parent and promoter of despotism. Sovereignty in India implies nothing else. For I know not how we can form an estimate of its powers, but from its visible effects, and those are every where the same from Cabool to Assam. The whole history of Asia is nothing more than precedents to prove the invariable exercise of arbitrary power. To all this I strongly alluded in the minutes I delivered in council, when the treaty with the new vizier was on foot in 1775; and I wished to make Cheit Sing independent, because in India dependence included a thousand evils, many of which I enumerated at that time, and they are entered in the ninth clause of the first section of this charge. I knew the powers, with which an Indian sovereignty is armed, and the dangers, to which tributaries are exposed. I knew, that, from the history of Asia, and from the very nature of mankind, the subjects of a despotick empire are always vigilant for the moment to rebel, and the sovereign is ever jealous of rebellious intentions. A zemindar is an Indian subject, and, as such, exposed to the common lot of his fellows. The mean and depraved state of a mere zemindar is therefore this very dependence above-mentioned on a despotick government, this very proneness to shake off his allegiance, and this very exposure to continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, which are consequent on the political state of Hindostanick governments. Bulwant Sing, if he had been, and Cheit Sing, as long as he was, a zemindar, stood exactly in this mean and depraved state by the constitution of his country. I did not make it for him, but would have secured him from it. Those, who made him a zemindar, entailed upon him the consequences of so mean and depraved a tenure. Ally Verdy Cawn and Cossim Ally fined all their zemindars on the necessities of war, and on every pretence either of court necessity or court extravagance."

My lords, you have now heard the principles, on which Mr. Hastings governs the part of Asia subjected to the British empire. You have heard his opinion of the mean and depraved state of those, who are subject to it. You have heard his lecture upon arbitrary power, which he states to be the constitution of Asia. You hear the application he

makes of it; and you hear the practices, which he employs to justify it, and who the persons were, on whose authority he relies, and whose example he professes to follow. In the first place, your lordships will be astonished at the audacity, with which he speaks of his own administration, as if he was reading a speculative lecture on the evils attendant upon some vitious system of foreign government, in which he had no sort of concern whatsoever. And then, when in this speculative way he has established, or thinks he has, the vices of the government, he conceives he has found a sufficient apology for his own crimes. And if he violates the most solemn engagements, if he oppresses, extorts, and robs, if he imprisons, confiscates, banishes, at his sole will and pleasure, when we accuse him for his ill treatment of the people committed to him as a sacred trust, his defence is,to be robbed, violated, oppressed is their privilege-let the constitution of their country answer for it.-I did not make it for them. Slaves I found them, and as slaves I have treated them. I was a despotick prince, despotick governments are jealous, and the subjects prone to rebellion. very proneness of the subject to shake off his allegiance exposes him to continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy ; and this is consequent on the political state of Hindostanick governments. He lays it down as a rule, that despotism is the genuine constitution of India, that a disposition to rebellion in the subject, or dependant, prince is the necessary effect of this despotism, and that jealousy and its consequences naturally arise on the part of the sovereign-that the government is every thing, and the subject nothing-that the great landed men are in a mean and depraved state, and subject to many evils.

This

Such a state of things, if true, would warrant conclusions directly opposite to those, which Mr. Hastings means to draw from them, both argumentatively, and practically, first to influence his conduct, and then to bottom his defence of it.

Perhaps you will imagine, that the man, who avows these principles of arbitrary government, and pleads them as the justification of acts, which nothing else can justify, is of opinion, that they are on the whole good for the people, over

He men

whom they are exercised. The very reverse. tions them as horrible things, tending to inflict on the people a thousand evils, and to bring on the ruler a continual train of dangers. Yet he states, that your acquisitions in India will be a detriment instead of an advantage, if you destroy arbitrary power, unless you can reduce all the religious establishments, all the civil institutions, and tenures of land, into one uniform mass; i. e. unless by acts of arbitrary power you extinguish all the laws, rights, and religious principles of the people, and force them to an uniformity; and on that uniformity build a system of arbitrary power.

But nothing is more false, than that despotism is the constitution of any country in Asia, that we are acquainted with. It is certainly not true of any Mahomedan constitution. But if it were, do your lordships really think, that the nation would bear, that any human creature would bear, to hear an English governour defend himself on such principles? or, if he can defend himself on such principles, is it possible to deny the conclusion, that no man in India has a security for any thing, but by being totally independent of the British government? Here he has declared his opinion, that he is a despotick prince, that he is to use arbitrary power, and of course all his acts are covered with that shield. “ I know, says he, the constitution of Asia only from its practice.” Will your lordships submit to hear the corrupt practices of mankind made the principles of government?-No; it will be your pride and glory to teach men intrusted with power, that, in their use of it, they are to conform to principles, and not to draw their principles from the corrupt practice of any man whatever. Was there ever heard, or could it be conceived, that a governour would dare to heap up all the evil practices, all the cruelties, oppressions, extortions, corruptions, briberies, of all the ferocious usurpers, desperate robbers, thieves, cheats, and jugglers, that ever had office from one end of Asia to another, and consolidating all this mass of the crimes and absurdities of barbarous domination into one code, establish it as the whole duty of an English governour? I believe, that till this time so audacious a thing was never attempted by man.-

He have arbitrary power! My lords, the East-India Company have not arbitrary power to give him; the king has no arbitrary power to give him; your lordships have not; nor the Commons; nor the whole legislature. have no arbitrary power to give, because arbitrary power is a thing, which neither any man can hold nor any man can give. No man can lawfully govern himself according to his own will, much less can one person be governed by the will of another. We are all born in subjection, all born equally, high and low, governours and governed, in subjection to one great, immutable, pre-existent law, prior to all our devices, and prior to all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas, and all our sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by which we are knit and connected in the eternal frame of the universe, out of which we cannot stir.

This great law does not arise from our conventions or compacts; on the contrary, it gives to our conventions and compacts all the force and sanction they can have ;-it does not arise from our vain institutions. Every good gift is of God; all power is of God;-and He, who has given the power, and from whom alone it originates, will never suffer the exercise of it to be practised upon any less solid foundation than the power itself. If then all dominion of man over man is the effect of the divine disposition, it is bound by the eternal laws of Him, that gave it, with which no human authority can dispense; neither he, that exercises it, nor even those, who are subject to it: and, if they were mad enough to make an express compact, that should release their magistrate from his duty, and should declare their lives, liberties, and properties dependent upon, not rules and laws, but his mere capricious will, that covenant would be void. The acceptor of it has not his authority increased, but he has his crime doubled. Therefore can it be imagined, if this be true, that he will suffer this great gift of government, the greatest, the best, that was ever given by God to mankind, to be the plaything and the sport of the feeble will of a man, who, by a blasphemous, absurd, and petulant usurpation, would place his own feeble, contemptible, ridiculous will in the place of the divine wisdom and justice?

The title of conquest makes no difference at all. No conquest can give such a right; for conquest, that is force, cannot convert its own injustice into a just title, by which it may rule others at its pleasure. By conquest, which is a more immediate designation of the hand of God, the conquerour succeeds to all the painful duties and subordination to the power of God, which belonged to the sovereign, whom he has displaced, just as if he had come in by the positive law of some descent, or some election. To this at least he is strictly bound-he ought to govern them, as he governs his own subjects. But every wise conquerour has gone much further than he was bound to go. It has been his ambition and his policy to reconcile the vanquished to his fortune, to show, that they had gained by the change, to convert their momentary suffering into a long benefit, and to draw from the humiliation of his enemies an accession to his own glory. This has been so constant a practice, that it is to repeat the histories of all politick conquerours in all nations and in all times; and I will not so much distrust your lordships' enlightened and discriminating studies and correct memories, as to allude to one of them. I will only show you, that the court of directors, under whom he served, has adopted that idea, that they constantly inculcated it to him, and to all the servants, that they run a parallel between their own and the native government, and supposing it to be very evil did not hold it up as an example to be followed, but as an abuse to be corrected; that they never made it a question, whether India is to be improved by English law and liberty, or English law and liberty vitiated by Indian corruption.

No, my lords, this arbitrary power is not to be had by conquest. Nor can any sovereign have it by succession, for no man can succeed to fraud, rapine, and violence; neither by compact, covenant, or submission,-for men cannot covenant themselves out of their rights and their duties; nor by any other means can arbitrary power be conveyed to any man. Those, who give to others such rights, perform aets, that are void as they are given, good indeed and valid only as tending to subject themselves and those, who act with