You will
see that the mischief which has happened has proceeded from the exercise
of arbitrary power. Arbitrary power, my Lords, is always a miserable
creature. When a man once adopts it as the principle of his actions, no
one dares to tell him a truth, no one dares to give him any information
that is disagreeable to him; for all know that their life and fortune
depend upon his caprice. Thus the man who lives in the exercise of
arbitrary power condemns himself to eternal ignorance. Of this the
prisoner at your bar affords us a striking example. This man, without
advice, without assistance, and without resource, except in his own
arbitrary power, stupidly ignorant in himself, and puffed up with the
constant companion of ignorance, a blind presumption, alters the system
of commercial imposts, and thereby ruined the whole trade of the
country, leaving no one part of it undestroyed.
Let me now call your Lordships' attention to his assumption of power,
without one word of communication with the Council at Calcutta, where
the whole of these trading regulations might and ought to have been
considered, and where they could have been deliberately examined and
determined upon. By this assumption the Council was placed in the
situation which I have before described: it must either confirm his
acts, or again undo everything which had been done.
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