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: 1 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

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. This 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.

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