Justice;--a State-Necessity that tries to steal a pitiful justification
from whispered accusations and fabricated rumors. No, my Lords, that is
no State Necessity;--tear off the mask, and you see coarse, vulgar
avarice,--you see speculation, lurking under the gaudy disguise, and
adding the guilt of libelling the public honor to its own private fraud.

"My Lords, I say this, because I am sure the Managers would make every
allowance that state-necessity could claim upon any great emergency. If
any great man in bearing the arms of this country;--if any Admiral,
bearing the vengeance and the glory of Britain to distant coasts, should
be compelled to some rash acts of violence, in order, perhaps, to give
food to those who are shedding their blood for Britain;--if any great
General, defending some fortress, barren itself, perhaps, but a pledge of
the pride, and, with the pride, of the power of Britain; if such a man
were to * * * while he himself was * * at the top, like an eagle besieged
in its imperial nest; [Footnote: The Reporter, at many of these passages,
seems to have thrown aside his pen in despair.]--would the Commons of
England come to accuse or to arraign such acts of state-necessity? No."

In describing that swarm of English pensioners and placemen, who were
still, in violation of the late purchased treaty, left to prey on the
finances of the Nabob, he says,--

"Here we find they were left, as heavy a weight upon the Nabob as
ever,--left there with as keen an appetite, though not so clamorous. They
were reclining on the roots and shades of that spacious tree, which their
predecessors had stripped branch and bough--watching with eager eyes the
first budding of a future prosperity, and of the opening harvest which
they considered as the prey of their perseverance and rapacity."