to write
a letter, or take an affidavit in a corner, or run on a message, to do
the business of an under-sheriff, tipstaff, or bum-bailiff, was not fit
to give an opinion on a question of Mahometan law.

You have heard Ali Ibrahim Khan referred to. This Mahometan lawyer was
carried by Mr. Hastings up to Benares, to be a witness of the vast good
he had done in that province, and was made Chief-Justice there. All,
indeed, that we know of him, except the high character given of him by
Mr. Hastings, is, I believe, that he is the Ali Ibrahim Khan whom in the
Company's records I find mentioned as a person giving bribes upon some
former occasion to Mr. Hastings; but whatever he was besides, he was a
doctor of the Mahometan law, he was a mufti, and was made by Mr.
Hastings the principal judge in a criminal court, exercising, as I
believe, likewise a considerable civil jurisdiction, and therefore he
was qualified as a lawyer; and Mr. Hastings cannot object to his
qualifications either of integrity or of knowledge. This man was with
him. Why did not he consult him upon this law? Why did he not make him
out a case of John Doe and Richard Roe, of John Stokes and John a Nokes?
Why not say, "Sinub possesses such things, under such and such
circumstances: give me your opinion upon the legality of the
possession"? No, he did no such thing.

Your Lordships, I am sure, will think it a little extraordinary, that
neither this chief-justice made by himself, nor that other chief-justice
whom he led about with him in a string,--the one an English
chief-justice, with a Mahometan suit in his court, the other a Mahometan
chief-justice of the country,--that neither of them was consulted as
lawyers by the prisoner. Both of them were, indeed, otherwise employed
by him. For we find Ali Ibrahim Khan employed in the same subservient
capacity in which Sir Elijah Impey was,--in order, I suppose, to keep
the law of England and the law of Mahomet upon a just par: for upon this
equality Mr. Hastings always values himself. Neither of these two
chief-justices, I say, was ever consulted, nor one opinion taken; but
they were both employed in the correspondence and private execution of
this abominable project, when the prisoner himself had not either
leisure or perhaps courage to give his public order in it till things
got to greater ripeness.

To Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, he did put a question; and, upon my word,
it did not require an Oedipus or a Sphinx t