Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/534

 530 SHERIDAN. fortunate events were a full and complete set-off against a system of op pression, corruption, breach of faith, peculation, and treachery, and finally, their solemn and awful judgment, that in the case of Benares, Mr. Hastings's conduct was a proper object of parliamentary impeachment; had covered them with applause, and brought them forward in the face of all the world, as the objects of perpetual admiration. The vote of the last session, by which the conduct of this pillar of India, this corner-stone of our strength in the East, this talisman of the British territories in Asia, was cen sured, did the greatest honour to an English House of Commons, as it must be the forerunner of speedy justice on that character which was said to be above censure; but whose deeds were such, as no difficulties, no neces sities could justify; for where is the situation, however elevated, and in that elevation, however embarrassed, that can authorise the wilful commission of oppression and rapacity?” As to the present charge, “He professed to God, that he felt in his own bosom the strongest personal conviction; and it was from that conviction, he believed the conduct of Warren Hastings in regard to the Nabob of Oude and the Begums, comprehended every species of human offence. He had proved himself guilty of rapacity, at once violent and insatiable, of treachery, cooland premeditated,—ofoppression, useless and unprovoked,—of breach of faith, unwarrantable and base, of cruelty, unmanly and unmerciful. These were the crimes of which, in his soul and conscience, he arraigned Warren Hastings; and of which he had the con fidence to say, he should convict him : As there were gentlemen ready to stand up his advocates, he challenged them to watch him, to watch if he advanced one inch of assertion, for which he had not solid ground: for he trusted nothing to declamation. I desire credit,” added he, “for no fact which I shall not prove, and which I do not demonstrate beyond the possi bility of refutation. I shall not desert the clear and invincible ground of truth, throughout any one particle of my allegations against Mr. Hastings, who uniformly aimed to govern India by his own arbitrary power, covering with misery upon misery the wretched people whom Providence had sub jected to the dominion of this country; whilst in his favour, not one single circumstance, grounded on truth, was stated,—the attempt at vindication was false throughout.” Mr. Sheridan now commenced his examination of Mr. Hastings's de fence. “Although he had gone so far back as the year 1775, for pretended grounds of justification from the charge of violence and rapacity, yet not one of the facts, as stated by him, but was fallacious. Groundless, nuga tory, and insulting, were the affirmations of the ex-governor-general, that the seizure of treasure from the Begums, and the exposition of their pil laged goods to public auction, (unparalleled acts of open injustice, oppres sion, and inhumanity!) were in any degree to be defended by those encroachments on their property, which had taken place previously to his administration; or by those sales, which they themselves had solicited as a favourable mode of supplying their aid to the Nabob. Mr. Hastings wished to insinuate, that a claim was set up in the year 1775, to the treasure of the Begums, as belonging of right to that prince; and it would appear from a minute of council, that women were entitled by the Mahomedan