Hastings
describes as having himself exercised there.
My Lords, if the prisoner can succeed in persuading us that these people
have no laws, no rights, not even the common sentiments and feeling of
men, he hopes your interest in them will be considerably lessened. He
would persuade you that their sufferings are much assuaged by their
being nothing new,--and that, having no right to property, to liberty,
to honor, or to life, they must be more pleased with the little that is
left to them than grieved for the much that has been ravished from them
by his cruelty and his avarice. This inference makes it very necessary
for me, before I proceed further, to make a few remarks upon this part
of the prisoner's conduct, which your Lordships must have already felt
with astonishment, perhaps with indignation. This man, who passed
twenty-five years in India, who was fourteen years at the head of his
government, master of all the offices, master of all the registers and
records, master of all the lawyers and priests of all this empire, from
the highest to the lowest, instead of producing to you the fruits of so
many years' local and official knowledge upon that subject, has called
out a long line of the rabble of travellers to inform you concerning the
objects of his own government.
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