This was the light in which this country appeared to almost every eye.  But Mr. Hastings beheld it askance.  Mr. Hastings tells us that it was reported of this Cheit Sing, that his father left him a million sterling, and that he made annual accessions to the hoard.  Nothing could be so obnoxious to indigent power.  So much wealth could not be innocent.  The House is fully acquainted with the unfounded and unjust requisitions which were made upon this prince.  The question has been most ably and conclusively cleared up in one of the reports of the select committee, and in an answer of the Court of Directors to an extraordinary publication against them by their servant, Mr. Hastings.  But I mean to pass by these exactions as if they were perfectly just and regular; and having admitted them, I take what I shall now trouble you with only as it serves to show the spirit of the Company’s government, the mode in which it is carried on, and the maxims on which it proceeds.

Mr. Hastings, from whom I take the doctrine, endeavors to prove that Cheit Sing was no sovereign prince, but a mere zemindar, or common subject, holding land by rent.  If this be granted to him, it is next to be seen under what terms he is of opinion such a landholder, that is a British subject, holds his life and property under the Company’s government.  It is proper to understand well the doctrines of the person whose administration has lately received such distinguished approbation from the Company.  His doctrine is,—­“That the Company, or the person delegated by it, holds an absolute authority over such zemindars;—­that he [such a subject] owes an implicit and unreserved obedience to its authority, at the forfeiture even of his life and property, at the DISCRETION of those who held or fully represented the sovereign authority;—­and that these rights are fully delegated to him, Mr. Hastings.”

Such is a British governor’s idea of the condition of a great zemindar holding under a British authority; and this kind of authority he supposes fully delegated to him,—­though no such delegation appears in any commission, instruction, or act of Parliament.  At his discretion he may demand of the substance of any zemindar, over and above his rent or tribute, even, what he pleases, with a sovereign authority; and if he does not yield an implicit, unreserved obedience to all his commands, he forfeits his lands, his life, and his property, at Mr. Hastings’s discretion.  But, extravagant, and even frantic, as these positions appear, they are less so than what I shall now read to you; for he asserts, that, if any one should urge an exemption from more than a stated payment, or should consider the deeds which passed between him and the Board “as bearing the quality and force of a treaty between equal states,” he says, “that such an opinion is itself criminal to the state of which he is a subject; and that he was himself amenable to its justice, if he gave countenance to such a belief.”  Here is a new species of crime invented, that of countenancing a belief,—­but a belief of what?  A belief of that which the Court of Directors, Hastings’s masters, and a committee of this House, have decided as this prince’s indisputable right.