Your Lordships will not suffer it.

God forbid! For my part, I should have no sort of objection to let him choose his law,--Mahomedan, Tartarian, Gentoo.

But if he disputes, as he does, the authority of an act of Parliament, let him state to me that law to which he means to be subject, or any law which he knows that will justify his actions.

I am not authorized to say that I shall, even in that case, give up what is not in me to give up, because I represent an authority of which I must stand in awe; but, for myself, I shall confess that I am brought to public shame, and am not fit to manage the great interests committed to my charge.

I therefore again repeat of that Asiatic government with which we are best acquainted, which has been constituted more in obedience to the laws of Mahomet than any other, that the sovereign cannot, agreeably to that constitution, exercise any arbitrary power whatever.
The next point for us to consider is, whether or no the Mahomedan constitution of India authorizes that power.