every pretence either of court necessity or
court extravagance."

My Lords, you have now heard the principles on which Mr. Hastings
governs the part of Asia subjected to the British empire. You have heard
his opinion of the mean and depraved state of those who are subject to
it. You have heard his lecture upon arbitrary power, which he states to
be the constitution of Asia. You hear the application he makes of it;
and you hear the practices which he employs to justify it, and who the
persons were on whose authority he relies, and whose example he
professes to follow. In the first place, your Lordships will be
astonished at the audacity with which he speaks of his own
administration, as if he was reading a speculative lecture on the evils
attendant upon some vicious system of foreign government in which he had
no sort of concern whatsoever. And then, when in this speculative way he
has established, or thinks he has, the vices of the government, he
conceives he has found a sufficient apology for his own crimes. And if
he violates the most solemn engagements, if he oppresses, extorts, and
robs, if he imprisons, confiscates, banishes at his sole will and
pleasure, when we accuse him for his ill-treatment of the people
committed to him as a sacred trust, his defence is,--"To be robbed,
violated, oppressed, is their privilege. Let the constitution of their
country answer for it. I did not make it for them. Slaves I found them,
and as slaves I have treated them. I was a despotic prince. Despotic
governments are jealous, and the subjects prone to rebellion. This very
proneness of the subject to shake off his allegiance exposes him to
continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, and this is consequent
on the political state of Hindostanic governments." He lays it down as a
rule, that despotism is the genuine constitution of India, that a
disposition to rebellion in the subject or dependent prince is the
necessary effect of this despotism, and that jealousy and its
consequences naturally arise on the part of the sovereign,--that the
government is everything, and the subject nothing,--that the great
landed men are in a mean and depraved state, and subject to many evils.

Such a state of things, if true, would warrant conclusions directly
opposite to those which Mr. Hastings means to draw from them, both
argumentatively and practically, first to influence his conduct, and
then to bottom his defence of it.

Perhaps you will im