ciples, which your lordships will hereafter see; and at last the dewannee was entirely taken out of the native hands, and settled in the supreme council and presidency itself in Calcutta; and so it remained until the year 1781, when Mr. Hastings made another revolution, took it out of the hands of the supreme council, in which the orders of the company, an act of parliament, and their own act had vested it, and put it into a subordinate council-that is, it was entirely vested in himself.

Now your lordships see the whole of the revolutions. I have stated them, I trust, with perspicuity-stated the grounds and principles, upon which they were made-stated the abuses, that grew upon them-and that every revolution produced its abuse. You saw the native government vanish by degrees, until it was reduced to a situation fit for nothing but to become a private perquisite, as it has been to Mr. Hastings, and to be granted to whom he pleased. The English government succeeded, at the head of which Mr. Hastings was placed by an act of parliament, having before held the office of president of the council-the express object of both these appointments being to redress grievances; and within these two periods of his power, as president and governour-general, were those crimes committed, of which he now stands accused. All this history is merely by way of illustration-his crimination begins from his nomination to the presidency; and we are to consider how he comported himself in that station, and in his office of governourgeneral.

The first thing, in considering the merits or demerits of any governour, is to have some test, by which they are to be tried. And here, my lords, we conceive, that when a British governour is sent abroad, he is sent to pursue the good of the people as much as possible in the spirit of the laws of this country, which in all respects intend their conservation, their happiness, and their prosperity. This is the principle, upon which Mr. Hastings was bound to govern, and upon which he is to account for his conduct here.

His rule was, what a British governour, intrusted with the power of this country, was bound to do, or to forbear. If he

has performed, and if he has abstained, as he ought, dismiss him honourably acquitted from your bar-otherwise condemn him. He may resort to other principles and to other maxims; but this country will force him to be tried by its laws. The law of this country recognizes that well-known crime, called misconduct in office; it is a head of the law of England, and, so far as inferiour courts are competent to try it, may be tried in them. Here, your lordships' competence is plenary; you are fully competent both to inquire into, and to punish the offence. And, first, I am to state to your lordships, by the direction of those, whom I am bound to obey, the principles, on which Mr. Hastings declares he has conducted his government; principles, which he has avowedfirst, in several letters written to the East-India Companynext, in a paper of defence, delivered to the House of Commons, explicitly; and more explicitly in his defence before your lordships. Nothing in Mr. Hastings's proceedings is so curious as his several defences; and nothing in the defences is so singular, as the principles, upon which he proceeds. Your lordships will have to decide not only upon a large, connected, systematick train of misdemeanours, but an equally connected system of principles and maxims of government, invented to justify those misdemeanours. He has brought them forward and avowed them in the face of day. He has boldly and insultingly thrown them in the face of the representatives of a free people, and we cannot pass them by without adopting them.

I am directed to protest against those grounds and principles, upon which he frames his defence; for, if those grounds are good and valid, they carry off a great deal at least, if not entirely the foundation of our charge. My lords, we contend, that Mr. Hastings, as a British governour, ought to govern on British principles, not by British forms-God forbid; for, if ever there was a case, in which the letter kills and the spirit gives life, it would be an attempt to introduce British forms and the substance of despotick principles together into any country. No. We call for that spirit of equity, that spirit of justice, that spirit of protection, that spirit of lenity, which ought to characterize every British

subject in power; and on these, and these principles only, he will be tried.

But he has told your lordships, in his defence, that actions in Asia do not bear the same moral qualities, which the same actions would bear in Europe.

My lords, we positively deny that principle. I am authorized and called upon to deny it. And having stated at large what he means by saying, that the same actions have not the same qualities in Asia and in Europe, we are to let your lordships know, that these gentlemen have formed a plan of geographical morality, by which the duties of men, in publick and in private situations, are not to be governed by their relation to the great Governour of the universe, or by their relation to mankind, but by climates, degrees of longitude, parallels not of life but of latitudes; as if, when you have crossed the equinoctial, all the virtues die, as they say some insects die, when they cross the line; as if there were a kind of baptism, like that practised by seamen, by which they unbaptize themselves of all, that they learned in Europe, and after which a new order and system of things commenced.

This geographical morality we do protest against. Mr. Hastings shall not screen himself under it; and on this point I hope and trust many words will not be necessary to satisfy your lordships. But we think it necessary, in justification of ourselves, to declare, that the laws of morality are the same every where; and that there is no action, which would pass for an act of extortion, of peculation, of bribery, and of oppression in England, that is not an act of extortion, of peculation, of bribery, and oppression in Europe, Asia, Africa, and all the world over. This I contend for, not in the technical forms of it, but I contend for it in the substance.

Mr. Hastings comes before your lordships not as a British governour answering to a British tribunal, but as a soubahdar, as a bashaw of three tails. He says, "I had an arbitrary power to exercise: I exercised it. Slaves I found the people; slaves they are, they are so by their constitution; and if they are, I did not make it for them. I was unfortunately bound to exercise this arbitrary power, and accord

ingly I did exercise it. It was disagreeable to me, but I did exercise it, and no other power can be exercised in that country." This, if it be true, is a plea in bar. But I trust and hope your lordships will not judge by laws and institutions, which you do not know, against those laws and institutions, which you do know, and under whose power and authority Mr. Hastings went out to India. Can your lordships patiently hear what we have heard with indignation enough, and what, if there were nothing else, would call these principles as well as the actions, which are justified on such principles, to your lordships' bar; that it may be known whether the Peers of England do not sympathize with the Commons in their detestation of such doctrine? Think of an English governour tried before you as a British subject, and yet declaring, that he governed on the principles of arbitrary power. His plea is, that he did govern there on arbitrary and despotick, and, as he supposes, oriental principles. And as this plea is boldly avowed and maintained, and as, no doubt, all his conduct was perfectly correspondent to these principles, the principles and the conduct must be tried together.

If your lordships will now permit me, I will state one of the many places, in which he has avowed these principles as the basis and foundation of all his conduct. "The sovereignty, which they assumed, it fell to my lot, very unexpectedly, to exert ; and whether or not such power, or powers of that nature, were delegated to me by any provisions of any act of parliament, I confess myself too little of a lawyer to pronounce. I only know, that the acceptance of the sovereignty of Benares, &c. is not acknowledged or admitted by any act of parliament; and yet, by the particular interference of the majority of the council, the company is clearly and indisputably seized of that sovereignty." So that this gentleman, because he is not a lawyer, nor clothed with those robes, which distinguish and well distinguish the learning of this country, is not to know any thing of his duty; and whether he was bound by any, or what act of parliament, is a thing he is not lawyer enough to know. Now, if your lordships will suffer the laws to be broken by those, who are not of the

long robe, I am afraid those of the long robe will have none to punish but those of their own profession. He therefore goes to a law he is better acquainted with; that is, the law of arbitrary power and force, if it deserves to be called by the name of law. "If, therefore," says he, "the sovereignty of Benares, as ceded to us by the vizier, have any rights whatever annexed to it, (and be not a mere empty word without meaning) those rights must be such as are held, countenanced, and established by the law, custom, and usage of the Mogul empire, and not by the provisions of any British act of parliament hitherto enacted. Those rights, and none

other, I have been the involuntary instrument of enforcing. And if any future act of parliament shall positively, or by implication, tend to annihilate those very rights, or their exertion, as I have exerted them, I much fear, that the boasted sovereignty of Benares, which was held up as an acquisition almost obtruded on the company against my consent and opinion, (for I acknowledge, that even then I foresaw many difficulties and inconveniences in its future exercise ;) I fear, I say, that this sovereignty will be found a burden instead of a benefit, a heavy clog rather than a precious gem to its present possessours; I mean, unless the whole of our territory in that quarter shall be rounded and made an uniform compact body by one grand and systematick arrangement; such an arrangement as shall do away all the mischiefs, doubts, and inconveniences, (both to the governours and the governed) arising from the variety of tenures, rights, and claims in all cases of landed property and feudal jurisdiction in India, from the informality, invalidity, and instability of all engagements in so divided and unsettled a state of society; and from the unavoidable anarchy and confusion of different laws, religions, and prejudices, moral, civil, and political, all jumbled together in one unnatural and discordant mass. Every part of Hindostan has been constantly exposed to these and similar disadvantages ever since the Mahomedan conquests."

"The Hindûs, who never incorporated with their conquerours, were kept in order only by the strong hand of power. The constant necessity of similar exertions would increase at once their energy and extent, so that rebellion itself is the