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that the rebel who rises against the government should have suffered; but I missed on the scaffold the right honourable gentleman. Two desperate parties were in arms against the constitution. The right honourable gentleman belonged to one of those parties, and deserved death. I could not join the rebel-I could not join the government-I could not join torture-I could not join half-hanging-I could not join freequarter-I could take part with neither. I was, therefore, absent from a scene where I could not be active without selfreproach, nor indifferent with safety.

Many honourable gentlemen thought differently from me: I respect their opinions, but I keep my own; and I think now as I thought then, that the treason of the minister against the liberties of the people, was infinitely worse than the rebellion of the people against the minister.

I have returned, not, as the right honourable member has said, to raise another storm-I have returned to discharge an honourable debt of gratitude to my country, that conferred a great reward for past services; which, I am proud to say, was not greater than my desert. I have returned to protect that constitution, of which I was the parent and the founder, from the assassination of such men as the honourable gentleman and his unworthy associates. They are corrupt-they are seditious;-and they, at this very moment, are in a conspiracy against their country. I have returned to refute a libel, as false as it is malicious, given to the public under the appellation of a Report of the Committee of the Lords. Here I stand, ready for impeachment or trial: I dare accusation. I defy the honourable gentleman; I defy the government; I defy the whole phalanx: let them come forth. I tell the ministers I will neither give them quarter, nor take it! I am here to lay the shattered remains of my constitution on the floor of this House, in defence of the liberties of my country!

XVI.-MR. CURRAN, IN DEFENCE OF FINNERTY.

Is a tyranny of this kind to be borne with, where law is said to exist? Shall the horrors which surround the informer, the ferocity of his countenance, and the terrors of his voice, cast such a wide and appalling influence, that none dare approach and save the victim whom he marks for ignominy and death? Gentlemen, are you prepared, I ask you seriously, are you prepared to embark your respectable characters in the same vessel with this detestable informer? Are you prepared, when

he shall come forward against ten thousand of your fellowcitizens, to assist him in digging the graves which he has destined to receive them, one by one? No! could your hearts yield for a moment to the suggestion, your own reflections would vindicate the justice of God, and the insulted character of man; you would fly from the secrets of your chamber, and take refuge in the multitude, from those "compunctious visitings" which meaner men could not look on without horror. Do not think I am speaking disrespectfully of you when I say, that, while such an informer can be found, it may be the lot of the proudest among you to be in the dock instead of the jury-box: how then, on such an occasion, would any of you feel, if such evidence as has been heard this day were adduced against you?

The application affects you-you shrink from the imaginary situation. Remember, then, the great mandate of your religion, and "Do unto all men as you would they should do unto you." Why do you condescend to listen to me with such attention? Why are you so anxious, if, even from me, anything should fall, tending to enlighten you on the present awful occasion? It is because, bound by the sacred obligation of an oath, your hearts will not allow you to forfeit it. Have you any doubt that it is the object of the informer to take-down the prisoner for the reward that follows? Have you not seen with what more than instinctive keenness this blood-hound has pursued his victim? how he has kept him in view from place to place, until he hunts him through the avenues of the court to where the unhappy man now stands, hopeless of all succour but that which your verdict shall afford? I have heard of assassination by sword, by pistol, and by dagger; but here is a wretch who would dip the Evangelists in blood: if he think he has not sworn his victim to death, he is ready to swear, without mercy and without end. But, oh! do not, I conjure you, suffer him to take an oath; the arm of the murderer should not pollute the purity of the Gospel: if he will swear, let it be on the knife, the proper symbol of his profession!

XVII.-MR. CURRAN, ON UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION.

I PUT it to your oaths :-do you think that a blessing of that kind-that a victory obtained by justice, over bigotry and oppression-should have a stigma cast upon it, by an ignominious sentence upon men bold and honest enough to pro

pose that measure?-to propose the redeeming of Religion from the abuses of the Church; the reclaiming of three millions of men from bondage; and giving liberty to all who had a right to demand it?-giving, I say, in the so-much censured words of this paper, giving "Universal Emancipation!" I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes Liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, British soil;-which proclaims, even to the stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation! No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced;—no matter what complexion, incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down;— no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery ;-the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of the chains that burst from around him; and he stands-redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of "Universal Emancipation!"

XVIII.-LORD ERSKINE, IN DEFENCE OF MR. STOCKDALE.

GENTLEMEN of the jury,-If this be a wilfully false account of the instructions given to Mr. Hastings for his government, and of his conduct under them, the author and publisher of this defence deserves the severest punishment, for a mercenary imposition on the public. But if it be true that he was directed to make the "safety and prosperity of Bengal the first object of his attention," and that, under his administration, it has been safe and prosperous; if it be true that the security and preservation of our possessions and revenues in Asia, were marked out to him as the great leading principle of his government; and that those possessions and revenues, amidst unexampled dangers, have been secured and preserved; then a question may be unaccountably mixed with your consideration, much beyond the consequence of the present prosecution; involving, perhaps, the merit of the impeachment itself which gave it birth;-a question which the Commons, as prosecutors of Mr. Hastings, should, in common prudence, have avoided; unless, regretting the unwieldy length of their proceedings against him, they wished to afford him the opportunity of

this strange anomalous defence. For, although I am neither his counsel, nor desire to have any thing to do with his guilt or innocence; yet, in the collateral defence of my client, I am driven to state matter which may be considered by many as hostile to the impeachment. For, if our dependencies have been secured, and their interests promoted, I am driven, in defence of my client, to remark, that it is mad and preposterous to bring, to the standard of justice and humanity, the exercise of a dominion founded upon violence and terror. It may, and must be true, that Mr. Hastings has repeatedly offended against the rights and privileges of Asiatic government, if he was the faithful deputy of a power which could not maintain itself for an hour without trampling upon both; he may, and must, have offended against the laws of God and nature, if he was the faithful viceroy of an empire wrested in blood from the people to whom God and nature had given it; he may, and must, have preserved that unjust dominion over timorous and abject nations by a terrifying, overbearing, insulting superiority, if he was the faithful administrator of your government: which, having no root in consent or affection, no foundation in similarity of interests, nor support from any one principle which cements men together in society, could only be upheld by alternate stratagem and force. The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilization, still occasionally start up in all the vigour and intelligence of insulted nature:-to be governed at all, they must be governed with a rod of iron; and our empire in the East would, long since, have been lost to Great Britain, if civil skill and military prowess had not united their efforts to support an authority which heaven never gave, by means which it never can

sanction.

Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject; and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books; but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself, amongst reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British colony; holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his

unlettered eloquence. "Who is it," said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure-" who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself in the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend it!" said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and, depend upon it, nothing but fear will control, where it is vain to look for affection.

These reflections are the only antidotes to those anathemas of superhuman eloquence which have lately shaken these walls that surround us. If England, from a lust of ambition and dominion, will insist on maintaining a despotic rule over distant nations, and give commission to her viceroys to govern them, with no other instructions than to preserve them, and to secure permanently their revenues; with what consistency can she place herself in the moral chair, and affect to be shocked at the execution of her own orders? Such a proceeding, gentlemen, begets serious reflection. It would be better, perhaps, for the masters and servants of all such governments, to join in supplication, that the great Avenger of violated humanity may not confound them together in one common judgment.

XIX.-LORD BROUGHAM, ON TAXATION.

PERMIT me to inform you what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory:-Taxes!-upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot-taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste-taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion-taxes on everything on earth, and the waters under the earth, on everything that comes from abroad, or is grown at home-taxes upon the raw material-taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man-taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health-on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal—on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice-on the brass nails

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