These presumptions mostly go to the intention.  In all criminal cases, the crime (except where the law itself implies malice) consists rather in the intention than the action.  Now the intention is proved but by two ways:  either, 1st, by confession,—­this first case is rare, but simple,—­2dly, by circumstantial proof,—­this is difficult, and requires care and pains.  The connection of the intention and the circumstances is plainly of such a nature as more to depend on the sagacity of the observer than on the excellence of any rule.  The pains taken by the Civilians on that subject have not been very fruitful; and the English law-writers have, perhaps as wisely, in a manner abandoned the pursuit.  In truth, it seems a wild attempt to lay down any rule for the proof of intention by circumstantial evidence.  All the acts of the party,—­all things that explain or throw light on these acts,—­all the acts of others relative to the affair, that come to his knowledge, and may influence him,—­his friendships and enmities, his promises, his threats, the truth of his discourses, the falsehood of his apologies, pretences, and explanations, his looks, his speech, his silence where he was called to speak,—­everything which tends to establish the connection between all these particulars,—­every circumstance, precedent, concomitant, and subsequent, become parts of circumstantial evidence.  These are in their nature infinite, and cannot be comprehended within any rule or brought under any classification.

Now, as the force of that presumptive and conjectural proof rarely, if ever, depends on one fact only, but is collected from the number and accumulation of circumstances concurrent in one point, we do not find an instance, until this trial of Warren Hastings, Esquire, (which has produced many novelties,) that attempts have been made by any court to call on the prosecutor for an account of the purpose for which he means to produce each particle of this circumstantial evidence, to take up the circumstances one by one, to prejudge the efficacy of each matter separately in proving the point,—­and thus to break to pieces and to garble those facts, upon the multitude of which, their combination, and the relation of all their component parts to each other and to the culprit, the whole force and virtue of this evidence depends.  To do anything which can destroy this collective effect is to deny circumstantial evidence.

Your Committee, too, cannot but express their surprise at the particular period of the present trial when the attempts to which we have alluded first began to be made.  The two first great branches of the accusation of this House against Warren Hastings, Esquire, relate to public and notorious acts, capable of direct proof,—­such as the expulsion of Cheyt Sing, with its consequences on the province of Benares, and the seizure of the treasures and jaghires of the Begums of Oude.  Yet, in the proof of those crimes, your Committee cannot justly complain that