THE LOVER'S RESOLVE. Be she fairer than the day, What care I how fair she be? Shall my foolish heart be pinel If she be not so to me, What care I how kind she be? Shall a woman's virtue move What care I how good she be? 'Cause her fortune seems too high, Shall I play the fool and die? Those that bear a noble mind, Where they want of riches find, Think what with them they would do, Great or good, or kind or fair, 401 402 CLARENCE'S DREAM. O CLARENCE'S DREAM.-SHAKESPEARE. I HAVE passed a miserable night, Upon the hatches; whence we looked toward England, During the wars of York and Lancaster, Upon the giddy footing of the hatches, Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling, O then, methought, what pain it was to drown! All scattered in the bottom of the sea. Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS. Which almost burst to belch it in the sea. The first that there did greet my stranger soul, Seize on him, furies, take him to your torments!" 403 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.-BURKE. MY Y LORDS: What is it that we want here to a great act of national justice? Do we want a cause, my lords? You have the cause of oppressed princes, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms. Do you want a criminal, my lords? Where was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one? No, my lords, you must not look to punish any other delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent. Is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you the Commons of Great Britain, as prosecutors; and I believe, my lords, that the sun, in his beneficent progress round the world, does not behold a more glorious sight than that of men separated from a remote people by the material bounds and barriers of nature, united by the bond of a social and moral community; all the 404 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS. commons of England resenting as their own the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people of India. Do we want a tribunal? No example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. Here we see that sacred majesty of the crown, under whose authority you sit, and whose power you exercise. We see in that invisible authority what we all feel in reality and life, the beneficent powers and protecting justice of his majesty. We have here the heir-apparent to the crown, such as the fond wishes of the people would have the heirapparent of the crown to be. We have here all the branches of the royal family, in a situation between majesty and subjection, between the sovereign and the subject; offering a pledge in that situation, for the support of the rights of the crown and the liberties of the people, both which extremities they touch. We have a great hereditary peerage here; those who have their own honor, the honor of their ancestors and of their posterity, to guard; and who will justify, as they have always justified, that provision in the constitution by which justice is made an hereditary office. We have here a new nobility, who have arisen and exalted themselves by various merits, by great military services, which have extended the fame of this country from the rising to the setting sun: we have those who, by various civil merits and various civil talents, have been exalted to a situation which they well deserve, and in which they will justify the favor of their sovereign and the good opinion of their fellow-subjects; and make them rejoice to see those virtuous characters, that were, the other day, upon a level with them, now exalted above them in rank, but feeling with them in sympathy what they felt in common with them before. We have persons exalted from the practice of the law, from a place in which they administered high, though subordinate justice, to a seat here, to enlighten with their knowledge, and to strengthen with their votes, those principles which have distinguished the courts in which they have presided. My lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of this house. We know them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands. Therefore it is with confidence, that, ordered by the Commons, REVELRY IN THE EAST INDIES. 405 I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors. I impeach him, in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed. I impeach him, in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored. I impeach him, in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted; whose properties he has destroyed; whose country he has laid waste and desolate. I impeach him, in the name, and by the virtue of those eternal laws of justice, which he has violated. I impeach him, in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life. REVELRY IN THE EAST INDIES. E meet 'neath the sounding rafter, WE And the walls around are bare; We drink to our comrades' eyes; Hurrah! for the next that dies. Not a sigh for the lot that darkles; |