MR. HASTINGS'S PETITION, COMPLAINING OF WORDS SOON April 27. OON after the opening of the session, on the 3d of February, Mr. Hastings presented a petition to the House of Lords, in which, after recapitulating the proceedings which had already been had from the commencement of the impeachment, he stated the great hardships to which its extraordinary duration had and was likely still farther to subject him. Amongst these, he mentioned the decease of several of his judges, the detention of witnesses necessary for his defence, the probability of his being deprived of many of them by various accidents, his health impaired, and his fortune wasted. He reminded them, that two articles only, out of twenty, had as yet been gone through by his accusers, that his expenses had already exceeded 30,000l.; and consequently, that should his life be continued to the close of the trial, he might find himself destitute of the means of defence, and even of subsistence, and run the dreadful chance of having his character transmitted on their records blasted with unrefuted criminations. He therefore prayed that they would enable him to make his innocence, and he hoped his deserts, apparent, by proceeding without delay upon his trial. The intervention of the circuits of the judges rendered it impossible for the lords to proceed upon the trial before the 20th day of April, when the court was resumed, and sat, during the remainder of the session, seventeen days. The charge brought before them, and opened by Mr. Burke, was that relative to the corrupt receipt of money. In the course of his speech, Mr. Burke had occasion to remark upon the conduct of Mr. Hastings towards one of his accusers in India, called Nundcomar; and after relating other acts of injustice and cruelty, he added that "he had murdered that man by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey." A few days after the charge had been thus opened, Major Scott presented a petition from Mr. Hastings to the House of Commons, in which he stated that Mr. Burke, in supporting the charges exhibited against him at the bar of the House of Lords, had accused him of sundry heinous crimes not laid in the articles of impeachment. He instanced the charge of having been concerned in a plot for assassinating the Shahzada, and in another plot for putting to death the son of Jaffier Ally Cawn; of being accessory to certain horrible cruelties alleged to have been committed by one Debi Sing; and lastly, of having been guilty of the murder of Nundcomar. He therefore prayed the House either to bring forward and prosecute those charges in specific articles, and thereby give him an opportunity of vindicating his innocence, or to grant him such other redress as to their justice and wisdom might seem fit. A motion being made, that the petition should be brought up, Mr. Fox said, that it was not his design either to resist the motion of the honourable member for bringing up the petition, or to enter into an extensive field, for the purpose of scrupulously investigating its contents. The predicament in which he stood, rendered it necessary that he should be cautious of incurring the charge of partiality. He wished, therefore, the propriety of the measure to be considered by those who were not managers of the prosecution, and who, upon that account, might be regarded as less interested in its contents and in its object, and consequently more impartial. He rose to state the bad tendency of it, not to that House in the present instance merely, but to future prosecutions of that House for ever and ever. There were three distinct points to be considered in respect to the present petition: first, the subject-matter of the complaint; secondly, who it was that the complaint was made to; and thirdly, who the person was that made the complaint. The subjectmatter of the complaint consisted of certain words and expressions said to have been used, and directly charged with having been falsely used by members of that House, at the bar of the House of Lords. He could not imagine that it would be admitted that the House attended in Westminster-hall, not for the purpose of appearing as prosecutors, countenancing and supporting the managers employed by their authority to urge the charges and adduce proof in support of them against the person impeached, not for that of taking care that justice was done them, but for the purpose of cavilling as an adverse party at the conduct of their own managers. With regard to the second point, to whom was the complaint made? It came not where all complaints of unjust treatment of a defendant ought to be made, to the tribunal that tried him, to the judges, and to the court that was to decide, and which alone was competent to relieve the party in a case of real injustice, but it came to the accusers, to the prosecutors themselves, who had no power to afford redress, if necessary, and whose duty it was to pursue the culprit, and prosecute him to punishment. As to the third point, who was it that preferred the complaint? Mr. Fox said, he should have been mortified, indeed, if his conduct, and that of any other of the managers, had been found fault with by the right honourable gentleman over against him, or those who had professed themselves to be warm friends to the prosecution. But, who was here the complainant? Not a member of the House of Commons, not a member of the House of Lords, no person of either description, but the culprit himself, who came forward to object to the mode of proceeding against him. Should such a complaint be listened to? And should the party accused be suffered to arraign the conduct of his accusers, addressing his charge to them? It would prove a deviation from every known and established rule; it would introduce a new system of proceeding; because it was altogether unprecedented for those who were the accusers, to hear the culprit in the manner of an accuser of themselves, complaining of the mode of prosecution which they had thought proper to adopt, as likely to answer the ends of justice in the most effectual manner. Mr. Fox proceeded to call in question the motive and the mode in which the honourable gentleman who had introduced the petition had opened it to the House. He denied that the words quoted by the honourable gentleman, as having passed between the counsel for Mr. Hastings and himself, at the bar of the House of Lords, were correctly stated; and he added, that it generally happened, that when that honourable gentleman undertook to refer to facts, he seldom was very correct. Whenever the managers had done what the counsel for Mr. Hastings had thought improper, he asked whether those learned gentleman had not appealed to the House of Lords, and whether the House of Lords had not always afforded them redress, if they were founded in their appeal? They had done so in various instances. With regard to what had passed between one of the learned counsel and himself, he had not objected to the substance of the learned counsel's argument, but to the manner of it. The learned counsel's objection appeared to him to be sufficiently proper, but his mode was that, which, as a manager of the prosecution, on behalf of the Commons of England, he had conceived that he ought not to submit to; and the House of Lords had proved that he was right in so thinking, by informing the counsel that they must not speak of the managers for the House of Commons in such a way. [Major Scott shook his head.] Mr. Fox said, the fact was as he stated it, let the honourable gentleman shake his head as much as he pleased. The honourable gentleman, he observed, had pledged himself for the truth of what he had asserted; let him pledge himself as much as he pleased; he by that altered no one fact in the smallest degree. Had not the honourable gentleman pledged himself to the House again and again, and had not every one of the occasions proved, in the event, how little his pledge was to be relied on? Did he not say, in an early part of the present business, "Produce the articles before the House, and I'll pledge myself to prove every one of them false, so that the House will necessarily reject them altogether?" Had not the event turned out the very reverse? Had not the House voted them to be articles containing matter of criminal charge, and had not the House proceeded to an impeachment? But, such was the honourable gentleman's eagerness to pledge himself, that he pledged himself for what he had not the smallest chance of proving. Had he not that day pledged himself to an universal negative? Had he not taken upon himself to prove the rash and extravagant assertion, that no one member of that House had read thirteen of the charges but himself? Mr. Fox said, he begged pardon of the House for having suffered himself to be betrayed into so much warmth, but it was a warmth excited by an attempt, which he trusted would be abortive, to fix a personal insult on his right honourable friend, and to cast an imputation on his character. By the coarseness of the manner in which the attempt had been made, he was persuaded that this, and this only, was the object. If it had not been a mere pretext, why not take the usual means of obtaining redress, if an injury were really conceived to have been done by either his right honourable friend, himself, or any other manager? Did not every member of that House know, that not only in the House of Lords, but in the most inferior court in the kingdom, if there was any thing wrong in the conduct of a cause, the counsel for the prisoner might object against it, and the court, if the appeal appeared founded, would grant immediate relief? With regard to words spoken elsewhere, was it not acknowledged, that no notice could be taken of words spoken in a former debate, nor even in the same debate, because no reliance could be placed on the correctness of the words complained of, unless taken down on the moment of delivery? Much less could notice be taken of words spoken in another place, the identity of which it was difficult to ascertain, and the drift of which it was impossible to fix, because it could not be proved that the words spoken were correctly the words which were complained of. So much for the subject-matter of the complaint. And who was the complainant, and to whom did he complain? Not to the court itself, not to the House of Lords, but to that House; and the complaint, as had been before stated, came from the culprit. That House did not order the prosecution to please the culprit. Heaven forbid that it should! Nor did it carry on the prosecution for the satisfaction of Mr. Hastings, but to punish Mr. Hastings for his bribery and misdemeanors in India, as an example to future governors-general of Bengal. In the petition, Mr. Hastings, to carry the absurdity farther, not only alluded to words spoken in another place, but at another time; to words spoken twelve months ago, to words heard in the House of Lords without objection, words delivered before the criminal himself, without being noticed by his counsel at the time. Mr. Fox maintained that Major Scott had by no means correctly stated what had been the ex pressions of his right honourable friend. His right honourable friend had not said a word to insinuate that Mr. Hastings was an accomplice in the murder of Meeran, eldest son of Jaffier Ally Cawn. He would not believe that the honourable gentleman had so ordinary a mind, as to conceive what he had represented to the House to be the conduct of his right honourable friend. Heaven forbid, said Mr. Fox, that I should be in a situation to be accused; but were this to prove the case, it must become my interest to wish for one of the same mind with the right honourable gentleman to be my accuser. He added, that the honourable gentleman had ventured to declare that there was not one word in the petition which he could not prove; and desired the House to frame articles upon the charges to which the petition alluded. He protested that he was at a loss to conceive how the House could listen to such a proposition, and thought it unbecoming a member of parliament, to make that House the instrument of his personal resentment and malice against his right honourable friend; for such, in his idea, was the great object of the present attempt. The honourable gentleman, Mr. Fox added, had said, that his right honourable friend had misrepresented the allegations in question, knowing it to be a misrepresentation. If it were so, and his right honourable friend had misrepresented the allegations wittingly, it undoubtedly would be the duty of the House to exclude his right honourable friend from any share in conducting the prosecution; but the fact was notoriously otherwise. The honourable gentleman had said, that the managers had stated themselves to be instructed to speak in the manner they had done by the House of Commons; undoubtedly, they had so stated themselves, because they felt themselves to be so instructed; but they all knew, that when they stated themselves to be instructed by the House, they meant generally, and did not confine themselves to words or expressions. With regard to the charges complained of, he should ever state them as his right honourable friend had done, both in public and in private, because he believed them, and should state them by such terms as they appeared to him to deserve. He desired the House to consider the difficulties the managers had to encounter. They had to contend with a most powerful criminal; a man who, for fourteen years, possessed all the patronage of India, and who had been enabled for a long period to confer so many obligations, that his connections at home were almost irresistible. They had likewise to contend with all the corruption of the East, and all the powers of the bar. They had to combat with other obstacles: and what had they to support them? The support of their |