imself under it; and on this point I hope and trust many words
will not be necessary to satisfy your Lordships. But we think it
necessary, in justification of ourselves, to declare that the laws of
morality are the same everywhere, and that there is no action which
would pass for an act of extortion, of peculation, of bribery, and of
oppression in England, that is not an act of extortion, of peculation,
of bribery, and oppression in Europe, Asia, Africa, and all the world
over. This I contend for not in the technical forms of it, but I contend
for it in the substance.

Mr. Hastings comes before your Lordships not as a British governor
answering to a British tribunal, but as a subahdar, as a bashaw of three
tails. He says, "I had an arbitrary power to exercise: I exercised it.
Slaves I found the people: slaves they are,--they are so by their
constitution; and if they are, I did not make it for them. I was
unfortunately bound to exercise this arbitrary power, and accordingly I
did exercise it. It was disagreeable to me, but I did exercise it; and
no other power can be exercised in that country." This, if it be true,
is a plea in bar. But I trust and hope your Lordships will not judge by
laws and institutions which you do not know, against those laws and
institutions which you do know, and under whose power and authority Mr.
Hastings went out to India. Can your Lordships patiently hear what _we_
have heard with indignation enough, and what, if there were nothing
else, would call these principles, as well as the actions which are
justified on such principles, to your Lordships' bar, that it may be
known whether the peers of England do not sympathize with the Commons in
their detestation of such doctrine? Think of an English governor tried
before you as a British subject, and yet declaring that he governed on
the principles of arbitrary power! His plea is, that he did govern there
on arbitrary and despotic, and, as he supposes, Oriental principles. And
as this plea is boldly avowed and maintained, and as, no doubt, all his
conduct was perfectly correspondent to these principles, the principles
and the conduct must be tried together.

If your Lordships will now permit me, I will state one of the many
places in which he has avowed these principles as the basis and
foundation of all his conduct. "The sovereignty which they assumed, it
fell to my lot, very unexpectedly, to exert; and whether or not such
power, or powers of that