Lords can only be with me matter of conjecture. I
certainly was not commanded by the House to state the
observation that had occurred to me; but in the position
in which it now stands, I feel no difficulty in saying,
as my own judgment, that nothing can be matter in reply
that does not relate to those articles that were pressed
in the original charge; and therefore, in this position
of the business of reply, you cannot go into new matter
arising out of other articles that were not originally
insisted upon.
_Mr. Burke._ We were aware of the objection that might
be made to admitting our observations, if considered as
observations upon the 17th article, but not when
considered with reference to facts on the record before
you, for the purpose of disproving the principles upon
which the defendant and his counsel had relied: that was
the purpose for which we proposed chiefly to make them.
But your Lordship's [the Lord Chancellor's] own personal
authority will have great weight with us, and, unless we
perceive some other peer differ from you, we will take
it in the course we have constantly done. We never have
sent your Lordships out of the hall to consent
[consult?] upon a matter upon which that noble lord
appeared to have formed a decision in his own mind; we
take for granted that what is delivered from the
woolsack, to which no peer expresses a dissent, is the
sense of the House; as such we take it, and as such we
submit to it in this instance.
Therefore, leaving this upon the record as it stands,
without observing upon it, and submitting to your
Lordships' decision, that we cannot, according to order,
observe in reply upon what was not declared by us to be
a part of the charges we meant to insist upon, we
proceed to another business.]
We have already stated to your Lordships, and we beg to remind you of
it, the state and condition of the country of Oude when Mr. Hastings
first came to it,--his subsequent and immediate usurpation of all the
powers of government, and the use he made of them,--the tyranny he
exercised over the Nabob himself,--the tyranny he exercised upon his
mother and grandmother, and all the other females of his family, and
their dependants of every description, to the number of about eight
hundred persons,--the tyranny exercised (though we are not at liberty
to pr
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