a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, with fraternal blood. Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in its original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured-bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first and Union afterward, but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"

Here is the conclusion of the arraignment of Warren Hastings by Edmund Burke. It is broad, comprehensive and philosophical in its treatment. It summarizes, in an eloquent and impressive manner, all the charges made by the orator, and gives a clear idea of the object of the prosecution, which might seem obscure if not collected and condensed at the close of the speech.

"I therefore charge Mr. Hastings with having destroyed, for private purposes, the whole system of government by the six provincial councils, which he had no right to destroy. I charge him with having delegated to others that power which the act of Parliament had directed him to preserve unalienably in himself. I charge him with having formed a committee to be mere inducements and tools, at the enormous expense of sixty-two

thousand pounds per annum. I charge him with having appointed a person their dewan, to whom these Englishmen were to be subservient tools; whose name, to their own knowledge, was, by the general voice of India, by the general recorded voice of the company, by recorded official transactions, by everything that can make a man known, abhorred, and detested, stamped with infamy; and with giving him the whole power, which he had thus separated from the council general, and from provincial councils. I charge him with taking bribes of Gunga Govin Sing. I charge him with having done that bribe service which fidelity even in iniquity requires at the hands of the worst of men. I charge him with having robbed these people of whom he took the bribes. I charge him with having fraudulently alienated the fortunes of widows. I charge him with having, without right, title or purchase, taken the lands of orphans, and giving them to wicked persons under him. I charge him with having removed. the natural guardians of a minor rajah and with having given that trust to a stranger, Debi Sing, whose wickedness was known to himself and all the world, and by whom the rajah, his family and dependents, were cruelly oppressed. I charge him with having committed to the management of Debi Sing three great provinces; and thereby with having wasted the country, ruined the landed interest, cruelly harassed the peasants, burnt their houses, seized their crops, tortured and degraded their persons, and destroyed the honor of the whole female race of the country.

"In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villainy upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to you,

"My lords, what is it, that we want here to a great act of national justice? Do we want a cause, my lords? You have the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms. Do you want a criminal, my lords? When was there so much iniquity.ever laid to the charge of any man? No, my lords, you must not look to punish any other such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent.

"My lords, is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you the Commons of Great Britain as prosecutors, and I believe, my lords, that the sun in his beneficent progress round the world does not behold a more glorious sight than that of men, separated from a remote people by the material bonds and barriers of nature, united by the bond of a social and moral community, all the Commons of England resenting as their own the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people of India.

"Do we want a tribunal? My lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, can supply us with a tribunal like this. My lords, here we see virtually, in the mind's eye, that sacred majesty of the crown, under whose authority you sit, and whose power you exercise. We see in that invisible authority, what we all feel in reality and life, the beneficent powers and protecting justice of his majesty. We have here the heir apparent to the crown, such as the fond wishes of the people of England wish an heir apparent to be. We have here all the branches of the royal family in a situation between majesty and subjection, between the

sovereign and the subject, offering a pledge in that situation for the support of the rights of the crown, and the liberties of the people, both which extremes they touch. My lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here, those who have their own honor, the honor of their ancestors, and of their posterity to guard, and who will justify, as they always have justified, that provision in the Constitution by which justice is made an hereditary office. My lords, we have here a new nobility, who have risen and exalted themselves by various merits, by great military services, which have extended the fame of this country from the rising to the setting sun; we have those who, by various civil merits and various civil talents, have been exalted to a situation which they well deserve, and in which they will justify the favor of their sovereign, and the good opinion of their fellow-subjects, and make them rejoice to see those virtuous characters, that were the other day upon a level with them, now exalted above them in rank, but feeling with them in sympathy what they felt in common with them before. We have persons exalted from the practice of the law, from the place in which they administered high, though subordinate, justice, to a seat here, to enlighten with their knowledge, and to strengthen with their votes, those principles which have distinguished the courts in which they have presided.

'My lords, you have here also the lights of our religion; you have the bishops of England, my lords, you have that true image of the primitive church in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions. You have the represent

atives of that religion, which says that their God is love, that the very vital spirit of their institution is charity; a religion which so much hates suppression that when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, he did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, but in sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of all government, since the Person who was the Master of nature chose to appear himself in a subordinate situation. These are the considerations which influence them, which animate them and will animate them against all oppression. He who is called first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed, and of those who feed it, made Himself 'the servant of all.'

"My lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of this house. We know them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands. Therefore, it is with confidence that, ordered

by the Commons,

"I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

"I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

"I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored.

"I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose properties he has destroyed, whose countries he has laid waste and desolate.