He next says, that "the
rights of the people he governed in India are nothing, and that the
rights of the government are everything." The people, he asserts, have
no liberty, no laws, no inheritance, no fixed property, no descendable
estate, no subordinations in society, no sense of honor or of shame, and
that they are only affected by punishment so far as punishment is a
corporal infliction, being totally insensible of any difference between
the punishment of man and beast. These are the principles of his Indian
government, which Mr. Hastings has avowed in their full extent. Whenever
precedents are required, he cites and follows the example of avowed
tyrants, of Aliverdy Khan, Cossim Ali Khan, and Sujah Dowlah. With an
avowal of these principles he was pleased first to entertain the House
of Commons, the _active_ assertors and conservators of the rights,
liberties, and laws of his country; and then to insist upon them more
largely and in a fuller detail before this awful tribunal, the _passive_
judicial conservator of the same great interests. He has brought out
these blasphemous doctrines in this great temple of justice, consecrated
to law and equity for a long series of ages. He has brought them forth
in Westminster Hall, in presence of all the Judges of the land, who are
to execute the law, and of the House of Lords, who are bound as its
guardians not to suffer the words "arbitrary power" to be mentioned
before them.
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