First, the people are divided into classes and ranks, with more accuracy of distinction than is used in this country, or in any other country under heaven.  Every class is divided into families, some of whom are more distinguished and more honorable than others; and they all have rights, privileges, and immunities belonging to them.  Even in cases of conquest, no confiscation is to take place.  A Brahmin’s estate comes by descent to him; it is forever descendible to his heirs, if he has heirs; and if he has none, it belongs to his disciples, and those connected with him in the Brahminical caste.  There are other immunities declared to belong to this caste, in direct contradiction to what has been asserted by the prisoner.  In no case shall a Brahmin suffer death; in no case shall the property of a Brahmin, male or female, be confiscated for crime, or escheat for want of heirs.  The law then goes on to other castes, and gives to each its property, and distinguishes them with great accuracy of discrimination.

Mr. Hastings says that there is no inheritable property among them.  Now you have only to look at page 27, chapter the second, the title of which, is, Of the Division of Inheritable Property.  There, after going through all the nicety of pedigree, it is declared, that, “when a father, or grandfather, a great-grandfather, or any relations of that nature, decease, or lose their caste, or renounce the world, or are desirous to give up their property, their sons, grandsons, great-grandsons, and other natural heirs, may divide and assume their glebe-lands, orchards, jewels, corals, clothes, furniture, cattle, and birds, and all the estate, real and personal.”  My Lords, this law recognizes this kind of property; it regulates it with the nicest accuracy of distinction; it settles the descent of it in every part and circumstance.  It nowhere asserts (but the direct contrary is positively asserted) that the magistrate has any power whatever over property.  It states that it is the magistrate’s duty to protect it; that he is bound to govern by law; that he must have a council of Brahmins to assist him in every material act that he does:  in short, my Lords, there is not even a trace of arbitrary power in the whole system.

My Lords, I will mention one article, to let you see, in a very few words, that these Gentoos not only have an inheritance, but that the law has established a right of acquiring possession in the property of another by prescription.  The passage stands thus:—­“If there be a person who is not a minor,” (a man ceases to be a minor at fifteen years of age,) “nor impotent, nor diseased, nor an idiot, nor so lame as not to have power to walk, nor blind, nor one who, on going before a magistrate, is found incapable of distinguishing and attending to his own concerns, and who has not given to another person power to employ and to use his property,—­if, in the face of any such person, another man has applied