5 if it immediately followed the other, this sentence: "What credit can we give to multiplied and accumulated charges when we find that they originate from misrepresentation and falsehood?" From these two passages thus standing together, without the intervenient matter which occupies thirteen pages, one would imagine that, instead of investigating the probability or improbability of the guilt imputed to Mr. Hastings; instead of carefully examining the Charges of 10 the Commons, and the defence of them which had been delivered before them, or which was preparing for the Lords; the author had immediately, and in a moment after stating the mere fact of the impeachment, decided that the act of the Commons originated from misrep15 resentation and falsehood. Gentlemen, in the same manner a veil is cast over all that is written in the next seven pages; for, knowing that the context would help to the true construction, not only of the passages charged before, but of those in the 20 sequel of this information, the Attorney-General, aware that it would convince every man who read it that there was no intention in the author to calumniate the House of Commons, passes over, by another leap, to page twenty; and in the same manner, without drawing his breath, 25 and as if it directly followed the two former sentences in the first and thirteenth pages, reads from page twentieth,"An impeachment of error in judgment with regard to the quantum of a fine, and for an intention that never was executed, and never known to the offending 30 party, characterizes a tribunal of inquisition rather than a Court of Parliament." From this passage, by another vault, he leaps over one-and-thirty pages more, to page fifty-one, where he reads the following sentence, which he mainly relies on, 35 and upon which I shall by and by trouble you with some observations: "Thirteen of them passed in the House of Commons, not only without investigation, but without being read; and the votes were given without inquiry, argument, or conviction. A majority had determined to impeach; opposite parties met each other, and 'jostled 5 in the dark,' to perplex the political drama, and bring the hero to a tragic catastrophe." From thence, deriving new vigor from every exertion, he makes his last grand stride over forty-four pages more, almost to the end of the book, charging a sentence 10 in the ninety-fifth page. So that, out of a volume of one hundred and ten pages, the defendant is only charged with a few scattered fragments of sentences, picked out of three or four. Out of a work consisting of about two thousand five hundred 15 and thirty lines of manly, spirited eloquence, only forty or fifty lines are culled from different parts of it, and artfully put together, so as to rear up a libel out of a false context, by a supposed connection of sentences with one another which are not only entirely independent, 20 but which, when compared with their antecedents, bear a totally different construction. In this manner the greatest works upon government, the most excellent books of science, the sacred Scriptures themselves, might be distorted into libel; by forsaking the general context, 25 and hanging a meaning upon selected parts. Thus, as in the text put by Algernon Sidney, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God," the Attorney-General, on the principle of the present proceeding against this pamphlet, might indict the publisher of the Bible for 30 blasphemously denying the existence of Heaven in printing, "There is no God; "these words alone, without the context, would be selected by the information, and the Bible, like this book, would be underscored to meet it nor could the defendant, in such a case, have any 5 possible defence, unless the jury were permitted to see, by the book itself, that the verse, instead of denying the existence of the Divinity, only imputed that imagination to a fool. Gentlemen, having now gone through the AttorneyGeneral's reading, the book shall presently come forward and speak for itself; but before I can venture to lay it before you, it is proper to call your attention to how matters stood at the time of its publication, without 10 which the author's meaning and intention cannot possibly be understood. The Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, had accused Mr. Hastings, as Governor-General of Bengal, of high crimes and misdemeanors; and their 15 jurisdiction, for that high purpose of national justice, was unquestionably competent; but it is proper you should know the nature of this inquisitorial capacity. The Commons, in voting an impeachment, may be compared to a grand jury finding a bill of indictment for the 20 Crown: neither the one nor the other can be supposed to proceed but upon the matter which is brought before. them; neither of them can find guilt without accusation, nor the truth of accusation, without evidence. When, therefore, we speak of the accuser or accusers of a person 25 indicted for any crime, although the grand jury are the prosecutors in form, by giving effect to the accusation, yet, in common parlance, we do not consider them as the responsible authors of the prosecution. If I were to write of a most wicked indictment, found against an 30 innocent man, which was preparing for trial, nobody who read it would conceive I meant to stigmatize the grand jury that found the bill; but it would be inquired immediately, who was the prosecutor and who were the witnesses on the back of it? In the same manner I mean to 35 contend that if this book is read with only common atten - tion, the whole scope of it will be discovered to be this: that, in the opinion of the author, Mr. Hastings had been accused of mal-administration in India from the heat and spleen of political divisions in Parliament, and not from any zeal for national honor or justice; that the impeach- 5 ment did not originate from Government, but from a faction banded against it, which, by misrepresentation and violence, had fastened it on an unwilling House of Commons; that, prepossessed with this sentiment which, however unfounded, makes no part of the present busi- 10 ness, since the publisher is not called before you for defaming individual members of the Commons, but for a contempt of the Commons as a body - the author pursues the charges, article by article; enters into a warm and animated vindication of Mr. Hastings, by regular answers to 15 each of them; and that, as far as the mind and soul of a man can be visible I might almost say embodied — in his writings, his intention throughout the whole volume appears to have been to charge with injustice the private accusers of Mr. Hastings, and not the House of Commons 20 as a body, which undoubtedly rather reluctantly gave way to, than heartily adopted, the impeachment. This will be found to be the palpable scope of the book; and no man who can read English, and who, at the same time, will have the candor and common sense to take up 25 his impressions from what is written in it, instead of bringing his own along with him to the reading of it, can possibly understand it otherwise. But it may be said, admitting this to be the scope and design of the author, what right had he to canvass 30 the merits of an accusation upon the records of the Commons, more especially while it was in the course of legal procedure? This, I confess, might have been a serious question; but the Commons, as prosecutors of this information, seem to have waived or forfeited their right to 35 ask it. Before they sent the Attorney-General into this place to punish the publication of answers to their charges, they should have recollected that their own want of circumspection in the maintenance of their priv 5 ileges, and in the protection of persons accused before them, had given to the public the charges themselves, which should have been confined to their own Journals. The course and practice of Parliament might warrant the printing of them for the use of their own members; but 10 there the publication should have stopped, and all further progress been resisted by authority. If they were resolved to consider answers to their charges as a contempt of their privileges, and to punish the publication of them by such severe prosecutions, it would have well 15 become them to have begun first with those printers who, by publishing the charges themselves throughout the whole kingdom, or rather throughout the whole civilized world, were anticipating the passions and judgments of the public against a subject of England upon his trial, 20 so as to make the publication of answers to them not merely a privilege, but a debt and duty to humanity and justice. The Commons of Great Britain claimed and exercised the privilege of questioning the innocence of Mr. Hastings by their impeachment; but as, how25 ever questioned, it was still to be presumed and protected until guilt was established by a judgment, he whom they had accused had an equal claim upon their justice to guard him from prejudice and misrepresentation until the hour of trial. 30 Had the Commons, therefore, by the exercise of their high, necessary, and legal privileges, kept the public aloof from all canvass of their proceedings by an early punishment of printers who, without reserve or secrecy, had sent out the charges into the world from a thousand 35 presses in every form of publication, they would have |