blood to flow, and consoling themselves with the thought, that it would
not sink into the earth, but rise to the common God of humanity, and cry
aloud for vengeance on their destroyers!--This warm description--which is
no declamation of mine, but founded in actual fact, and in fair, clear
proof before Your Lordships--speaks powerfully what the cause of these
oppressions were, and the perfect justness of those feelings that were
occasioned by them. And yet, my Lords, I am asked to prove _why_
these people arose in such concert:--'there must have been machinations,
forsooth, and the Begums' machinations, to produce all this!'--Why did
they rise!--Because they were people in human shape; because patience
under the detested tyranny of man is rebellion to the sovereignty of God;
because allegiance to that Power that gives us the _forms_ of men
commands us to maintain the _rights_ of men. And never yet was this
truth dismissed from the human heart--never in any time, in any
age--never in any clime, where rude man ever had any social feeling, or
where corrupt refinement had subdued all feelings,--never was this one
unextinguishable truth destroyed from the heart of man, placed, as it is,
in the core and centre of it by his Maker, that man was not made the
property of man; that human power is a trust for human benefit and that
when it is abused, revenge becomes justice, if not the bounden duty of
the injured! These, my Lords, were the causes why these people rose."

Another passage in the second day's speech is remarkable, as exhibiting a
sort of tourney of intellect between Sheridan and Burke, and in that
field of abstract speculation, which was the favorite arena of the
latter. Mr. Burke had, in opening the prosecution, remarked, that
prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be
effectively enlisted in its cause:--"I never (said he) knew a man who was
bad, fit for _service_ that was good. There is always some
disqualifying ingredient, mixing and spoiling the compound. The man seems