rested the final
judgment, of this great cause.

With very few intermissions, the affairs of India have constantly
engaged the attention of the Commons for more than fourteen years. We
may safely affirm we have tried every mode of legislative provision
before we had recourse to anything of penal process. It was in the year
1774 [1773?] we framed an act of Parliament for remedy to the then
existing disorders in India, such as the then information before us
enabled us to enact. Finding that the act of Parliament did not answer
all the ends that were expected from it, we had, in the year 1782,
recourse to a body of monitory resolutions. Neither had we the expected
fruit from them. When, therefore, we found that our inquiries and our
reports, our laws and our admonitions, were alike despised, that
enormities increased in proportion as they were forbidden, detected, and
exposed,--when we found that guilt stalked with an erect and upright
front, and that legal authority seemed to skulk and hide its head like
outlawed guilt,--when we found that some of those very persons who were
appointed by Parliament to assert the authority of the laws of this
kingdom were the most forward, the most bold, and the most active in the
conspiracy for their destruction,--then it was time for the justice of
the nation to recollect itself. To have forborne longer would not have
been patience, but collusion; it would have been participation with
guilt; it would have been to make ourselves accomplices with the
criminal.

We found it was impossible to evade painful duty without betraying a
sacred trust. Having, therefore, resolved upon the last and only
resource, a penal prosecution, it was our next business to act in a
manner worthy of our long deliberation. In all points we proceeded with
selection. We have chosen (we trust it will so appear to your Lordships)
such a crime, and such a criminal, and such a body of evidence, and such
a mode of process, as would have recommended this course of justice to
posterity, even if it had not been supported by any example in the
practice of our forefathers.

First, to speak of the process: we are to inform your Lordships, that,
besides that long previous deliberation of fourteen years, we examined,
as a preliminary to this proceeding, every circumstance which could
prove favorable to parties apparently delinquent, before we finally
resolved to prosecute. There was no precedent to be found in the
Journals,