ects,
errors of common human frailty, which, as we know and feel, we can allow
for. We charge this offender with no crimes that have not arisen from
passions which it is criminal to harbor,--with no offences that have not
their root in avarice, rapacity, pride, insolence, ferocity, treachery,
cruelty, malignity of temper,--in short, in [with?] nothing that does
not argue a total extinction of all moral principle, that does not
manifest an inveterate blackness of heart, dyed in grain with malice,
vitiated, corrupted, gangrened to the very core. If we do not plant his
crimes in those vices which the breast of man is made to abhor, and the
spirit of all laws, human and divine, to interdict, we desire no longer
to be heard upon this occasion. Let everything that can be pleaded on
the ground of surprise or error, upon those grounds be pleaded with
success: we give up the whole of those predicaments. We urge no crimes
that were not crimes of forethought. We charge him with nothing that he
did not commit upon deliberation,--that he did not commit against
advice, supplication, and remonstrance,--that he did not commit against
the direct command of lawful authority,--that he did not commit after
reproof and reprimand, the reproof and reprimand of those who were
authorized by the laws to reprove and reprimand him. The crimes of Mr.
Hastings are crimes not only in themselves, but aggravated by being
crimes of contumacy. They were crimes, not against forms, but against
those eternal laws of justice which are our rule and our birthright. His
offences are, not in formal, technical language, but in reality, in
substance and effect, _high_ crimes and high misdemeanors.

So far as to the crimes. As to the criminal, we have chosen him on the
same principle on which we selected the crimes. We have not chosen to
bring before you a poor, puny, trembling delinquent, misled, perhaps, by
those who ought to have taught him better, but who have afterwards
oppressed him by their power, as they had first corrupted him by their
example. Instances there have been many, wherein the punishment of minor
offences, in inferior persons, has been made the means of screening
crimes of an high order, and in men of high description. Our course is
different. We have not brought before you an obscure offender, who, when
his insignificance and weakness are weighed against the power of the
prosecution, gives even to public justice something of the appearance of
o