I charge him with taking bribes of Gunga Govind Sing.

I charge him with not 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 those 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 given 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 dependants 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 that country.

In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villany 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 one?  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 bounds 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, nothing in the range of human imagination, 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 of the crown to be.  We have here all the branches of the royal family, in a situation between majesty and subjection, between the sovereign