And indeed, my Lords, the disproportion between crime and justice, when seen in the particular acts of either, would be so much to the advantage of crimes and criminals, that we should find it difficult to defend laws and tribunals, (especially in great and arduous cases like this,) if we did not look, not to the immediate, not to the retrospective, but to the provident operation of justice.  Its chief operation is in its future example; and this turns the balance, upon the total effect, in favor of vindictive justice, and in some measure reconciles a pious and humble mind to this great mysterious dispensation of the world.

Upon the charge of delay in this particular cause, my Lords, I have only to say that the business before you is of immense magnitude.  The prisoner himself says that all the acts of his life are committed in it.  With a due sense of this magnitude, we know that the investigation could not be short to us, nor short to your Lordships; but when we are called upon, as we have been daily, to sympathize with the prisoner in that delay, my Lords, we must tell you that we have no sympathy with him.  Rejecting, as we have done, all false, spurious, and hypocritical virtues, we should hold it to be the greatest of all crimes to bestow upon the oppressors that pity which belongs to the oppressed.  The unhappy persons who are wronged, robbed, and despoiled have no remedy but in the sympathies of mankind; and when these sympathies are suffered to be debauched, when they are perversely carried from the victim to the oppressor, then we commit a robbery still greater than that which was committed by the criminal accused.

My Lords, we do think this process long; we lament it in every sense in which it ought to be lamented; but we lament still more that the Begums have been so long without having a just punishment inflicted upon their spoiler.  We lament that Cheyt Sing has so long been a wanderer, while the man who drove him from his dominions is still unpunished.  We are sorry that Nobkissin has been cheated of his money for fourteen years, without obtaining redress.  These are our sympathies, my Lords; and thus we reply to this part of the charge.

My Lords, there are some matters of fact in this charge of delay which I must beg your Lordships will look into.  On the 19th of February, 1789, the prisoner presented a petition to your Lordships, in which he states, after many other complaints, that a great number of his witnesses were obliged to go to India, by which he has lost the benefit of their testimony, and that a great number of your Lordships’ body were dead, by which he has lost the benefit of their judgment.  As to the hand of God, though some members of your House may have departed this life since the commencement of this trial, yet the body always remains entire.  The evidence before you is the same; and therefore there is no reason to presume that your final judgment will be affected by these