Despotism, if it means anything that is at all defensible, means a mode of government bound by no written rules, and coerced by no controlling magistracies or well-settled orders in the state.

The moment a sovereign removes the idea of security and protection from his subjects, and declares that he is everything and they nothing, when he declares that no contract he makes with them can or ought to bind him, he then declares war…

The arbitrary acts which are unpunished are not the less vicious, though none but God, the conscience, and the opinions of mankind take cognizance of them.

But are they less criminal, less rebellious against the Divine Majesty? are they less hateful to man, whose opinions they ought to cultivate as far as they are just?

But it is from confounding the unaccountable character inherent in the supreme power with arbitrary power, that all this confusion of ideas has arisen.

It is true that the supreme power in every constitution of government must be absolute, and this may be corrupted into the arbitrary.

But all good constitutions have established certain fixed rules for the exercise of their functions, which they rarely or ever depart from, and which rules form the security against that worst of evils, the government of will and force…

For that is to let a wild beast (for such is a man without law) loose upon the people to prey on them at his pleasure, whilst all the laws which ought to secure the people against the abuse of power are employed to screen that abuse…

For a subordinate arbitrary or even despotic power never was heard of in right, claim, or authorized practice; least of all has it been heard of in the Eastern governments, where all the instances of severity and cruelty fall upon…

It cannot be admitted, because it is a perversion of the fundamental principle, that every power given for the protection of the people below should be responsible to the power above.

It is a law enforced by stronger sanctions than any law that can bind a Christian sovereign.

Their law is believed to be given by God; and it has the double sanction of law and of religion, with which the prince is no more authorized to dispense than any one else.

And if any man will produce the Koran to me, and will but show me one text in it that authorizes in any degree an arbitrary power in the government, I will confess that I have read that book, and been conversant in the affairs of Asia, in…

There is not such a syllable in it; but, on the contrary, against oppressors by name every letter of that law is fulminated.

These men are conservators of the law; and to enable them to preserve it in its perfection, they are secured from the resentment of the sovereign: for he cannot touch them.

I say he is destitute of the first character of sovereign power: he cannot lay a tax upon his people.

The next part in which he misses of a sovereign power is, that he cannot dispose of the life, of the property, or of the liberty of any of his subjects, but by what is called the fetwah, or sentence of the law.

He cannot declare peace or war without the same sentence of the law: so much is he, more than European sovereigns, a subject of strict law, that he cannot declare war or peace without it.

Then, if he can neither touch life nor property, if he cannot lay a tax on his subjects, or declare peace or war, I leave it to your Lordships' judgment, whether he can be called, according to the principles of that constitution, an…

Corruption is the true cause of the loss of all the benefits of the constitution of that country.

The question is, whether you will take the constitution of the country as your rule, or the base practices of those usurpers, robbers, and tyrants who have subverted it.

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 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…

If there be any part of it to justify arbitrary power, he will produce it.

But if we may judge by those ten precepts of Genghiz Khân which we have, there is not a shadow of arbitrary power to be found in any one of them.