prisoner is directly or indirectly involved in every part of them.  If it be still objected, that these crimes are irrelevant to the charge, we answer, that we did not introduce them as matter of charge.  We say they were not irrelevant to the proof of the preamble of our charge, which preamble is perfectly relevant in all its parts.  That the matters stated in it are perfectly true we vouch the House of Commons, we vouch the very persons themselves who were concerned in the transactions.  When Arabic authors are quoted, and Oriental tales told about flashes of lightning and three seals, we quote the very parties themselves giving this account of their own conduct to a committee of the House of Commons.

Your Lordships will remember that a most reverend prelate, who cannot be named without every mark of respect and attention, conveyed a petition to your Lordships from a gentleman concerned in one of those narratives.  Upon your Lordships’ table that petition still lies.  For the production of this narrative we are not answerable to this House; your Lordships could not make us answerable to him; but we are answerable to our own House, we are answerable to our own honor, we are answerable to all the Commons of Great Britain for whatever we have asserted in their name.  Accordingly, General Burgoyne, then a member of this Committee of Managers, and myself, went down into the House of Commons; we there restated the whole affair; we desired that an inquiry should be made into it, at the request of the parties concerned.  But, my Lords, they have never asked for inquiry from that day to this.  Whenever he or they who are criminated (not by us, but in this volume of Reports that is in my hand) desire it, the House will give them all possible satisfaction upon the subject.

A similar complaint was made to the House of Commons by the prisoner, that matters irrelevant to the charge were brought up hither.  Was it not open to him, and has he had no friends in the House of Commons, to call upon the House, during the whole period of this proceeding, to examine into the particulars adduced in justification of the preamble of the charge against him, in justification of the covenants of the Company, in justification of the act of Parliament?  It was in his power to do it; it is in his power still; and if it be brought before that tribunal, to which I and my fellow Managers are alone accountable, we will lay before that tribunal such matters as will sufficiently justify our mode of proceeding, and the resolution of the House of Commons.  I will not, therefore, enter into the particulars (because they cannot be entered into by your Lordships) any further than to say, that, if we had ever been called upon to prove the allegations which we have made, not in the nature of a charge, but as bound in duty to this Court, and in justice to ourselves, we should have been ready to enter into proof.  We offered to do so, and we now repeat the offer.