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Rh labours were cut short by the death of Colonel Monson in 1776, and of General Clavering in 1777; and Mr. Francis being thus left in a minority, the old system was reverted to with the most disgraceful eagerness. It would be tedious to detail the particulars of his long contest with Mr. Hastings; they are recorded in the Books of the Councils, the Reports of the Committee, and the Journals of the House of Commons. In consequence of a minute of Mr. Hastings, communicated to Mr. Francis on the 14th of August, 1780, wherein he declared his conduct to be void of truth and honour, a meeting took place on the 17th, in which Mr. Francis was shot through the body. He left Bengal in December; passed five months at St. Helena, and arrived in England in October in the following year.

On the dissolution of parliament, in 1784, he was returned for Yarmouth, and on the 27th of July following, in a debate on that clause of Mr. Pitt's India Bill, which went to take away trial by jury, he made use of an expression, for which that minister never forgave him:-"Though I am not an old man," said he; "I can remember the time when an attempt of this nature would have thrown the whole kingdom into a flame. Had it been made when a great man [the late Earl of Chatham] now no more, had a seat in this House, he would have started from the bed of sickness, he would have solicited some friendly hand to deposit him on this floor, and from this station, with a monarch's voice, would have called the kingdom to arms to oppose it. But he is dead, and has left nothing in this world that resembles him. He is dead, and the sense, and honour, and character, and understanding of the nation are dead with him." A few days before, he had also uttered a very severe philippic on Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who had declared in the House of Lords, "that it would have been happy for this country if General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, had been drowned on their passage to India." On the 19th April, 1787, he moved the revenue charge against Mr. Hastings,