The King's illness in autumn led to stormy debates on the Regency, and the trial could not proceed before April, 1789. After seventeen sittings taken up with the third charge, which concerned the receipt of presents, the Lords again adjourned. In 1790 Parliament was dissolved, and the great trial made very little progress. In the following May the Managers went through the charge of corruption, and the remaining charges were dropped by general consent. That year's sittings closed with the reading of Hastings' defence; a powerful and temperate statement of the facts which went to prove not only the greatness of his public services, but his entire innocence of the wrong-doing laid to his charge. On the latter point he laid particular stress, disclaiming and protesting against the notion that he had dwelt upon his merits and services merely as 'a set-off against confessed offences.' If he was guilty of those offences let him be convicted, he said, and punished according to his deserts. 'No, my Lords; I have troubled you with this long recital, not as an extenuation of the crimes which have been imputed to me, but as an argument of the impossibility of my having committed them[1].'
So strong indeed was Hastings' belief in his own innocence, that he begged his judges, if it so pleased them, to pass their decision at once upon the case as it then stood. But more than three years had yet to elapse before that decision was pronounced. Two of
- ↑ Debrett.
