“I had the honor to lay before you, in a letter of the 11th instant, an abstracted, but true account of the Honorable Governor in the course of his administration.  What is there written I mean not the least to alter:  far from it.  I have the strongest written vouchers to produce in support of what I have advanced; and I wish and entreat, for my honor’s sake, that you will suffer me to appear before you, to establish the fact by an additional, incontestable evidence.”

My Lords, I will venture to say, if ever there was an accuser that appeared well and with weight before any court, it was this man.  He does not shrink from his charge; he offered to meet the person he charged face to face, and to make good his charge by his own evidence, and further evidence that he should produce.  Your Lordships have also seen the conduct of Mr. Hastings on the first day; you have seen his acquiescence under it; you have seen the suspicion he endeavored to raise.  Now, before I proceed to what Mr. Hastings thought of it, I must remark upon this accusation, that it is a specific accusation, coming from a person knowing the very transaction, and known to be concerned in it,—­that it was an accusation in writing, that it was an accusation with a signature, that it was an accusation with a person to make it good, that it was made before a competent authority, and made before an authority bound to inquire into such accusation.  When he comes to produce his evidence, he tells you, first, the sums of money given, the species in which they were given, the very bags in which they were put, the exchange that was made by reducing them to the standard money of the country; he names all the persons through whose hands the whole transaction went, eight in number, besides himself, Munny Begum, and Gourdas, being eleven, all referred to in this transaction.  I do believe that since the beginning of the world there never was an accusation which was more deserving of inquiry, because there never was an accusation which put a false accuser in a worse situation, and that put an honest defendant in a better; for there was every means of collation, every means of comparison, every means of cross-examining, every means of control.  There was every way of sifting evidence, in which evidence could be sifted.  Eleven witnesses to the transaction are referred to; all the particulars of the payment, every circumstance that could give the person accused the advantage of showing the falsehood of the accusation, were specified.  General accusations may be treated as calumnies; but particular accusations, like these, afford the defendant, if innocent, every possible means for making his defence:  therefore the very making no defence at all would prove, beyond all doubt, a consciousness of guilt.