Volume IX Part 16 (2/2)

If your Lords.h.i.+ps will now permit me, I will state one of the many places in which he has avowed these principles as the basis and foundation of all his conduct. ”The sovereignty which they a.s.sumed, it fell to my lot, very unexpectedly, to exert; and whether or not such power, or powers of that nature, were delegated to me by any provisions of any act of Parliament, I confess myself too little of a lawyer to p.r.o.nounce. I only know that the acceptance of the sovereignty of Benares, &c., is not acknowledged or admitted by any act of Parliament; and yet, by the particular interference of the majority of the Council, the Company is clearly and indisputably seized of that sovereignty.” So that this gentleman, because he is not a lawyer, nor clothed with those robes which distinguish, and well distinguish, the learning of this country, is not to know anything of his duty; and whether he was bound by any, or what act of Parliament, is a thing he is not lawyer enough to know! Now, if your Lords.h.i.+ps will suffer the laws to be broken by those who are not of the long robe, I am afraid those of the long robe will have none to punish but those of their own profession. He therefore goes to a law he is better acquainted with,--that is, the law of arbitrary power and force, if it deserves to be called by the name of law. ”If, therefore,” says he, ”the _sovereignty_ of Benares, as ceded to us by the Vizier, have _any rights whatever_ annexed to it, and be not a mere empty word without meaning, those rights must be such as are held, countenanced, and established by the law, custom, and usage of the Mogul empire, and not by the provisions of any British act of Parliament hitherto enacted. _Those rights_, and none other, I have been the involuntary instrument of enforcing. And if any future act of Parliament shall positively or by implication tend to annihilate those very rights, or their exertion as I have exerted them, I much fear that the boasted sovereignty of Benares, which was held up as an acquisition, almost obtruded on the Company against my consent and opinion, (for I acknowledge that even then I foresaw many difficulties and inconveniences in its future exercise,)--I fear, I say, that this sovereignty will be found a burden instead of a benefit, a heavy clog rather than a precious gem to its present possessors: I mean, unless the whole of our territory in that quarter shall be rounded and made an uniform compact body by one grand and systematic arrangement.--such an arrangement as shall do away all the mischiefs, doubts, and inconveniences (both to the governors and the governed) arising from the variety of tenures, rights, and claims in all cases of landed property and feudal jurisdiction in India, from the informality, invalidity, and instability of all engagements in so divided and unsettled a state of society, and from the unavoidable anarchy and confusion of different laws, religions, and prejudices, moral, civil, and political, all jumbled together in one unnatural and discordant ma.s.s.

”Every part of Hindostan has been constantly exposed to these and similar disadvantages ever since the Mahomedan conquests. The Hindoos, who never incorporated with their conquerors, were kept in order only by the strong hand of power. The constant necessity of similar exertions would increase at once their energy and extent; so that rebellion itself is the parent and promoter of despotism. Sovereignty in India implies nothing else. For I know not how we can form an estimate of its powers, but from its visible effects; and those are everywhere the same, from Cabool to a.s.sam. The whole history of Asia is nothing more than precedents to prove the invariable exercise of arbitrary power. To all this I strongly alluded in the minutes I delivered in Council, when the treaty with the new Vizier was on foot in 1775; and I wished to make Cheyt Sing independent, because in India dependence included a thousand evils, many of which I enumerated at that time, and they are entered in the ninth clause of the first section of this charge. I knew the powers with which an Indian sovereignty is armed, and the dangers to which tributaries are exposed. I knew, that, from the history of Asia, and from the very nature of mankind, the subjects of a despotic empire are always vigilant for the moment to rebel, and the sovereign is ever jealous of rebellious intentions. A zemindar is an Indian subject, and as such exposed to the common lot of his fellows. _The mean and depraved state of a mere zemindar_ is therefore this very dependence above mentioned on a despotic government, this very p.r.o.neness to shake off his allegiance, and this very exposure to continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, which are consequent on the political state of Hindostanic governments. Bulwant Sing, if he had been, and Cheyt Sing, as long as he was a zemindar, stood exactly in this _mean and depraved state_ by the const.i.tution of his country. I did not make it for him, but would have secured him from it. Those who made him a zemindar entailed upon him the consequences of so mean and depraved a tenure.

Aliverdy Khan and Cossim Ali fined all their zemindars on the necessities of war, and on every pretence either of court necessity or court extravagance.”

My Lords, you have now heard the principles on which Mr. Hastings governs the part of Asia subjected to the British empire. You have heard his opinion of the mean and depraved state of those who are subject to it. You have heard his lecture upon arbitrary power, which he states to be the const.i.tution of Asia. You hear the application he makes of it; and you hear the practices which he employs to justify it, and who the persons were on whose authority he relies, and whose example he professes to follow. In the first place, your Lords.h.i.+ps will be astonished at the audacity with which he speaks of his own administration, as if he was reading a speculative lecture on the evils attendant upon some vicious system of foreign government in which he had no sort of concern whatsoever. And then, when in this speculative way he has established, or thinks he has, the vices of the government, he conceives he has found a sufficient apology for his own crimes. And if he violates the most solemn engagements, if he oppresses, extorts, and robs, if he imprisons, confiscates, banishes at his sole will and pleasure, when we accuse him for his ill-treatment of the people committed to him as a sacred trust, his defence is,--”To be robbed, violated, oppressed, is their privilege. Let the const.i.tution of their country answer for it. I did not make it for them. Slaves I found them, and as slaves I have treated them. I was a despotic prince. Despotic governments are jealous, and the subjects p.r.o.ne to rebellion. This very p.r.o.neness of the subject to shake off his allegiance exposes him to continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, and this is consequent on the political state of Hindostanic governments.” He lays it down as a rule, that despotism is the genuine const.i.tution of India, that a disposition to rebellion in the subject or dependent prince is the necessary effect of this despotism, and that jealousy and its consequences naturally arise on the part of the sovereign,--that the government is everything, and the subject nothing,--that the great landed men are in a mean and depraved state, and subject to many evils.

Such a state of things, if true, would warrant conclusions directly opposite to those which Mr. Hastings means to draw from them, both argumentatively and practically, first to influence his conduct, and then to bottom his defence of it.

Perhaps you will imagine that the man who avows these principles of arbitrary government, and pleads them as the justification of acts which nothing else can justify, is of opinion that they are on the whole good for the people over whom they are exercised. The very reverse. He mentions them as horrible things, tending to inflict on the people a thousand evils, and to bring on the ruler a continual train of dangers.

Yet he states, that your acquisitions in India will be a detriment instead of an advantage, if you destroy arbitrary power, unless you can reduce all the religious establishments, all the civil inst.i.tutions, and tenures of land, into one uniform ma.s.s,--that is, unless by acts of arbitrary power you extinguish all the laws, rights, and religious principles of the people, and force them to an uniformity, and on that uniformity build a system of arbitrary power.

But nothing is more false than that despotism is the const.i.tution of any country in Asia that we are acquainted with. It is certainly not true of any Mahomedan const.i.tution. But if it were, do your Lords.h.i.+ps really think that the nation would bear, that any human creature would bear, to hear an English governor defend himself on such principles? or, if he can defend himself on such principles, is it possible to deny the conclusion, that no man in India has a security for anything, but by being totally independent of the British government? Here he has declared his opinion, that he is a despotic prince, that he is to use arbitrary power; and of course all his acts are covered with that s.h.i.+eld. ”_I know_,” says he, ”_the const.i.tution of Asia only from its practice_.” Will your Lords.h.i.+ps submit to hear the corrupt practices of mankind made the principles of government? No! it will be your pride and glory to teach men intrusted with power, that, in their use of it, they are to conform to principles, and not to draw their principles from the corrupt practice of any man whatever. Was there ever heard, or could it be conceived, that a governor would dare to heap up all the evil practices, all the cruelties, oppressions, extortions, corruptions, briberies, of all the ferocious usurpers, desperate robbers, thieves, cheats, and jugglers, that ever had office, from one end of Asia to another, and, consolidating all this ma.s.s of the crimes and absurdities of barbarous domination into one code, establish it as the whole duty of an English governor? I believe that till this time so audacious a thing was never attempted by man.

_He_ have arbitrary power! My Lords, the East India Company have not arbitrary power to give him; the king has no arbitrary power to give him; your Lords.h.i.+ps have not; nor the Commons, nor the whole legislature. We have no arbitrary power to give, because arbitrary power is a thing which neither any man can hold nor any man can give. No man can lawfully govern himself according to his own will; much less can one person be governed by the will of another. We are all born in subjection,--all born equally, high and low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great, immutable, preexistent law, prior to all our devices and prior to all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas and all our sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by which we are knit and connected in the eternal frame of the universe, out of which we cannot stir.

This great law does not arise from our conventions or compacts; on the contrary, it gives to our conventions and compacts all the force and sanction they can have. It does not arise from our vain inst.i.tutions.

Every good gift is of G.o.d; all power is of G.o.d; and He who has given the power, and from whom alone it originates, will never suffer the exercise of it to be practised upon any less solid foundation than the power itself. If, then, all dominion of man over man is the effect of the Divine disposition, it is bound by the eternal laws of Him that gave it, with which no human authority can dispense,--neither he that exercises it, nor even those who are subject to it; and if they were mad enough to make an express compact that should release their magistrate from his duty, and should declare their lives, liberties, and properties dependent upon, not rules and laws, but his mere capricious will, that covenant would be void. The acceptor of it has not his authority increased, but he has his crime doubled. Therefore can it be imagined, if this be true, that He will suffer this great gift of government, the greatest, the best, that was ever given by G.o.d to mankind, to be the plaything and the sport of the feeble will of a man, who, by a blasphemous, absurd, and petulant usurpation, would place his own feeble, contemptible, ridiculous will in the place of the Divine wisdom and justice?

The t.i.tle of conquest makes no difference at all. No conquest can give such a right; for conquest, that is, force, cannot convert its own injustice into a just t.i.tle, by which it may rule others at its pleasure. By conquest, which is a more immediate designation of the hand of G.o.d, the conqueror succeeds to all the painful duties and subordination to the power of G.o.d which belonged to the sovereign whom he has displaced, just as if he had come in by the positive law of some descent or some election. To this at least he is strictly bound: he ought to govern them as he governs his own subjects. But every wise conqueror has gone much further than he was bound to go. It has been his ambition and his policy to reconcile the vanquished to his fortune, to show that they had gained by the change, to convert their momentary suffering into a long benefit, and to draw from the humiliation of his enemies an accession to his own glory. This has been so constant a practice, that it is to repeat the histories of all politic conquerors in all nations and in all times; and I will not so much distrust your Lords.h.i.+ps' enlightened and discriminating studies and correct memories as to allude to one of them. I will only show you that the Court of Directors, under whom he served, has adopted that idea,--that they constantly inculcated it to him, and to all the servants,--that they run a parallel between their own and the native government, and, supposing it to be very evil, did not hold it up as an example to be followed, but as an abuse to be corrected,--that they never made it a question, whether India is to be improved by English law and liberty, or English law and liberty vitiated by Indian corruption.

No, my Lords, this arbitrary power is not to be had by conquest. Nor can any sovereign have it by succession; for no man can succeed to fraud, rapine, and violence. Neither by compact, covenant, or submission,--for men cannot covenant themselves out of their rights and their duties,--nor by any other means, can arbitrary power be conveyed to any man. Those who give to others such rights perform acts that are void as they are given,--good indeed and valid only as tending to subject themselves, and those who act with them, to the Divine displeasure; because morally there can be no such power. Those who give and those who receive arbitrary power are alike criminal; and there is no man but is bound to resist it to the best of his power, wherever it shall show its face to the world. It is a crime to bear it, when it can be rationally shaken off. Nothing but absolute impotence can justify men in not resisting it to the utmost of their ability.

Law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity. Name me a magistrate, and I will name property; name me power, and I will name protection. It is a contradiction in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics, to say that any man can have arbitrary power. In every patent of office the duty is included. For what else does a magistrate exist?

To suppose for power is an absurdity in idea. Judges are guided and governed by the eternal laws of justice, to which we are all subject. We may bite our chains, if we will, but we shall be made to know ourselves, and be taught that man is born to be governed by law; and he that will subst.i.tute _will_ in the place of it is an enemy to G.o.d.

Despotism does not in the smallest degree abrogate, alter, or lessen any one duty of any one relation of life, or weaken the force or obligation of any one engagement or contract whatsoever. Despotism, if it means anything that is at all defensible, means a mode of government bound by no written rules, and coerced by no controlling magistracies or well-settled orders in the state. But if it has no written law, it neither does nor can cancel the primeval, indefeasible, unalterable law of Nature and of nations; and if no magistracies control its exertions, those exertions must derive their limitation and direction either from the equity and moderation of the ruler, or from downright revolt on the part of the subject by rebellion, divested of all its criminal qualities. The moment a sovereign removes the idea of security and protection from his subjects, and declares that he is everything and they nothing, when he declares that no contract he makes with them can or ought to bind him, he then declares war upon them: he is no longer sovereign; they are no longer subjects.

No man, therefore, has a right to arbitrary power. But the thought which is suggested by the depravity of him who brings it forward is supported by a gross confusion of ideas and principles, which your Lords.h.i.+ps well know how to discern and separate. It is manifest, that, in the Eastern governments, and the Western, and in all governments, the supreme power in the state cannot, whilst that state subsists, be rendered criminally responsible for its actions: otherwise it would not be the supreme power. It is certainly true: but the actions do not change their nature by losing their responsibility. The arbitrary acts which are unpunished are not the less vicious, though none but G.o.d, the conscience, and the opinions of mankind take cognizance of them.

It is not merely so in this or that government, but in all countries.

The king in this country is undoubtedly unaccountable for his actions.

The House of Lords, if it should ever exercise, (G.o.d forbid I should suspect it would ever do what it has never done!)--but if it should ever abuse its judicial power, and give such a judgment as it ought not to give, whether from fear of popular clamor on the one hand, or predilection to the prisoner on the other,--if they abuse their judgments, there is no calling them to an account for it. And so, if the Commons should abuse their power, nay, if they should have been so greatly delinquent as not to have prosecuted this offender, they could not be accountable for it; there is no punis.h.i.+ng them for their acts, because we exercise a part of the supreme power. But are they less criminal, less rebellious against the Divine Majesty? are they less hateful to man, whose opinions they ought to cultivate as far as they are just? No: till society fall into a state of dissolution, they cannot be accountable for their acts. But it is from confounding the unaccountable character inherent in the supreme power with arbitrary power, that all this confusion of ideas has arisen.

Even upon a supposition that arbitrary power can exist anywhere, which we deny totally, and which your Lords.h.i.+ps will be the first and proudest to deny, still, absolute supreme dominion was never conferred or delegated by you,--much less, arbitrary power, which never did in any case, nor ever will in any case, time, or country, produce any one of the ends of just government.

It is true that the supreme power in every const.i.tution of government must be absolute, and this may be corrupted into the arbitrary. But all good const.i.tutions have established certain fixed rules for the exercise of their functions, which they rarely or ever depart from, and which rules form the security against that worst of evils, the government of will and force instead of wisdom and justice.

But though the supreme power is in a situation resembling arbitrary, yet never was there heard of in the history of the world, that is, in that mixed chaos of human wisdom and folly, such a thing as an _intermediate_ arbitrary power,--that is, of an officer of government who is to exert authority over the people without any law at all, and who is to have the benefit of all laws, and all forms of law, when he is called to an account. For that is to let a wild beast (for such is a man without law) loose upon the people to prey on them at his pleasure, whilst all the laws which ought to secure the people against the abuse of power are employed to screen that abuse against the cries of the people.

This is _de facto_ the state of our Indian government. But to establish it so in right as well as in fact is a thing left for us to begin with, the first of mankind. For a subordinate arbitrary or even despotic power never was heard of in right, claim, or authorized practice; least of all has it been heard of in the Eastern governments, where all the instances of severity and cruelty fall upon governors and persons intrusted with power. This would be a gross contradiction. Before Mr. Hastings, none ever came before his superiors to claim it; because, if any such thing could exist, he claims the very power of that sovereign who calls him to account.

But suppose a man to come before us, denying all the benefits of law to the people under him,--and yet, when he is called to account, to claim all the benefits of that law which was made to screen mankind from the excesses of power: such a claim, I will venture to say, is a monster that never existed, except in the wild imagination of some theorist. It cannot be admitted, because it is a perversion of the fundamental principle, that every power given for the protection of the people below should be responsible to the power above. It is to suppose that the people shall have no laws with regard to _him_, yet, when _he_ comes to be tried, he shall claim the protection of those laws which were made to secure the people from his violence,--that he shall claim a fair trial, an equitable hearing, every advantage of counsel, (G.o.d forbid he should not have them!) yet that the people under him shall have none of those advantages. The reverse is the principle of every just and rational procedure. For the people, who have nothing to use but their natural faculties, ought to be gently dealt with; but those who are intrusted with an artificial and inst.i.tuted authority have in their hands a great deal of the force of other people; and as their temptations to injustice are greater, so their moans are infinitely more effectual for mischief by turning the powers given for the preservation of society to its destruction: so that, if an arbitrary procedure be justifiable, (a strong one I am sure is,) it is when used against those who pretend to use it against others.

My Lords, I will venture to say of the governments of Asia, that none of them ever had an arbitrary power; and if any governments had an arbitrary power, they cannot delegate it to any persons under them: that is, they cannot so delegate it to others as not to leave them accountable on the principles upon which it was given. As this is a contradiction in terms, a gross absurdity, as well as a monstrous wickedness, let me say, for the honor of human nature, that, although undoubtedly we may speak it with the pride of England that we have better inst.i.tutions for the preservation of the rights of men than any other country in the world, yet I will venture to say that no country has wholly meant, or ever meant, to give this power.

As it cannot exist in right on any rational and solid principles of government, so neither does it exist in the const.i.tution of Oriental governments,--and I do insist upon it, that Oriental governments know nothing of arbitrary power. I have taken as much pains as I could to examine into the const.i.tutions of them. I have been endeavoring to inform myself at all times on this subject; of late my duty has led me to a more minute inspection of them; and I do challenge the whole race of man to show me any of the Oriental governors claiming to themselves a right to act by arbitrary will.

The greatest part of Asia is under Mahomedan governments. To name a Mahomedan government is to name a government by law. It is a law enforced by stronger sanctions than any law that can bind a Christian sovereign. Their law is believed to be given by G.o.d; and it has the double sanction of law and of religion, with which the prince is no more authorized to dispense than any one else. And if any man will produce the Koran to me, and will but show me one text in it that authorizes in any degree an arbitrary power in the government, I will confess that I have read that book, and been conversant in the affairs of Asia, in vain. There is not such a syllable in it; but, on the contrary, against oppressors by name every 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.

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