the crime which it pretends to punish. As the instances I allude to are curious, and as they go to the principles of Mr. Hastings's defence, I shall beg to quote them.
The first is upon a governor who did what Mr. Hastings says he has a power delegated to him to do: he levied a tax without the consent of his master. "Some years after my departure from Com," says Tavernier, "the governor had, of his own accord, and without any communication with the king, laid a small impost upon every pannier of fruit brought into the city, for the purpose of making some necessary reparations in the walls and bridges of the town. It was towards the end of the year 1632 that the event I am going to relate happened. The king, being informed of the impost which the governor had laid upon the fruit, ordered him to be brought in chains to court. The king ordered him to be exposed to the people at one of the gates of the palace; then he commanded the son to pluck off the mustachios of his father, to cut off his nose and ears, to put out his eyes, and then cut off his head. The king then told the son to go and take possession of the government of his father, saying, See that you govern better than this deceased dog, or thy doom shall be a death more exquisitely tormenting."
My Lords, you are struck with horror, I am struck with horror, at this punishment. I do not relate it to approve of such a barbarous act, but to prove to your Lordships, that, whatever power the princes of that country have, they are jealous of it to such a degree, that, if any of their governors should levy a tax, even the most insignificant, and for the best purposes, he meets with a cruel punishment. I do
not justify the punishment; but the severity of it shows how little of their power the princes of that country mean to delegate to their servants, the whole of which the gentleman at your bar says was delegated to him.
There is another case, a very strong one, and that is the case of presents, which I understand is a custom admitted throughout Asia in all their governments. It was of a person who was raised to a high office; no business was suffered to come before him without a previous present. "One morning, the king being at this time on a hunting party, the nazar came to the tent of the king, but was denied entrance by the meter, or master of the wardrobe. About the same time the king came forth, and, seeing the nazar, commanded his officers to take off the bonnet from the head of that dog that took gifts from his people, and that he should sit three days bareheaded in the heat of the sun, and as many nights in the air. Afterwards he caused him to be chained about the neck and arms, and condemned him to perpetual imprisonment, with a mamoudy a day for his maintenance; but he died for grief within eight days after he was put in prison."
Do I mean, by reading this to your Lordships, to express or intimate an approbation either of the cruelty of the punishment or of the coarse barbarism of the language? Neither one nor the other. I produce it to your Lordships to prove to you, from this dreadful example, the horror which that government felt, when any person subject to it assumed to himself a privilege to receive presents. The cruelty and severity exercised by these princes is not levelled at the poor unfortunate people who complain at
their gates, but, to use their own barbarous expression, to dogs that impose taxes and take presents. God forbid I should use that language! The people, when they complain, are not called dogs and sent away, but the governors, who do these things against the people: they are called dogs, and treated in that cruel manner. I quote them to show that no governors in the East, upon any principle of their constitution or any good practice of their government, can lay arbitrary imposts or receive presents. When they escape, it is probably by bribery, by corruption, by creating factions for themselves in the seraglio, in the country, in the army, in the divan. But how they escape such punishments is not my business to inquire; it is enough for me that the constitution disavows them, that the princes of the country disavow them,—that they revile them with the most horrible expressions, and inflict dreadful punishments on them, when they are called to answer for these offences. Thus much concerning the Mahomedan laws of Asia. That the people of Asia have no laws, rights, or liberty, is a doctrine that wickedly is to be disseminated through this country. But I again assert, every Mahomedan government is, by its principles, a government of law.
I shall now state, from what is known of the government of India, that it does not and cannot delegate, as Mr. Hastings has frequently declared, the whole of its powers and authority to him. If they are absolute, as they must be in the supreme power, they ought to be arbitrary in none; they were, however, never absolute in any of their subordinate parts, and I will prove it by the known provincial constitu
tions of Hindostan, which are all Mahomedan, the laws of which are as clear, as explicit, and as learned as ours.
The first foundation of their law is the Koran. The next part is the Fetwah, or adjudged cases by proper authority, well known there. The next, the written interpretations of the principles of jurisprudence: and their books are as numerous upon the principles of jurisprudence as in any country in Europe. The next part of their law is what they call the Kanon,—that is, a positive rule equivalent to acts of Parliament, the law of the several powers of the country, taken from the Greek word Κανών, which was brought into their country, and is well known. The next is the Rawaj-ul-Mulk, or common law and custom of the kingdom, equivalent to our common law. Therefore they have laws from more sources than we have, exactly in the same order, grounded upon the same authority, fundamentally fixed to be administered to the people upon these principles.