land, and of which Mr. Burke pronounced at its conclusion, that "of all
the various species of oratory, of every kind of eloquence that had been
heard, either in ancient or modern times; whatever the acuteness of the
bar, the dignity of the senate, or the morality of the pulpit could
furnish, had not been equal to what that House had that day heard in
Westminster Hall. No holy religionist, no man of any description as a
literary character, could have come up, in the one instance, to the pure
sentiments of morality, or in the other, to the variety of knowledge,
force of imagination, propriety and vivacity of allusion, beauty and
elegance of diction, and strength of expression, to which they had that
day listened. From poetry up to eloquence there was not a species of
composition of which a complete and perfect specimen might not have been
culled, from one part or the other of the speech to which he alluded, and
which, he was persuaded, had left too strong an impression on the minds
of that House to be easily obliterated."

As some atonement to the world for the loss of the Speech in the House of
Commons, this second master-piece of eloquence on the same subject has
been preserved to us in a Report, from the short-hand notes of Mr.
Gurney, which was for some time in the possession of the late Duke of
Norfolk, but was afterwards restored to Mr. Sheridan, and is now in my
hands.

In order to enable the reader fully to understand the extracts from this
Report which I am about to give, it will be necessary to detail briefly
the history of the transaction, on which the charge brought forward in
the Speech was founded.

Among the native Princes who, on the transfer of the sceptre of Tamerlane
to the East India Company, became tributaries or rather slaves to that