to

sciousness of his guilt—it is this that inflames the minds of those who watch his transactions, and roots out all pity for a person who could act under such an influence. We conceive of such tyrants as Caligula and Nero, bred up to tyranny and oppression, having had no equals to controul them—no moment for reflection-we conceive that, if it could have been possible to seize the guilty profligates for a moment, you might bring conviction to their hearts and repentance to their minds. But when you see a cool, reasoning, deliberate tyrant — one who was not born and bred to arrogance, who has been nursed in a mercantile line who has been used to look round among his fellow - subjects transact business with his equals to account for conduct to his master, and, by that wise system of the Company, to detail all his transactions—who never could fly one moment from himself, but must be obliged every night to sit down and hold up a glass to his own soul -who could never be blind to his deformity; and who must have brought his conscience not only to connive at but to approve of it—this it is that distinguishes it from the worst cruelties, the worst enormities of those who, born to tyranny, and finding no superior, no adviser, have gone to the last presumption that there were none above to controul them hereafter. This is a circumstance that aggravates the whole of the guilt of the unfortunate gentleman we are now arraigning at your bar."

We now come to the Peroration, in which, skilfully and without appearance of design, it is contrived that the same sort of appeal to the purity of British justice, with which the oration

opened, should, like the repetition of a solemn strain of music, recur at its close,-leaving in the minds of the Judges a composed and concentrated feeling of the great public duty they had to perform, in deciding upon the arraignment of guilt brought before them. The Court of Directors, it appeared, had ordered an enquiry into the conduct of the Begums, with a view to the restitution of their property, if it should appear that the charges against them were unfounded; but to this proceeding Mr. Hastings objected, on the ground that the. Begums themselves had not called for such interference in their favour, and that it was inconsistent with the "Majesty of Justice" to condescend to volunteer her services. The pompous and jesuitical style in which this singular doctrine is expressed, in a letter addressed by the Governor-General to Mr. Macpherson, is thus ingeniously turned to account by the orator, in winding up his masterly statement to a close :—

"And now before I come to the last magnificent paragraph, let me call the attention of those who, possibly, think themselves capable of judging of the dignity and character of justice in this country;-let me call the attention of those who, arrogantly perhaps presume that they understand what the features, what the duties of justice are here and in India ;-let them learn a lesson from

"If nothing (says Mr. Mill) remained to stain the reputation of Mr. Hastings but the principles avowed in this singular pleading, his character, among the friends of justice, be sufficiently determined."

this great statesman, this enlarged, this liberal philosopher :- I hope I shall not depart from the simplicity of official language in saying, that the Majesty of Justice ought to be approached with solicitation, not descend to provoke or invite it, much less to debase itself by the suggestion of wrongs and the promise of redress, with the denunciation of punishment before trial, and even before accusation.' This is the exhortation which Mr. Hastings makes to his Counsel. This is the character which he gives of British justice.

" But I will ask Your Lordships, do you approve this representation? Do you feel that this is the true image of justice! Is this the character of British Justice? Are these her features? Is this her countenance? Is this her gait or her mien? No, I think even now I hear you calling upon me to turn from this vile libel, this base caricature, this Indian pagod, formed by the hand of guilty and knavish tyranny, to dupe the heart of ignorance, to turn from this deformed idol to the true Majesty of Justice here. Here, indeed, I see a different form, enthroned by the sovereign hand of Freedom,awful without severity-commanding without pridevigilant and active without restlessness or suspicionsearching and inquisitive without meanness or debasement—not arrogantly scorning to stoop to the voice of afflicted innocence, and in its loveliest attitude when bending to uplift the suppliant at its feet.

"It is by the majesty, by the form of that Justice, that I do conjure and implore Your Lordships to give your minds to this great business; that I exhort you to look, not so much to words which may be denied or quibbled away, but to the plain facts,-to weigh and

VOL. II.

4

consider the testimony in your own minds: we know the result must be inevitable. Let the truth appear and our cause is gained. It is this, I conjure Your Lordships, for your own honour, for the honour of the nation, for the honour of human nature, now entrusted to your care, -it is this duty that the Commons of England, speaking through us, claims at your hands.

They exhort you to it by every thing that calls sublimely upon the heart of man, by the Majesty of that Justice which this bold man has libelled, by the wide fame of your own tribunal, by the sacred pledge by which you swear in the solemn hour of decision, knowing that that decision will then bring you the highest reward that ever blessed the heart of man, the consciousness of having done the greatest act of mercy for the world, that the earth has ever yet received from any hand but Heaven. -My Lords, I have done."

Though I have selected some of the most remarkable passages of this Speech, it would be

* I had selected many more, but must confess that they appeared to me, when in print, so little worthy of the reputation of the Speech, that I thought, it would be, on the whole, more prudent to omit them. Even of the passages here cited, I speak rather from my imagination of what they must have been, than from my actual feeling of what they

are.

The character given of such Reports by Lord Loughborough, is, no doubt, but too just. On a motion made by Lord Stanhope, (April 29, 1794,) that the short-hand writers employed on Hastings's trial, should be summoned to the bar of the House, to read their minutes, Lord Loughborough, in the course of his observations on the motion said, "God forbid that ever their Lordships should call on the short-hand writers to publish their notes:-for, of all people, short-hand writers were ever the farthest from correctness, and there were no man's words they ever heard that they again re

unfair to judge of it even from these specimens. A Report, verbatim, of any effective speech must always appear diffuse and ungraceful in the perusal. The very repetitions, the redundancy, the accumulation of epithets, which gave force and momentum in the career of delivery, but weaken and encumber the march of the style, when read. There is, indeed, the same sort of difference between a faithful short-hand Report, and those abridged and polished records which Burke has left us of his speeches, as there is between a cast taken directly from the face, (where every line is accurately preserved, but all the blemishes and excrescences are in rigid preservation also,) and a model, over which the correcting hand has passed, and all that was minute or superflous is generalised and softened away.

Neither was it in such rhetorical passages as abound, perhaps, rather lavishly, in this Speech, that the chief strength of Mr. Sheridan's talent lay. Good sense and wit were the great weapons of his oratory-shrewdness in detecting the weak points of an adversary, and infinite powers of raillery in exposing it. These were faculties which he possessed in a greater degree than any of his contemporaries; and so well did he himself

turned. They were in general ignorant, as acting mechanically; and by not considering the antecedent, and catching the sound, and not the sense, they perverted the sense of the speaker, and made him appear as ignorant as themselves.”