and thought, as if the commons of Great Britain in parliament assembled, were a most wicked, tyranical base, and corrupt set of persons, and to bring them into disgrace with the publick." The defendant published-What?-Not those latter ends of sentences, which the attorney general has read from his brief, as if they had followed one another in order in this book ;-Not those scraps and tails of passages which are patched together upon this record, and pronounced in one breath, as if they existed without intermediate matter in the same page, and without context any where.-No.-This is not the accusation, even mutilated as it is for the information charges, that with intention to vilify the house of commons, the defendant published the whole book, describing it on the record by its title: "A Review of the principal charges against Warren Hastings, Esquire, late governour general of Bengal;" in which amongst other things the matter particularly selected is to be found. Your inquiry, therefore, is not confined to, Whether the defendant published those select parts of it; and whether looking at them as they are distorted by the information, they carry in fair construction, the sense and meaning which the innuendos put upon them; but whether the author of the intire work,-I say the author, since, if he could defend himself, the publisher unquestionably can; whether the author wrote the volume which I hold in my hand, as a free, manly, bona fide disquisition of criminal charges against his fellow citizens; or whether the long eloquent discussion of them, which fills so many pages, was a mere cloak and cover for the introduction of the supposed scandal imputed to the selected passages; the mind of the writer all along being intent on traducing the house of commons, and not on fairly answering their charges against Mr. Hastings.

This, gentlemen, is the principal matter for your consideration; and therefore, if after you shall have taken the book itself into the chamber which will be provided for you, and read the whole of it with impartial attention;-if after the performance of this duty,

you can return here and with clear consciences pronounce upon your oaths that the impression made upon you by these pages is, that the author wrote them with the wicked, seditious, and corrupt intentions, charged by the information; you have then my full permission to find the defendant guilty. But if, on the other hand, the general tenour of the composition should impress you with respect for the author, and point him out to you as a man mistaken perhaps himself, but not seeking to deceive others :-If every line of the work shall present to you an intelligent animated mind, glowing with a Christian compassion towards a fellow man, whom he believed to be innocent, and with a patriot zeal for the liberty of his country, which he considered as wounded through the sides of an oppressed fellow citizen; if this shall be the impression on your consciences and understandings, when you are called upon to deliver your verdict; then hear from me, that you not only work private injustice, but break up the press of England, and surrender her rights and liberties forever if you convict him.

Gentlemen, to enable you to form a true judgment of the meaning of this book, and of the intention of its author, and to expose the miserable juggle that is played off in the information, by the combination of sentences, which in the work itself have no bearing upon one another—I will first give you the publication, as it is charged on the record, and presented by the Attorney General in opening the case for the Crown; and I will then by reading the interjacent matter which is studiously kept out of sight, convince you of its true interpretation. The information, beginning with the first page of the book, charges, as a libel upon the house of commons, the following

sentence:

"The house of commons has now given its final decision, with regard to the merits and demerits of Mr. Hastings. The grand inquest of England have delivered their charges, and preferred their impeachment; their allegations are referred to proof; and

from the appeal to the collective wisdom and justice of the nation in the supreme tribunal of the kingdom, the question comes to be determined, whether Mr. Hastings be guilty or not guilty ?"

It is but fair, however, to admit that the first sentence, which the most ingenious malice cannot torture into a criminal construction, is charged by the information rather as introductory to what is made to follow it, than as libellous in itself; for the attorney general, from this introductory passage in the first page, goes on at a leap to page thirteenth, and reads almost without a stop, as if it immediately followed the other.

"What credit can we give to multiplied and accumulated charges, when we find that they originate from misrepresentation and falsehood?"

From these two passages thus standing together without the intervenient matter which occupies thirteen pages, one would imagine that instead of investigating the probability or improbability of the guilt imputed to Mr. Hastings; instead of carefully examining the charges of the commons, and the defence of them which had been delivered before them, or which was preparing for the Lords; the author immediately, and in a moment after stating the mere fact of the impeachment, had decided that the act of the commons originated from misrepresentation and falsehood.

Gentlemen, in the same manner a veil is cast over all that is written in the next seven pages: for knowing that the context would help to the true construction, not only of the passages charged before, but of those in the sequel of this information; the attorney general, aware that it would convince every man who read it, that there was no intention in the author to calumniate the house of commons, passes over, by another leap, to page twenty; and in the same manner, without drawing his breath, and as if it directly followed the two former sentences, in the 1st and 13th pages, reads from page 20.

"An impeachment of errour in judgment with regard to the quantum of fine, and for an intention that never was executed and never known to the offending party, characterizes a tribunal of inquisition rather than a court of parliament."

From this passage, by another vault, he leaps over one and thirty pages more, to page fifty-one; where he reads the following sentence, which he mainly relies on, and upon which I shall by and by trouble you with some observations.

"Thirteen of them passed in the house of commons, not only without investigation but without being read; and the votes were given without inquiry, argument, or conviction. A majority had determined to impeach; opposite parties met each other, and justled in the dark, to perplex the political drama, and bring the hero to a tragick catastrophe."

From thence deriving new vigour from every exertion, he makes his last grand stride over forty-four pages, almost to the end of the book, charging a sentence in the ninety-fifth page.

So that out of a volume of one hundred and ten pages, the defendant is only charged with a few scattered fragments of sentences, picked out of three or four. Out of a work, consisting of about two thousand five hundred and thirty lines, of manly spirited eloquence, only forty or fifty lines are culled from different parts of it, and artfully put together, so as to rear up a libel, out of a false context by a supposed connexion of sentences with one another which are not only entirely independent, but which, when compared with their antecedents bear a totally different construction.

In this manner the greatest works upon government, the most excellent books of science, the sacred scriptures themselves, might be distorted into libels, by forsaking the general context, and hanging a meaning upon selected parts:-Thus, as in the text put by Algernon Sidney, "The fool has said in his heart there is no God." The attorney general on the principle of the present proceeding against this

pamphlet, might indict the publisher of the Bible for blasphemously denying the existence of heaven, in printing" There is no God." For these words alone, without the context, would be selected by the information; and the bible, like this book, would be underscored to meet it. Nor could the defendant in such a case have any possible defence, unless the jury were permitted to see, by the book itself, that the verse, instead of denying the existence of the Divinity, only imputed that imagination to a fool.

Gentlemen, having now gone through the attorney general's reading, the book shall presently come forward and speak for itself.

But before I can venture to lay it before you, it is proper to call your attention to how matters stood at the time of its publication; without which the author's meaning and intention cannot possibly be understood.

The commons of Great Britain in parliament assembled, had accused Mr. Hastings, as governour general of Bengal, of high crimes and misdemeanors; and their jurisdiction for that high purpose of national justice, was unquestionably competent. But it is proper you should know the nature of this inquisitorial capacity.-The commons in voting an impeachment, may be compared to a grand jury, finding a bill of indictment for the crown: neither the one nor the other can be supposed to proceed, but upon the matter which is brought before them; neither of them can find guilt without accusation, nor the truth of accusation without evidence.

When, therefore, we speak of the accuser or accusers, of a person indicted for any crime, although the grand jury are the accusers in form, by giving effect to the accusation; yet in common parlance we do not consider them the responsible authors of the prosecution. If I were to write of a most wicked indictment, found against an innocent man, which was preparing for trial, nobody who read it would conceive I meant to stigmatize the grand jury that