before you to the confusion, I hope, of the propagators of this slanderous imputation-one, whose life and actions condemn him in the opinion of all impartial persons; but who, according to his own reckoning and declared dependence upon his riches, is already acquitted: I mean Caius Verres. I demand justice of you, Fathers, upon the robber of the public treasury, the oppressor of Asia Minor and Pamphylia, the invader of the rights and privileges of Romans, the scourge and curse of Sicily. If that sentence is passed upon him which his crimes deserve, your authority, Fathers, will be venerable and sacred in the eyes of the public; but if his great riches should bias you in his favour, I shall still gain one point-to make it apparent to all the world, that what was wanting in this case was not a criminal nor a prosecutor-but justice and adequate punishment.

To pass over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what does his quæstorship, the first public employment he held, what does it exhibit, but one continued scene of villanies? Cneius Carbo plundered of the public money by his own treasurer, a consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious rights of a people violated. The employment he held in Asia Minor and Pamphylia, what did it produce but the ruin of those countries? In which houses, cities, and temples were robbed by him. What was his conduct in the prætorship here at home? Let the plundered temples, and public works neglected, that he might embezzle the money intended for carrying them on, bear witness. How did he discharge the office of a judge? Let those who suffered by his injustice answer. But his prætorship in Sicily crowns all his works of wickedness, and finishes a lasting monument to his infamy. The mischiefs done by him in that unhappy country, during the three years of his iniquitous administration, are such, that many years, under the wisest and best of prætors, will not be sufficient to restore things to the condition in which he found them: for it is notorious, that, during the time of his tyranny, the Sicilians neither enjoyed the

protection of their own original laws, of the regulations made for their benefit by the Roman Senate, upon their coming under the protection of the commonwealth, nor of the natural and unalienable rights of men. His nod has decided all causes in Sicily for these three years; and his decisions have broke all law, all precedent, all right. The sums he has, by arbitrary taxes and unheard of impositions, extorted from the industrious poor, are not to be computed. The most faithful allies of the commonwealth have been treated as enemies; Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures; the most atrocious criminals, for money, have been exempted from the deserved punishments; and men of the most unexceptionable characters, condemned and banished unheard. The harbours, though sufficiently fortified, and the gates of strong towns, opened to pirates and ravagers; the soldiery and sailors, belonging to a province under the protection of the commonwealth, starved to death; whole fleets, to the great detriment of the province, suffered to perish. The ancient monuments of either Sicilian or Roman greatness, the statues of heroes and princes, carried off; and the temples stripped of the images. Having, by his iniquitous sentences, filled the prisons with the most industrious and deserving of the people, he then proceeded to order numbers of Roman citizens to be strangled in the gaols; so that the exclamation, "I am a citizen of Rome!" which has often, in the most distant regions, and among the most barbarous people been a protection, was of no service to them, but, on the contrary, brought a speedier and more severe punishment upon them.

I ask now, Verres, what you have to advance against this charge? Will you pretend to deny it? Will you pretend, that any thing false, that even any thing aggravated, is alleged against you? Had any prince, or any state committed the same outrage against the privileges of Roman citizens, should we not think we had sufficient ground for declaring immediate war against them? What punishment ought, then, to be inflicted upon a tyrannical and wicked prætor, who

dared, at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, to put to the infamous death of crucifixion, that unfortunate and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Cosanus, only for his having asserted his privilege of citizenship, and declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against a cruel oppressor, who had unjustly confined him in prison at Syracuse, whence he had just made his escape? The unhappy man, arrested as he was going to embark for his native country, is brought before the wicked prætor. With eyes darting fury, and a countenance distorted with cruelty, he orders the helpless victim of his rage to be stripped, and rods to be brought; accusing him, but without the least shadow of evidence, or even of suspicion, of having come to Sicily as a spy. It was in vain that the unhappy man cried out, "I am a Roman citizen; I have served under Lucius Precius, who is now at Panormus, and will attest my innocence." The blood-thirsty prætor, deaf to all he could urge in his own defence, ordered the infamous punishment to be inflicted. Thus, Fathers, was an innocent Roman citizen publicly mangled with scourging; whilst the only words he uttered amidst his cruel sufferings were, "I am a Roman citizen!" With these he hoped to defend himself from violence and from infamy. But of so little service was this privilege to him, that while he was thus asserting his citizenship, the order was given for his execution -for his execution upon the cross!-Oh liberty !—Oh sound, once delightful to every Roman ear!-Oh sacred privilege of Roman citizenship!-once sacred! -now trampled upon! But what then?-Is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate, a governor, who holds his whole power of the Roman people, in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture with fire and red hot plates of iron, and at last put to the infamous death of the cross, a Roman citizen? Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, nor the tears of pitying spectators, nor the majesty of the Roman commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country, restrain the licentious and wanton cruelty of a monster, who, in confidence of

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his riches, strikes at the root of all liberty, and sets mankind at defiance?

I conclude with expressing my hopes, that your wisdom and justice, Fathers, will not, by suffering the most atrocious and unexampled insolence of Caius Verres to escape the due punishment, leave room to apprehend the danger of a total subversion of authority, and introduction of general anarchy and confusion.

Invective against Hastings.

Had a stranger, at this time, gone into the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowla, that man, who, with a savage heart, had still great lines of character, and who, with all his ferocity in war, had still, with a cultivating hand, preserved to his country the riches which it derived from benignant skies and a prolific soil-if this stranger, ignorant of all that had happened in the short interval, and observing the wide and general devastation, and all the horrors of the scene of plains unclothed and brown-of vegetables burned up and extinguishedof villages depopulated, and in ruins of temples unroofed and perishing-of reservoirs broken down and dry, he would naturally inquire, what war has thus laid waste the fertile fields of this once beautiful and opulent country-what civil dissensions have happened, thus to tear asunder and separate the happy societies that once possessed those villages what disputed succession-what religious rage has, with unholy violence, demolished those temples, and disturbed fervent, but unobtruding piety, in the exercise of its duties ? What merciless enemy has thus spread the horrors of fire and sword-what severe visitation of providence has dried up the fountain, and taken from the face of the earth every vestige of verdure?—Or, rather, what monsters have stalked over the country, tainting and poisoning, with pestiferous breath, what the voracious appetite could not devour? To such questions, what must be the answer? No wars have ravaged these lands, and depopulated these villages-no civil discords: have been felt no disputed succession-no religious

rage, no merciless enemy-no affliction of providence, which, while it scourged for the moment, cut off the sources of resuscitation-no voracious and poisoning monsters-no, all this has been accomplished by the friendship, generosity, and kindness of the English nation. They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo! those are the fruits of their alliance. What, then, shall we be told, that under such circumstances, the exasperated feelings of a whole people thus goaded and spurred on to clamour and resistance, were excited by the poor and feeble influence of the Begums! When we hear the description of the paroxysm, fever, and delirium, into which despair had thrown the natives, when on the banks of the polluted Ganges, panting for death, they tore more widely open the lips of their gaping wounds, to accelerate their dissolution, and while their blood was issuing, presented their ghastly eyes to Heaven, breathing their last and fervent prayer, that the dry earth might not be suffered to drink their blood, but that it might rise up to the throne of God, and rouse the eternal Providence to avenge the wrongs of their country; will it be said that this was brought about by the incantations of these Begums in their secluded Zenana? or that they could inspire this enthusiasm and this despair into the breasts of a people who felt no grievance, and had suffered no torture? What motive, then, could have such influence in their bosom? What motive? That which nature, the common parent, plants in the bosom of man, and which, though it may be less active in the Indian than in the Englishman, is still congenial with, and makes part of his being-that feeling which tells him, that man was never made to be the property of man; but that when through pride and insolence of power, one human creature dares to tyrannise over another, it is a power usurped, and resistance is a duty-that feeling which tells him, that all power is delegated for the good, not for the injury of the people, and that when it is converted from the original purpose, the compact is broken, and the right is to be resumed that principle which tells him, that resistance to power usurped is not merely a duty which he owes