In regard to punishments being arbitrary, I will, with your Lordships’ permission, read a passage which will show you that the magistrate is a responsible person.  “If a supreme ruler, such as the Caliph for the time being, commit any offence punishable by law, such as whoredom, theft, or drunkenness, he is not subject to any punishment; but yet if he commit murder, he is subject to the law of retaliation, and he is also accountable in matters of property:  because punishment is a right of God, the infliction of which is committed to the Caliph, or other supreme magistrate, and to none else; and he cannot inflict punishment upon himself, as in this there is no advantage, because the good proposed in punishment is that it may operate as a warning to deter mankind from sin, and this is not obtained by a person’s inflicting punishment upon himself, contrary to the rights of the individual, such as the laws of retaliation and of property, the penalties of which may be exacted of the Caliph, as the claimant of right may obtain satisfaction, either by the Caliph impowering him to exact his right from himself, or by the claimant appealing for assistance to the collective body of Mussulmans."[96]

Here your Lordships see that the Caliph, who is a magistrate of the highest authority which can exist among the Mahometans, where property or life is concerned has no arbitrary power, but is responsible just as much as any other man.

I am now to inform your Lordships that the sovereign can raise no taxes.  The imposing of a tribute upon a Mussulman, without his previous consent, is impracticable.  And so far from all property belonging to the sovereign, the public treasure does not belong to him.  It is declared to be the common property of all Mahometans.  This doctrine is laid down in many places, but particularly in the 95th page of the second volume of Hamilton’s Hedaya.

Mr. Hastings has told you what a sovereign is, and what sovereignty is, all over India; and I wish your Lordships to pay particular attention to this part of his defence, and to compare Mr. Hastings’s idea of sovereignty with the declaration of the Mahometan law.  The tenth chapter of these laws treats of rebellion, which is defined an act of warfare against the sovereign.  You are there told who the sovereign is, and how many kinds of rebels there are.  The author then proceeds to say,—­“The word baghee (rebellion), in its literal sense, means prevarication, also, injustice and tyranny; in the language of the law it is particularly applied to injustice, namely, withdrawing from obedience to the rightful Imaum (as appears in the Fattahal-Kadeen).  By the rightful Imaum is understood a person in whom all the qualities essential to magistracy are united, such as Islamism, freedom, sanity of intellect, and maturity of age,—­and who has been elected into his office by any tribe of Mussulmans, with their general consent; whose view and intention is the advancement