uch a case by what means the
corporate rights could be revived, or the property could be recovered
out of the hands of the crown. But Parliament can do what the courts
neither can do nor ought to attempt. Parliament is competent to give due
weight to all political considerations. It may modify, it may mitigate,
and it may render perfectly secure, all that it does not think fit to
take away. It is not likely that Parliament will ever draw to itself the
cognizance of questions concerning ordinary corporations, farther than
to protect them, in case attempts are made to induce a forfeiture of
their franchises.

The case of the East India Company is different even from that of the
greatest of these corporations. No monopoly of trade, beyond their own
limits, is vested in the corporate body of any town or city in the
kingdom. Even within these limits the monopoly is not general. The
Company has the monopoly of the trade of half the world. The first
corporation of the kingdom has for the object of its jurisdiction only a
few matters of subordinate police. The East India Company governs an
empire, through all its concerns and all its departments, from the
lowest office of economy to the highest councils of state,--an empire to
which Great Britain is in comparison but a respectable province. To
leave these concerns without superior cognizance would be madness; to
leave them to be judged in the courts below, on the principles of a
confined jurisprudence, would be folly. It is well, if the whole
legislative power is competent to the correction of abuses which are
commensurate to the immensity of the object they affect. The idea of an
absolute power has, indeed, its terrors; but that objection lies to
every Parliamentary proceeding; and as no other can regulate the abuses
of such a charter, it is fittest that sovereign authority should be
exercised, where it is most likely to be attended with the most
effectual correctives. These correctives are furnished by the nature and
course of Parliamentary proceedings, and by the infinitely diversified
characters who compose the two Houses. In effect and virtually, they
form a vast number, variety, and succession of judges and jurors. The
fulness, the freedom, and publicity of discussion leaves it easy to
distinguish what are acts of power, and what the determinations of
equity and reason. There prejudice corrects prejudice, and the different
asperities of party zeal mitigate and neutralize