ghter faults; but then they ought to be urged as
such,--with modesty, with humility, with confession of the faults, and
not with a proud and insolent defiance. They should not be stated as
proofs that he stands justified in the eye of mankind for committing
unexampled and enormous crimes. Indeed, humility, suppliant guilt,
always makes impression in our bosoms, so that, when we see it before
us, we always remember that we are all frail men; and nothing but a
proud defiance of law and justice can make us forget this for one
moment. I believe the Commons of Great Britain, and I hope the persons
that speak to you, know very well how to allow for the faults and
frailties of mankind equitably.

Let us now see what are the merits which Mr. Hastings has set up against
the just vengeance of his country, and against his proved delinquencies.
From the language of the prisoner, and of his counsel, you would imagine
some great, known, acknowledged services had been done by him. Your
Lordships recollect that most of these presumed services have been
considered, and we are persuaded justly considered, as in themselves
crimes. He wishes your Lordships to suppose and believe that these
services were put aside either because we could not prove the facts
against him or could not make out that they were criminal, and
consequently that your Lordships ought to presume them to have been
meritorious; and this is one of the grounds upon which he demands to be
acquitted of the charges that have been brought forward and proved
against him. Finding in our proceedings, and recorded upon our journals,
an immense mass of criminality with which he is charged, and finding
that we had selected, as we were bound to select, such parts as might be
most conveniently brought before your Lordships, (for to have gone
through the whole would have been nearly impossible,) he takes all the
rest that we have left behind and have not brought here as charges, and
converts them, by a strange metamorphosis, into merits.

My Lords, we must insist, on the part of the House of Commons, we must
conjure your Lordships, for the honor of a cooerdinate branch of the
legislature, that, whenever you are called upon to admit what we have
condemned as crimes to be merits, you will at least give us an
opportunity of being heard upon the matter,--that you will not suffer
Mr. Hastings, when attempting to defend himself against our charges, in
an indirect and oblique manner to cond