I think it is pretty nearly as I state it: if I have fallen into any error or inaccuracy, it is easily rectified; for here is the state of the transaction given by the parties themselves. On this inaccurate memory of Mr. Hastings, not venturing, however, to say positively that he was not the interpreter, or that he was not present, he is discharged from being an accomplice,--he is removed from the bar, and leaps upon the seat of justice. The court thus completed, Major Calliaud comes manfully forward to make his defence. Mr. Lushington is taken off his back in the manner we have seen, and no one person remains but Captain Knox. Now, if Captain Knox was there and assenting, he is an accomplice too. Captain Knox asserts, that, at the consultation about the murder, he said it was a pity to cut off so fine a young fellow in such a manner,--meaning that fine young fellow the Prince, the descendant of Tamerlane, the present reigning Mogul, from whom the Company derive their present charter. The purpose to be served by this declaration, if it had any purpose, was, that Captain Knox did not assent to the murder, and that therefore his evidence might be valid.
The defence set up by Major Calliaud was to this effect. He was apprehensive, he said, that the Nabob was alarmed at the violent designs that were formed against him by Mr. Holwell, and that therefore, to quiet his mind, (to quiet it by a proposition compounded of murder and treason,--an odd kind of mind he had that was to be quieted by such means!)--but to quiet his mind, and to show that the English were willing to go all lengths with him, to sell body and soul to him, he did put his seal to this extraordinary agreement, he put his seal to this wonderful paper. He likewise stated, that he was of opinion at the time that nothing at all sinister could happen from it, that no such murder was likely to take place, whatever might be the intention of the parties. In fact, he had very luckily said in a letter of his, written a day after the setting the seal, "I think nothing will come of this matter, but it is no harm to try." This experimental treachery, and these essays of conditional murder, appeared to him good enough to make a trial of; but at the same time he was afraid nothing would come of it. In general, the whole gest of his defence comes to one point, in which he persists,--that, whatever the act might be, his mind is clear: "My hands are guilty, but my heart is free." He conceived that it would be very improper, undoubtedly, to do such an act, if he suspected anything could happen from it: he, however, let the thing out of his own hands; he put, it into the hands of others; he put the commission into the hands of a murderer. The fact was not denied; it was fully before these severe judges. The extenuation was the purity of his heart, and the bad situation of the Company's affairs,--the perpetual plea, which your Lordships will hear of forever, and which if it will justify evil actions, they will take good care that the most nefarious of their deeds shall never want a sufficient justification. But then he calls upon his life and his character to oppose to his seal; and though he has declared that Mr. Holwell had intended ill to the Nabob, and that he approved of those measures, and only postponed them, yet he thought it necessary, he says, to quiet the fears of the Nabob; and from this motive he did an act abhorrent to his nature, and which, he says, he expressed his abhorrence of the morning after he signed it: not that he did so; but if he had, I believe it would only have made the thing so many degrees worse. Your Lordships will observe, that, in this conference, as stated by himself, these reasons and apologies for it did not appear, nor did they appear in the letter, nor anywhere else, till next year, when he came upon his trial. Then it was immediately recollected that Mr. Holwell's designs were so wicked they certainly must be known to the Nabob, though he never mentioned them in the conference of the morning or the evening of the 15th; yet such was now the weight and prevalence of them upon the Major's mind, that he calls upon Mr. Hastings to know whether the Nabob was not informed of these designs of Mr. Holwell against him. Mr. Hastings's memory was not quite correct upon the occasion. He does not recollect anything of the matter. He certainly seems not to think that he ever mentioned it to the Nabob, or the Nabob to him; but he does recollect, he thinks, speaking something to some of the Nabob's attendants upon it, and further this deponent sayeth not.