before the House of Commons,
and it is now in evidence before your Lordships. In this defence, he
supposes the charge which was made originally before the Commons, and
which the Commons voted, (though afterwards, for the convenience of
shortening it, the affair was brought before your Lordships in the way
in which it is,)--he supposes, I say, the whole to proceed from a
malicious intention; and I hope your Lordships will not think, and I
hope the Commons, reconsidering this matter, will not think, that, when
such an imputation of malice was made for the purpose of repelling this
corroborating argument which was used in the House of Commons to prove
his guilt, I was wrong in attempting to support the House of Commons
against his imputation of malice.

I must observe where I am limited and where I am not. I am limited,
strictly, fully, (and your Lordships and my country, who hear me, will
judge how faithfully I shall adhere to that limitation,) not to support
the credit of Nundcomar by any allegation against Mr. Hastings
respecting his condemnation or execution; but I am not at all limited
from endeavoring to support his credit against Mr. Hastings's charges of
other forgeries, and from showing you, what I hope to show you clearly
in a few words, that Nundcomar cannot be presumed guilty of forgery with
more probability than Mr. Hastings is guilty of bringing forward a light
and dangerous (for I use no other words than a light and dangerous)
charge of forgery, when it serves his purpose. Mr. Hastings charges
Nundcomar with two other forgeries. "These two forgeries," he says, "are
facts recorded in the very Proceedings which my accuser partially
quotes, proving this man to have been guilty of a most flagrant forgery
of a letter from Munny Begum, and of a letter from the Nabob Yeteram ul
Dowlah"; and therefore he infers malice in those who impute anything
improper to him, knowing that the proof stood so. Here he asserts that
there are records before the House of Commons, and on the Company's
Proceedings and Consultations, proving Nundcomar to have been guilty of
these two forgeries. Turn over the next page of his printed defence, and
you find a very extraordinary thing. You would have imagined that this
forgery of a letter from Munny Begum, which, he says, is recognized and
proved on the Journals, was a forgery charged by Munny Begum herself, or
by somebody on her part, or some person concerned in this business.
There is no