ministration had been
marked by violence, oppression, and cruelty.

In reply, Dundas acknowledged that he had suggested and moved the
resolutions which had been read; and that he entertained the same
sentiments respecting Hastings now, as he did when he moved them in the
house; but these resolutions, he said, only went to recall, and not to
impeach him. Yet, though he thus virtually condemned Hastings in
the opening of his speech, before he concluded he applauded his
administration. The more, he said, he examined the conduct of the late
governor-general, the more difficult he found it to fix any criminal
intention, or to separate it from the conduct of the directors at home,
who had expressly commanded or urged him on in so many particulars.
Mutual recrimination between Fox and Pitt followed this speech of
Dundas, in which the deadly sin of the coalition was used with great
effect. The papers which Burke called for, however, were not opposed
until the following day, when he asked for those relating to Oude, in
the latter part of the administration, of the accused governor-general,
the part which ministers maintained was without spot, and blameless.
Pitt said that this would be producing new and endless matter, and that
the inquiry for the present ought to be confined to the period embraced
in the reports of 1781. Major Scott, however, said that the Oude papers
would establish the reputation of Hastings, and that they ought to be
produced; whence the motion was carried. Subsequently motions were made
for papers relating to the Mahratta peace, to the negociations which
Hastings had carried on at Lucknow with the son of the Great Mogul, and
to the mission of Major Brown to Delhi. These papers were all refused,
and Burke having got all he could, on the 3rd of April, proposed calling
to the bar some of the gentlemen who had been ordered to attend
as witnesses. In this he was opposed by all the crown lawyers, who
represented that he ought to produce his charges first, and that no
proofs ought to be admitted, except such as were applicable to the
charges; a mode of proceeding adopted in the courts of law, and which,
they contended, ought to regulate the proceedings of the house of
commons. Burke and his friends argued, in reply, that the house had
already-sanctioned a different mode of proceeding, by gran ting the
power of taking evidence, by forming itself into a committee, to receive
evidence, and by summoning the witnesses