Elector of Bavaria.
The polygars and the Northern zemindars, and other great chiefs, might
well class with the rest of the princes, dukes, counts, marquises, and
bishops in the Empire; all of whom I mention to honor, and surely
without disparagement to any or all of those most respectable princes
and grandees.

All this vast mass, composed of so many orders and classes of men, is
again infinitely diversified by manners, by religion, by hereditary
employment, through all their possible combinations. This renders the
handling of India a matter in an high degree critical and delicate. But,
oh, it has been handled rudely indeed! Even some of the reformers seem
to have forgot that they had anything to do but to regulate the tenants
of a manor, or the shopkeepers of the next county town.

It is an empire of this extent, of this complicated nature, of this
dignity and importance, that I have compared to Germany and the German
government,--not for an exact resemblance, but as a sort of a middle
term, by which India might be approximated to our understandings, and,
if possible, to our feelings, in order to awaken something of sympathy
for the unfortunate natives, of which I am afraid we are not perfectly
susceptible, whilst we look at this very remote object through a false
and cloudy medium.

My second condition necessary to justify me in touching the charter is,
whether the Company's abuse of their trust with regard to this great
object be an abuse of great atrocity. I shall beg your permission to
consider their conduct in two lights: first the political, and then the
commercial. Their political conduct (for distinctness) I divide again
into two heads: the external, in which I mean to comprehend their
conduct in their federal capacity, as it relates to powers and states
independent, or that not long since were such; the other
internal,--namely, their conduct to the countries, either immediately
subject to the Company, or to those who, under the apparent government
of native sovereigns, are in a state much lower and much more miserable
than common subjection.

The attention, Sir, which I wish to preserve to method will not be
considered as unnecessary or affected. Nothing else can help me to
selection out of the infinite mass of materials which have passed under
my eye, or can keep my mind steady to the great leading points I have in
view.

With regard, therefore, to the abuse of the external federal trust, I
engage mys