I had no men of the law, no legal assistance, to supply my deficiencies." _At Sphingem habebas domi._ Had he not the chief-justice, the tamed and domesticated chief-justice, who waited on him like a familiar spirit, whom he takes from province to province, his amanuensis at home, his postilion and riding express abroad?
Such a declaration would in some measure suit persons who had acted much otherwise than Mr.Hastings.When a man pleads ignorance in justification of his conduct, it ought to be an humble, modest, unpresuming ignorance, an ignorance which may have made him lax and timid in the exercise of his duty; but an assuming, rash, presumptuous, confident, daring, desperate, and disobedient ignorance heightens every crime that it accompanies.

Mr.Hastings, if through ignorance he left some of the Company's orders unexecuted, because he did not understand them, might well say, "I was an ignorant man, and these things were above my capacity." But when he understands them, and when he declares he will not obey them, positively and dogmatically,--when he says, as he has said, and we shall prove it, _that he never succeeds better than when he acts in an utter defiance of those orders_, and sets at nought the laws of his country,--I believe this will not be thought the language of an ignorant man.

But I beg your Lordships' pardon: it is the language of an ignorant man; for no man who was not full of a bold, determined, profligate ignorance could ever think of such a system of defence.

He quitted Westminster School almost a boy.

We have reason to regret that he did not finish his education in that noble seminary, which has given so many luminaries to the Church and ornaments to the State.