I thank God, and I say it from my heart, that even for his enormous offences there neither is nor can be anything like such punishments.

God forbid that we should not as much detest out-of-the-way, mad, furious, and unequal punishments as we detest enormous and abominable crimes! because a severe and cruel penalty for a crime of a light nature is as bad and iniquitous as the crime which it pretends to punish.

As the instances I allude to are curious, and as they go to the principles of Mr.Hastings's defence, I shall beg to quote them.
The first is upon a governor who did what Mr.Hastings says he has a power delegated to him to do: he levied a tax without the consent of his master.

"Some years after my departure from Com," says Tavernier, "the governor had, of his own accord, and without any communication with the king, laid a small impost upon every pannier of fruit brought into the city, for the purpose of making some necessary reparations in the walls and bridges of the town.

It was towards the end of the year 1632 that the event I am going to relate happened.