The rights of _men_--that is to say, the natural rights of mankind--are
indeed sacred things; and if any public measure is proved mischievously
to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if
no charter at all could be set up against it. If these natural rights
are further affirmed and declared by express covenants, if they are
clearly defined and secured against chicane, against power and
authority, by written instruments and positive engagements, they are in
a still better condition: they partake not only of the sanctity of the
object so secured, but of that solemn public faith itself which secures
an object of such importance. Indeed, this formal recognition, by the
sovereign power, of an original right in the subject, can never be
subverted, but by rooting up the holding radical principles of
government, and even of society itself. The charters which we call by
distinction _great_ are public instruments of this nature: I mean the
charters of King John and King Henry the Third. The things secured by
these instruments may, without any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly
called _the chartered rights of men_.

These charters have made the very name of a charter dear to the heart of
every Englishman. But, Sir, there may be, and there are, charters, not
only different in nature, but formed on principles _the very reverse_ of
those of the Great Charter. Of this kind is the charter of the East
India Company. _Magnet Charta_ is a charter to restrain power and to
destroy monopoly. The East India charter is a charter to establish
monopoly and to create power. Political power and commercial monopoly
are _not_ the rights of men; and the rights to them derived from
charters it is fallacious and sophistical to call "the chartered rights
of men." These chartered rights (to speak of such charters and of their
effects in terms of the greatest possible moderation) do at least
suspend the natural rights of mankind at large, and in their very frame
and constitution are liable to fall into a direct violation of them.

It is a charter of this latter description (that is to say, a charter of
power and monopoly) which is affected by the bill before you. The bill,
Sir, does without question affect it: it does affect it essentially and
substantially. But, having stated to you of what description the
chartered rights are which this bill touches, I feel no difficulty at
all in acknowledging the existence of those ch