enjoy,) "when the despotic institutes of Genghiz Khân or Tamerlane shall give place to the
liberal spirit of a British legislature; and," says he, "I shall be amply satisfied in my present
prosecution, if it shall tend to hasten the approach of an event so beneficial to the great
interests of mankind."
My Lords, you have seen what he says about an act of Parliament. Do you not now think it
rather an extraordinary thing, that any British subject should, in vindication of the authority
which he has exercised, here quote the names and institutes, as he calls them, of fierce
conquerors, of men who were the scourges of mankind, whose power was a power which
they held by force only?
As to the institutes of Genghiz Khân, which he calls arbitrary institutes, I never saw them.
If he has that book, he will oblige the public by producing it. I have seen a book existing,
called Yassa of Genghiz Khân; the other I never saw. If there be any part of it to justify
arbitrary power, he will produce it. But if we may judge by those ten precepts of Genghiz
Khân which we have, there is not a shadow of arbitrary power to be found in any one of
them. Institutes of arbitrary power! Why, if there is arbitrary power, there can be no
institutes.
As to the institutes of Tamerlane, here they are in their original, and here is a translation. I
have carefully read every part of these institutes; and if any one shows me one word in
them in which the prince claims in himself arbitrary power, I again repeat, that I shall for
my own part confess that I have brought myself to great shame. There is no book in the
world, I believe, which contains nobler, more just, more manly, more pious principles of
government than this book, called the Institutions of Tamerlane. Nor is there one word of
arbitrary power in it, much less of that arbitrary power which Mr. Hastings supposes