I have already stated to your Lordships a material circumstance of this case, which I hope will never be lost sight of,—­namely, the different situation in which India stood under the government of its native princes and its own original laws, and even under the dominion of Mahometan conquerors, from that in which it has stood under the government of a series of tyrants, foreign and domestic, particularly of Mr. Hastings, by whom it has latterly been oppressed and desolated.  One of the books which I have quoted was written by Mr. Halhed; and I shall not be accused of wantoning in fabulous antiquity, when I refer to another living author, who wrote from what he saw and what he well knew.  This author says,—­“In truth, it would be almost cruelty to molest these happy people” (speaking of the inhabitants of one of the provinces near Calcutta); “for in this district are the only vestiges of the beauty, purity, piety, regularity, equity, and strictness of the ancient Hindostan government:  here the property as well as the liberty of the people is inviolate.”  My Lords, I do not refer you to this writer because I think it necessary to our justification, nor from any fear that your Lordships will not do us the justice to believe that we have good authority for the facts which we state, and do not (as persons with their licentious tongues dare to say) wanton in fabulous antiquity.  I quote the works of this author, because his observations and opinions could not be unknown to Mr. Hastings, whose associate he was in some acts, and whose adviser he appears to have been in that dreadful transaction, the deposition of Cossim Ali Khan.  This writer was connected with the prisoner at your bar in bribery, and has charged him with detaining his bribe.  To this Mr. Hastings has answered, that he had paid him long ago.  How they have settled that corrupt transaction I know not.  I merely state all this to prove that we have not dealt in fabulous history, and that, if anybody has dealt in falsehood, it is Mr. Hastings’s companion and associate in guilt, who must have known the country, and who, however faulty he was in other respects, had in this case no interest whatever in misrepresentation.

I might refer your Lordships, if it were necessary, to Scrafton’s account of that ancient government, in order to prove to you the happy comparative state of that country, even under its former usurpers.  Our design, my Lords, in making such references, is not merely to disprove the prisoner’s defence, but to vindicate the rights and privileges of the people of India.  We wish to reinstate them in your sympathy.  We wish you to respect a people as respectable as yourselves,—­a people who know as well as you what is rank, what is law, what is property,—­a people who know how to feel disgrace, who know what equity, what reason, what proportion in punishments, what security of property is, just as well as any of your Lordships; for these are things which are secured to them by laws, by religion,