but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles.

18.-EDMUND BURKE'S PERORATION ON THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.

[Burke was born in Dublin 1730, and educated at Trinity College in that city. After completing his education he came to London, and entered himself as a law student in the Temple. At first he applied himself to letters, and published his "Vindication of Natural Society" and his " Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful;" these works introduced him to the best society, and he then determined to devote himself to politics. An an orator he was almost without a rival. Died 1797.]

MY LORDS-What is it that we want here to do a great act of national justice? Do we want a cause, my lords? You have the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms. Do you want a criminal, my lords? When was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one? No, my lords, you must not look to punish any other such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent.

My lords, 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 Commons of England resenting, as their own, the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people of Indiạ.

Do you want a tribunal? My lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. My lords, here we see virtually in the mind's eye 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 of the crown, such as the fond wishes of the people of England wish an heir apparent 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. My lords, we have a great hereditary peerage

here; those who have their own honour, the honour 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. My lords, we have here a new nobility, who have risen 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 favour 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 the 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 distiguished the courts in which they have presided.

My lords, you have here also the lights of our religion; you have the bishops of England. My lords, you have that true image of the primitive Church in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions. You have the representatives of that religion which says, that their God is love, that the very vital spirit of their institution is charity; a religion which so much hates oppression, that, when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, he did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, but in sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle, that their welfare was the object of all government, since the person who was the Master of Nature chose to appear in a subordinate situation. These are the considerations which influence them, which animate them, and will animate them, against all oppression; knowing that He, who is called first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed and of those who feed it, made himself "the servant of all."

My lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of the body 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,

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 (i.e. the people) of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonoured.

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 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

19.-LORD BROUGHAM ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION. MY LORDS, I have had my attention directed, within the last two hours, to the new mass of papers laid on our table from the West Indies. The bulk I am averse to break, but a sample I have culled of its hateful contents. Eleven females were punished by severe flogging-and then put on the treadmill, where they were compelled to ply until exhausted nature could endure no more;-when faint and about to fall off, they were suspended by the arms in a manner that has been described to me by a most respectable eyewitness of similar scenes, but not so suspended as that the mechanism could revolve clear of their persons; for the wheels at each turn bruised and galled their legs, till their sufferings had reached the pitch when life can no longer even glimmer in the socket of the weary frame. In the course of a few days these wretched beings languished, to use the language of our law-that law which is thus so constantly and systematically violated-and "languishing died."

Ask you if crimes like these, murderous in their legal nature, as well as frightful in their aspect, passed unnoticed-if inquiry was neglected to be made respecting these deaths in a prison? No such thing! The forms of justice were on this head peremptory, even in the West Indies-and at those forms, the handmaids of justice were present, though their sacred mistress was far away. The coroner duly attended-the jury were regularly empanelledeleven inquisitions were made in order and eleven verdicts returned-Murder? Manslaughter? Misdemeanour ? Misconduct? No -but "DIED BY THE VISITATION OF GOD!" Died by the Visitation of God! A lie! a perjury! a blasphemy! The Visitation of God! Yes, for it is among the most awful of those visitations by which the inscrutable purposes of His will are mysteriously accomplished, that He sometimes arms the wicked with power to oppress the guiltless; and if there be any visitation more dreadful than another; any which more tries the faith and vexes the reason of erring mortals, it is when Heaven showers down upon the earth the plague -not of scorpions, or pestilence, or famine, or war-but of unjust judges and perjured jurors, wretches who pervert the law to wreak their personal vengeance, or compass their sordid ends, forswearing themselves on the Gospels of God, to the end that injustice may prevail, and the innocent be destroyed!

I hasten to a close; there remains little to add. It is, my lords, with a view to prevent such enormities as I have feebly pictured

before you, to correct the administration of justice, to secure the comforts of the negroes, to restrain the cruelty of the tormentors, to amend the discipline of prisons, to arm the governors with local authority over the police; it is with these views that I have formed the resolutions now on your table. These improvements are, however, only to be regarded as temporary expedients, as mere palliatives of an enormous mischief, for which the only effectual remedy is the complete emancipation which I have demonstrated by the unerring and incontrovertible evidence of facts, as well as the clearest deductions of reason, to be safe and practicable, and, therefore, proved to be our imperative duty at once to proclaim.

From the instant that glad sound is wafted across the ocean, what a blessed change begins; what an enchanting prospect unfolds itself! The African placed on the same footing with other men, becomes in reality our fellow-citizen-to our feelings, as well as in his own nature our equal, our brother. No difference of origin or colour can now prevail to keep the two castes apart. Where the driver and the gaoler once bore sway, the lash resounds no more; nor does the clank of the chain any more fall upon the troubled ear; the fetter has ceased to gall the vexed limb, and the very mark disappears which for awhile it had left. I do not deny that danger exists—I admit it to be not far distant from our path. You have gone too far if you stop here and go no further; you are in imminent hazard if, having loosened the fetters, you do not strike them off-if, leaving them ineffectual to restrain, you let them remain to gall, to irritate, and to goad. Beware of that state, yet more unnatural than slavery itself-liberty bestowed by halves -the power of resistance given-the inducement to submission withheld.

You have let the slave taste of the cup of freedom; while intoxicated with the draught, beware how you dash the cup away from his lips. You have produced the progeny of liberty, see the prodigious hazard of swathing the limbs of the gigantic infant, you know not the might that may animate it. Have a care, I beseech you have a care, how you rouse the strength that slumbers in the sable peasant's arm! Every tribe, every shade of the Negro race will combine, from the fiery Koramantin to the peaceful Eboe, and the ghastly shape of colonial destruction meets the astonished eye.

I turn away from the horrid vision that my eye may rest once more on the prospect of enduring empire, and peace founded upon freedom. I regard the freedom of the Negro as accomplished and sure. Why? because it is his right; because he has shown himself fit for it; because a pretext, or a shadow of a pretext, can no longer be devised for withholding that right from its possessor. My reliance is firm and unflinching upon the great change which I have witnessed-the education of the people, unfettered by_party or by sect, witnessed from the beginning of its progress. I may say from the hour of its birth; I watched over its cradle, I marked its growth, I rejoiced in its strength, I witnessed its maturity, I

have been spared to see it ascend the very height of supreme power, directing the councils of state, accelerating every great improvement, uniting itself with every good work, propping all useful institutions, extirpating abuses in all our institutions, passing the bounds of our European dominions, and in the new world, as well as the old, proclaiming that freedom is the birthright of man, that distinction of colour gives no title to oppression, that the chains now loosened must be struck off, and even the marks they have left effaced, proclaiming this by the same eternal law of our nature which makes nations the masters of their own destiny, and which in Europe has caused every tyrant's throne to quake.

But they need feel no alarm at the progress of light who defend a limited monarchy and support popular institutions; who place their chief pride not in ruling over slaves, be they white or be they black, but in wearing a constitutional crown, in holding the sword of justice with the hand of mercy, in being the first citizen of a country whose air is too pure for slaves to breathe, and on whose shores, if the captive's foot but touch, his fetters of themselves fall off.

The time has come, the trial has been made, the hour is striking; you have no longer a pretext for hesitation, faltering, or delay. I demand his rights. I demand his liberty without stint. In the name of justice and of law, in the name of reason, in the name of GOD, who has given you no right to work injustice, I demand that your brother be no longer trampled upon as your slave! I make my appeal to the Commons who represent the free people of England, and I require at their hands the performance of that condition for which they have paid so enormous a price, that condition which all their constituents are in breathless anxiety to see fulfilled! I appeal to this house. Hereditary judges of the first tribunal in the world, to you I appeal for justice. Patrons of all the arts that humanize mankind, under your protection I place humanity herself. To the merciful sovereign of a free people I call aloud for mercy to the hundreds of thousands for whom half a million of her Christian sisters have supplicated, I ask that their cry may not have risen in vain.

But first I turn my eye to the throne of all justice, and devoutly humbling myself before Him who is of purer eyes than to behold such vast iniquities, I implore that the curse hovering over the head of the unjust and the oppressor be averted from us, that your hearts may be turned to mercy, and that over all the earth His will may at length be done.

20.-MR. SHERIDAN'S PANEGYRIC ON JUSTICE.

[Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born in Dublin 1751, and educated at Harrow School. He adorned every branch of literature to which he applied himself, and was equally famous as an orator. His fine comedy, "The Rivals," was produced