agine that the man who avows these principles of
arbitrary government, and pleads them as the justification of acts which
nothing else can justify, is of opinion that they are on the whole good
for the people over whom they are exercised. The very reverse. He
mentions them as horrible things, tending to inflict on the people a
thousand evils, and to bring on the ruler a continual train of dangers.
Yet he states, that your acquisitions in India will be a detriment
instead of an advantage, if you destroy arbitrary power, unless you can
reduce all the religious establishments, all the civil institutions, and
tenures of land, into one uniform mass,--that is, unless by acts of
arbitrary power you extinguish all the laws, rights, and religious
principles of the people, and force them to an uniformity, and on that
uniformity build a system of arbitrary power.

But nothing is more false than that despotism is the constitution of any
country in Asia that we are acquainted with. It is certainly not true of
any Mahomedan constitution. But if it were, do your Lordships really
think that the nation would bear, that any human creature would bear, to
hear an English governor defend himself on such principles? or, if he
can defend himself on such principles, is it possible to deny the
conclusion, that no man in India has a security for anything, but by
being totally independent of the British government? Here he has
declared his opinion, that he is a despotic prince, that he is to use
arbitrary power; and of course all his acts are covered with that
shield. "_I know_," says he, "_the constitution of Asia only from its
practice_." Will your Lordships submit to hear the corrupt practices of
mankind made the principles of government? No! it will be your pride
and glory to teach men intrusted with power, that, in their use of it,
they are to conform to principles, and not to draw their principles from
the corrupt practice of any man whatever. Was there ever heard, or could
it be conceived, that a governor would dare to heap up all the evil
practices, all the cruelties, oppressions, extortions, corruptions,
briberies, of all the ferocious usurpers, desperate robbers, thieves,
cheats, and jugglers, that ever had office, from one end of Asia to
another, and, consolidating all this mass of the crimes and absurdities
of barbarous domination into one code, establish it as the whole duty of
an English governor? I believe that till this time so aud