British empire, contains (as I have already had occasion to mention) three distinct classes of people, forming three distinct social systems. The first is the Mahometans; which, about seven hundred years ago, obtained a footing in that country, and ever since has in a great degree retained its authority there. For the Mahometans had settled there long before the foundation of the Bengal empire, which was overturned by Tamerlane: So that this people, who are represented sometimes loosely as strangers, are people of ancient and considerable settlement in that country; and though like Mahometan settlers in many other countries, they have fallen into decay, yet, being continually recruited from various parts of Tartary under the Mogul empire, and from various parts of Persia, they continue to be the leading and most powerful people throughout the Peninsula; and so we found them there. These people, for the most part, follow no trades or occupation, their religion and laws forbidding them in the strictest manner to take usury or profit arising from money that is in any way lent; they have therefore no other means for their support, but what arises from their adherence to, and connexion with, the Mogul governments and its Viceroys. They enjoy under them various offices civil and military, various employments in the courts of law,

and

and stations in the army. Accordingly a prodigious number of people, almost all of them persons of the most ancient and respectable families in the country, are dependent upon and cling to the Subodars or Viceroys of the several provinces. They therefore who oppress, plunder and destroy the Subodars, oppress, rob and destroy an immense mass of people. It is true that a supervening government, established upon another, always reduces a certain portion of the dependents upon the latter to want. You must distress, by the very nature of the circumstances of the case, a great number of people; but then it is your business, when by the superiority which you have acquired, however you may have acquired it, (for I am not now considering whether you have acquired it by fraud or force, or whether by a mixture of both;) when I say you have acquired it, it is your business not to oppress those people with new and additional difficulties, but rather to console them in the state to which they are reduced, and to give them all the assistance and protection in your power.

The next system is composed of the descendants of the people who were found in the country by the Mahomedan invaders. The system before mentioned comprehends the official interest, the judicial interest, the court interest, and the military interest. This latter body includes almost

the

the whole landed interest, commercial interest, and monied interest of the country. For the Hindoos. not. being forbidden by their laws or religious tenets as. laid down in the Shaster, many of them became the principal money lenders and bankers; and thus the Hindoos form the greatest part both of the landed and monied interest in that country...

The third and last system is formed of the English interest; which in reality, whether it appears directly or indirectly, is the governing. interest of the whole country; of its civil and military interest, of its landed, monied, and reve-, nue interest; and what to us is the greatest concern of all, it is this system which is responsible for the government of that country to the government of Great Britain. It is divided into two. parts, one emanating from the Company, and afterwards regulated by Act of Parliament; the other a judicial body sent out by, and acting under the authority of the Crown itself. The persons composing that interest are those whom we usually call the servants of the Company. They enter into that service, as your Lordships know, at an early period of life, and they are promoted accordingly as their merit or their interest may provide for them. This body of men, with respect to its number, is so small as scarcely to deserve mentioning; but from certain circumstances

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circumstances, the government of the whole country is fallen into their hands. Amongst these circumstances the most important and essential are, their having the publick revenues and the publick purse entirely in their own hands, and their having an army maintained by that purse, and disciplined in the European manner. Such was the state of that country when Mr. Hastings was appointed governour in 1772. Your Lordships are now to decide upon the manner in which he has comported himself with regard to all these three interests; first, whether he has made the ancient Mahometan families as easy as he could; secondly, whether he has made the Hindoo inhabitants, the Zemindars and their tenants, as secure in their property and as easy in their tenure as he could; and lastly, whether he has made the English interest a blessing to the country; and whilst it provided moderate, safe, and proper emoluments to the persons that were concerned in it-it kept them from oppression and rapine, and a general waste and ravage of the country; whether in short, he made all these three interests pursue that one object, which all interests and all governments ought to pursue, the advantage and welfare of the people under them.

My Lords, in support of our charge against the Prisoner at your bar, that he acted in a manner directly the reverse of this: We have proved

to you that his first acts of oppression were directed against the Mahometan government; that government which had been before, not only in name, but in effect to the very time of his appointment, the real government of the country. After the Company had acquired its right over it, some shadow still remained of the ancient government. An allowance was settled for the Nabob of Bengal, to support the dignity of his court, which amounted to between four and five hundred thousand pounds a year. In this was comprehended the support of the whole mass of nobility; the soldiers, serving or retired; all the officers of the court; and all the women that were dependent upon them; the whole of the criminal jurisdiction of the country, and a very considerable part of the civil law and the civil government. These establishments formed the constitutional basis of their political government.

The Company never had, and it is a thing that we can never too often repeat to your Lordships, the Company never had of right despotick power in that country, to overturn any of these establishments. The Mogul, who gave them their charters, could not give them such a power, he did not de facto give them such a power-the government of this country did not by Act of Parliament, and the Company did not and could