Then, my Lords, two distinct people inhabit India.  Two sorts of people inhabit the same country, as totally distinct from each other, in characters, lives, opinions, prejudices, and manners, as the inhabitants of countries most remote from each other.  For both of these descriptions Mr. Hastings was bound to provide equally, agreeable to the terms of the charter which the Company received from the lawful governing power of that country:  a charter received at its own solicitation; a charter not forced upon us by a superior power, but given at the immediate solicitation of the principal servants belonging to the Company; a charter solemnly accepted by the Company, and by them, I am very sorry to say, little regarded,—­or, at least, little regarded by their principal servants.

My Lords, the first description of people who are subjected virtually to the British empire through those mediums which I have described to you are the original inhabitants of Hindostan, who have in all time, and beyond all the eras which we use, (I mean always the two grand eras excepted,) been the aboriginal inhabitants and proprietors of that country,—­with manners, religion, customs, and usages appropriated to themselves, and little resembling those of the rest of mankind.  This description of men is commonly called Gentoos.  The system and principle of that government is locality.  Their laws, their manners, their religion are all local.

Their legislator, whoever he was, (for who he was is a matter lost in the mists of a most obscure antiquity,) had it as a great leading principle of his policy to connect the people with their soil.  Accordingly, by one of those anomalies which a larger acquaintance with our species daily discovers, and which perhaps an attentive reflection might explain in the nature of man, this aboriginal people of India,—­who are the softest in their manners of any of our race, approaching almost to feminine tenderness,—­who are formed constitutionally benevolent, and, in many particulars, made to fill a larger circle of benevolence than our morals take in,—­who extend their good-will to the whole animal creation,—­these people are, of all nations, the most unalliable to any other part of mankind.  They cannot, the highest orders of them, at least, cannot, come into contact with any other.  That bond which is one of the chief instruments of society, and which, supporting the individual, connects the species, can have no existence with them:  I mean the convivial bond.  That race can be held to no other by that great link of life.  No Hindoo can mix at meals even with those on whom he depends for the meat he eats.  This circumstance renders it difficult for us to enter with due sympathy into their concerns, or for them to enter into ours, even when we meet on the same ground.  But there are other circumstances which render our intercourse, in our mutual relation, very full of difficulty.  The sea is between us.  The mass of that element, which, by appearing to disconnect,