(The Managers withdrew: in a few minutes the Managers returned, again into the Hall.)
Mr. Burke. My Lords, the Managers have consulted among themselves upon this business; they first referred to your printed proceedings, in order to see the particular circumstance on which the observation of your Lordship is founded; we find it thus stated:—"Then the Managers for the Commons informed the Lords, that, saving to themselves their undoubted rights and privileges, the Commons were content to rest their charge here." We rested our charge there, not because we meant to efface any precedent matter of the charge which had been made by us, and of which the facts had been admitted by the defendant, but, simply saving our rights and privileges, that is, to resume, (and to make new matter, if we thought fit,) the Commons were content to rest the charge there.
I have further to remark to your Lordships, that the counsel for the defendant have opened a vast variety of matter that is not upon record, either on our part or on theirs, in order to illustrate and to support their cause; and they have spoken day after day upon the principles on which their defence was made. My great object now is an examination of those principles, and to illustrate the effects of these principles by examples which are not the less cogent, the less weighty, and the less known, because they are articles in this charge. Most assuredly they are not. If your Lordships recollect the speeches that were made here, you know that great merit was given to Mr. Hastings for matters that were not at all in the charge, and which would put us under the greatest difficulties, if we were to take no notice of them in our reply. For instance, his merits in the Mahratta war, and a great mass of matter upon that subject, were obliquely, and for other purposes, brought before you, upon which they argued. That immense mass of matter, containing an immense mass of principles, and which was sometimes supported by alleged facts, sometimes by none, they have opened and argued upon, as matter relative to principle. In answer to their argument, we propose to show the mischiefs that have happened from the mischievous principles laid down by Mr. Hastings, and the mischievous consequences of them.
If, however, after this explanation, your Lordships are of opinion that we ought not to be allowed to take this course, wishing to fall in with your Lordships' sentiments, we shall abandon it. But we will remind your Lordships that such things stand upon your records; that they stand unanswered and admitted on your records; and consequently they cannot be destroyed by any act of ours, but by a renunciation of the charge, which renunciation we cannot make, because the defendant has clearly and fully admitted it to be founded in fact. We cannot plead error; we cannot retract it. And why? Because he has admitted it. We therefore only remind your Lordships that the charge stands uncontradicted; and that the observation we intended to make upon it was to show your Lordships that the principles upon which he defends all such conduct are totally false and groundless. But though your Lordships should be of opinion that we cannot press it, yet we cannot abandon it; it is not in your power, it is not in our power, it is not in his power to abandon that charge. You cannot acquit him of that charge; it is impossible. If, however, your Lordships, for the accommodation of business, method of proceedings, or any circumstance of that kind, wish we should say no more upon the subject, we close the subject there. Your Lordships are in possession both of the charge and the admission; and we wish, and we cannot wish better than, to leave it as it is upon the record.
The Lord Chancellor here said,—The opinion of the Lords can only be with me matter of conjecture. I certainly was not commanded by the House to state the observation that had occurred to me; but in the position in which it now stands, I feel no difficulty in saying, as my own judgment, that nothing can be matter in reply that does not relate to those articles that were pressed in the original charge; and therefore, in this position of the business of reply, you cannot go into new matter arising out of other articles that were not originally insisted upon.
Mr. Burke. We were aware of the objection that might be made to admitting our observations, if considered as observations upon the 17th article, but not when considered with reference to facts on the record before you, for the purpose of disproving the principles upon which the defendant and his counsel had relied: that was the purpose for which we proposed chiefly to make them. But your Lordship's [the Lord Chancellor's] own personal authority will have great weight with us, and, unless we perceive some other peer differ from you, we will take it in the course we have constantly done. We never have sent your Lordships out of the hall to consent [consult?] upon a matter upon which that noble lord appeared to have formed a decision in his own mind; we take for granted that what is delivered from the woolsack, to which no peer expresses a dissent, is the sense of the House; as such we take it, and as such we submit to it in this instance.
Therefore, leaving this upon the record as it stands, without observing upon it, and submitting to your Lordships' decision, that we cannot, according to order, observe in reply upon what was not declared by us to be a part of the charges we meant to insist upon, we proceed to another business.]
We have already stated to your Lordships, and we beg to remind you of it, the state and condition of the country of Oude when Mr. Hastings first came to it,—his subsequent and immediate usurpation of all the powers of government, and the use he made of them,—the tyranny he exercised over the Nabob himself,—the tyranny he exercised upon his mother and grandmother, and all the other females of his family, and their dependants of every description, to the number of about eight hundred persons,—the tyranny exercised (though we are not at liberty to press it now) upon his brethren. We have shown you how he confiscated the property of all the jaghiredars, the nobility of the country. We have proved to your Lordships that he was well acquainted with all the misery and distress occasioned by these proceedings, and that he afforded the sufferers no relief. We now proceed to review the effect of this general mass of usurpation, tyranny, and oppression upon the revenues and the prosperity of the country.
Your Lordships will first be pleased to advert to the state in which Mr. Hastings found the country,—in what state he found its revenues,—who were the executive ministers of the government,—what their conduct was, and by whom they were recommended and supported. For the evidence of these facts we refer your Lordships to your printed Minutes: there, my Lords, they stand recorded: they never can be expunged out of your record, and the memory of mankind, whether we be permitted to press them at this time upon your Lordships or not. Your Lordships will there find in what manner the government was carried on in Oude in 1775, before the period of Mr. Hastings's usurpation. Mr. Hastings, you will find, has himself there stated that the minister was recommended by the Begums; and you will remark this, because Mr. Hastings afterwards makes her interference in the government of her son a part of his crimination of the Begum.