My Lords, in the first place, I have to remark to you, that the whole of the charge originally brought by Mr. Hastings against Cheyt Sing, in justification of his wicked and tyrannical proceedings, is, that he had been dilatory, evasive, shuffling, and unwilling to pay that which, however unwilling, evasive, and shuffling, he did pay; and that, with regard to the business of furnishing cavalry, the Rajah has asserted, and his assertion has not been denied, that, when he was desired by the Council to furnish these troopers, the purpose for which this application was made was not mentioned or alluded to, nor was there any place of muster pointed out.  We therefore contended, that the demand was not made for the service of the state, but for the oppression of the individual that suffered by it.

But admitting the Rajah to have been guilty of delay and unwillingness, what is the nature of the offence?  If you strip it of the epithets by which it has been disguised, it merely amounts to an unwillingness in the Rajah to pay more than the sums stipulated by the mutual agreement existing between him and the Company.  This is the whole of it, the whole front and head of the offence; and for this offence, such as it is, and admitting that he could be legally fined for it, he was subjected to the secret punishment of giving a bribe to Mr. Hastings, by which he was to buy off the fine, and which was consequently a commutation for it.

That your Lordships may be enabled to judge more fully of the nature of this offence, let us see in what relation Cheyt Sing stood with the Company.  He was, my Lords, a person clothed with every one of the attributes of sovereignty, under a direct stipulation that the Company should not interfere in his internal government.  The military and civil authority, the power of life and death, the whole revenue, and the whole administration of the law, rested in him.  Such was the sovereignty he possessed within Benares:  but he was a subordinate sovereign dependent upon a superior, according to the tenor of his compact, expressed or implied.  Now, having contended, as we still contend, that the Law of Nations is the law of India as well as of Europe, because it is the law of reason and the law of Nature, drawn from the pure sources of morality, of public good, and of natural equity, and recognized and digested into order by the labor of learned men, I will refer your Lordships to Vattel, Book I. Cap. 16, where he treats of the breach of such agreements, by the protector refusing to give protection, or the protected refusing to perform his part of the engagement.  My design in referring you to this author is to prove that Cheyt Sing, so far from being blamable in raising objections to the unauthorized demand made upon him by Mr. Hastings, was absolutely bound to do so; nor could he have done otherwise, without hazarding the whole benefit of the agreement upon which his subjection and protection were founded.  The law is the same with respect to both contracting parties:  if the protected or protector does not fulfil with fidelity each his separate stipulation, the protected may resist the unauthorized demand of the protector, or the protector is discharged from his engagement; he may refuse protection, and declare the treaty broken.