evidence of their guilt or innocence to be produced, are themselves the causes of the irrelevancy of all these matters. It cannot justly be charged on us; for we have never offered any matter here, which we did not declare our readiness upon the spot to prove. Your lordships did not think fit to receive that proof. We do not now censure your lordships for your determination; that is not the business of this day. We refer to your determination for the purpose of showing the falsehood of the imputation, which the prisoner has cast upon us, of having oppressed him by delay and irrelevant matter. We refer to it, in order to show that the oppression rests with himself; that it is all his own. Well, but Mr. Hastings complained also to the House of Commons. Has he pursued the complaint? No, he has not; and yet this prisoner, and these gentlemen, his learned counsel, have dared to reiterate their complaints of us at your lordships' bar; while we have always been, and still are, ready to prove both the atrocious nature of the facts, and that they are referable to the prisoner at your bar. To this, as I have said before, the prisoner has objected. we are not permitted to do by your lordships: and therefore, without presuming to blame your determination, I repeat that we throw the blame directly upon himself, when he complains that his private character suffers without the means of defence, since he objects to the use of means of defence which are at his disposal. This Having gone through this part of the prisoner's recriminatory charge, I shall close my observations on his demeanor, and defer my remarks on his complaint of our ingratitude until we come to consider his set-off of services. The next subject for your lordships' consideration is the principle of the prisoner's defence. And here we must observe, that either by confession or conviction, we are possessed of the facts, and perfectly agreed upon the matter at issue between us. In taking a view of the laws, by which you are to judge, I shall beg leave to state to you upon what principles of law the House of Commons has criminated him, and upon what principles of law, or pretended law, he justifies himself; for these are the matters at issue between us : the matters of fact, as I have just said, being determined, either by confession on his part, or by proof on ours. My lords, we acknowledge that Mr. Hastings was invested with discretionary power, but we assert, that he was bound to use that power according to the established rules of political morality, humanity, and equity. In all questions relating to foreign powers, he was bound to act under the law of nature and under the law of nations, as it is recognised by the wisest authorities in public jurisprudence. In his relation to this country, he was bound to act according to the laws and statutes of Great Britain, either in their letter or in their spirit; and we affirm, that in his relation to the people of India, he was bound to act according to the largest and most liberal construction of their laws, rights, usages, institutions, and good customs; and we furthermore assert, that he was under an express obligation to yield implicit obedience to the court of directors. It is upon these rules and principles the Commons contend, that Mr. Hastings ought to have regulated his government; and not only Mr. Hastings, but all other governors. It is upon these rules that he is responsible, and upon these rules, and these rules only, your lordships are to judge. My lords, long before the committee had resolved upon this impeachment, we had come, as I have told your lordships, to forty-five resolutions, every one criminatory of this man, every one of them bottomed upon the principles which I have stated. We never will, nor can we abandon them; and we therefore do not supplicate your lordships upon this head, but claim and demand of right, that you will judge him upon those principles, and upon no other. If once they are evaded, you can have no rule for your judgment but your caprices and partialities. Having thus stated the principles upon which the Com mons hold him and all governors responsible, and upon which we have grounded our impeachment, and which must be the grounds of your judgment, (and your lordships will not suffer any other ground to be mentioned to you,) we will now tell you what are the grounds of his defence. He first asserts, that he was possessed of an arbitrary and despotic power, restrained by no laws but his own will. He next says, that "the rights of the people he governed in India are nothing, and that the rights of the government are every thing." The people, he asserts, have no liberty, no laws, no inheritance, no fixed property, no descendable estate, no subordinations in society, no sense of honor or of shame; and that they are only affected by punishment so far as punishment is a corporal infliction; being totally insensible of any difference between the punishment of man and beast. These are the principles of his Indian government, which Mr. Hastings has avowed in their full extent. Whenever precedents are required, he cites and follows the example of avowed tyrants, of Ali Verdi Khan, Cossim Ali Khan, and Sujah Dowlah. With an avowal of these principles he was pleased first to entertain the House of Commons, the active asserters and conservators of the rights, liberties, and laws of his country; and then to insist upon them more largely and in a fuller detail before this awful tribunal, the passive judicial conservator of the same great interests. He has brought out these blasphemous doctrines in this great temple of justice, consecrated to law and equity for a long series of ages. He has brought them forth in Westminster Hall, in presence of all the judges of the land, who are to execute the law, and of the House of Lords, who are bound as its guardians not to suffer the words, "arbitrary power," to be mentioned before them. For I am not again to tell your lordships that arbitrary power is treason in the law; that to mention it with law is to commit a contradiction in terms. They cannot exist in concert; they cannot hold together for a moment. Let us now hear what the prisoner says, "The sovereign A ty, which they [the soubahdars, or viceroys of the Mogul empire] 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. If, therefore, 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 possessors; I mean, unless the whole of our territory in that quarter shall be rounded and made an uniform compact body by one grand and systematic arrangement; such an arrangement as shall do away all the mischiefs, doubts, and inconveniences, (both to the governors 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 confu sion 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 Hindoos, who never incorporated with their conquerors, 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 despotic 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 despotic 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 Hindostanic 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, |