and the subject,—­offering a pledge in that situation for the support of the rights of the crown and the liberties of the people, both which extremities they touch.  My Lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here,—­those who have their own honor, the honor of their ancestors and of their posterity to guard, and who will justify, as they have always justified, that provision in the Constitution by which justice is made an hereditary office.  My Lords, we have here a new nobility, who have risen and exalted themselves by various merits,—­by great military services which have extended the fame of this country from the rising to the setting sun.  We have those who, by various civil merits and various civil talents, have been exalted to a situation which they well deserve, and in which they will justify the favor of their sovereign, and the good opinion of their fellow-subjects, and make them rejoice to see those virtuous characters that were the other day upon a level with them now exalted above them in rank, but feeling with them in sympathy what they felt in common with them before.  We have persons exalted from the practice of the law, from the place in which they administered high, though subordinate, justice, to a seat here, to enlighten with their knowledge and to strengthen with their votes those principles which have distinguished the courts in which they have presided.

My Lords, you have here also the lights of our religion, you have the bishops of England.  My Lords, you have that true image of the primitive Church, in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions.  You have the representatives of that religion which says that their God is love, that the very vital spirit of their institution is charity,—­a religion which so much hates oppression, that, when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, He did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, but in sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of all government, since the Person who was the Master of Nature chose to appear Himself in a subordinate situation.  These are the considerations which influence them, which animate them, and will animate them, against all oppression,—­knowing that He who is called first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed and of those who feed it, made Himself “the servant of all.”

My Lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of this House.  We know them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands.  Therefore it is with confidence, that, ordered by the Commons,

I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, whose Parliamentary trust he has betrayed.