But the great and serious evil which he complains of, as being occasioned by our delay, is of so extraordinary a nature that I must request your Lordships to examine it with extraordinary strictness and attention.  In the petition before your Lordships, the prisoner asserts that he was under the necessity, through his counsel and solicitors, “of collecting and collating from the voluminous records of the Company the whole history of his public life, in order to form a complete defence to every allegation which the Honorable House of Commons had preferred against him, and that he has expended upwards of thirty thousand pounds in preparing the materials of his defence.”

It is evident, my Lords, that the expenditure of this thirty thousand pounds is not properly connected with the delay of which he complains; for he states that he had incurred this loss merely in collecting and collating materials, previous to his defence before your Lordships.  If this were true, and your Lordships were to admit the amount as a rule and estimate by which the aggregate of his loss could be ascertained, the application of the rule of three to the sum and time given would bring out an enormous expenditure in the long period which has elapsed since the commencement of the trial,—­so enormous, that, if this monstrous load of oppression has been laid upon him by the delay of the Commons, I believe no man living can stand up in our justification.  But, my Lords, I am to tell your Lordships some facts, into which we trust you, will inquire:  for this business is not in our hands, nor can we lay it as a charge before you.  Your own Journals have recorded the document, in which the prisoner complains bitterly of the House of Commons, and indeed of the whole judicature of the country,—­a complaint which your Lordships will do well to examine.

When we first came to a knowledge of this petition, which was not till some time after it was presented, I happened to have conversation with a noble lord,—­I know not whether he be in his place in the House or not, but I think I am not irregular in mentioning his name.  When I mention Lord Suffolk, I name a peer whom honor, justice, veracity, and every virtue that distinguishes the man and the peer would claim for their own.  My Lord Suffolk told me, that, in a conversation with the late Lord Dover, who brought the prisoner’s petition into your House, he could not refrain from expressing his astonishment at that part of the petition which related to the expense Mr. Hastings had been at; and particularly as a complaint had been made in the House of the enormous expense of the prosecution, which at that time had only amounted to fourteen thousand pounds, although the expense of the prosecutor is generally greater than that of the defendant, and public proceedings more expensive than private ones.  Lord Dover said, that, before he presented the petition, he had felt exactly in the same manner; but that Mr. Hastings assured him