Good God! my
Lords, what shall we say in this stage of the business? The prisoner put
in an elaborate defence: he now disclaims that defence. He told us that
it was of his own writing, that he had been able to compose it in five
days; and he now gets five persons to contradict his own assertions, and
to disprove on oath his most solemn declarations.
My Lords, this business appears still more alarming, when we find not
only Mr. Hastings, but his whole Council, engaged in it. I pray your
Lordships to observe, that Mr. Halhed, a person concerned with Mr.
Hastings in compiling a code of Gentoo laws, is now found to be one of
the persons to whom this very defence is attributed which contains such
detestable and abominable doctrines. But are we to consider the contents
of this paper as the defence of the prisoner or not? Will any one say,
that, when an answer is sworn to in Chancery, when an answer is given
here to an impeachment of the Commons, or when a plea is made to an
indictment, that it is drawn by the defendant's counsel, and therefore
is not his? Did we not all hear him read this defence in part at our
bar?--did we not see him hand it to his secretary to have it read by his
son?--did he not then hear it read from end to end?--did not he himself
desire it to be printed, (for it was no act of ours,) and did he not
superintend and revise the press?--and has any breath but his own
breathed upon it? No, my Lords, the whole composition is his, by writing
or adoption; and never, till he found it pressed him in this House,
never, till your Lordships began to entertain the same abhorrence of it
that we did, did he disclaim it.
Pages:
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253