To remove such an imputation from us, we assert that the Commons of
Great Britain are not to receive instructions about the language which
they ought to hold from the gentlemen who have made profitable studies
in the academies of Benares and of Oude. We know, and therefore do not
want to learn, how to comport ourselves in prosecuting the haughty and
overgrown delinquents of the East. We cannot require to be instructed by
them in what words we shall express just indignation at enormous crimes;
for we have the example of our great ancestors to teach us: we tread in
their steps, and we speak in their language.
Your Lordships well know, for you must be conversant in this kind of
reading, that you once had before you a man of the highest rank in this
country, one of the greatest men of the law and one of the greatest men
of the state, a peer of your own body, Lord Macclesfield. Yet, my Lords,
when that peer did but just modestly hint that he had received hard
measure from the Commons and their Managers, those Managers thought
themselves bound _seriatim_, one after another, to express the utmost
indignation at the charge, in the harshest language that could be used.
Why did they do so? They knew it was the language that became them.
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