So far as to the process; which, though I mentioned last in the line and order in which I stated the objects of our selection, I thought it best to dispatch first.

As to the crime which we chose, we first considered well what it was in its nature, under all the circumstances which attended it.  We weighed it with all its extenuations and with all its aggravations.  On that review, we are warranted to assert that the crimes with which we charge the prisoner at the bar are substantial crimes,—­that they are no errors or mistakes, such as wise and good men might possibly fall into, which may even produce very pernicious effects without being in fact great offences.  The Commons are too liberal not to allow for the difficulties of a great and arduous public situation.  They know too well the domineering necessities which frequently occur in all great affairs.  They know the exigency of a pressing occasion, which, in its precipitate career, bears everything down before it,—­which does not give time to the mind to recollect its faculties, to reinforce its reason, and to have recourse to fixed principles, but, by compelling an instant and tumultuous decision, too often obliges men to decide in a manner that calm judgment would certainly have rejected.  We know, as we are to be served by men, that the persons who serve us must be tried as men, and with a very large allowance indeed to human infirmity and human error.  This, my Lords, we knew and we weighed before we came before you.  But the crimes which we charge in these articles are not lapses, defects, errors of common human frailty, which, as we know and feel, we can allow for.  We charge this offender with no crimes that have not arisen from passions which it is criminal to harbor,—­with no offences that have not their root in avarice, rapacity, pride, insolence, ferocity, treachery, cruelty, malignity of temper,—­in short, in [with?] nothing that does not argue a total extinction of all moral principle, that does not manifest an inveterate blackness of heart, dyed in grain with malice, vitiated, corrupted, gangrened to the very core.  If we do not plant his crimes in those vices which the breast of man is made to abhor, and the spirit of all laws, human and divine, to interdict, we desire no longer to be heard upon this occasion.  Let everything that can be pleaded on the ground of surprise or error, upon those grounds be pleaded with success:  we give up the whole of those predicaments.  We urge no crimes that were not crimes of forethought.  We charge him with nothing that he did not commit upon deliberation,—­that he did not commit against advice, supplication, and remonstrance,—­that he did not commit against the direct command of lawful authority,—­that he did not commit after reproof and reprimand, the reproof and reprimand of those who were authorized by the laws to reprove and reprimand him.  The crimes of Mr. Hastings are crimes not only in themselves, but aggravated by being crimes of contumacy.  They were crimes, not against forms, but against those eternal laws of justice which are our rule and our birthright.  His offences are, not in formal, technical language, but in reality, in substance and effect, high crimes and high misdemeanors.