I wish to save your Lordships' time, or I could show you in the life of this prince, that he, violent as his conquests were, bloody as all conquests are, ferocious as a Mahometan making his crusades for the propagation of his religion, he yet knew how to govern his unjust acquisitions with equity and moderation. If any man could be entitled to claim arbitrary power, if such a claim could be justified by extent of conquest, by splendid personal qualities, by great learning and eloquence, Tamerlane was the man who could have made and justified the claim. This prince gave up all his time not employed in conquests to the conversation of learned men. He gave himself to all studies that might accomplish a great man. Such a man, I say, might, if any may, claim arbitrary power. But the very things that made him great made him sensible that he was but a man. Even in the midst of all his conquests, his tone was a tone of humility; he spoke of laws as every man must who knows what laws are; and though he was proud, ferocious, and violent in the achievement of his conquests, I will venture to say no prince ever established institutes of civil government more honorable to himself than the Institutes of Timour. I shall be content to be brought to shame before your Lordships, if the prisoner at your bar can show me one passage where the assumption of arbitrary power is even hinted at by this great conqueror. He declares that the nobility of every country shall be considered as his brethren, that the people shall be acknowledged as his children, and that the learned and the dervishes shall be particularly protected. But, my Lords, what he particularly valued himself upon I shall give your Lordships in his own words:--"I delivered the oppressed from the hand of the oppressor; and after proof of the oppression, whether on the property or the person, the decision which I passed between them was agreeable to the sacred law; and I did not cause any one person to suffer for the guilt of another."[95]