tent with credit gained by as base a fraud as was ever practised, he did not read the books. which Nobkissin paid for; we take the benefit of them we know and speak after knowledge of them. And although I believe his council have never read them, I should be sorry to stand in this place, if there was one word and tittle in these books that I had not read over.

We therefore come here and declare to you, that he is not borne out by these institutes, either in their general spirit or in any particular passage, to which he has had the impudence to appeal, in the assumption of the arbitrary power which he has exercised. We claim, that, as our own Government, and every person exercising authority in Great Britain is bound by the laws of Great Britain, so every person exercising authority in another country shall be subject to the laws of that country; since otherwise, they break the very covenant by which we hold our power there. Even if these institutes had been. arbitrary, which they are not, they might have been excused as the acts of conquerors. But, my Lords, he is no conqueror, nor any thing but. what you see him; a bad scribbler of absurd papers, in which he can put no two sentences, together without contradiction. We know him in no other character than that of having been a bullock contractor for some years; of having

acted

acted fraudulently in that capacity, and afterwards giving fraudulent contracts to others; and yet I will maintain, that the first conquerors of the world would have been base and abandoned if they had assumed such a right as he dares to claim. It is the glory of all such great men to have for their motto, Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. These were men that said they would recompense the countries which they had obtained through torrents of blood, through carnage and violence; by the justice of their institutions, the mildness of their laws, and the equity of their government. Even if these conquerors had promulgated arbitrary institutes instead of disclaiming them in every point, you, my Lords, would never suffer such principles of defence to be urged here; still less will you suffer the examples of men acting by violence, of men acting by wrong;-the example of a man who has become a rebel to his sovereign in order that he should become the tyrant of his people, to be examples for a British governour, or for any governour. We here confidently protest against this mode of justification, and we maintain that his pretending to follow these examples is in itself a crime. The Prisoner has ransacked all Asia for principles of despotism; he has ran. sacked all the bad and corrupted part of it for tyrannical

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tyrannical examples to justify himself; and certainly in no other way can he be justified.

Having established the falsehood of the first principle of the Prisoner's defence, that sovereignty, wherever it exists in India, implies in its nature and essence a power of exacting any thing from the subject, and disposing of his person and property;-we now come to his second assertion, that he was the true, full, and perfect representative of that sovereignty in India.

In opposition to this assertion we first do positively deny, that he or the Company are the perfect representative of any sovereign power whatever. They have certain rights by their charter, and by Acts of Parliament, but they have no other. They have their legal rights only, and these do not imply any such thing as sovereign power. The sovereignty of Great Britain is in the King, he is the Sovereign of the Lords, and the Sovereign of the Commons, individually and collectively; and as he has his prerogative established by law, he must exercise it, and all persons claiming and deriving under him, whether by Act of Parliament, whether by charter of the Crown, or by any other mode whatever, all are alike bound by law, and responsible to it. No one can assume or receive any power of sovereignty, because the sove

reignty

reignty is in the Crown, and cannot be delegated away from the Crown; no such delegation ever took place, or ever was intended; as any one may see in the Act by which Mr. Hastings was nominated governour. He cannot, therefore, exercise that high supreme sovereignty, which is vested by the law, with the consent of both Houses of Parliament, in the King, and in the King only, It is a violent, rebellious assumption of power, when Mr. Hastings pretends fully, perfectly, and entirely, to represent the Sovereign of this country, and to exercise legislative, executive, and judicial authority, with as large and broad a sway as His Majesty, acting with the consent of the two Houses of Parliament, and agreeably to the laws of this Kingdom. I say, my Lords, this is a traitorous and rebellious assumption which he has no right to make, and which we charge against him, and therefore it cannot be urged in justification of his conduct in any respect.

He next alleges, with reference to one particular case, that he received this sovereignty from the Vizier Sujah Dowlah, who he pretends was sovereign, with an unlimited power over the life, goods, and property of Cheit Sing. This we positively deny. Whatever power the supreme sovereign of the empire had, we deny that it was delegated to Sujah Dowlah. He never was in possession of it. He was a Vizier of the Empire;

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Empire; he had a grant of certain lands for the support of that dignity, and we refer you to the institutes of Timour, to the institutes of Akbar, to the institutes of the Mahometan law, for the powers of delegated governours and viceroys. You will find, that there is not a trace of sovereignty in them; but that they are, to all intents and purposes, mere subjects, and consequently as Sujah Dowlah had not these powers he could not transfer them to the India Company. His master, the Mogul Emperor, had them not. I defy any man to shew an instance of that Em. peror's claiming any such thing as arbitrary power, much less can it be claimed by a rebellious viceroy who had broken loose from his sovereign's authority, just as this man broke loose from the authority of Parliament. The one had not a right to give, nor the other to receive such powers; but whatever rights were vested in the Mogul, they cannot belong either to Sujah Dowlah, to Mr. Hastings, or to the Company. These latter are expressly bound by their com pact to take care of the subjects of the empire, and to govern them according to law, reason, and equity; and when they do otherwise, they are guilty of tyranny, of a violation of the rights of the people, and of rebellion against their sovereign. We have taken these pains to ascertain and