These resolutions were seconded by Sir Wm. Meredith, who combated the notion of the supposed hardship of bringing up such charges, after a period of sixteen years, and contended that length of time could not improve the title to wealth so acquired. As to presents, he denied that covenants alone made the receiving of them a crime, or that where there were no covenants they were legal: that it had been found, indeed, that presents had been taken, after the receipt of the covenants, by Mr. Johnstone and others, in circumstances which had been investigated and published by Lord Clive; but that it did not appear that the ill-blood excited by such disclosure had had the slightest influence on the conduct of his brother, the Governor, who had carried on the investigation before the Committee with perfect exactness: that it could not be overlooked, that the evidence against that gentleman had been taken in a most illegal manner, the witnesses being under restraint: that Lord Clive's supposed generosity in not plundering Moorshedabad was nugatory; that he entered it not as a conqueror, but as an ally: nor would the assertion, that there was no criminal intention in receiving the presents, acquit him; that would only affect the _extent_ of the consequences. Colonel Burgoyne's original motion was to be kept in mind, and that he was content to leave him all that his merit deserved. Others had fought against European enemies, he against wretched Indians,--a circumstance not to be forgotten in estimating the comparative merit of officers. Mr. Wedderburn (then Solicitor-General) strenuously opposed the motion. He said that the House was in danger of being led blindly and inconsiderately, from misdirected feelings, to commit a grand injustice towards one of the most illustrious men of his country. With respect to presents, on which the burthen of the accusation lay, he argued, that there were some, indeed many, situations, wherein the receipt of presents was justifiable upon every principle of disinterested integrity: and such, he contended, they were in the present instance, where a great capital had been saved from the horrors of pillage, or military contribution; and where signal services had been rendered to a sovereign Prince, who had adopted only the ordinary means of showing his gratitude: they were justifiable both from the extraordinary circumstances of the case, and from the known customs and usages of the country. He largely expatiated on the deep obligations under which the nation lay to Lord Clive; and affirmed, that for the Parliament to accuse a man of delinquency, upon the necessarily partial report of a Select Committee, would be to accuse him without competent evidence, and to be guilty of an act of flagrant injustice. Mr. Richard Fuller, one of the Committee, took a similar view of the case; and while he doubted the competency of the kind of evidence, declared that the latter part of the Committee's report was undoubtedly not true.