B

my own.

EFORE I enter upon my general defence, I humbly folicit the indulgence of this Honourable House to be permitted to preface it with a few neceffary obfervations, relative to the circumftances which have progreffively confpired to make me an object of the prefent inquiry. In the first place, I beg leave to remark, that I am here by no obtrufion of I have too humble a fenfe of my own confequence, to confider either my reputation, honour, fortune, or life, or all thefe interefts collectively, as having any claim to the smallest portion of the valuable time of this Houfe, on any ground, however just in itself, which has thefe only for its object. I have been brought before the notice of this Honourable House by the acts of others, independent of my will or defire; and all the participation which I have in it, is in the request made by member of this Houfe on my behalf, and at my fuggeftion, that fince it was deter mined that my conduct was to be arraigned before this Honourable Houfe, my are raignment might be speedy, and that I might have the time and means afforded me Lo provide the materials for my defence;

for after having been, during a course of five years, the continued fubject of the fame criminations, and from the fan e quarter, with the name of the Almighty folemnly invoked to atteft the pledge given to this Houfe, that the most undoubted proofs fhould be produced to authenticate them-1 allude, Mr. Speaker, to no declarations made in this Houfe, but to publications out of it-I may furely be allowed, even with a confcioufnefs of the pureft integrity, to wifh for a speedy accomplishment of a menace thus made, and for fuch profeffed purposes; and that it might not hang the denunciations of párliamentary vengeance over my head for ever.

Of the first effects of this injury I have a right to complain; for in these the injury affected the public alone, through their interefts committed to my charge. During a long and defperate struggle,with an accumulation of difficulties, and a host of natural enemies combined avainft our national poffeffions in Indi, when I required all the fupport and confidence of my fuperiors in the parent flate to give tfo fect to my exertions, all my actions were

reprobated

that no power upon earth had a right to impeach me for the exercife of a truft, which thofe for whom I held it, had repeatedly declared, and in the most authentic terms, that I had difcharged to their benefit and entire fatisfaction; yet I was glad to fee fome fubftantial ground on which I could build my hopes of a speedy trial and definite termination. There too my expectation failed me. The profecution began, not as is the universal practice of every fyftem of jurisprudence, established either in this or any other civilized nation, by the introduction of fpecific charges, and the examination of witneffes to prove them; for the latter indeed there was little need, fince my accufer had long before afferted, that he was in the actual poffeffion of proofs, and of fuch proofs as were to fill the breasts of this honourable affembly with horror. Why therefore aggravate them with new proofs? But witneffes were ordered to attend, and reams of official documents demanded, produced, and printed; additions were daily made to thefe during the course of many weeks, and the eyes of the world were fixed upon me as a man blackened by the imputation of fome unknown guilt, which was the blacker for its concealment. No grounds were alledged for the accumula tion of fuch a mass of evidence against me; no fpecific objects to which it was to be applied; nor was it known to this honourable Houfe, perhaps, not even to that member of the Houfe who had required thefe materials, what the charges were to be which he was to establish by them.

At length I heard that a day was fixed for the production of the charges; but here too I experienced a fresh caufe of difappointment and mortification. Three weeks were affigned for the term of their appearance, and when that term expired, this honourable Houfe knows (for I may not perhaps affirm what I bave heard) whether even then any of the charges were prefented, and whether, when they were prefented, they were optionally given.

In this long and painful interval, I myfelf, though the object of the inquiry, remained in total inaction, a mere spectator of the paffing scene; for I knew not, nor could I know, what defence to prepare, not knowing what charges were to require my defence; and when they were produced, I was told that I could not be admitted to my defence, becaufe by the rules of the Houfe, I could not know the charges exhibited against me, nor that any had been exhibited; nor indeed were all exhibited at

the fame time, but followed tardily, and the three laft (if indeed these are the last) not till last Wednesday. But though it might be informal in me to know the char ges, the public are certainly in poffeffion of all but the three laft, for they have been printed and publickly fold, and purchasers invited by an advertisement made in all the public papers, which ftated them, "Articles of Charge of High Crimes and "Mifdemeanors" against me by name, and the name of my accufer inferted by a conftruction marking him not as the pre fenter of the charge, but as the publisher of it. How much my reputation must have fuffered in the opinion of all mankind from this publication; how feverely my feelings must have been wounded by fo unfair and iniquitous an appeal to their judgment, while the charge itself, loaded as it was with crimination against me, yet waited its flow term of maturity for the examination of it before its allotted judges, I leave to the decifion of every member of this honourable Houfe, who will bring the question home to his own judgment andhis own paffions, by fuppofing that cafe to be his own, which I have defcribed as mine.

Nor is this the only injury of the kind that I have fuffered. Every daily paper has teemed with reflections upon me; and pamphlets, filled with the most fcandalous and libellous abuse, have been written on various fubjects of the charge, to influence the prejudices of the public against me; and it has been boafted that they have pro duced the effect.

Preffed by the load of flander thus heaped upon me, I refolved to try the only refource which afforded me a chance of redrefs; and in oppofition to many and weighty difcouragements, I threw myself upon the juftice of this honourable Houfe, and petitioned to be allowed to make my defence in perfon,and I fucceeded. Whether I owe this indulgence to your goodnefs, or your justice, I accept it with equal gratitude.

Of the difcouragements to which I allude, I fhall mention but two points; and thefe it is incumbent on me to mention, becaufe they relate to effects which the juf tice of this honourable Houfe may, and I truft will avert. The first is an objection to my being at all perfonally committed in my defence, fince in fo wide a field of dif- h cuffion it would be impoffible not to admit fome things of which an advantage d might be taken to turn them into evidence against myfelf; whereas another might as

well

well ufe as I could, or better, the fame materials of my defence, without involving me in the fame confequences. But I an fure that this honourable Houfe will yield me its protection against the cavils of unwarranted inference; and if the truth can tend to convict me, I am content to be myself the channel to convey it. The other objection lays in my own breast. It was not till Monday left that I formed the refolution; and I knew not then, whether I might not in confequence be laid under the obligation of preparing and completing in five days, and in effect fo it has proved, the refutation of charges which has been the labour of my acculer, armed with all the powers of Parliament, and at one time greater, to compile during as many years of almoft undisturbed leifure. But I knew myfelf equal to the undertaking; and I now only revert to my difficulties, that the confideration of them may befpeak the candid allowance of this honourable Houfe for any inaccuracies, or for any thing defective which may appear in my defence, but I claim no other indulgence on this account.

It might perhaps be expected, that I fhould object to the conftruction of the articles of which the charge is compofed; for, in truth, they are not charges, but hiftories and comments. But they are yet more; they are made up of mutilated quotations; of facts which have no mutual relation, but are forced by falfe arrangement into connection-of princi. ples of pernicious policy and falfe moraJity-allertions of guilt without proof, or the attempt to prove them;-interpreta tions of fecret motives and defigns which pailed within my own breaft, and which none but myself could know; actions of others imputed to me, in which I had no concern, or which paffed in oppofition to me, and epithets and invectives affixed to acts afcribed to me, equally to those which in the construction are bad, as to thofe which are indifferent, or even meritorious Thefe are artifices by which the most wary judgment might be furprized, that had nothing before it to repel their effects, hut which on the touch of truth difappear, and leave, not merely the conviction of their own fallacy, but the strong internal prefumption that the charges themfelves were formed under the conviction of their want of foundation; and as far as my feelings as a man will allow me to confider them in that tendency only, I am glad that they wear the form which they do wear.

With refpect to the general fubject of the charge, I must beg leave to observe to this honourable Houfe, that it has been compofed from a laboured fcrutiny of my whole official life, during a most impor tant and weighty adminiftration of this teen years, comprehending, perhaps, a greater variety of interefling events than have fallen to the lot of any man liv ing events not brought to the pub blic view by their notoriety alone, but all, the fubjects of minute record ;-mea fures propofed, with all their motives and objects diftinctly laid down in writing, with their effects difplayed by letters and official reports through every process of their operation; oppofed by every objection, and thofe too written, that the judg ment or ingenuity of my colleagues in office, among whom I had always opponents, could devife;-at times weakened, at others fufpended, and again resumed with their effect enfeebled; but my own refponfibility fill attending their iffue. Yet all my actions have undergone, and even during the actual progress of them, they underwent fuch a feverity inveftigation, that could fuit only a mind poffeffing in itself an abfolute exemption from error, In the prefent occafion I am put to a harder teft; for not my actions alone, but my words, and even my imputed thoughts, as at the final day of judgment, are wrested into accufation against me. And from whom is this ftate of perfection exacted? From a man who was feparated, while yet but a school-boy, from his native country, and from every advantage of that infrut on which might have better qualified him for the high offices, and arduous fituations, which it became his lot to fill ; and left to form his rule of conduct on his own practice, and the light of such an understanding as it had pleafed God to beftow on him.

I pafs over the first years of my life.—. Thefe no otherwife relate to the prefent purpofe, than as they recommended me fucceffively to the fucceffion of the govern ment of Fort St. George, to the govern ment of Fort William, and virtually to all the appointments which have fince followed.

I received the government of Bengal with incumbrances, which might have intimidated a firmer Spirit than mine; and I felt the perilous fituation in which it placed me.

I found myfelf the titular head of a numerous, and not always accordant, Council, appointed