Consider, my
Lords, the effect of this upon the whole service. Not one man that
appears to pay any regard to the authority of the Directors is to expect
that any regard will be paid to himself. So that this man not only
rebels himself, in his own person, against the authority of the Company,
but he makes all their servants join him in this very rebellion. Think,
my Lords, of this state of things,--and I wish it never to pass from
your minds that I have called him the captain-general of the whole host
of actors in Indian iniquity, under whom that host was arrayed,
disciplined, and paid. This language which I used was not, as fools have
thought proper to call it, offensive and abusive; it is in a proper
criminatory tone, justified by the facts that I have stated to you, and
in every step we take it is justified more and more. I take it as a text
upon which I mean to preach; I take it as a text which I wish to have in
your Lordships' memory from the beginning to the end of this proceeding.
He is not only guilty of iniquity himself, but is at the head of a
system of iniquity and rebellion, and will not suffer with impunity any
one honest man to exist in India, if he can help it. Every mark of
obedience to the legal authority of the Company is by him condemned; and
if there is any virtue remaining in India, as I think there is, it is
not his fault that it still exists there.
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