which can be in creased only
by the decay of those to whom we owe it, and which is then most fervent,
when the tremulous voice of age, resistless in its feebleness, inquires
for the natural protector of its cold decline. If these are the general
sentiments of man, what must be their depravity--what must be their
degeneracy--who can blot out and erase from the bosom the virtue that is
most deeply rooted in the human heart, and twined, within the cords of
life itself? Aliens from nature! Apostates from humanity! And yet, if
there be a crime more fell, more foul; if there be anything worse than
a wilful persecutor of his mother, it is that of a deliberate instigator
and abettor to the deed; this it is that shocks, disgusts, and appals
the mind more than the other; to view, not a wilful parricide, but
a parricide by compulsion; a miserable wretch, not actuated by the
stubborn evils of his own worthless heart, not driven by the fury of
his own distracted brain, but lending his sacrilegious hand, without any
malice of his own, to answer the abandoned purposes of the human fiends
that have subdued his will. To condemn crimes like these we need not
talk of laws or of human rules; their foulness, their deformity does not
depend on local constitutions, on human institutes, or religious creeds;
they are crimes, and the persons who perpetrate them are monsters, who
violate the primitive condition on which the earth was given to
man; they are guilty by the general verdict of human-kind." Sheridan
concluded his speech by an appeal to British justice, which, as it is
preserved to us, is a mere sonorous roll of words, with a common-place
meaning; after which he acted a stage-trick; as if fainting, he fell
back into the arms of his friend Burke.

This was the last charge against Hastings that came before the court in
Westminster Hall during the present session. In the house of commons,
however, there was much discussion concerning the money issued from
the exchequer, for the discharge of the expenses incurred in the
impeachment. Mr. Burgess moved that an account of all the money expended
should be laid before the house; and, though opposed by the managing
committee, who said they considered the motion as made merely as an
attempt by the friends of Hastings to vex and impede the committee in
the prosecution, it was carried, and an account of the expenses was laid
upon the table. But this account was incomplete; and Mr. Burgess had to
ma