Edmund Burke

This resolution is in itself so solemn, and is so bottomed on constitutional principle and legal policy, that your Committee have thought fit to insert it verbatim in their Report, as they relied upon it at the bar of the Court, when they…

They are of opinion that a body of precedents so uniform, so accordant with principle, made in such times, and under the authority of a succession of such great men, ought not to have been departed from.

That trial, therefore, furnishes the largest body of authentic precedents in this point to be found in the records of Parliament.

Precedents grounded on principles so favorable to the fairness and equity of judicial proceedings, given in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., were not likely to be abandoned after the Revolution.

There is a later authority in print that doth settle the point so as I tell you, and I do conceive it ought to be followed; and it being safer for the prisoner, my humble opinion to your Lordship is, that he ought to be present at the…

It is well known that the form of an impeachment has very little resemblance to that of an indictment; and I believe the Commons will endeavor to preserve the difference, by adhering to their own precedents.

My Lords, if the Commons, in preparing articles of impeachment, should govern themselves by precedents of indictments, in my humble opinion they would depart from the ancient, nay, the constant, usage and practice of Parliament.

I hope it never will be allowed here as a reason, that what quashes an indictment in the courts below will make insufficient an impeachment brought by the Commons of Great Britain.

The conservation of all other parts of the law, the whole indeed of the rights and liberties of the subject, ultimately depends upon the preservation of the Law of Parliament in its original force and authority.

Courts are made for the suitors, and not the suitors for the court.

We call upon you for our liberties; and hope that the freedom of the Commons will be preserved by the justice of the Lords.

We call upon you for the preservation of our manners, of our virtues.

We know, I say, and feel the force of money; and we now call upon your Lordships for justice in this cause of money.

To-day the Commons of Great Britain prosecute the delinquents of India: to-morrow the delinquents of India may be the Commons of Great Britain.

We, who here appear representing the Commons of England, are not wild enough not to tremble both for ourselves and for our constituents at the effect of riches.

Our liberty is as much in danger as our honor and our national character.

But nobody refused them the character of being an open-hearted, candid, liberal, plain, sincere people,--qualities which would cancel a thousand faults, if they had them.

They not only bring with them the wealth which they have acquired, but they bring with them into our country the vices by which it was acquired.

I have only regarded the system of bribery; I have endeavored to show that it is a system of mystery and concealment, and consequently a system of fraud.

Hastings has endeavored to involve in mystery, by bringing proof after proof that every bribe that was here concealed was taken with corrupt purposes and followed with the most pernicious consequences.

I have shown your Lordships that his evasions of the clear words of his covenant and the clear words of an act of Parliament were such as did not arise from an erroneous judgment, but from a corrupt intention; and I believe you will find…

And here, my Lords, I would wish to say something of the miserable situation of the people of that country; but it is not in my commission, and I must be silent, and shall only request your Lordships to observe how this crime of bribery…

No, we bring them forth, to show you the wickedness of the man, who, after he has robbed innocence, after he has divided the spoil between Gunga Govind Sing and himself, gets the party robbed to perjure himself for his sake,--if such a…

But the House of Commons was too just not to send him to this tribunal, whose justice they cannot doubt, whose penetration he cannot elude, and whose decision will justify those managers whose characters he attempted to defame.

He would seek refuge anywhere, even in the very sanctuary of his accusers, rather than abide a trial with him in a court of justice.