says, 'I was equal to the task. I knew the difficulties, but I scorn
them: here is the truth, and if the truth will convict me, I am content
myself to be the channel of it.' His friends hold up their heads, and
say, 'What noble magnanimity! This must be the effect of conscious and
real innocence.' Well, it is so received, it is so argued upon,--but it
fails of its effect.

"Then says Mr. Hastings,--'That my defence! no, mere
journeyman-work,--good enough for the Commons, but not fit for Your
Lordships' consideration.' He then calls upon his Counsel to save
him:--'I fear none of my accusers' witnesses--I know some of them well--I
know the weakness of their memory, and the strength of their
attachment--I fear no testimony but my own--save me from the peril of my
own panegyric--preserve me from that, and I shall be safe.' Then is this
plea brought to Your Lordships' bar, and Major Scott gravely
asserts,--that Mr. Hastings did, at the bar of the House of Commons,
vouch for facts of which he was ignorant, and for arguments which he had
never read.

"After such an attempt, we certainly are left in doubt to decide, to
_which_ set of his friends Mr. Hastings is least obliged, those who
assisted him in making his defence, or those who advised him to deny it."

He thus describes the feelings of the people of the East with respect to
the unapproachable sanctity of their Zenanas:--

"It is too much, I am afraid, the case, that persons, used to European
manners, do not take up these sort of considerations at first with the
seriousness that is necessary. For Your Lordships cannot even learn the
right nature of those people's feelings and prejudices from any history