of any law, either general or municipal. It is made a
sort of rule in the service, a rule confirmed even by the attempts that
were made to correct it, (I mean confirmed by Sir Elijah Impey, when,
under the auspices of Mr. Hastings, he undertook to be legislator for
India,) that the judicial character, the last in the order of legal
progress, that to which all professional men look up as the crown of
their labors, that ultimate hope of men grown gray in professional
practice, is among the first experimental situations of a Company's
servant. It is expressly said in that body of regulations to which I
allude, that the office and situation of a judge of the Dewanny Courts
of Adawlut is to be filled by the _junior_ servants of the Company; and
as the judicial emolument is not substantially equal to that of other
situations, the office of a judge is to be taken, as it were, _in
transitu_, as a passage to other offices not of a judicial nature. As
soon, therefore, as a young man has supplied the defects of his
education by the advantage of some experience, he is immediately
translated to a totally different office; and another young man is
substituted, to learn, at the expense of the property of India, to fill
a situation which, when he may be qualified to fill, he is no longer to
hold.

It is in a great measure the same with regard to the other situations.
They are the situations of great statesmen, which, according to the
practice of the world, require, to fill properly, rather a large
converse with men and much intercourse in life than deep study of
books,--though that, too, has its eminent service. We know that in the
habits of civilized life, in cultivated society, there is imbibed by men
a good deal of the solid practice of government, of the true maxims of
state, and everything that enables a man to serve his country. But these
men are sent over to exercise functions at which a statesman here would
tremble, without any theoretical study, and without any of that sort of
experience which, in mixed societies of business and converse, form men
gradually and insensibly to great affairs. Low cunning, intrigue, and
stratagem are soon acquired; but manly, durable policy, which never
sacrifices the general interest to a partial or momentary advantage, is
not so cheaply formed in the human understanding.

Mr. Hastings, in his defence before the House of Commons, and in the
defences he has made before your Lordships, has lament