The alms of the settlement, in this dreadful exigency, were certainly liberal; and all was done by charity that private charity could do; but it was a people in beggary; it was a nation which stretched out its hands for food. For months together, these creatures of sufferance, whose very excess and luxury in their most plenteous days had fallen short of the allowance of our austerest fasts, silent, patient, resigned, without sedition or disturbance, almost without complaint, perished by a hundred a day in the streets of Madras; every day seventy at least laid their bodies in the streets, or on the glacis of Tanjore, and expired of famine in the granary of India. I was going to awake your justice towards this unhappy part of our fellow-citizens, by bringing before you some of the circumstances of this plague of hunger. Of all the calamities which beset and waylay, the life of man, this comes the nearest to our heart, and is that wherein the proudest of us all feels himself to be nothing more than he is; but I find myself unable to manage it with decorum; these details are of a species of horror so nauseous and disgusting; they are so degrading to the sufferers and to the hearers; they are so humiliating to human nature itself, that on better thoughts, I find it more adviseable to throw a pall over this hideous object, and to leave it to your general conceptions.

For eighteen months, without intermission, this destruction raged from the gates of Madras to the gates of Tanjore; and so completely did these masters in their art, Hyder Ali and his more ferocious son, absolve themselves of their impious vow, that when the British armies traversed as they did the Carnatic, for hundreds of miles in all directions, through the whole line of their march, they did not see one man, not one woman, not one child, not one four footed beast of any description whatever. One dead, uniform, silence reigned over the whole region. With the inconsiderable exceptions of the narrow vicinage of some few forts, I wish to be understood as speaking literally. I mean to produce to you more than three witnesses, above all exception, who will support this assertion

in its full extent. That hurricane of war passed through every part of the central provinces of the Carnatic. Six or seven districts to the north and to the south (and these not wholly untouched) escaped the general ravage.

The Carnatic is a country, not much inferior in extent to England. Figure to yourself, Mr. Speaker, the land in whose representation chair you sit; figure to yourself the form and fashion of your sweet and cheerful country from Thames to Trent, north and south, and from the Irish to the German sea, east and west, emptied and embowelled (may God avert the omen of our crimes!) by so accomplished a desolation. Extend your imagination a little further, and then suppose your ministers taking a survey of this scene of waste and desolation; what would be your thoughts if you should be informed, that they were computing how much had been the amount of the excises, how much the customs, how much the land and malt tax, in order that they should charge (take it in the most favorable light) for public service, upon the relics of the satiated vengeance of relentless enemies, the whole of what England had yielded in her most exuberant seasons of peace and abundance? What would you call it? To call it tyranny, sublimed into madness, would be too faint an image; yet this very madness is the principle upon which the ministers at your right hand have proceeded in their estimate of the revenues of the Carnatic. when they were providing not supply for the establishments of its protection, but rewards for the authors of its ruin.

CONCLUSION OF MR. BURKE'S SPEECH ON THE TRIAL

OF HASTINGS.

I charge Warren Hastings, in the name of the Commons of England, here assembled, with high crimes and misdemeanors!-I charge him with fraud, abuse, treachery, and robbery! I charge him with cruelties unheard of, and devastations almost without a

Dame! I charge him with having scarcely left in India, what will prove satisfaction for his guilt.

And now I address myself to this assembly, with the most perfect reliance on the justice of this high court. Amongst you, I see a venerable and religious band, whose province and whose duty it is, to vencrate that government which is established in piety and mercy. To them, what must have been the principles of Mr. Hastings.

Amongst you, I see the judges of England, the deliverers of law founded on equal justice. To them, what must have been the usurpations, the tyranny, the extortions of Warren Hastings.

Amongst you, I descry an illustrious and virtuous train of nobles, whose forefathers have fought and died for the constitution! men who do even less honor to their children, than those children do to them, who are here assembled to guard that constitution which they have received. From them, what must the violator of all forms and constitutions deserve.

With one voice they will encourage this impeachment, which I here solemnly maintain.

I impeach, therefore, Warren Hastings, in the name of our holy religion, which he has disgraced. I impeach him in the name of the English constitution, which he has violated and broken. I impeach him in the name of Indian millions, whom he has sacrific ed to injustice. I impeach him in the name and by the best rights of human nature, which he has stabbed to the heart. And I conjure this high and sacred court to let not these pleadings be heard in vain !

EXTRACT FROM MR. CURRAN'S SPEECH ON THE TRIAL OF ROWAN.

This paper, gentlemen, insists upon the necessity of emancipating the Catholics of Ireland, and that is charged as a part of the libel. If they had kept this prosecution impending for another year, how much would remain for a jury to decide upon, I should be at

a loss to discover. It seems as if the progress of public reformation was eating away the ground of the prosecution. Since the commencement of the prosecution, this part of the libel has unluckily received the sanction of the Legislature. In that interval, our Catholic brethren have obtained that admission, which it seems it was a libel to propose in what way to acCount for this, I am really at a loss. Have any alarms been occasioned by the emancipation of our Catholic brethren? Has the bigotted malignity of any individuals been crushed? Or, has the stability of the gov ernment, or has that of the country been weakened? Or, is one million of subjects stronger than three millions? Do you think that the benefit they received should be poisoned by the stings of vengeance ?-If you think so, you must say to them, "You have demanded your emancipation, and you have got it; but we abhor your persons, we are outraged at your suc. cess; and we will stigmatize, by a criminal prosecution, the relief which you have obtained from the voice of your country." I ask you, Gentlemen, do you think, as honest men, anxious for the public tranquillity, conscious that there are wounds not yet completely cicatrized, that you ought to speak this language at this time, to men who are too much disposed to think that in this very emancipation, they have been saved from their own parliament by the humanity of their Sovereign?-Or, do you wish to prepare them for the revocation of these improvident concessions? Do you think it wise or humane, at this moment, to insult them, by sticking up in a pillory the man who dared to stand forth their advocate? I put it to your oaths, do you think that a blessing of that kind, that a victory obtained by justice over bigotry and oppression, should have a stigma cast upon it by an ignominious sentence upon men bold and honest enough to propose that measure ;-to propose the redeeming of religion from the abuses of the churchthe reclaiming of three millions of men from bondage, and giving liberty to all who had a right to demand it-giving, I say, in the so much censured

words of this paper, "Universal Emancipation !"-I speak in the spirit of the British Law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, the British soil-which proclaims, even to the stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the Genius of Universal Emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced ;--no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him ;-no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down ;—no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of Slavery ;-the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible Genius of Universal Emancipation!

There is a sort of aspiring and adventurous credulity, which disdains assenting to obvious truths, and delights in catching at the improbability of circumstances, as its best ground of faith. To what other cause, Gentlemen, can you ascribe, that in the wise, the reflecting, the philosophic nation of Great Britain, a printer has been found guilty of a libel, for publishing those resolutions, to which the present minister of that kingdom had actually subscribed his name! To what other cause can you ascribe, what in my mind is still more astonishing, in such a country as Scotland, a nation cast in the happy medium between the spiritless acquiescense of submissive poverty, and the sturdy credulity of pampered wealth; cool and ardent, adventurous and persevering; winging her eagle flight against the blaze of every science; with an eye that never winks, and a wing that never tires; crowned as she is with the spoils of every Art, and decked with the wreath of every Muse, from the deep and scrutinizing researches of her Humes, to the sweet