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 Cheyt 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.  Aliverdy Khan and Cossim Ali 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 vicious 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 despotic prince.  Despotic 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 Hindostanic 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 dependent 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 everything, and the subject nothing,—­that the great landed men are in a mean and depraved state, and subject to many evils.