ght
before your Lordships. I knew that Mr. Hastings, in his anticipated
defence before the House of Commons, had attempted to shake the credit
of that witness. I therefore thought myself justified in informing your
Lordships, and in warning him, that, if he did attempt to shake the
credit of an important witness against him by an allegation of his
having been condemned and executed for a forgery, I would endeavor to
support his credit by attacking that very prosecution which brought on
that condemnation and that execution; and that I did consider it, and
would lay grounds before your Lordships to prove it, to be a murder
committed, instead of a justification set up, or that ought to be set
up.

Now, my Lords, I am ordered by the Commons no longer to persist in that
declaration; and I, who know nothing in this place, and ought to know
nothing in this place, but obedience to the Commons, do mean, when Mr.
Hastings makes that objection (if he shall be advised to make it)
against the credit of Rajah Nundcomar, not thus to support that credit;
and therefore that objection to the credit of the witness must go
unrefuted by me. My Lords, I must admit, perhaps against my private
judgment, (but that is of no consideration for your Lordships, when
opposed to the judgment of the House of Commons,) or, at least, not
contest, that a first minister of state, in a great kingdom, who had the
benefit of the administration, and of the entire and absolute command of
a revenue of fifteen hundred thousand pounds a year, had been guilty of
a paltry forgery in Calcutta; that this man, who had been guilty of this
paltry forgery, had waited for his sentence and his punishment, till a
body of English judges, armed with an English statute, came to Calcutta;
and that this happened at the very happy nick and moment when he was
accusing Mr. Hastings of the bribery with which we now in the name of
the Commons charge him; that it was owing to an entirely fortuitous
concurrence of circumstances, in which Mr. Hastings had no share, or
that it was owing to something beyond this, something that is rather
pious than fortuitous, namely, that, as Mr. Hastings tells you himself,
"all persuasions of men were impressed with a superstitious belief that
a fortunate influence directed all my actions to their destined ends."
I, not being at that time infected with the superstition, and
considering what I thought Mr. Hastings's guilt to be, and what I must
prove it