course of this year, formed by far the most important part of the proceedings of parliament. In compliance with the order of the lords, at the close of the former session, Mr. Hastings' answer to the charges brought against him was delivered at the bar of the house of peers, and from thence a copy of it was transmitted to the commons. A committee was then appointed, at the head of which was Mr. Burke, who presented a reply to the answer of Mr. Hastings, in which he offered to substantiate the charges alleged, provided their lordships would condescend to appoint a time and place for the trial, On the reply being carried up to the lords, they were pleased to appoint Wednesday, the 13th of February, for proceeding upon the trial in Westminster Hall.

The trial was opened by Mr. Burke, with an eloquence which charmed his auditors. The first two days were occupied in reading the articles of impeachment, and in arranging the necessary formalities, The counsel for the defendant were Messrs. Law, Plumer, and Dallas. The assistant counsel for the commons were Drs. Scott and Lawrence, Messrs. Mansfield, Pigot, Burke, and Douglas. On the third day, the anxiety of the public to hear Mr. Burke was so great, that the galleries of the hall were filled before nine o'clock. About twelve, the peers were seated to the number of a hundred and sixty-four; and the managers being called upon by the chancellor to proceed, Mr. Burke rose and said, that he stood forth, by order of the commons of Great Britain, to support the charge of high crimes and misdemeanors which had been exhibited against Warren Hastings: and that he had a body of evidence to produce which would substantiate the whole of the charges. After a preliminary peroration upon the object and high importance of the trial, the magnitude of the crimes, and the nature of the

evidence, Mr. Burke proceeded to the direct matter of the charge.

He stated the power delegated to governor Hastings by the East India company, which power he had so grossly abused; the charter granted by the crown of Great Britain, under the authority of parliament, to that company; and the consequent responsibility of their servants to the British government. Tracing the history of the East India company from its first establishment in the reign of queen Elizabeth, through its progressive arrangements and constitution, he affirmed, that Mr. Hastings had availed himself of every abuse that could arise out of the defective nature of the corporation: That Mr. Hastings, upon the plan chalked out by sir Elijah Impey, had contributed to build up a system of abuse, connivance, and corruption, by distributing places of trust, of dignity, and of emolument, in forms of seduction which human nature could hardly in such circumstances be expected to resist. He charged Mr. Hastings with having deprived of its use the only institution of the company which stood in his way, being a wisely contrived check upon improper proceedings. This was, an express obligation on the company's servants to keep a journal of all their transactions, public and private; a letter-book, in which all their correspondence was to be registered; and lastly, to keep a written record, not only of all the proceedings, resolutions, and orders made in their councils, but also of the arguments used, and the opinions delivered of each individual member. To exonerate himself from the control of this check, he said that Mr. Hastings had instituted a distinction between public and private correspondence, by dispensing with the orders of the company in boards appointed by his own authority; and lastly, by the actual spoliation and destruction of the company's records. Mr. Burke's next charge was, that besides

abusing the powers of Indian government, conferred by the British charters, he had abused those powers also with which he had been invested by the charter of the Great Mogul. On this head he laboured to prove, in opposition to the chief point of Mr. Hastings' defence, that the native princes held their dominions as mere vassals under their conquerors; that neither under the government of the Arabian nor Tartar invaders, nor of the usurping subahs and nabobs, were the native princes and zemindars dispossessed of their estates, and the jurisdictions annexed to them; but that, up to the last unfortunate epoch in their history, viz. their conquest by the arms of Britain, they had preserved their independent rank and dignity, their seignories, and always the right, sometimes even the means, of protecting the people under them.

The second day's speech of Mr. Burke occupied upwards of four hours in the delivery. It developed a long and dreadful narrative of the transactions of the East India company in their connexion with the surrounding potentates, of which the particulars contain nearly the whole history of British India since the time of lord Clive; but they are far too numerous and complicated to allow of even a compressed enumeration. Resuming the history of Bengal from the usurpation of Ali Khan, he detailed the dethronement of Sorijah Dowlah, of the elevation of his treacherous servant Meer Jaffier, by the bribe of one million to the company, and another million to individuals in their employment;-of the underplot on the same stage, by which Shah Zaddah, the Mogul's eldest son, was put to death; and of the infamous collusion of the directing court of Calcutta with the performers of the catastrophe. He next drew a strong and affecting picture of the miseries which were inflicted upon the subjects of Cossim Ali, when that guilty potentate, in order to pay the

English the price of his elevation, was obliged to harass and oppress the natives; and the acts of whose infamous tyranny were among the precedents which Mr. Hastings had pleaded in his justification. "From the sale of kingdoms," said Mr. Burke, "they proceeded to the sale of prime ministries and official dignities." The prime ministry of the restored subah Meer Jaffier, was set up to auction, and sold for two hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Nundcomar, à Gentoo, the unsuccessful bidder, shortly after threatening to inform against Mr. Hastings, was hanged on the charge of a crime, which by the laws of his country was not punishable with death. By these and other abuses, but more especially by his illegal suppression of all the courts which had been humanely instituted for the protection of the people, the native government had almost wholly vanished from Bengal, or was only fit to be a private perquisite for peculators.

On the third day, Mr. Burke opened his speech with an explanation of the company's affairs and Mr. Hastings' situation, sufficiently distinct to show, that the latter was bound by every tie, legal and honourable, not to take presents either for himself or the company's servants. But, far from acting in this manner, Mr. Hastings, after compelling the zemindars, or ancient nobility of India, to bid for their own confiscated estates at a sale which pretended to be public, but which in reality was private, had exposed to sale the offices of justice, the successions of families, guardianships, and other sacred trusts in Bengal. In this desultory but severe accusation, the principal proof rested on the evidence of Mr. Paterson, who was sent by the company to report the state of the country of Dinagepore; a country that was given over by Mr. Hastings to the barbarity and avarice of Gunga Govad Sing, who, though of infamous character, was described as the

colleague in oppression and bosom friend of the governor.

"From the whole view of these transactions," said Mr. Burke," I charge Mr. Hastings with having destroyed the whole system of government in the six provincial councils, for private and bad ends, and with illegal exertion of authority. I charge him with having delegated to others, that power which the act of parliament had directed him to preserve in himself. I charge him with having appointed a dewan, or secretary, to whom Englishmen were to be subservient, whose name, by his own knowledge, by the general voice of India, by recorded official transactions, by every thing that can make a man known, abhorred, and detested, was stamped with infamy; with giving him his whole power, which he had thus separated from the council-general, and from the provincial councils. I charge him with taking bribes of Gunga Govad Sing; with having alienated the fortunes of widows; with having taken unjustly the lands of orphans, and given them to his wicked dependants; with having committed to Debi Sing, another associate, similar in infamy to Gunga Govad, whose wickedness was known to himself and all the world besides, three great provinces; and thereby with having wasted the country, destroyed the landed interest, cruelly harassed the peasants, burnt their houses, laid waste their corn fields, tortured their persons, and sullied the honour of the whole female sex of that country."

Such were some of the outlines of Mr. Burke's celebrated charges against this state culprit, the highest in power and importance that was brought into a court of justice during the present age. A proposal was made by the managers of the impeachment, that each article of the charges should be answered singly, and then replied to by the accusers; but the defendant's counsel protested against such a