The next thing is to show that in India there is a partition of the powers of the government, which proves that there is no absolute power delegated.

In every province the first person is the Subahdar or Nazim, or Viceroy:  he has the power of the sword, and the administration of criminal justice only.  Then there is the Dewan, or High Steward:  he has the revenue and all exchequer causes under him, to be governed according to the law and custom and institutions of the kingdom.  The law of inheritances, successions, and everything that relates to them, is under the Cadi, in whose court these matters are tried.  But this, too, was subdivided.  The Cadi could not judge, but by the advice of his assessors.  Properly in the Mahomedan law there is no appeal, only a removal of the cause; but when there is no judgment, as none can be when the court is not unanimous, it goes to the general assembly of all the men of the law.  There are, I will venture to say, other divisions and subdivisions; for there are the Kanongoes, who hold their places for life, to be the conservators of the canons, customs, and good usages of the country:  all these, as well as the Cadi and the Mufti, hold their places and situations, not during the wanton pleasure of the prince, but on permanent and fixed terms for life.  All these powers of magistracy, revenue, and law are all different, consequently not delegated in the whole to any one person.

This is the provincial constitution, and these the laws of Bengal; which proves, if there were no other proof, by the division of the functions and authorities, that the supreme power of the state in the Mogul empire did by no means delegate to any of its officers the supreme power in its fulness.  Whether or no we have delegated to Mr. Hastings the supreme power of King and Parliament, that he should act with the plenitude of authority of the British legislature, you are to judge.

Mr. Hastings has no refuge here.  Let him run from law to law; let him fly from the common law and the sacred institutions of the country in which he was born; let him fly from acts of Parliament, from which his power originated; let him plead his ignorance of them, or fly in the face of them.  Will he fly to the Mahomedan law?  That condemns him.  Will he fly to the high magistracy of Asia to defend taking of presents?  Padishah and the Sultan would condemn him to a cruel death.  Will he fly to the Sophis, to the laws of Persia, or to the practice of those monarchs?  I cannot utter the pains, the tortures, that would be inflicted on him, if he were to govern there as he has done in a British province.  Let him fly where he will, from law to law; law, I thank God, meets him everywhere, and enforced, too, by the practice of the most impious tyrants, which he quotes as if it would justify his conduct.  I would as willingly have him tried by the law of the Koran, or the Institutes of Tamerlane, as on the common law or statute law of this kingdom.