of proceeding. It is necessary, therefore, that nothing in that
proceeding should appear to mark the slightest trace, should betray the
faintest odor of chicane. God forbid, that, when you try the most
serious of all causes, that, when you try the cause of Asia in the
presence of Europe, there should be the least suspicion that a narrow
partiality, utterly destructive of justice, should so guide us that a
British subject in power should appear in substance to possess rights
which are denied to the humble allies, to the attached dependants of
this kingdom, who by their distance have a double demand upon your
protection, and who, by an implicit (I hope not a weak and useless)
trust in you, have stripped themselves of every other resource under
heaven!

I do not say this from any fear, doubt, or hesitation concerning what
your Lordships will finally do,--none in the world; but I cannot shut my
ears to the rumors which you all know to be disseminated abroad. The
abusers of power may have a chance to cover themselves by those fences
and intrenchments which were made to secure the liberties of the people
against men of that very description. But God forbid it should be
bruited from Pekin to Paris, that the laws of England are for the rich
and the powerful, but to the poor, the miserable, and defenceless they
afford no resource at all! God forbid it should be said, no nation is
equal to the English in _substantial_ violence and in _formal_
justice,--that in this kingdom we feel ourselves competent to confer the
most extravagant and inordinate powers upon public ministers, but that
we are deficient, poor, helpless, lame, and impotent in the means of
calling them to account for their use of them! An opinion has been
insidiously circulated through this kingdom, and through foreign nations
too, that, in order to cover our participation in guilt, and our common
interest in the plunder of the East, we have invented a set of
scholastic distinctions, abhorrent to the common sense and unpropitious
to the common necessities of mankind, by which we are to deny ourselves
the knowledge of what the rest of the world knows, and what so great a
part of the world both knows and feels. I do not deprecate any
appearance which may give countenance to this aspersion from suspicion
that any corrupt motive can influence this court; I deprecate it from
knowing that hitherto we have moved within the narrow circle of
municipal justice. I am afraid, tha