* * * * *

There was another complaint in the prisoner’s petition, which did not apply to the words of the preamble, but to an allegation in the charge concerning abuses in the revenue, and the ill consequences which arose from them.  I allude to those shocking transactions, which nobody can mention without horror, in Rampore and Dinagepore, during the government of Mr. Hastings, and which we attempted to bring home to him.  What did he do in this case?  Did he endeavor to meet these charges fairly, as he might have done?  No, my Lords:  what he said merely amounted to this:—­“Examination into these charges would vindicate my reputation before the world; but I, who am the guardian of my own honor and my own interests, choose to avail myself of the rules and orders of this House, and I will not suffer you to enter upon that examination.”

My Lords, we admit, you are the interpreters of your own rules and orders.  We likewise admit that our own honor may be affected by the character of the evidence which we produce to you.  But, my Lords, they who withhold their defence, who suffer themselves, as they say, to be cruelly criminated by unjust accusation, and yet will not permit the evidence of their guilt or innocence to be produced, are themselves the causes of the irrelevancy of all these matters.  It cannot justly be charged on us; for we have never offered any matter here which we did not declare our readiness upon the spot to prove.  Your Lordships did not think fit to receive that proof.  We do not now censure your Lordships for your determination:  that is not the business of this day.  We refer to your determination for the purpose of showing the falsehood of the imputation which the prisoner has cast upon us, of having oppressed him by delay and irrelevant matter.  We refer to it in order to show that the oppression rests with himself, that it is all his own.

Well, but Mr. Hastings complained also to the House of Commons.  Has he pursued the complaint?  No, he has not; and yet this prisoner, and these gentlemen, his learned counsel, have dared to reiterate their complaints of us at your Lordships’ bar, while we have always been, and still are, ready to prove both the atrocious nature of the facts, and that they are referable to the prisoner at your bar.  To this, as I have said before, the prisoner has objected; this we are not permitted to do by your Lordships:  and therefore, without presuming to blame your determination, I repeat, that we throw the blame directly upon himself, when he complains that his private character suffers without the means of defence, since he objects to the use of means of defence which are at his disposal.

Having gone through this part of the prisoner’s recriminatory charge, I shall close my observations on his demeanor, and defer my remarks on his complaint of our ingratitude until we come to consider his set-off of services.