did participate in the guilt, it can not tend to diminish his criminality. But the fact is that the council erred in nothing so much as in a reprehensible credulity given to the declarations of the governor-general. They knew not a word of those transactions until they were finally concluded. It was not until the January following that they saw the mass of falsehood which had been published under the title of "Mr. Hastings's Narrative." They were then unaccountably duped to permit a letter to pass, dated the 29th of November, intended to seduce the directors into a belief that they had received intelligence at that time, which was not the fact. These observations, my lords, are not meant to cast any obloquy on the council. They undoubtedly were deceived, and the deceit practised on them is a decided proof of his consciousness of guilt. When tired of corporal infliction, Mr. Hastings was gratified by insulting the understanding. The coolness and reflection with which this act was managed and concerted, raises its enormity and blackens its turpitude. It proves the prisoner to be that monster in nature, a deliberate and reasoning tyrant! Other tyrants of whom we read, such as a Nero or a Caligula, were urged to their crimes by the impetuosity of passion. High rank disqualified them from advice, and perhaps equally prevented reflection. But in the prisoner, we have a man born in a state of mediocrity; bred to mercantile life; used to system and accustomed

to regularity; who was accountable to his masters, and therefore was compelled to think and to deliberate on every part of his conduct. It is this cool deliberation, I say, which renders his crimes more horrible and his character more atrocious.

When, my lords, the board of directors received the advices which Mr. Hastings thought proper to transmit, tho unfurnished with any other materials to form their judgment, they expressed very strongly their doubts, and properly ordered an inquiry into the circumstances of the alleged disaffection of the Begums, declaring it at the same time to be a debt which was due to the honor and justice of the British nation. This inquiry, however, Mr. Hastings thought it absolutely necessary to elude. He stated to the council, in answer, that it would revive those animosities that subsisted between the Begums and the Visier which had then subsided. If the former were inclined to appeal to a foreign jurisdiction, "they were the best judges of their own feeling, and should be left to make their own complaint." All this, however, my lords, is nothing to the magnificent paragraph which concludes this communication. "Besides," says he, "I hope it will not be a departure from official language to say that the majesty of justice ought not to be approached without solicitation. She ought not to descend to inflame or provoke, but to withhold her judgment, until she is called on to de

termine." What is still more astonishing is that Sir John Macpherson, who, tho a man of sense and honor, is rather oriental in his imagination, and not learned in the sublime and beautiful from the immortal leader of this prosecution, was caught by this bold, bombastic quibble, and joined in the same words, "that the majesty of justice ought not to be approached without solicitation." But, my lords, do you, the judges of this land, and the expounders of its rightful laws, do you approve of this mockery, and call it the character of justice, which takes the form of right to excite wrong? No, my lords, justice is not this halt and miserable object; it is not the ineffective bauble of an Indian pagod; it is not the portentous phantom of despair; it is not like any fabled monster, formed in the eclipse of reason, and found in some unhallowed grove of superstitious darkness and political dismay! No, my lords. In the happy reverse of all this, I turn from the disgusting caricature to the real image! Justice I have now before me, august and pure! the abstract idea of all that would be perfect in the spirits and the aspirings of men! where the mind rises, where the heart expands; where the countenance is ever placid and benign; where her favorite attitude is to stoop to the unfortunate; to hear their cry and to help them; to rescue and relieve, to succor and save; majestic, from its mercy; venerable, from its utility; uplifted, without pride; firm,

without obduracy; beneficent in each preference; lovely, tho in her frown!

On that justice I rely; deliberate and sure, abstracted from all party purpose and political speculation, not on words, but on facts. You, my lords, who hear me, I conjure, by those rights it is your best privilege to preserve; by that fame it is your best pleasure to inherit; by all those feelings which refer to the first term in the series of existence, the original compact of our nature our controlling rank in the creation. This is the call on all to administer to truth and equity, as they would satisfy the laws and satisfy themselves, with the most exalted bliss possible or conceivable for our nature -the self-approving consciousness of virtue— when the condemnation we look for will be one of the most ample mercies accomplished for mankind since the creation of the world! My lords, I have done.

CURRAN

I

IN BEHALF OF ROWAN AND FREE SPEECH1

(1794)

Born in 1750, died in 1817; admitted to the Irish Bar in 1775; entered the Irish Parliament in 1783; defended prisoners arrested during the Irish Insurrection of 1798; Master of the Rolls in Ireland in 1806-14.

WHEN I consider the period at which this prosecution is brought forward; when I behold the extraordinary safeguard of armed soldiers, resorted to, no doubt, for the preservation of peace and order; when I catch, as I can not but do, the throb of public anxiety, which beats from one end to the other of this hall; when I reflect on what may be the fate of a man of the most beloved personal character, of one of

1 Archibald Hamilton Rowan was secretary of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen. In August, 1792, in reply to a proclamation against "the Volunteers of Ireland," Rowan had published an address inviting them to resume their arms. The government having decided to prosecute him, Curran in 1794 was engaged to defend him. It was in this case that Curran began a series of defenses in state trials which form the chief basis of his fame as an orator. The full report of his speech in defense of Rowan fills twenty-five large pages in small type. It was delivered "from a dozen catchwords on the back of his brief." Soldiers in the court-room frequently interrupted him with threats. On leaving the court-room, Curran's horses were taken from his carriage and the carriage dragged to his home by his admirers. Rowan, convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, escaped to France.