distinctions to a prince whom he meant to celebrate, that through a long succession of generations, he had been the progenitor of an able and virtuous citizen, who by force of the arts of peace, had corrected governments of oppression, and suppressed wars of rapine: Indole proh quanta juvenis, quantumque daturus This was what was said of the predecessor of the only person to whose eloquence it does not wrong that of the mover of this bill to be compared. But the Ganges and the Indus are the patrimony of the fame of my honourable friend, and not of Cicero. I confess, I anticipate with joy the reward of those, whose whole consequence, power, and authority, exist only for the benefit of mankind; and I carry my mind to all the people, and all the names and descriptions, that, relieved by this bill, will bless the labours of this parliament, and the confidence which the best House of Commons has given to him who the best deserves it. The little cavils of party will not be heard, where freedom and happiness will be felt. There is not a tongue, a nation, or religion in India, which will not bless the presiding care and manly beneficence of this House, and of him who proposes to you this great work. Your names will never be separted before the throne of the Divine Goodness, in whatever language, or with whatever rites, pardon is asked for sin, and reward for those who imitate the Godhead in his universal bounty to his creatures. These honours you deserve, and they will surely be paid, when all the jargon of influence, and party, and patronage, are swept into oblivion. DESCRIPTION OF THE CRUELTIES OF DEBI SING. MY lords, I am here obliged to offer some apology for the horrid scenes I am about to open. Permit me to make the same apology to your lordships, that was made by Mr. Patterson-a man with whose name I wish mine to be handed down to posterity. His apology is this-and it is minethat the punishments inflicted upon the ryots of Rumpore and of Dinagepore, were, in many instances, of such a nature, that I would rather wish to draw a veil over them, than shock your feelings by a detail. But it is necessary for the substantial ends of justice and humanity, and for the honour of government, that they should be exposed, that they should be recorded, and handed down to after ages: let this be my apology. My lords, when the people had been stript of every thing, it was, in some cases, suspected, and justly, that they had hid some share of the grain. Their bodies were then applied to the fiercest mode of torture, which was this: they began with winding cords about their fingers, till the flesh on each hand clung and was actually incorporated. Then they hammered wedges of wood and iron between those fingers, until they crushed and maimed those poor, honest, and laborious hands, which were never never lifted up to their mouths but with a scanty supply of provision. My lords, these acts of unparalleled cruelty, began with the poor ryots; but if they began there, there they did not stop. The heads of the villages, the leading yeomen of the country, respectable for their virtues, respectable for their age, were tied together, two and two, the unoffending and helpless, thrown across a bar, upon which they were hung with their feet uppermost, and there beat with bamboo canes on the soles of those feet, until the nails started from their toes, and then with the cudgels of their blind fury these poor wretches were afterwards beat about the head, until the blood gushed out at their mouth, nose, and ears. My lords, they did not stop here. Bamboos, wangees, rattans, canes, common whips, and scourges were not sufficient. They found a tree in the country which bears strong and sharp thorns-not satisfied with those other cruelties, they scourged them with these. Not satisfied with this, but searching every thing through the deepest parts of nature, where she seems to have forgot her usual benevolence, they found a poisonous plant, a deadly caustic, that inflames the part that is bruised, and often occasions death. This they applied to those wounds. My lords, we know that there are men (for so we are made) whom bodily pains cannot subdue. The mind of some men strengthens in proportion as the body suffers. But people who can bear up against their own tortures, cannot bear up against those of their children and their friends. To add, therefore, to their sufferings, the innocent children were brought forth, and cruelly scourged before the faces of their parents. They frequently bound the father and the son, face to face, arm to arm, body to body, and then flogged till the skin was torn from the flesh and thus they had the devilish satisfaction of knowing, that every blow must wound the body or the mind; for if one escaped the son, his sensibility was wounded by the knowledge he had that the blow had fallen upon his father; the same torture was felt by the father, when he knew that every blow that missed him had fallen upon his unfortunate son. : My lords, this was not, this was not all! The treatment of the females cannot be described. Virgins that were kept from the sight of the sun, were dragged into the public court that court which was intended to be a refuge against all oppression and there, in the presence of day, their deli cacies were offended, and their persons cruelly violated, by the basest of mankind. It did not end there: the wives of the men of the country only suffered less by this: they lost their honour in the bottom of the most cruel dungeons, in which they were confined. They were then dragged out naked, and in that situation exposed to public view, and scourged before all the people. My lords, here is my authority for otherwise you will not believe it possible. My lords, what will you feel when I tell you, that they put the nipples of the women into the cleft notches of sharp bamboos, and tore them from their bodies. What modesty in all nations most carefully conceals, these monsters revealed to view, and consumed by burning tortures, and cruel slow fires! My lords, I am ashamed to open it- horrid to tell! these infernal fiends, these monstrous tools of this monster Debi Sing, in defiance of every thing divine or human, planted death in the source of life! Peroration to MR. BURKE'S SPEECH on the Impeachment of Warren Hastings. MY lords, none but wicked, bloody, and rapacious persons can be employed to execute such a task. Therefore, I charge Mr. Hastings-and we shall charge him when we come to bring it more home to him-I charge him with having destroyed the whole system of government, which he had no right to destroy, in the six provincial councils-I charge him with having delegated away that power, which the act of parliament had directed him to preserve unalienably in himself—I charge him with having formed an osten sible committee to be instruments and tools at the enormous expence of 62,000l. a-year-I charge him with having appointed a person dewan to whom those tools were to be subservient, a man, whose name, to his own knowledge, by his own general recorded official transactions, by every thing that can make a man known, abhorred, and detested, was stamped with infamy; with giving him this whole power, which he had thus separated from the council general, and from the provincial councils-I charge him with taking bribes of Gunga Govind Sing-I charge him that he has not done that bribe-duty with fidelity; for there is something like a fidelity in the transactions of the very worst of men-I charge him with having robbed those people of whom he took the bribes-I charge him with having alienated the fortunes of widows-I charge him with having, without right, title, or purchase, taken away the lands of orphans, and given them to the very person under whose protection those orphans were I charge him with giving those very zemindaries to the most wicked of persons, knowing his wickedness; with having committed to him that great country, and with having wasted the country, destroyed the landed interest, cruelly harassed the peasants, burnt their houses, and destroyed their crops-I charge him with having tortured and dishonoured their persons, and destroyed the honour of the whole female race of that country. This I charge upon him in the name of the Commons of England. Now, my lords, what is it in this last moment that we want besides the cause of justice-the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms? Do you want a criminal, my lords? When was there so much iniquity applied to any one? No, my lords, with respect to India, you must not look to punish in India more; for Mr. Hastings has not left |