We offered
to do so, and we now repeat the offer.
* * * * *
There was another complaint in the prisoner's petition, which did not
apply to the words of the preamble, but to an allegation in the charge
concerning abuses in the revenue, and the ill consequences which arose
from them. I allude to those shocking transactions, which nobody can
mention without horror, in Rampore and Dinagepore, during the government
of Mr. Hastings, and which we attempted to bring home to him. What did
he do in this case? Did he endeavor to meet these charges fairly, as he
might have done? No, my Lords: what he said merely amounted to
this:--"Examination into these charges would vindicate my reputation
before the world; but I, who am the guardian of my own honor and my own
interests, choose to avail myself of the rules and orders of this
House, and I will not suffer you to enter upon that examination."
My Lords, we admit, you are the interpreters of your own rules and
orders. We likewise admit that our own honor may be affected by the
character of the evidence which we produce to you. But, my Lords, they
who withhold their defence, who suffer themselves, as they say, to be
cruelly criminated by unjust accusation, and yet will not permit the
evidence of their guilt or innocence to be produced, are themselves the
causes of the irrelevancy of all these matters.
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