were formed by the Lord Advocate of Scotland, and carried in our House by the unanimous consent of all parties:  I mean the then Lord Advocate of Scotland,—­now one of his Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State, and at the head of this very Indian department.  Afterwards, when this defendant came home, in the year 1785, we reinstituted our inquiry.  We instituted it, as your Lordships and the world know, at his own request, made to us by his agent, then a member of our House.  We entered into it at large; we deliberately moved for every paper which promised information on the subject.  These papers were not only produced on the part of the prosecution, as is the case before grand juries, but the friends of the prisoner produced every document which they could produce for his justification.  We called all the witnesses which could enlighten us in the cause, and the friends of the prisoner likewise called every witness that could possibly throw any light in his favor.  After all these long deliberations, we referred the whole to a committee.  When it had gone through that committee, and we thought it in a fit state to be digested into these charges, we referred the matter to another committee; and the result of that long examination and the labor of these committees is the impeachment now at your bar.

If, therefore, we are defeated here, we cannot plead for ourselves that we have done this from a sudden gust of passion, which sometimes agitates and sometimes misleads the most grave popular assemblies.  No:  it is either the fair result of twenty-two years’ deliberation that we bring before you, or what the prisoner says is just and true,—­that nothing but malice in the Commons of Great Britain could possibly produce such an accusation as the fruit of such an inquiry.  My Lords, we admit this statement, we are at issue upon this point; and we are now before your Lordships, who are to determine whether this man has abused his power in India for fourteen years, or whether the Commons has abused their power of inquiry, made a mock of their inquisitorial authority, and turned it to purposes of private malice and revenge.  We are not come here to compromise matters; we do not admit [do admit?] that our fame, our honors, nay, the very inquisitorial power of the House of Commons is gone, if this man be not guilty.

My Lords, great and powerful as the House of Commons is, (and great and powerful I hope it always will remain,) yet we cannot be insensible to the effects produced by the introduction of forty millions of money into this country from India.  We know that the private fortunes which have been made there pervade this kingdom so universally that there is not a single parish in it unoccupied by the partisans of the defendant.  We should fear that the faction which he has thus formed by the oppression of the people of India would be too strong for the House of Commons itself, with all its power and reputation, did we not know that we have brought before you a cause which nothing can resist.