d honest.

We have now gone through most of the general topics.

But he is not responsible, as being thanked by the Court of Directors.
He has had the thanks and approbation of the India Company for his
services.--We know too well here, I trust the world knows, and you will
always assert, that a pardon from the crown is not pleadable here, that
it cannot bar the impeachment of the Commons,--much less a pardon of the
East India Company, though it may involve them in guilt which might
induce us to punish them for such a pardon. If any corporation by
collusion with criminals refuse to do their duty in coercing them, the
magistrates are answerable.

It is the use, virtue, and efficacy of Parliamentary judicial procedure,
that it puts an end to this dominion of faction, intrigue, cabal, and
clandestine intelligences. The acts of men are put to their proper test,
and the works of darkness tried in the face of day,--not the corrupted
opinions of others on them, but their own intrinsic merits. We charge it
as his crime, that he bribed the Court of Directors to thank him for
what they had condemned as breaches of his duty.

The East India Company, it is true, have thanked him. They ought not to
have done it; and it is a reflection upon their character that they did
it. But the Directors praise him in the gross, after having condemned
each act in detail. His actions are _all_, every one, censured one by
one as they arise. I do not recollect any one transaction, few there
are, I am sure, in the whole body of that succession of crimes now
brought before you for your judgment, in which the India Company have
not censured him. Nay, in one instance he pleads their censure in bar of
this trial;[27] for he says, "In that censure I have already received my
punishment." If, for any other reasons, they come and say, "We thank
you, Sir, for all your services," to that I answer, Yes; and _I_ would
thank him for his services, too, if I knew them. But _I_ do
not;--perhaps _they_ do. Let them thank him for those services. I am
ordered to prosecute him for these crimes. Here, therefore, we are on a
balance with the India Company; and your Lordships may perhaps think it
some addition to his crimes, that he has found means to obtain the
thanks of the India Company for the whole of his conduct, at the same
time that their records are full of constant, uniform, particular
censure and reprobation of every one of those acts for which he now
stands