sovereign,—that the government is everything, and the subject nothing,—that the great
landed men are in a mean and depraved state, and subject to many evils.
Such a state of things, if true, would warrant conclusions directly opposite to those which
Mr. Hastings means to draw from them, both argumentatively and practically, first to
influence his conduct, and then to bottom his defence of it.
Perhaps you will imagine that the man who avows these principles of arbitrary government,
and pleads them as the justification of acts which nothing else can justify, is of opinion that
they are on the whole good for the people over whom they are exercised. The very reverse.
He mentions them as horrible things, tending to inflict on the people a thousand evils, and
to bring on the ruler a continual train of dangers. Yet he states, that your acquisitions in
India will be a detriment instead of an advantage, if you destroy arbitrary power, unless you
can reduce all the religious establishments, all the civil institutions, and tenures of land, into
one uniform mass,—that is, unless by acts of arbitrary power you extinguish all the laws,
rights, and religious principles of the people, and force them to an uniformity, and on that
uniformity build a system of arbitrary power.
But nothing is more false than that despotism is the constitution of any country in Asia that
we are acquainted with. It is certainly not true of any Mahomedan constitution. But if it
were, do your Lordships really think that the nation would bear, that any human creature
would bear, to hear an English governor defend himself on such principles? or, if he can
defend himself on such principles, is it possible to deny the conclusion, that no man in India
has a security for anything, but by being totally independent of the British government?
Here he has declared his opinion, that he is a despotic prince, that he is to use arbitrary
power; and of course all his acts are covered with that shield. "I know," says he, "the