All the evidence they had produced to you amounts to no more than that such a man _believes_ such a man _heard of something_; and to close the whole of this hearsay account, Sir Elijah Impey, who always comes in as a supplement, declares that no man doubted of the existence of this rebellion, and of the guilt of the Begums, any more than of the rebellion of 1745: a comparison which, I must say, is, by way of evidence, a little indecorous in a chief-justice of India. Your Lordships are sufficiently acquainted with the history of that rebellion to know, that, when Lord Lovat was tried at this bar, the proceedings against him were not founded on second-hand hearsay. The existence of the rebellion of 1745 was proved, notwithstanding its notoriety; but neither notoriety nor proof would have signified anything, if Lord Lovat's participation in it had not been brought home to him directly, personally, and particularly. Yet a chief-justice, sent to India to represent the sacred majesty of the crown of England, has gone so far as to say at your bar that no more doubt could be entertained of the existence either of the rebellion or the guilt of the Begums than of the rebellion in 1745. Besides, he forgets that he himself carried the order to confiscate these people's property without any trial whatever. But this is the way of proceeding by an English chief-justice in India,--a chief-justice who had rendered himself the instrument, the letter-carrier, the messenger, I had almost said the executioner of Mr. Hastings. From this view of the whole matter your Lordships will form an estimate of the spirit of Indian government and Indian justice. But to blow away and to put an end to all their false pretences, their hearsays, and talk of nudjeeves, and wounds, and the like, I ask, Who is the first witness that we have produced upon this occasion? It is the Nabob himself, negativing all these pretences. Did he believe them? Not a word from him of any rebellion, actual or suspected. Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, said that he was obliged to wheel round, and to avoid that dangerous place, Fyzabad. His friends urged him to this. "For God's sake," say they, "have a reverend care of your sacred person! What will become of the justice of India, what will become of the natives, if you, their legitimate protector, should fall into the hands of these wicked, rebellious women at Fyzabad?" But although the Chief-Justice does this, the Nabob, whose deposition is said to be the first object of this rebellion, takes leave of Mr. Hastings at the very moment when it is raging in the highest possible degree, and gallops into its very focus.