This makes
it absolutely necessary for me to refute every one of these
misrepresentations; and whilst I am endeavoring to establish the rights
of these people, in order to show in what manner and degree they have
been violated, I trust that your Lordships will not think that the time
is lost: certainly I do not think that my labor will be misspent in
endeavoring to bring these matters fully before you.
In determining to treat this subject at length, I am also influenced by
a strong sense of the evils that have attended the propagation of these
wild, groundless, and pernicious opinions. A young man goes to India
before he knows much of his own country; but he cherishes in his breast,
as I hope every man will, a just and laudable partiality for the laws,
liberties, rights, and institutions of his own nation. We all do this;
and God forbid we should not prefer our own to every other country in
the world! but if we go to India with an idea of the mean, degraded
state of the people that we are to govern, and especially if we go with
these impressions at an immature age, we know, that, according to the
ordinary course of human nature, we shall not treat persons well whom we
have learnt to despise. We know that people whom we suppose to have
neither laws or rights will not be treated by us as a people who have
laws and rights.
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