all its duties. Great Britain entered into
a virtual act of union with that country, by which we bound ourselves as
securities to preserve the people in all the rights, laws, and liberties
which their natural, original sovereign was bound to support, if he had
been in condition to support them. By the disposition of events, the two
duties, flowing from two different sources, are now united in one. The
people of India, therefore, come in the name of the Commons of Great
Britain, but in their own right, to the bar of this House, before the
supreme royal justice of this kingdom, from whence originally all the
powers under which they have suffered were derived.

It may be a little necessary, when we are stating the powers the Company
have derived from their charter, and which we state Mr. Hastings to
have abused, to state in as short and as comprehensive words as I can
(for the matter is large indeed) what the constitution of that Company
is,--I mean chiefly, what it is in reference to its Indian service, the
great theatre of the abuse. Your Lordships will naturally conceive that
it is not to inform you, but to revive circumstances in your memory,
that I enter into this detail.

You will therefore recollect, that the East India Company had its origin
about the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth, a period of projects,
when all sorts of commercial adventures, companies, and monopolies were
in fashion. At that time the Company was constituted with extensive
powers for increasing the commerce and the honor of this country;
because increasing its commerce, without increasing its honor and
reputation, would have been thought at that time, and will be thought
now, a bad bargain for the country. The powers of the Company were,
under that charter, merely commercial. By degrees, as the theatre of
operation was distant, as its intercourse was with many great, some
barbarous, and all of them armed nations, nations in which not only the
sovereign, but the subjects, were armed, it was found necessary to
enlarge their powers. The first power they obtained was a power of naval
discipline in their ships,--a power which has been since dropped; the
next was a power of law martial; the next was a power of civil, and, to
a degree, of criminal jurisdiction, within their own factories, upon
their own people and their own servants; the next was (and here was a
stride indeed) the power of peace and war. Those high and almost
incommunicable prero