Hastings, by which he was to
buy off the fine, and which was consequently a commutation for it.
That your Lordships may be enabled to judge more fully of the nature of
this offence, let us see in what relation Cheyt Sing stood with the
Company. He was, my Lords, a person clothed with every one of the
attributes of sovereignty, under a direct stipulation that the Company
should not interfere in his internal government. The military and civil
authority, the power of life and death, the whole revenue, and the whole
administration of the law, rested in him. Such was the sovereignty he
possessed within Benares: but he was a subordinate sovereign dependent
upon a superior, according to the tenor of his compact, expressed or
implied. Now, having contended, as we still contend, that the Law of
Nations is the law of India as well as of Europe, because it is the law
of reason and the law of Nature, drawn from the pure sources of
morality, of public good, and of natural equity, and recognized and
digested into order by the labor of learned men, I will refer your
Lordships to Vattel, Book I. Cap. 16, where he treats of the breach of
such agreements, by the protector refusing to give protection, or the
protected refusing to perform his part of the engagement.
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