you can return here and with clear consciences pronounce upon your oaths that the impression made upon you by these pages is, that the author wrote them with the wicked, seditious, and corrupt intentions, charged by the information; you have then my full permission to find the defendant guilty. But if, on the other hand, the general tenour of the composition should impress you with respect for the author, and point him out to you as a man mistaken perhaps himself, but not seeking to deceive others :-If every line of the work shall present to you an intelligent animated mind, glowing with a Christian compassion towards a fellow man, whom he believed to be innocent, and with a patriot zeal for the liberty of his country, which he considered as wounded through the sides of an oppressed fellow citizen; if this shall be the impression on your consciences and understandings, when you are called upon to deliver your verdict; then hear from me, that you not only work private injustice, but break up the press of England, and surrender her rights and liberties forever if you convict

him.

Gentlemen, to enable you to form a true judgment of the meaning of this book, and of the intention of its author, and to expose the miserable juggle that is played off in the information, by the combination of sentences, which in the work itself have no bearing upon one another-I will first give you the publication, as it is charged on the record, and presented by the Attorney General in opening the case for the Crown; and I will then by reading the interjacent matter which is studiously kept out of sight, convince you of its true interpretation. The information, beginning with the first page of the book, charges, as a libel upon the house of commons, the following

sentence:

"The house of commons has now given its final decision, with regard to the merits and demerits of Mr. Hastings. The grand inquest of England have delivered their charges, and preferred their impeachment; their allegations are referred to proof; and

from the appeal to the collective wisdom and justice of the nation in the supreme tribunal of the kingdom, the question comes to be determined, whether Mr. Hastings be guilty or not guilty?"

It is but fair, however, to admit that the first sentence, which the most ingenious malice cannot torture into a criminal construction, is charged by the information rather as introductory to what is made to follow it, than as libellous in itself; for the attorney general, from this introductory passage in the first page, goes on at a leap to page thirteenth, and reads almost without a stop, as if it immediately followed the other.

"What credit can we give to multiplied and accumulated charges, when we find that they originate from misrepresentation and falsehood?"

From these two passages thus standing together without the intervenient matter which occupies thirteen pages, one would imagine that instead of investigating the probability or improbability of the guilt imputed to Mr. Hastings; instead of carefully examining the charges of the commons, and the defence of them which had been delivered before them, or which was preparing for the Lords; the author immediately, and in a moment after stating the mere fact of the impeachment, had decided that the act of the commons originated from misrepresentation and falsehood.

Gentlemen, in the same manner a veil is cast over all that is written in the next seven pages: for knowing that the context would help to the true construction, not only of the passages charged before, but of those in the sequel of this information; the attorney general, aware that it would convince every man who read it, that there was no intention in the author to calumniate the house of commons, passes over, by another leap, to page twenty; and in the same manner, without drawing his breath, and as if it directly followed the two former sentences, in the 1st and 13th pages, reads from page 20.

"An impeachment of errour in judgment with regard to the quantum of fine, and for an intention that never was executed and never known to the offending party, characterizes a tribunal of inquisition rather than a court of parliament."

From this passage, by another vault, he leaps over one and thirty pages more, to page fifty-one; where he reads the following sentence, which he mainly relies on, and upon which I shall by and by trouble you with some observations.

"Thirteen of them passed in the house of commons, not only without investigation but without being read; and the votes were given without inquiry, argument, or conviction. A majority had determined to impeach; opposite parties met each other, and justled in the dark, to perplex the political drama, and bring the hero to a tragick catastrophe."

From thence deriving new vigour from every exertion, he makes his last grand stride over forty-four pages, almost to the end of the book, charging a sentence in the ninety-fifth page.

So that out of a volume of one hundred and ten pages, the defendant is only charged with a few scattered fragments of sentences, picked out of three or four. Out of a work, consisting of about two thousand five hundred and thirty lines, of manly spirited eloquence, only forty or fifty lines are culled from different parts of it, and artfully put together, so as to rear up a libel, out of a false context by a suppo sed connexion of sentences with one another which are not only entirely independent, but which, when compared with their antecedents bear a totally different construction.

In this manner the greatest works upon government, the most excellent books of science, the sacred scriptures themselves, might be distorted into libels, by forsaking the general context, and hanging a meaning upon selected parts:-Thus, as in the text put by Algernon Sidney, "The fool has said in his heart there is no God." The attorney general on the principle of the present proceeding against this

pamphlet, might indict the publisher of the Bible for blasphemously denying the existence of heaven, in printing" There is no God." For these words alone, without the context, would be selected by the information; and the bible, like this book, would be underscored to meet it. Nor could the defendant in such a case have any possible defence, unless the jury were permitted to see, by the book itself, that the verse, instead of denying the existence of the Divinity, only imputed that imagination to a fool.

Gentlemen, having now gone through the attorney general's reading, the book shall presently come forward and speak for itself.

But before I can venture to lay it before you, it is proper to call your attention to how matters stood at the time of its publication; without which the author's meaning and intention cannot possibly be understood.

The commons of Great Britain in parliament assembled, had accused Mr. Hastings, as governour general of Bengal, of high crimes and misdemeanors; and their jurisdiction for that high purpose of national justice, was unquestionably competent. But it is proper you should know the nature of this inquisitorial capacity.-The commons in voting an impeachment, may be compared to a grand jury, finding a bill of indictment for the crown: neither the one nor the other can be supposed to proceed, but upon the matter which is brought before them; neither of them can find guilt without accusation, nor the truth of accusation without evidence.

When, therefore, we speak of the accuser or accusers, of a person indicted for any crime, although the grand jury are the accusers in form, by giving effect to the accusation; yet in common parlance we do not consider them the responsible authors of the prosecution. If I were to write of a most wicked indictment, found against an innocent man, which was preparing for trial, nobody who read it would conceive I meant to stigmatize the grand jury that

found the bill; but it would be inquired immediately, who was the prosecutor, and who were the witnesses on the back of it. In the same manner I mean to contend, that if this book is read with only common attention, the whole scope of it will be discovered to be this:

That in the opinion of the author, Mr. Hastings had been accused of malicious administration in India, from the heat and spleen of political divisions in parliament, and not for any zeal for national honour or justice; that the impeachment did not originate from government, but from a faction banded against it, which, by misrepresentation and violence, had fastened it on an unwilling house of commons; that prepossessed with this sentiment (which however unfounded, makes no part of the present business, since the publisher is not called before you for defaming individual members of the commons, but for a contempt of the commons as a body) the author pursues the charges, article by article; enters into a warm and animated vindication of Mr. Hastings, by regular answers to each of them; and that as far as the mind and soul of a man can be visible, I might almost say embodied in his writings, his intention throughout the whole volume appears to have been to charge with injustice the private accusers of Mr. Hastings, and not the house of commons as a body; which, undoubtedly, rather reluctantly gave way to, than heartily adopted the impeachment.

This will be found to be the palpable scope of the book; and no man who can read English, and who at the same time, will have the candour and common sense to take up his impressions from what is written in it, instead of bringing his own along with him to the reading of it, can possibly understand it otherwise.

But it may be said, that admitting this to be the scope and design of the author, what right had he to canvass the merits of an accusation upon the records of the commons; more especially while it was in the course of legal procedure. This I confess might