t rob another; when he had imprisoned one man
arbitrarily, and extorted money from him, he might do so by another. He
resorts at first to the practice of barbarians and usurpers; at last he
comes to his own. Now, if your Lordships will try him by such maxims and
principles, he is certainly clear: for there is no manner of doubt that
there is nothing he has practised once which he has not practised again;
and then the repetition of crimes becomes the means of his indemnity.

The next pleas he urges are not so much in bar of the impeachment as in
extenuation. The first are to be laid by as claims to be made on motion
for arrest of judgment, the others as an extenuation or mitigation of
his fine. He says, and with a kind of triumph, "The ministry of this
country have great legal assistance,--commercial lights of the greatest
commercial city in the world,--the greatest generals and officers to
guide and direct them in military affairs: whereas I, poor man, was sent
almost a school-boy from England, or at least little better,--sent to
find my way in that new world as well as I could. I had no men of the
law, no legal assistance, to supply my deficiencies." _At Sphingem
habebas domi._ Had he not the chief-justice, the tamed and domesticated
chief-justice, who waited on him like a familiar spirit, whom he takes
from province to province, his amanuensis at home, his postilion and
riding express abroad?

Such a declaration would in some measure suit persons who had acted much
otherwise than Mr. Hastings. When a man pleads ignorance in
justification of his conduct, it ought to be an humble, modest,
unpresuming ignorance, an ignorance which may have made him lax and
timid in the exercise of his duty; but an assuming, rash, presumptuous,
confident, daring, desperate, and disobedient ignorance heightens every
crime that it accompanies. Mr. Hastings, if through ignorance he left
some of the Company's orders unexecuted, because he did not understand
them, might well say, "I was an ignorant man, and these things were
above my capacity." But when he understands them, and when he declares
he will not obey them, positively and dogmatically,--when he says, as he
has said, and we shall prove it, _that he never succeeds better than
when he acts in an utter defiance of those orders_, and sets at nought
the laws of his country,--I believe this will not be thought the
language of an ignorant man. But I beg your Lordships' pardon: it is the
lan