_Mr. Burke._ We were aware of the objection that might be made to admitting our observations, if considered as observations upon the 17th article, but not when considered with reference to facts on the record before you, for the purpose of disproving the principles upon which the defendant and his counsel had relied: that was the purpose for which we proposed chiefly to make them. But your Lordship's [the Lord Chancellor's] own personal authority will have great weight with us, and, unless we perceive some other peer differ from you, we will take it in the course we have constantly done. We never have sent your Lordships out of the hall to consent [consult?] upon a matter upon which that noble lord appeared to have formed a decision in his own mind; we take for granted that what is delivered from the woolsack, to which no peer expresses a dissent, is the sense of the House; as such we take it, and as such we submit to it in this instance. Therefore, leaving this upon the record as it stands, without observing upon it, and submitting to your Lordships' decision, that we cannot, according to order, observe in reply upon what was not declared by us to be a part of the charges we meant to insist upon, we proceed to another business.] We have already stated to your Lordships, and we beg to remind you of it, the state and condition of the country of Oude when Mr. Hastings first came to it,--his subsequent and immediate usurpation of all the powers of government, and the use he made of them,--the tyranny he exercised over the Nabob himself,--the tyranny he exercised upon his mother and grandmother, and all the other females of his family, and their dependants of every description, to the number of about eight hundred persons,--the tyranny exercised (though we are not at liberty to press it now) upon his brethren. We have shown you how he confiscated the property of all the jaghiredars, the nobility of the country. We have proved to your Lordships that he was well acquainted with all the misery and distress occasioned by these proceedings, and that he afforded the sufferers no relief. We now proceed to review the effect of this general mass of usurpation, tyranny, and oppression upon the revenues and the prosperity of the country.