uling nation,
resembling in colour, in language, in manners, those who hold supreme
military and political power, and differing in all these respects from
the great mass of the population, may consider themselves as a superior
class, and may trample on the indigenous race. Hitherto there have been
strong restraints on Europeans resident in India. Licences were not
easily obtained. Those residents who were in the service of the Company
had obvious motives for conducting themselves with propriety. If they
incurred the serious displeasure of the Government, their hopes of
promotion were blighted. Even those who were not in the public service
were subject to the formidable power which the Government possessed of
banishing them at its pleasure.

The license of the Government will now no longer be necessary to persons
who desire to reside in the settled provinces of India. The power of
arbitrary deportation is withdrawn. Unless, therefore, we mean to leave
the natives exposed to the tyranny and insolence of every profligate
adventurer who may visit the East, we must place the European under
the same power which legislates for the Hindoo. No man loves political
freedom more than I. But a privilege enjoyed by a few individuals, in
the midst of a vast population who do not enjoy it, ought not to be
called freedom. It is tyranny. In the West Indies I have not the
least doubt that the existence of the Trial by Jury and of Legislative
Assemblies has tended to make the condition of the slaves worse than it
would otherwise have been. Or, to go to India itself for an instance,
though I fully believe that a mild penal code is better than a severe
penal code, the worst of all systems was surely that of having a mild
code for the Brahmins, who sprang from the head of the Creator, while
there was a severe code for the Sudras, who sprang from his feet. India
has suffered enough already from the distinction of castes, and from
the deeply rooted prejudices which that distinction has engendered. God
forbid that we should inflict on her the curse of a new caste, that we
should send her a new breed of Brahmins, authorised to treat all the
native population as Parias!

With a view to the prevention of this evil, we propose to give to the
Supreme Government the power of legislating for Europeans as well as for
natives. We propose that the regulations of the Government shall bind
the King's Court as they bind all other courts, and that registrati