votes those principles, which have distinguished the courts, in which they have presided.

My lords, you have here also the lights of our religion; you have the bishops of England. My lords, you have that true image of the primitive church in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions. You have the representatives of that religion, which says, that their God is love, that the very vital spirit of their institution is charity; a religion, which so much hates oppression, that, when the God, whom we adore, appeared in human form, he did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, but in sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle, that their welfare was the object of all government; since the person, who was the Master of Nature, chose to appear himself in a subordinate situation. These are the considerations, which influence them, which animate them, and will animate them, against all oppression; knowing, that He, who is called first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed, and of those who feed it, made Himself" the servant of all."

My lords, these are the securities, which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of this house. We know them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands. Therefore, it is with confidence, that, ordered by the Commons,

I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored.

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted; whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate. I impeach him in the name, and by virtue, of those eternal laws of justice, which he has violated.

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life.

MR. ERSKINE'S SPEECH,

IN

DEFENCE OF THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS,

DELIVERED

ON THE TRIAL OF THOMAS PAINE FOR A LIBEL.

GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY,

The Attorney General, in that part of his address which referred to a letter, supposed to have been written to him from France, exhibited signs of strong sensibility and emotion.-I do not, I am sure, charge him with acting a part to seduce you;on the contrary, I am persuaded, from my own feelings, and from my acquaintance with my friend from our childhood upwards, that HE expressed himself as he felt. But, gentlemen, if he felt those painful embarrassments, you may imagine what MINE must be: he can only feel for the august character whom he represents in this place, as a subject for his Sovereign, too far removed by custom from the intercourses which generate affections, to produce any other sentiments than those that flow from a relation common to us all; but it will be remembered, that I stand in the same relation towards another great person more deeply implicated by this supposed letter; who, not restrained from the cultivation of personal attachments by those qualifications which must always secure them, has exalted my duty to a Prince, into a warm and honest affection between man and man. Thus circumstanced, I certainly should have been glad to have had an earlier opportunity of knowing correctly the contents of this letter, and whether (which I positively deny) it proceeded from the defendant. Coming thus suddenly upon us, I see but too plainly the impression it has made upon you who are to try the cause, and I feel its weight upon myself, who am to conduct it; but this shall neither detach me from my duty, nor enervate me (if I can help it) in the discharge of it.

If the Attorney General be well founded in the commentaries he has made to you upon the book which he prosecutes ;-if he be warranted by the law of England, in repressing its circulation, from the illegal and dangerous matters contained in it :-if that suppression be, as he avows it, and as in common sense it must be, the sole object of the prosecution, the public has

great reason to lament that this letter should have been at all brought into the service of the cause:-It is no part of the charge upon the record;-it had no existence for months after the work was composed and published;-it was not written by the defendant, if written by him at all, till after he had been in a manner insultingly expelled from the country by the influence of government; it was not even written till he had become the subject of another country. It cannot, therefore, by any fair inference decipher the mind of the author when he composed his work: still less can it affect the construction of the language in which it is written. The introduction of this letter at all is, therefore, not only a departure from the charge, but a dereliction of the object of the prosecution, which is to condemn the book-since, if the condemnation of the author is to be obtained, not by the work itself, but by collateral matter not even existing when it was written, nor known to its various publishers throughout the kingdom, how can a verdict upon such grounds condemn the work, or criminate other publishers, strangers to the collateral matter on which the conviction may be obtained to-day? I maintain, therefore, upon every principle of sound policy, as it affects the interests of the Crown, and upon every rule of justice, as it affects the author of The Rights of Man, that the letter should be wholly dismissed from your consideration.

Gentlemen, the Attorney General has thought it necessary to inform you, that a rumor had been spread, and had reached his ears, that he only carried on the prosecution as a public prosecutor, but without the concurrence of his own judgment; and therefore to add the just weight of his private character to his public duty, and to repel what he thinks a calumny, he tells you that he should have deserved to have been driven from society, if he had not arraigned the work and the author before you. Here too we stand in situations very different:-I have no doubt of the existence of such a rumor, and of its having reached his ears, because he says so; but for the narrow circle in which any rumor, personally implicating my learned friend's character, has extended, I might appeal to the multitudes who surround us, and ask, which of them all, except the few connected in office with the crown, ever heard of its existence. But with regard to myself, every man within hearing at this moment, nay, the whole people of England, have been witnesses to the calumnious clamor that, by every art, has been raised and kept up against me: in every place, where business or pleasure collects the public together, day after day my name and character have been the topics of injurious reflection. And for what?-only for not having shrunk from the discharge of a

duty, which no personal advantage recommended, and which a thousand difficulties repelled. But, Gentlemen, I have no complaint to make, either against the printers of these libels, nor even against their authors:-the greater part of them, hurried perhaps away by honest prejudices, may have believed they were serving their country by rendering me the object of its suspicion and contempt; and if there have been amongst them others who have mixed in it from personal malice and unkindness, I thank God I can forgive them also.-Little indeed 'did they know me, who thought that such calumnies would influence my conduct: I will for ever, at all hazards, assert the dignity, independence, and integrity of the ENGLISH BAR; without which, impartial justice, the most valuable part of the English constitution, can have no existence. From the moment that any advocate can be permitted to say, that he will or will not stand between the crown and the subject arraigned in the court where he daily sits to practise, from that moment the liberties of England are at an end. If the advocate refuses to defend, from what he may think of the charge or of the defence, he assumes the character of the Judge; nay, he assumes it before the hour of judgment; and in proportion to his rank and reputation, puts the heavy influence of, perhaps, a mistaken opinion into the scale against the accused, in whose favor the benevolent principle of English law makes all presumptions, and which commands the very judge to be his counsel.

Gentlemen, it is now my duty to address myself without digression to the defence.

The first thing which presents itself in the discussion of any subject, is to state distinctly, and with precision, what the question is, and, where prejudice and misrepresentation have been exerted, to distinguish it accurately from what it is NOT. The question then is NOT, whether the constitution of our fathers, under which we live-under which I present myself before you, and under which alone you have any jurisdiction to hear me be or be not preferable to the constitution of America or France, or any other human constitution. For upon what principle can a court, constituted by the authority of any government, and administering a positive system of law, under it, pronounce a decision against the constitution which creates its authority; or the rule of action which its jurisdiction is to enforce ?-The common sense of the most uninformed person must revolt at such an absurd supposition.

I have no difficulty, therefore, in admitting, that if by accident some or all of you were alienated in opinion and affection from the forms and principles of the English government, and were impressed with the value of that unmixed representative

constitution which this work recommends and inculcates, you could not, on that account, acquit the defendant. Nay, to speak out plainly, I freely admit that even if you were avowed enemies to monarchy, and devoted to republicanism, you would be nevertheless bound by your oaths, as a jury sworn to administer justice according to the English law, to convict the author of The Rights of Man, if it were brought home to your consciences, that he had exceeded those widely extended bounds which the ancient wisdom and liberal policy of the English constitution have allotted to the range of a free press. I freely concede this, because you have no jurisdiction to judge either the author or the work, by any rule but that of English law, which is the source of your authority. But having made this large concession, it follows, by a consequence so inevitable as to be invulnerable to all argument or artifice, that if, on the other hand, you should be impressed (which I know you to be) not only with a dutiful regard, but with an enthusiasm, for the whole form and substance of your own government; and though you should think that this work, in its circulation amongst classes of men unequal to political researches, may tend to alienate opinion; still you cannot, upon such grounds, without a similar breach of duty, convict the defendant of a libel,-unless he has clearly stepped beyond that extended range of communication which the same ancient wisdom and liberal policy of the British constitution has allotted for the liberty of the press.

Gentlemen, I admit, with the Attorney General, that in every case where a court has to estimate the quality of a writing, the mind and intention of the writer must be taken into the account;-the bona or mala fides, as lawyers express it, must be examined: for a writing may undoubtedly proceed from a motive, and be directed to a purpose, not to be deciphered by the mere construction of the thing written. But wherever a writing is arraigned as seditious or slanderous, not upon its ordinary construction in language, nor from the necessary conse quences of its publication, under any circumstances and at all times, but that the criminality springs from some extrinsic matter, not visible upon the page itself, nor universally operative, but capable only of being connected with it by evidence, so as to demonstrate the effect of the publication, and the design of the publisher; such a writing, not libellous PER SE, cannot be arraigned as the author's work is arraigned upon the record before the court. I maintain, without the hazard of contradiction, that the law of England positively requires, for the secu rity of the subject, that every charge of a libel complicated with extrinsic facts and circumstances, dehors the writing, must