d is not to be defended by wit,
eloquence, or learning.

On the present question, my lords, as on all others, he has produced all
that can be urged, either from the knowledge of past ages, or experience
of the present; all that the scholar or the statesman can supply has
been accumulated, one argument has been added to another, and all the
powers of a great capacity have been employed, only to show that right
and wrong cannot be confounded, and that fallacy can never strike with
the force of truth.

When I survey the arguments of the noble lord, disrobed of those
ornaments which his imagination has so liberally bestowed upon them, I
am surprised at the momentary effect which they had upon my mind, and
which they could not have produced had they been clothed in the language
of any other person.

For when I recollect, singly, the particular positions upon which his
opinion seems to be founded, I do not find them by any means
uncontrovertible; some of them seem at best uncertain, and some
evidently mistaken.

That there is no apparent crime committed, and that, therefore, no legal
inquiry can be made after the criminal, I cannot hear without
astonishment. Is our commerce ruined, are our troops destroyed, are the
morals of the people vitiated, is the senate crowded with dependants,
are our fleets disarmed, our allies betrayed, and our enemies supported
without a crime? Was there no certainty of any crime committed, when it
was moved to petition his majesty to dismiss this person from his
councils for ever.

It has been observed, my lords, that nothing but a sight of the dead
body can warrant a pursuit after the murderer; but this is a concession
sufficient for the present purpose; for if, upon the sight of a murdered
person, the murderer may lawfully be inquired after, and those who are
reasonably suspected detained and examined; with equal reason, my lords,
may the survey of a ruined nation, a nation oppressed with burdensome
taxes, devoured by the caterpillars of a standing army, sunk into
contempt in every foreign court, and repining at the daily decay of its
commerce, and the daily multiplication of its oppressors, incite us to
an inquiry after the author of its miseries.

It is asserted, that no man ought to be called into question for any
crime, who is not suspected of having committed it. This, my lords, is a
rule not only reasonable in itself, but so naturally observed, that I
believe it was never yet broken