“My patience,” says he, “was exhausted.”  Your Lordships have, and ought to have, a judicial patience.  Mr. Hastings has none of any kind.  I hold that patience is one of the great virtues of a governor; it was said of Moses, that he governed by patience, and that he was the meekest man upon earth.  Patience is also the distinguishing character of a judge; and I think your Lordships, both with regard to us and with regard to him, have shown a great deal of it:  we shall ever honor the quality, and if we pretend to say that we have had great patience in going through this trial, so your Lordships must have had great patience in hearing it.  But this man’s patience, as he himself tells you, was soon exhausted.  “I considered,” he says, “the light in which such behavior would have been viewed by his native sovereign, and I resolved he should feel the power he had so long insulted.  Forty or fifty lacs of rupees would have been a moderate fine for Sujah ul Dowlah to exact,—­he who had demanded twenty-five lacs for the mere fine of succession, and received twenty in hand, and an increased rent tantamount to considerably above thirty lacs more; and therefore I rejected the offer of twenty, with which the Rajah would have compromised for his guilt when it was too late.”

Now, my Lords, observe who his models were, when he intended to punish this man for an insult on himself.  Did he consult the laws?  Did he look to the Institutes of Timour, or to those of Genghis Khan?  Did he look to the Hedaya, or to any of the approved authorities in this country?  No, my Lords, he exactly followed the advice which Longinus gives to a great writer:—­“Whenever you have a mind to elevate your mind, to raise it to its highest pitch, and even to exceed yourself, upon any subject, think how Homer would have described it, how Plato would have imagined it, and how Demosthenes would have expressed it; and when you have so done, you will then, no doubt, have a standard which will raise you up to the dignity of anything that human genius can aspire to.”  Mr. Hastings was calling upon himself, and raising his mind to the dignity of what tyranny could do, what unrighteous exaction could perform.  He considered, he says, how much Sujah Dowlah would have exacted, and that he thinks would not be too much for him to exact.  He boldly avows,—­“I raised my mind to the elevation of Sujah Dowlah; I considered what Cossim Ali Khan would have done, or Aliverdy Khan, who murdered and robbed so many, I had all this line of great examples before me, and I asked myself what fine they would have exacted upon such an occasion.  But,” says he, “Sujah Dowlah levied a fine of twenty lacs for a right of succession.”