This prince gave up all his time not employed
in conquests to the conversation of learned men. He gave himself to all
studies that might accomplish a great man. Such a man, I say, might, if
any may, claim arbitrary power. But the very things that made him great
made him sensible that he was but a man. Even in the midst of all his
conquests, his tone was a tone of humility; he spoke of laws as every
man must who knows what laws are; and though he was proud, ferocious,
and violent in the achievement of his conquests, I will venture to say
no prince ever established institutes of civil government more honorable
to himself than the Institutes of Timour. I shall be content to be
brought to shame before your Lordships, if the prisoner at your bar can
show me one passage where the assumption of arbitrary power is even
hinted at by this great conqueror. He declares that the nobility of
every country shall be considered as his brethren, that the people shall
be acknowledged as his children, and that the learned and the dervishes
shall be particularly protected. But, my Lords, what he particularly
valued himself upon I shall give your Lordships in his own words:--"I
delivered the oppressed from the hand of the oppressor; and after proof
of the oppression, whether on the property or the person, the decision
which I passed between them was agreeable to the sacred law; and I did
not cause any one person to suffer for the guilt of another.
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