gs has thought proper to resort
to as containing what he calls arbitrary principles.

But it is not in this instance only that I must do justice to the East.
I assert that their morality is equal to ours, in whatever regards the
duties of governors, fathers, and superiors; and I challenge the world
to show in any modern European book more true morality and wisdom than
is to be found in the writings of Asiatic men in high trust, and who
have been counsellors to princes. If this be the true morality of Asia,
as I affirm and can prove that it is, the plea founded on Mr. Hastings's
geographical morality is annihilated.

I little regard the theories of travellers, where they do not relate the
facts on which they are founded. I have two instances of facts attested
by Tavernier, a traveller of power and consequence, which are very
material to be mentioned here, because they show that in some of the
instances recorded, in which the princes of the country have used any of
those cruel and barbarous executions which make us execrate them, it has
been upon governors who have abused their trust,--and that this very
Oriental authority to which Mr. Hastings appeals would have condemned
him to a dreadful punishment. I thank God, and I say it from my heart,
that even for his enormous offences there neither is nor can be anything
like such punishments. God forbid that we should not as much detest
out-of-the-way, mad, furious, and unequal punishments as we detest
enormous and abominable crimes! because a severe and cruel penalty for a
crime of a light nature is as bad and iniquitous as the crime which it
pretends to punish. As the instances I allude to are curious, and as
they go to the principles of Mr. Hastings's defence, I shall beg to
quote them.

The first is upon a governor who did what Mr. Hastings says he has a
power delegated to him to do: he levied a tax without the consent of his
master. "Some years after my departure from Com," says Tavernier, "the
governor had, of his own accord, and without any communication with the
king, laid a small impost upon every pannier of fruit brought into the
city, for the purpose of making some necessary reparations in the walls
and bridges of the town. It was towards the end of the year 1632 that
the event I am going to relate happened. The king, being informed of the
impost which the governor had laid upon the fruit, ordered him to be
brought in chains to court. The king ordered him to be exp