My Lords, in support of our charge against the prisoner at your bar, that he acted in a manner directly the reverse of this, we have proved to you that his first acts of oppression were directed against the Mahometan government,—­that government which had been before, not only in name, but in effect, to the very time of his appointment, the real government of the country.  After the Company had acquired its right over it, some shadow still remained of the ancient government.  An allowance was settled for the Nabob of Bengal, to support the dignity of his court, which amounted to between four and five hundred thousand pounds a year.  In this was comprehended the support of the whole mass of nobility,—­the soldiers, serving or retired,—­all the officers of the court, and all the women that were dependent upon them,—­the whole of the criminal jurisdiction of the country, and a very considerable part of the civil law and the civil government.  These establishments formed the constitutional basis of their political government.

The Company never had (and it is a thing that we can never too often repeat to your Lordships)—­the Company never had of right despotic power in that country, to overturn any of these establishments.  The Mogul, who gave them their charters, could not give them such a power,—­he did not de facto give them such a power; the government of this country did not by act of Parliament, and the Company did not and could not by their delegation, give him such a power; the act by which he was appointed Governor did not give him such a power.  If he exercised it, he usurped it; and therefore, every step we take in the examination of his conduct in Bengal, as in every step we take upon the same subject everywhere else, we look for the justification of his conduct to laws,—­the Law of Nations, the laws of this country, and the laws of the country he was sent to govern.

The government of that country, by the ancient constitution of the Mogul empire, besides the numberless individual checks and counter-checks in the inferior officers [offices?], is divided into the viceroyal part and the subahdarry part.  The viceroyal part takes in all criminal justice and political government.  Mr. Hastings found the country under a viceroy, governing according to law, acting by proper judges and magistrates under him:  he himself not being the judicial, but executive power of the country,—­that which sets the other in action, and does not supersede it or supply its place.  The other, the subahdarry power, which was by the grant of the dewanny conferred upon the Company, had under its care the revenues, as much of the civil government as is concerned with the revenues, and many other matters growing out of it.  These two offices are cooerdinate and dependent on each other.  The Company, after contracting to maintain the army out of it, got the whole revenue into their power.  The army being thus within their power, the subahdar by degrees vanished into an empty name.