I was obliged to use that word.  Your Lordships do not imagine, I hope, that I used that word in any other than a moral and popular sense, or that I used it in the legal and technical sense of the word murder.  Your Lordships know that I could not bring before this bar any commoner of Great Britain on a charge for murder.  I am not so ignorant of the laws and constitution of my country.  I expressed an act which I conceived to be of an atrocious and evil nature, and partaking of some of the moral evil consequences of that crime.  What led me into that error?  Nine years’ meditation upon that subject.

My Lords, the prisoner at the bar in the year 1780 sent a petition to the House of Commons complaining of that very chief-justice, Sir Elijah Impey.  The House of Commons, who then had some trust in me, as they have some trust still, did order me, along with persons more wise and judicious than myself, several of whom stand near me, to make an inquiry into the state of the justice of that country.  The consequence of that inquiry was, that we began to conceive a very bad opinion both of the complainant and defendant in that business,—­that we found the English justice to be, as we thought it, and reported it to the House, a grievance, instead of a redress, to the people of India.  I could bring before your Lordships, if I did not spare your patience, whole volumes of reports, whole bodies of evidence, which, in the progress we have made in the course of eight or nine years, brought to my mind such a conviction as will never be torn from my heart but with my life; and I should have no heart that was fit to lodge any honest sentiment, if I departed from my opinion upon that occasion.  But when I declare my own firm opinion upon it,—­when I declare the reasons that led me to it,—­when I mention the long meditation that preceded my founding a judgment upon it, the strict inquiry, the many hours and days spent in consideration, collation, and comparison,—­I trust that infirmity which could be actuated by no malice to one party or the other may be excused; I trust that I shall meet with this indulgence, when your Lordships consider, that, as far as you know me, as far as my public services for many years account for me, I am a man of a slow, laborious, inquisitive temper, that I do seldom leave a pursuit without leaving marks, perhaps of my weakness, but leaving marks of that labor, and that, in consequence of that labor, I made that affirmation, and thought the nature of the cause obliged me to support and substantiate it.  It is true that those who sent me here have sagacity to decide upon the subject in a week; they can in one week discover the errors of my labors for nine years.

Now that I have made this apology to you, I assure you, you shall never hear me, either in my own name here, much less in the name of the Commons, urge one thing to you in support of the credit of Nundcomar grounded upon that judgment, until the House shall instruct and order me otherwise; because I know, that, when I can discover their sentiments, I ought to know nothing here but what is in strict and literal obedience to them.