the test, and endeavoured to show, that | subjected himself to an action; and supreligion was not a proper test for a poli- posing that he found means to get through tical institution. With regard to the the inconveniencies of the litigation, what argument used by the right hon. gentle- was the consequence? Why, that having man to prove that those Acts operated to refused the man the Sacrament, he had exclude persons from corporations, though disabled him from being qualified to hold not from sitting in that House, he should the office; for the man could not take the contend that they had not that effect; that Sacrament from another clergyman, and there were corporations which were en- thus there was vested in the minister of a tirely filled by Dissenters, and that he parish a power superior to that of any knew of two such corporations. The mis- ecclesiastical court.-Mr. Fox then spoke chiefs in Charles 2's reign arose not from of the principles which had governed the the Dissenters, but from the governing Dissenters in this kingdom, and said, they part of the Church of England: he said, were persevering and active in their aphe was supported in this assertion by the plication for redress of their injuries in authority of a great writer, Mr. Locke. former times; and if they used the same The opinions of the heads of the Church perseverance now, they could not fail of of England were not to be a rule for the success; that he would advise them to repolitical conduct of that House; for they peat their applications till the Legislature were as decidedly against passing the Bills gave them that redress they desired. which that House passed six or seven He had considered himself honoured in years ago in favour of the Dissenters, as acting with them upon many occasions; they were upon the present occasion. In and if he thought there was any time in deciding upon questions of that nature the which they had departed from those prinelectors of the representatives of the Uni- ciples which were inconsistent with the versities were likely to be warped more constitution of this country, he should strongly than the electors of other re- refer that period to a very recent date inpresentatives of that House: this was deed; on a recollection of what had been to be lamented; but he did not mean to their conduct upon that occasion, the cast any reflections upon the motives of House would at least do him the justice their conduct. The Church of Scotland to say, that in supporting them that day had not found a test necessary there for he was not influenced by any very obvious the Episcopalians. The right hon. gen- motives of private partiality or attachtleman had stated, that by this repeal the ment; yet he was determined to let them Dissenters would not be obliged to contri- know, that though they could upon some bute to the provision of the members of occasions lose sight of their principles of the Church of England; it was absurd to liberty, he would not upon any occasion argue that as a consequence; it did not lose sight of his principles of toleration: follow this motion went only to take off he should therefore give his vote for the the seclusion of offices. Mr. Fox dwelt motion; but at the same time observe, some time upon this point. He then that if there could be any modification of asserted, that the argument that there the penalties without repealing much of must be one establishment was absurd; the Act, it might be matter of instructwo establishments might exist in one go- tion to the committee, and perhaps would vernment; they actually did exist, and prove more palatable to the House; he instanced the Church of England and yet, as the matter stood at present, the the Kirk of Scotland. He confessed that right hon. gentleman opposing the motion the Test Act did not operate directly as a might be said, though disclaiming persestigma upon the Dissenters; but at least cution in words, to admit the whole exit carried, and it was a fair argument to tent of it in principle. say, that the Dissenters will be glad to be excused paying to the maintenance of the Church. Mr. Fox then said, What are you doing to secure the establishment of this constitution? You are taking religion as religion for a test in politics. He then combated the propriety of such a measure. With respect to clergymen giving or refusing the Sacrament, he observed, that if the clergyman of the parish refused, he

Mr. Pitt begged leave to assure the right hon. gentleman, in answer to his mis-statements, that he could not have been so absurd as to say, that by repealing the Test the Dissenters would avoid being obliged to contribute to the provision for the clergy of the Church of England. He had only stated, that if the Test were repealed, it might put the Dissenters into a situation to make other

NOES

Tellers.

Mr. Beaufoy
Mr. Plumer

Sir William Dolben
Mr. Young

So it passed in the negative.

Debate in the Commons on the Articles of Charge against Mr. Hastings-Presents.] April 2. The order of the day having been read for the House to resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to consider farther of the several Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against Warren Hastings, esq. late governor-general of Bengal, the Speaker left the chair, and Mr. St. John took his seat at the table.

state regulations, which in their conse-
quences might affect that provision. The
right hon. gentleman had also, in the first YEAS
part of his speech, mis-stated another of
his arguments. He had never said, that
the persons who now applied were of that
description of Dissenters who would not
allow that any establishment was neces-
sary he had only stated, that there were
among Dissenters, men who maintained
those tenets; he would say whom he
meant; they were a class of Dissenters in
Cambridgeshire, and he should name the
minister of the congregation, Mr. Robin-
son. As to the persons who now applied,
nobody respected them as individuals more
than he did; as a body, they had, on many
occasions, evinced a disposition to resist
the encroachments of arbitrary power;
the nation was under obligations to them
for the assistance which had been derived
from their zeal and activity; and if he
were to name the time in which he con-
ceived that they had given the strongest
proof of their regard to the liberties of
the country, he should name the very pe-
riod in which the right hon. gentleman
had asserted, that they had lost sight of
their original principles.

Mr. Fox confessed, that he had misunderstood those parts of the right hon. gentleman's arguments.

Sir William Dolben said, that he must beg leave particularly to animadvert upon that spirit of moderation which had been described as the characteristic of Dissenters: that moderation he denied, and he should appeal to a pamphlet written by one of their body, where the contrary was very strongly established; the pamphlet to which he alluded was that which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been pleased to praise, though he acknowledged he had not seen it; and he begged leave only to trouble the House with one sentence from it. It stated, that their silent propagation of the truth would, in the end, prove efficacious; for they were wisely placing, as it were, grain by grain, a train of gunpowder, to which the match would, one day, be laid to blow up that fabric which never could be again raised upon the same foundation. Such were the doctrines which the Dissenters avowed; and therefore he called upon every man who had any regard for the civil and religious rights of his country, to be cautious how he gave his vote for a question so pregnant with danger. The House divided:

Mr. Sheridan now rose, and desired that a clause of the Act of 1773 might be read. It was accordingly read, as follows: "No governor-general, nor any of the council, shall, directly or indirectly, accept, receive, or take, of or from any person or persons, or on any account whatsoever, any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward, pecuniary or otherwise, or any promise or engagement for any of the aforesaid." Mr. Sheridan then begged leave to call to the recollection of the committee the favour which a right hon. friend (Mr. Burke) had, on a former day, conferred upon him, when he informed them that it was his intention to use as much brevity in opening the charge upon the subject of the presents as possible. In this declaration his right hon. friend had certainly spoken his sentiments; and as a part of the evidence given during the course of the preceding Friday, threw a decided light upon some of the facts which were, previously to the intervention of that complete elucidation, in some degree obscured and doubtful, he felt with a redoubled force his early and indisputable conviction, that brevity and perspicuity were the only things necessary to imprint the truth of the facts contained in the charge upon the perceptions of the committee; and to press home to their minds a lively and indignant sense of the enormity of the crimes of Mr. Hastings, as exemplified in these several and distinctly. alleged accusations, if either the one or the other point remained yet to be accomplished. Honoured, upon a former occasion, with the almost unprecedented indulgence of the committee, he would not offer so ungrateful a return to the li

berality of their feelings, as to suppose | power, and that by this power he kept the that they would not do him the justice to whole body of the natives in awe and believe that it was far indeed from any terror. Once, indeed, (Mr. Sheridan great willingness on his part that he had added) he thought him free from the been induced to trespass a second time vices of avarice and corruption; but now upon their patience; but, when he consi- he had changed his opinion. These most dered that it would ill become him to re- unfortunate vindicators, themselves demo fuse his feeble aid to those who had, with lishing their own frail plans of exculpaequal zeal, in this momentous cause, stept tion, had indeed already anticipated the forward, as much as it was possible, under accusation in that House; and in no parthe inevitable restraints of an attention di- ticular did their zeal so far outstrip their vided by occupations more multiplied and discretion. Such rash defenders of his convaried than his own; when he considered duct, aware that scarcely any attainment the importance of the proceeding with was wanting except a conviction of the respect to the impeachment of Mr. Has- receipt of presents, and of an accumulatings; when he reflected how much the tion of private douceurs, to blacken the character of that House and its honour, catalogue of his crimes, and to destroy all and, what was still more material, the those pretensions which could in the honour and justice of the country, were minds of men soften their asperity, and implicated in the business; when he con- allay their indignation at his enormities, sulted his own serious and sincere feelings had violently affirmed that Mr. Hastings on the subject, he could not refuse to lend did not amass treasures for his own use, himself to the occasion, and discharge his was not corrupt for interested purposes: duty by exerting his best endeavours to and although, perhaps, improvident and accelerate the progress of this interesting profuse, was not mercenary, and, by a business, by assisting to draw it nearer to natural consequence, not rich. But it that conclusion, of which the distance indispensably behoved them to go beyond appeared, at last considerably diminished. the frivolous attempt to establish such poThe subject which at present de- sitions by mysterious excuses, and lanmanded an investigation, was necessarily guage so complicated as to become nearly much colder and drier than that which, unintelligible. They should have placed upon a preceding occasion, he had been their vindications of him upon the broad so liberally permitted to state to the com- and immoveable corner-stone of truth, mittee. No horrible accounts of the upon downright, fair, and absolute proofs; sacrilegious plunder of defenceless pa- and this the more especially, because, if rents were now to be addressed to their the points for which they, with so blind a painfully-excited notice; no enumeration vehemence, had contended, were open to of barbarities perpetrated against aged the admission of proofs, the means of inand guiltless mothers by their unnatural troducing them were certainly in their offspring; but the narration was neverthe- power. Vainly, indeed, had these impru less equally, if not still more important, dent friends of Mr. Hastings exerted the as it went to establish the stubborn fact, faculties of their invention to puzzle and that corruption had been the leading prin- to confound the mind; nor was it astociple of all the actions of Mr. Hastings in nishing that such extraordinary pains had India. Though, Heaven forbid that Mr. proved the cause of raising a proportionate Hastings should prove guilty to the extent suspicion; for in this, as in the generality set up by his friends, in what had been of similar instances, when genius became denominated his defence! Perhaps more racked under the consciousness of guilt, hostile than truly serviceable was the the ardour of defence left its propriety at anxiety with which the advocates of this an irrecoverable and shameful distance. gentleman met the deserved attack upon There was an infirmity, a weakness, a his flagrantly-reprehensible administration something not to be described in human in the East Indies. They seemed mor nature, which, almost insensibly, led men tally to have wounded the cause, by the to think less of the foibles or the crimes rash eagerness which they discovered to of such individuals, whilst it could be support it, and by the firmness with which proved that they had not been actuated they were determined to bring resistance by mercenary motives; that they had not against every endeavour to assail it. They proceeded upon a principle of personal appeared unwilling to admit, that Mr. avarice; and that the increase of their Hastings in India was a man of unbounded own private property had not been the [VOL. XXVI.] . | [SH]

object of either their rapacity or their op- House of Lords, although the Commons pression. Swayed and influenced by this had been satisfied with the fair prospect of sort of weakness, Mr. Sheridan declared, a future security and prevention of the that he had been among those who at one evil which it held out, a noble earl, of the time conceived that Mr. Hastings was not highest law authority (the earl of Mansstimulated to his conduct, as governor- field) expressed a different opinion, and general, by any view to his own emolu- had deemed it so necessary to take all ment; and that his fortune was trifling, possible means of putting a stop to a compared with the advantages which fell practice so oppressive to the natives of within his power; but the more close and India, and so disgraceful to the British minute investigation which it was his duty name and character, that he inserted a to apply to the facts contained in the clause, declaring that all presents accepted charge, had completely altered his opi- by the Company's servants, on any acnion, and he scarcely harboured even the count whatsoever, were the property of slightest doubt of being able to satisfy the the Company, not meaning it as a fund committee that Mr. Hastings had all along for their benefit, but only in order to found governed his conduct by corruption, as a legal title to a civil suit, upon what is gross and determined, as his oppression termed a fiction of law. Thus strengthenand injustice had proved severe and gall- ed, the Bill passed and went out to India. ing. In reviewing his conduct, he had The construction, however, which Mr. found it to spring from a wild, eccentric, Hastings put upon it was, that by the and irregular mind. He had been every Regulating Act of 1773, he remained at thing by fits and starts. Now proud and liberty to receive money, provided that it lofty, now mean and insidious; now genewas to and for the use of the Company; rous, now just, now artful, now open; and, under this construction, he did, in a now deceitful, now decided; in pride, in variety of instances, violate as clear and passion, in every thing changeable, except obvious an act of parliament as ever had in corruption. In that he had proved passed; an act of parliament concerning uniform, systematical, and methodical; the legal meaning of which Mr. Sheridan his revenge a tempest, a tornado;-his said he was persuaded there was scarcely corruption a monsoon, a trade-wind that a lawyer in the House who would stand blew regularly and constantly. up and declare, that he had at any time Mr. Sheridan added, that whilst he re-entertained the smallest doubt, or felt the lied upon the power of exposing fully to the view of the committee the criminal proceedings of Mr. Hastings, he could not avoid observing, that the nature of his private transactions was such as rendered it, in general, extremely difficult to drag them out into a full light. They were the deeds of privacy, enveloped in a cloud of mystery. The committee would please to recollect the history of the Act of 1773, which was passed with a view to deliver the princes of India, and the natives in general, from the consequences of the rapacity of the Company's servants. They must well remember that it did, in the most clear and comprehensive terms which could be devised, prohibit all the said servants from receiving any present, gift, or donation, in any manner, or on any account whatsoever. That Act, when it left the House of Commons in the form of a bill, had no clause in it authorizing the institution of a civil suit, but merely contained the authority and grounds of criminal prosecution of the parties accused of having violated positive injunctions. When the Bill, however, came into the

least difficulty. It might be most unanswerably proved, from the words of Mr. Hastings, that even he, notwithstanding his infringement of so positive and plain a law, considered the Act as amounting, under all descriptions whatsoever, to an absolute prohibition. When colonel Champion, in his letter written to this gentle. man, requested to know from him whether he should be justified in receiving a present offered to him, the governor-general answered, that the Act was so strict and specific in its injunction as to admit of no palliative; of no discretion on the part of the conduct of the servants of the EastIndia Company; that it was so plain that it could not be misinterpreted, and so strict that it could not be infringed. And surely, said Mr. Sheridan, it was with this view only that the Act was carried into a law by the British Legislature, who could not mean to transfer to the Company, the exclusive privilege of that injustice, from which its servants were so strictly probibited. It was a libel on the Parliament to think that they could intend to confer such an illegal and despotic power. Mr. Has