The next recriminatory charge made upon us by the prisoner is, that, merely to throw an odium upon him, we have brought forward a great deal of irrelevant matter, which could not be proved regularly in the course of examination at your bar, and particularly in the opening speech, which I had the honor of making on the subject.
Your Lordships know very well that we stated in our charge that great abuses had prevailed in India, that the Company had entered into covenants with their servants respecting those abuses, that an act of Parliament was made to prevent their recurrence, and that Mr. Hastings still continued in their practice. Now, my Lords, having stated this, nothing could be more regular, more proper, and more pertinent, than for us to justify both the covenants required by the Company and the act made to prevent the abuses which existed in India. We therefore went through those abuses; we stated them, and were ready to prove every material word and article in them. Whether they were personally relevant or irrelevant to the prisoner we cared nothing. We were to make out from the records of the House (which records I can produce, whenever I am called upon for them) all these articles of abuse and grievance; and we have stated these abuses as the grounds of the Company's provisional covenants with its servants, and of the act of Parliament. We have stated them under two heads, violence and corruption: for these crimes will be found, my Lords, in almost every transaction with the native powers; and the prisoner is directly or indirectly involved in every part of them. If it be still objected, that these crimes are irrelevant to the charge, we answer, that we did not introduce them as matter of charge. We say they were not irrelevant to the proof of the preamble of our charge, which preamble is perfectly relevant in all its parts. That the matters stated in it are perfectly true we vouch the House of Commons, we vouch the very persons themselves who were concerned in the transactions. When Arabic authors are quoted, and Oriental tales told about _flashes of lightning_ and _three seals_, we quote the very parties themselves giving this account of their own conduct to a committee of the House of Commons.