So far as to the crimes.  As to the criminal, we have chosen him on the same principle on which we selected the crimes.  We have not chosen to bring before you a poor, puny, trembling delinquent, misled, perhaps, by those who ought to have taught him better, but who have afterwards oppressed him by their power, as they had first corrupted him by their example.  Instances there have been many, wherein the punishment of minor offences, in inferior persons, has been made the means of screening crimes of an high order, and in men of high description.  Our course is different.  We have not brought before you an obscure offender, who, when his insignificance and weakness are weighed against the power of the prosecution, gives even to public justice something of the appearance of oppression:  no, my Lords, we have brought before you the first man of India, in rank, authority, and station.  We have brought before you the chief of the tribe, the head of the whole body of Eastern offenders, a captain-general of iniquity, under whom all the fraud, all the peculation, all the tyranny in India are embodied, disciplined, arrayed, and paid.  This is the person, my Lords, that we bring before you.  We have brought before you such a person, that, if you strike at him with the firm and decided arm of justice, you will not have need of a great many more examples.  You strike at the whole corps, if you strike at the head.

So far as to the crime:  so far as to the criminal.  Now, my Lords, I shall say a few words relative to the evidence which we have brought to support such a charge, and which ought to be equal in weight to the charge itself.  It is chiefly evidence of record, officially signed by the criminal himself in many instances.  We have brought before you his own letters, authenticated by his own hand.  On these we chiefly rely.  But we shall likewise bring before you living witnesses, competent to speak to the points to which they are brought.

When you consider the late enormous power of the prisoner,—­when you consider his criminal, indefatigable assiduity in the destruction of all recorded evidence,—­when you consider the influence he has over almost all living testimony,—­when you consider the distance of the scene of action,—­I believe your Lordships, and I believe the world, will be astonished that so much, so clear, so solid, and so conclusive evidence of all kinds has been obtained against him.  I have no doubt that in nine instances in ten the evidence is such as would satisfy the narrow precision supposed to prevail, and to a degree rightly to prevail, in all subordinate power and delegated jurisdiction.  But your Lordships will maintain, what we assert and claim as the right of the subjects of Great Britain, that you are not bound by any rules of evidence, or any other rules whatever, except those of natural, immutable, and substantial justice.

God forbid the Commons should desire that anything should be received as proof from them which is not by nature adapted to prove the thing in question!  If they should make such a request, they would aim at overturning the very principles of that justice to which they resort; they would give the nation an evil example that would rebound back on themselves, and bring destruction upon their own heads, and on those of all their posterity.