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 priv5 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.

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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

then stood upon ground to-day from whence no argument of policy or justice could have removed them; because nothing could be more incompatible with either than appeals to the many upon subjects of judicature which, by common consent, a few are appointed to deter- 5 mine, and which must be determined by facts and principles which the multitude have neither leisure nor knowledge to investigate. But then, let it be remembered that it is for those who have the authority to accuse and punish, to set the example of and to enforce 10 this reserve which is so necessary for the ends of justice. Courts of law therefore, in England, never endure the publication of their records; and a prosecutor of an indictment would be attached for such a publication; and upon the same principle, a defendant would be punished 15 for anticipating the justice of his country by the publication of his defence, the public being no party to it until the tribunal appointed for its determination be open for its decision.

Gentlemen, you have a right to take judicial notice 20 of these matters without the proof of them by witnesses, for jurors may not only, without evidence, found their verdicts on facts that are notorious, but upon what they know privately themselves, after revealing it upon oath to one another, and therefore you are always to 25 remember that this book was written when the charges against Mr. Hastings, to which it is an answer, were, to the knowledge of the Commons (for we cannot presume our watchmen to have been asleep), publicly hawked about in every pamphlet, magazine, and newspaper in 30 the kingdom. You well know with what a curious appetite those charges were devoured by the whole public, interesting as they were, not only from their importance, but from the merit of their composition; certainly not so intended by the honorable and excellent composer 35

to oppress the accused, but because the commonest subjects swell into eloquence under the touch of his sublime genius. Thus, by the remissness of the Commons, who are now the prosecutors of this information, a sub5 ject of England, who was not even charged with contumacious resistance to authority, much less a proclaimed outlaw, and therefore fully entitled to every security which the customs and statutes of the kingdom hold out for the protection of British liberty, saw himself pierced. 10 with the arrows of thousands and ten thousands of libels.

Gentlemen, ere I venture to lay the book before you, it must be yet further remembered (for the fact is equally notorious) that under these inauspicious circum15 stances the trial of Mr. Hastings at the bar of the Lords had actually commenced long before its publication.

There the most august and striking spectacle was daily exhibited which the world ever witnessed. A vast stage 20 of justice was erected, awful from its high authority, splendid from its illustrious dignity, venerable from the learning and wisdom of its judges, captivating and affecting from the mighty concourse of all ranks and conditions which daily flocked into it, as into a theatre 25 of pleasure; there, when the whole public mind was at once awed and softened to the impression of every human affection, there appeared, day after day, one after another, men of the most powerful and exalted talents, eclipsing by their accusing eloquence the most boasted 30 harangues of antiquity - rousing the pride of national resentment by the boldest invectives against broken faith and violated treaties, and shaking the bosom with alternate pity and horror by the most glowing pictures of insulted nature and humanity; ever animated and 35 energetic from the love of fame, which is the inherent

passion of genius; firm and indefatigable from a strong prepossession of the justice of their cause.

Gentlemen, when the author sat down to write the book now before you, all this terrible, unceasing, exhaustless artillery of warm zeal, matchless vigor of 5 understanding, consuming and devouring eloquence, united with the highest dignity, was daily, and without prospect of conclusion, pouring forth upon one private, unprotected man, who was bound to hear it, in the face of the whole people of England, with reverential sub- 10 mission and silence. I do not complain of this, as I did of the publication of the charges, because it was what the law allowed and sanctioned in the course of a public trial; but when it is remembered that we are not angels, but weak fallible men, and that even the noble judges of 15 that high tribunal are clothed beneath their ermines with the common infirmities of man's nature, it will bring us all to a proper temper for considering the book itself, which will in a few moments be laid before you. But first, let me once more remind you that it was under 20 all these circumstances, and amidst the blaze of passion and prejudice which the scene I have been endeavoring faintly to describe to you might be supposed likely to produce, that the author, whose name I will now give to you, sat down to compose the book which is prosecuted 25 to-day as a libel.

The history of it is very short and natural.

The Rev. Mr. Logan, minister of the gospel at Leith, in Scotland, a clergyman of the purest morals, and, as you will see by and by, of very superior talents, well 30 acquainted with the human character, and knowing the difficulty of bringing back public opinion after it is settled on any subject, took a warm, unbought, unsolicited interest in the situation of Mr. Hastings, and determined, if possible, to arrest and suspend the public 35

judgment concerning him. He felt for the situation of a fellow-citizen exposed to a trial which, whether right or wrong, is undoubtedly a severe one; a trial certainly not confined to a few criminal acts like those we are 5 accustomed to, but comprehending the transactions of a whole life, and the complicated policies of numerous and distant nations; a trial which had neither visible limits to its duration, bounds to its expense, nor circumscribed compass for the grasp of memory or understanding; a 10 trial which had therefore broken loose from the common forms of decision, and had become the universal topic of discussion in the world, superseding not only every other grave pursuit, but every fashionable dissipation.

Gentlemen, the question you have therefore to try 15 upon all this matter is extremely simple. It is neither more nor less than this. At a time when the charges against Mr. Hastings were, by the implied consent of the Commons, in every hand and on every table; when, by their managers, the lightning of eloquence was inces20 santly consuming him, and flashing in the eyes of the public; when every man was, with perfect impunity, saying, and writing, and publishing just what he pleased of the supposed plunderer and devastator of nations; - would it have been criminal in Mr. Hastings himself to have re25 minded the public that he was a native of this free land, entitled to the common protection of her justice, and that he had a defence, in his turn, to offer to them, the outlines of which he implored them in the mean time to receive, as an antidote to the unlimited and unpunished 30 poison in circulation against him? This is, without color or exaggeration, the true question you are to decide; because I assert, without the hazard of contradiction, that if Mr. Hastings himself could have stood justified or excused in your eyes for publishing this 35 volume in his own defence, the author, if he wrote it