And, as to the native subjects, the power of this deputed government over them is perfectly absolute and complete. For the inhabitants of those countries, being disposed by nature or climate to passive obedience, and by long custom habituated to despotic authority, and being farther impressed with a particular awe of Europeans, from a notion of their natural superiority, implicitly submit to the will of their present government, without once daring to either examine its right, dispute its authority, or question its conduct. The subject therefore holds not the smallest voice in the administration of government; the jurisdiction, the police, the finances, the military government and defence, are all incontroulably directed by the Company’s deputation: and the entire interests of those countries, the lives and property of the inhabitants, are subjected to its discretion, and depend on its will. So that this deputation of the Company executes the government of Bengal with a power perfectly unlimited by any exterior controul; and if we consider that it is at the same time foreign to the country governed, mutable, and of very short duration, we shall find that it is equally unrestrained by any internal check. It is therefore the most unlimited government on earth; or rather it is the only government that can, with propriety, be termed arbitrary and despotic. For all other deputed governments are sufficiently restrained by the authority of the sovereign; and we have no idea of despotism, except in governments that are supreme or sovereign. But the idea of actual despotism in a supreme government is merely imaginary; seeing that, in one and all of these governments, the power of governing is conditional, limited by rule, and subjected to controul both external and internal. For it is evident, that, in all supreme governments, the power of governing, and the means that support this power, must needs be derived from the people governed; and therefore cannot exist in despight of their consent; and though, in some of these governments, the condition, upon which this power and these means are granted, is not specially expressed, yet is it perfectly understood, and invariably enforced in all of them; inasmuch as there are examples in each, of sovereigns who have suffered the utmost punishment, for attempting to transgress the limits of this condition; nay, there is scarce one instance where the prince, thus transgressing, escaped the resentment of the people; and examples of this nature are most frequent in these governments that are falsely termed despotic. These examples must therefore convince all sovereigns, that there is a power in the people, superior to, and capable of controuling them; and the sense of this must ever prove an effectual external controul on the conduct of a supreme government. But self-interest, that _primum_ and _perpetuum mobile_ of human action, which we may term an internal check, operates still more forcibly,