se
aggravations and pretences is itself, in fact and in its principle, a
substantive crime.

Your Lordships witnessed the insolence with which this man, stung to the
quick by the recital of his crime, interrupted me; and you heard his
recrimination of falsehood against us. We again avouch the truth of all
and every word we have uttered, and the validity of every proof with
which we have supported them. Let his impatience, I say, now again burst
forth,--he who feels so sensibly everything that touches him, and yet
seeks for an act of indemnity for his own atrocities, by endeavoring to
make you believe that the wrongs of a desolated family are within one
year forgotten by them, and buried in oblivion.

I trust, my Lords, that both his prosecutors and his judges will evince
that patience which the criminal wants. Justice is not to wait to have
its majesty approached with solicitation. We see that throne in which
resides invisibly, but virtually, the majesty of England; we see your
Lordships representing, in succession, the juridical authority in the
highest court in this kingdom: but we do not approach you with
solicitation; we make it a petition of right; we claim it; we demand it.
The right of seeking redress is not suppliant, even before the majesty
of England; it comes boldly forward, and never thinks it offends its
sovereign by claiming what is the right of all his people.

We have now done with this business: a business as atrocious as any that
is known in the history of mankind; a business that has stained,
throughout all Asia, the British character, and by which our fame for
honor, integrity, and public faith has been forfeited; a business which
has introduced us throughout that country as breakers of faith,
destroyers of treaties, plunderers of the weak and unprotected, and has
dishonored and will forever dishonor the British name. Your Lordships
have had all this in evidence. You have seen in what manner the Nabob,
his country, his revenues, his subjects, his mother, his family, his
nobility, and all their fortunes, real and personal, have been disposed
of by the prisoner at your bar; and having seen this, you will by the
impatience of this criminal estimate the patience of the unfortunate
women into whose injuries he refused to inquire. What he would not do
the Commons have done. They know that you have a feeling different from
that which he manifested on this occasion; they do not approach you
suppliantly, b