human authority can dispense; neither he that exercises
it, nor even those who are subject to it. And if they were mad enough to
make an express compact that should release their magistrate from his
duty, and should declare their lives, liberties, and properties
dependent upon, not rules and laws, but his mere capricious will, that
covenant would be void.

This arbitrary power is not to be had by conquest. Nor can any
sovereign have it by succession; for no man can succeed to fraud,
rapine, and violence. Those who give and those who receive arbitrary
power are alike criminal; and there is no man but is bound to resist it
to the best of his power, wherever it shall show its face to the world.
Law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity. Name me a magistrate, and
I will name property; name me power, and I will name protection. It is a
contradiction in terms; it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in
politics, to say that any man can have arbitrary power. In every patent
of office the duty is included. For what else does a magistrate exist?
To suppose for power, is an absurdity in idea. Judges are guided and
governed by the eternal laws of justice, to which we are all subject. We
may bite our chains, if we will; but we shall be made to know ourselves,
and be taught that man is born to be governed by law; and he that will
substitute will in the place of it, is an enemy to God.

My lords, I do not mean to go further than just to remind your lordships
of this,--that Mr. Hastings' government was one whole system of
oppression, of robbery of individuals, of spoliation of the public, and
of supersession of the whole system of the English Government, in order
to vest in the worst of the natives all the power that could possibly
exist in any government; in order to defeat the ends which all
governments ought, in common, to have in view. In the name of the
Commons of England, I charge all this villainy upon Warren Hastings in
this last moment of my application to you.

My lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of national
justice? Do we want a cause, my lords? You have the cause of oppressed
princes, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms. Do you want a
criminal, my lords? When was there so much iniquity ever laid to the
charge of any one? No, my lords, you must not look to punish any other
such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance
enough in India to nourish such another delin