of a minor Rajah,
and with having given that trust to a stranger, Debi Sing, whose
wickedness was known to himself and all the world, and by whom the
Rajah, his family, and dependants were cruelly oppressed.

I charge him with having committed to the management of Debi Sing three
great provinces; and thereby with having wasted the country, ruined the
landed interest, cruelly harassed the peasants, burnt their houses,
seized their crops, tortured and degraded their persons, and destroyed
the honor of the whole female race of that country.

In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villany upon
Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to you.

My Lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of national
justice? Do we want a cause, my Lords? You have the cause of oppressed
princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and
of wasted kingdoms.

Do you want a criminal, my Lords? When was there so much iniquity ever
laid to the charge of any one? No, my Lords, you must not look to punish
any other such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left
substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent.

My Lords, is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you the Commons
of Great Britain as prosecutors; and I believe, my Lords, that the sun,
in his beneficent progress round the world, does not behold a more
glorious sight than that of men, separated from a remote people by the
material bounds and barriers of Nature, united by the bond of a social
and moral community,--all the Commons of England resenting, as their
own, the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people of
India.

Do we want a tribunal? My Lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the
modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us
with a tribunal like this. My Lords, here we see virtually, in the
mind's eye, that sacred majesty of the crown, under whose authority you
sit, and whose power you exercise. We see in that invisible authority,
what we all feel in reality and life, the beneficent powers and
protecting justice of his Majesty. We have here the heir-apparent to the
crown, such as the fond wishes of the people of England wish an
heir-apparent of the crown to be. We have here all the branches of the
royal family, in a situation between majesty and subjection, between the
sovereign and the subject,--offering a pledge in that situation for the