honour and their consciences; and he trusted they would be supported by the House of Commons.

He reminded the House of the effect of individual members coming down there, from time to time, to complain of words uttered in another place a year ago, and said, if the person accused was to be in perpetual litigation with them before that House, it would be almost impossible to go on with the prosecution at all. They were, he believed, the first persons who, being known not to possess the favour and support of the House of Commons on political questions, had ventured to undertake an impeachment; but was that a reason for deserting them? He trusted it was not. As long as the ministers for the time had been the managers of impeachments, it had generally happened that the House of Commons had been blamed for their intemperance; but, never was there upon their journals so clear a proof of an impeachment, managed by men who could have no view but a desire to do justice. There never was upon their journals an instance so honourable to that House and to the country. He trusted, therefore, that the House of Commons would not throw difficulties in their way, but act in an open, manly, and direct mode. If they imagined that they had been betrayed, and ought not to be accusers, let them confess their error, retract, and make honourable amends to Mr. Hastings; but do not let them act a double character, do not let them at the same time be the accusers and the defenders! The honourable gentleman had said, that there had been unwarrantable delays: that there had been extraordinary delays was true; but then it was to be considered, that they had, during the present session at least, been occasioned by a cause sufficiently extraordinary to account for them. When the honourable gentleman stated, that his right honourable friend had alledged what he knew not to be true, he was convinced that the whole drift of this business was to bring on a personal quarrel with his right honourable friend; and this, from a conception that he could not avoid bearing a just indignation against insult; but he begged leave to recommend to his right honourable friend to disregard any thing done with such a view. For his part, he declared, that neither the honourable gentleman nor his friends should, by any thing short of a personal attack, in the literal sense of the words, make him, or any of his friends, he hoped, produce a personal quarrel out of a public proceeding. He should consider every complaint that came from the honourable gentleman or the culprit as a personal compliment, and when he said this, he declared he did not speak of the honourable gentleman in respect of his character, but because he considered him as the agent of the ac 13

cused. With regard to the motion, he was indifferent what became of it, and hoped its object was defeated: he could not, however, sit down, without conjuring gentlemen, for the honour of the House, and for the sake of justice, to consider the glaring impropriety of making the conduct of the managers, in the discharge of a public trust, a matter of personal attack.

Mr. Pitt and some other members declared themselves for receiving the petition, on the ground that Mr. Hastings, though the object of their accusation, did not cease to be the object of their justice, and therefore ought not to be deprived of the right belonging to every subject, of preferring a petition and stating a grievance to that House.

Mr. Fox rose again, and expressed his wish, that if the petition should be agreed to be brought up, gentlemen would decide in what manner they meant to identify the words spoken. If the managers were to be called upon to explain the drift of every speech they might make, it would not only prove a new but a fatiguing task. If the managers had done wrong, let the House employ others. He contended, that the petition which was the subject of debate, was without precedent in the annals of parliament. If it was to be received, it was proper that the House ought to know what kind of evidence was meant to be adduced to prove and identify the words of the managers. It was absurd to say, that the accuser was to be satisfied with whatever words the managers themselves might chuse to avow. Every part of the petition was new, except the spirit of it coming from Mr. Hastings, whose constant practice, throughout his whole life, had been to become the accuser of his accusers. Nundcomar had been the accuser of Mr. Hastings- Nundconiar was tried on the accusation of Mr. Hastings for a forgery, and executed. The managers, in the present instance, might probably have shared the same fate, had Sir Elijah Impey been their chief justice. If the managers had failed in the execution of their duty, let them be removed and others appointed in their room; there were many gentlemen well qualified for the task; and whoever undertook it would find that he and those with whom he acted, would not play the same game that had been played against them. They would find them the zealous supporters of a cause, in which not only the dignity of parliament, but the honour of the national character, was at stake. But if, after the fatigues of their duty in Westminster-hall, they were only to be obliged to defend in that House every word in their speeches which the prisoner at the bar or his agents might think extraneous

or irrelevant, he thought it would be better if the House were to appoint a committee, consisting of the honourable major and his friends, or Mr. Hastings himself, to revise and correct the speeches of the managers before they were spoken, lest any expression should be introduced which might be hurtful to his feelings. He could not but congratulate the honourable gentleman who had brought in the petition, on the support which had been given to a measure which he firmly believed was calculated to throw contempt and ridicule on their proceedings; but he trusted that the House would not desert those whom they had delegated for the execution of a task of such an arduous and complicated nature. The honour and character of the House of Commons were involved in the conduct of their representatives, who, from the peculiar situation in which they stood, were entitled not only to the protection but the indulgence of the House. It was absurd to say, that in a criminal charge nothing was to be alluded to which did not immediately relate to the charge. Suppose, for instance, a man was indicted for murder, and it afterwards appeared, that to accomplish that murder the culprit had broke open the house. The counsel for the prosecution mentions this fact, but is immediately stopped by the prisoner, "You are not to mention a syllable of the house breaking, because that of itself is a crime." Upon the whole, Mr. Fox hoped that the House would not be disposed to countenance a petition presented under the circumstances which he had stated.

Mr. Burke, after declaring that on the present occasion he should receive the decision of the House, whatever it might be, without any other emotion than what he should feel for the honour and reputation of the House itself, proceeded to explain the argument which had led him, in the course of it, to advert to the murder of Nundcomar, and to impute it to Mr. Hastings. The power of prosecuting and enforcing the charges against Mr. Hastings, under an injunction not to use one extraneous word, he compared to the giving Shylock the power of taking a pound of flesh, upon condition of his not spilling one drop of blood; a task which neither Jew nor Christian could perform. He added, that if the House was dissatisfied with his conduct, they ought to remove him, and not oblige him, in the midst of his accusation, to turn short about at the pleasure of the culprit to defend himself,-to-day an accuser, to-morrow a person accused. The drift of such artifice was obvious enough; and if the House should give it that countenance, and make him one day stand his trial there, and send him the next to Westminster Hall as the prosecutor of Mr. Hastings, it could not fail to cover them with ridicule and disgrace. Mr. Pulteney, Mr. Marsham, and several other members, insisted strongly on the glaring impropriety of receiving the petition, from its being totally

unprecedented, and grossly disrespectful to the House of Lords, whose protection the complainant ought to have sought, and who were alone competent to interfere on the occasion. The motion was agreed to without a division. After which, Mr. Pitt observed, that an early day certainly ought to be appointed to take the subject-matter of the petition into consideration.

Mr. Fox remarked, that upon the present occasion he felt himself so unusually circumstanced, that he could not avoid dissenting from the right honourable gentleman over the way in one particular; and he was completely convinced, that what he was about to observe was right, and that the majority of the House would agree with him that it was right. No procedure could tend more to disgrace the character and honour of the House, which the right honourable gentleman had stated to be deeply interested in the prosecution, than to weaken the hands of the managers, by doing any thing which should reflect on their conduct; and therefore, instead of wishing that the petition should be taken into consideration on an early day, he thought that its consideration ought to be delayed as long as possible. He declared, that he said not this from any personal wish upon the subject; it was in that view indifferent to him whether it was entered upon that night or the next, being fully persuaded, that whenever it was gone into, the mention of what had been termed extraneous matter would be found to have been absolutely right and indispensably necessary. He thought that no men ever received such completely hard treatment as the managers had experienced, and he could not help having his feeling on the occasion, and therefore it was that he had spoken warmly upon the subject. With regard to the prosecution, he for one was determined to stick by it, as long as he could do so with honour; and when he said with honour, he did not mean honour as a principle of pride or punctilio, but as long as there was any prospect of rendering the prosecution effectual. The right honourable gentleman had said, that he hoped there was not a disposition any where to abandon the prosecution or to impede it. He hoped so too; but if, upon the discussion of the petition, the managers were disclaimed, they could not undertake to go on with the prosecution with any prospect of success, because it would appear that they were acting without the confidence and support of the House of Commons. Mr. Fox enlarged upon this argument, and the inconveniences which he feared would result from entertaining a complaint made by a culprit against his accusers; declaring, that he conceived all that he had mentioned, to be the natural consequence of the prosecution being in the hands of those who were not, generally speaking,

the favourites of the House. Therefore, it would be better to change the managers at once, than to let them remain acting under disabilities and difficulties thrown in their way by the House itself. Its character and its honour were interested in the prosecution, and it was of much greater consequence that the House should preserve its consistency, and either give its full confidence to the present managers or chuse others in whom it would repose confidence, than give a handle to its enemies to say that it acted in a prevaricating way, and indirectly endeavoured to cast inefficacy upon a prosecution which they themselves had instituted.

On the 30th of April a motion was entered on the journals, purporting, "That a petition having been presented by Warren Hastings, Esq. against the managers of his impeachment, and the name of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke being mentioned in the said petition, and that gentleman being in his place, the House will to-morrow take the matter of the said petition into consideration."

May 1.

On the order of the day for taking the petition of Mr. Hastings into consideration, Mr. Montague rose and read, as part of his speech, the following letter to him from Mr. Burke:

"My Dear Sir,

"With the consent, as you know, and the approbation of the committee, I am resolved to persevere in the resolution I had formed and had declared to the House, that nothing should persuade me, upon any occasion, least of all upon the present occasion, to enter into a laboured, litigious, artificial, defence of my conduct. Such a mode of defence belongs to another sort of conduct, and to causes of a different description.

"As a faithful and ingenuous servant, I owe to the House a plain and simple explanation of any part of my behaviour which shall be called in question before them. I have given this explanation, and in doing so I have done every thing which my own honour and my duty to the House could possibly require at my hands. The rest belongs to the House. They, I have no doubt, will act in a manner fit for a wise body, attentive to its reputation. I must be supposed to know something of the duty of a prosecutor for the public; otherwise neither ought the House to have conferred that trust upon me, nor ought I to have accepted it. I have not been disapproved by the first abilities in the kingdom, appointed by the same authority, not only for my assistance, but for my direction and control. You, who have honoured me with a partial friendship, continued without interruption for twenty-four years, would not have failed in giving me that first and most decisive proof of friendship, to enlighten my ignorance and to rectify my mistakes. You have not done either; and I must act on the