My Lords, the Commons have resolved last night, and I did not see the resolution till this morning, "that no direction or authority was given by this House to the committee appointed to manage the impeachment against Warren Hastings, Esquire, to make any charge or allegation against the said Warren Hastings respecting the condemnation or execution of Nundcomar; and that the words spoken by the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, one of the said managers, _videlicet_, that he (meaning Mr. Hastings) murdered that man (meaning Nundcomar) by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey, ought not to have been spoken." My Lords, this is the resolution of the House of Commons. Your Lordships well know and remember my having used such or similar words, and the end and purpose for which I used them. I owe a few words of explanation to the Commons of Great Britain, who attend in a committee of the whole House to be the observers and spectators of my conduct. I owe it to your Lordships, I owe it to this great auditory, I owe it to the present times and to posterity, to make some apology for a proceeding which has drawn upon me the disavowal of the House which I represent. Your Lordships will remember that this charge which I have opened to your Lordships is primarily a charge founded upon the evidence of the Rajah Nundcomar; and consequently I thought myself obliged, I thought it a part of my duty, to support the credit of that person, who is the principal evidence to support the direct charge that is brought before your Lordships. I knew that Mr. Hastings, in his anticipated defence before the House of Commons, had attempted to shake the credit of that witness. I therefore thought myself justified in informing your Lordships, and in warning him, that, if he did attempt to shake the credit of an important witness against him by an allegation of his having been condemned and executed for a forgery, I would endeavor to support his credit by attacking that very prosecution which brought on that condemnation and that execution; and that I did consider it, and would lay grounds before your Lordships to prove it, to be a murder committed, instead of a justification set up, or that ought to be set up.