man who is born in the highest caste, which at once unites what would
be tantamount in this country to the dignity of the peerage and the
ennobled sanctity of the episcopal character,--the Brahmin, who sustains
these characters, if he loses his caste, does not fall into an inferior
order, the Chittery, the Bice, or the Soodur, but he is thrown at once
out of all ranks of society. He is precipitated from the proudest
elevation of respect and honor to a bottomless abyss of contempt,--from
glory to infamy,--from purity to pollution,--from sanctity to
profanation. No honest occupation is open to him; his children are no
longer his children; their parent loses that name; the conjugal bond is
dissolved. Few survive this most terrible of all calamities. To speak to
an Indian of his caste is to speak to him of his all.

But the rule of caste has, with them, given one power more to fortune
than the manners of any other nation were ever known to do. For it is
singular, the caste may be lost, not only by certain voluntary crimes,
but by certain involuntary sufferings, disgraces, and pollutions, that
are utterly out of their power to prevent. Those who have patiently
submitted to imprisonment,--those who have not flinched from the
scourge,--those who have been as unmoved as marble under torture,--those
who have laughed at the menaces of death itself,--have instantly given
way, when it has been attempted to subject them to any of those
pollutions by which they lose caste. To this caste they are bound by all
laws of all descriptions, human and divine; and inveterate usage has
radicated it in them to a depth and with an adhesion with which no other
known prejudice has been known to exist. Tyranny is therefore armed
against them with a greater variety of weapons than are found in its
ordinary stores.

This, amongst a thousand other considerations, speaks to us in very
authoritative language with what care and circumspection we ought to
handle people so delicate. In the course of this trial your Lordships
will see with horror the use which Mr. Hastings made, through several of
his wicked and abominable instruments, chosen from the natives
themselves, of these superadded means of oppression. I shall prove, in
the course of this trial, that he has put his own menial domestic
servant,--a wretch totally dependent,--a wretch grossly ignorant,--the
common instrument of his bribery and peculation,--he has enthroned him,
I say, on the first se