for his enormous offences there neither is nor can be anything like such punishments.  God forbid that we should not as much detest out-of-the-way, mad, furious, and unequal punishments as we detest enormous and abominable crimes! because a severe and cruel penalty for a crime of a light nature is as bad and iniquitous as the crime which it pretends to punish.  As the instances I allude to are curious, and as they go to the principles of Mr. Hastings’s defence, I shall beg to quote them.

The first is upon a governor who did what Mr. Hastings says he has a power delegated to him to do:  he levied a tax without the consent of his master.  “Some years after my departure from Com,” says Tavernier, “the governor had, of his own accord, and without any communication with the king, laid a small impost upon every pannier of fruit brought into the city, for the purpose of making some necessary reparations in the walls and bridges of the town.  It was towards the end of the year 1632 that the event I am going to relate happened.  The king, being informed of the impost which the governor had laid upon the fruit, ordered him to be brought in chains to court.  The king ordered him to be exposed to the people at one of the gates of the palace; then he commanded the son to pluck off the mustachios of his father, to cut off his nose and ears, to put out his eyes, and then cut off his head.  The king then told the son to go and take possession of the government of his father, saying, See that you govern better than this deceased dog, or thy doom shall be a death more exquisitely tormenting.”

My Lords, you are struck with horror, I am struck with horror, at this punishment.  I do not relate it to approve of such a barbarous act, but to prove to your Lordships, that, whatever power the princes of that country have, they are jealous of it to such a degree, that, if any of their governors should levy a tax, even the most insignificant, and for the best purposes, he meets with a cruel punishment.  I do not justify the punishment; but the severity of it shows how little of their power the princes of that country mean to delegate to their servants, the whole of which the gentleman at your bar says was delegated to him.

There is another case, a very strong one, and that is the case of presents, which I understand is a custom admitted throughout Asia in all their governments.  It was of a person who was raised to a high office; no business was suffered to come before him without a previous present.  “One morning, the king being at this time on a hunting party, the nazar came to the tent of the king, but was denied entrance by the meter, or master of the wardrobe.  About the same time the king came forth, and, seeing the nazar, commanded his officers to take off the bonnet from the head of that dog that took gifts from his people, and that he should sit three days bareheaded in the heat of the sun, and as many nights in the air.  Afterwards he caused him to be chained about the neck and arms, and condemned him to perpetual imprisonment, with a mamoudy a day for his maintenance; but he died for grief within eight days after he was put in prison.”