of the true religion and the strengthening of the Mussulmans, and under whom the Mussulmans enjoy security in person and property; one who levies tithe and tribute according to law; who out of the public treasury pays what is due to learned men, preachers, kazees, muftis, philosophers, public teachers, and so forth; and who is just in all his dealings with Mussulmans:  for whoever does not answer this description is not the right Imaum; whence it is not incumbent to support such a one; but rather it is incumbent to oppose him and make war upon him, until such time as he either adopt a proper mode of conduct or be slain."[97]

My Lords, is this a magistrate of the same description as the sovereign delineated by Mr. Hastings?  This man must be elected by the general consent of Mussulmans; he must be a protector of the person and property of his subjects; a right of resistance is directly established by law against him, and even the duty of resistance is insisted upon.  Am I, in praising this Mahometan law, applauding the principle of elective sovereignty?  No, my Lords, I know the mischiefs which have attended it; I know that it has shaken the thrones of most of the sovereigns of the Mussulman religion; but I produce the law as the clearest proof that such a sovereign cannot be supposed to have an arbitrary power over the property and persons of those who elect him, and who have an acknowledged right to resist and dethrone him, if he does not afford them protection.

I have now gone through what I undertook to prove,—­that Mr. Hastings, with all his Indian Council, who have made up this volume of arbitrary power, are not supported by the laws of the Moguls, by the laws of the Gentoos, by the Mahometan laws, or by any law, custom, or usage which has ever been recognized as legal and valid.

But, my Lords, the prisoner defends himself by example; and, good God! what are the examples which he has chosen?  Not the local usages and constitutions of Oude or of any other province; not the general practice of a respectable emperor, like Akbar, which, if it would not fatigue your Lordships, I could show to be the very reverse of this man’s.  No, my Lords, the prisoner, his learned counsel here, and his unlearned Cabinet Council, who wrote this defence, have ransacked the tales of travellers for examples, and have selected materials from that mass of loose remarks and crude conceptions, to prove that the natives of India have neither rights, laws, orders, or distinction.

I shall now proceed to show your Lordships that the people of India have a keen sense and feeling of disgrace and dishonor.  In proof of this I appeal to well-known facts.  There have been women tried in India for offences, and acquitted, who would not survive the disgrace even of acquittal.  There have been Hindoo soldiers, condemned at a court-martial, who have desired to be blown from the mouth of a cannon, and have claimed rank and precedence at the last moment of their existence.  And yet these people are said to have no sense of dishonor!  Good God! that we should be under the necessity of proving, in this place, all these things, and of disproving that all India was given in slavery to this man!