legislative and by judicial remedy, the cure of this Indian malady, worse ten thousand times than the leprosy which our forefathers brought from the East. Could they have done this, if they had not been actuated by some strong, some vehement, some perennial passion, which, burning like the vestal fire, chaste and eternal, never suffers generous sympathy to grow cold in maintaining the rights of the injured, or in denouncing the crimes of the oppressor?

My lords, the managers for the Commons have been actuated by this passion; my lords, they feel its influence at this moment; and so far from softening either their measures or their tone, they do here, in the presence of their Creator, of this House, and of the world, make this solemn declaration, and nuncupate this deliberate vow; that they will ever glow with the most determined and unextinguishable animosity against tyranny, oppression, and peculation in all, but more particularly as practised by this man in India; that they never will relent, but will pursue and prosecute him and it, till they see corrupt pride prostrate under the feet of justice. We call upon your lordships to join us; and we have no

doubt that you will feel the same sympathy that we feel, or (what I cannot persuade my soul to think, or my mouth to utter,) you will be identified with the criminal whose crimes. you excuse, and rolled with him in all the pollution of Indian guilt, from generation to generation. Let those who feel with me upon this occasion join with me in this vow; if they will not, I have it all to myself.

It is not to defend ourselves, that I have addressed your lordships at such length on this subject. No, my lords; I have said what I considered necessary to instruct the public, upon the principles which induced the House of Commons to persevere in this business with a generous warmth, and in the indignant language which nature prompts, when great crimes are brought before men who feel as they ought to feel upon such occasions.

I now proceed, my lords, to the next recriminatory charge, which is delay. I confess I am not astonished at this charge. From the first records of human impatience, down to the present time, it has been complained that the march of violence and oppression is rapid; but that the progress of remedial and vindictive justice, even the divine, has almost always favored the appearance of being languid and sluggish. Something of this is owing to the very nature and constitution of human affairs; because, as justice is a circumspect, cautious, scrutinizing, balancing principle, full of doubt even of itself, and fearful of doing wrong even to the greatest wrong doers, in the nature of things its movements must be slow, in comparison with the headlong rapidity with which avarice, ambition, and revenge, pounce down upon the devoted prey of those violent and destructive passions. And indeed, my lords, the disproportion between crime and justice, when seen in the particular acts of either, would be so much to the advantage of crimes and criminals, that we should find it difficult to defend laws and tribunals, (especially in great and arduous cases like this,) if we did not look, not to the immediate, not the retrospective, but to the provident operation of justice.

Its chief operation is in its future example; and this turns the balance, upon the total effect, in favor of vindictive justice, and in some measure reconciles a pious and humble mind to this great, mysterious dispensation of the world.

Upon the charge of delay in this particular cause, my lords, I have only to say, that the business before you is of immense magnitude. The prisoner himself says, that all the acts of his life are committed in it. With a due sense of this magnitude, we know that the investigation could not be short to us, nor short to your lordships; but when we are called upon, as we have been daily, to sympathize with the prisoner in that delay, my lords, we must tell you, that we have no sympathy with him. Rejecting, as we have done, all false, spurious, and hypocritical virtues, we should hold it to be the greatest of all crimes, to bestow upon the oppressors that pity which belongs to the oppressed. The unhappy persons who are wronged, robbed, and despoiled, have no remedy but in the sympathies of mankind; and when these sympathies are suffered to be debauched, when they are perversely carried from the victim to the oppressor, then we commit a robbery still greater than that which was committed by the criminal accused.

My lords, we do think this process long, we lament it in every sense in which it ought to be lamented; but we lament still more that the Begums have been so long without having a just punishment inflicted upon their spoiler. We lament that Cheit Sing has so long been a wanderer, while the man who drove him from his dominions is still unpunished. We are sorry that Nobkissen has been cheated of his money for fourteen years, without obtaining redress. These are our sympathies, my lords, and thus we reply to this part of the charge.

My lords, there are some matters of fact in this charge of delay, which I must beg your lordships will look into. On the 19th of February, 1789, the prisoner presented a petition to your lordships, in which he states, after many other com

plaints, that a great number of his witnesses were obliged to go to India, by which he has lost the benefit of their testimony; and that a great number of your lordships' body were dead, by which he has lost the benefit of their judgment.

As to the hand of God, though some members of your House may have departed this life since the commencement of this trial, yet the body always remains entire. The evidence before you is the same; and therefore there is no reason to presume that your final judgment will be affected by these afflicting dispensations of Providence. With regard to his witnesses, I must beg to remind your lordships of one extraordinary fact. This prisoner has sent to India, and obtained, not testimonies, but testimonials to his general good behavior. He has never once applied, by commission or otherwise, to falsify any one fact that is charged upon him. No, my lords, not one; therefore that part of his petition, which states the injury he has received from the Commons of Great Britain, is totally false and groundless; for if he had any witnesses to examine, he would not have failed to examine them. If he had asked for a commission to receive their depositions, a commission would have been granted; if, without a commission, he had brought affidavits to facts, or regular recorded testimony, the Commons of Great Britain would never have rejected such evidence, even though they could not have cross-examined it.

Another complaint is, that many of his witnesses were obliged to leave England, before he could make use of their evidence. My lords, no delay in the trial has prevented him from producing any evidence, for we were willing that any of his witnesses should be examined at any time most convenient to himself. If many persons connected with his measures are gone to India, during the course of his trial, many others have returned to England. Mr. Larkins returned; was the prisoner willing to examine him? No; and it was nothing but downright shame, and the presumptions which he knew would be drawn against him, if he did not