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I shall now, my Lords, proceed to state what has been already done in this cause, and in what condition it now stands for your judgment.

An immense mass of criminality was digested by a committee of the House of Commons; but although this mass had been taken from another mass still greater, the House found it expedient to select twenty specific charges, which they afterwards directed us, their Managers, to bring to your Lordships’ bar.  Whether that which has been brought forward on these occasions or that which was left behind be more highly criminal, I for one, as a person most concerned in this inquiry, do assure, your Lordships that it is impossible for me to determine.

After we had brought forward this cause, (the greatest in extent that ever was tried before any human tribunal, to say nothing of the magnitude of its consequences,) we soon found, whatever the reasons might be, without at present blaming the prisoner, without blaming your Lordships, and far are we from imputing blame to ourselves, we soon found that this trial was likely to be protracted to an unusual length.  The Managers of the Commons, feeling this, went up to their constituents to procure from them the means of reducing it within a compass fitter for their management and for your Lordships’ judgment.  Being furnished with this power, a second selection was made upon the principles of the first:  not upon the idea that what we left could be less clearly sustained, but because we thought a selection should be made upon some juridical principle.  With this impression on our minds, we reduced the whole cause to four great heads of guilt and criminality.  Two of them, namely, Benares and the Begums, show the effects of his open violence and injustice; the other two expose the principles of pecuniary corruption upon which the prisoner proceeded:  one of these displays his passive corruption in receiving bribes, and the other his active corruption, in which he has endeavored to defend his passive corruption by forming a most formidable faction both abroad and at home.  There is hardly any one act of the prisoner’s corruption in which there is not presumptive violence, nor any acts of his violence in which there are not presumptive proofs of corruption.  These practices are so intimately blended with each other, that we thought the distribution which we have adopted would best bring before you the spirit and genius of his government; and we were convinced, that, if upon these four great heads of charge your Lordships should not find him guilty, nothing could be added to them which would persuade you so to do.