My second condition necessary to justify me in touching the charter is, whether the Company’s abuse of their trust with regard to this great object be an abuse of great atrocity.  I shall beg your permission to consider their conduct in two lights:  first the political, and then the commercial.  Their political conduct (for distinctness) I divide again into two heads:  the external, in which I mean to comprehend their conduct in their federal capacity, as it relates to powers and states independent, or that not long since were such; the other internal,—­namely, their conduct to the countries, either immediately subject to the Company, or to those who, under the apparent government of native sovereigns, are in a state much lower and much more miserable than common subjection.

The attention, Sir, which I wish to preserve to method will not be considered as unnecessary or affected.  Nothing else can help me to selection out of the infinite mass of materials which have passed under my eye, or can keep my mind steady to the great leading points I have in view.

With regard, therefore, to the abuse of the external federal trust, I engage myself to you to make good these three positions.  First, I say, that from Mount Imaus, (or whatever else you call that large range of mountains that walls the northern frontier of India,) where it touches us in the latitude of twenty-nine, to Cape Comorin, in the latitude of eight, that there is not a single prince, state, or potentate, great or small, in India, with whom they have come into contact, whom they have not sold:  I say sold, though sometimes they have not been able to deliver according to their bargain.  Secondly, I say, that there is not a single treaty they have ever made which they have not broken.  Thirdly, I say, that there is not a single prince or state, who ever put any trust in the Company, who is not utterly ruined; and that none are in any degree secure or flourishing, but in the exact proportion to their settled distrust and irreconcilable enmity to this nation.

These assertions are universal:  I say, in the full sense, universal.  They regard the external and political trust only; but I shall produce others fully equivalent in the internal.  For the present, I shall content myself with explaining my meaning; and if I am called on for proof, whilst these bills are depending, (which I believe I shall not,) I will put my finger on the appendixes to the Reports, or on papers of record in the House or the Committees, which I have distinctly present to my memory, and which I think I can lay before you at half an hour’s warning.

The first potentate sold by the Company for money was the Great Mogul,—­the descendant of Tamerlane.  This high personage, as high as human veneration can look at, is by every account amiable in his manners, respectable for his piety, according to his mode, and accomplished in all the Oriental literature.  All this, and the title derived under his charter to all that we hold in India, could not save him from the general sale.  Money is coined in his name; in his name justice is administered; he is prayed for in every temple through the countries we possess;—­but he was sold.