their true and natural service,—­and that in the pursuit of wickedness, in the following it through all the winding recesses and mazes of its artifices, we shall show as much vigor, as much constancy, as much diligence, energy, and perseverance, as any others can do in endeavoring to elude the laws and triumph over the justice of their country.  My Lords, we have thought it the more necessary to say this, because it has been given out that we might faint in this business.  No:  we follow, and trust we shall always follow, that great emblem of antiquity, in which the person who held out to the end of a long line of labors found the reward of all the eleven in the twelfth.  Our labor, therefore, will be our reward; and we will go on, we will pursue with vigor and diligence, in a manner suitable to the Commons of Great Britain, every mode of corruption, till we have thoroughly eradicated it.

I think it necessary to say a word, too, upon another circumstance, of which there is some complaint, as if some injustice had arisen from voluntary delay on our part.

I have already alluded to, first, the melancholy, then the joyful occasion of this delay; and I shall now make one remark on another part of the complaint, which I understand was formally made to your Lordships soon after we had announced our resolution to proceed in this great cause of suffering nations before you.  It has been alleged, that the length of the pursuit had already very much distressed the person who is the object of it,—­that it leaned upon a fortune unequal to support it,—­and that 30,000_l._ had been already spent in the preliminary preparations for the defence.

My Lords, I do admit that all true, genuine, and unadulterated justice considers with a certain degree of tenderness the person whom it is called to punish, and never oppresses those by the process who ought not to be oppressed but by the sentence of the court before which they are brought.  The Commons have heard, indeed, with some degree of astonishment, that 30,000_l._ hath been laid out by Mr. Hastings in this business.  We, who have some experience in the conduct of affairs of this nature, we, who profess to proceed with regard not to the economy so much as to the rigor of this prosecution, (and we are justified by our country in so doing,) upon a collation and comparison of the public expenses with those which the defendant is supposed to have incurred, are much surprised to hear it.  We suppose that his solicitors can give a good account to him of those expenses,—­that the thing is true,—­and that he has actually, through them, incurred this expense.  We have nothing to do with this:  but we shall remove any degree of uneasiness from your Lordships’ minds, and from our own, when we show you in the charge which we shall bring before you this day, that one bribe only received by Mr. Hastings, the smallest of his bribes, or nearly the smallest, the bribe received from Rajah Nobkissin, is alone more than equal to have paid all the charges Mr. Hastings is stated to have incurred; and if this be the case, your Lordships will not be made very uneasy in a case of bribery by finding that you press upon the sources of peculation.