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 whom they are exercised.  The very reverse.  He mentions them as horrible things, tending to inflict on the people a thousand evils, and to bring on the ruler a continual train of dangers.  Yet he states, that your acquisitions in India will be a detriment instead of an advantage, if you destroy arbitrary power, unless you can reduce all the religious establishments, all the civil institutions, and tenures of land, into one uniform mass,—­that is, unless by acts of arbitrary power you extinguish all the laws, rights, and religious principles of the people, and force them to an uniformity, and on that uniformity build a system of arbitrary power.

But nothing is more false than that despotism is the constitution of any country in Asia that we are acquainted with.  It is certainly not true of any Mahomedan constitution.  But if it were, do your Lordships really think that the nation would bear, that any human creature would bear, to hear an English governor defend himself on such principles? or, if he can defend himself on such principles, is it possible to deny the conclusion, that no man in India has a security for anything, but by being totally independent of the British government?  Here he has declared his opinion, that he is a despotic prince, that he is to use arbitrary power; and of course all his acts are covered with that shield. “I know,” says he, “the constitution of Asia only from its practice.”  Will your Lordships submit to hear the corrupt practices of mankind made the principles of government?  No! it will be your pride and glory to teach men intrusted with power, that, in their use of it, they are to conform to principles, and not to draw their principles from the corrupt practice of any man whatever.  Was there ever heard, or could it be conceived, that a governor would dare to heap up all the evil practices, all the cruelties, oppressions, extortions, corruptions, briberies, of all the ferocious usurpers, desperate robbers, thieves, cheats, and jugglers, that ever had office, from one end of Asia to another, and, consolidating all this mass of the crimes and absurdities of barbarous domination into one code, establish it as the whole duty of an English governor?  I believe that till this time so audacious a thing was never attempted by man.