We sold, I admit, all that we had to sell; that
is, our authority, not our control. We had not a right to make a market
of our duties.
I ground myself therefore on this principle--that if the abuse is
proved, the contract is broken, and we re-enter into all our rights;
that is, into the exercise of all our duties. Our own authority is
indeed as much a trust originally, as the company's authority is a trust
derivatively; and it is the use we make of the resumed power that must
justify or condemn us in the resumption of it. When we have perfected
the plan laid before us by the right honourable mover, the world will
then see what it is we destroy, and what it is we create. By that test
we stand or fall; and by that test I trust that it will be found in the
issue, that we are going to supersede a charter abused to the full
extent of all the powers which it could abuse, and exercised in the
plenitude of despotism, tyranny, and corruption; and that in one and the
same plan, we provide a real chartered security for the RIGHTS OF MEN,
cruelly violated under that charter.
This bill, and those connected with it, are intended to form the magna
charta of Hindostan. Whatever the treaty of Westphalia is to the liberty
of the princes and free cities of the empire, and to the three religions
there professed; whatever the great charter, the statute of tallege, the
petition of right, and the declaration of right, are to Great Britain,
these bills are to the people of India.
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