Fox used to ask of a printed speech, "Does it read well?" and, if
answered in the affirmative, said, "Then it was a bad speech."] yet, with
all this disadvantage, the celebrated oration in question so well
sustains its reputation in the perusal, that it would be injustice,
having an authentic Report in my possession, not to produce some
specimens of its style and spirit.

In the course of his exordium, after dwelling upon the great importance
of the inquiry in which they were engaged, and disclaiming for himself
and his brother-managers any feeling of personal malice against the
defendant, or any motive but that of retrieving the honor of the British
name in India, and bringing down punishment upon those whose inhumanity
and injustice had disgraced it,--he thus proceeds to conciliate the Court
by a warm tribute to the purity of English justice:--

"However, when I have said this, I trust Your Lordships will not believe
that, because something is necessary to retrieve the British character,
we call for an example to be made, without due and solid proof of the
guilt of the person whom we pursue:--no, my Lords, we know well that it
is the glory of this Constitution, that not the general fame or character
of any man--not the weight or power of any prosecutor--no plea of moral
or political expediencey--not even the secret consciousness of guilt,
which may live in the bosom of the Judge, can justify any British Court
in passing any sentence, to touch a hair of the head, or an atom in any
respect, of the property, of the fame, of the liberty of the poorest or
meanest subject that breathes the air of this just and free land. We
know, my Lords, that there can be no legal guilt without legal proof, and
that the rule which defines the evidence is as much the law of the land
as that which creates the crime. It is upon that ground we mean to stand."