letter of that law is fulminated. There are interpreters established throughout all Asia to explain that law, an order of priesthood, whom they call men of the law. These men are conservators of the law; and to enable them to preserve it in its perfection, they are secured from the resentment of the sovereign: for he cannot touch them. Even their kings are not always vested with a real supreme power, but the government is in some degree republican.
To bring this point a little nearer home,—since we are challenged thus, since we are led into Asia, since we are called upon to make good our charge on the principles of the governments there, rather than on those of our own country, (which I trust your Lordships will oblige him finally to be governed by, puffed up as he is with the insolence of Asia,)—the nearest to us of the governments he appeals to is that of the Grand Seignior, the Emperor of the Turks.—He an arbitrary power! Why, he has not the supreme power of his own country. Every one knows that the Grand Seignior is exalted high in titles, as our prerogative lawyers exalt an abstract sovereign,—and he cannot be exalted higher in our books. I say he is destitute of the first character of sovereign power: he cannot lay a tax upon his people. The next part in which he misses of a sovereign power is, that he cannot dispose of the life, of the property, or of the liberty of any of his subjects, but by what is called the fetwah, or sentence of the law. He cannot declare peace or war without the same sentence of the law: so much is he, more than European sovereigns, a subject of strict law, that he cannot declare war or peace without it. Then, if he can neither touch
life nor property, if he cannot lay a tax on his subjects, or declare peace or war, I leave it to your Lordships' judgment, whether he can be called, according to the principles of that constitution, an arbitrary power. A Turkish sovereign, if he should be judged by the body of that law to have acted against its principles, (unless he happens to be secured by a faction of the soldiery,) is liable to be deposed on the sentence of that law, and his successor comes in under the strict limitations of the ancient law of that country: neither can he hold his place, dispose of his succession, or take any one step whatever, without being bound by law. Thus much may be said, when gentlemen talk of the affairs of Asia, as to the nearest of Asiatic sovereigns: and he is more Asiatic than European, he is a Mahomedan sovereign; and no Mahomedan is born who can exercise any arbitrary power at all, consistently with their constitution; insomuch that this chief magistrate, who is the highest executive power among them, is the very person who, by the constitution of the country, is the most fettered by law.
Corruption is the true cause of the loss of all the benefits of the constitution of that country. The practice of Asia, as the gentleman at your bar has thought fit to say, is what he holds to; the constitution he flies away from. The question is, whether you will take the constitution of the country as your rule, or the base practices of those usurpers, robbers, and tyrants who have subverted it. Undoubtedly, much blood, murder, false imprisonment, much peculation, cruelty, and robbery are to be found in Asia; and if, instead of going to the sa
cred laws of the country, he chooses to resort to the iniquitous practices of it, and practices authorized only by public tumult, contention, war, and riot, he may indeed find as clear an acquittal in the practices as he would find condemnation in the institutions of it. He has rejected the law of England. Your Lordships will not suffer it. God forbid! For my part, I should have no sort of objection to let him choose his law,—Mahomedan, Tartarian, Gentoo. But if he disputes, as he does, the authority of an act of Parliament, let him state to me that law to which he means to be subject, or any law which he knows that will justify his actions. I am not authorized to say that I shall, even in that case, give up what is not in me to give up, because I represent an authority of which I must stand in awe; but, for myself, I shall confess that I am brought to public shame, and am not fit to manage the great interests committed to my charge. I therefore again repeat of that Asiatic government with which we are best acquainted, which has been constituted more in obedience to the laws of Mahomet than any other, that the sovereign cannot, agreeably to that constitution, exercise any arbitrary power whatever.
The next point for us to consider is, whether or no the Mahomedan constitution of India authorizes that power. The gentleman at your Lordships' bar has thought proper to say, that it will be happy for India, (though soon after he tells you it is an happiness they can never enjoy,) "when the despotic institutes of Genghiz Khân or Tamerlane shall give place to the liberal spirit of a British legislature; and," says he, "I shall be amply satisfied in my present prosecution, if it shall tend to hasten
the approach of an event so beneficial to the great interests of mankind."
My Lords, you have seen what he says about an act of Parliament. Do you not now think it rather an extraordinary thing, that any British subject should, in vindication of the authority which he has exercised, here quote the names and institutes, as he calls them, of fierce conquerors, of men who were the scourges of mankind, whose power was a power which they held by force only?
As to the institutes of Genghiz Khân, which he calls arbitrary institutes, I never saw them. If he has that book, he will oblige the public by producing it. I have seen a book existing, called Yassa of Genghiz Khân; the other I never saw. If there be any part of it to justify arbitrary power, he will produce it. But if we may judge by those ten precepts of Genghiz Khân which we have, there is not a shadow of arbitrary power to be found in any one of them. Institutes of arbitrary power! Why, if there is arbitrary power, there can be no institutes.
As to the institutes of Tamerlane, here they are in their original, and here is a translation. I have carefully read every part of these institutes; and if any one shows me one word in them in which the prince claims in himself arbitrary power, I again repeat, that I shall for my own part confess that I have brought myself to great shame. There is no book in the world, I believe, which contains nobler, more just, more manly, more pious principles of government than this book, called the Institutions of Tamerlane. Nor is there one word of arbitrary power in it, much less of that arbitrary power which Mr. Hastings supposes himself justified by,—namely, a delegated,