12 files changed, 62038 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/18315-0.txt b/18315-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..311635c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/18315-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14578 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund
+Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.), by Edmund Burke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.)
+
+Author: Edmund Burke
+
+Release Date: May 5, 2006 [EBook #18315]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF EDMUND BURKE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Susan Skinner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at
+http://gallica.bnf.fr)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS
+
+OF
+
+THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
+
+EDMUND BURKE
+
+
+IN TWELVE VOLUMES
+
+VOLUME THE TWELFTH
+
+
+[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms.]
+
+
+LONDON
+JOHN C. NIMMO
+14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
+MDCCCLXXXVII
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. XII.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+SPEECHES IN THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS,
+ESQUIRE, LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL. (CONTINUED.)
+
+  SPEECH IN GENERAL REPLY.
+
+    FIFTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1794                                  3
+
+    SIXTH DAY: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11                                     75
+
+    SEVENTH DAY: THURSDAY, JUNE 12                                   143
+
+    EIGHTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 14                                    235
+
+    NINTH DAY: MONDAY, JUNE 16                                       335
+
+GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS                                            401
+
+INDEX                                                                407
+
+
+
+
+SPEECHES
+
+IN
+
+THE IMPEACHMENT
+
+OF
+
+WARREN HASTINGS, ESQUIRE,
+
+LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL.
+
+
+SPEECH IN GENERAL REPLY.
+
+(CONTINUED.)
+
+June, 1794.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+FIFTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--We will now resume the consideration of the remaining part of
+our charge, and of the prisoner's attempts to defend himself against it.
+
+Mr. Hastings, well knowing (what your Lordships must also by this time
+be perfectly satisfied was the case) that this unfortunate Nabob had no
+will of his own, draws down his poor victim to Chunar by an order to
+attend the Governor-General. If the Nabob ever wrote to Mr. Hastings,
+expressing a request or desire for this meeting, his letter was
+unquestionably dictated to him by the prisoner. We have laid a ground of
+direct proof before you, that the Nabob's being at Chunar, that his
+proceedings there, and that all his acts were so dictated, and
+consequently must be so construed.
+
+I shall now proceed to lay before your Lordships the acts of oppression
+committed by Mr. Hastings through his two miserable instruments: the
+one, his passive instrument, the Nabob; the other, Mr. Middleton, his
+active instrument, in his subsequent plans for the entire destruction of
+that country. In page 513 of the printed Minutes you have Mr.
+Middleton's declaration of his promptitude to represent everything
+agreeably to Mr. Hastings's wishes.
+
+     "My dear Sir,--I have this day answered your public letter in the
+     form you seemed to expect. I hope there is nothing in it that may
+     to you appear too pointed. If you wish the matter to be otherwise
+     understood than I have taken up and stated it, I need not say I
+     shall be ready to conform to whatever you may prescribe, and to
+     take upon myself any share of the blame of the hitherto
+     non-performance of the stipulations made on behalf of the Nabob;
+     though I do assure you I myself represented to his Excellency and
+     the ministers, conceiving it to be your desire, that the apparent
+     assumption of the reins of his government, (for in that light he
+     undoubtedly considered it at the first view,) as specified in the
+     agreement executed by him, was not meant to be fully and literally
+     enforced, but that it was necessary you should have something to
+     show on your side, as the Company were deprived of a benefit
+     without a requital; and upon the faith of this assurance alone, I
+     believe I may safely affirm, his Excellency's objections to signing
+     the treaty were given up. If I have understood the matter wrong, or
+     misconceived your design, I am truly sorry for it. However, it is
+     not too late to correct the error; and I am ready to undertake,
+     and, God willing, to carry through, whatever you may, on the
+     receipt of my public letter, tell me is your final resolve.
+
+     "If you determine, at all events, that the measures of reducing the
+     Nabob's army, &c., shall be immediately undertaken, I shall take it
+     as a particular favor, if you will indulge me with a line at
+     Fyzabad, that I may make the necessary previous arrangements with
+     respect to the disposal of my family, which I would not wish to
+     retain here, in the event either of a rupture with the Nabob, or
+     the necessity of employing our forces on the reduction of his
+     aumils and troops. This done, I can begin the work in three days
+     after my return from Fyzabad."
+
+Besides this letter, which I think is sufficiently clear upon the
+subject, there is also another much more clear upon your Lordships'
+minutes, much more distinct and much more pointed, expressive of his
+being resolved to make such representations of every matter as the
+Governor-General may wish. Now a man who is master of the manner in
+which facts are represented, and whose subsequent conduct is to be
+justified by such representations, is not simply accountable for his
+conduct; he is accountable for culpably attempting to form, on false
+premises, the judgment of others upon that conduct. This species of
+delinquency must therefore be added to the rest; and I wish your
+Lordships to carry generally in your minds, that there is not one single
+syllable of representation made by any of those parties, except where
+truth may happen to break out in spite of all the means of concealment,
+which is not to be considered as the representation of Mr. Hastings
+himself in justification of his own conduct.
+
+The letter which I have just now read was written preparatory to the
+transaction which I am now going to state, called _the treaty of
+Chunar_. Having brought his miserable victim thither, he forced him to
+sign a paper called a treaty: but such was the fraud in every part of
+this treaty, that Mr. Middleton himself, who was the instrument and the
+chief agent in it, acknowledges that the Nabob was persuaded to sign it
+by the assurance given to him that it never was to be executed. Here,
+then, your Lordships have a prince first compelled to enter into a
+negotiation, and then induced to accede to a treaty by false assurances
+that it should not be executed, which he declares nothing but force
+should otherwise have compelled him to accede to.
+
+The first circumstance in this transaction that I shall lay before your
+Lordships is that the treaty is declared to have for its objects two
+modes of relieving the Nabob from his distresses,--from distresses which
+we have stated, and which Mr. Hastings has not only fully admitted, but
+has himself proved in the clearest manner to your Lordships. The first
+was by taking away that _wicked rabble_, the British troops, represented
+by Mr. Hastings as totally ruinous to the Nabob's affairs, and
+particularly by removing that part of them which was called the new
+brigade. Another remedial part of the treaty regarded the British
+pensioners. It is in proof before your Lordships that Mr. Hastings
+agreed to recall from Oude that body of pensioners, whose conduct there
+is described in such strong terms as being ruinous to the Vizier and to
+all his affairs. These pensioners Mr. Hastings engaged to recall; but he
+never did recall them. We refer your Lordships to the evidence before
+you, in proof that these odious pensioners, so distressing to the Nabob,
+so ruinous to his affairs, and so disgraceful to our government, were
+not only _not_ recalled by Mr. Hastings, but that, both afterwards, and
+upon the very day of signing the treaty, (as Mr. Middleton himself tells
+you,) upon that very day, I say, he recommended to the Nabob that these
+pensioners might remain upon that very establishment which, by a solemn
+treaty of his own making and his own dictating, he had agreed to
+relieve from this intolerable burden.
+
+Mr. Hastings, your Lordships will remember, had departed from Benares,
+frustrated in his designs of extorting 500,000_l._ from the Rajah for
+the Company's use. He had ravaged the country, without obtaining any
+benefit for his masters: the British soldiers having divided the only
+spoil, and nothing remaining for the share of his employers but
+disgrace. He was therefore afraid to return without having something of
+a lucrative pecuniary nature to exhibit to the Company. Having this
+object in view, Oude appears to have first presented itself to his
+notice, as a country from which some advantage of a pecuniary kind might
+be derived; and accordingly he turned in his head a vast variety of
+stratagems for effecting his purpose.
+
+The first article that occurs in the treaty of Chunar is a power given
+to the Nabob to resume all the jaghires not guarantied by the Company,
+and to give pensions to all those persons who should be removed from
+their jaghires.
+
+Now the first thing which would naturally occur to a man, who was going
+to raise a revenue through the intervention of the prince of the
+country, would be to recommend to that prince a better economy in his
+affairs, and a rational and equal assessment upon his subjects, in order
+to furnish the amount of the demand which he was about to make upon him.
+I need not tell your Lordships, trained and formed as your minds are to
+the rules and orders of good government, that there is no way by which a
+prince can justly assess his subjects but by assessing them all in
+proportion to their respective abilities, and that, if a prince should
+make such a body as the House of Lords in this kingdom (which comes
+near the case I am going to state) separately the subject of assessment,
+such a thing would be contrary to all the principles of regular and just
+taxation in any country in the universe. Some men may possibly, by
+locality or privileges, be excepted from certain taxes, but no taxation
+ever can be just that is thrown upon some particular class only; and if
+that class happen to be small and the demand great, the injustice done
+is directly proportionable to the greatness of the exaction, and
+inversely to the number of the persons who are the objects of it: these
+are clear, irrefragable, and eternal principles. But if, instead of
+exacting a part by a proportionable rate, the prince should go further
+and attempt to shake the whole mass of property itself, a mass perhaps
+not much less than that which is possessed by the whole peers of Great
+Britain, by confiscating the whole of the estates at once, as a
+government resource, without the charge or pretence of any crime, I say
+that such an act would be oppressive, cruel, and wicked in the highest
+degree. Yet this is what Mr. Hastings projected, and actually did
+accomplish.
+
+My Lords, at the treaty of Chunar, as it is called, Mr. Hastings (for he
+always artfully feels his way as he proceeds) first says, that the Nabob
+shall be permitted to do this act, if he pleases. He does not assume the
+government. He does not compel the Nabob to do anything. He does not
+force upon him this abandoned and wicked confiscation of the property of
+the whole nobility of a great country. All that he says is this,--"The
+Nabob _may be permitted_ to resume these jaghires." Why permitted? If
+the act had been legal, proper, and justifiable, he did not want our
+permission; he was a sovereign in his own dominions. But Mr. Hastings
+recollected that some of these jaghires (as they are called, and on
+which I shall say a very few words to your Lordships) were guarantied by
+the Company. The jaghires of his own house, of his mother and
+grandmother, were guarantied by us. I must inform your Lordships, that,
+upon some of our other exactions at an earlier period, the Nabob had
+endeavored to levy a forced loan upon the jaghiredars. This forced loan
+was made and submitted to by those people upon a direct assurance of
+their rights in the jaghires, which right was guarantied by the British
+Resident, not only to the Begums, and to the whole family of the Nabob,
+but also to all the other objects of the tax.
+
+Before I proceed, I will beg leave to state to you briefly the nature of
+these jaghires. The jaghiredars, the holders of jaghires, form the body
+of the principal Mahometan nobility. The great nobility of that country
+are divided into two parts. One part consists of the zemindars, who are
+the ancient proprietors of land, and the hereditary nobility of the
+country: these are mostly Gentoos. The Mahometans form the other part,
+whose whole interest in the land consists in the jaghires: for very few
+indeed of them are zemindars anywhere, in some of the provinces none of
+them are so; the whole of them are jaghiredars.
+
+We have heard, my Lords, much discussion about jaghires. It is in proof
+before your Lordships that they are of two sorts: that a jaghire
+signifies exactly what the word _fee_ does in the English language, or
+_feodum_ in the barbarous Latin of the Feudists; that it is a word which
+signifies a salary or a maintenance, as did originally the English word
+_fee_, derived from the word _feod_ and _feodum_. These jaghires, like
+other fees and like other feods, were given in land, as a maintenance:
+some with the condition of service, some without any condition; some
+were annexed to an office, some were granted as the support of a
+dignity, and none were granted for a less term than life, except those
+that were immediately annexed to a lease. We have shown your Lordships
+(and in this we have followed the example of Mr. Hastings) that some of
+them are fees granted actually in perpetuity; and in fact many of them
+are so granted. We are farther to tell your Lordships, that by the
+custom of the empire they are almost all grown, as the feods in Europe
+are grown, by use, into something which is at least virtually an
+inheritance. This is the state of the jaghires and jaghiredars.
+
+Among these jaghires we find, what your Lordships would expect to find,
+an ample provision for all the nobility of that illustrious family of
+which the Nabob is the head: a prince whose family, both by father and
+mother, notwithstanding the slander of the prisoner against his
+benefactor, was undoubtedly of the first and most distinguished nobility
+of the Mahometan empire. Accordingly, his uncles, all his near
+relations, his mother, grandmother, all possessed jaghires, some of very
+long standing, and most of them not given by the Nabob.
+
+I take some pains in explaining this business, because I trust your
+Lordships will have a strong feeling against any confiscation for the
+purpose of revenue. Believe me, my Lords, if there is anything which
+will root the present order of things out of Europe, it will begin, as
+we see it has already begun in a neighboring country, by confiscating,
+for the purposes of the state, grants made to classes of men, let them
+be held by what names or be supposed susceptible of what abuses soever.
+I will venture to say that Jacobinism never can strike a more deadly
+blow against property, rank, and dignity than your Lordships, if you
+were to acquit this man, would strike against your own dignity, and the
+very being of the society in which we live.
+
+Your Lordships will find in your printed Minutes who the jaghiredars
+were, and what was the amount of their estates. The jaghires of which
+Mr. Hastings authorized the confiscation, or what he calls a
+_resumption_, appear from Mr. Purling's account, when first the forced
+loan was levied upon them under his Residentship, to amount to
+285,000_l._ sterling per annum; which 285,000_l._, if rated and valued
+according to the different value of provisions and other necessaries of
+life in that country and in England, will amount, as near as may be, to
+about 600,000_l._ a year. I am within compass. Everybody conversant with
+India will say it is equivalent at least to 600,000_l._ a year in
+England; and what a blow such a confiscation as this would be on the
+fortunes of the peers of Great Britain your Lordships will judge. I like
+to see your estates as great as they are; I wish they were greater than
+they are; but whatever they are, I wish, above all that they should be
+perpetual. For dignity and property in this country, _Esto perpetua_
+shall be my prayer this day, and the last prayer of my life. The
+Commons, therefore, of Great Britain, those guardians of property, who
+will not suffer the monarch they love, the government which they adore,
+to levy one shilling upon the subject in any other way than the law and
+statutes of this kingdom prescribe, will not suffer, nor can they bear
+the idea, that any single class of people should be chosen to be the
+objects of a contrary conduct, nor that even the Nabob of Oude should be
+permitted to act upon such a flagitious principle. When an English
+governor has substituted a power of his own instead of the legal
+government of the country, as I have proved this man to have done, if he
+found the prince going to do an act which would shake the property of
+all the nobility of the country, he surely ought to raise his hand and
+say, "You shall not make my name your sanction for such an atrocious and
+abominable act as this confiscation would be."
+
+Mr. Hastings, however, whilst he gives, with an urbanity for which he is
+so much praised, his consent to this confiscation, adds, there must be
+pensions secured for all persons losing their estates, who had the
+security of our guaranty. Your Lordships know that Mr. Hastings, by his
+guaranty, had secured their jaghires to the Nabob's own relations and
+family. One would have imagined, that, if the estates of those who were
+without any security were to be confiscated at his pleasure, those at
+least who were guarantied by the Company, such as the Begums of Oude and
+several of the principal nobility of the Nabob's family, would have been
+secure. He, indeed, says that pensions shall be given them; for at this
+time he had not got the length of violating, without shame or remorse,
+all the guaranties of the Company. "There shall," says he, "be pensions
+given." If pensions were to be given to the value of the estate, I ask,
+What has this violent act done? You shake the security of property, and,
+instead of suffering a man to gather his own profits with his own hands,
+you turn him into a pensioner upon the public treasury. I can conceive
+that such a measure will render these persons miserable dependants
+instead of independent nobility; but I cannot conceive what financial
+object can be answered by paying that in pension which you are to
+receive in revenue. This is directly contrary to financial economy. For
+when you stipulate to pay out of the treasury of government a certain
+pension, and take upon you the receipts of an estate, you adopt a
+measure by which government is almost sure of being a loser. You charge
+it with a certain fixed sum, and, even upon a supposition that under the
+management of the public the estate will be as productive as it was
+under the management of its private owner, (a thing highly improbable,)
+you take your chance of a reimbursement subject to all the extra
+expense, and to all the accidents that may happen to a public revenue.
+This confiscation could not, therefore, be justified as a measure of
+economy; it must have been designed merely for the sake of shaking and
+destroying the property of the country.
+
+The whole transaction, my Lords, was an act of gross violence, ushered
+in by a gross fraud. It appears that no pensions were ever intended to
+be paid; and this you will naturally guess would be the event, when such
+a strange metamorphosis was to be made as that of turning a great landed
+interest into a pensionary payment. As it could answer no other purpose,
+so it could be intended for no other, than that of getting possession of
+these jaghires by fraud. This man, my Lords, cannot commit a robbery
+without indulging himself at the same time in the practice of his
+favorite arts of fraud and falsehood.
+
+And here I must again remind your Lordships, that at the time of the
+treaty of Chunar the jaghires were held in the following manner. Of the
+285,000_l._ a year which was to be confiscated, the old grants of Sujah
+Dowlah, [and?] the grandfather of the Nabob, amounted to near two thirds
+of the whole, as you will find in the paper to which we refer you. By
+this confiscation, therefore, the Nabob was authorized to _resume_
+grants of which he had not been the grantor.
+
+    [_Mr. Burke here read the list of the jaghires._]
+
+Now, my Lords, you see that all these estates, except 25,782_l._ a year,
+were either jaghires for the Nabob's own immediate family, settled by
+his father upon his mother, and by his father's father upon his
+grandmother, and upon Salar Jung, his uncle, or were the property of the
+most considerable nobility, to the gross amount of 285,000_l._ Mr.
+Hastings confesses that the Nabob reluctantly made the confiscation to
+the extent proposed. Why? "Because," says he, "the orderlies, namely,
+certain persons so called, subservient to his debaucheries, were persons
+whom he wished to spare." Now I am to show you that this man, whatever
+faults he may have in his private morals, (with which we have nothing at
+all to do,) has been slandered throughout by Mr. Hastings. Take his own
+account of the matter. "The Nabob," says he, "would have confiscated all
+the rest, except his orderlies, whom he would have spared; but I,
+finding where his partiality lay, compelled him to sacrifice the whole;
+for otherwise he would have sacrificed the good to save the bad:
+whereas," says Mr. Hastings, "in effect my principle was to sacrifice
+the good, and at the same time to punish the bad." Now compare the
+account he gives of the proceedings of Asoph ul Dowlah with his own.
+Asoph ul Dowlah, to save some unworthy persons who had jaghires, would,
+if left to his own discretion, have confiscated those only of the
+deserving; while Mr. Hastings, to effect the inclusion of the worthless
+in the confiscation, confiscates the jaghires of the innocent and the
+virtuous men of high rank, and of those who had all the ties of Nature
+to plead for the Nabob's forbearance, and reduced them to a state of
+dependency and degradation.
+
+Now, supposing these two villanous plans, neither of which your
+Lordships can bear to hear the sound of, to stand equal in point of
+morality, let us see how they stand in point of calculation. The
+unexceptionable part of the 285,000_l._ amounted to 260,000_l._ a year;
+whereas, supposing every part of the new grants had been made to the
+most unworthy persons, it only amounted to 25,000_l._ a year. Therefore,
+by his own account, given to you and to the Company, upon this occasion
+he has confiscated 260,000_l._ a year, the property of innocent, if not
+of meritorious individuals, in order to punish by confiscation those who
+had 25,000_l._ a year only. This is the account he gives you himself of
+his honor, his justice, and his policy in these proceedings.
+
+But, my Lords, he shall not escape so. It is in your minutes, that so
+far was the Nabob from wishing to save the new exceptionable grants,
+that, at the time of the forced loan I have mentioned, and also when the
+resumption was proposed, he was perfectly willing to give up every one
+of them, and desired only that his mother, his uncles, and his
+relations, with other individuals, the prime of the Mahometan nobility
+of that country, should be spared. Is it not enough that this poor
+Nabob, this wretched prince, is made a slave to the man now standing at
+your bar, that he is made by him a shame and a scandal to his family,
+his race, and his country, but he must be cruelly aspersed, and have
+faults and crimes attributed to him that do not belong to him? I know
+nothing of his private character and conduct: Mr. Hastings, who deals in
+scandalous anecdotes, knows them: but I take it upon the face of Mr.
+Purling's assertion, and I say, that the Nabob would have consented to
+an arbitrary taxation of the jaghires, and would have given up to
+absolute confiscation every man except those honorable persons I have
+mentioned.
+
+The prisoner himself has called Mr. Wombwell to prove the names of those
+infamous persons with a partiality for whom Mr. Hastings has aspersed
+the Nabob, in order to lay the ground for the destruction of his family.
+They amount to only six in number; and when we come to examine these
+six, we find that their jaghires were perfectly contemptible. The list
+of the other jaghiredars, your Lordships see, fills up pages; and the
+amount of their incomes I have already stated. Your Lordships now see
+how inconsiderable, both in number and amount, were the culpable
+jaghires, in the destruction of which he has involved the greater number
+and the meritorious. You see that the Nabob never did propose any
+exemption of the former at any time; that this was a slander and a
+calumny on that unhappy man, in order to defend the violent acts of the
+prisoner, who has recourse to slander and calumny as a proper way to
+defend violence, outrage, and wrongs.
+
+We have now gone through the first stage of Mr. Hastings's confiscation
+of the estates of these unhappy people. When it came to be put in
+execution, Mr. Middleton finds the Nabob reluctant in the greatest
+degree to make this sacrifice of his family and of all his nobility. It
+touched him in every way in which shame and sympathy can affect a man.
+He falls at the feet of Mr. Middleton; he says, "I signed the treaty of
+Chunar upon an assurance that it was never meant to be put in force."
+Mr. Middleton nevertheless proceeds; he sends the family of the Nabob
+out of the country; but he entertains fears of a general revolt as the
+consequence of this tyrannical act, and refers the case back to Mr.
+Hastings, who insists upon its being executed in its utmost extent. The
+Nabob again remonstrates in the strongest manner; he begs, he prays, he
+dissembles, he delays. One day he pretends to be willing to submit, the
+next he hangs back, just as the violence of Mr. Hastings or his own
+natural feelings and principles of justice dragged him one way or
+dragged him another. Mr. Middleton, trembling, and under the awe of that
+_dreadful responsibility_ under which your Lordships may remember Mr.
+Hastings had expressly laid him upon that occasion, ventures at once to
+usurp the Nabob's government. He usurped it openly and avowedly. He
+declared that he himself would issue his purwannahs as governor of the
+country, for the purpose of executing this abominable confiscation. He
+assumed, I say, to himself the government of the country, and Mr.
+Hastings had armed him with a strong military force for that purpose; he
+declared he would order those troops to march for his support; he at
+last got this reluctant, struggling Nabob to consent in the manner we
+have described.
+
+I shall now read to your Lordships Mr. Middleton's letters, that you may
+hear these men with their own mouths describing their own acts, and that
+your Lordships may then judge whether the highest tone and language of
+crimination comes up to their own description of their own proceedings.
+
+        "_Lucknow, the 6th of Dec., 1781._
+
+     "Finding the Nabob wavering in his determination about the
+     resumption of the jaghires, I this day, in presence of, and with
+     the minister's concurrence, ordered the necessary purwannahs to be
+     written to the several aumils for that purpose, and it was my firm
+     resolution to have dispatched them this evening, with proper people
+     to see them punctually and implicitly carried into execution; but
+     before they were all transcribed, I received a message from the
+     Nabob, who had been informed by the minister of the resolution I
+     had taken, entreating that I would withhold the purwannahs till
+     to-morrow morning, when he would attend me, and afford me
+     satisfaction on this point. As the loss of a few hours in the
+     dispatch of the purwannahs appeared of little moment, and as it is
+     possible the Nabob, seeing that the business will at all events be
+     done, may make it an act of his own, I have consented to indulge
+     him in his request; but, be the result of our interview whatever it
+     may, nothing shall prevent the orders being issued to-morrow,
+     either by him or myself, with the concurrence of the ministers.
+     Your pleasure respecting the Begums I have learnt from Sir Elijah,
+     and the measure heretofore proposed will soon follow the resumption
+     of the jaghires; from both, or, indeed, from the former alone, I
+     have no doubt of the complete liquidation of the Company's
+     balance."
+
+
+       "_Lucknow, the 7th Dec., 1781._
+
+     "My dear Sir,--I had the honor to address you yesterday, informing
+     you of the steps I had taken in regard to the resumption of the
+     jaghires. This morning the Vizier came to me, according to his
+     agreement, but seemingly without any intention or desire to yield
+     me satisfaction on the subject under discussion; for, after a great
+     deal of conversation, consisting on his part of trifling evasion
+     and puerile excuses for withholding his assent to the measure,
+     though at the same time professing the most implicit submission to
+     your wishes, I found myself without any other resource than the one
+     of employing that exclusive authority with which I consider your
+     instructions to vest me. I therefore declared to the Nabob, in
+     presence of the minister and Mr. Johnson, who I desired might bear
+     witness of the conversation, that I construed his rejection of the
+     measure proposed as a breach of his solemn promise to you, and an
+     unwillingness to yield that assistance which was evidently in his
+     power towards liquidating his heavy accumulated debt to the
+     Company, and that I must in consequence determine, in my own
+     justification, to issue immediately the purwannahs, which had only
+     been withheld in the sanguine hope that he would be prevailed upon
+     to make that his own act, which nothing but the most urgent
+     necessity could force me to make mine. He left me without any
+     reply, but afterwards sent for his minister, and authorized him to
+     give me hopes that my requisition would be complied with; on which
+     I expressed my satisfaction, but declared that I could admit of no
+     further delays, and, unless I received his Excellency's formal
+     acquiescence before the evening, I should then most assuredly issue
+     my purwannahs: which I have accordingly done, not having had any
+     assurances from his Excellency that could justify a further
+     suspension. I shall as soon as possible inform you of the effect of
+     the purwannahs, which in many parts I am apprehensive it will be
+     found necessary to enforce with military aid; I am not, however,
+     entirely without hopes that the Nabob, when he sees the inefficacy
+     of further opposition, may alter his conduct, and prevent the
+     confusion and disagreeable consequences which would be too likely
+     to result from the prosecution of a measure of such importance
+     without his concurrence. His Excellency talks of going to Fyzabad,
+     for the purpose heretofore mentioned, in three or four days; I wish
+     he may be serious in this intention, and you may rest assured I
+     shall spare no pains to keep him to it."
+
+
+       "_Lucknow, 28th December, 1781._
+
+     "If your new demand is to be insisted upon, which your letter seems
+     to portend, I must beg your precise orders upon it; as, from the
+     difficulties I have within these few days experienced in carrying
+     the points you had enjoined with the Nabob, I have the best grounds
+     for believing that he would consider it a direct breach of the late
+     agreement, and totally reject the proposal as such; and I must own
+     to you, that, in his present fermented state of mind, I could
+     expect nothing less than despair and a declared rupture.
+
+     "He has by no means been yet able to furnish me with means of
+     paying off the arrears due to the temporary brigade, to the
+     stipulated term of its continuance in his service. The funds
+     necessary for paying off and discharging his own military
+     establishment under British officers, and his pension list, have
+     been raised, on the private credit of Mr. Johnson and myself, from
+     the shroffs of this place, to whom we are at this moment pledged
+     for many lacs of rupees; and without such aid, which I freely and
+     at all hazards yielded, because I conceived it was your anxious
+     desire to relieve the Nabob as soon as possible of this heavy
+     burden, the establishment must have been at his charge to this
+     time, and probably for months to come, while his resources were
+     strained to the utmost to furnish jaidads for its maintenance to
+     this period. I therefore hesitate not to declare it utterly
+     impossible for him, under any circumstances whatever, to provide
+     funds for the payment of the troops you now propose to send him.
+
+     "The wresting Furruckabad, Kyraghur, and Fyzoola Khân's country
+     from his government, (for in that light, my dear Sir, I can
+     faithfully assure you, he views the measures adopted in respect to
+     those countries,) together with the resumption of all the jaghires,
+     so much against his inclination, have already brought the Nabob to
+     a persuasion that nothing less than his destruction, or the
+     annihilation of every shadow of his power, is meant; and all my
+     labors to convince him to the contrary have proved abortive. A
+     settled melancholy has seized him, and his health is reduced beyond
+     conception; and I do most humbly believe that the march of four
+     regiments of sepoys towards Lucknow, under whatever circumstances
+     it might be represented, would be considered by him as a force
+     ultimately to be used in securing his person. In short, my dear
+     Sir, it is a matter of such immediate moment, and involving,
+     apparently, such very serious and important consequences, that I
+     have not only taken upon me to suspend the communication of it to
+     the Nabob until I should be honored with your further commands, but
+     have also ventured to write the inclosed letter to Colonel Morgan:
+     liberties which I confidently trust you will excuse, when you
+     consider that I can be actuated by no other motive than a zeal for
+     the public service, and that, if, after all, you determine that the
+     measure shall be insisted on, it will be only the loss of six or at
+     most eight days in proposing it. But in the last event, I earnestly
+     entreat your orders may be explicit and positive, that I may
+     clearly know what lengths you would wish me to proceed in carrying
+     them into execution. I again declare it is my firm belief, and
+     assure yourself, my dear Mr. Hastings, I am not influenced in this
+     declaration by any considerations but my public duty and my
+     personal attachment to you, that the enforcing the measure you have
+     proposed would be productive of an open rupture between us and the
+     Nabob; nay, that the first necessary step towards carrying it into
+     effect must be, on our part, a declaration of hostility."
+
+Your Lordships have now before your eyes proofs, furnished by Mr.
+Hastings himself from his correspondence with Mr. Middleton,
+irrefragable proofs, that this Nabob, who is stated to have made the
+proposition himself, was dragged to the signature of it; and that the
+troops which are supposed, and fraudulently stated, (and I wish your
+Lordships particularly to observe this,) to have been sent to assist
+him in this measure, were considered by him as a body of troops sent to
+imprison him, and to free him from all the troubles and pains of
+government.
+
+When Mr. Hastings sent the troops for the purpose, as he pretended, of
+assisting the Nabob in the execution of a measure which was really
+adopted in direct opposition to the wishes of that prince, what other
+conclusion could be drawn, but that they were sent to overawe, not to
+assist him? The march of alien troops into a country upon that occasion
+could have no object but hostility; they could have been sent with no
+other design but that of bringing disgrace upon the Nabob, by making him
+the instrument of his family's ruin, and of the destruction of his
+nobility. Your Lordships, therefore, will not wonder that this miserable
+man should have sunk into despair, and that he should have felt the
+weight of his oppression doubly aggravated by its coming from such a man
+as Mr. Hastings, and by its being enforced by such a man as Mr.
+Middleton.
+
+And here I must press one observation upon your Lordships: I do not know
+a greater insult that can be offered to a man born to command than to
+find himself made the tool of a set of obscure men, come from an unknown
+country, without anything to distinguish them but an usurped power.
+Never shall I, out of compliment to any persons, because they happen to
+be my own countrymen, disguise my feelings, or renounce the dictates of
+Nature and of humanity. If we send out obscure people, unknowing and
+unknown, to exercise such acts as these, I must say it is a bitter
+aggravation of the victim's suffering. Oppression and robbery are at all
+times evils; but they are more bearable, when exercised by persons whom
+we have been habituated to regard with awe, and to whom mankind for ages
+have been accustomed to bow.
+
+Now does the history of tyranny furnish, does the history of popular
+violence deposing kings furnish, anything like the dreadful deposition
+of this prince, and the cruel and abominable tyranny that has been
+exercised over him? Consider, too, my Lords, for what object all this
+was done. Was Mr. Hastings endeavoring, by his arbitrary interference
+and the use of his superior power, to screen a people from the
+usurpation and power of a tyrant,--from any strong and violent acts
+against property, against dignity, against nobility, against the freedom
+of his people? No: you see here a monarch deposed, in effect, by persons
+pretending to be his allies, and assigning what are pretended to be his
+wishes as the motive for using his usurped authority in the execution of
+these acts of violence against his own family and his subjects. You see
+him struggling against this violent prostitution of his authority. He
+refuses the sanction of his name, which before he had given up to Mr.
+Hastings to be used as he pleased, and only begs not to be made an
+instrument of wrong which his soul abhors, and which would make him
+infamous throughout the world. Mr. Middleton, however, assumes the
+sovereignty of the country. "I," he says, "am Nabob of Oude: the
+jaghires shall be confiscated: I have given my orders, and they shall be
+supported by a military force."
+
+I am ashamed to have so far distrusted your Lordships' honorable and
+generous feelings as to have offered you, upon this occasion, any
+remarks which you must have run before me in making. Those feelings
+which you have, and ought to have, feelings born in the breasts of all
+men, and much more in men of your Lordships' elevated rank, render my
+remarks unnecessary. I need not, therefore, ask what you feel, when a
+foreign resident at a prince's court takes upon himself to force that
+prince to act the part of a tyrant, and, upon his resistance, openly and
+avowedly assumes the sovereignty of the country. You have it in proof
+that Mr. Middleton did this. He not only put his own name to the orders
+for this horrible confiscation, but he actually proceeded to dispossess
+the jaghiredars of their lands, and to send them out of the country. And
+whom does he send, in the place of this plundered body of nobility, to
+take possession of the country? Why, the usurers of Benares. Yes, my
+Lords, he immediately mortgages the whole country to the usurers of
+Benares, for the purpose of raising money upon it: giving it up to those
+bloodsuckers, dispossessed of that nobility, whose interest, whose duty,
+whose feelings, and whose habits made them the natural protectors of the
+people.
+
+My Lords, we here see a body of usurers put into possession of all the
+estates of the nobility: let us now see if this act was necessary, even
+for the avowed purposes of its agents,--the relief of the Nabob's
+financial difficulties, and the payment of his debts to the Company. Mr.
+Middleton has told your Lordships that these jaghires would pay the
+Company's debt completely in two years. Then would it not have been
+better to have left these estates in the hands of their owners, and to
+have oppressed them in some moderate, decent way? Might they not have
+left the jaghiredars to raise the sums required by some settlement with
+the bankers of Benares, in which the repayment of the money within five
+or six years might have been secured, and the jaghiredars have had in
+the mean time something to subsist upon? Oh, no! these victims must have
+nothing to live upon. They must be turned out. And why? Mr. Hastings
+commands it.
+
+Here I must come in aid of Mr. Middleton a little; for one cannot but
+pity the miserable instruments that have to act under Mr. Hastings. I do
+not mean to apologize for Mr. Middleton, but to pity the situation of
+persons who, being servants of the Company, were converted, by the
+usurpation of this man, into his subjects and his slaves. The mind of
+Mr. Middleton revolts. You see him reluctant to proceed. The Nabob begs
+a respite. You find in the Resident a willingness to comply. Even Mr.
+Middleton is placable. Mr. Hastings alone is obdurate. His resolution to
+rob and to destroy was not to be moved, and the estates of the whole
+Mahometan nobility of a great kingdom were confiscated in a moment. Your
+Lordships will observe that his orders to Mr. Middleton allow no
+forbearance. He writes thus to him.
+
+     "Sir,--My mind has been for some days suspended between two
+     opposite impulses: one arising from the necessity of my return to
+     Calcutta; the other, from the apprehension of my presence being
+     more necessary and more urgently wanted at Lucknow. Your answer to
+     this shall decide my choice.
+
+     "I have waited thus long in the hopes of hearing that some progress
+     had been made in the execution of the plan which I concluded with
+     the Nabob in September last. I do not find that any step towards
+     it has been yet taken, though three months are elapsed, and little
+     more than that period did appear to me requisite to have
+     accomplished the most essential parts of it, and to have brought
+     the whole into train. This tardiness, and the opposition prepared
+     to the only decided act yet undertaken, have a bad appearance. I
+     approve the Nabob's resolutions to deprive the Begums of their
+     ill-employed treasures. In both services, it must be your care to
+     prevent an abuse of the powers given to those that are employed in
+     them. You yourself ought to be personally present. You must not
+     allow any negotiation or forbearance, but must prosecute both
+     services, until the Begums are at the entire mercy of the Nabob,
+     their jaghires in the quiet possession of his aumils, and their
+     wealth in such charge as may secure it against private
+     embezzlement. You will have a force more than sufficient to effect
+     both these purposes.
+
+     "The reformation of his army and the new settlement of his revenues
+     are also points of immediate concern, and ought to be immediately
+     concluded. Has anything been done in either?
+
+     "I now demand and require you most solemnly to answer me. Are you
+     confident in your own ability to accomplish all these purposes, and
+     the other points of my instructions? If you reply that you are, I
+     will depart with a quiet and assured mind to the Presidency, but
+     leave you a dreadful responsibility, if you disappoint me. If you
+     tell me that you cannot rely upon your power, and the other means
+     which you possess for performing these services, I will free you
+     from the charge. I will proceed myself to Lucknow, and I will
+     myself undertake them; and in that case, I desire that you will
+     immediately order bearers to be stationed, for myself and two other
+     gentlemen, between Lucknow and Allahabad, and I will set out from
+     hence in three days after the receipt of your letter.
+
+     "I am sorry that I am under the necessity of writing in this
+     pressing manner. I trust implicitly to your integrity, I am certain
+     of your attachment to myself, and I know that your capacity is
+     equal to any service; but I must express my doubts of your firmness
+     and activity, and above all of your recollection of my
+     instructions, and of their importance. My conduct in the late
+     arrangements will be arraigned with all the rancor of disappointed
+     rapacity, and my reputation and influence will suffer a mortal
+     wound from the failure of them. They have already failed in a
+     degree, since no part of them has yet taken place, but the removal
+     of our forces from the Dooab and Rohilcund, and of the British
+     officers and pensioners from the service of the Nabob, and the
+     expenses of the former thrown without any compensation on the
+     Company.
+
+     "I expect a supply of money equal to the discharge of all the
+     Nabob's arrears, and am much disappointed and mortified that I am
+     not now able to return with it.
+
+     "Give me an immediate answer to the question which I have herein
+     proposed, that I may lose no more time in fruitless inaction."
+
+About this time Mr. Hastings had received information of our inquiries
+in the House of Commons into his conduct; and this is the manner in
+which he prepares to meet them. "I must get money. I must carry with me
+that great excuse for everything, that salve for every sore, that
+expiation for every crime: let me provide that, all is well. You, Mr.
+Middleton, try your nerves: are you equal to these services? Examine
+yourself; see what is in you: are you man enough to come up to it?" says
+the great robber to the little robber, says Roland the Great to his puny
+accomplice. "Are you equal to it? Do you feel yourself a man? If not,
+send messengers and dawks to me, and I, the great master tyrant, will
+come myself, and put to shame all the paltry delegate tools of
+despotism, that have not edge enough to cut their way through and do the
+services I have ordained for them."
+
+I have already stated to your Lordships his reason and motives for this
+violence, and they are such as aggravated his crime by attempting to
+implicate his country in it. He says he was afraid to go home without
+having provided for the payment of the Nabob's debt. Afraid of what? Was
+he afraid of coming before a British tribunal, and saying, "Through
+justice, through a regard for the rights of an allied sovereign, through
+a regard to the rights of his people, I have not got so much as I
+expected"? Of this no man could be afraid. The prisoner's fear had
+another origin. "I have failed," says he to himself, "in my first
+project. I went to Benares to rob; I have lost by my violence the fruits
+of that robbery. I must get the money somewhere, or I dare not appear
+before a British House of Commons, a British House of Lords, or any
+other tribunal in the kingdom; but let me get money enough, and they
+won't care how I get it. The estates of whole bodies of nobility may be
+confiscated; a people who had lived under their protection may be given
+up into the hands of foreign usurers: they will care for none of these
+things; they will suffer me to do all this, and to employ in it the
+force of British troops, whom I have described as a set of robbers,
+provided I can get money." These were Mr. Hastings's views; and, in
+accordance with them, the jaghires were all confiscated, the jaghiredars
+with their families were all turned out, the possessions delivered up to
+the usurer, in order that Mr. Hastings might have the excuse of money to
+plead at the bar of the House of Commons, and afterwards at the bar of
+the House of Lords. If your Lordships, in your sacred character of the
+first tribunal in the world, should by your judgment justify those
+proceedings, you will sanction the greatest wrongs that have been ever
+known in history.
+
+But to proceed. The next thing to be asked is, Were the promised
+pensions given to the jaghiredars? I suppose your Lordships are not idle
+enough to put that question to us. No compensation, no consideration,
+was given or stipulated for them. If there had been any such thing, the
+prisoner could have proved it,--he would have proved it. The means were
+easy to him. But we have saved him the trouble of the attempt. We have
+proved the contrary, and, if called upon, we will show you the place
+where this is proved.
+
+I have now shown your Lordships how Mr. Hastings, having with such
+violent and atrocious circumstances usurped the government of Oude, (I
+hope I need not use any farther proof that the Nabob was in effect
+non-existent in the country,) treated all the landed property. The next
+question will be, How has he treated whatever moneyed property was left
+in the country? My Lords, he looked over that immense waste of his own
+creating, not as Satan viewed the kingdoms of the world and saw the
+power and glory of them,--but he looked over the waste of Oude with a
+diabolical malice which one could hardly suppose existed in the
+prototype himself. He saw nowhere above-ground one single shilling that
+he could attach,--no, not one; every place had been ravaged; no money
+remained in sight. But possibly some might be buried in vaults, hid from
+the gripe of tyranny and rapacity. "It must be so," says he. "Where can
+I find it? how can I get at it? There is one illustrious family that is
+thought to have accumulated a vast body of treasures, through a course
+of three or four successive reigns. It does not appear openly; but we
+have good information that very great sums of money are bricked up and
+kept in vaults under ground, and secured under the guard and within the
+walls of a fortress": the residence of the females of the family, a
+guard, as your Lordships know, rendered doubly and trebly secure by the
+manners of the country, which make everything that is in the hands of
+women sacred. It is said that nothing is proof against gold,--that the
+strongest tower will not be impregnable, if Jupiter makes love in a
+golden shower. This Jupiter commences making love; but he does not come
+to the ladies with gold for their persons, he comes to their persons for
+their gold. This impetuous lover, Mr. Hastings, who is not to be stayed
+from the objects of his passion, would annihilate space and time between
+him and his beloved object, the jaghires of these ladies, had now,
+first, their treasure's affection.
+
+Your Lordships have already had a peep behind the curtain, in the first
+orders sent to Mr. Middleton. In the treaty of Chunar you see a desire,
+obliquely expressed, to get the landed estates of all these great
+families. But even while he was meeting with such reluctance in the
+Nabob upon this point, and though he also met with some resistance upon
+the part even of Mr. Middleton, Mr. Hastings appears to have given him
+in charge some other still more obnoxious and dreadful acts. "While I
+was meditating," says Mr. Middleton, in one of his letters, "upon this
+[the resumption of the jaghires], your orders came to me through Sir
+Elijah Impey." What these orders were is left obscure in the letter: it
+is yet but as in a mist or cloud. But it is evident that Sir Elijah
+Impey did convey to him some project for getting at more wealth by some
+other service, which was not to supersede the first, but to be
+concurrent with that upon which Mr. Hastings had before given him such
+dreadful charges and had loaded him with such horrible responsibility.
+It could not have been anything but the seizure of the Begum's
+treasures. He thus goaded on two reluctant victims,--first the reluctant
+Nabob, then the reluctant Mr. Middleton,--forcing them with the bayonet
+behind them, and urging on the former, as at last appears, to violate
+the sanctity of his mother's house.
+
+Your Lordships have been already told by one of my able fellow Managers,
+that Sir Elijah Impey is the person who carried up the message alluded
+to in Mr. Middleton's letter. We have charged it, as an aggravation of
+the offences of the prisoner at your bar, that the Chief-Justice, who,
+by the sacred nature of his office, and by the express provisions of the
+act of Parliament under which he was sent out to India to redress the
+wrongs of the natives, should be made an instrument for destroying the
+property, real and personal, of this people. When it first came to our
+knowledge that all this private intrigue for the destruction of these
+high women was carried on through the intrigue of a Chief-Justice, we
+felt such shame and such horror, both for the instrument and the
+principal, as I think it impossible to describe, or for anything but
+complete and perfect silence to express.
+
+But by Sir Elijah Impey was that order carried up to seize and
+confiscate the treasures of the Begums. We know that neither the Company
+nor the Nabob had any claim whatever upon these treasures. On the
+contrary, we know that two treaties had been made for the protection of
+them. We know that the Nabob, while he was contesting about some
+elephants and carriages, and some other things that he said were in the
+hands of their steward, did allow that the treasures in the custody of
+his grandmother and of his mother's principal servants were their
+property. This is the Nabob who is now represented by Mr. Hastings and
+his counsel to have become the instrument of destroying his mother and
+grandmother, and everything else that ought to be dear to mankind,
+throughout the whole train of his family.
+
+Mr. Hastings, having resolved to seize upon the treasures of the Begums,
+is at a loss for some pretence of justifying the act. His first
+justification of it is on grounds which all tyrants have ready at their
+hands. He begins to discover a legal title to that of which he wished to
+be the possessor, and on this title sets up a claim to these treasures.
+I say Mr. Hastings set up this claim, because by this time I suppose
+your Lordships will not bear to hear the Nabob's name on such an
+occasion. The prisoner pretended, that, by the Mahometan law, these
+goods did belong to the Nabob; but whether they did or did not, he had
+himself been an active instrument in the treaty for securing their
+possession to the Begums,--a security which he attempts to unlock by his
+constructions of the Mahometan law. Having set up this title, the
+guaranty still remained; and how is he to get rid of that? In his usual
+way. "You have rebelled, you have taken up arms against your own son,"
+(for that is the pretext,) "and therefore my guaranty is gone, and your
+goods, whether you have a title to them or not, are to be confiscated
+for your rebellion." This is his second expedient by way of
+justification.
+
+Your Lordships will observe the strange situation in which we are here
+placed. If the fact of the rebellion can be proved, the discussion of
+the title to the property in question will be totally useless; for, if
+the ladies had actually taken up arms to cut the Nabob's throat, it
+would require no person to come from the dead to prove to us that the
+Nabob, but not Mr. Hastings, had a right, for his own security and for
+his own indemnification, to take those treasures, which, whether they
+belonged to him or not, were employed in hostilities against him. The
+law of self-defence is above every other law; and if any persons draw
+the sword against you, violence on your part is justified, and you may
+use your sword to take from them that property by which they have been
+enabled to draw their sword against you.
+
+But the prisoner's counsel do not trust to this justification; they set
+up a title of right to these treasures: but how entirely they have
+failed in their attempts to substantiate either the one or the other of
+these his alleged justifications your Lordships will now judge. And
+first with regard to the title. The treasure, they say, belonged to the
+state. The grandmother and mother have robbed the son, and kept him out
+of his rightful inheritance. They then produce the Hedaya to show you
+what proportion of the goods of a Mussulman, when he dies, goes to his
+family; and here, certainly, there is a question of law to be tried. But
+Mr. Hastings is a great eccentric genius, and has a course of proceeding
+of his own: he first seizes upon the property, and then produces some
+Mahometan writers to prove that it did not belong to the persons who
+were in possession of it. You would naturally expect, that, when he was
+going to seize upon those goods, he would have consulted his
+Chief-Justice, (for, as Sir Elijah Impey went with him, he might have
+consulted him,) and have thus learnt what was the Mahometan law: for,
+though Sir Elijah had not taken his degree at a Mahometan college,
+though he was not a mufti or a moulavy, yet he had always muftis and
+moulavies near him, and he might have consulted them. But Mr. Hastings
+does not even pretend that such consultations or conferences were ever
+had. If he ever consulted Sir Elijah Impey, where is the report of the
+case? When were the parties before him? Where are the opinions of the
+moulavies? Where is the judgment of the Chief-Justice? Was he fit for
+nothing but to be employed as a messenger, as a common tipstaff? Was he
+not fit to try these rights, or to decide upon them? He has told you
+here, indeed, negatively, that he did not know any title Mr. Hastings
+had to seize upon the property of the Begums, except upon his hypothesis
+of the rebellion. He was asked if he knew any other. He answered, No. It
+consequently appears that Mr. Hastings, though he had before him his
+doctors of all laws, who could unravel for him all the enigmas of all
+the laws in the world, and who had himself shone upon questions of
+Mahometan law, in the case of the Nuddea Begum, did not dare to put this
+case to Sir Elijah Impey, and ask what was his opinion concerning the
+rights of these people. He was tender, I suppose, of the reputation of
+the Chief-Justice. For Sir Elijah Impey, though a very good man to write
+a letter, or take an affidavit in a corner, or run on a message, to do
+the business of an under-sheriff, tipstaff, or bum-bailiff, was not fit
+to give an opinion on a question of Mahometan law.
+
+You have heard Ali Ibrahim Khân referred to. This Mahometan lawyer was
+carried by Mr. Hastings up to Benares, to be a witness of the vast good
+he had done in that province, and was made Chief-Justice there. All,
+indeed, that we know of him, except the high character given of him by
+Mr. Hastings, is, I believe, that he is the Ali Ibrahim Khân whom in the
+Company's records I find mentioned as a person giving bribes upon some
+former occasion to Mr. Hastings; but whatever he was besides, he was a
+doctor of the Mahometan law, he was a mufti, and was made by Mr.
+Hastings the principal judge in a criminal court, exercising, as I
+believe, likewise a considerable civil jurisdiction, and therefore he
+was qualified as a lawyer; and Mr. Hastings cannot object to his
+qualifications either of integrity or of knowledge. This man was with
+him. Why did not he consult him upon this law? Why did he not make him
+out a case of John Doe and Richard Roe, of John Stokes and John à Nokes?
+Why not say, "Sinub possesses such things, under such and such
+circumstances: give me your opinion upon the legality of the
+possession"? No, he did no such thing.
+
+Your Lordships, I am sure, will think it a little extraordinary, that
+neither this chief-justice made by himself, nor that other chief-justice
+whom he led about with him in a string,--the one an English
+chief-justice, with a Mahometan suit in his court, the other a Mahometan
+chief-justice of the country,--that neither of them was consulted as
+lawyers by the prisoner. Both of them were, indeed, otherwise employed
+by him. For we find Ali Ibrahim Khân employed in the same subservient
+capacity in which Sir Elijah Impey was,--in order, I suppose, to keep
+the law of England and the law of Mahomet upon a just par: for upon this
+equality Mr. Hastings always values himself. Neither of these two
+chief-justices, I say, was ever consulted, nor one opinion taken; but
+they were both employed in the correspondence and private execution of
+this abominable project, when the prisoner himself had not either
+leisure or perhaps courage to give his public order in it till things
+got to greater ripeness.
+
+To Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, he did put a question; and, upon my word,
+it did not require an Œdipus or a Sphinx to answer it. Says he, "I
+asked Sir Elijah Impey." What? a question on the title between the Nabob
+and his mother? No such thing. He puts an hypothetical question.
+"Supposing," says he, "a rebellion to exist in that country; will the
+Nabob be justified in seizing the goods of the rebels?" That is a
+question decided in a moment; and I must have a malice to Sir Elijah
+Impey of which I am incapable, to deny the propriety of his answer. But
+observe, I pray you, my Lords, there is something peculiarly good and
+correct in it. He does not take upon him to say one word of the actual
+existence of a rebellion, though he was at the time in the country, and,
+if there had been any, he must have been a witness to it; but, so chaste
+was his character as a judge, that he would not touch upon the juries'
+office. "I am chief-justice here," says he, "though a little wandering
+out of my orbit; yet still the sacred office of justice is in me. Do you
+take upon you the fact; I find the law." Were it not for this sacred
+attention to separate jurisdictions, he might have been a tolerable
+judge of the fact,--just as good a judge as Mr. Hastings: for neither of
+them knew it any other way, as it appears afterwards, but by rumor and
+reports,--reports, I believe, of Mr. Hastings's own raising; for I do
+not know that Sir Elijah Impey had anything to do with them.
+
+But to proceed. With regard to the title of these ladies, according to
+the Mahometan law, you have nothing laid before you by the prisoner's
+counsel but a quotation cut out with the scissors from a Mahometan
+law-book, (which I suspect very much the learned gentlemen have never
+read through,) declaring how a Mahometan's effects are to be
+distributed. But Mr. Hastings could not at the time have consulted that
+learned counsel who now defends him upon the principles of the Hedaya,
+the Hedaya not having been then published in English; and I will venture
+to say, that neither Sir Elijah Impey nor Ali Ibrahim Khân, nor any
+other person, high or low, in India, ever suggested this defence, and
+that it was never thought of till lately found by the learned counsel in
+the English translation of the Hedaya. "God bless me!" now says Mr.
+Hastings, "what ignorance have I been in all this time! I thought I was
+seizing this unjustly, and that the pretence of rebellion was necessary;
+but my counsel have found out a book, since published, and from it they
+produce the law upon that subject, and show that the Nabob had a right
+to seize upon the treasures of his mother." But are your Lordships so
+ignorant--(your Lordships are not ignorant of anything)--are any men so
+ignorant as not to know that in every country the common law of
+distribution of the estate of an intestate amongst private individuals
+is no rule with regard to the family arrangements of great princes? Is
+any one ignorant, that, from the days of the first origin of the Persian
+monarchy, the laws of which have become rules ever since for almost all
+the monarchs of the East, the wives of great men have had, independent
+of the common distribution of their goods, great sums of money and great
+estates in land, one for their girdle, one for their veil, and so on,
+going through the rest of their ornaments and attire,--and that they
+held great estates and other effects over which the reigning monarch or
+his successor had no control whatever? Indeed, my Lords, a more curious
+and extraordinary species of trial than this of a question of right
+never was heard of since the world began. Mr. Hastings begins with
+seizing the goods of the Begums at Fyzabad, nine thousand miles from
+you, and fourteen years after tries the title in an English court,
+without having one person to appear for these miserable ladies. I trust
+you will not suffer this mockery; I hope this last and ultimate shame
+will be spared us: for I declare to God, that the defence, and the
+principles of it, appear to me ten thousand times worse than the act
+itself.
+
+Now, my Lords, this criminal, through his counsel, chooses, with their
+usual flippancy, to say that the Commons have been _cautious_ in stating
+this part of the charge, knowing that they were on tender ground, and
+therefore did not venture to say _entitled_, but _possessed of_ only. A
+notable discovery indeed! We are as far from being taken in by such
+miserable distinctions as we are incapable of making them. We certainly
+have not said that the Begums were entitled to, but only that they were
+possessed of, certain property. And we have so said because we were not
+competent to decide upon their title, because your Lordships are not
+competent to decide upon their title, because no part of this tribunal
+is competent to decide upon their title. You have not the parties before
+you; you have not the cause before you,--but are getting it by oblique,
+improper, and indecent means. You are not a court of justice to try that
+question. The parties are at a distance from you; they are neither
+present themselves, nor represented by any counsel, advocate, or
+attorney: and I hope no House of Lords will ever judge and decide upon
+the title of any human being, much less upon the title of the first
+women in Asia, sequestered, shut up from you, at nine thousand miles'
+distance.
+
+I believe, my Lords, that the Emperor of Hindostan little thought, while
+Delhi stood, that an English subject of Mr. Hastings's description
+should domineer over the Vizier of his empire, and give the law to the
+first persons in his dominions. He as little dreamed of it as any of
+your Lordships now dream that you shall have your property seized by a
+delegate from Lucknow, and have it tried by what tenure a peer or
+peeress of Great Britain hold, the one his estate, and the other her
+jointure, dower, or her share of goods, her paraphernalia, in any court
+of Adawlut in Hindostan. If any such thing should happen, (for we know
+not what may happen; we live in an age of strange revolutions, and I
+doubt whether any more strange than this,) the Commons of Great Britain
+would shed their best blood sooner than suffer that a tribunal at
+Lucknow should decide upon any of your titles, for the purpose of
+justifying a robber that has taken your property. We should do the best
+we could, if such a strange circumstance occurred.
+
+The House of Commons, who are virtually the representatives of Lucknow,
+and who lately took 500,000_l._ of their money, will not suffer the
+natives first to be robbed of their property, and then the titles, which
+by the laws of their own country they have to the goods they possess, to
+be tried by any tribunal in Great Britain. Why was it not tried in India
+before Mr. Hastings? One would suppose that an English governor, if
+called to decide upon such a claim of the Nabob's, would doubtless be
+attended by judges, muftis, lawyers, and all the apparatus of legal
+justice. No such thing. This man marches into the country, not with
+moulavies, not with muftis, not with the solemn apparatus of Oriental
+justice,--no: he goes with colonels, and captains, and majors,--these
+are his lawyers: and when he gets there, he demands from the parties,
+not their title,--no: "Give me your money!" is his cry. It is a shame
+(and I will venture to say, that these gentlemen, upon recollection,
+will feel ashamed) to see the bar justify what the sword is ashamed of.
+In reading this correspondence, I have found these great muftis and
+lawyers, these great chief-justices, attorneys-general, and
+solicitors-general, called colonels and captains, ashamed of these
+proceedings, and endeavoring to mitigate their cruelty; yet we see
+British lawyers in a British tribunal supporting and justifying these
+acts, on the plea of defective titles.
+
+The learned counsel asks, with an air of triumph, whether these ladies
+possessed these treasures by jointure, dower, will, or settlement. What
+was the title? Was it a deed of gift?--was it a devise?--was it _donatio
+causâ mortis?_--was it dower?--was it jointure?--what was it? To all
+which senseless and absurd questions we answer, You asked none of these
+questions of the parties, when you guarantied to them, by a solemn
+treaty, the possession of their goods. Then was the time to have asked
+these questions: but you asked none of them. You supposed their right,
+and you guarantied it, though you might then have asked what was their
+right. But besides the force and virtue of the guaranty, these unhappy
+princesses had ransomed themselves from any claim upon their property.
+They paid a sum of money, applied to your use, for that guaranty. They
+had a treble title,--by possession, by guaranty, by purchase.
+
+Again, did you ask these questions, when you went to rob them of their
+landed estates, their money, their ornaments, and even their
+wearing-apparel? When you sent those great lawyers, Major ----, Major
+----, and the other majors, and colonels, and captains, did you call on
+them to exhibit their title-deeds? No: with a pistol at their breast,
+you demanded their money. Instead of forging a charge of rebellion
+against these unhappy persons, why did you not then call on them for
+their vouchers? No rebellion was necessary to give validity to a civil
+claim. What you could get by an ordinary judgment did not want
+confiscation called to its aid. When you had their eunuchs, their
+ministers, their treasurers, their agents and attorneys in irons, did
+you then ask any of these questions? No. "Discover the money you have in
+trust, or _you_ go to corporal punishment,--_you_ go to the castle of
+Chunar,--here is another pair of irons!"--this was the only language
+used.
+
+When the Court of Directors, alarmed at the proceedings against these
+ancient ladies, ordered their Indian government to make an inquiry into
+their conduct, the prisoner had then an opportunity and a duty imposed
+upon him of entering into a complete justification of his conduct: he
+might have justified it by every civil, and by every criminal mode of
+process. Did he do this? No. Your Lordships have in evidence the manner,
+equally despotic, _rebellious_, insolent, fraudulent, tricking, and
+evasive, by which he positively refused all inquiry into the matter. How
+stands it now, more than twelve years after the seizure of their goods,
+at ten thousand miles' distance? You ask of these women, buried in the
+depths of Asia, secluded from human commerce, what is their title to
+their estate. Have you the parties before you? Have you summoned them?
+Where is their attorney? Where is their agent? Where is their counsel?
+Is this law? Is this a legal process? Is this a tribunal,--the highest
+tribunal of all,--that which is to furnish the example for, and to be a
+control on all the rest? But what is worse, you do not come _directly_
+to the trial of this right to property. You are desired to surround and
+circumvent it; you are desired obliquely to steal an iniquitous
+judgment, which you dare not boldly ravish. At this judgment you can
+only arrive by a side wind. You have before you a criminal process
+against an offender. One of the charges against him is, that he has
+robbed matrons of high and reverend place. His defence is, that they had
+not the apt deeds to entitle them in law to this property. _In_ this
+cause, with only the delinquent party before you, you are called upon to
+try their title on his allegations of its invalidity, and by acquitting
+him to divest them not only of their goods, but of their honor,--to call
+them disseizors, wrong-doers, cheats, defrauders of their own son. No
+hearing for them,--no pleading,--all appeal cut off. Was ever a man
+indicted for a robbery, that is, for the forcible taking of the goods
+possessed by another, suffered to desire the prosecutor to show the
+deeds or other instruments by which he acquired those goods? The idea is
+contemptible and ridiculous. Do these men dream? Do they conceive, in
+their confused imaginations, that you can be here trying such a
+question, and venturing to decide upon it? Your Lordships will never do
+that, which if you did do, you would be unfit to subsist as a tribunal
+for a single hour; and if we, on our part, did not bring before you this
+attempt, as the heaviest aggravation of the prisoner's crimes, we
+should betray our trust as representatives of the Commons of Great
+Britain. Having made this protest in favor of law, of justice, and good
+policy, permit me to take a single step more.
+
+I will now show your Lordships that it is very possible, nay, very
+probable, and almost certain, that a great part of what these ladies
+possessed was a saving of their own, and independent of any grant. It
+appears in the papers before you, that these unfortunate ladies had
+about 70,000_l._ a year, landed property. Mr. Bristow states in evidence
+before your Lordships, that their annual expenses did not exceed a lac
+and a half, and that their income was about seven lacs; that they had
+possessed this for twenty years before the death of Sujah Dowlah, and
+from the death of that prince to the day of the robbery. Now, if your
+Lordships will calculate what the savings from an income of 70,000_l._ a
+year will amount to, when the party spends about 15,000_l._ a year, you
+will see that by a regular and strict economy these people may have
+saved considerable property of their own, independent of their titles to
+any other property: and this is a rational way of accounting for their
+being extremely rich. It may be supposed, likewise, that they had all
+those advantages which ladies of high rank usually have in that
+country,--gifts at marriage, &c. We know that there are deeds of gift by
+husbands to their wives during their lifetime, and many other legal
+means, by which women in Asia become possessed of very great property.
+But Mr. Hastings has taught them the danger of much wealth, and the
+danger of economy. He has shown them that they are saving, not for their
+families, for those who may possibly stand in the utmost need of it,
+but for tyrants, robbers, and oppressors.
+
+My Lords, I am really ashamed to have said so much upon the subject of
+their titles. And yet there is one observation more to be made, and then
+I shall have done with this part of the prisoner's defence. It is, that
+the Nabob himself never has made a claim on this ground; even Mr.
+Hastings, his despotic master, could never get him regularly and
+systematically to make such a claim; the very reverse of this is the
+truth. When urged on to the commission of these acts of violence by Mr.
+Middleton, you have seen with what horror and how reluctantly he lends
+his name; and when he does so, he is dragged like a victim to the stake.
+At the beginning of this affair, where do we find that he entered this
+claim, as the foundation of it? Upon one occasion only, when dragged to
+join in this wicked act, something dropped from his lips which seemed
+rather to have been forced into his mouth, and which he was obliged to
+spit out again, about the possibility that he might have had some right
+to the effects of the Begums.
+
+We next come to consider the manner in which these acts of violence were
+executed. They forced the Nabob himself to accompany their troops, and
+their Resident, Mr. Middleton, to attack the city and to storm the fort
+in which these ladies lived, and consequently to outrage their persons,
+to insult their character, and to degrade their dignity, as well as to
+rob them of all they had.
+
+That your Lordships may learn something of one of these ladies, called
+the Munny Begum, I will refer you to Major Browne's evidence,--a man who
+was at Delhi, the fountain-head of all the nobility of India, and must
+have known who this lady was that has been treated with such indignity
+by the prisoner at your bar. Major Browne was asked, "What was the
+opinion at Delhi respecting the rank, quality, and character of the
+Princesses of Oude, or of either of them?"--"The elder, or Munny Begum,
+was," says he, "a woman of high rank: she was, I believe, the daughter
+of Saadut Ali Khân, a person of high rank in the time of Mahommed
+Shah."--"Do you know whether any woman in all Hindostan was considered
+of superior rank or birth?"--He answers, "I believe not, except those of
+the royal family. She was a near relation to Mirza Shaffee Khân, who was
+a noble of nobles, the first person at that day in the empire." In
+answer to another question put by a noble Lord, in the same examination,
+respecting the conversation which he had with Mirza Shaffee Khân, and of
+which he had given an account, he says, "He [Mirza Shaffee Khân] spoke
+of the attempt to seize the treasures of the Begums, which was then
+suspected, in terms of resentment, and as a disgrace in which he
+participated, as being related by blood to the house of Sufdar Jung, who
+was the husband of the old Begum." He says afterwards, in the same
+examination, that he, the Begum's husband, was the second man, and that
+her father was the first man, in the Mogul empire. Now the Mogul empire,
+when this woman came into the world, was an empire of that dignity that
+kings were its subjects; and this very Mirza Shaffee Khân, that we speak
+of, her near relation, was then a prince with a million a year revenue,
+and a man of the first rank, after the Great Mogul, in the whole empire.
+
+My Lords, these were people that ought to have been treated with a
+little decorum. When we consider the high rank of their husbands, their
+fathers, and their children, a rank so high that we have nothing in
+Great Britain to compare with theirs, we cannot be surprised that they
+were left in possession of great revenues, great landed estates, and
+great moneyed property. All the female parts of these families, whose
+alliance was, doubtless, much courted, could not be proffered in
+marriage, and endowed in a manner agreeably to the dignity of such
+persons, but with great sums of money; and your Lordships must also
+consider the multitude of children of which these families frequently
+consisted. The consequences of this robbery were such as might naturally
+be expected. It is said that not one of the females of this family has
+since been given in marriage.
+
+But all this has nothing to do with the rebellion. If they had, indeed,
+rebelled to cut their own son's throat, there is an end of the business.
+But what evidence have you of this fact? and if none can be produced,
+does not the prisoner's defence aggravate infinitely his crime and that
+of his agents? Did they ever once state to these unfortunate women that
+any such rebellion existed? Did they ever charge them with it? Did they
+ever set the charge down in writing, or make it verbally, that they had
+conspired to destroy their son, a son whom Mr. Hastings had brought
+there to rob them? No, this was what neither Mr. Hastings nor his agent
+ever did: for as they never made a civil demand upon them, so they never
+made a criminal charge against them, or against any person belonging to
+them.
+
+I save your Lordships the trouble of listening to the manner in which
+they seized upon these people, and dispersed their guard. Mr. Middleton
+states, that they found great difficulties in getting at their
+treasures,--that they stormed their forts successively, but found great
+reluctance in the sepoys to make their way into the inner inclosures of
+the women's apartments. Being at a loss what to do, their only resource,
+he says, was to threaten that they would seize their eunuchs. These are
+generally persons who have been bought slaves, and who, not having any
+connections in the country where they are settled, are supposed to guard
+both the honor of the women, and their treasures, with more fidelity
+than other persons would do. We know that in Constantinople, and in many
+other places, these persons enjoy offices of the highest trust, and are
+of great rank and dignity; and this dignity and rank they possess for
+the purpose of enabling them to fulfil their great trusts more
+effectually. The two principal eunuchs of the Begums were Jewar and
+Behar Ali Khân, persons of as high rank and estimation as any people in
+the country. These persons, however, were seized, not, says Mr.
+Hastings, for the purpose of extorting money, as assumed in the charge,
+but as agents and principal instruments of exciting the insurrection
+before alluded to, &c. Mr. Hastings declares that they were not seized
+for the purpose of extorting money, but that they were seized in order
+to be punished for their crimes, and, _eo nomine_, for this crime of
+rebellion. Now this crime could not have been committed immediately by
+[the?] women themselves; for no woman can come forward and head her own
+troops. We have not heard that any woman has done so since the time of
+Zenobia, in another part of the East; and we know that in Persia no
+person can behold the face of a woman of rank, or speak to females of
+condition, but through a curtain: therefore they could not go out
+themselves, and be active in a rebellion. But, I own, it would be some
+sort of presumption against them, if Jewar Ali Khân and Behar Ali Khân
+had headed troops, and been concerned in acts of rebellion; and the
+prisoner's counsel have taken abundance of pains to show that such
+persons do sometimes head armies and command legions in the East. This
+we acknowledge that they sometimes do. If these eunuchs had behaved in
+this way, if they had headed armies and commanded legions for the
+purposes of rebellion, it would have been a fair presumption that their
+mistresses were concerned in it. But instead of any proof of such facts,
+Mr. Hastings simply says, "We do not arrest them for the purpose of
+extorting money, but as a punishment for their crimes." By Mr.
+Middleton's account you will see the utter falsity of this assertion.
+God knows what he has said that is true. It would, indeed, be singular
+not to detect him in a falsity, but in a truth. I will now show your
+Lordships the utter falsity of this wicked allegation.
+
+There is a letter from Mr. Middleton to Sir Elijah Impey, dated Fyzabad,
+the 25th of January, 1782, to which I will call your Lordships'
+attention.
+
+     "Dear Sir Elijah,--I have the satisfaction to inform you that we
+     have at length so far obtained the great object of our expedition
+     to this place as to commence on the receipt of money, of which, in
+     the course of this day, we have got about six lacs. I know not yet
+     what amount we shall actually realize, but I think I may safely
+     venture to pronounce it will be equal to the liquidation of the
+     Company's balance. It has been at once the most important and the
+     most difficult point of duty which has ever occurred in my office;
+     and the anxiety, the hopes and fears, which have alternately
+     agitated my mind, cannot be described or conceived but by those who
+     have been witness to what has passed in the course of this long
+     contest. The [Nabob's] ministers have supported me nobly, and
+     deserve much commendation. Without the shrewd discernment and
+     knowledge of the finesse and tricks of the country which Hyder Beg
+     Khân possesses, I believe we should have succeeded but
+     indifferently; for I soon found that no real advantage was to be
+     obtained by proceeding at once to violent extremities with the
+     Begum, and that she was only to be attacked through the medium of
+     her confidential servants, who it required considerable address to
+     get hold of. However, we at last effected it; and by using some few
+     severities with them, we at length came at the secret hoards of
+     this old lady. I will write you more particulars hereafter.
+
+     "I am sorry to inform you my little boy still continues in a very
+     precarious way, though somewhat better than when I had last the
+     honor to address you. My respects to Lady Impey. And believe me,
+     with great regard, my dear Sir Elijah, your faithful, obliged, and
+     most affectionate humble servant,
+
+       "NATHANIEL MIDDLETON."
+
+My Lords, we produce this letter to your Lordships, because it is a
+letter which begins with "_Dear Sir Elijah_," and alludes to some family
+matters, and is therefore more likely to discover the real truth, the
+true genius of a proceeding, than all the formal and official stuff that
+ever was produced. You see the tenderness and affection in which they
+proceed. You see it is his _dear Sir Elijah_. You see that he does not
+tell the dear Sir Elijah, the Chief-Justice of India, the pillar of the
+law, the great conservator of personal liberty and private property,--he
+does not tell him that he has been able to convict these eunuchs of any
+crime; he does not tell him he has the pleasure of informing him what
+matter he has got upon which a decision at law may be grounded; he does
+not tell him that he has got the least proof of the want of title in
+those ladies: not a word of the kind. You cannot help observing the soft
+language used in this tender billet-doux between Mr. Middleton and Sir
+Elijah Impey. You would imagine that they were making love, and that you
+heard the voice of the turtle in the land. You hear the soft cooing, the
+gentle addresses,--"Oh, my hopes!" to-day, "My fears!" to-morrow,--all
+the language of friendship, almost heightened into love; and it comes at
+last to "_I have got at the secret hoards of these ladies_.--Let us
+rejoice, my dear Sir Elijah; this is a day of rejoicing, a day of
+triumph; and this triumph we have obtained by seizing upon the old
+lady's eunuchs,--in doing which, however, we found a great deal of
+difficulty." You would imagine, from this last expression, that it was
+not two eunuchs, with a few miserable women clinging about them, that
+they had to seize, but that they had to break through all the guards
+which we see lovers sometimes breaking through, when they want to get at
+their ladies. Hardly ever did the beauty of a young lady excite such
+rapture; I defy all the charms this country can furnish to produce a
+more wonderful effect than was produced by the hoards of these two old
+women, in the bosoms of Sir Elijah Impey and Mr. Middleton. "We have
+got," he exultingly says, "we have got to the secret hoards of this old
+lady!" And I verily believe there never was a passion less dissembled;
+there Nature spoke; there was truth triumphant, honest truth. Others may
+feign a passion; but nobody can doubt the raptures of Mr. Hastings, Sir
+Elijah Impey, and Mr. Middleton.
+
+My Lords, one would have expected to have found here something of their
+crimes, something of their rebellion, for he talks of a few "necessary
+severities." But no: you find the real criminal, the real object, was
+the secret hoards of the old ladies. It is true, _a few severities_ were
+necessary to obtain that object: however, they did obtain it. How then
+did they proceed? First, they themselves took and received, in weight
+and tale, all the money that was in the place. I say _all_; for whether
+there was any more they never have discovered, with all their search,
+from that day to this. Therefore we fairly presume that they had
+discovered all that there was to discover with regard to money. They
+next took from these unfortunate people an engagement for the amount of
+treasure at a definite sum, without knowing whether they had it or not,
+whether they could procure it or not. The Bhow Begum has told us, as
+your Lordships have it in evidence, that they demanded from her a
+million of money; that she, of course, denied having any such sums; but
+Mr. Middleton forced her unfortunate eunuchs or treasurers, by some _few
+severities_, to give their bond for 600,000_l._
+
+You would imagine, that, when these eunuchs had given up all that was in
+their power, when they had given a bond for what they had not, (for they
+were only the treasurers of other people,) that the bond would not have
+been rigidly exacted. But what do Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton, as
+soon as they get their plunder? They went to their own assay-table, by
+which they measured the rate of exchange between the coins in currency
+at Oude and those at Calcutta, and add the difference to the sum for
+which the bond was given. Thus they seize the secret hoards, they
+examine it as if they were receiving a debt, and they determine what
+this money would and ought to produce at Calcutta: not considering it as
+coming from people who gave all they had to give, but as what it would
+produce at the mint at Calcutta, according to a custom made for the
+profit of the Residents; even though Mr. Hastings, upon another
+occasion, charged upon Mr. Bristow as a crime that he had made that
+profit. This money, my Lords, was taken to that assay-table, which they
+had invented for their own profit, and they made their victims pay a
+rupee and a half batta, or exchange of money, upon each gold mohur; by
+which and other charges they brought them 60,000_l._ more in debt, and
+forced them to give a bond for that 60,000_l._
+
+Your Lordships have seen in what manner these debts were
+contracted,--and that they were contracted by persons engaging, not for
+themselves, for they had nothing; all their property was apparently
+their mistresses'. You will now see in what manner the payment of them
+was exacted; and we shall beg leave to read to you their own accounts of
+their own proceedings. Your Lordships will then judge whether they were
+proceeding against rebels as rebels, or against wealthy people as
+wealthy people, punishing them, under pretence of crimes, for their own
+profit.
+
+In a letter from Mr. Middleton to Mr. Hastings, after two other
+paragraphs, he goes on thus.
+
+"It remained only to get possession of her wealth; and to effect this,
+it was then and is still my firm and unalterable opinion that it was
+indispensably necessary to employ temporizing expedients, and to work
+upon the hopes and fears of the Begum herself, and more especially upon
+those of her principal agents, through whose means alone there appeared
+any probable chance of our getting access to the hidden treasures of the
+late Vizier; and when I acquaint you that by far the greatest part of
+the treasure which has been delivered to the Nabob was taken from the
+most secret recesses in the houses of the two eunuchs, whence, of
+course, it could not have been extracted without the adoption of those
+means which could induce the discovery, I shall hope for your
+approbation of what I did. I must also observe, that no further rigor
+than that which I exerted could have been used against females in this
+country, to whom there can be no access. The Nabob and Salar Jung were
+the only two that could enter the zenanah: the first was a son, who was
+to address a parent, and, of course, could use no language or action but
+that of earnest and reiterated solicitation; and the other was, in all
+appearance, a traitor to our cause. Where force could be employed, it
+was not spared: the troops of the Begum were driven away and dispersed;
+their guns taken; her fort, and the outward walls of her house seized
+and occupied by our troops, at the Nabob's requisition; and her chief
+agents imprisoned and put in irons. No further step was left. And in
+this situation they still remain, and are to continue (excepting only a
+remission of the irons) until the final liquidation of the payment; and
+if then you deem it proper, no possible means of offence being left in
+her hands or those of her agents, all her lands and property having been
+taken, I mean, with your sanction, to restore her house and servants to
+her, and hope to be favored with your early reply, as I expect that a
+few days will complete the final surrender of all that is further
+expected from the Begum."
+
+There are some things in this letter which I shall beg your Lordships to
+remark. There is mention made of a few preliminary severities used by
+Mr. Middleton, in order to get at their money. Well, he did get at the
+money, and he got a bond for the payment of an additional sum, which
+they thought proper to fix at about six hundred thousand pounds, to
+which was added another usurious bond for sixty thousand; and in order
+to extort these forced bonds, and to make up their aggravated crimes of
+usury, violence, and oppression, they put these eunuchs into prison,
+without food and water, and loaded their limbs with fetters. This was
+their second imprisonment; and what followed these few severities your
+Lordships will remark,--still more severities. They continued to
+persecute, to oppress, to work upon these men by torture and by the fear
+of torture, till at last, having found that all their proceedings were
+totally ineffectual, they desire the women to surrender their house;
+though it is in evidence before you, that to remove a woman from her own
+house to another house without her consent is an outrage of the greatest
+atrocity, on account of which many women have not only threatened, but
+have actually put themselves to death. Mr. Hastings himself, in the case
+of Munny Begum, had considered such a proposition as the last degree of
+outrage that could be offered. These women offered to go from house to
+house while their residence was searched; but "No," say their
+tormentors, "the treasure may be bricked up, in so large a house, in
+such a manner that we cannot find it."
+
+But to proceed with the treatment of these unfortunate men. I will read
+to your Lordships a letter of Mr. Middleton to Captain Leonard Jaques,
+commanding at Fyzabad, 18th March, 1782.
+
+     "Sir,--I have received your letter of the 13th instant. The two
+     prisoners, Behar and Jewar Ali Khân, having violated their written
+     solemn engagement with me for the payment of the balance due to the
+     Honorable Company on the Nabob's assignments accepted by them, and
+     declining giving me any satisfactory assurances on that head, I am
+     under the disagreeable necessity of recurring to severities to
+     enforce the said payment. This is, therefore, to desire that you
+     immediately cause them to be put in irons, and kept so until I
+     shall arrive at Fyzabad, to take further measures, as may be
+     necessary."
+
+Here is the answer of Captain Jaques to Mr. Middleton.
+
+        "_April 23d, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--Allow me the honor of informing you that the place the
+     prisoners Behar Ali Khân and Jewar Ali Khân are confined in is
+     become so very unhealthy, by the number obliged to be on duty in so
+     confined a place at this hot season of the year, and so situated,
+     that no reduction can with propriety be made from their guard, it
+     being at such a distance from the battalion."
+
+You see, my Lords, what a condition these unfortunate persons were in at
+that period; you see they were put in irons, in a place highly
+unhealthy; and from this you will judge of the treatment which followed
+the _few severities_. The first yielded a bond for 600,000_l._; the
+second, a bond for 60,000_l._; the third was intended to extort the
+payment of these bonds, and completed their series.
+
+I will now read a letter from Captain Jaques to Mr. Middleton, from the
+printed Minutes, dated _Palace, Fyzabad, May 18th, 1782_, consequently
+written nearly a month after the former.
+
+     "Sir,--The prisoners Behar and Jewar Ali Khân, who seem to be very
+     sickly, have requested their irons might be taken off for a few
+     days, that they might take medicine, and walk about the garden of
+     the place where they are confined, to assist the medicine in its
+     operation. Now, as I am sure they would be equally as secure
+     without their irons as with them, I think it my duty to inform you
+     of this request, and desire to know your pleasure concerning it.
+
+       (Signed) "LEONARD JAQUES."
+
+On the 22d May, 1782, Captain Jaques's humane proposal is thus replied
+to by Mr. Middleton.
+
+     "I am sorry it is not in my power to comply with your proposal of
+     easing the prisoners for a few days of their fetters. Much as my
+     humanity may be touched by their sufferings, I should think it
+     inexpedient to afford them any alleviation while they persist in a
+     breach of their contract with me; and, indeed, no indulgence could
+     be shown them without the authority of the Nabob, who, instead of
+     consenting to moderate the rigors of their situation, would be most
+     willing to multiply them.
+
+       (Signed) "NATHANIEL MIDDLETON."
+
+I will now call your Lordships' attention to other letters connected
+with this transaction.
+
+     _Letter from Major Gilpin to Mr. Middleton, June 5th, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--Agreeably to your instructions, I went to the prisoners,
+     Behar and Jewar Ali Khân, accompanied by Hoolas Roy, who read the
+     papers respecting the balance now due, &c., &c.
+
+     "In general terms they expressed concern at not being able to
+     discharge the same without the assistance of the Begum, and
+     requested indulgence to send a message to her on that subject, and
+     in the evening they would give an answer.
+
+     "I went at the time appointed for the answer, but did not receive a
+     satisfactory one; in consequence of which I desired them to be
+     ready, at the shortest notice, to proceed to Lucknow, and explained
+     to them every particular contained in your letter of the 1st
+     instant respecting them.
+
+     "Yesterday morning I sent for Letafit Ali Khân, and desired him to
+     go to the Bhow Begum, and deliver the substance of my instructions
+     to her, which he did, and returned with the inclosed letter from
+     her. From some circumstances which I have heard to-day, I am
+     hopeful the prisoners will soon think seriously of their removal,
+     and pay the balance rather than submit themselves to an
+     inconvenient journey to Lucknow."
+
+
+     _To Major Gilpin, commanding at Fyzabad, from Mr. Middleton._
+
+     "Sir,--I have been favored with your letter of the 5th instant,
+     informing me of the steps you had taken in consequence of my
+     instructions of the 1st, and covering a letter from the Bhow Begum,
+     which is so unsatisfactory that I cannot think of returning an
+     answer to it. Indeed, as all correspondence between the Begum and
+     me has long been stopped, I request you will be pleased to inform
+     her that I by no means wish to resume it, or maintain any friendly
+     intercourse with her, until she has made good my claim upon her for
+     the balance due.
+
+     "I have now, in conformity to my former instructions, to desire
+     that the two prisoners, Behar and Jewar Ali Khân, may be
+     immediately sent, under a sufficient guard, to Lucknow, unless,
+     upon your imparting to them this intimation, either they or the
+     Begum should actually pay the balance, or give you such assurances
+     or security for the assets to be immediately forthcoming as you
+     think can be relied upon; in which case you will of course suspend
+     the execution of this order."
+
+
+     _Mr. Richard Johnson to Major Gilpin. Lucknow, 24th June, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I have received the honor of your letter of the 20th. The
+     prisoners arrived here this morning. Lieutenant Crow has delivered
+     them over to Captain Waugh, and returns to you in a day or two.
+
+     "I think their hint to you a very good one, and worth improving
+     upon. Was the Bhow Begum to think that she must go to Allahabad, or
+     any other place, while her palace is searched for the hidden
+     treasure of the late Vizier, it might go further than any other
+     step that can be immediately taken towards procuring payment of the
+     balance outstanding.
+
+     "The prisoners are to be threatened with severities to-morrow, to
+     make them discover where the balance may be procurable, the fear of
+     which may possibly have a good effect; and the apprehensions of the
+     Begum lest they should discover the hidden treasure may induce her
+     to make you tenders of payment, which you may give any reasonable
+     encouragement to promote that may occur to you.
+
+     "The jaghire cannot be released to her on any other terms, nor even
+     to the Nabob, until the five lacs for which it was granted be paid
+     up; and the prisoners must also be detained until the full fifty
+     lacs be liquidated: consequently nothing but the fear of an
+     increase of demand, upon breach of the first engagement on her
+     part, will induce her to prompt payment."
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Richard Johnson to the Commanding Officer of the
+     Guard. Lucknow, 23d July, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--Some violent demands having been made for the release of the
+     prisoners, it is necessary that every possible precaution be taken
+     for their security. You will therefore be pleased to be very strict
+     in guarding them; and I herewith send another pair of fetters, to
+     be added to those now upon the prisoners."
+
+
+     _Letter from Robert Steere Allen to Richard Johnson, Esq., Acting
+     Resident. Lucknow, 23d July, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I have received your instructions, and ordered the fetters
+     to be added; but they are by much too small for their feet. The
+     utmost regard shall be paid to the security of the prisoners. I
+     have sent back the fetters, that you may have them altered, if you
+     think proper."
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Johnson to the Officer commanding the Guard.
+     Lucknow, 28th June, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--The Nabob having determined to inflict corporal punishment
+     upon the prisoners under your guard, this is to desire that his
+     officers, when they shall come, may have free access to the
+     prisoners, and be permitted to do with them as they shall see
+     proper, only taking care that they leave them always under your
+     charge."
+
+I will now trouble your Lordships with the following passages from Mr.
+Holt's evidence.
+
+     "_Q._ Did you ever see the two ministers of the Begum?--_A._ I saw
+     them brought into Lucknow.--_Q._ In what situation were they, when
+     you saw them brought into Lucknow?--_A._ They were brought in their
+     palanquins, attended by a guard of sepoys.--_Q._ Under whose
+     command were the sepoys?--_A._ That they were brought in by?--_Q._
+     Yes.--_A._ I do not recollect.--_Q._ Were those sepoys that brought
+     in the prisoners part of the Nabob's army, or were they any British
+     troops?--_A._ To the best of my recollection, they were detached
+     from a regiment then stationed at Fyzabad.--_Q._ In whose service
+     was that regiment?--_A._ In the Company's.--_Q._ Were they
+     imprisoned in any house near that in which you resided?--_A._ They
+     were imprisoned immediately under the window of the house in which
+     I resided, close to it.--_Q._ Did you or did you not ever see any
+     preparations made for any corporal punishment?--_A._ I saw
+     something of a scaffolding.--_Q._ For what purpose?--_A._ I heard
+     it was for the purpose of tying them up.--_Q._ Whose prisoners did
+     you consider these men to be?--_A._ I considered them as prisoners
+     of the Resident; they were close to his house, and under an
+     European officer."
+
+Your Lordships have now seen the whole process, except one dreadful part
+of it, which was the threatening to send the Begum to the castle at
+Chunar. After all these cruelties, after all these menaces of further
+cruelties, after erecting a scaffold for actually exercising the last
+degree of criminal punishment, namely, by whipping these miserable
+persons in public,--after everything has been done but execution, our
+inability to prove by evidence this part of their proceedings has
+secured to your Lordships a circumstance of decorum observed on the
+stage where murders, executions, whippings, and cruelties are performed
+behind the scenes. I know as certainly as a man can know such a thing,
+from a document which I cannot produce in evidence here, but I have it
+in the handwriting of the Resident, Mr. Bristow, that Behar Ali Khân was
+actually scourged in the manner that we speak of. I had it in writing in
+the man's hand; I put the question to him, but he refused to answer it,
+because he thought it might criminate himself, and criminate us all; but
+if your Lordships saw the scaffold erected for the purpose, (and of
+this we have evidence,) would you not necessarily believe that the
+scourging did follow? All this was done in the name of the Nabob; but if
+the Nabob is the person claiming his father's effects, if the Nabob is
+the person vindicating a rebellion against himself upon his nearest
+relations, why did he not in person take a single step in this matter?
+why do we see nothing but his abused name in it? We see no order under
+his own hand. We see all the orders given by the cool Mr. Middleton, by
+the outrageous Mr. Johnson, by all that gang of persons that the
+prisoner used to disgrace the British name. Who are the officers that
+stormed their fort? who put on the irons? who sent them? who supplied
+them? They are all, all, English officers. There is not an appearance,
+even, of a minister of the Nabob's in the whole transaction. The actors
+are all Englishmen; and we, as Englishmen, call for punishment upon
+those who have thus degraded and dishonored the English name.
+
+We do not use torture or cruelties, even for the greatest crimes, but
+have banished them from our courts of justice; we never suffer them in
+any case. Yet those men, in order to force others to break their most
+sacred trust, inflict tortures upon them. They drag their poor victims
+from dungeon to dungeon, from one place of punishment to another, and
+wholly on account of an extorted bond,--for they owed no money, they
+could not owe any,--but to got this miserable balance of 60,000_l._,
+founded upon their tables of exchange: after they had plundered these
+ladies of 500,000_l._ in money, and 70,000_l._ a year in land, they
+could not be satisfied without putting usury and extortion upon tyranny
+and oppression. To enforce this unjust demand, the miserable victims
+were imprisoned, ironed, scourged, and at last threatened to be sent
+prisoners to Chunar. This menace succeeded. The persons who had resisted
+irons, who had been, as the Begums say, refused food and water, stowed
+in an unwholesome, stinking, pestilential prison, these persons
+withstood everything till the fort of Chunar was mentioned to them; and
+then their fortitude gave way: and why? The fort of Chunar was not in
+the dominions of the Nabob, whose rights they pretended to be
+vindicating: to name a British fort, in their circumstances, was to name
+everything that is most horrible in tyranny; so, at least, it appeared
+to them. They gave way; and thus were committed acts of oppression and
+cruelty unknown, I will venture to say, in the history of India. The
+women, indeed, could not be brought forward and scourged, but their
+ministers were tortured, till, for their redemption, these princesses
+gave up all their clothes, all the ornaments of their persons, all their
+jewels, all the memorials of their husbands and fathers,--all were
+delivered up, and valued by merchants at 50,000_l._; and they also gave
+up 5,000_l._ in money, or thereabouts: so that, in reality, only about
+5,000_l._, a mere nothing, a sum not worth mentioning, even in the
+calculations of extortion and usury, remained unpaid.
+
+But, my Lords, what became of all this money? When you examine these
+witnesses here, they tell you it was paid to Hyder Beg Khân. Now they
+had themselves received the money in tale at their own assay-table. And
+when an account is demanded of the produce of the goods, they shrink
+from it, and say it was Hyder Beg Khân who received the things and sold
+them. Where is Hyder Beg Khân's receipt? The Begums say (and the thing
+speaks for itself) that even gold and jewels coming from them lost their
+value; that part of the goods were spoilt, being kept long unsold in
+damp and bad warehouses; and that the rest of the goods were sold, as
+thieves sell their spoil, for little or nothing. In all this business
+Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton were themselves the actors, chief actors;
+but now, when they are called to account, they substitute Hyder Beg Khân
+in their place, a man that is dead and gone, and you hear nothing more
+of this part of the business.
+
+But the sufferings of these eunuchs did not end here; they were, on
+account of this odd 5,000_l._, confined for twelve months,--not
+prisoners at large, like this prisoner who thrusts his sore leg into
+your Lordships' faces every day, but in harsh and cruel confinement.
+These are the persons that I feel for. It is their dungeon, it is their
+unrevenged wrongs that move me. It is for these innocent, miserable,
+unhappy men, who were guilty of no offence but fidelity to their
+mistresses, in order to vex and torture whom (the first women in Asia)
+in the persons of their ministers these cruelties were exercised,--these
+are they for whom I feel, and not for the miserable sore leg or whining
+cant of this prisoner. He has been the author of all these wrongs; and
+if you transfer to him any of the sympathy you owe to these sufferers,
+you do wrong, you violate compassion. Think of their irons. Has not this
+criminal, who put on these irons, been without one iron? Has he been
+threatened with torture? Has he been locked up without food and water?
+Have his sufferings been aggravated as the sufferings of these poor men
+were aggravated? What punishment has been inflicted, and what can be
+inflicted upon him, in any manner commensurate with the atrocity of his
+crimes?
+
+At last, my Lords, these unhappy men were released. Mr. Bristow, who had
+been sent to Lucknow, writes to Mr. Hastings, and informs him that
+severities could do no more, that imprisonments and menaces could get no
+more money. I believe not, for I doubt much whether any more was to be
+got. But whether there was or not, all the arts of extortion, fortified
+by all the arts of tyranny, of every name and species, had failed, and
+therefore Mr. Bristow released the prisoners,--but without any warrant
+for so doing from Mr. Hastings, who, after having received this letter
+from Mr. Bristow, gets the Supreme Council to order these very
+severities to be continued till the last farthing was paid. In order to
+induce the Council to sanction this measure, he suppressed Mr. Bristow's
+declaration, that severities could do nothing more in exacting further
+payments; and the Resident, I find, was afterwards obliquely punished
+for his humanity by Mr. Hastings.
+
+Mr. Bristow's letter is dated the 12th of December, and he thus writes.
+
+"The battalion at Fyzabad" (where the Begums and their ministers had
+been confined) "is recalled, and my letter to the board of the 1st
+instant has explained my conduct to the Begum. The letter I addressed
+her, a translation of which I beg leave to inclose, (No. 2,) was with a
+view of convincing her that you readily assented to her being freed from
+the restraints which had been imposed upon her, and that your
+acquiescence in her sufferings was a measure of necessity, to which you
+were forced by her extraordinary conduct. I wished to make it appear
+this was a matter on which you directed me to consult the Vizier's
+pleasure, that it might be known you were the spring from whence she was
+restored to her dignity and consequence."
+
+On the 3d of March following, the Council agree to send the following
+order to Mr. Bristow.
+
+"We desire you will inform us if any and what means have been taken for
+recovering the balance due from the Begum at Fyzabad, and, if necessary,
+that you recommend it to the Vizier to enforce the most effectual means
+for that purpose."
+
+My Lords, you see the fraud he has put upon the Council. You will find
+that Mr. Bristow's letters, up to the 3d of March, had been suppressed;
+and though then communicated, yet he instigated his cat's-paw, that
+blind and ignorant Council, to demand from the Vizier the renewal of
+these very severities and cruelties, the continuance of which the
+letters in his pocket had shown him were of no effect. Here you have an
+instance of his implacable cruelty; you see that it never relaxes, never
+remits, and that, finding all the resources of tyranny useless and
+ineffective, he is still willing to use them, and for that purpose he
+makes a fraudulent concealment of the utter inefficacy of all the means
+that had been used.
+
+But, you will ask, what could make him persevere in these acts of
+cruelty, after his avarice had been more than satiated? You will find it
+is this. He had had some quarrel with these women. He believed that they
+had done him some personal injury or other, of which he nowhere informs
+you. But, as you find that in the case of Cheyt Sing he considered his
+visit to General Clavering as an horrid outrage against himself, which
+he never forgave, and revenged to the ruin of that miserable person, so
+you find that he has avowed the same malicious disposition towards the
+Begums, arising from some similar cause. In page 367 of your printed
+Minutes, he says,--"I am sorry that I must in truth add, that a part of
+the resentment of the Begums was, as I had too much reason to suspect,
+directed to myself personally. The incidents which gave rise to it are
+too light to be mixed with the professed subject and occasion of this
+detail; and as they want the authenticity of recorded evidence, I could
+lay no claim to credit in my relation of them. At some period I may be
+induced to offer them to the world, my ultimate and unerring judges,
+both of that and of every other trait in my political character."
+
+My Lords, you have an anecdote here handed to you which is the key of a
+great part of this transaction. He had determined upon some deep and
+desperate revenge for some injury or affront of some kind or other that
+he thought he had received from these people. He accuses them of a
+personal quarrel with himself; and yet he has not the honor or honesty
+to tell you what it was,--what it was that could induce them to
+entertain such a personal resentment against him as to ruin themselves
+and their country by their supposed rebellion. He says, that some time
+or other he will tell it to the world. Why did he not tell his counsel,
+and authorize them to tell a story which could not be unimportant, as it
+was connected with a rebellion which shook the British power in India to
+its foundation? And if it be true that this rebellion had its rise in
+some wicked act of this man, who had offended these women, and made
+them, as he says, his mortal enemies, you will then see that you never
+can go so deep with this prisoner that you do not find in every criminal
+act of his some other criminal act. In the lowest deep there is still a
+lower deep. In every act of his cruelty there is some hidden, dark
+motive, worse than the act itself, of which he just gives you a hint,
+without exposing it to that open light which truth courts and falsehood
+basely slinks from.
+
+But cruelly as they have suffered, dreadfully as they have been robbed,
+insulted as they have been, in every mode of insult that could be
+offered to women of their rank, all this must have been highly
+aggravated by coming from such a man as Mr. Middleton. You have heard the
+audacious and insulting language he has held to them, his declining to
+correspond with them, and the mode of his doing it. There are, my Lords,
+things that embitter the bitterness of oppression itself: contumelious
+acts and language, coming from persons who the other day would have
+licked the dust under the feet of the lowest servants of these ladies,
+must have embittered their wrongs, and poisoned the very cup of malice
+itself.
+
+Oh! but they deserved it. They were concerned in a wicked, outrageous
+rebellion: first, for expelling their own son from his dominions; and,
+secondly, for expelling and extirpating the English nation out of
+India.--Good God Almighty! my Lords, do you hear this? Do you understand
+that the English nation had made themselves so odious, so particularly
+hateful, even to women the most secluded from the world, that there was
+no crime, no mischief, no family destruction, through which they would
+not wade, for our extermination? Is this a pleasant thing to hear of?
+Rebellion is, in all parts of the world, undoubtedly considered as a
+great misfortune: in some countries it must be considered as a
+presumption of some fault in government: _nowhere is it boasted of as
+supplying the means of justifying acts of cruelty and insult, but with
+us_.
+
+We have, indeed, seen that a rebellion did exist in Baraitch and
+Goruckpore. It was an universal insurrection of the people: an
+insurrection for the very extermination of Englishmen,--for the
+extermination of Colonel Hannay,--for the extermination of Captain
+Gordon,--for the extermination of Captain Williams, and of all the other
+captains and colonels exercising the office of farmer-general and
+sub-farmer-general in the manner that we have described. We know that
+there did exist in that country such a rebellion. But mark, my Lords,
+against whom!--against these mild and gracious sovereigns, Colonel
+Hannay, Captain Gordon, Captain Williams. Oh, unnatural and abominable
+rebellion!--But will any one pretend to say that the Nabob himself was
+ever attacked by any of these rebels? No: the attacks were levelled
+against the English. The people rose in favor of their lawful sovereign,
+against a rebellion headed by Mr. Middleton, who, you see, usurped his
+authority,--headed by Colonel Hannay,--headed by Captain Gordon,--headed
+by all those abominable persons exercising, under the Nabob's name, an
+authority destructive to himself and his subjects. Against them there
+was a rebellion. But was this an unnatural rebellion,--a rebellion
+against usurped authority, to save the prince, his children, and state,
+from a set of vile usurpers?
+
+My Lords, I shall soon close our proceeding for this day, because I wish
+to leave this part of our charge strongly and distinctly impressed upon
+your Lordships' memory, and because nothing can aggravate it. I shall
+next proceed, in the farther examination of the prisoner's defence, to
+dissipate, as I trust we have done, and as I hope we shall do, all the
+miserable stuff they have given by way of defence. I shall often have
+occasion to repeat and press upon your Lordships that that miserable
+defence is a heavy aggravation of his crime. At present, I shall
+conclude, leaving this part of our charge with the impression upon your
+Lordships' minds that this pretended rebellion was merely an
+insurrection against the English, excited by their oppression.
+
+If the rebellion was against the Nabob, or if he was the author of the
+oppression which caused it, why do the English only appear to be
+concerned in both of them? How comes it that the Nabob never appears to
+have expressed any resentment against the rebels? We shall prove beyond
+a doubt, that the Begums had nothing to do with it. There was, indeed,
+as I have already said, what may be called a rebellion; but it was a
+rebellion against--not the Nabob, but in favor of the lawful prince of
+the country,--against the usurpers of his authority and the destroyers
+of his country. With this, as a rebellion, Mr. Hastings has charged
+these women; he has charged them with a war against their son, for the
+purpose of exterminating the English. Look, I pray you, at the whole
+business, consider all the circumstances of it, and ask yourselves
+whether this is not a charge, not only so grossly improbable, but so
+perfectly impossible, that there is not any evidence which can make it
+even plausible. Consider next, my Lords, on the other side, the evidence
+of their innocence, and then ask yourselves whether any additional
+matter could make its probability in the least degree more probable. My
+Lords, the evidence we have produced is neither more nor less than that
+of almost all the persons who have had a share in exciting that
+rebellion, and who, to justify their own horrible cruelty, have
+attempted to charge the natural consequences of that cruelty upon these
+unhappy women.
+
+But where, all this time, is the Nabob, against whom this rebellion is
+pretended to be directed? Was it ever even insinuated to him that his
+mother had raised a rebellion against him? When were the proofs shown to
+him? Did he ever charge her with it? He surely must have been most
+anxious to prevent and suppress a rebellion against himself: but not one
+word on that subject has ever come out of his mouth; nor has any one
+person been produced to show that he was informed of the existence of
+such a rebellion. The persons said to be rebels are his mother and
+grandmother; and I again ask, Was there the least intimation given to
+him by Mr. Middleton, or by any other person, of their being even
+suspected of rebellion against him? There was, indeed, a hint of some
+rebellion, which the creatures of Mr. Hastings got at obliquely; but
+neither the person against whom the rebellion is supposed to exist, nor
+the persons who were said to be guilty of it, were ever either informed
+of or charged with it. I defy the prisoner and his whole gang to produce
+one word ever uttered by any one of them, from which the Nabob or
+Begums could learn that they were supposed to be concerned in the
+rebellion: so that none of those who were said to be the principal
+actors in the scene ever heard of the parts they were acting from the
+actual authors and managers of the business. Not one word was uttered of
+a charge made, much less of proof given. Nothing was heard but "Give me
+the money!"--irons,--new irons,--new imprisonment,--and at last the
+castle of Chunar.
+
+And here I beg leave to pause, and to leave upon your minds the
+impression, first, of the wrong that was done, the violence, and the
+robbery,--and, secondly, of the pretences, both civil and criminal, by
+which they have attempted to justify their proceedings.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+SIXTH DAY, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--Your Lordships will recollect that we closed the last day of
+your proceeding in this trial at a most interesting part of our charge,
+or rather of our observations upon that charge. We closed at that awful
+moment when we found the first women of Oude pillaged of all their
+landed and of all their moneyed property, in short, of all they
+possessed. We closed by reciting to you the false pretence on which this
+pillage was defended, namely, that it was the work of the Nabob. Now we
+had before proved to you, from evidence adduced by the prisoner himself,
+that this Nabob was a mere tool in his hands; and therefore, if this
+pretence be true, it aggravates his guilt: for surely the forcing a son
+to violate the property of his mother must everywhere be considered a
+crime most portentous and enormous. At this point we closed; and after
+the detail which has been given you already of these horrible and
+iniquitous proceedings, some apology may perhaps be necessary for
+entering again into the refutation of this iniquitous pretence.
+
+My honorable fellow Manager who preceded me in this business did, in his
+remarks upon the inference drawn by the prisoner's counsel from the
+seizure of the Begums' treasures by the Nabob, as evidence of their
+guilt, as he ought to do,--he treated it with proper contempt. I
+consider it, indeed, to be as little an evidence of their guilt as he
+does, and as little a defence of that seizure as he does. But I consider
+it in another and in a new light, namely, as a heavy aggravation of the
+prisoner's crimes, and as a matter that will let you into the whole
+spirit of his government; and I warn your Lordships against being
+imposed on by evasions, of which if it were possible for you to be the
+dupes, you would be unfit to be judges of the smallest matters in the
+world, civil or criminal.
+
+The first observation which I shall beg leave to make to your Lordships
+is this, that the whole of the proceedings, from beginning to end, has
+been a mystery of iniquity, and that in no part of them have the orders
+of the Company been regarded, but, on the contrary, the whole has been
+carried on in a secret and clandestine manner.
+
+It is necessary that your Lordships should be acquainted with the manner
+in which the correspondence of the Company's servants ought to be
+carried on and their proceedings regulated; your Lordships, therefore,
+will please to hear read the orders given concerning correspondence of
+every kind with the country powers. You will remember the period when
+these orders were issued, namely, the period at which the act passed for
+the better direction of the servants of the Company. By this act Mr.
+Hastings was appointed to be Governor-General, and the Court of
+Directors was required by that act to prepare orders and instructions,
+which Mr. Hastings was required by the same act to comply with. You will
+see what these instructions and orders were, and in what manner he has
+complied with them.
+
+
+     _Extract of General Instructions to the Governor-General and
+     Council, 29th of March, 1774._
+
+     "We direct that you assemble in Council twice every week, and that
+     all the members be duly summoned; that the correspondence with the
+     princes or country powers in India be carried on by the
+     Governor-General only, but that all letters sent by him be first
+     approved in Council, and that he lay before the Council, at their
+     next meeting, all letters received by him in the course of such
+     correspondence, for their information. We likewise direct that a
+     copy of such parts of the country correspondence be communicated to
+     our Board of Trade: (to be constituted as hereinafter mentioned) as
+     may any ways relate to the business of their department."
+
+You will observe, my Lords, two important circumstances in these
+instructions: first, that, after the board had regularly met, the
+Persian correspondence, kept by the Governor only, was to be
+communicated to the Council; and, secondly, that he should write no
+answer to any part of the business until he had previously consulted the
+Council upon it. Here is the law of the land,--an order given in
+pursuance of an act of Parliament. Your Lordships will consider how Mr.
+Hastings comported himself with regard to those orders: for we charge it
+as a substantive crime, independent of the criminal presumptions arising
+from it, that he violated an act of Parliament which imposed direct
+instructions upon him as to the manner in which he was to conduct all
+matters of business with the native powers.
+
+My Lords, we contend strongly that all the positive rules and
+injunctions of the law, though they are merely positive, and do not
+contain anything but mere matters of regulation, shall be strictly
+observed. The reason is this, and a serious reason it is: official
+tyranny and oppression, corruption, peculation, and bribery are crimes
+so secret in their nature that we can hardly ever get to the proof of
+them without the assistance of rules, orders, and regulations of a
+positive nature, intended to prevent the perpetration of these crimes,
+and to detect the offender in case the crimes should be actually
+perpetrated. You ought, therefore, to presume, that, whenever such rules
+or laws are broken, these crimes are intended to be committed; for you
+have no means of security against the commission of secret crimes but by
+enforcing positive laws, the breach of which must be always plain, open,
+and direct. Such, for instance, is the spirit of the laws, that,
+although you cannot directly prove bribery or smuggling in a hundred
+cases where they have been committed, you can prove whether the proper
+documents, proper cockets, proper entries in regular offices have been
+observed and performed, or not. By these means you lock the door against
+bribery, you lock the door against corruption, against smuggling and
+contraband trade. But how? By falling upon and attacking the offence?
+No, by falling upon and attacking the breach of the regulation. You
+prove that the man broke the regulation, and, as he could have no other
+motive or interest in breaking it, you presume that he broke it
+fraudulently, and you punish the man not for the crime the regulation
+was meant to prevent, but you punish him for the breach of the
+regulation itself.
+
+Next to the breach of these positive instructions, your Lordships will
+attend to the consequent concealment and mystery by which it was
+accompanied. All government must, to preserve its authority, be sincere
+in its declarations and authentic in its acts. Whenever in any matter of
+policy there is a mystery, you must presume a fraud; whenever in any
+matter of money there is concealment, you must presume misconduct: you
+must therefore affix your punishment to the breach of the rule;
+otherwise the conviction of public delinquents would be unattainable.
+
+I have therefore put before you that rule which he has violated; and we,
+the Commons, call upon your Lordships to enforce that rule, and to
+avenge the breach of it. You have seen the consequences of breaking the
+rule; and we have charged and do charge it as a heavy aggravation of
+those consequences, that, instead of consulting the Council, instead of
+laying the whole correspondence before them, instead of consulting them
+upon his answers, he went himself up into the country, took his
+Majesty's chief-justice along with him, and made that person the
+instrument of those wrongs, violences, robberies, and concealments
+which we call upon your Lordships to punish.
+
+My Lords, an extraordinary circumstance occurred in the course of our
+proceedings in another place, which I must state, to show you in what a
+horrible manner your laws have been trampled upon and despised. None of
+the proceedings which have been last stated to your Lordships respecting
+the seizure of the treasures of the Begums appear upon any public record
+whatever. From the manner in which they came to our knowledge, your
+Lordships will perceive what must have been the prisoner's own opinion
+of the horrible nature of proceedings which he thought so necessary to
+be concealed.
+
+Whilst we were inquiring into the violences committed against the
+Begums, in breach of the treaty entered into with them, there came into
+my hands an anonymous letter containing a full account of all the matter
+which has lately been stated to you. It came anonymously; and I did not
+know from what quarter it came. I do not even know with certainty at
+this hour: I say, not with certainty, for I can only form a conjecture.
+This anonymous communication enabled us to produce all the
+correspondence with Mr. Middleton respecting the cruelties exercised
+towards the Begums and their eunuchs in order to extort money. We found
+the names of Major Gilpin and several other persons in these letters. We
+also found in them a strong fox smell of a Sir Elijah Impey, that his
+brush and crime had left behind him; we traced him by that scent; and as
+we proceeded, we discovered the footsteps of as many of the wolves as
+Mr. Hastings thought proper to leave there. We sent for and examined Mr.
+Middleton, and Major Gilpin produced his correspondence. When we applied
+to Mr. Middleton, we found that all this part of his correspondence had
+been torn out of his book; but having come at it by means of our
+anonymous communication, we subsequently proved and established it, in
+the manner we have done before your Lordships. Here, then, you have
+important matter which this anonymous letter has brought to light; and
+otherwise the whole of this correspondence, so essential to the
+interests and justice of Great Britain, would have been concealed by
+this wicked man. Thus, I say, his violation of a positive law would have
+remained undiscovered, if mere accident had not enabled us to trace this
+iniquity to its source. Therefore I begin our proceedings this day by
+stating to your Lordships this fact, and by calling upon your justice to
+punish him for this violation of the laws of his country.
+
+We have told you who the instruments were by which all this wickedness
+was committed, Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson, persons who were sent as
+ambassadors to represent the interests of the Company at the court of an
+independent prince. Over this prince they usurped an absolute power;
+they even made use of British officers in his own service and receiving
+his pay, to enslave his person, and to force him to rob his kindred.
+These agents were aided by an English chief-justice, sent under the
+authority of an act of Parliament to represent the sovereign majesty of
+English justice, and to be a restraint upon the misconduct of the
+Company's servants. These are the instruments with which this man works.
+We have shown you his system; we have shown you his instruments: we will
+now proceed with the examination of the pretences upon which this horrid
+and nefarious act is attempted to be justified. We have not entered into
+this examination for the sake of refuting things that want no
+refutation, but for the purpose of showing you the spirit of the whole
+proceeding, and making it appear to your Lordships, as I trust it will
+appear, that the wicked act done there is not half so bad as the wicked
+defence made here.
+
+The first part of Sir Elijah Impey's commission, as your Lordships will
+remember, was to seize upon the Begums' treasures. He had likewise
+another budget of instructions, which has been discovered in the trunks
+of which your Lordships have heard,--secret instructions to be given by
+him to Mr. Middleton for the furtherance of this business. And that his
+office of Chief-Justice should not lie dormant, he was commissioned to
+seek for affidavits or written testimony from any persons, for the
+purpose of convicting these women of a design of atrociously revolting
+against their son, and deposing him from the government, with a view of
+getting rid of the English inhabitants. This was the accusation; and the
+evidence to support it Sir Elijah Impey was sent to collect.
+
+My Lords, I must here observe to your Lordships that there is no act of
+violence which, merely as an act of violence, may not in some sort be
+borne: because an act of violence infers no principle; it infers nothing
+but a momentary impulse of a bad mind, proceeding, without law or
+justice, to the execution of its object. For at the same time that it
+pays no regard to law, it does not debauch it, it does not wrest it to
+its purposes: the law disregarded still exists; and hope still exists in
+the sufferer, that, when law shall be resorted to, violence will cease,
+and wrongs will be redressed. But whenever the law itself is debauched,
+and enters into a corrupt coalition with violence, robbery, and wrong,
+then all hope is gone; and then it is not only private persons that
+suffer, but the law itself, when so corrupted, is often perverted into
+the worst instrument of fraud and violence; it then becomes most odious
+to mankind, and an infinite aggravation of every injury they suffer.
+
+We have therefore in our charge strongly reprobated Sir Elijah Impey's
+going to take such affidavits. "Oh! but," they say, "a judge may take an
+affidavit in his chamber privately; and he may take an affidavit, though
+not exactly in the place of his jurisdiction, to authenticate a bond, or
+the like."--We are not to be cheated by words. It is not dirty shreds of
+worn-out parchments, the sweepings of Westminster Hall, that shall serve
+us in place of that justice upon, which the world stands. Affidavits! We
+know that in the language of our courts affidavits do not signify a body
+of evidence to sustain a criminal charge, but are generally relative to
+matter [matters?] in process collateral to the charge, which, not coming
+before the jury, are made known to the judge by way of affidavit.
+
+But was it ever heard, or will it be borne, that a person exercising a
+judicial office under his Majesty should walk beyond the sphere of his
+jurisdiction,--that he should desert the station in which he was placed
+for the protection of the natives, and should march to such a place as
+Lucknow in order to take depositions for criminating persons in that
+country, without so much as letting these poor victims know one article
+in the depositions so taken? These depositions, my Lords, were made to
+criminate, they were meant to justify a forfeiture, and are not in the
+nature of those voluntary affidavits which, whether made within
+jurisdiction or without, whether made publicly or privately, signify
+comparatively nothing to the cause. I do not mean, to say that any
+process of any court has not its weight, when the matter is within it in
+the ordinary course of proceedings: it is the extraordinary course, the
+extrajudicial conduct, which divests it of that just weight it otherwise
+would have.
+
+This chief-justice goes to Lucknow, where he holds his court, such as it
+was. He is ready to authenticate any process by the signature of the
+English chief-justice, in a court which he holds by night, in a court
+which he holds in darkness and secrecy. He holds his court in Fyzabad;
+he holds it, unknown to the Nabob of Oude, in his own capital, and
+without giving him the least knowledge of or any notice of what he was
+proceeding to do. He holds it at the lodgings of Colonel Morgan, a
+pensioner of the Nabob; and the person assisting him is Mr. Middleton,
+who is likewise, as we have proved to you, one of the Nabob's
+pensioners, a monopolizer of trade in the country, and a person who
+received much the major part of his emoluments from the Nabob's hands.
+
+In that clandestine manner, in the Nabob's own house, in his own capital
+city, in the lodging of his dependant and pensioner, Colonel Morgan,
+with no other witness that we know of than Mr. Middleton, was this
+iniquitous, dark procedure held, to criminate the mother of the Nabob.
+We here see a scene of dark, mysterious contrivance: let us now see what
+is brought out in the face of open day. The attestations themselves,
+which you have seen on the record before you. They were brought
+out--where? there? No: they were brought out in another place; they were
+brought out at Calcutta,--but were never communicated to the Nabob. He
+never knew anything of the matter. Let us now see what those
+attestations were. Your Lordships will bear in mind that I do not advert
+to this thing, which they bring as evidence, in the way of imputation of
+its being weak, improper, and insufficient evidence, but as an
+incontrovertible proof of crimes, and of a systematic design to ruin
+the accused party, by force there and by chicane here: these are the
+principles upon which I am going to talk to you upon this abominable
+subject,--of which, I am sorry to say, I have no words sufficient to
+express my horror. No words can express it; nor can anything but the
+severity of your Lordships' judgments find an adequate expression of it.
+It is not to be expressed in words, but in punishment.
+
+Having stated before whom the evidence collected in this body of
+affidavits was taken, I shall now state who the persons were that gave
+it. They were those very persons who were guilty of robbing and ruining
+the whole country: yes, my Lords, the very persons who had been accused
+of this in the mass by Mr. Hastings himself. They were nothing less than
+the whole body of those English officers who were usurping the office of
+farmers-general, and other lucrative offices in the Nabob's government,
+and whose pillage and peculations had raised a revolt of the whole
+kingdom against themselves. These persons are here brought in a mass to
+clear themselves of this charge by criminating other persons, and
+clandestinely imputing to them the effect of their own iniquity.
+
+But supposing these witnesses to be good for anything, supposing it fit
+that the least attention should be paid them, the matter of their
+testimony may very possibly be true without criminating the Begum. It
+criminates Saadut Ali Khân, the brother of the Nabob; the word Begum is
+never mentioned in the crimination but in conjunction with his; and much
+the greater part of it criminates the Nabob himself. Now, my Lords, I
+will say, that the matter of these affidavits, forgetting who the
+deponents were, may possibly be true, as far as respects Saadut Ali
+Khân, but that it is utterly as improbable, which is the main point and
+the stress of the thing, with respect to the Begums, as it is impossible
+with respect to the Nabob. That Saadut Ali, being a military man, a man
+ambitious and aspiring to greatness, should take advantage of the abuses
+of the English government and of the discontent of the country, that he
+should, I say, raise a revolt against his brother is very possible; but
+it is scarcely within possibility that the mother of the Nabob should
+have joined with the illegitimate son against her legitimate son. I can
+only say that in human affairs there is the possibility of truth in
+this. It is possible she might wish to depose her legitimate son, her
+only legitimate son, and to depose him for the sake of a bastard son of
+her husband's,--to exalt him at the expense of the former, and to exalt,
+of course, the mother of that bastard at her own expense, and to her own
+wrong. But I say, that this, though possible, is grossly improbable. The
+reason why the Begum is implicated in this charge with Saadut Ali by the
+affidavits cannot escape your notice. Their own acquittal might be the
+only object of the deponents in their crimination of the latter; but the
+treasures of the former were the objects of their employers, and these
+treasures could not be come at but by the destruction of the Begums.
+
+But, my Lords, there are other affidavits, or whatever your Lordships
+may call them, that go much further. In order to give a color to the
+accusation, and make it less improbable, they say that the Nabob himself
+was at the bottom of it, and that he joined with his brother and his
+mother to extirpate out of his dominions that horrible grievance, the
+English brigade officers,--those English officers who were the
+farmers-general, and who, as we have proved by Mr. Hastings's own
+evidence, had ruined the country. Nothing is more natural than that a
+man, sensible of his duty to himself and his subjects, should form a
+scheme to get rid of a band of robbers that were destroying his country
+and degrading and ruining his family. Thus you see a family compact
+naturally accounted for: the Nabob at the head of it, his mother joining
+her own son, and a natural brother joining in the general interests of
+the family. This is a possible case. But is this the case pressed by
+them? No: they pass lightly over the legitimate son; they scarcely touch
+upon Saadut Ali Khân; they sink the only two persons that could give
+probability or possibility to this business, and endeavor to throw the
+whole design upon these two unfortunate women.
+
+Your Lordships see the wickedness and baseness of the contrivance. They
+first, in order to keep the whole family in terror, accuse the whole
+family; then, having possessed themselves of the treasures of the Begums
+upon another pretence, they endeavor to fix upon them that improbable
+guilt which they had with some degree of probability charged upon the
+whole family, as a farther justification of that spoliation. Your
+Lordships will see what an insult is offered to the Peers of Great
+Britain, in producing before you, by way of defence, such gross,
+scandalous, and fraudulent proceedings.
+
+Who the first set of witnesses were which they produced before their
+knight-errant chief-justice, Sir Elijah Impey, who wandered in search of
+a law adventure, I have laid open to your Lordships. You have now had
+an account of the scandalous manufacture of that batch of affidavits
+which was in the budget of Sir Elijah Impey,--that Pandora's box which I
+have opened, and out of which has issued every kind of evil. This
+chief-justice went up there with the death-warrant of the Begums'
+treasures, and, for aught he knew, the death-warrant of their persons.
+At the same time that he took these affidavits he became himself a
+witness in this business; he appears as a witness. How? Did he know any
+one circumstance of the rebellion? No, he does not even pretend to do
+so. "But," says he, "in my travels I was obliged to avoid Fyzabad, upon
+account of the suspected rebellion there." Another chief-justice would
+have gone fifty miles about to avoid Lucknow, for everybody knows that
+Lucknow was the focus and centre of extortion, corruption, and
+peculation, and that a worse air for the lungs of a chief-justice could
+not be found in the world. If his lungs wanted the benefit of pure air,
+he would even have put himself in the focus of a rebellion, to have kept
+at a distance from the smell of carrion and putrid corruption of every
+kind that was at Lucknow. A chief-justice may go to a place where a
+rebellion is raging, he may die a martyr to his honor; but a
+chief-justice who puts himself into the focus of peculation, into the
+focus of bribery, into the focus of everything that is base and
+corrupt,--what can we expect from him but that he will be engaged in
+clandestine jobs there? The former might kill Sir Elijah Impey, the
+knight-errant, but the chief-justice would remain pure and entire;
+whereas Sir Elijah Impey has escaped from Lucknow, and the chief-justice
+is left by Mr. Hastings to shift for himself.
+
+After mentioning this violation of the laws of hospitality by Sir Elijah
+Impey, I would ask, Was any notice given by him, or by any of Mr.
+Hastings's agents, to the Nabob, who was so immediately interested in
+this matter? Was any notice given to the Begums that any such charge was
+entertained against them? Not a word. Was it notified to the eunuchs?
+Was it to Saadut Ali Khân? Not a word. They were all within their power.
+The eunuchs were a year in irons, and they were subjected to the want of
+food and water for a part of that year. They were dragged from Fyzabad
+to Lucknow, and from Lucknow to Fyzabad. During all that time was there
+a word mentioned to them by any one person on the part of Mr. Hastings,
+that they were accused of this matter? Not a word.
+
+We now submit to your Lordships' vindictive justice and condemnation
+this recriminatory defence, in which every principle of justice has been
+violated. And now I will ask your Lordships whether you would have
+suffered such a procedure in the case of the prisoner at your bar. It
+was asked by a person of great authority in this House, when we were
+going to produce certain evidence against Mr. Hastings, (we do not say
+whether we offered to produce it properly or improperly,--that is
+another matter,)--we were asked, I say, whether our intentions of
+producing that evidence had been communicated to Mr. Hastings. Had he
+had an opportunity of cross-examining the witnesses who had given that
+evidence? No, he added, that evidence must be rejected. Now I say to
+your Lordships, upon the same ground, deal with the Begums as you dealt
+with Mr. Hastings. Do not keep two weights and measures for different
+persons in the same cause. You would not suffer such evidence to be
+produced against him; you will not assuredly suffer such evidence to be
+produced to you in his favor and against them.
+
+My Lords, the cause between this man and these unfortunate women is at
+last come into Westminster Hall; the cause is come to a solemn trial;
+and we demand other witnesses and other kinds of proof than what these
+affidavits furnish. My Lords, the persons who have been examined here
+are almost all of them the same persons who made these affidavits; but
+there is this material difference in their evidence: at your Lordships'
+bar they sunk all those parts of their former evidence which criminated
+the Nabob and Saadut Ali, and confined their testimony wholly to what
+related to the Begums. We were obliged, by a cross-examination, to
+squeeze out of them the disavowal of what they had deposed on the former
+occasion. The whole of their evidence we leave to the judgment of your
+Lordships, with these summary remarks: first, that they are the persons
+who were to profit by their own wrong; they are the persons who had
+seven months' arrears paid to them out of the money of these unfortunate
+ladies; they are the persons who, to justify the revolt which they had
+caused in the country by their robbery, charge their own guilt upon
+others. The credibility of their evidence is therefore gone. But if it
+were not affected by these circumstances, Mr. Hastings has put an end to
+it by telling you that there is not one of them who is to be credited
+upon his oath,--no, not in a court-martial; and can it, therefore, be
+expected that in a case of peculation they will do otherwise than acquit
+the party accused? He has himself laid before you the horrible state of
+the whole service; your Lordships have it fresh in your memories, and
+ringing in your ears. You have also heard from witnesses brought by Mr.
+Hastings himself, that these soldiers committed misdemeanors of the very
+same kind with those which we have stated. They ought not, therefore, to
+be listened to for a moment; and we aver that it is an aggravation of
+the prisoner's crimes, that he has brought the instruments of his guilt,
+the persons of whom he has complained as having ruined and destroyed
+that country, and whom he had engaged, at the Nabob's desire, in the
+treaty of Chunar, to send out of the country, as being a nuisance in
+it,--to bring, I say, these people here, to criminate, at a distance of
+nine thousand miles, these unfortunate women, where they have neither
+attorney or agent who can from local knowledge cross-examine them. He
+has the audacity to bring these people here; and in what manner they
+comport themselves, when they come here, your Lordships have seen.
+
+There is one of them whom we cannot pass by: that is, Captain Gordon.
+The other witnesses, who appeared here as evidences to criminate the
+Begums, did it by rumors and hearsays. They had heard some person say
+that the Begums had encouraged rebellion, always coupling them with
+Saadut Ali Khân, and sometimes with the Nabob, because there might have
+been some probability for their charge in the transactions with Saadut
+Ali Khân, which, though impossible with regard to the Begums, they
+thought would implicate him [them?] in his designs. But Captain Gordon
+is to give a different account of the proceedings.
+
+Captain Gordon was one of Colonel Hannay's under-farmers. He was hunted
+out of the country and, as one of the Begums says, pursued by a
+thousand of the zemindars, for robbing the whole country. This woman,
+through respect to the British name, that name which guarantied her
+possessions to her, receives this Captain Gordon and Captain Williams
+with every mark of kindness, hospitality, and protection, that could be
+given them. She conveys them from the borders to the city of Fyzabad,
+and from Fyzabad, her capital, supposed to be the nest of her rebellion,
+on to their place of destination. They both write her letters full of
+expressions of gratitude and kindness for the services that they had
+received. They then pass on to Lucknow to Sir Elijah Impey, and there
+they sink every word of kindness, of any service or protection that they
+had received, or of any acknowledgment that they had ever made of it.
+They sink all this: not one word of it appears in their affidavits.
+
+How, then, did we come to the knowledge of it? We got it from Major
+Gilpin, who was examined in the course of these proceedings; and we used
+it in our charge, from the papers that we hold in our hands. Mr.
+Hastings has confessed the fact; and Mr. Middleton has endeavored to
+slur it over, but could not completely conceal it. We have established
+the fact, and it is in evidence before your Lordships.
+
+You have now, then, in this manner, got these testimonials given by
+English officers in favor of these women; and by the same means the
+letters of the latter accusing the former are come to your hands: and
+now these same English officers come here with their recriminatory
+accusation. Now why did they not make it at Lucknow? Why did not Mr.
+Hastings, when Mr. Middleton had such papers for him in his hands, why,
+I ask, did not Mr. Hastings procure some explanation of the
+circumstances whilst he was in India? I will read your Lordships the
+letter, that you may not only know, but feel, the iniquity of this
+business.
+
+
+     _Letter from the Mother of the Vizier to Mr. Hastings; received the
+     6th of January, 1782._
+
+     "Our situation is pretty well, and your good health is constantly
+     prayed for. I had sent Behar Ali Khân to you. Accordingly people
+     invented a falsehood, that Behar Ali Khân was gone to get the
+     deputyship of the Subah; and some persons here were saying,
+     'Wherefore has she sent Behar Ali Khân to Calcutta to the Nabob
+     Amaud ul Dowlah? We will never permit the affair to succeed.' And
+     accordingly it has so happened. For they say that you also have not
+     put your seal to the treaty: and the people here say, 'Why does the
+     noble lady correspond with the English gentlemen?' On this account,
+     I did not send a letter at the time when you came this way. Now the
+     state of affairs here is thus. On the 27th Zehedja, Asoph ul Dowlah
+     Banadur, without my knowledge, sent his own aumils into my
+     jaghires. I accordingly wrote several times to Mr. Middleton on
+     this business: that his seal was to the treaty and writing of
+     discharge; why did he not negotiate in my favor? Mr. Middleton
+     replied, 'The Nabob is the master.' I wrote frequently, but without
+     effect. Being helpless, I represent to you the state of my affairs,
+     that, notwithstanding the existence of this treaty, I have been
+     treated in this manner. It is useless for me to stay here. Whatever
+     is is a compact; whenever any one deviates from his compact, he
+     meets with no credit for the future; and the light of mine eyes,
+     Asoph ul Dowlah, wrote to me that he had sent his own aumils into
+     my jaghires, and would pay ready money from his treasury. Reflect
+     on my security for his adhering to his future engagements, from the
+     consideration of his conduct under his past promises. I do not
+     agree to his ready money. Let me have my jaghires as formerly;
+     otherwise, leaving this place, I will wait on you at Benares, and
+     thence will go towards Shahjehanabad, because he has not adhered to
+     his engagement. Send letters to Asoph ul Dowlah, and to Mr.
+     Middleton, and Hussein Reza Khân, and Hyder Beg Khân, not to molest
+     the Begum's jaghires, and to let them remain, as formerly, with the
+     Begum's aumils. And it is here suspected of me that my aumil
+     plundered the property of Mr. John Gordon. The case is this. Mr.
+     John Gordon arrived at Taunda, a jaghire of mine, fighting with the
+     zemindars of Acberpore, which belongs to the Khalseh. Accordingly,
+     Mr. John Gordon having come to Taunda, my aumil performed whatever
+     appertained to his duty. Afterwards Mr. John Gordon wrote to me to
+     send my people, that he might come with them to Fyzabad. I sent
+     people accordingly to bring Mr. John Gordon, and the said gentleman
+     arrived here in complete safety; and Mr. John Gordon is now
+     present. Ask him yourself of these matters. Mr. John Gordon will
+     represent matters in detail; the truth will then become known, how
+     ill-founded the calumny is. Should you come here for a few days, it
+     will be very well, and if not, I will wait on you; and your coming
+     here is very necessary, that all my affairs may become arranged.
+     And send a speedy answer to my letters, and a letter to Asoph ul
+     Dowlah, and Mr. Middleton, and Hussein Reza Khân, and Hyder Beg
+     Khân, on the subject of ceasing to molest my jaghires. And send me
+     constantly news of your health, for my peace of mind depends
+     thereon."
+
+This letter was transmitted to Mr. Hastings. I desire your Lordships
+will remark upon this letter, for it is a most important one indeed. It
+is hardly worth observing that all this correspondence came out of the
+various trunks of which your Lordships have already heard, and that this
+letter is out of the trunk of Mr. Hastings's private Persian secretary
+and interpreter, Mr. Jonathan Scott. Now, my Lords, in this letter there
+are several things worthy of your Lordships' observation. The first is,
+that this woman is not conscious of having ever been accused of any
+rebellion: the only accusation that ever came to her ears was, that
+Captain Gordon said that his baggage had been robbed by one of her
+aumils. She denies the truth of this charge; and she produces
+testimonials of their good behavior to him; and, what is the essential
+point of all, she desires Mr. Hastings to apply to this Mr. John Gordon,
+and to know from him what truth or falsehood there is in that
+accusation, and what weight there is in the attestation she produces.
+"Mr. Gordon is now present," says she; "ask him yourself of these
+matters." This reasonable request was not complied with. Mr. Gordon
+swears before Sir Elijah Impey to the robbery; but he never mentions the
+paper he had written, in which he confessed that he owed his life to
+this very lady. No inquiry was made into this matter. Colonel Hannay
+was then alive. Captain Gordon was alive, and she refers to him: yet
+that very man was sworn before Sir Elijah Impey, and accuses his
+prisoner. Did the prisoner at your bar make that attestation known to
+the Begum, whose letter at that very time was in his possession, in Mr.
+Scott's trunk,--that very letter in which he is desired to make the
+inquiry from Captain Gordon?
+
+Mr. Hastings is acquainted with the facts stated by the Begum, and with
+Captain Gordon's accusation. Did he afterwards inform her of this
+accusation? or did he ask this Captain Gordon one question in India,
+where the matter might be ventilated? Not one word, my Lords. Therefore
+we fix upon him fraud, deceit, and the production of false evidence,
+after the woman had desired to have the man who was the evidence against
+her examined upon the spot. This he does not do, but with much more
+prudence he brings him here. And for what? To discredit his own
+testimony, and the written evidence. And how does he discredit them?
+There are two of these papers, which I beg leave to read to your
+Lordships.
+
+
+     _Copy of a Letter to Jewar and Behar Ali Khân, from Mr. Gordon._
+
+     "Sirs, my indulgent friends, remain under, &c., &c., &c. After
+     compliments, I have the pleasure to inform you, that yesterday,
+     having taken leave of you, I passed the night at Noorgunge, and
+     next morning about ten or eleven o'clock, through your favor and
+     benevolence, arrived safe at Goondah. Mir Aboo Buksh Zemindar and
+     Mir Rustum Ali accompanied me.
+
+     "To what extent can I prolong the praises of you, my beneficent
+     friends? May the Supreme Being, for this benign, compassionate,
+     humane action, have you in His keeping, and increase your property,
+     and speedily grant me the pleasure of an interview; until which
+     time continue to favor me with friendly letters, and oblige me by
+     any commands in my power to execute. May your wishes be ever
+     crowned with success! My compliments," &c., &c., &c.
+
+
+     _Copy of an Address from Mr. Gordon to the Begum._
+
+     "Begum Saib of exalted dignity and generosity, whom God preserve!
+     After presenting the usual professions of servitude, &c., in the
+     customary manner, my address is presented.
+
+     "Your gracious letter, in answer to the petition of your servant
+     from Goondah, exalted me. From the contents, I became unspeakably
+     impressed with the honor it conferred. May the Almighty protect
+     that royal purity, and bestow happiness, increase of wealth, and
+     prosperity! The welfare of your servant is entirely owing to your
+     favor and benevolence; a few days have elapsed since I arrived at
+     Goondah, with the Colonel Saib.
+
+     "This is presented for your Highness's information. I cherish hopes
+     from your generosity, that, considering me in the light of one of
+     your servants, you will always continue to exalt and honor me with
+     your gracious letters. May the sun of prosperity continually
+     shine!"
+
+These acknowledgments of the Begum's friendly disposition and services
+were concealed, when the charge was made against this woman at Lucknow
+before Sir Elijah Impey: I wish to impress this upon your Lordships'
+mind; and that before Mr. Hastings left Bengal, in the trunk of Major
+Scott, his private Persian interpreter, was this letter. Did he make
+that inquiry of Captain Gordon? No. Did he make that inquiry of Colonel
+Hannay? Did he make any inquiry into the matter, after his perusal of
+these letters? Or did he give this poor woman any opportunity of
+obtaining justice against this Captain Gordon, who, after acknowledging
+that he owed his life to her favor, calumniates and traduces her to her
+utter destruction? No, he never did; and therefore he is chargeable, and
+I charge him, with everything that is wrongful in Captain Gordon's
+evidence.
+
+These papers, which carry with them a clear refutation of all the
+charges against the Begum, are never once produced, though Captain
+Gordon was referred to expressly for inquiry and explanation of the
+whole transaction by the woman herself. You hear nothing of them; there
+is no appearance of them in the affidavits; no such papers were laid
+before the Supreme Council; none were transmitted to the Court of
+Directors: but at last the House of Commons having come at the truth of
+this matter, Mr. Hastings, not daring to deny the existence of these
+papers, brings Captain Gordon to be examined here, in order to prove
+that papers which he had himself written were false. Is this to be
+tolerated? What will your Lordships think of a man that comes to attest
+his own infamy,--to declare that he has written papers containing
+falsehoods, and to invalidate the false testimony which he had before
+given? Is he to be suffered, I say, to come here, and endeavor to prove
+the absolute falsity of his own deeds by his own evidence?
+
+The next point for your Lordships' consideration is the evidence which
+he produces to prove the falsity of a paper written by himself. Why, he
+himself is the sole evidence. And how does he prove it? Why, says he,
+"The reason of my writing that letter was this: she had sent a person
+with me as an escort, and this person was desirous of receiving some
+proof that he had done his duty; and therefore I wrote a complaisant
+letter. I meant nothing by it. It was written merely to satisfy the mind
+of the man." Now is that the way in which formal and solemn letters,
+written upon great occasions to great people, are to be explained away?
+If he had said nothing but "Your servant, such a one, has done his
+duty," this explanation might pass. But you see it has another
+complexion. It speaks of his owing his life to her. But if you admit
+that it is possible (for possibilities have an unknown extent) that he
+wrote such a letter at such a time and for such a purpose, and that the
+letter he wrote was false, and that the falsity of the letter is proved
+by his own testimony given in an affidavit which we have also reason to
+believe is false, your Lordships must at the same time admit that it is
+one of the most complex pieces of fraud and falsehood that, I believe,
+ever existed in the world. But it is worse than all this. There is
+another letter, written some days after, which I will read to you, and
+which he has not pretended to say was written only to testify that a
+messenger had executed his commission properly.
+
+"Your gracious letter," (he thus writes,) "in answer to the petition of
+your servant from Goondah, exalted me. From the contents, I became
+unspeakably impressed with the honor it conferred."
+
+My Lords, this letter was not sent back by a messenger, in
+acknowledgment of his having done his duty, but was written in
+consequence of a correspondence in the nature of a petition for
+something or other which he made to the Begum. That petition they have
+suppressed and sunk. It is plain, however, that the petition had been
+sent, and was granted; and therefore the apology that is made for the
+former letter does not apply to this letter, which was written
+afterwards.
+
+How, then, do they attempt to get rid of this difficulty? Why, says
+Captain Gordon, "_The Colonel Saib_ (by whom was meant Colonel Hannay)
+was not at Goondah, as stated in the letter, but at Succara, about
+eighteen miles from it, and therefore you ought not to pay much regard
+to this paper." But he does not deny the letter, nor was it possible for
+him to deny it. He says Colonel Hannay was not there. But how do we know
+whether Colonel Hannay was there or not? We have only his own word for
+it. But supposing he was not there, and that it was clearly proved that
+he was eighteen miles distant from it, Major Naylor was certainly with
+Captain Gordon at the time. Might not his Persian scribe (for he does
+not pretend to say he wrote the letter himself) take Major Naylor for a
+colonel, (for he was the superior officer to Captain Gordon,) and think
+him the Colonel Saib? For errors of that kind may be committed in our
+own country. Every day we may take a major for a lieutenant-colonel.
+This was an error that might easily have happened in such a case. He was
+in as high rank as Colonel Hannay; for Colonel Hannay at that time was
+only a major. I do not believe either of them was properly entitled to
+the name of Colonel Saib. I am ashamed, my Lords, to be obliged to
+remark upon this prevarication. Their own endeavors to get rid of their
+own written acts by contradictory evidence and false constructions
+sufficiently clear these women of the crimes of which they were accused;
+and I may now ask the prisoner at your bar how he dares to produce
+Captain Gordon here, how he dares thus to insult the Peers, how he dares
+thus to insult the public justice of his country, after not having dared
+to inquire, upon the spot, of this man, to whom he was referred by the
+Begums for an account of this very transaction?
+
+I hope your Lordships have got enough of this kind of evidence. All the
+rest is of the same batch, and of the same description,--made up of
+nothing but hearsays, except in one particular only. This I shall now
+mention to your Lordships. Colonel Popham and another gentleman have
+told you, that, in a battle with Cheyt Sing's forces, they took
+prisoners two wounded nudjeeves or swordsmen, and that these men told
+them that they were sent there by the Begums,--that they had got two
+rupees and two wounds, but that they thought two rupees a bad
+compensation for two wounds. These two men, with their two wounds and
+two rupees, had, however, been dismissed. It does not appear that this
+accident was considered by these officers to be of consequence enough to
+make them ever tell one word of it to Mr. Hastings, though they knew he
+was collecting evidence of the disaffection of the Begums, of all kinds,
+good, bad, and indifferent, from all sorts of persons.
+
+My Lords, I must beg leave to say a few words upon this matter; because
+I consider it as one of the most outrageous violations of your
+Lordships' dignity, and the greatest insult that was ever offered to a
+court of justice. A nudjeeve is a soldier armed with a sword. It appears
+in evidence that the Nabob had several corps of nudjeeves in his
+service; that the Begums had some nudjeeves; and that Colonel Hannay had
+a corps of nudjeeves. It is well known that every prince in Hindostan
+has soldiers of that description,--in like manner, probably, as the
+princes of Europe have their guards. The whole, then, amounts to this:
+that a story told by two men who were wounded in an action far from the
+place from which they were supposed to come, who were not regularly
+examined, not cross-examined, not even kept for examination, and whose
+evidence was never reported, is to be a reason why you are to believe
+that these Begums were concerned in a rebellion against their son, and
+deserved to forfeit all their lands and goods, and to suffer the
+indignities that we have stated.
+
+My Lords, I am really ashamed to mention so scandalous a thing; but let
+us put a case: let us suppose that we had accused Mr. Hastings of
+instigating the Rajah of Berar to fall upon some of the country powers,
+and that the evidence we produced at your bar to prove it was, that an
+officer had taken two nudjeeves, who declared they were instigated by
+Mr. Hastings to go into the service of that Rajah: could you bear such a
+thing? would you suffer such evidence to be produced? or do you think
+that we should have so little regard for our own reputation as to
+venture to produce such evidence before you? Again, we have charged Mr.
+Hastings with committing several acts of violence against the Begums.
+Let us suppose our proof to be, that two persons who never appeared
+before nor since, that two grenadiers in English uniforms, (which would
+be a great deal stronger than the case of the nudjeeves, because they
+have no particular uniform belonging to them,) that two English
+grenadiers, I say, had been taken prisoners in some action and let go
+again, who said that Mr. Hastings had instigated them to make war upon
+the Begums: would your Lordships suffer such evidence to be produced
+before you? No. And yet two of the first women in India are to be
+stripped of all they have in the world upon no better evidence than that
+which you would utterly reject. You would not disgrace the British
+peerage, you would not disgrace this court of justice, you would not
+disgrace human reason itself, by confiscating, on such evidence, the
+meanest property of the meanest wretch. You would not subject to the
+smallest fine for the smallest delinquency, upon such evidence. I will
+venture to say, that, in an action of assault and battery, or in an
+action for the smallest sum, such evidence would be scouted as odious
+and contemptible, even supposing that a perfect reliance might be placed
+upon its truth. And yet this is the sort of evidence upon which the
+property, the dignity, and the rank of some of the first persons in Asia
+are to be destroyed,--by which a British guaranty, and the honor and
+dignity of the crown of Great Britain, and of the Parliament itself,
+which sent out this man, are to be forfeited.
+
+Observe, besides, my Lords, that the two swordsmen said they were sent
+by the Begums. Now they could not be sent by the Begums in their own
+person. This was a thing in India impossible. They might, indeed, have
+been sent by Jewar and Behar Ali Khân: and then we ask again, How came
+these ministers not to be called to an account at the time? Why were
+they not called upon for their muster-rolls of these nudjeeves? No,
+these men and women suffer the penalty, but they never hear the
+accusation nor the evidence.
+
+But to proceed with the evidence of this pretended rebellion. Captain
+Williams has told your Lordships that he once had a great number of
+letters and papers to prove this rebellion of the Begums. But he
+declares that he has lost all these letters. A search was ordered to be
+made in Mr. Hastings's record-office, called a trunk; and accordingly in
+the trunk is found a paper worthy of such a place and such a cause. This
+letter, which has been made use of to criminate the Begums, has not
+their names mentioned, nor is there any possibility of their being
+included in it. By this paper which is preserved you may judge of the
+whole of the papers that are lost. Such a letter, I believe, was never
+before brought as evidence in a court of justice. It is a letter said to
+have been intercepted, and is as follows.
+
+     "To the most noble * * * * *, whose prosperity be everlasting!
+
+     "It is represented, that the august purwannah [command], having
+     completed his honorable arrival on the 16th of the month in the
+     evening, highly exalted me. It is ordered that I should charge
+     Medeporee, and the other enrolled sepoys belonging to my district,
+     and take bonds from them that none of them go for service to the
+     Rajah; and that, when four or five hundred men, nudjeeves and
+     others, are collected, I should send them to the presence.
+     According to the order, I have written to Brejunekar Shah Rehemet
+     Ullah, who is in Bhooaparah, charging him to take bonds from them,
+     and that whatever sepoys fit for service are collected he should
+     send to the presence. As at this time the wind is contrary, the
+     sepoys will not * * * * without travelling charges; for I have
+     learnt from a letter previously received from Brejunekar Shah
+     Rehemet Ullah, that the people there also are badly inclined. By
+     the grace of God, the unalterable glory shall be * * * * *. Zehan
+     Beg and the nudjeeves who were in the fort of Aneelah have gone off
+     to Goruckpore."
+
+This is a letter of somebody or other employed by somebody or other for
+the recruiting service,--it should seem, by the word "presence,"
+somebody employed in enlisting forces for the Nabob. The charge against
+the Begum was, that she had joined with the rebellious Rajahs to
+exterminate her son's government and the English influence in that
+country. In this very paper you see that the soldiers entering into that
+service, and officers who are to contract for soldiers, are expressly
+bound not to join the Rajahs; and this they produce as proof that the
+Begums had joined the Rajahs, and had joined them in a rebellion, for
+the purpose of exterminating their son, in the first instance, and the
+English afterwards.
+
+There is another circumstance which makes their own acts the refutation
+of their false pretences. This letter says that the country is
+disaffected, and it mentions the ill-disposed parts of the country. Now
+we all know that the country was ill-disposed; and we may therefore
+conclude this paper was written by, and addressed to, some person who
+was employed against the persons so ill-disposed,--namely, the very
+Rajahs so mentioned before. The prisoner's counsel, after producing this
+paper, had the candor to declare that they did not see what use could be
+made of it. No, to be sure, they do not see what use can be made of it
+for their cause; but I see the use that can be made of it against their
+cause. I say that the lost papers, upon which they do so much insist,
+deserve no consideration, when the only paper that they have preserved
+operates directly against them; and that therefore we may safely infer,
+that, if we had the rest of the contents of this trunk, we should
+probably find them make as strongly against them as this paper does. You
+have no reason to judge of them otherwise than by the specimen: for how
+can you judge of what is lost but from what remains?
+
+The man who hid these papers in his trunk never understood one word of
+the Persian language, and consequently was liable to every kind of
+mistake, even though he meant well. But who is this man? Why, it is
+Captain Williams,--the man who in his affidavits never mentioned the
+Begums without mentioning Saadut Ali. It is Captain Williams,--whom we
+charge to have murdered a principal man of the country by his own hand,
+without law or legal process. It is Captain Williams,--one of those
+British officers whom Mr. Hastings states to be the pests of the
+country. This is the man who comes here as evidence against these women,
+and produces this monstrous paper.
+
+All the evidence they had produced to you amounts to no more than that
+such a man _believes_ such a man _heard of something_; and to close the
+whole of this hearsay account, Sir Elijah Impey, who always comes in as
+a supplement, declares that no man doubted of the existence of this
+rebellion, and of the guilt of the Begums, any more than of the
+rebellion of 1745: a comparison which, I must say, is, by way of
+evidence, a little indecorous in a chief-justice of India. Your
+Lordships are sufficiently acquainted with the history of that rebellion
+to know, that, when Lord Lovat was tried at this bar, the proceedings
+against him were not founded on second-hand hearsay. The existence of
+the rebellion of 1745 was proved, notwithstanding its notoriety; but
+neither notoriety nor proof would have signified anything, if Lord
+Lovat's participation in it had not been brought home to him directly,
+personally, and particularly. Yet a chief-justice, sent to India to
+represent the sacred majesty of the crown of England, has gone so far as
+to say at your bar that no more doubt could be entertained of the
+existence either of the rebellion or the guilt of the Begums than of the
+rebellion in 1745. Besides, he forgets that he himself carried the order
+to confiscate these people's property without any trial whatever. But
+this is the way of proceeding by an English chief-justice in India,--a
+chief-justice who had rendered himself the instrument, the
+letter-carrier, the messenger, I had almost said the executioner of Mr.
+Hastings.
+
+From this view of the whole matter your Lordships will form an estimate
+of the spirit of Indian government and Indian justice. But to blow away
+and to put an end to all their false pretences, their hearsays, and talk
+of nudjeeves, and wounds, and the like, I ask, Who is the first witness
+that we have produced upon this occasion? It is the Nabob himself,
+negativing all these pretences. Did he believe them? Not a word from him
+of any rebellion, actual or suspected. Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, said
+that he was obliged to wheel round, and to avoid that dangerous place,
+Fyzabad. His friends urged him to this. "For God's sake," say they,
+"have a reverend care of your sacred person! What will become of the
+justice of India, what will become of the natives, if you, their
+legitimate protector, should fall into the hands of these wicked,
+rebellious women at Fyzabad?" But although the Chief-Justice does this,
+the Nabob, whose deposition is said to be the first object of this
+rebellion, takes leave of Mr. Hastings at the very moment when it is
+raging in the highest possible degree, and gallops into its very focus.
+
+And under what circumstances does he do this? He had brought some
+considerable forces with him. No man of his rank in that country ever
+goes without them. He left a part of these forces with Mr. Hastings,
+notwithstanding he was going into the centre of the rebellion. He then
+went on with a corps of about a thousand horse. He even left a part of
+these with Mr. Middleton, and galloped, attended by a few horse, into
+the very capital, where the Begums, we are told, had ten thousand armed
+men. He put himself into their power, and, not satisfied with this, the
+very first thing we hear of him after his arrival is, that he paid his
+mother a friendly visit,--thus rushing into the den of a lioness who was
+going to destroy her own whelp. Is it to be credited, my Lords, that a
+prince would act thus who believed that a conspiracy was formed against
+him by his own mother? Is it to be credited that any man would trust a
+mother who, contrary to all the rules of Nature and policy, had
+conspired to destroy her own son?
+
+Upon this matter your Lordships have the evidence of Captain Edwards,
+who was aide-de-camp to the Nabob, who was about his person, his
+attendant at Chunar, and his attendant back again. I am not producing
+this to exculpate the Begums,--for I say you cannot try them here, you
+have not the parties before you, they ought to have been tried on the
+spot,--but I am going to demonstrate the iniquity of this abominable
+plot beyond all doubt: for it is necessary your Lordships should know
+the length, breadth, and depth of this mystery of iniquity.
+
+Captain Edwards being asked,--"Whether he ever heard any native of
+credit and authority in the Nabob's dominions, who appeared to believe
+the rebellion of the Begums?--_A._ No, I never did.--_Q._ Have you any
+reason to believe that the Nabob gave credit to it?--_A._ I really
+cannot rightly presume to say whether the Nabob did or did not; but I am
+apt to believe that he did not.--_Q._ Have you any reason, and what, to
+form a belief about it?--_A._ I have. I think, if he supposed the
+rebellion, ever existed at Fyzabad, he would have been the first person
+to take and give the alarm to the British troops.--_Q._ And no such
+alarm was taken or given to the British troops?--_A._ No, I think not:
+as I was always about his person, and in the camp, I think I certainly
+must have known it or heard of it; but I never did."
+
+We assure your Lordships, you will find upon your printed Minutes, that
+Captain Edwards says he was credibly informed that the Nabob left behind
+him a part of his guard of horse; and that, so desirous was he to go
+into the power of this cruel lioness, his mother, that he advanced, as
+he is a vigorous man, and a bold and spirited rider, leaving all his
+guards behind him, and rode before them into the middle of Fyzabad.
+There is some more evidence to the same purpose in answer to the
+question put next to that which I read before.
+
+"_Q._ When you did hear of the rebellion, did not you understand it to
+have been alleged that one object of it was to dethrone the Nabob
+himself, as well as to extirpate the English?--_A._ I understood that
+the intention of the princesses, the Begums, was to extirpate the
+English troops out of the country and out of those dominions, and
+likewise to depose her son, and set another son, who seems to have been
+a greater favorite of that family, upon the throne, in the room of the
+present Nabob; and that son's name is Saadut Ali. I have only heard this
+from report. I have no other knowledge but mere report. I understood
+from the report, she was to extirpate the English, and depose her son
+who is now upon the throne.--_Q._ Was it after or before the seizing of
+the treasures, that you heard a circumstantial account of the supposed
+object of the rebellion?--_A._ The report was more general after the
+seizing of the treasures; but yet there were reports prevailing in the
+neighborhood that our troops were sent there in consequence of the
+charge that was made by Colonel Hannay and some of his officers of
+rebellion existing then at Fyzabad, or having existed, I cannot rightly
+say which.--_Q._ Was that report after the order for the troops to march
+to Fyzabad?--_A._ It was more general, it was very general then when the
+troops did march there, and more general after the seizing of the
+treasures.--_Q._ When did the troops first march?--_A._ It was some time
+in the month of January, I believe, in the year 1782.--_Q._ While you
+was with the Nabob in passing from Lucknow to Chunar, and while you was
+with him or the army returning from Chunar, did you then, out of the
+whole army, regular or irregular, ever hear of any report of the Begums
+being in rebellion?--_A._ No, I do not recollect I ever did.--_Q. (Upon
+cross-examination.)_ Do you recollect at what time in August, 1781, you
+left Lucknow to proceed with the Nabob to Chunar?--_A._ No, I cannot
+rightly mention the date: all that I know is this, that I accompanied
+the Nabob, Mr. Middleton, and his attendants, all the way from Lucknow
+to Chunargur. I really cannot recollect; I have no notes, and it is so
+distant a time since that I do not recollect the particulars of the
+month or the day; but I recollect perfectly I accompanied the Nabob all
+the way from Lucknow to Chunar, and returned again with him until he
+struck off on the road for Fyzabad."
+
+Your Lordships see plainly the whole of this matter. When they had
+resolved to seize the Begums' treasures, they propagated this report
+just in proportion to their acts. As they proceeded, the report grew
+hotter and hotter. This man tells you when it was that the propagation
+of this report first began, when it grew hot, and when it was in its
+greatest heat. He tells you that not one native of credit in the country
+believed it,--that he did not think the Nabob himself believed it; and
+he gives a reason that speaks for itself, namely, that he, the Nabob,
+would have been the first man to give the alarm, if he believed in a
+rebellion, as he was to be the object of it. He says the English were
+the principal spreaders of the report. It was, in fact, a wicked report,
+propagated by Mr. Middleton and the English agents for the purpose of
+justifying their iniquitous spoliation of the Begums.
+
+This is the manner in which the matter stands upon the ground of
+rebellion, with the exception of Major Gilpin's and Hyder Beg Khân's
+testimony. This last man we have proved to have been kept in his office
+by Mr. Hastings's influence, and to have been entirely under his
+government. When this dependant comes to give his attestation, he gives
+a long account of all the proceedings of Cheyt Sing's rebellion, with
+which the rebellion charged on the Begums was supposed to be coincident;
+and he ends it very remarkably,--that he tells the whole truth, and
+nothing but the truth. But it is also remarkable, that even this Hyder
+Beg Khân never mentions by name the rebellion of the Begums, nor says
+that he ever heard a word about it: a strong proof that he did not dare,
+in the face of his country, to give countenance to such a falsehood.
+
+Major Gilpin's evidence leaves not even the shadow of a pretence for
+this charge. He had the Begums and their eunuchs under his custody for a
+full year; he was strictly ordered to watch them and to guard them; and
+during all that time he lived at Fyzabad. He was the man who commanded
+the troops, who had all the witnesses in his power, who had daily access
+to all parties at Fyzabad, and who, moreover, was a person attached to
+Mr. Hastings in the strongest manner. Your Lordships will now be pleased
+to hear read to you this part of Major Gilpin's evidence.
+
+"_Q._ Had you any opportunity of knowing the character of the Begums,
+and whether they were disaffected to our government?--_A._ I had a very
+good opportunity of knowing, from the circumstance of my having
+commanded so long there. The elder Begum, it was generally understood,
+(and I have reason to believe,) was disaffected to our government; and
+my sentiments of her conduct stand recorded in my correspondence to the
+court of Lucknow to that effect; but with respect to the Bhow Begum, I
+acquit her entirely of any disaffection to our government, so far as
+comes to my knowledge: appearances were for some time against her; but,
+on cool, deliberate inquiry, I found there was no ground for supposing
+her guilty of any rebellious principles, at the time of Cheyt Sing's
+rebellion.--_Q._ Whether that, according to your belief, is not your
+present opinion?--_A._ I think I have answered that very fully, that it
+was upon those very principles that I did form an opinion of her
+innocence; how far they are justifiable or right I will not take upon me
+to say upon oath; there was no one circumstance that came to my
+knowledge, during my residence at Fyzabad or my residence in India, that
+I would wish to withhold from your Lordships.--_Q._ You state here,
+'upon cool, deliberate inquiry': what was that cool, deliberate
+inquiry?--_A._ That cool, deliberate inquiry was the conversations I had
+with the ministers and the people of Fyzabad, and the letters from
+herself expressing her innocence; and it appeared to me from those
+letters that she really was our friend and ally."
+
+The same witness goes on afterwards to say:--
+
+"_Q._ I understood you to say, that originally the report prevailed with
+respect to both the Begums, but that you was induced to alter that
+opinion with respect to the younger Begum, in consequence of Mr.
+Gordon's letters, and the intelligence of some of her ministers and
+other persons: were not those other persons in the interest of the
+younger Begum?--_A._ In general the town of Fyzabad were in her
+interest.--_Q._ In what sense do you mean generally in her interest?
+Were the persons you conversed with merely those who were in her service
+and household, or the inhabitants of Fyzabad in general?--_A._ Both: I
+held conversations with both her own body-servants and the inhabitants
+of the city."
+
+A little lower down, in the same page:--
+
+"_Q._ What do you mean by the word rebellion, as applied to the Begums?
+In what sense do you use it?--_A._ In raising troops, and in other acts
+of rebellion, in the common acceptation of the word.--_Q._ Against
+whom?--_A._ Against the Nabob's government and the British government
+jointly: but I beg to know the particular time and circumstance the
+question alludes to.--_Q._ I understand you to have said you understood
+the elder Begum was in a constant state of rebellion. In what sense do
+you use the word rebellion? Did you say the elder Begum was in a
+constant state of rebellion?--_A._ I always understood her to be
+disaffected to the English government: it might not be a proper
+expression of mine, the word rebellion.--_Q._ Do you know of any act by
+the elder Begum against the Vizier?--_A._ I cannot state any.--_Q._ Do
+you know of any act which you call rebellion, committed by the elder
+Begum against the Company?--_A._ I do not know of any particular
+circumstance, only it was generally supposed that she was disaffected to
+the Company.--_Q._ What acts of disaffection or hostility towards the
+English do you allude to, when you speak of the conversation of the
+world at the time?--_A._ I have answered that question as fully as I
+can,--that it was nothing but conversation,--that I knew of no
+particular act or deed myself."
+
+This man, then, declares, as your Lordships have heard, that, upon cool,
+deliberate inquiry made at Fyzabad from all the inhabitants, he did not
+believe in the existence of any rebellion;--that as to the Bhow Begum,
+the grandmother, who was a person that could only be charged with it in
+a secondary degree, and as conspiring with the other, he says he knows
+no facts against her, except that at the battle of Buxar, in the year
+1764, she had used some odd expressions concerning the English, who were
+then at war with her son Sujah Dowlah. This was long before we had any
+empire or pretence to empire in that part of India: therefore the
+expression of a rebellion, which he had used with regard to her, was, he
+acknowledged, improper, and that he only meant he had formed some
+opinion of her disaffection to the English.
+
+As to the Begum, he positively acquits her of any rebellion. If he,
+therefore, did not know it, who was an active officer in the very centre
+of the alleged rebellion, and who was in possession of all the persons
+from whom information was to be got, who had the eunuchs in prison, and
+might have charged them with this rebellion, and might have examined and
+cross-examined them at his pleasure,--if this man knew nothing about it,
+your Lordships will judge of the falsehood of this wicked rumor, spread
+about from hand to hand, and which was circulated by persons who at the
+same time have declared that they never heard of it before Sir Elijah
+Impey went up into the country, the messenger of Mr. Hastings's orders
+to seize the treasures of the Begums, and commissioned to procure
+evidence in justification of that violence and robbery.
+
+I now go to another part of this evidence. There is a person they call
+Hoolas Roy,--a man in the employment of the Resident, Mr. Middleton. The
+gentlemen who are counsel for the prisoner have exclaimed, "Oh! he was
+nothing but a news-writer. What! do you take any notice of him?" Your
+Lordships would imagine that the man whom they treat in this manner, and
+whose negative evidence they think fit to despise, was no better than
+the writers of those scandalous paragraphs which are published in our
+daily papers, to misrepresent the proceedings of this court to the
+public. But who in fact is this Hoolas Roy, whom they represent, for the
+convenience of the day, to be nothing but a news-writer? I will read to
+your Lordships a letter from Major Naylor to Colonel Jaques, commanding
+the second battalion, twentieth regiment.
+
+     "Sir,--Hoolas Roy, the person appointed by the Nabob for
+     transacting the business for which the troops are required here,
+     will hold constant communication and intercourse with you; and as
+     he is instructed and acquainted with the best method to accomplish
+     this business, Mr. Middleton requests implicit attention to be paid
+     to what he may from time to time represent respecting the prisoners
+     or the business on which he is employed; in short, as he is the
+     person nominated by the Nabob, he wishes Hoolas Roy to be
+     considered in the same light as if he himself was present."
+
+Mr. Middleton, in a letter to Lieutenant Francis Rutledge, writes thus
+of him:--
+
+     "Sir,--When, this note is delivered to you by Hoolas Roy, I have to
+     desire that you order the two prisoners to be put in irons, keeping
+     them from all food, &c., agreeable to my instructions of
+     yesterday."
+
+You will first see in how confidential a manner Hoolas Roy was employed,
+and in what light he was held: that he was employed to carry some
+instructions which do not indeed appear, but were accompanied by an
+order from Mr. Middleton. "When these instructions shall come to you, to
+put these prisoners in irons and keep them without food, &c." The Begums
+say, without food and water. _Et cetera_ are words of large import; but
+he was "to keep them without food, &c., agreeable to my instructions of
+yesterday." This was a pretty general warrant for sufferings. This
+Hoolas Roy, this mere news-writer, was not only intrusted with this
+warrant, but Mr. Middleton declares him to be a person who was to be
+received there, and to represent the Nabob, and very justly too; for he,
+Mr. Middleton, was undoubtedly the real nabob of the country. The man,
+therefore, whom they talk of in this contemptuous manner in order to
+make slight of an observation we made, and which I shall make again, and
+whom they affect to consider as a mere paragraph-monger in some
+scandalous newspaper, was a man vested by Mr. Middleton with authority
+equal to that of the Nabob himself.
+
+Mr. Hastings not only thought him of consequence enough to be a witness
+to the severities used on the ministers of the Begums, but he considered
+that he would afterwards be a fit witness to the rebellion. I pray your
+Lordships to mark this: he sent for this Hoolas Roy, (who is now nothing
+but a mere paragraph-monger,)--he sent for him from Fyzabad to
+Benares,--a pretty long journey; and at last caused him to be examined
+before Sir Elijah Impey. He has, however, sunk his evidence: a
+suppression which is strongly in favor of the Begums, and equally strong
+against their accuser. Here we have a man who was intrusted with all
+their orders,--who represented the English government,--who represented
+the Nabob's government: this man is sent for by Mr. Hastings; he gives
+his deposition before Sir Elijah Impey; and the deposition so given is
+not to be found either upon the Company's record, in Sir Elijah Impey's
+trunk, in Jonathan Scott's trunk, nor in any other place whatever. The
+evidence of a witness who could speak most clearly, as probably he did,
+and most decisively, upon this subject, is sunk. They suppress, and dare
+not produce, the affidavit of the man who was at the bottom of every
+secret of both governments. They had the folly to let you know,
+obliquely, that he had been sent for by Mr. Hastings, but they conceal
+the information obtained from him: a silence more damning than any
+positive evidence could be. You have here a proof of their practice of
+producing such evidence only as they thought most favorable to their
+wicked purposes, in the destruction of this great and ancient family.
+
+But all the English, they say, believed in the existence of this
+rebellion. This we deny. Mr. Purling, who was Resident the year before
+its pretended explosion, has told you that he never knew of anything
+like a plot carrying on by these women. We were almost ashamed to put
+the question to him. Did Mr. Bristow, the next Resident, know or
+believe in this plot? He seems, indeed, to have been induced to give
+some oblique hints to Mr. Hastings of improper conduct on the part of
+the Begums, but without stating what it was. In a letter to Mr.
+Hastings, he appears to endeavor to soften the cruel temper of this
+inflexible man by going a little way with him, by admitting that he
+thought they had behaved improperly. When Mr. Wombwell, another
+Resident, is asked whether any Englishman doubted of it, he says Mr.
+Bristow doubted of it. No one, indeed, who reads these papers, can avoid
+seeing that Mr. Bristow did not believe one word of it,--no more, in
+fact, than did Mr. Hastings, or anybody else.
+
+But, my Lords, let us go from these inferior agents and servants of the
+Company to their higher officers. Did Mr. Stables believe it? This
+gentleman was Mr. Hastings's colleague in the Council,--a man of as
+much honor, I really believe, as ever went to India,--a faithful old
+servant of the Company, and very worthy of credit. I believe there is
+not a spot upon him during all his long service under the Company: if
+any, it is his being a little too obsequious, sometimes, to Mr.
+Hastings. Did he believe it? No, he did not: and yet he was one of the
+persons authorized to investigate it coolly, and most able to do so.
+
+Upon the whole, then, the persons who best knew the state of the country
+did not believe it; the Nabob did not believe it; the Begums were never
+charged with it; no ground of suspicion is suggested, except loose
+rumors and the story of two nudjeeves. Under these circumstances the
+treasures of these ancient ladies were seized, their property
+confiscated, and the Nabob dragged most reluctantly to this act. Yes,
+my Lords, this poor, miserable victim was forced to violate all the laws
+of Nature, all decency, all property, to rob his own mother, for the
+benefit of Mr. Hastings. All this he was forced to do: he was made the
+reluctant instrument of punishing his mother and grandmother for a plot
+of which even their accusers do not pretend to say that the parties
+accused had ever received any intimation.
+
+My Lords, in forming your judgment upon this nefarious proceeding, your
+Lordships will not fail to advert to the fundamental principles, the
+acknowledged maxims and established rules, of all judgment and
+justice,--that conviction ought to precede execution, that trial ought
+to precede conviction, and that a prosecutor's information and evidence
+ought to be the preliminary step and substance of the trial. Here
+everything was reversed: Sir Elijah Impey goes up with the order for
+execution; the party accused is neither arraigned nor tried; this same
+Sir Elijah then proceeds to seek for witnesses and to take affidavits;
+and in the mean time neither the Nabob, the ostensible prosecutor, nor
+his mother and grandmother, the parties accused, knew one word of the
+matter.
+
+But possibly some peculiarity in the circumstances of the case rendered
+such a proceeding necessary, and may justify it. No such peculiarity has
+been proved or even alleged; nay, it is in the highest degree improbable
+that it could have existed. Mr. Hastings had another opportunity of
+doing himself justice. When an account of this business was transmitted
+to the Court of Directors, they ordered him to inquire into it: and your
+Lordships will see what he did in consequence of this order. Your
+Lordships will then judge of the extreme audacity of the defence which
+he has made of this act at your bar, after having refused to institute
+any inquiry into it, although, he had the positive order of the Court of
+Directors, and was in the place where that inquiry could be made
+effectually, and in the place where the unfortunate women could have an
+opportunity of clearing themselves.
+
+I will first read to your Lordships an extract from the letter of the
+Court of Directors to the board at Calcutta, dated the 14th of February,
+1783.
+
+     "4. By the second article of the treaty [of Chunar] the Nabob is
+     permitted to resume such jaghires as he shall think proper, with a
+     reserve, that all such jaghiredars, for the amount of whose
+     jaghires the Company are guaranties, shall, in case of a resumption
+     of their lands, be paid the amount of the net collections through
+     the Resident.
+
+     "5. We do not see how the Governor-General could consent to the
+     resumption of such lands as the Company had engaged should remain
+     in the hands of those who possessed them previous to the execution
+     of the late treaty, without stronger proofs of the Begums'
+     defection than have been laid before us; neither can we allow it to
+     be good policy to reduce the several jaghiredars, and thus uniting
+     the territory, and the troops maintained for the protection of that
+     territory, under one head, who, by that means, at some future
+     period, may become a very powerful enemy to the Company.
+
+     "6. With respect to the resumption of the jaghires possessed by the
+     Begums in particular, and the subsequent seizure of the treasure
+     deposited with the Vizier's mother, which the Governor-General, in
+     his letter to the board, 23d January, 1782, has declared he
+     strenuously encouraged and supported, we hope and trust, for the
+     honor of the British nation, that the measure appeared to be fully
+     justified in the eyes of all Hindostan. The Governor-General has
+     informed us that it can be well attested, that the Begums
+     principally excited and supported the late commotions, and that
+     they carried their inveteracy to the English nation so far as to
+     aim at our utter extirpation.
+
+     "7. It must have been publicly known that in 1775 the Resident at
+     the Vizier's court not only obtained from the Begum, widow of the
+     late Sujah Dowlah, on the Nabob's account, thirty lacs of rupees,
+     half of which was to be paid to the Company, but also the
+     forbearance of twenty-six lacs, for the repayment of which she had
+     security in land, on the Nabob's agreeing to renounce all further
+     claims upon her, and that to this agreement the Company were
+     guaranties.
+
+     "8. We find that on the 21st December, 1775, the Begum complained
+     of a breach of engagements on the part of the Nabob, soliciting
+     your protection for herself, her mother, and for all the women
+     belonging to the seraglio of the late Nabob, from the distresses to
+     which they were reduced; in consequence whereof it was agreed in
+     consultation, 3d January, 1776, to remonstrate with the
+     Vizier,--the Governor-General remarking, that, as the
+     representative of our government has become an agent in this
+     business, and has pledged the honor and faith of the Company for
+     the punctual observance of the conditions under which the treaty
+     was concluded, you had a right to interfere, and justice demanded
+     it, if it should appear that those engagements have been violated.
+     And the board at the same time resolved, that, as soon as the
+     Begum's engagements with the Nabob, to which Mr. Bristow is a
+     party, shall be fulfilled on her part, this government will think
+     themselves bound to protect her against any further demand or
+     molestation.
+
+     "9. If, therefore, the disaffection of the Begums was not a matter
+     of public notoriety, we cannot but be alarmed for the effects which
+     these subsequent transactions must have had on the minds of the
+     natives of India. The only consolation we feel upon this occasion
+     is, that the amount of those jaghires for which the Company were
+     guaranties is to be paid through our Resident at the court of the
+     Vizier; and it very materially concerns the credit of your
+     government on no account to suffer such payments to be evaded.
+
+     "10. If it shall hereafter be found that the Begums did not take
+     that hostile part against the Company which has been represented,
+     as well in the Governor-General's Narrative as in several documents
+     therein referred to,--and as it nowhere appears, from the papers at
+     present in our possession, that they excited any commotion previous
+     to the imprisonment of Rajah Cheyt Sing, but only armed themselves
+     in consequence of that transaction,--and as it is probable that
+     such a conduct proceeded entirely from motives of self-defence,
+     under an apprehension that they themselves might likewise be laid
+     under unwarrantable contributions,--we direct that you use your
+     influence with the Vizier that their jaghires may be restored to
+     them; but if they should be under apprehensions respecting the
+     future conduct of the Vizier, and wish our further protection, it
+     is our pleasure that you afford those ladies an asylum within the
+     Company's territories, and there be paid the amount of the net
+     collections of their jaghires, agreeably to the second article of
+     the late treaty, through the medium of our Resident, as may be
+     ascertained upon an average estimate of some years back."
+
+You see, my Lords, the Directors had received every one of his false
+impressions. They had conceived an idea, that, after the rebellion of
+Cheyt Sing, (but not before, upon his own showing,) the Begums had shown
+a disposition to arm. They here assume a false fact, which Mr. Hastings
+stated in his representation of the business to them. They assume a
+variety of other false facts: they assume that the amount of the
+jaghires of the Begums were to be paid them in regular pensions; whereas
+they were totally confiscated, without any compensation at all. And yet,
+upon Mr. Hastings's own showing, they found the transaction to be so
+dishonorable to the British government, that they desire him to make
+inquiry into it, and give redress accordingly.
+
+Here, then, is another order of the Company, another call upon Mr.
+Hastings to examine to the bottom of this affair. The Directors, after
+giving him credit for that enormous mass of falsehoods which we have
+proved him to have stated in his Narrative, found themselves so utterly
+dissatisfied, that they gave this conditional order to restore the
+Begums to their jaghires. Your Lordships will find it in evidence upon
+your minutes, that he contumaciously disobeyed this order,--that he
+would not consent to the propositions of the Council for inquiring into
+the conduct of these injured women, but stifled every attempt that was
+made by others to do them justice. And yet he here has the effrontery to
+propose that your Lordships should inquire into the business at your
+bar,--that you should investigate a matter here which he refused to
+inquire into on the spot, though expressly ordered by his masters so to
+do.
+
+I will now read to your Lordships a short extract from his own narrative
+of his own proceedings. It begins with reciting part of a note entered
+by Mr. Macpherson in the Consultations of the Council, at the time when
+the orders of the Court of Directors which I have just alluded to were
+taken into consideration.
+
+"What the Court of Directors seem to have most at heart are, first, that
+the engagement of the second article of the Benares treaty should be
+faithfully fulfilled,--and, secondly, to guard against the future
+misconduct of the Vizier, if he should be disposed to oppress the
+Begums; that we should therefore ascertain whether the amount of the
+jaghires of the Begums is regularly paid to them through the Company's
+Resident, and give them notice that no future demands shall be made upon
+them. This the Governor-General might, I think, do in a letter that
+would make the Begums sensible of their past misconduct, yet inform them
+of the lenity and gracious intentions of the Company, in ordering them
+an asylum in Bengal, in case of future distress."
+
+In consequence of the foregoing opinion from Mr. Macpherson, the
+following minute was delivered by the Governor-General.
+
+"I should gladly acquiesce in the motion made by Mr. Macpherson, if I
+thought it possible to frame a letter to the Begums in any terms which
+should at the same time convey the intimation proposed by it and not
+defeat the purpose of it, or be productive of evils greater than any
+which exist in consequence of the proceedings which have already taken
+place, and which time has almost obliterated. The orders of the Court of
+Directors are conditional; they require nothing, but in the event of
+discoveries made subsequent to the advices which were before you on the
+14th February last, in alleviation of the former conduct of the Begums.
+Nothing has since appeared in relation to them, but their refusal, or
+rather that of one, to fulfil her engagements for the payment of the
+remainder of the sum exacted from her by the Nabob Vizier in the
+beginning of last year. Whatever obedience may be due to the clear
+ascertained spirit of the orders of the Court of Directors, this
+obligation cannot extend to points to which neither the letter nor
+evident spirit of their orders apply. If I am rightly informed, the
+Nabob Vizier and the Begums are on terms of mutual good-will. It would
+ill become this government to interpose its influence by any act which
+might tend to revive their animosities: and a very slight occasion would
+be sufficient to effect it. It will be to little purpose to tell them
+that their conduct has, in our estimation of it, been very wrong, and at
+the same time to announce to them the orders of our superiors, which
+more than indicate the reverse. They will instantly take fire on such a
+declaration, proclaim the judgment of the Company in their favor, demand
+a reparation of the acts which they will construe wrongs with such a
+sentence warranting that construction,--and either accept the
+invitation, to the proclaimed scandal of the Vizier, which will not add
+to the credit of our government, or remain in his dominions, but not
+under his authority, to add to his vexations and the disorders of the
+country, by continual intrigues and seditions. Enough already exists to
+affect his peace, and the quiet of his people; if we cannot heal, let us
+not inflame the wounds which have been inflicted.
+
+"If the Begums think themselves aggrieved to such a degree as to justify
+them in an appeal to a foreign jurisdiction,--to appeal to it against a
+man standing in the relation of son and grandson to them,--to appeal to
+the justice of those who have been the abettors and instruments of their
+imputed wrongs,--let us at least permit them to be the judges of their
+own feelings, and prefer their complaints before we offer to redress
+them: they will not need to be prompted. I hope I shall not depart from
+the simplicity of official language, in saying, that the majesty of
+justice ought to be approached with solicitation, not descend to provoke
+or invite it, much less to debase itself by the suggestion of wrongs and
+the promise of redress, with the denunciation of punishment before
+trial, and even before accusation."
+
+My Lords, if, since the beginning of the world, such a paper as this was
+ever before written by a person standing in the relation of a servant to
+his master, I shall allow that every word we have said to your Lordships
+upon this occasion to mark his guilt ought to be expunged from your
+minutes and from our charges.
+
+Before I proceed to make any observations upon this act of open
+rebellion against his superiors, I must beg your Lordships to remark the
+cruelty of purpose, the hostile feeling, towards these injured women,
+which were displayed in this daring defiance. Your Lordships will find
+that he never is a rebel to one party without being a tyrant to some
+others; that _rebel_ and _tyrant_ are correlative terms, when applied to
+him, and that they constantly go together.
+
+It is suggested by the Directors, that the Nabob is the persecutor, the
+oppressor, and that Mr. Hastings is the person who is to redress the
+wrong. But here they have mistaken the matter totally. For we have
+proved to your Lordships that Mr. Hastings was the principal in the
+persecution, and that the Nabob was only an instrument. "If I am rightly
+informed," he says, "the Nabob and the Begums are on terms of mutual
+good-will. It would ill become this government to interpose its
+influence by any act which might tend to revive their animosities: and a
+very slight occasion would be sufficient to effect it." What animosities
+had they towards each other? None that we know of. Mr. Hastings gets the
+Nabob to rob his mother; and then he supposes, contrary to truth,
+contrary to fact, contrary to everything your Lordships have heard, that
+the Nabob would fall into a fury, if his mother was to obtain any
+redress,--and that, if the least inquiry into this business was made, it
+would create a flame in the Nabob's mind, on account of the active,
+energetic, spirited part he had taken in these transactions.
+"Therefore," says he, "oh, for God's sake, soothe the matter! It is a
+green wound; don't uncover it; do nothing to irritate. It will be to
+little purpose to tell them that their conduct has in our estimation of
+it been very wrong, and at the same time announce to them the orders of
+our superiors, which more than indicate the reverse." Now, my Lords, to
+what does all this amount? "First," says he, "I will not do them
+justice,--I will not enter upon an inquiry into their wrongs." Why?
+"Because they charge us with having inflicted them." Then, surely, for
+that reason, you ought to commence an inquiry. "No," says he, "that
+would be telling them that our superiors suspect we are in the wrong."
+But when his superiors more than indicated suspicions, was he not bound
+tenfold to make that inquiry, for his honor and for their satisfaction,
+which they direct him to make? No, he will not do it, "because," says
+he, "the Begums would either accept the offer of an asylum in the
+Company's territories, to the proclaimed scandal of the Vizier, which
+would not add to the credit of our government, or they would remain in
+his dominions, but not under his authority, to add to his vexations, and
+the disorders of the country, by continual intrigues and seditions."
+
+You see, my Lords, this man is constantly thrusting this peaceable Nabob
+before him; goading and pushing him on, as if with a bayonet behind, to
+the commission of everything that is base and dishonorable. You have him
+here declaring that he will not satisfy the Directors, his masters, in
+their inquiries about those acts, for fear of the Nabob's taking
+umbrage, and getting into a flame with his mother,--and for fear the
+mother, supported by the opinion of the Directors, should be induced to
+resent her wrongs. What, I say, does all this amount to? It amounts to
+this:--"The Begums accuse me of doing them injustice; the Directors
+indicate a suspicion that they have been injured; therefore I will not
+inquire into the matter." Why? "Because it may raise disturbances." But
+what disturbance could it raise? The mother is disarmed, and could not
+hurt the Nabob. All her landed estates he knew were confiscated; he knew
+all her money was in his own possession; he knew she had not the means,
+if she had been disposed, to create intrigues and cabals;--what
+disturbance, then, could be created by his sending a letter to know what
+she had to say upon the subject of her wrongs?
+
+"_If_" says he, "_the Begums think themselves aggrieved._" Observe, my
+Lords, that the institution of an inquiry is no measure of the Begums;
+it is an order of the Court of Directors, made by them upon his own
+representation of his own case, and upon nothing else. The Begums did
+not dare to murmur; they did not dare to ask for redress, God knows the
+poor creatures were, at or about the time, his
+prisoners,--robbed,--stripped of everything,--without hope and without
+resource. But the Directors, doing their duty upon that occasion, did
+condemn him upon his own false representations contained in that bundle
+of affidavits upon which his counsel now contend that your Lordships
+should acquit him.--"But," says he, "are they to _appeal to a foreign
+jurisdiction_?" When these women were to be robbed, we were not
+foreigners to them; on the contrary, we adjudged them guilty of
+rebellion. We sent an English chief-justice to collect materials of
+accusation against them. We sent English officers to take their money.
+The whole was an English transaction. When wrong is to be done, we have
+then an interest in the country to justify our acting in it; but when
+the question is of redressing wrongs, when the question is of doing
+justice, when the question is of inquiry, when the question is of
+hearing complaints, then it is a foreign jurisdiction. You are to suffer
+Mr. Hastings--to make it foreign, or to make it domestic, just as it
+answers his purposes.--But they are "_to appeal against a man standing
+in the relation of son and grandson to them, and to appeal to the
+justice of those who have been the abettors and instruments of their
+imputed wrongs_." Why, my Lords, if he allows that he is the abettor of,
+and the instrument to which the Directors impute these wrongs, why, I
+ask, does he, with those charges lying upon him, object to all inquiry
+in the manner you have seen?
+
+But the Company's Governor is, it seems, all at once transformed into a
+great sovereign;--"_the majesty of justice ought to be approached with
+solicitation_." Here, my Lords, he forgets at once the Court of
+Directors, he forgets the laws of England, he forgets the act of
+Parliament, he forgets that any obedience is due to his superiors. The
+Begums were to approach him by the orders of the Court of Directors; he
+sets at nought these orders, and asserts that he must be approached with
+solicitations.
+
+"_Time_," says he, "_has obliterated their sufferings._" Oh, what a balm
+of oblivion time spreads over the wrongs, wounds, and afflictions of
+others, in the mind of the person who inflicts those wrongs and
+oppressions! The oppressor soon forgets. This robbery took place in
+17[81]; it was in the year 1783 when he asserted that the waters of
+Lethe had been poured over all their wrongs and oppressions. Your
+Lordships will mark this insulting language, when he says that both the
+order of the Directors and the application of the Begums for redress
+must be _solicitations to him_.
+
+     [Here Mr. Burke was interrupted by Mr. Hastings, who said, "My
+     Lords, there was no order. I find a man's patience may be
+     exhausted. I hear so many falsehoods, that I must declare there was
+     no order of the Court of Directors. Forgive me, my Lords. He may
+     say what he pleases; I will not again controvert it. But there is
+     no order; if there is, read it." Mr. Burke then proceeded.]
+
+Judge you, my Lords, what the insolence, audacity, and cruelty of this
+man must have been, from his want of patience in his present situation,
+and when he dares to hold this language here. Your Lordships will reckon
+with him for it, or the world will reckon with you.
+
+     [Mr. Hastings here again interrupted Mr. Burke, and said, "There
+     was no order for inquiry."]
+
+_Mr. Burke._--Your Lordships have heard the letter read,--I mean the
+letter from the Directors, which I read just now. You will judge whether
+it is an order or not. I did hope within these two days to put an end to
+this business; but when your Lordships hear us charged with direct
+falsehood at your bar, when you hear this wicked wretch who is before
+you--
+
+     [_From a Lord._--Order! order! order!]
+
+_Mr. Burke._--Order, my Lords, we call for, in the name of the Commons!
+Your Lordships have heard us accused at your bar of falsehood, after we
+had read the order upon which our assertion was founded. This man, whom
+we have described as the scourge and terror of India, this man gets up,
+and charges us, not with a mistake, an error, a wrong construction, but
+a direct falsehood,--and adds, that his patience is worn out with the
+falsehood he hears. This is not an English court of justice, if such a
+thing is permitted. We beg leave to retire, and take instructions from
+our constituents. He ought to be sent to Bridewell for going on in this
+manner.
+
+     [_Mr. Wyndham here read the letter again._]
+
+_Mr. Burke._--With regard to the ravings of this unhappy man, I am sure,
+if I were only considering what passed from him to the Managers in this
+box, and knowing what allowance is due to a wounded conscience, brought
+before an awful tribunal, and smarting under the impressions of its own
+guilt, I would pass them over. But, my Lords, we have the honor of the
+Commons, we have the honor of this court to sustain. [Your Lordships,
+the other day, for an offence committed against a constable, who was
+keeping the way under your orders, did, very justly, and to the great
+satisfaction of the public, commit the party to Bridewell, for a much
+slighter insult against the honor and dignify of your court.] And I
+leave it, therefore, for the present, till your Lordships can seriously
+consider what the mode of proceeding in this matter ought to be.--I now
+proceed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have read to your Lordships the orders of the Court of Directors: I
+again say we consider them as orders: your Lordships are as good judges
+of the propriety of the term as we are. You have heard them read; you
+have also heard that the Council at Calcutta considered them as orders,
+for resolutions were moved upon them; and Mr. Stables, in evidence
+before you here, who was one of the Council, so considered them: and yet
+this man has the frantic audacity in this place to assert that they were
+not orders, and to declare that he cannot stand the repetition of such
+abominable falsehoods as are perpetually urged against him. We cannot
+conceive that your Lordships will suffer this; and if you do, I promise
+you the Commons will not suffer the justice of the country to be trifled
+with and insulted in this manner: because, if such conduct be suffered
+by your Lordships, they must say that very disagreeable consequences
+will ensue, and very disagreeable inferences will be drawn by the public
+concerning it. You will forgive, and we know how to forgive, the ravings
+of people smarting under a conscious sense of their guilt. But when we
+are reading documents given in evidence, and are commenting upon them,
+the use of this kind of language really deserves your Lordships'
+consideration. As for us, we regard it no more than we should other
+noise and brawlings of criminals who in irons may be led through the
+streets, raving at the magistrate that has committed them. We consider
+him as a poor, miserable man, railing at his accusers: it is natural he
+should fall into all these frantic ravings, but it is not fit or natural
+that the Court should indulge him in them. Your Lordships shall now hear
+in what sense Mr. Wheler and Mr. Stables, two other members of the
+Council, understood this letter.
+
+Mr. Wheler thus writes.--"It always has been and always will be my wish
+to conform implicitly to the orders of the Court of Directors, and I
+trust that the opinion which I shall give upon that part of the Court's
+letter which is now before us will not be taken up against its meaning,
+as going to a breach of them. The orders at present under the board's
+consideration are entirely provisional. Nothing has passed since the
+conclusion of the agreement made by the Governor-General with the Vizier
+at Chunar which induces me to alter the opinion which I before held, as
+well from the Governor-General's reports to this board as the opinions
+which I have heard of many individuals totally unconcerned in the
+subject, that the Begums at Fyzabad did take a hostile part against the
+Company during the disturbances in Benares; and I am impressed with a
+conviction that the conduct of the Begums did not proceed entirely from
+motives of self-defence. But as the Court of Directors appear to be of a
+different opinion, and conceive that there ought to be stronger proofs
+of the defection of the Begums than have been laid before them, I think,
+that, before we decide on their orders, the late and present Resident at
+the Vizier's court, and the commanding officers in the Vizier's country,
+ought to be required to collect and lay before the board all the
+information they can obtain with respect to the defection of the Begums
+during the troubles in Benares, and their present disposition to the
+Company."
+
+Mr. Stables, September 9th, 1783, writes thus.--"The Court of Directors,
+by their letter of the 14th February, 1783, seem not to be satisfied
+that the disaffection of the Begums to this government is sufficiently
+proved by the evidence before them. I therefore think that the late and
+present Resident and commanding officers in the Vizier's country at the
+time should be called upon to collect what further information they can
+on this subject, in which the honor and dignity of this government is so
+materially concerned, that such information may be immediately
+transmitted to the Court of Directors."
+
+When questioned upon this subject at your Lordships' bar, he gives this
+evidence.--"_Q._ What was your motive for proposing that
+investigation?--_A._ A letter from the Court of Directors; I conceived
+it to be ordered by them.--_Q._ Did you conceive the letter of the Court
+of Directors positively to direct that inquiry?--_A._ I did so certainly
+at the time, and I beg to refer to the minutes which expressed it."--A
+question was put to the same witness by a noble lord. "_Q._ The witness
+has stated, that at the time he has mentioned he conceived the letter
+from the Court of Directors to order an inquiry, and that it was upon
+that opinion that he regulated his conduct, and his proposal for such
+inquiry. I wish to know whether the expression, '_at the time_,' was
+merely casual, or am I to understand from it that the witness has
+altered his opinion of the intention of this letter since that
+time?--_A._ I certainly retain that opinion, and I wished the inquiry to
+go on."
+
+My Lords, you see that his colleagues so understood it; you see that we
+so understood it; and still you have heard the prisoner, after charging
+us with falsehood, insultingly tell us we may go on as we please, we may
+go on in our own way. If your Lordships think that it was not a positive
+order, which Mr. Hastings was bound to obey, you will acquit him of the
+breach of it. But it is a most singular thing, among all the astonishing
+circumstances of this case, that this man, who has heard from the
+beginning to the end of his trial breaches of the Company's orders
+constantly charged upon him,--(nay, I will venture to say, that there is
+not a single step that we have taken in this prosecution, or in
+observations upon evidence, in which we have not charged him with an
+avowed direct breach of the Company's order,--you have heard it ten
+times this day,--in his defence before the Commons he declares he did
+intentionally, in naming Mr. Markham, break the Company's orders,)--it
+is singular, I say, that this man should now pretend to be so sore upon
+this point. What is it now that makes him break through all the rules of
+common decency and common propriety, and show all the burnings of guilt,
+upon being accused of the breach of one of the innumerable orders which
+he has broken, of which he has avowed the breaking, and attempted to
+justify himself a thousand times in the Company's books for having
+broken?
+
+My Lords, one of his own body, one of the Council, has sworn at your bar
+what he repeatedly declared to be his sense of it. We consider it as one
+of the strongest orders that can be given, because the reason of the
+order is added to it: the Directors declaring, that, if it should not be
+found upon inquiry, (you see, my Lords, it puts the very case,)--"if you
+do not find such and such things, we shall consider the English honor
+wounded and stained, and we direct you to make reparation." There are,
+in fact, two orders contained in this letter, which we take to be
+equally strong and positive,--and we charge him with the breach of both:
+namely, the order for inquiry, and the conditional order of restoring to
+the Begums their jaghires, or making satisfaction for them; and in case
+of any apprehension of reluctance in the Nabob, to bring them for
+security into the Company's territories. The two last positive orders
+are preceded by the supposition of an inquiry which was to justify him
+either in the acts he had done or to justify him in making restitution.
+He did neither the one nor the other. We aver that he disobeyed all
+these orders. And now let his impatience break out again.
+
+Your Lordships have seen, amongst the various pretences by which this
+man has endeavored to justify his various delinquencies, that of fearing
+to offend the Nabob by the restoration of their jaghires to the Begums
+is one. Your Lordships will form your own judgment of the truth or
+falsehood of this pretence, when you shall have heard the letter which I
+shall now read to you, written to Mr. Hastings by the Nabob himself.
+
+
+     _Letter from the Nabob Vizier to Mr. Hastings, 25th February,
+     1782._
+
+     "You performed on every occasion towards me whatever was becoming
+     of friendship: I, too, have done whatever affection required and
+     you commanded; and in future also, whatever may be your pleasure,
+     there shall be no deviation therefrom, because whatever you direct
+     is altogether for my benefit. The business for which I came to
+     Fyzabad is become settled by your favor: particulars will become
+     known to your wisdom from the writings of Mr. Middleton. I am
+     grateful for your favors. If in these matters you sincerely approve
+     me, communicate it, for it will be a comfort to me. Having
+     appointed my own aumils to the jaghire of the lady mother, I have
+     engaged to pay her cash. She has complied with my views. Her
+     pleasure is, that, after receiving an engagement, he should deliver
+     up the jaghires. What is your pleasure in this matter? If you
+     command, it will comfort the lady mother giving her back the
+     jaghire after I have obtained my views; or I will have it under my
+     aumil. I am obedient to your pleasure."
+
+Your Lordships here see the Begum a suppliant to have her jaghire
+restored, (after entering into some engagement that might have been
+required of her,) and the Nabob, in a tone equally suppliant, expressing
+his consent, at least, that her request should be complied with, if the
+command of Mr. Hastings could be procured.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, in order to save your Lordships' time, and that I might not
+overload this business, I did not intend to have troubled you with any
+observations upon this part of it; but the charge of falsehood which the
+prisoner at your bar has had the audacity to bring against us has
+induced me to lay it more particularly before, you. We have now done
+with it; but before we retire, your Lordships will permit me to
+recapitulate briefly the substance of what has now been urged respecting
+his conduct towards these miserable women. We accuse him of reiterated
+breaches of the orders of the Court of Directors, both in the letter and
+spirit of them, and of his contempt of the opinions which his colleagues
+in office had formed of them. We charge him with the aggravation of
+these delinquencies, by the oppression and ruin which they brought upon
+the family of the Nabob, by the infraction of treaties, and by the
+disrepute which in his person was sustained by the government he
+represented, and by the stain left upon the justice, honor, and good
+faith of the English nation. We charge him with their farther
+aggravation by sundry false pretences alleged by him in justification of
+this conduct, the pretended reluctance of the Nabob, the fear of
+offending him, the suggestion of the Begums having forgotten and
+forgiven the wrongs they had suffered, and of the danger of reviving
+their discontent by any attempt to redress them, and by his insolent
+language, that the majesty of justice with which he impudently invests
+himself was only to be approached with solicitation. We have farther
+stated, that the pretence that he was only concerned in this business as
+an accessary is equally false; it being, on the contrary, notorious,
+that the Nabob was the accessary, forced into the service, and a mere
+instrument in his hands, and that he and Sir Elijah Impey (whose
+employment in this business we stated as a farther aggravation) were the
+authors and principal agents. And we farther contend, that each of these
+aggravations and pretences is itself, in fact and in its principle, a
+substantive crime.
+
+Your Lordships witnessed the insolence with which this man, stung to the
+quick by the recital of his crime, interrupted me; and you heard his
+recrimination of falsehood against us. We again avouch the truth of all
+and every word we have uttered, and the validity of every proof with
+which we have supported them. Let his impatience, I say, now again burst
+forth,--he who feels so sensibly everything that touches him, and yet
+seeks for an act of indemnity for his own atrocities, by endeavoring to
+make you believe that the wrongs of a desolated family are within one
+year forgotten by them, and buried in oblivion.
+
+I trust, my Lords, that both his prosecutors and his judges will evince
+that patience which the criminal wants. Justice is not to wait to have
+its majesty approached with solicitation. We see that throne in which
+resides invisibly, but virtually, the majesty of England; we see your
+Lordships representing, in succession, the juridical authority in the
+highest court in this kingdom: but we do not approach you with
+solicitation; we make it a petition of right; we claim it; we demand it.
+The right of seeking redress is not suppliant, even before the majesty
+of England; it comes boldly forward, and never thinks it offends its
+sovereign by claiming what is the right of all his people.
+
+We have now done with this business: a business as atrocious as any that
+is known in the history of mankind; a business that has stained,
+throughout all Asia, the British character, and by which our fame for
+honor, integrity, and public faith has been forfeited; a business which
+has introduced us throughout that country as breakers of faith,
+destroyers of treaties, plunderers of the weak and unprotected, and has
+dishonored and will forever dishonor the British name. Your Lordships
+have had all this in evidence. You have seen in what manner the Nabob,
+his country, his revenues, his subjects, his mother, his family, his
+nobility, and all their fortunes, real and personal, have been disposed
+of by the prisoner at your bar; and having seen this, you will by the
+impatience of this criminal estimate the patience of the unfortunate
+women into whose injuries he refused to inquire. What he would not do
+the Commons have done. They know that you have a feeling different from
+that which he manifested on this occasion; they do not approach you
+suppliantly, but demand justice; they insist, that, as the Commons have
+done their part, your Lordships will perform yours.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We shall next proceed to show your Lordships how he acted towards
+another set of women, the women of the late Sujah Dowlah, and for whom
+the Directors had ordered a maintenance to be secured by an express
+treaty. You will see that he is cruel towards the weak sex, and to all
+others in proportion as they are weak and powerless to resist him. You
+will see, I say, when he had usurped the whole government of Oude, and
+brought it into a servile dependence on himself, how these women fared;
+and then your Lordships will judge whether or not, and in what degree,
+he is criminal.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+SEVENTH DAY. THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--When I had last the honor of addressing your Lordships from
+this place, my observations were principally directed to the unjust
+confiscation and seizure of the jaghires and treasures of the Begums,
+without previous accusation, or trial, or subsequent inquiry into their
+conduct, in violation of a treaty made with them and guarantied by the
+East India Company,--to the long imprisonment and cruel treatment of
+their ministers, and to the false pretences and abominable principles by
+which the prisoner at your bar has attempted to justify his conduct. The
+several acts of violence and of oppression were, as we have shown your
+Lordships, committed with circumstances of aggravated atrocity highly
+disgraceful to the British name and character,--and particularly by his
+forcing the Nabob to become the means and instrument of reducing his
+mother and grandmother and their families to absolute want and distress.
+
+I have now to call your attention to his treatment of another branch of
+this miserable family,--the women and children of the late Nabob Sujah
+ul Dowlah. These persons were dependent upon the Begums, and by the
+confiscation of their property, and by the ruin of various persons who
+would otherwise have contributed to their maintenance, were reduced to
+the last extremity of indigence and want. Being left without the common
+necessaries of life, they were driven to the necessity of breaking
+through all those local principles of decorum which constitute the
+character of the female sex in that part of the world; and after
+fruitless supplications and shrieks of famine, they endeavored to break
+the inclosure of the palace, and to force their way to the market-place,
+in order to beg for bread. When they had thus been forced to submit to
+the extremity of disgrace and degradation, by exposing themselves to
+public view with the starving children of their late sovereign, the
+brothers and sisters of the reigning prince, they were, in this attempt,
+attacked by the sepoys armed with bludgeons, and driven back by blows
+into the palace.
+
+My Lords, we have first laid before you the sufferings and disgraces of
+women of the first distinction in Asia, protected by their rank,
+protected by their sex, protected by their near relation to the prince
+of the country, protected by two guaranties of the representative of the
+British government in India. We now come to another class of women, who
+suffered by the violent misappropriation of the revenues of the Nabob,
+by which their regular allowance was taken from them; and your Lordships
+will find that this man's crimes, at every step we take, ripen in guilt,
+his acts of positive injustice are always aggravated by his conduct with
+regard to the consequences of them, and form but a small part in the
+mass of oppression and tyranny which we have brought before you.
+
+My Lords, the unjust seizure of the jaghires and treasures of the
+Begums, out of which those women were maintained, reduced them to a
+state of indigence, and exposed them not only to the sufferings which
+belong to the physical nature of man, but also to the indignities which
+particularly affected their sex and condition. But before I proceed, I
+will beg leave to restate to your Lordships and recall to your memory
+who these women were.
+
+The Nabob Sujah Dowlah had but one legitimate wife. Though the Mahometan
+law admits of this number's being extended in certain cases even to
+four, yet it is for the most part held disreputable, especially when a
+person is married to a woman of the first distinction, to have more than
+one legitimate wife. Upon looking into the Hedaya, your Lordships will
+see with what extreme rigor fornication is forbidden; but we know that
+persons of high rank, by customs that supersede both religion and laws,
+add to the number of their wives, or substitute in their room wives of a
+subordinate description, and indulge themselves in this license to an
+unlimited degree. You will find in Chardin's Travels, where he treats of
+the subject of marriage, that such is the custom of all the princes of
+the East. The wives of this subordinate class, though they are in
+reality no better than concubines, and are subject to the power and
+caprices of their lords, are yet allowed, in the eye of the severest
+moralists, to have some excuse for their frailty and their weakness; and
+they accordingly always do find a degree of favor in this world, and
+become the object of particular protection.
+
+We know that Sujah ul Dowlah was a man unquestionably in his manners
+very licentious with regard to women, that he had a great number of
+these women in his family, and that his women and the women attendant
+upon the persons of his favorites had increased to a very great number.
+We know that his sons amounted to twenty,--or, according to Mr.
+Hastings's own account, to nineteen. Montesquieu supposes that there are
+more females born in the East than in the West. But he says this upon no
+good ground. We know by better and more regular information concerning
+this matter, that the birth of males and females in that country is in
+the same proportion as it is here; and therefore, if you suppose that he
+had twenty sons, you may suppose he had about nineteen daughters. By the
+customs of that country, all these sons and daughters were considered as
+persons of eminent distinction, though inferior to the legitimate
+children,--assuming the rank of their father, without considering the
+rank which their mother held. All these wives with their children, and
+all their female servants and attendants, amounting in the whole to
+about eight hundred persons, were shut up in what they call the _Khord
+Mohul_, or Lesser Palace. This place is described by one of the
+witnesses to be about as large as St. James's Square. Your Lordships
+have been told, that, in other circumstances as well as this, these
+women were considered as objects of a great degree of respect, and of
+the greatest degree of protection. I refer your Lordships to the treaty
+by which their maintenance was guarantied by the English government.
+
+In order to let your Lordships see that I state nothing to you but what
+is supported not only by general history, which is enough to support an
+account of general manners, but by the particular and peculiar opinions
+of a person best informed of the nature of the case, I will refer you to
+the Nabob himself: for, undoubtedly, the Nabob of Oude, the Vizier of
+the Empire, the Subahdar of the country, was most likely to be the best
+judge of what respect was due to the women of his father's family. I
+will therefore read to your Lordships, from his own letters, what the
+Nabob's opinion was upon this subject.
+
+
+     _Extract of a Letter from the Vizier, received 23d of August,
+     1782._
+
+     "I never found resource equal to the necessary expenses. Every
+     year, by taking from the ministers, and selling the articles of my
+     harkhanna, I with great distress transacted the business. But I
+     could not take care of my dependants: so that some of my brothers,
+     from their difficulties, arose and departed; and the people of the
+     Khord Mohul of the late Nabob, who are all my mothers, from their
+     distresses are reduced to poverty and involved in difficulties. No
+     man of rank is deficient in the care of his dependants, in
+     proportion to his ability."
+
+
+     _Another Letter from the Vizier, received the 31st July, 1784._
+
+     "My brother, dear as life, Saadut Ali Khân, has requested that I
+     would permit his mother to go and reside with him. My friend, all
+     the mothers of my brothers, and the women of the late Nabob, whom I
+     respect as my own mothers, are here, and it is incumbent upon me to
+     support them: accordingly I do it; and it is improper that they
+     should be separated, nor do I approve it. By God's blessing and
+     your kindness, I hope that all the women of the late Nabob may
+     remain here; it is the wish also of my grandmother and my mother
+     that they should."
+
+Your Lordships now see in what degree of estimation the Nabob held these
+women. He regarded the wives of his father as his honorary mothers; he
+considers their children as his brethren; he thinks it would be highly
+dishonorable to his government, if one of them was taken out of the
+sanctuary in which they are placed, and in which, he says, the great of
+the country are obliged to maintain their dependants. This is the
+account given by the person best acquainted with the usages of the
+country, best acquainted with his own duties, best acquainted with his
+own wishes.
+
+Now, my Lords, you will see in what light another person, the agent of a
+trading company, who designates himself under the name of Majesty, and
+assumes other great distinctions, presumes also to consider these
+persons,--and in what contempt he is pleased to hold what is respected
+and what is held sacred in that country. What I am now going to quote is
+from the prisoner's second defence. For I must remind your Lordships
+that Mr. Hastings has made three defences,--one in the House of Commons,
+another in the lobby of the House of Commons, and a third at your
+Lordships' bar. The second defence, though delivered without name, to
+the members in the lobby of the House of Commons, has been proved at
+your Lordships' bar to be written by himself. This lobby, this
+out-of-door defence, militates in some respects, as your Lordships will
+find, with the in-door defence; but it probably contains the real
+sentiments of Mr. Hastings himself, delivered with a little more
+freeness when he gets into the open air,--like the man who was so vain
+of some silly plot he had hatched, that he told it to the
+hackney-coachman, and every man he met in the streets.
+
+He says,--"Begums are the ladies of an Eastern prince; but these women
+are also styled the ladies of the late Vizier, and their sufferings are
+painted in such strong colors that the unsuspecting reader is led to mix
+the subjects together, and to suppose that these latter, too, were
+princesses of Oude, that all their sufferings proceeded from some act of
+mine, or had the sanction of my authority or permission. The fact is,
+that the persons of the Khord Mohul (or Little Seraglio) were young
+creatures picked up wherever youth and beauty could be found, and mostly
+purchased from amongst the most necessitous and meanest ranks of the
+people, for the Nabob's pleasures." In the in-door defence, he says,
+"The said women, who were mostly persons of low condition, and the said
+children, if any such there were, lived in the Khord Mohul, on an
+establishment entirely distinct from the said Begums'."
+
+My Lords, you have seen what was the opinion of the Nabob, who ought to
+know the nature and circumstances of his father's palace, respecting
+these women; you hear what Mr. Hastings's opinion is: and now the
+question is, whether your Lordships will consider these women in the
+same light in which the person does who is most nearly connected with
+them and most likely to know them, or in the way in which Mr. Hastings
+has thought proper, within doors and without doors, to describe them.
+Your Lordships will be pleased to observe that he has brought no proof
+whatever of facts which are so boldly asserted by him in defiance of
+proof to the contrary, totally at variance with the letter of the son of
+the man to whom these women belonged. Your Lordships, I say, will remark
+that he has produced not one word of evidence, either within the House
+of Commons or the House of Peers, or in the lobby, or anywhere else, to
+verify any one word he has said. He slanders these women in order to
+lessen that compassion which your Lordships might have for the
+sufferings he inflicted upon them. But admitting that some of these
+women were of a meaner condition, and that they derived nothing from
+their connection with the dignity of the person by whom they had
+children, (and we know that in the whole they amounted to about
+fourscore children, the Nabob having a race like the patriarchs of old,
+as many great persons in that part of the world still have,)--supposing,
+I say, all this to be true, yet, when persons are reduced from ease and
+affluence to misery and distress, they naturally excite in the mind a
+greater degree of compassion by comparing the circumstances in which
+they once stood with those into which they are fallen: for famine,
+degradation, and oppression were famine, degradation, and oppression to
+those persons, even though they were as mean as Mr. Hastings chooses to
+represent them. But I hope, as you will sympathize with the great on
+account of their condition, that you will sympathize with all mankind on
+the ground of the common condition of humanity which belongs to us all;
+therefore I hope your Lordships will not consider the calumny of Mr.
+Hastings against those women as any other than as an aggravation of his
+offence against them. That is the light in which the House of Commons
+considered it; for they had heard both his in-door and out-door defence,
+and they still persevered in making the charge, and do persevere in
+making it still.
+
+We have first stated what these women were,--in what light they stood
+with the Nabob,--in what light they stood with the country at large. I
+have now to state in what light they stood with the British government,
+previous to this invasion of their rights; and we will prove they were
+the actual subjects of a guaranty by the Company.
+
+
+     _Extract from an Agreement made by Mr. Middleton, to all the
+     Particulars of which he engages to procure a Treaty from the Nabob
+     Asoph ul Dowlah, after his Arrival, and that he will also sign it,
+     as follows._
+
+     "First, That, whenever the Begum shall choose to go to Mecca, she
+     shall be permitted to go.
+
+     "Second, That, when the Nabob shall arrive, I [Mr. Middleton] will
+     procure suitable allowances to be made to the ladies of the zenanah
+     and the children of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah, and take care
+     that they are paid.
+
+     "Third, That the festivals (_shadee_) and marriages of the children
+     of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah shall be at the disposal of the
+     Begum: whenever she thinks proper, she shall marry them; and
+     whatever money shall be necessary for these expenses shall be paid
+     by the Nabob.
+
+     "Fourth, That the syer of Coda Gunge and Ali Gunge shall be
+     retained by the Begum as heretofore.
+
+     "Fifth, That I [Mr. Middleton] will, upon the arrival of the Nabob,
+     procure Vizier Gunge and the garden of Sepoy Dand Khân, or their
+     equivalent, for the Begum.
+
+     "Sixth, That I [Mr. Middleton] will endeavor to obtain from the
+     Nabob the sum of 1,150,000 rupees on account of the purchase of
+     Metchee Bohaun, and the house of Sahebjee, and the fort of the
+     Gossim, with the land and garden and the barraderry on the banks of
+     Goomply [Goomty?], and bazaar and garden of the house of Mahnarain
+     and the house of Beng Peofand at Lucknow: all of which the Nabob
+     Asoph ul Dowlah has assumed possession of.
+
+     "Seventh, That I will settle with the Nabob the allowances to be
+     made in ready money to the ladies of the zenanah and others
+     specified, in the following amount: Total, 17 lacs 250 rupees per
+     month.
+
+     "Eighth, Upon the arrival of the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah Bahadur, I
+     will endeavor with all my influence to settle the monthly
+     allowances of Mohrum Ali Khân and Mahmud Eltifant Khân, &c., the
+     attendants of the Begums.
+
+     "Ninth, That, if the Begum shall go to Mecca, she shall leave her
+     mahals and jaghires to the Begum, the mother of Asoph ul Dowlah,
+     who shall remit the revenues thereof to the Burree Begum: no one
+     shall prevent her enjoying her jaghires."
+
+Now, my Lords, we will read the copy of an engagement under the seal of
+the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah, and under the seal and signature, in English,
+of Mr. Middleton, as follows.
+
+     "First, I, who am the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah Bahadur, do agree that
+     the jaghires and the gunges and monthly allowance of the officers
+     and servants, and of the ladies of the zenanah, and of those
+     specified in the accounts annexed, shall be at the disposal and
+     under the management and authority of the Begum, and no one shall
+     oppose or prevent it: this I will punctually observe. In this
+     agreement Mr. Middleton and the English are engaged.
+
+     "Second, Whenever the Begum may choose to go to Mecca, I will not
+     oppose it.
+
+     "Third, Whenever the Begum should go to Mecca, she shall leave her
+     lands, jaghires, &c., either in the care of my mother or of me; and
+     I will procure bills for the amount of their revenues, and send
+     them to her: no one shall oppose this.
+
+     "Fourth, The Begum shall have authority over all the ladies of her
+     zenanah; she shall let them remain with me, and not let them go
+     anywhere without my permission, or keep them with her.
+
+     "Fifth, The jaghires Coda Gunge and Ali Gunge, &c., with the mahal
+     and syer belonging to the Begum and made over, shall remain as
+     heretofore in her possession: Total, 14,460 rupees per month.
+
+     "Eighth, The Begum has authority over the ladies and attendants of
+     the zenanah; neither myself nor any one else will oppose it.
+
+     "Ninth, The Begum, my grandmother, shall have the authority in all
+     festivals, and in the marriage of the children of the late Nabob
+     Sujah ul Dowlah, and, with the consent of my mother and myself,
+     shall regulate them: excepting in the festivals (_shadee_), the
+     authority is mine.
+
+     "The English are guaranties to the above engagements, so long as
+     the Begum shall exist."
+
+
+Your Lordships will observe something here worthy of your notice. You
+will first perceive, that the very treaty in which Mr. Hastings, by his
+representative, Mr. Middleton, was a party concerned, supposes that the
+Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah had other children besides the reigning prince by
+his sole legitimate wife; and yet Mr. Hastings, in his defence, has
+thought proper, with a full knowledge of that circumstance, to doubt
+whether there were any other children. You next see that these women
+have Mr. Middleton's (that is, Mr. Hastings's) guaranty for the
+allowances which are made and settled upon them, and for the maintenance
+of their attendants, for the security and enjoyment of their own
+possessions, for their having a law officer of high rank, a moulavy, of
+their own. In short, there is a regular establishment formed for all
+these women: they are not separated as a part distinct from the Begums,
+but they are put by this very guaranty entirely under their management;
+the maintenance of the children is secured; the whole order and economy
+of their establishment is delivered entirely to the Begum, the
+grandmother, and the Begum, the mother, of the Nabob.
+
+My Lords, you see that all these arrangements have the solemn guaranty
+of the Company, and that these women form a very considerable part of
+that guaranty; and therefore your Lordships will not treat their
+sufferings, inflicted in violation of the Company's own settlement and
+guaranty, as a matter of no consideration for you.
+
+But to proceed.--We have proved to your Lordships that the Nabob was
+reduced to a state of the greatest possible misery and distress; that
+his whole revenue was sequestered into the hands of Mr. Hastings's
+agents; that by the treaty of Chunar he was to be relieved from the
+expense of a body of troops with which he had been burdened without his
+own voluntary consent,--nay, more, the temporary brigade, which Mr.
+Hastings proposed to take off, but kept on, which he considers not only
+as a great distress to his finances, but a dreadful scourge and calamity
+to his country,--there was a whole pension-list upon it, with such
+enormous pensions as 18,000_l._ a year to Sir Eyre Coote, and other
+pensions, that Mr. Hastings proposed to take off, but did not; that, in
+proportion as the Nabob's distress increased, Mr. Hastings's demands
+increased too; he was not satisfied, with taking from him for the
+Company, but he took from him for himself; he demanded six hundred
+thousand pounds as a loan, when he knew he had neither money nor credit.
+
+The consequence of these acts of violence was, that these people,
+besieged by the English troops, and deprived of every resource, even of
+the funds of charity, by which the protectors of the family, male and
+female, might have relieved them, but which the cruel rapacity of Mr.
+Hastings had either entirely taken away or greatly diminished, were
+reduced to the last extremity of distress.
+
+After the length of time which has elapsed since we first brought these
+matters with their proofs, I shall beg leave, before you go to judgment,
+to refresh your memory with a recital of a part of that evidence, in
+order that your Lordships may again fully and distinctly comprehend the
+nature and extent of the oppression, cruelty, and injustice committed by
+Mr. Hastings, and by which you may estimate the punishment you will
+inflict upon him.
+
+
+     _Letter from Captain Leonard Jaques to Richard Johnson, Esq.,
+     Resident at the Vizier's Court; March 6th, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--The women belonging to the Khord Mohul complain of their
+     being in want of every necessary of life, and are at last drove to
+     that desperation, that they at night get on the top of the zenanah,
+     make a great disturbance, and last night not only abused the
+     sentinels posted in the gardens, but threw dirt at them; they
+     threatened to throw themselves from the walls of the zenanah, and
+     also to break out of it. Humanity obliges me to acquaint you of
+     this matter, and to request to know if you have any direction to
+     give me concerning it. I also beg leave to acquaint you, I sent for
+     Letafit Ali Khân, the cojah who has the charge of them, who informs
+     me their complaint is well grounded,--that they have sold
+     everything they had, even to the clothes from their backs, and now
+     have no means of existing. Inclosed, I transmit you a letter from
+     Mandall on the subject."
+
+
+     _Letter from Captain Jaques to Richard Johnson, Esq., March 7th,
+     1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I beg leave to address you again concerning the women in the
+     Khord Mohul. Their behavior last night was so furious that there
+     seemed the greatest probability of their proceeding to the utmost
+     extremities, and that they would either throw themselves from the
+     walls or force the doors of the zenanah. I have made every inquiry
+     concerning the cause of their complaints, and find from Letafit Ali
+     Khân that they are in a starving condition, having sold all their
+     clothes and necessaries, and now have not wherewithal to support
+     nature. And as my instructions are quite silent upon this head,
+     should be glad to know how to proceed in case they were to force
+     the doors of the zenanah; as I suspect it will happen, should no
+     subsistence be very quickly sent to them."
+
+
+     _Letter from Major Gilpin to John Bristow, Esq., Resident at the
+     Court of Lucknow; 30th October, 1782._
+
+     "Last night, about eight o'clock, the women in the Khord Mohul
+     Zenanah, under the charge of Letafit Ali Khân, assembled on the
+     tops of the buildings, crying in a most lamentable manner for
+     food,--that for the last four days they had got but a very scanty
+     allowance, and that yesterday they had got none. The melancholy
+     cries of famine are more easily imagined than described; and from
+     their representations, I fear that the Nabob's agents for that
+     business are very inattentive. I therefore think it requisite to
+     make you acquainted with the circumstance, that his Excellency the
+     Nabob may cause his agents to be more circumspect in their conduct
+     to these poor, unhappy women."
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Bristow to Major Gilpin; Fyzabad, 4th November,
+     1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I have received your letters of the 12th, 19th, 27th, and
+     30th ultimo. I communicated the contents of that of the 30th to the
+     minister, who promised me to issue orders for the payment of a sum
+     of money to relieve the distress of the Khord Mohul. I shall also
+     forward a bill for 10,000 rupees to you in the course of three or
+     four days; and if in the mean time you may find means to supply to
+     the amount of that sum, I will become personally responsible to
+     you for the repayment."
+
+
+     _Letter from Major Gilpin to John Bristow, Esq., at the Court of
+     Lucknow; Fyzabad, 15th November, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--The repeated cries of the women in the Khord Mohul Zenanah
+     for subsistence have been truly melancholy. They beg most piteously
+     for liberty, that they may earn their daily bread by laborious
+     servitude, or be relieved from their misery by immediate death. In
+     consequence of their unhappy situation, I have this day taken the
+     liberty of drawing on you in favor of Ramnarain at ten days' sight,
+     for twenty son Kerah rupees, ten thousand of which I have paid to
+     Cojah Letafit Ali Khân, under whose charge that zenanah is."
+
+These, my Lords, are the state of the distresses in the year 1782, and
+your Lordships will see that they continued almost, with only occasional
+reliefs, during the period of that whole year. Now we enter into the
+year 1783, to show you that it continued during the whole time; and then
+I shall make a very few remarks upon it.
+
+I will now read to your Lordships a part of Mr. Holt's evidence, by
+which it is proved that Mr. Hastings was duly advertised of all these
+miserable and calamitous circumstances.
+
+    "_Q._ Whether you saw a letter of intelligence from Fyzabad
+    containing a relation of the treatment of the women in the Khord
+    Mohul?--_A._ Yes, I did, and translated it.--_Q._ From whom did it
+    come?--_A._ Hoolas Roy.--_Q._ Who was he?--_A._ An agent of the
+    Resident at Fyzabad, employed for the purpose of transmitting
+    information to the Resident.--_Q._ Was that paper transmitted to
+    Mr. Hastings?--_A._ To the best of my recollection, it was
+    transmitted to the Board, after I had attested it.--_Q._ Do you
+    remember at what distance of time after the receipt of the
+    intelligence respecting the distresses of the Khord Mohul that paper
+    was transmitted to Calcutta?--_A._ I cannot say.--_Q._ Do you
+    believe it was transmitted within ten months after the time it was
+    received?--_A._ I understood it to be a letter received just before
+    it was transmitted.--_Q._ Then you understand it was transmitted
+    as soon as received?--_A._ Yes, in the course of three days.--_Q._
+    Can you bring to your mind the time at which the translation was
+    made?--_A._ To the best of my recollection, it was in January,
+    1784.--_Q._ Whether the distresses that had been complained of had
+    ceased for above a twelvemonth before the distresses of the Khord
+    Mohul?--_A._ I understood they were new distresses.--_Q._ Then you
+    state that that account transmitted in 1784 was, as you understand,
+    an account of new distresses?--_A._ Yes."
+
+I shall now refer your Lordships to page 899 of your printed Minutes.
+
+     [The Managers for the Commons acquainted the House, that they would
+     next read the paper of intelligence which had been authenticated by
+     Mr. Holt, in his evidence at the bar, relative to the miserable
+     situation of these women, which they meant to bring home to Mr.
+     Hastings.]
+
+
+     _An Extract of a Consultation of the 17th February, 1784._
+
+     "At a Council: present, the Honorable Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+     Governor-General, President, Edward Wheler and John Stables,
+     Esqrs.; Mr. Macpherson absent from the Presidency for the benefit
+     of his health: the following letter and its inclosures were
+     received from Mr. Bristow on the 8th instant, and circulated.
+
+     "'Honorable Sir, and Gentlemen,--I have the honor to forward, for
+     your further information, the inclosure No. 3; it contains a
+     relation of the hardships endured by the ladies of the late
+     Vizier's zenanah.'
+
+       (Signed) 'JOHN BRISTOW.'
+
+
+     "_Translation of a Paper of Intelligence from Fyzabad._
+
+     "'The ladies, their attendants, and servants were still as
+     clamorous as last night. Letafit, the darogah, went to them, and
+     remonstrated with them on the impropriety of their conduct, at the
+     same time assuring them that in a few days all their allowances
+     would be paid, and should that not be the case, he would advance
+     them ten days' subsistence, upon condition that they returned to
+     their habitations. None of them, however, consented to his
+     proposal, but were still intent upon making their escape through
+     the bazaar, and in consequence formed themselves in the following
+     order,--the children in the front, behind them the ladies of the
+     seraglio, and behind them again their attendants; but their
+     intentions were frustrated by the opposition which they met with
+     from Letafit's sepoys. The next day Letafit went twice to the
+     women, and used his endeavors to make them return into the zenanah,
+     promising to advance them ten thousand rupees, which, upon the
+     money being paid down, they agreed to comply with; but night coming
+     on, nothing transpired.
+
+     "'On the day following, their clamors were more violent than usual.
+     Letafit went to confer with them on the business of yesterday,
+     offering the same terms. Depending upon the fidelity of his
+     promises, they consented to return to their apartments, which they
+     accordingly did, except two or three of the ladies, and most of
+     their attendants. Letafit went then to Hossmund Ali Khân, to
+     consult with him about what means they should take. They came to a
+     resolution of driving them in by force, and gave orders to their
+     sepoys to beat any one of the women who should attempt to move
+     forward; the sepoys accordingly assembled, and each one being
+     provided with a bludgeon, they drove them, by dint of beating, into
+     the zenanah. The women, seeing the treachery of Letafit, proceeded
+     to throw stones and bricks at the sepoys, and again attempted to
+     get out; but finding that impossible, from the gates being shut,
+     they kept up a continual discharge till about twelve o'clock, when,
+     finding their situation desperate, they returned into the Rung
+     Mohul, and forced their way from thence into the palace, and
+     dispersed themselves about the house and gardens. After this they
+     were desirous of getting into the Begum's apartments; but she,
+     being apprised of their intentions, ordered the doors to be shut.
+     In the mean time Letafit and Hossmund Ali Khân posted sentries to
+     secure the gates of the Lesser Mohul. During the whole of this
+     conflict, the ladies and women remained exposed to the view of the
+     sepoys.
+
+     "'The Begum then sent for Letafit and Hossmund Ali Khân, whom she
+     severely reprimanded, and insisted upon knowing the cause of this
+     infamous behavior. They pleaded in their defence the impossibility
+     of helping it, as the treatment the women had met with had only
+     been conformable to his Excellency the Vizier's orders. The Begum
+     alleged, that, even admitting that the Nabob had given these
+     orders, they were by no means authorized in this manner to disgrace
+     the family of Sujah Dowlah, and should they not receive their
+     allowances for a day or two, it could be of no great moment; what
+     had passed was now at an end, but that the Vizier should certainly
+     be acquainted with the whole of the affair, and that whatever he
+     directed she should implicitly comply with. The Begum then sent for
+     two of the children who were wounded in the affray of last night,
+     and after endeavoring to soothe them, she again sent to Letafit and
+     Hossmund Ali Khân, and in the presence of the children again
+     expressed her disapprobation of their conduct, and the
+     improbability of Asoph ul Dowlah's suffering the ladies and
+     children of Sujah Dowlah to be disgraced by being exposed to the
+     view of the sepoys. Upon which Letafit produced the letter from the
+     Nabob, representing that he was amenable only to the order of his
+     Excellency, and that whatever he ordered it was his duty to obey;
+     and that, had the ladies thought proper to have retired quietly to
+     their apartments, he would not have used the means he had taken to
+     compel them. The Begum again observed, that what had passed was now
+     over. She then gave the children four hundred rupees and dismissed
+     them, and sent word by Sumrud and the other eunuchs, that, if the
+     ladies would peaceably retire to their apartments, Letafit would
+     supply them with three or four thousand rupees for their present
+     expenses, and recommended them not to incur any further disgrace,
+     and that, if they did not think proper to act agreeably to her
+     directions, they would do wrong. The ladies followed her advice,
+     and about ten at night went back to the zenanah. The next morning
+     the Begum waited upon the mother of Sujah Dowlah, and related to
+     her all the circumstances of the disturbance. The mother of Sujah
+     Dowlah returned for answer, that, after there being no accounts
+     kept by crores of revenue, she was not surprised that the family of
+     Sujah Dowlah, in their endeavors to procure subsistence, should be
+     obliged to expose themselves to the meanest of the people. After
+     bewailing their misfortunes and shedding many tears, the Begum took
+     her leave and returned home.'"
+
+As a proof of the extremity of the distress which reigned in the Khord
+Mohul, your Lordships have been told that these women must have perished
+through famine, if their gaolers, Captain Jaques and Major Gilpin, had
+not raised money upon their own credit, and supplied them with an
+occasional relief. And therefore, when they talk of his peculation, of
+his taking but a bribe here and a bribe there, see the consequences of
+his system of peculation, see the consequences of a usurpation which
+extinguishes the natural authority of the country, see the consequences
+of a clandestine correspondence that does not let the injuries of the
+country come regularly before the authorities in Oude to relieve it,
+consider the whole mass of crimes, and then consider the sufferings that
+have arisen in consequence of it.
+
+My Lords, it was not corporal pain alone that these miserable women
+suffered. The unsatisfied cravings of hunger and the blows of the
+sepoys' bludgeons could touch only the physical part of their nature.
+But, my Lords, men are made of two parts,--the physical part, and the
+moral. The former he has in common with the brute creation. Like theirs,
+our corporeal pains are very limited and temporary. But the sufferings
+which touch our moral nature have a wider range, and are infinitely more
+acute, driving the sufferer sometimes to the extremities of despair and
+distraction. Man, in his moral nature, becomes, in his progress through
+life, a creature of prejudice, a creature of opinions, a creature of
+habits, and of sentiments growing out of them. These form our second
+nature, as inhabitants of the country and members of the society in
+which Providence has placed us. This sensibility of our moral nature is
+far more acute in that sex which, I may say without any compliment,
+forms the better and more virtuous part of mankind, and which is at the
+same time the least protected from the insults and outrages to which
+this sensibility exposes them. This is a new source of feelings, that
+often make corporal distress doubly felt; and it has a whole class of
+distresses of its own. These are the things that have gone to the heart
+of the Commons.
+
+We have stated, first, the sufferings of the Begum, and, secondly, the
+sufferings of the two thousand women (I believe they are not fewer in
+number) that belong to them, and are dependent upon them, and dependent
+upon their well-being. We have stated to you that the Court of Directors
+were shocked and astonished, when they received the account of the
+first, before they had heard the second. We have proved they desired him
+to redress the former, if, upon inquiry, he found that his original
+suspicions concerning their conduct were ill-founded. He has declared
+here that he did not consider these as orders. Whether they were orders
+or not, could anything have been more pressing upon all the duties and
+all the sentiments of man than at least to do what was just,--that is,
+to make such an inquiry as in the result might justify his acts, or have
+entitled them to redress? Not one trace of inquiry or redress do we
+find, except we suppose, as we hear nothing after this of the famine,
+that Mr. Bristow, who seems to be a man of humanity, did so effectually
+interpose, that they should no longer depend for the safety of their
+honor on the bludgeons of the sepoys, by which alone it seems they were
+defended from the profane view of the vulgar, and which we must state as
+a matter of great aggravation in this case.
+
+The counsel on the other side say that all this intelligence comes in an
+anonymous paper without date, transmitted from a newspaper-writer at
+Fyzabad. This is the contempt with which they treat this serious paper,
+sent to Mr. Hastings himself by official authority,--by Hoolas Roy, who
+was the news-writer at Fyzabad,--the person appointed to convey
+authentic intelligence concerning the state of it to the Resident at
+Lucknow. The Resident received it as such; he transmitted it to Mr.
+Hastings; and it was not till this hour, till the counsel were
+instructed (God forgive them for obeying such instructions!) to treat
+these things with ridicule, that we have heard this Hoolas Roy called a
+common news-writer of anonymous information, and the like. If the
+information had come in any way the least authentic, instead of coming
+in a manner the most authentic in which it was possible to come to Mr.
+Hastings, he was bound by every feeling of humanity, every principle of
+regard to his own honor and his employers', to see whether it was true
+or false; if false, to refute it; if true, to afford redress: he has
+done neither. Therefore we charge him with being the cause; we charge
+upon him the consequences, with all the aggravations attending them; and
+we call both upon justice and humanity for redress, as far as it can be
+afforded to these people, and for the severest punishments which your
+Lordships can inflict upon the author of these evils. If, instead of the
+mass of crimes that we have brought before you, this singly had been
+charged upon the prisoner, I will say that it is a greater crime than
+any man has ever been impeached for before the House of Lords, from the
+first records of Parliament to this hour.
+
+I need not remind your Lordships of one particular circumstance in this
+cruel outrage. No excuse or pretence whatever is brought forward in its
+justification. With respect to the Begums, they have been charged with
+rebellion; but who has accused the miserable inhabitants of the Khord
+Mohul of rebellion, or rebellious designs? What hearsay is there, even,
+against them of it? No: even the persons permitted by Mr. Hastings to
+rob and destroy the country, and who are stated by him to have been so
+employed,--not one of that legion of locusts which he had sent into the
+country to eat up and devour the bread of its inhabitants, and who had
+been the cause both of the famine itself and of the inability of the
+Begums to struggle with it,--none of these people, I say, ventured even
+a hearsay about these women.
+
+Were the sufferers few? There were eight hundred of them, besides
+children. Were they persons of any rank and consequence? We are told
+that they were persons of considerable rank and distinction, connected
+with and living under the protection of women of the first rank in Asia.
+Were they persons not deserving pity? We know that they were innocent
+women and children, not accused, and unsuspected, of any crime. He has
+taken into his head to speak contemptuously of these women of the Khord
+Mohul: but your Lordships will consider both descriptions generally with
+some respect; and where they are not objects of the highest respect,
+they will be objects of your compassion. Your Lordships, by your
+avenging justice, will rescue the name of the British government from
+the foulest disgrace which this man has brought upon it.
+
+An account of these transactions, as we have proved by Mr. Holt's
+evidence, was regularly transmitted and made known to him. But why do I
+say made known to him? Do not your Lordships know that Oude was
+his,--that he treated it like his private estate,--that he managed it in
+all its concerns as if it were his private demesne,--that the Nabob
+dared not do a single act without him,--that he had a Resident there,
+nominated by himself, and forced upon the Nabob, in defiance of the
+Company's orders? Yet, notwithstanding all this, we do not find a trace
+of anything done to relieve the aggravated distresses of these
+unfortunate people.
+
+These are some of the consequences of that abominable system which, in
+defiance of the laws of his country, Mr. Hastings established in Oude.
+He knew everything there; he had spies upon his regular agents, and
+spies again upon them. We can prove, (indeed, he has himself proved,)
+that, besides his correspondence with his avowed agents, Major Palmer
+and Major Davy, he had secret correspondence with a whole host of agents
+and pensioners, who did and must have informed him of every circumstance
+of these affairs. But if he had never been informed of it at all, the
+Commons contend, and very well and justly contend, that he who usurps
+the government of a country, who extinguishes the authority of its
+native sovereign, and places in it instruments of his own, and that in
+defiance of those whose orders he was bound to obey, is responsible for
+everything that was done in the country. We do charge him with these
+acts of delinquencies and omissions, we declare him responsible for
+them; and we call for your Lordships' judgment upon these outrages
+against humanity, as cruel perhaps as ever were suffered in any country.
+
+My Lords, if there is a spark of manhood, if there is in your breasts
+the least feeling for our common humanity, and especially for the
+sufferings and distresses of that part of human nature which is made by
+its peculiar constitution more quick and sensible,--if, I say, there is
+a trace of this in your breasts, if you are yet alive to such feelings,
+it is impossible that you should not join with the Commons of Great
+Britain in feeling the utmost degree of indignation against the man who
+was the guilty cause of this accumulated distress. You see women, whom
+we have proved to be of respectable rank and condition, exposed to what
+is held to be the last of indignities in that country,--the view of a
+base, insulting, ridiculing, or perhaps vainly pitying populace. You
+have before you the first women in Asia, who consider their honor as
+joined with that of these people, weeping and bewailing the calamities
+of their house. You have seen that in this misery and distress the sons
+of the Nabob were involved, and that two of them were wounded in an
+attempt to escape: and yet this man has had the impudence to declare his
+doubts of the Nabob's having had any children in the place, though the
+account of what was going on had been regularly transmitted to him.
+After this, what is there in his conduct that we can wonder at?
+
+My Lords, the maintenance of these women had been guarantied by the
+Company; but it was doubly guarantied under the great seal of humanity.
+The conscience of every man, and more especially of the great and
+powerful, is the keeper of that great seal, and knows what is due to its
+authority. For the violation of both these guaranties, without even the
+vain and frivolous pretence of a rebellion, and for all its
+consequences, Mr. Hastings is answerable; and he will not escape your
+justice by those miserable excuses which he has produced to the Court of
+Directors, and which he has produced here in his justification. My
+Lords, that justification we leave with your Lordships.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We now proceed to another part of our charge, which Mr. Hastings has not
+thought proper to deny, but upon which we shall beg leave to make a few
+observations. You will first hear read to you, from the 17th article of
+our charge, the subject-matter to which we now wish to call your
+attention.
+
+     "That in or about the month of March, 1783, three of the said
+     brothers of the Nabob, namely, Mirza Hyder Ali, Mirza Imayut Ali,
+     and Mirza Syef Ali, did represent to the said Bristow that they
+     were in distress for dry bread and clothes, and in consequence of
+     such representation were relieved by the intervention of the said
+     Bristow, but soon after the deputation of the said Warren Hastings
+     to Oude, in the year 1784, that is to say, some time in or about
+     the month of September, in the said year 1784, the said Mirza Hyder
+     Ali, one of the three princes aforesaid, did fly to the province of
+     Benares, and did remain there in great distress; and that, although
+     the said Warren Hastings did write to the said Nabob an account of
+     the aforesaid circumstances, in certain loose, light, and
+     disrespectful expressions concerning the said Mirza Hyder Ali, he
+     did not, as he was in duty bound to do, in any wise exert that
+     influence which he actually and notoriously possessed over the mind
+     of the said Nabob, for the relief of the said prince, the brother
+     of the said Nabob, but, without obtaining any satisfactory and
+     specific assurances, either from the said Nabob or the said
+     minister, the said Warren Hastings did content himself with
+     advising the said prince to return to his brother, the said Nabob."
+
+The answer of Mr. Hastings to that part of the 17th article states:--
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings says, that in or about the month of
+     July, in the year 1783, a paper was received, inclosed in a letter
+     to the Governor-General and Council, from Mr. Bristow, purporting
+     to be a translation of a letter from three brothers of the said
+     Vizier, in which they did represent themselves to be in distress
+     for dry bread and clothes; but whether such distress actually
+     existed, and was relieved by the said Bristow, the said Warren
+     Hastings cannot set forth.
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that some time in the
+     month of September, 1784, the said Warren Hastings, being then at
+     Benares, did receive information that Mirza Hyder Ali was arrived
+     there, and the said Warren Hastings, not knowing before that time
+     that there was any such person, did write to the Nabob Vizier, to
+     the purport or effect following:--'A few days since I learnt that a
+     person called Mirza Hyder Ali was arrived at Benares, and calls
+     himself a son of the deceased Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah, and I was also
+     told that he came from Fyzabad; as I did not know whether he left
+     Fyzabad with or without your consent, I therefore did not pay him
+     much attention, and I now trouble you to give me every information
+     on this subject, how he came here, and what your intentions are
+     about him; he remains here in great distress, and I therefore wish
+     to know your sentiments.'
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that, having received
+     an answer from the said Vizier, he did, on or about the 13th of
+     October, 1784, inclose the same in a letter to the said Mirza, of
+     which letter the following is a copy:--'An answer is arrived to
+     what I wrote on your account to the Nabob Vizier, which I inclose
+     to you: having read it, you will send it back. I conceive you had
+     better go to the Nabob Vizier's presence, who will certainly afford
+     you protection and assistance. I will write what is proper to carry
+     with you to the Nabob, and it will in every respect be for your
+     good; whatever may be your intention on this head, you will write
+     to me.'
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings submits, that it was no part of his
+     duty as Governor-General to interfere with the said Vizier on
+     behalf of the said Mirza, or to obtain from the said Vizier any
+     specific assurances on the subject."
+
+Continuation of the 17th article of the charge:--
+
+     "That, in order to avoid famine at home, another of the said
+     Nabob's brothers, by name Mirza Jungli, was under the necessity of
+     flying from his native country, and did seek protection from a
+     certain Mahometan lord called Mirza Shuffee Khân, then
+     prime-minister of the Mogul, from whom he did go to the camp of the
+     Mahratta chief Mahdajee Sindia, where he did solicit and obtain a
+     military command, together with a grant of lands, or jaghire, for
+     the subsistence of himself, his family, and followers; but wishing
+     again to be received under the protection of the British
+     government, the said Mirza Jungli, in 1783, did apply to the said
+     Resident Bristow, through David Anderson, Esquire, then on an
+     embassy in the camp of the said Sindia; and in consequence of such
+     application, the said Bristow, sensible of the disgrace which the
+     exile of the said Mirza Jungli reflected both on the said Nabob of
+     Oude and the British nation, did negotiate with the said Nabob and
+     his ministers for the return of the said Mirza Jungli, and for the
+     settlement and regular payment of some proper allowance for the
+     maintenance of the said Mirza Jungli; but the allowance required
+     was ultimately refused; and although the whole of the transactions
+     aforesaid were duly represented to the said Warren Hastings by the
+     said Anderson and by the said Bristow, and although he had himself
+     received, so early as the 23d of August, 1782, a letter from the
+     Vizier, grievously complaining of the cruel and extortious demands
+     made upon him by the said Warren Hastings, in which letter he did
+     expressly mention the flight of his brothers, and the distresses of
+     the women of his late father, who he said were all as his mothers,
+     and that his said brothers, from the resumption of their jaghires,
+     were reduced to great affliction and distress, and he did attribute
+     the said flight of some of his brethren, and the distresses of the
+     rest, and of the women who stood in a species of maternal relation
+     to him, as owing to the aforesaid oppressive demands, yet he, the
+     said Warren Hastings, did cruelly, inhumanly, and corruptly decline
+     to make any order for the better provision of any of the said
+     eminent family, or for the return of the said prince, who had fled
+     from his brother's court to avoid the danger of perishing by
+     famine."
+
+Answer of Mr. Hastings to that part of the charge:--
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that he was informed
+     that Mirza Jungli, in the said article also mentioned, did leave
+     his native country in distress, and did go to Mirza Shuffee Khân,
+     in the said article also mentioned; and the said Warren Hastings
+     likewise admits he was informed that the said Mirza Jungli did
+     afterwards leave the said Mirza Shuffee Khân, and repair to the
+     camp of Mahdajee Sindia, with a view of obtaining some
+     establishment for himself and followers.
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that in certain letters
+     written by David Anderson, Esquire, and John Bristow, Esquire, it
+     was represented that the said Mirza Jungli did apply to the said
+     Bristow, through the said Anderson, then on an embassy in the camp
+     of the said Sindia, and that in consequence thereof the said
+     Bristow did, amongst other things, apply to the said Nabob Vizier
+     for a certain allowance to be made for the said Mirza, and for the
+     regular payment thereof, and that a certain allowance was
+     accordingly settled by the said Vizier on the said Mirza; and the
+     said Warren Hastings says, that information of the above
+     transactions was transmitted to the Board of Council, and that a
+     letter from the said Vizier was received on the 23d of August,
+     1782, containing certain representations of the distresses of
+     himself and his family; and he admits that no order was made by
+     him, the said Warren Hastings, for the provision of any of the said
+     family, or for the return of the said Mirza; but the said Warren
+     Hastings denies that he was guilty of any cruelty, inhumanity, or
+     corruption, or of any misconduct whatsoever, in the matters
+     aforesaid."
+
+Continuation of the charge:--
+
+     "That some time in or about the month of December, 1783, the Nabob
+     Bahadur, another of the brothers of the said Nabob of Oude, did
+     represent to the said Bristow, that he, the said Nabob Bahadur, had
+     not received a farthing of his allowance for the current year, and
+     was without food; and being wounded by an assassin, who had also
+     murdered his aunt in the very capital of Oude, the said Nabob
+     Bahadur had not a daum to pay the surgeon, who attended him for the
+     love of God alone. That at or about the period of this said
+     representation the said Bristow was recalled, and the said Warren
+     Hastings proceeded up to Lucknow, but did not inquire into the said
+     representations transmitted by the said Bristow to Calcutta, nor
+     did order any relief."
+
+Mr. Hastings's answer to the part of the charge last read:--
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that on the 29th of
+     January, 1784, after the recall of the said Bristow, he, the said
+     Bristow, did transmit to the Governor-General and Council two
+     letters, one dated 28th of December, 1783, the other 7th of
+     January, 1784, purporting to be written by the said Nabob Bahadur,
+     addressed to him, the said Bristow, to the effect in the said
+     article stated; and the said Warren Hastings admits, that, when at
+     Lucknow, he did not institute any inquiry into the supposed
+     transaction in the said 17th article stated, or make any order
+     concerning the said Bahadur, and he denies that it was his duty so
+     to do."
+
+Here is the name of this Nabob from a list of the jaghiredars stated by
+Mr. Purling, page 485 printed Minutes. Amongst the names of jaghiredars,
+the times when granted, and the amount of the jaghires, there occurs
+that of the Nabob Bahadur, with a grant of a jaghire of the amount of
+20,000 rupees.
+
+    [The _Lord Chancellor_ here remarked, that what had been
+    just read was matter of the 17th article of the charge
+    and parts of the answer to it, and that, upon looking
+    back to the former proceedings, it has escaped his
+    attention, if any matter contained in the 17th article
+    had been made matter of the charge; that it therefore
+    seemed to him that it could not be brought in upon a
+    reply, not having been made matter of the charge
+    originally.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ My Lords, I have to say to this, that I
+    believe you have heard these facts made matter of charge
+    by the House of Commons, that I conceive they have been
+    admitted by the prisoner, and that the Commons have
+    nothing to do with the proofs of anything in their
+    charge which is fully and in terms admitted. The proofs
+    which they have produced to your Lordships were upon
+    matters which were contested; but here the facts are
+    admitted in the fullest manner. We neither have
+    abandoned them, intended to abandon them, or ever shall
+    abandon them; we have made them, as a charge, upon
+    record; the answers to them have been recorded, which
+    answers are complete admissions of every fact in the
+    charge.
+
+    _Lord Chancellor._ I do not make myself understood. The
+    objection is not that there has not been evidence given
+    upon the 17th article, but at the close of the case on
+    the part of the Managers for the House of Commons no
+    mention having been made of the matter contained in the
+    17th article, that therefore, although it may all have
+    been admitted by the answer to be true, yet in justice,
+    if from that answer you ground the charge, it is
+    necessary the defendant should be heard upon it.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ If your Lordships choose that the defendant
+    shall be heard upon it, we have no kind of objection,
+    nor ever had, or proposed an objection to the defendant
+    being heard upon it. Your Lordships know that the
+    defendant's counsel value themselves upon having
+    abandoned their defence against certain parts of the
+    charge; your Lordships know that they declared that they
+    broke off thus in the middle of their defence in order
+    to expedite this business.
+
+    _Lord Chancellor._ Referring to the proceedings, I think
+    it a matter perfectly clear, that, in the course of the
+    charge, after certain articles had been gone through,
+    the Managers for the Commons closed the case there,
+    leaving therefore all the other articles, excepting
+    those that had been discussed, as matters standing with
+    the answers against them, but not insisted upon in
+    making out the charge. Of course, therefore, if the
+    defendant had gone into any of those articles, the
+    defendant must have been stopped upon them, because he
+    would then have been making a case in defence to that
+    which had not been made a case in the prosecution. The
+    objection, therefore, is not at all that no evidence has
+    been examined. To be sure, it would be an answer to that
+    to say, you are now proceeding upon an admission; but
+    even upon those facts that are admitted, (if the facts
+    are admitted that are insisted upon as matter in
+    charge,) that should come in the original state of the
+    cause, and the defendant in common justice must be heard
+    upon that, and then, and then only, come the
+    observations in reply.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ We do not know, not are informed, that any
+    charge, information, or indictment, that is before the
+    court, and upon record, and is not denied by the
+    defendant, does not stand in full force against him. We
+    conceive it to be so; we conceive it to be agreeable to
+    the analogy of all proceedings; and the reason why we
+    did not go into and insist upon it was, that, having a
+    very long cause before us, and having the most full and
+    complete admission upon this subject, we did not proceed
+    further in it. The defendant defends himself by averring
+    that _it was not his duty_. It was not our business to
+    prove that it was his duty. It was he that admitted the
+    facts assumed to be the foundation of his duty; the
+    negative he was bound to prove, and he never offered to
+    prove it. All that I can say upon this point is, that
+    his delinquency in the matter in question appeared to us
+    to be a clear, distinct case,--to be a great
+    offence,--an offence charged upon the record, admitted
+    upon the record, and never by us abandoned. As to his
+    defence having been abandoned, we refer your Lordships
+    to the last petition laid by him upon your table, (that
+    libellous petition, which we speak of as a libel upon
+    the House of Commons,) and which has no validity but as
+    it asserts a matter of fact from the petitioner; and
+    there you will find that he has declared explicitly,
+    that, for the accommodation and ease of this business,
+    and for its expedition, he did abandon his defence at a
+    certain period.
+
+    _Lord Chancellor._ A charge consisting of a variety of
+    articles in their nature (however connected with each
+    other in their subject, but in their nature) distinct
+    and specific, if only certain articles are pressed in
+    the charge, to those articles only can a defence be
+    applied; and all the other articles, that are not made
+    matter of charge _originally_, have never, in the course
+    of any proceeding whatever, been taken up _originally_
+    in reply.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ With great respect to your Lordship's
+    judgment, we conceive that the objection taken from our
+    not having at a certain period argued or observed upon
+    the prisoner's answer to the articles not insisted upon
+    is not conclusive; inasmuch as the record still stands,
+    and as our charge still stands. It was never abandoned;
+    and the defendant might have made a justification to
+    it, if he had thought fit: he never did think fit so to
+    do. If your Lordships think that we ought not to argue
+    upon it here in our reply, because we did not argue upon
+    it before,--well and good; but we have argued and do
+    argue in our reply many things to which he never gave
+    any answer at all. I shall beg leave, if your Lordships
+    please, to retire with my fellow Managers for a moment,
+    to consult whether we shall press this point or not. We
+    shall not detain your Lordships many minutes.
+
+    (_The Managers withdrew: in a few minutes the Managers
+    returned, again into the Hall._)
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ My Lords, the Managers have consulted among
+    themselves upon this business; they first referred to
+    your printed proceedings, in order to see the particular
+    circumstance on which the observation of your Lordship
+    is founded; we find it thus stated:--"Then the Managers
+    for the Commons informed the Lords, that, saving to
+    themselves their undoubted rights and privileges, the
+    Commons were content to rest their charge here." We
+    rested our charge there, not because we meant to efface
+    any precedent matter of the charge which had been made
+    by us, and of which the facts had been admitted by the
+    defendant, but, simply saving our rights and privileges,
+    that is, to resume, (and to make new matter, if we
+    thought fit,) the Commons were content to rest the
+    charge there.
+
+    I have further to remark to your Lordships, that the
+    counsel for the defendant have opened a vast variety of
+    matter that is not upon record, either on our part or on
+    theirs, in order to illustrate and to support their
+    cause; and they have spoken day after day upon the
+    principles on which their defence was made. My great
+    object now is an examination of those principles, and to
+    illustrate the effects of these principles by examples
+    which are not the less cogent, the less weighty, and the
+    less known, because they are articles in this charge.
+    Most assuredly they are not. If your Lordships recollect
+    the speeches that were made here, you know that great
+    merit was given to Mr. Hastings for matters that were
+    not at all in the charge, and which would put us under
+    the greatest difficulties, if we were to take no notice
+    of them in our reply. For instance, his merits in the
+    Mahratta war, and a great mass of matter upon that
+    subject, were obliquely, and for other purposes, brought
+    before you, upon which they argued. That immense mass of
+    matter, containing an immense mass of principles, and
+    which was sometimes supported by alleged facts,
+    sometimes by none, they have opened and argued upon, as
+    matter relative to principle. In answer to their
+    argument, we propose to show the mischiefs that have
+    happened from the mischievous principles laid down by
+    Mr. Hastings, and the mischievous consequences of them.
+
+    If, however, after this explanation, your Lordships are
+    of opinion that we ought not to be allowed to take this
+    course, wishing to fall in with your Lordships'
+    sentiments, we shall abandon it. But we will remind your
+    Lordships that such things stand upon your records; that
+    they stand unanswered and admitted on your records; and
+    consequently they cannot be destroyed by any act of
+    ours, but by a renunciation of the charge, which
+    renunciation we cannot make, because the defendant has
+    clearly and fully admitted it to be founded in fact. We
+    cannot plead error; we cannot retract it. And why?
+    Because he has admitted it. We therefore only remind
+    your Lordships that the charge stands uncontradicted;
+    and that the observation we intended to make upon it was
+    to show your Lordships that the principles upon which he
+    defends all such conduct are totally false and
+    groundless. But though your Lordships should be of
+    opinion that we cannot press it, yet we cannot abandon
+    it; it is not in your power, it is not in our power, it
+    is not in his power to abandon that charge. You cannot
+    acquit him of that charge; it is impossible. If,
+    however, your Lordships, for the accommodation of
+    business, method of proceedings, or any circumstance of
+    that kind, wish we should say no more upon the subject,
+    we close the subject there. Your Lordships are in
+    possession both of the charge and the admission; and we
+    wish, and we cannot wish better than, to leave it as it
+    is upon the record.
+
+    The _Lord Chancellor_ here said,--The opinion of the
+    Lords can only be with me matter of conjecture. I
+    certainly was not commanded by the House to state the
+    observation that had occurred to me; but in the position
+    in which it now stands, I feel no difficulty in saying,
+    as my own judgment, that nothing can be matter in reply
+    that does not relate to those articles that were pressed
+    in the original charge; and therefore, in this position
+    of the business of reply, you cannot go into new matter
+    arising out of other articles that were not originally
+    insisted upon.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ We were aware of the objection that might
+    be made to admitting our observations, if considered as
+    observations upon the 17th article, but not when
+    considered with reference to facts on the record before
+    you, for the purpose of disproving the principles upon
+    which the defendant and his counsel had relied: that was
+    the purpose for which we proposed chiefly to make them.
+    But your Lordship's [the Lord Chancellor's] own personal
+    authority will have great weight with us, and, unless we
+    perceive some other peer differ from you, we will take
+    it in the course we have constantly done. We never have
+    sent your Lordships out of the hall to consent
+    [consult?] upon a matter upon which that noble lord
+    appeared to have formed a decision in his own mind; we
+    take for granted that what is delivered from the
+    woolsack, to which no peer expresses a dissent, is the
+    sense of the House; as such we take it, and as such we
+    submit to it in this instance.
+
+    Therefore, leaving this upon the record as it stands,
+    without observing upon it, and submitting to your
+    Lordships' decision, that we cannot, according to order,
+    observe in reply upon what was not declared by us to be
+    a part of the charges we meant to insist upon, we
+    proceed to another business.]
+
+We have already stated to your Lordships, and we beg to remind you of
+it, the state and condition of the country of Oude when Mr. Hastings
+first came to it,--his subsequent and immediate usurpation of all the
+powers of government, and the use he made of them,--the tyranny he
+exercised over the Nabob himself,--the tyranny he exercised upon his
+mother and grandmother, and all the other females of his family, and
+their dependants of every description, to the number of about eight
+hundred persons,--the tyranny exercised (though we are not at liberty
+to press it now) upon his brethren. We have shown you how he confiscated
+the property of all the jaghiredars, the nobility of the country. We
+have proved to your Lordships that he was well acquainted with all the
+misery and distress occasioned by these proceedings, and that he
+afforded the sufferers no relief. We now proceed to review the effect of
+this general mass of usurpation, tyranny, and oppression upon the
+revenues and the prosperity of the country.
+
+Your Lordships will first be pleased to advert to the state in which Mr.
+Hastings found the country,--in what state he found its revenues,--who
+were the executive ministers of the government,--what their conduct was,
+and by whom they were recommended and supported. For the evidence of
+these facts we refer your Lordships to your printed Minutes: there, my
+Lords, they stand recorded: they never can be expunged out of your
+record, and the memory of mankind, whether we be permitted to press them
+at this time upon your Lordships or not. Your Lordships will there find
+in what manner the government was carried on in Oude in 1775, before the
+period of Mr. Hastings's usurpation. Mr. Hastings, you will find, has
+himself there stated that the minister was recommended by the Begums;
+and you will remark this, because Mr. Hastings afterwards makes her
+interference in the government of her son a part of his crimination of
+the Begum.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Resident at the court of Oude thus writes on the 2d of March, 1775.
+
+     "Notwithstanding the confidence the Nabob reposes in Murtezza Khân,
+     the Begums are much dissatisfied with his elevation. They
+     recommended to his Excellency to encourage the old servants of the
+     government, whose influence in the country, and experience, might
+     have strengthened his own authority, and seated him firmly on the
+     musnud. In some measure this, too, may appear consistent with the
+     interests of the Company; for, as Elija Khân and the old ministers
+     have by frequent instances within their own knowledge experienced
+     the power of our government, such men, I should conceive, are much
+     more likely to pay deference to the Company than a person who at
+     present can have but a very imperfect idea of the degree of
+     attention which ought to be paid to our connection with the Nabob."
+
+Your Lordships see that the Begums recommended the old servants,
+contrary to the maxims of Rehoboam,--those who had served his father and
+had served the country, and who were strongly inclined to support the
+English interest there. Your Lordships will remark the effects of the
+Begum's influence upon the state of things in 1775, that the Nabob had
+been advised by his mother to employ the confidential servants of his
+father,--persons conversant in the affairs of the country, persons
+interested in it, and persons who were well disposed to support the
+English connection. Your Lordships will now attend to a letter from Mr.
+Bristow, at Lucknow, to the board, dated 28th November, 1775.
+
+     "I also neglected no part of my duty on the spot, but advised the
+     minister, even at Lucknow, according to my letter of the 3d
+     instant, to recommend it to the Nabob to dismiss his useless and
+     mutinous troops, which measure seems by present appearances to have
+     succeeded beyond expectation: as the rest of the army do now pay
+     the greatest attention to his Excellency's orders; already the
+     complaints of the violences the troops used to commit are greatly
+     decreased; they profess obedience; and, by the best intelligence I
+     can obtain of their disposition, there seems to be little doubt
+     that the example made by disbanding Bussunt's corps has every good
+     effect we could wish, which had crossed the river and voluntarily
+     surrendered their arms the day before yesterday to the Nabob."
+
+His next letter is dated 13th June, 1776.
+
+     "Honorable Sir and Sirs,--It is Elija Khân's first object to
+     regulate the Vizier's revenue; and I must do him the justice to
+     say, that the short time he has been in office he has been
+     indefatigable, and already settled the greater part of the province
+     of Oude, and fixed on the districts for the assignments of the army
+     subsidy; Corah and Allahabad he has disposed of, and called for the
+     Dooab and Rohilcund accounts, in order to adjust them as soon as
+     possible. This activity will, I hope, produce the most salutary
+     effects,--as, the present juncture being the commencement of the
+     season for the cultivation, the aumils, by being thus early placed
+     in their offices, have the opportunity of advancing _tukavy_,
+     encouraging the ryots, and making their agreements in their several
+     districts, in letting under-farms, or disposing of the lands in
+     such a manner as they may judge most expedient. If, though similar
+     to the late minister's conduct, a delay of two or three months
+     should occur in the settlement of the lands, the people throughout
+     the country would be disheartened, and inevitably a very heavy
+     balance accrue on the revenue. I have troubled the honorable board
+     with this detail, in the first place, to show the propriety of
+     Elija Khân's conduct, and, in the next, the essential service that
+     will be rendered to the Vizier by continuing Colonel Parker's
+     detachment during the whole rains in Corah, if required by the
+     Vizier."
+
+My Lords, you have now had a view of the state of Oude, previous to the
+first period of our connection with it. Your Lordships have seen and
+understand that part of the middle period, with which we do not mean to
+trouble you again. You will now be pleased to attend to a letter from
+Fyzoola Khân to the Governor-General, received the 13th of February,
+1778.
+
+     "This country of Cuttah, which formerly depended on the Rohilla
+     States, and which I consider as now appertaining to the Company,
+     was very populous and flourishing; but since the commencement of
+     the Nabob Vizier's government, the farmers appointed by his
+     ministers have desolated the country. Its situation is at present
+     very ruinous; thousands of villages, formerly populous, are now
+     utterly deserted, and no trace left of them. I have already written
+     to Roy Buckstowr Sing a full account of the tyranny and oppression
+     exercised by the farmers, to be communicated to you: the constant
+     revenue of a country depends on the care of its rulers to preserve
+     it in a flourishing state. I have been induced to make the
+     representation by my attachment to the interest of the Company; for
+     otherwise it is no concern of mine. Should these oppressions
+     continue one or two years longer, and the rulers take no measures
+     to put a stop to them, the whole country will be a desert."
+
+My Lords, upon these statements I have only to make this remark,--that
+you have seen the first state of this country, and that the period when
+it had fallen into the state last described was about two years after
+Mr. Hastings had obtained the majority in the Council and began to
+govern this country by his lieutenants. We know that the country was put
+by him under military collectors: you see the consequences. The person
+who makes this representation to Mr. Hastings of the state of the
+country, of its distress and calamity, and of the desolation of a
+thousand of the villages formerly flourishing in it, is no less a person
+than a prince of a neighboring country, a person of whom you have often
+heard, and to whom the cause of humanity is much indebted, namely,
+Fyzoola Khân,--a prince whose country the English Resident, travelling
+through, declares to be cultivated like a garden. That this was the
+state of the Rohilla country is owing to its having very fortunately
+been one of those that escaped the dominion of Mr. Hastings.
+
+We will now read to your Lordships a letter from Sir Eyre Coote to the
+board at Calcutta, dated the 11th of September, 1779.
+
+     "Honorable Sir and Sirs,--The day before yesterday I encamped near
+     Allahabad, where the Vizier did me the honor of a visit; and
+     yesterday morning, in my way hither, I returned it, and was
+     received by his Excellency with every mark of respect and
+     distinction. This morning he called here, and we had some general
+     conversation, which principally turned upon the subject of his
+     attachment to the English, and his readiness to show the sincerity
+     of it upon all occasions. It is to be wished we had employed the
+     influence which such favorable sentiments must have given us more
+     to the benefit of the country and ourselves; but I fear the
+     distresses which evidently appear on the face of the one, and the
+     failure of the revenues to the other, are not to be wholly ascribed
+     to the Vizier's mismanagement."
+
+This is the testimony of Mr. Hastings's own pensioner, Sir Eyre Coote,
+respecting the known state of the country during the time of this
+horrible usurpation, which Sir Eyre Coote mentions under the soft name
+of our _influence_. But there could be but one voice upon the subject,
+and that your Lordships shall now hear from Mr. Hastings himself. We
+refer your Lordships to the Minute of the Governor-General's
+Consultation, Fort William, 21st May, 1781: he is here giving his
+reasons for going into the upper provinces.
+
+     "The province of Oude having fallen into a state of great disorder
+     and confusion, its resources being in an extraordinary degree
+     diminished, and the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah having earnestly
+     entreated the presence of the Governor-General, and declared, that,
+     unless some effectual measures are taken for his relief, he must be
+     under the necessity of leaving his country, and coming down to
+     Calcutta, to present his situation to this government,--the
+     Governor-General therefore proposes, with the concurrence of Mr.
+     Wheler, to visit the province of Oude as speedily as the affairs of
+     the Presidency will admit, in hopes that, from a minute and
+     personal observation of the circumstances of that country, the
+     system of management which has been adopted, and the characters
+     and conduct of the persons employed, he may possibly be able to
+     concert and establish some plan by which the province of Oude may
+     in time be restored to its former state of affluence, good order,
+     and prosperity."
+
+Your Lordships have now the whole chain of the evidence complete, with
+regard to the state of the country, up to the period of Mr. Hastings's
+journey into the country. You see that Mr. Hastings himself admits it to
+have been formerly in a most flourishing, orderly, and prosperous state.
+Its condition in 1781 he describes to you in words than which no enemy
+of his can use stronger, in order to paint the state in which it then
+was. In this state he found it, when he went up in the year 1781; and he
+left it, with regard to any substantial regulation that was executed or
+could be executed, in the state in which he found it,--after having
+increased every one of those grievances which he pretended to redress,
+and taken from it all the little resources that remained in it.
+
+We now come to a subsequent period, at which time the state of the
+country is thus described by Mr. Bristow, on the 12th December, 1782.
+
+     "Despotism is the principle upon which every measure is founded,
+     and the people in the interior parts of the country are ruled at
+     the discretion of the aumil or foujdar for the time being. They
+     exercise, within the limits of their jurisdiction, the powers of
+     life and death, and decisions in civil and other cases, in the same
+     extent as the sovereign at the capital. The forms prescribed by the
+     ancient institutions of the Mogul empire are unattended to, and the
+     will of the provincial magistrate is the sole law of the people.
+     The total relaxation of the Vizier's authority, his inattention and
+     dislike to business, leave the aumils in possession of this
+     dangerous power, unawed, uncontrolled by any apprehension of
+     retrospection, or the interference of justice. I can hardly quote
+     an instance, since the Vizier's accession to the musnud, of an
+     aumil having been punished for oppression, though the complaints of
+     the people and the state of the country are notorious proofs of the
+     violences daily committed: it is even become unsafe for travellers
+     to pass, except in large bodies; murders, thefts, and other
+     enormities shocking to humanity, are committed in open day."
+
+In another paragraph of the same letter, he says,--
+
+     "Such has been the system of this government, that the oppressions
+     have generally originated with the aumils. They have been rarely
+     selected for their abilities or integrity, but from favor, or the
+     means to advance a large sum upon being appointed to their office.
+     The aumil enters upon his trust ruined in reputation and fortune;
+     and unless he accomplishes his engagements, which is seldom the
+     case, disgrace and punishment follow. Though the balance of revenue
+     may be rigorously demanded of him, it has not been usual to
+     institute any inquiry for oppression. The zemindars, thus left at
+     the mercy of the aumils, are often driven to rebellion. The weak
+     are obliged to submit to his exactions, or fly the country; and the
+     aumil, unable to reduce the more powerful, is compelled to enter
+     into a disgraceful compromise. Every zemindar looks to his fort for
+     protection, and the country is crowded with them: Almas Ali Khân
+     asserts there are not less than seven hundred in his districts.
+     Hence it has become a general custom to seize the brother, son, or
+     some near relation or dependant of the different zemindars, as
+     hostages for the security of the revenue: a great aumil will
+     sometimes have three or four hundred of these hostages, whom he is
+     obliged to confine in places of security. A few men like Almas Ali
+     Khân and Coja Ain ul Din have, from their regularity in the
+     performance of pecuniary engagements, rendered themselves useful to
+     the Vizier. A strict scrutiny into his affairs was at all times
+     irksome to his Excellency, and none of the ministers or officers
+     about his person possessing the active, persevering spirit
+     requisite to conduct the detail of engagements for a number of
+     small farms, it became convenient to receive a large sum from a
+     great farmer without trouble or deficiency. This system was
+     followed by the most pernicious consequences; these men were above
+     all control, they exacted their own terms, and the districts they
+     farmed were most cruelly oppressed. The revenue of Rohilcund is
+     reduced above a third, and Almas Ali Khân's administration is well
+     known to have been extremely violent."
+
+We will next read to your Lordships an extract from Captain Edwards's
+evidence.
+
+    "_Q._ Had you any opportunity of observing the general face of the
+    country in the time of Sujah Dowlah?--_A._ I had.--_Q._ Did you
+    remark any difference in the general state of the country at that
+    time and the period when you made your latter observation?--did you
+    observe any difference between the condition of the country at that
+    time, that of Sujah Dowlah in the year 1774, and the latter period
+    you have mentioned?--_A._ I did,--a very material difference.--_Q._
+    In what respect?--_A._ In the general aspect that the country bore,
+    and the cultivation of the country,--that it was infinitely better
+    cultivated in 1774 than it was in 1783.--_Q._ You said you had no
+    opportunity of observing the face of the country till you was
+    appointed aide-de-camp to the Nabob?--_A._ No,--except by marching
+    and countermarching. I marched in the year 1774 through the Nabob
+    Sujah ul Dowlah's provinces into Rohilcund.--_Q._ Had you those
+    opportunities from the time of your going there in 1774?--_A._ I
+    had; but not so much as I had after being appointed aide-de-camp to
+    the Vizier, because I was always before in a subordinate situation:
+    I marched in a direct line before, with the troops; but afterwards,
+    when I was aide-de-camp to his Excellency, I was my own master, and
+    made frequent excursions into the different parts of the
+    country.--_Q._ Had you an opportunity of observing the difference in
+    the general happiness and disposition of the people?--_A._ I
+    had.--_Q._ Did you observe a difference in that respect also between
+    your first coming and the year 1783?--_A._ Yes, a very sensible
+    difference: in Sujah ul Dowlah's time the country was in a very
+    flourishing state, in merchandise, cultivation, and every article of
+    commerce, and the people then seemed to be very happy under his
+    government, which latterly was not the case; because the country in
+    reality appeared in the year 1774 in a flourishing state, and in the
+    year 1783 it appeared comparatively forlorn and desolate.--_Q._ Was
+    the court of Asoph ul Dowlah, when you left India, equal in point
+    of splendor to what it was in the time of Sujah ul Dowlah?--_A._ By
+    no means: it was not equally splendid, but far inferior.--_Q._ Were
+    the dependants and officers belonging to the court paid in the same
+    punctual manner?--_A._ No: I really cannot say whether they were
+    paid more regularly in Sujah Dowlah's time, only they appeared more
+    wealthy and more able to live in a splendid style in his time than
+    they ever have done since his death."
+
+Here, then, your Lordships see the state of the country in 1783. Your
+Lordships may trace the whole progress of these evils, step by step,
+from the death of Sujah ul Dowlah to the time of Mr. Hastings's
+obtaining a majority in the Council, after which he possessed the sole
+and uncontrolled management of the country; you have seen also the
+consequences that immediately followed till the year 1784, when he went
+up a second time into the country.
+
+I do not know, my Lords, that it is necessary to make any observation
+upon this state of things. You see that the native authority was, as we
+have proved, utterly extinguished by Mr. Hastings, and that there was
+no superintendent power but his. You have heard of the oppressions of
+the farmers of the revenues; and we have shown you that these farmers
+generally were English officers. We have shown you in what manner
+Colonel Hannay, one of these farmers sent by Mr. Hastings, acted, and
+particularly the accumulation of hostages which were made by him. We
+have shown you, that by their arbitrary and tyrannical proceedings all
+regular government was subverted, and that the country experienced the
+last and most dreadful effects of anarchy. We have shown you that no
+other security was left to any human being, but to intrench themselves
+in such forts as they could make, and that these forts, in one district
+only of the country, had increased in number to the amount of seven
+hundred. Your Lordships also know, that, when the prisons and mud forts
+in which Colonel Hannay kept his hostages confined were full, he kept
+them in uncovered cages in the open air. You know that all these farmers
+of revenue were either English and military men, or natives under an
+abject submission to them; you know that they had the whole country in
+assignments, that the jaghires were all confiscated for their benefits;
+and you find that the whole system had its origin at the time when Mr.
+Hastings alone formed in effect the authority of the Supreme Council.
+The weakness of the Nabob, as Sir Eyre Coote tells you, could not have
+been alone the cause of these evils, and that our influence over him, if
+not actually the cause of the utter ruin, desolation, and anarchy of
+that country, might have been successfully exerted in preventing.
+
+When your Lordships shall proceed to judgment upon these accumulated
+wrongs, arising out of the usurped power of the prisoner at your bar,
+and redressed by him in no one instance whatever, let not the usurpation
+itself of the Nabob's power be considered as a trivial matter. When any
+prince at the head of a great country is entirely stripped of everything
+in his government, civil or military, by which his rank may be
+distinguished or his virtues exercised, he is in danger of becoming a
+mere animal, and of abandoning himself wholly to sensual gratifications.
+Feeling no personal interest in the institutions or in the general
+welfare of the country, he suffers the former (and many wise and
+laudable institutions existed in the provinces of the Nabob, for their
+good order and government) to fall into disuse, and he leaves the
+country itself to persons in inferior situations, to be wasted and
+destroyed by them. You find that in Oude, the very appearance of justice
+had been banished out of it, and that every aumil exercised an arbitrary
+power over the lives and fortunes of the people. My Lords, we have the
+proofs of all these facts in our hands; they are in your Lordships'
+minutes; and though we can state nothing stronger than is stated in the
+papers themselves, yet we do not so far forget our duty as not to point
+out to your Lordships such observations as arise out of them.
+
+To close the whole, your Lordships shall how hear read an extract from a
+most curious and extraordinary letter, sent by him to the Court of
+Directors, preparatory to his return to England.
+
+     "My only remaining fear is, that the members of the Council, seeing
+     affairs through a different medium from that through which I view
+     them, may be disposed, if not to counteract the system which I have
+     formed, to withhold from it their countenance and active support.
+     While I myself remain, it will be sufficient if they permit it to
+     operate without interruption; and I almost hope, in the event of a
+     new administration of your affairs which shall confine itself to
+     the same forbearance, and manifest no symptoms of intended
+     interference, the objects of my arrangements will be effectually
+     attained; for I leave them in the charge of agents whose interests,
+     ambition, and every prospect of life are interwoven with their
+     success, and the hand of Heaven has visibly blest the soil with
+     every elementary source of progressive vegetation: but if a
+     different policy shall be adopted, if new agents are sent into the
+     country and armed with authority for the purpose of vengeance or
+     corruption, to no other will they be applied. If new demands are
+     raised on the Nabob Vizier, and accounts overcharged on one side
+     with a wide latitude taken on the other to swell his debt beyond
+     the means of payment,--if political dangers are portended, to
+     ground on them the pleas of burdening his country with unnecessary
+     defences and enormous subsidies,--or if, even abstaining from
+     direct encroachment on the Nabob's rights, your government shall
+     show but a degree of personal kindness to the partisans of the late
+     usurpation, or by any constructive indication of partiality and
+     disaffection furnish ground for the expectation of an approaching
+     change of system, I am sorry to say that all my labors will prove
+     abortive; for the slightest causes will be sufficient to deject
+     minds sore with the remembrance of past conflicts, and to elevate
+     those whose only dependence is placed in the renewal of the
+     confusion which I have labored with such zeal to eradicate, and
+     will of course debilitate the authority which can alone insure
+     future success. I almost fear that this denunciation of effects
+     from causes so incompetent, as they will appear to those who have
+     not had the experience which I have had of the quick sensibility
+     which influences the habits of men placed in a state of polity so
+     loose, and subject to the continual variations of capricious and
+     despotic authority, will be deemed overcharged, or perhaps void of
+     foundation; nor, if they should come to pass, will it be easy to
+     trace them with any positive evidence to their connection: yet it
+     is my duty to apprise you of what I apprehend, on grounds which I
+     deem of absolute certainty, may come to pass; and I rely on your
+     candor for a fair interpretation of my intention."
+
+Here, my Lords, the prisoner at your bar has done exactly what his
+bitterest accuser would do: he goes through, head by head, every one of
+the measures which he had himself pursued in the destruction of the
+country; and he foretells, that, if any one of those measures should
+again be pursued, or even if good cause should be given to suspect they
+would be renewed, the country must fall into a state of inevitable
+destruction. This supersedes all observation. This paper is a
+recapitulated, minute condemnation of every step which he took in that
+country, and which steps, are every one of them upon your Lordships'
+minutes.
+
+But, my Lords, we know very well the design of these pretended
+apprehensions, and why he wished to have that country left in the state
+he speaks of. He had left a secret agent of his own to control that
+ostensible government, and to enable him, sitting in the place where he
+now sits, to continue to govern those provinces in the way in which he
+now governs them.
+
+     [_A murmur having arisen here, Mr. Burke proceeded._]
+
+If I am called upon to reword what I have just said, I shall repeat my
+words, and show strong grounds and reasons to indicate that he governs
+Oude now as much as he ever did.
+
+You see, my Lords, that the reform which he pretended to make in 1781
+produced the calamities which he states to have existed in 1784. We
+shall now show that the reform which he pretended to make in 1784
+brought on the calamities which Lord Cornwallis states in his evidence
+to have existed in 1787.
+
+We will now read two letters from Lord Cornwallis: the first is dated
+the 16th November, 1787.
+
+     "I was received at Allahabad and attended to Lucknow by the Nabob
+     and his ministers with every mark of friendship and respect. I
+     cannot, however, express how much I was concerned, during my short
+     residence at his capital, and my progress through his dominions, to
+     be witness of the disordered state of his finances and government,
+     and of the desolate appearances of his country. The evils were too
+     alarming to admit of palliation, and I thought it my duty to exhort
+     him, in the most friendly manner, to endeavor to apply effectual
+     remedies to them. He began with urging as apology, that, whilst he
+     was not certain of the expense [extent?] of our demands upon him,
+     he had no real interest in being economical in his expenses, and
+     that, while we interfered in the internal management of his
+     affairs, his own authority and that of his ministers were despised
+     by his own subjects. It would have been useless to discuss these
+     topics with him; but while I repeated my former declarations of our
+     being determined to give no ground in future for similar
+     complaints, he gave me the strongest assurances of his being
+     resolved to apply himself earnestly to the encouragement of
+     agriculture, and to endeavor to revive the commerce of his
+     country."
+
+The second is dated the 25th April, 1788.
+
+     "Till I saw the Vizier's troops, I was not without hope that upon
+     an emergency he would have been able to have furnished us with some
+     useful cavalry; but I have no reason to believe that he has any in
+     his service upon which it would be prudent to place any dependence;
+     and I think it right to add, that his country appears to be in so
+     ruined a state, and his finances in so much disorder, that even in
+     case of war we ought not to depend upon any material support from
+     him."
+
+My Lords, I have only to remark upon these letters, that, so far as they
+go, they prove the effects of Mr. Hastings's reformation, from which he
+was pleased to promise the Company such great things. But when your
+Lordships know that he had left his dependant and minister, Hyder Beg
+Khân, there, whose character, as your Lordships will find by a reference
+to your minutes he has represented as black as hell, to be the real
+governor there, and to carry on private correspondence with him here,
+and that he had left Major Palmer, his private agent, for a considerable
+time in that country to carry on his affairs, your Lordships will easily
+see how it has come to pass that the Vizier, such a man as you have
+heard him described to be, was not alone able to restore prosperity to
+his country.
+
+My Lords, you have now seen what was the situation of the country in
+Sujah Dowlah's time, prior to Mr. Hastings's interference with the
+government of it, what it was during his government, and what situation
+it was in when Lord Cornwallis left it. Nothing now remains but to call
+your Lordships' attention to perhaps the most extraordinary part of
+these transactions. But before we proceed, we will beg leave to go back
+and read to your Lordships the Nabob's letter of the 24th February,
+1780.
+
+     "I have received your letter, and understand the contents. I cannot
+     describe the solidity of your friendship and brotherly affection
+     which subsisted between you and my late father. From the friendship
+     of the Company he received numberless advantages; and I,
+     notwithstanding I was left an orphan, from your favor and that of
+     the Company was perfectly at ease, being satisfied that everything
+     would be well, and that I should continue in the same security that
+     I was during my father's lifetime, from your protection. I
+     accordingly, from the day of his death, have never omitted to
+     cultivate your favor, and the protection of the Company; and
+     whatever was the desire and directions of the Council at that time
+     I have ever since conformed to, and obeyed with readiness. Thanks
+     be given to God that I have never as yet been backward in
+     performing the will of the English Company, of the Council, and of
+     you, and have always been from my heart ready to obey them, and
+     have never given you any trouble from my difficulties or wishes.
+     This I have done simply from my own knowledge of your favor towards
+     me, and from my being certain that you would learn the particulars
+     of my distresses and difficulties from other quarters, and would
+     then show your friendship and good-will in whatever was for my
+     advantage. But when the knife had penetrated to the bone, and I was
+     surrounded with such heavy distresses that I could no longer live
+     in expectations, I then wrote an account of my difficulties. The
+     answer which I have received to it is such, that it has given me
+     inexpressible grief and affliction. I never had the least idea or
+     expectation from you and the Council that you would ever have
+     given your orders in so afflicting a manner, in which you never
+     before wrote, and which I could not have imagined. As I am resolved
+     to obey your orders, and directions of the Council, without any
+     delay, as long as I live, I have, agreeably to those orders,
+     delivered up all my private papers to him [the Resident], that,
+     when he shall have examined my receipts and expenses, he may take
+     whatever remains. As I know it to be my duty to satisfy you, the
+     Company, and Council, I have not failed to obey in any instance,
+     but requested of him that it might be done so as not to distress me
+     in my necessary expenses: there being no other funds but those for
+     the expenses of my mutsuddies, household expenses, and servants,
+     &c. He demanded these in such a manner, that, being remediless, I
+     was obliged to comply with what he required. He has accordingly
+     stopped the pensions of my old servants for thirty years, whether
+     sepoys, mutsuddies, or household servants, and the expenses of my
+     family and kitchen, together with the jaghires of my grandmother,
+     mother, and aunts, and of my brothers and dependants, which were
+     for their support. I had raised fifteen hundred horse and three
+     battalions of sepoys to attend upon me; but, as I have no resources
+     to support them, I have been obliged to remove the people stationed
+     in the mahals, and to send his people into the mahals, so that I
+     have not now one single servant about me. Should I mention what
+     further difficulties I have been reduced to, it would lay me open
+     to contempt. Although I have willingly assented to this which
+     brings such distress on me, and have in a manner altogether ruined
+     myself, yet I failed not to do it for this reason, because it was
+     for your satisfaction, and that of the Council; and I am patient,
+     and even thankful, in this condition; but I cannot imagine from
+     what cause you have conceived displeasure against me. From the
+     commencement of my administration, in every circumstance, I
+     received strength and security from your favor, and that of the
+     Council; and in every instance you and the Council have shown your
+     friendship and affection for me; but at present, that you have sent
+     these orders, I am greatly perplexed."
+
+We will not trouble your Lordships with the remainder of the letter,
+which is all in the same style of distress and affliction, and of the
+abject dependence of a man who considers himself as insulted, robbed,
+and ruined in that state of dependence.
+
+In addition to the evidence contained in this letter, your Lordships
+will be pleased to recollect the Nabob's letter which we read to your
+Lordships yesterday, the humble and abject style of which you will never
+forget. Oh, consider, my Lords, this instance of the fate of human
+greatness! You must remember that there is not a trace anywhere, in any
+of the various trunks of Mr. Hastings, that he ever condescended so much
+as to give an answer to the suppliant letters of that unhappy man. There
+was no mode of indignity with which he did not treat his family; there
+was no mode of indignity with which he did not treat his person; there
+was no mode of indignity with which he did not treat his minister, Hyder
+Beg Khân,--this man whom he represents to be the most infamous and
+scandalous of mankind, and of whom he, nevertheless, at the same time
+declares, that his only support with the Vizier was the support which
+he, Warren Hastings, as representative of the English government, gave
+him.
+
+We will now read a paper which perhaps ought not to have been received
+in evidence, but which we were willing to enter in your minutes as
+evidence, in order that everything should come before you. Your
+Lordships have heard the Nabob speak of his misery, distress, and
+oppression; but here he makes a complete defeasance, as it were, of the
+whole charge, a direct disavowal of every one of the complaints, and
+particularly that of having never received an answer to these
+complaints. Oh, think, I say, my Lords, of the degraded, miserable, and
+unhappy state to which human nature may be reduced, when you hear this
+unhappy man declare that all the charges which we have made upon this
+subject relative to him, and which are all either admitted by him or
+taken from his own representation, are now stated by him in a paper
+before you to be all false, and that there is not a word of the
+representation which he had made of Mr. Hastings that has the least
+truth in it! Your Lordships will find this in that collection of various
+papers which ought to be preserved and put into every museum in Europe,
+as one of the most extraordinary productions that was ever exhibited to
+the world.
+
+
+     _Papers received the 8th of March, 1788, and translated pursuant to
+     an Order of the Governor-General in Council, dated the 21th of
+     April, 1788, under the Seal of His Excellency the Nabob Asoph ul
+     Dowlah, Asoph Jah Bahadur, Vizier ul Momalik._
+
+     "I have at this time learnt that the gentlemen in power in England,
+     upon the suspicion that Mr. Hastings, during his administration,
+     acted contrary to the rules of justice and impartiality, and,
+     actuated by motives of avidity, was inimical towards men without
+     cause; that he broke such engagements and treaties as had been made
+     between the Company and other chiefs; that he extended the hand of
+     oppression over the properties of men, tore up the roots of
+     security and prosperity from the land, and rendered the ryots and
+     subjects destitute by force and extortion.--As this accusation, in
+     fact, is destitute of uprightness and void of truth, therefore,
+     with a view to show the truth in its true colors, I have written
+     upon this sheet with truth and sincerity, to serve as an evidence,
+     and to represent real facts,--to serve also as information and
+     communication, that Mr. Hastings, from the commencement of his
+     administration until his departure for England, whether during the
+     lifetime of the deceased Nabob, of blessed memory, Vizier ul Moolk,
+     Sujah ul Dowlah Bahadur, my father, or during my government, did
+     not at any time transact contrary to justice any matter which took
+     place from the great friendship between me and the Company, nor in
+     any business depart from the path of truth and uprightness, but
+     cultivated friendship with integrity and sincerity, and in every
+     respect engaged himself in the duties of friendship with me, my
+     ministers and confidants. I am at all times, and in every way,
+     pleased with and thankful for his friendly manners and qualities;
+     and my ministers and confidants, who have always, every one of
+     them, been satisfied with his conduct, are forever grateful for his
+     friendship and thankful for his virtues. As these matters are real
+     facts, and according to truth, I have written these lines as an
+     evidence, and transmit this paper to England, through the
+     government of Calcutta, for the information of the gentlemen of
+     power and rank in England."
+
+Observe, my Lords, the candor of the Commons. We produce this evidence,
+which accuses us, as Mr. Hastings does, of uttering everything that is
+false; we choose to bring our shame before the world, and to admit that
+this man, on whose behalf and on the behalf of whose country we have
+accused Mr. Hastings, has declared that this accusation (namely, this
+impeachment) is destitute of uprightness and without truth. But, my
+Lords, this is not only a direct contradiction to all he has ever said,
+to all that has been proved to you by us, but a direct contradiction to
+all the representations of Mr. Hastings himself. Your Lordships will
+hence see what credit is to be given to these papers.
+
+Your Lordships shall now hear what Hyder Beg Khân says: that Hyder Beg
+Khân who stands recorded in your minutes as the worst of mankind; who is
+represented as writing letters without the Nabob's consent, and in
+defiance of him; the man of whom Mr. Hastings says, that the Nabob is
+nothing but a tool in his hands, and that the Nabob is and ever must be
+a tool of somebody or other. Now, as we have heard the tool speak, let
+us hear how the workman employed to work with this tool speaks.
+
+
+     _Extract from Hyder Beg Khân's Letter to the Governor and Council._
+
+     "It is at this time learnt by the Nabob Vizier, and us, his
+     ministers, that the gentlemen of power in England are displeased
+     with Mr. Hastings, on the suspicion that during his administration
+     in this country, from motives of avidity, he committed oppressions
+     contrary to the rules of justice, took the properties of men by
+     deceit and force, injured the ryots and subjects, and rendered the
+     country destitute and ruined. As the true and upright disposition
+     of Mr. Hastings is in every respect free of this suspicion, we
+     therefore with truth and sincerity declare by these lines, written
+     according to fact, that Mr. Hastings, from the first of his
+     appointment to the government of this country until his departure
+     for Europe, during his authority in the management of the affairs
+     of the country, whether in the lifetime of the Nabob Sujah ul
+     Dowlah Bahadur, deceased, or whether during the present reign, did
+     not, in any matters which took place from the great friendship
+     between this government and the Company, act in any wise upon
+     motives of avidity, and, not having, in any respect, other than
+     justice and propriety in intention, did not swerve from their
+     rules. He kept his Excellency the Vizier always pleased and
+     satisfied" (you will remember, my Lords, the last expressions of
+     his pleasure and satisfaction) "by his friendship and attention in
+     every matter. He at all times showed favor and kindness towards us,
+     the ministers of this government; and under his protection having
+     enjoyed perfect happiness and comfort, we are from our hearts
+     satisfied with and grateful for his benevolence and goodness."
+
+Here, my Lords, you have the character which Hyder Beg Khân gives of Mr.
+Hastings,--of the man who he knew had loaded him, as he had done, with
+every kind of indignity, reproach, and outrage with which a man can be
+loaded. Your Lordships will see that this testimony repeats, almost word
+for word, the testimony of the Vizier Nabob,--which shows who the real
+writer is.
+
+My Lords, it is said, that there is no word in the Persian language to
+express gratitude. With these signal instances of gratitude before us, I
+think we may venture to put one into their dictionary. Mr. Hastings has
+said he has had the pleasure to find from the people of India that
+gratitude which he has not met with from his own countrymen, the House
+of Commons. Certainly, if he has done us services, we have been
+ungrateful indeed; if he has committed enormous crimes, we are just. Of
+the miserable, dependent situation to which these people are reduced,
+that they are not ashamed to come forward and deny everything they have
+given under their own hand,--all these things show the portentous nature
+of this government, they show the portentous nature of that phalanx with
+which the House of Commons is at present at war, the power of that
+captain-general of every species of Indian iniquity, which, under him,
+is embodied, arrayed, and paid, from Leadenhall Street to the
+furthermost part of India.
+
+We have but one observation more to offer upon this collection of
+_razinamas_, upon these miserable testimonials given by these wretched
+people in contradiction to all their own previous
+representations,--directly in contradiction to those of Mr. Hastings
+himself,--directly in contradiction to those of Lord
+Cornwallis,--directly in contradiction to truth itself. It is this. Here
+is Mr. Hastings with his agents canvassing the country, with all that
+minuteness with which a county is canvassed at an election; and yet in
+this whole book of razinamas not one fact adduced by us is attempted to
+be disproved, not one fact upon which Mr. Hastings's defence can be
+founded is attempted to be proved. There is nothing but bare vile
+panegyrics, directly belied by the state of facts, directly belied by
+the persons themselves, directly belied by Mr. Hastings at your bar, and
+by all the whole course of the correspondence of the country.
+
+We here leave to your Lordships' judgment the consideration of the
+elevated rank of the persons aggrieved and degraded to the lowest state
+of dependence and actual distress,--the consideration of the condition
+of the country gentlemen, who were obliged to hide their heads, wherever
+they could, from the plunderers and robbers established under his
+authority in every part of the country, and that of the miserable common
+people, who have been obliged to sell their children through want of
+food to feed them,--the consideration, I say, of the manner in which
+this country, in the highest, in the middle, and in the lowest classes
+of its inhabitants, nay, in physical works of God, was desolated and
+destroyed by this man.
+
+Having now done with the province of Oude, we will proceed to the
+province of Bengal, and consider what was the kind of government which
+he exercised there, and in what manner it affected the people that were
+subjected to it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bengal, like every part of India subject to the British empire, contains
+(as I have already had occasion to mention) three distinct classes of
+people, forming three distinct social systems. The first is the
+Mahometans, which, about seven hundred years ago, obtained a footing in
+that country, and ever since has in a great degree retained its
+authority there. For the Mahometans had settled there long before the
+foundation of the Bengal empire, which was overturned by Tamerlane: so
+that this people, who are represented sometimes loosely as strangers,
+are people of ancient and considerable settlement in that country; and
+though, like Mahometan settlers in many other countries, they have
+fallen into decay, yet, being continually recruited from various parts
+of Tartary under the Mogul empire, and from various parts of Persia,
+they continue to be the leading and most powerful people throughout the
+peninsula; and so we found them there. These people, for the most part,
+follow no trades or occupation, their religion and laws forbidding them
+in the strictest manner to take usury or profit arising from money that
+is in any way lent; they have, therefore, no other means for their
+support but what arises from their adherence to and connection with the
+Mogul government and its viceroys. They enjoy under them various
+offices, civil and military,--various employments in the courts of law,
+and stations in the army. Accordingly a prodigious number of people,
+almost all of them persons of the most ancient and respectable families
+in the country, are dependent upon and cling to the subahdars or
+viceroys of the several provinces. They, therefore, who oppress,
+plunder, and destroy the subahdars, oppress, rob, and destroy an immense
+mass of people. It is true that a supervening government, established
+upon another, always reduces a certain portion of the dependants upon
+the latter to want. You must distress, by the very nature of the
+circumstances of the case, a great number of people; but then it is your
+business, when, by the superiority which you have acquired, however you
+may have acquired it, (for I am not now considering whether you have
+acquired it by fraud or force, or whether by a mixture of both,) when, I
+say, you have acquired it, it is your business not to oppress those
+people with new and additional difficulties, but rather to console them
+in the state to which they are reduced, and to give them all the
+assistance and protection in your power.
+
+The next system is composed of the descendants of the people who were
+found in the country by the Mahometan invaders. The system before
+mentioned comprehends the official interest, the judicial interest, the
+court interest, and the military interest. This latter body includes
+almost the whole landed interest, commercial interest, and moneyed
+interest of the country. For the Hindoos not being forbidden by their
+laws or religious tenets, as laid down in the Shaster, many of them
+became the principal money-lenders and bankers; and thus the Hindoos
+form the greatest part both of the landed and moneyed interest in that
+country.
+
+The third and last system is formed of the English interest; which in
+reality, whether it appears directly or indirectly, is the governing
+interest of the whole country,--of its civil and military interest, of
+its landed, moneyed, and revenue interest; and what to us is the
+greatest concern of all, it is this system which is responsible for the
+government of that country to the government of Great Britain. It is
+divided into two parts: one emanating from the Company, and afterwards
+regulated by act of Parliament; the other a judicial body, sent out by
+and acting under the authority of the crown itself. The persons
+composing that interest are those whom we usually call the servants of
+the Company. They enter into that service, as your Lordships know, at an
+early period of life, and they are promoted accordingly as their merit
+or their interest may provide for them. This body of men, with respect
+to its number, is so small as scarcely to deserve mentioning; but, from
+certain circumstances, the government of the whole country is fallen
+into their hands. Amongst these circumstances, the most important and
+essential are their having the public revenues and the public purse
+entirely in their own hands, and their having an army maintained by that
+purse, and disciplined in the European manner.
+
+Such was the state of that country when Mr. Hastings was appointed
+Governor in 1772. Your Lordships are now to decide upon the manner in
+which he has comported himself with regard to all these three interests:
+first, whether he has made the ancient Mahometan families as easy as he
+could; secondly, whether he has made the Hindoo inhabitants, the
+zemindars and their tenants, as secure in their property and as easy in
+their tenure as he could; and lastly, whether he has made the English
+interest a blessing to the country, and, whilst it provided moderate,
+safe, and proper emoluments to the persons that were concerned in it, it
+kept them from oppression and rapine, and a general waste and ravage of
+the country: whether, in short, he made all these three interests pursue
+that one object which all interests and all governments ought to pursue,
+the advantage and welfare of the people under them.
+
+My Lords, in support of our charge against the prisoner at your bar,
+that he acted in a manner directly the reverse of this, we have proved
+to you that his first acts of oppression were directed against the
+Mahometan government,--that government which had been before, not only
+in name, but in effect, to the very time of his appointment, the real
+government of the country. After the Company had acquired its right over
+it, some shadow still remained of the ancient government. An allowance
+was settled for the Nabob of Bengal, to support the dignity of his
+court, which amounted to between four and five hundred thousand pounds a
+year. In this was comprehended the support of the whole mass of
+nobility,--the soldiers, serving or retired,--all the officers of the
+court, and all the women that were dependent upon them,--the whole of
+the criminal jurisdiction of the country, and a very considerable part
+of the civil law and the civil government. These establishments formed
+the constitutional basis of their political government.
+
+The Company never had (and it is a thing that we can never too often
+repeat to your Lordships)--the Company never had of right despotic power
+in that country, to overturn any of these establishments. The Mogul, who
+gave them their charters, could not give them such a power,--he did not
+_de facto_ give them such a power; the government of this country did
+not by act of Parliament, and the Company did not and could not by their
+delegation, give him such a power; the act by which he was appointed
+Governor did not give him such a power. If he exercised it, he usurped
+it; and therefore, every step we take in the examination of his conduct
+in Bengal, as in every step we take upon the same subject everywhere
+else, we look for the justification of his conduct to laws,--the Law of
+Nations, the laws of this country, and the laws of the country he was
+sent to govern.
+
+The government of that country, by the ancient constitution of the Mogul
+empire, besides the numberless individual checks and counter-checks in
+the inferior officers [offices?], is divided into the viceroyal part and
+the subahdarry part. The viceroyal part takes in all criminal justice
+and political government. Mr. Hastings found the country under a
+viceroy, governing according to law, acting by proper judges and
+magistrates under him: he himself not being the judicial, but executive
+power of the country,--that which sets the other in action, and does not
+supersede it or supply its place. The other, the subahdarry power, which
+was by the grant of the dewanny conferred upon the Company, had under
+its care the revenues, as much of the civil government as is concerned
+with the revenues, and many other matters growing out of it. These two
+offices are coördinate and dependent on each other. The Company, after
+contracting to maintain the army out of it, got the whole revenue into
+their power. The army being thus within their power, the subahdar by
+degrees vanished into an empty name.
+
+When we thus undertook the government of the country, conscious that we
+had undertaken a task which by any personal exertion of our own we were
+unable to perform in any proper or rational way, the Company appointed a
+native of the country, Mahomed Reza Khân, who stands upon the records of
+the Company, I venture to say, with such a character as no man perhaps
+ever did stand, to execute the duties of both offices. Upon the
+expulsion of Cossim Ali Khân, the Nabob of Bengal, all his children were
+left in a young, feeble, and unprotected state; and in that state of
+things, Lord Clive, Mr. Sumner, who sits near Mr. Hastings, and the rest
+of the Council, wisely appointed Mahomed Reza Khân to fulfil the two
+offices of deputy-viceroy and deputy-dewan, for which he had immense
+allowances, and great jaghires and revenues, I allow. He was a man of
+that dignity, rank, and consideration, added to his knowledge of law and
+experience in business, that Lord Clive and Mr. Sumner, who examined
+strictly his conduct at that time, did not think that 112,000_l._ a
+year, the amount of the emoluments which had been allowed him, was a
+great deal too much; but at his own desire, and in order that these
+emoluments might be brought to stated and fixed sums, they reduced it to
+90,000_l._,--an allowance which they thought was not more than
+sufficient to preserve the state of so great a magistrate, and a man of
+such rank, exercising such great employments. The whole revenue of the
+Company depended upon his talents and fidelity; and you will find, that,
+on the day in which he surrendered the revenues into our hands, the
+dewanny, under his management, was a million more than it produced on
+the day Mr. Hastings left it. For the truth of this I refer your
+Lordships to a letter of the Company sent to the Board of Control. This
+letter is not in evidence before your Lordships, and what I am stating
+is merely historical. But I state the facts, and with the power of
+referring for their proof to documents as authentic as if they were
+absolutely in evidence before you. Assuming, therefore, that all these
+facts may be verified by the records of the Company, I have now to state
+that this man, by some rumors true or false, was supposed to have
+misconducted himself in a time of great calamity in that country. A
+great famine had about this time grievously afflicted the whole province
+of Bengal.--I must remark by the way, that these countries are liable to
+this calamity; but it is greatly blessed by Nature with resources which
+afford the means of speedy recovery, if their government does not
+counteract them. Nature, that inflicts the calamity, soon heals the
+wound; it is in ordinary seasons the most fertile country, inhabited by
+the most industrious people, and the most disposed to marriage and
+settlement, probably, that exists in the whole world; so that population
+and fertility are soon restored, and the inhabitants quickly resume
+their former industrious occupations.
+
+During the agitation excited in the country by the calamity I have just
+mentioned, Mahomed Reza Khân, through the intrigues of Rajah Nundcomar,
+one of his political rivals, and of some English faction that supported
+him, was accused of being one of the causes of the famine. In answer to
+this charge, he alleged, what was certainly a sufficient justification,
+that he had acted under the direction of the English board, to which his
+conduct throughout this business was fully known. The Company, however,
+sent an order from England to have him tried; but though he frequently
+supplicated the government at Calcutta that his trial should be
+proceeded in, in order that he might be either acquitted and discharged
+or condemned, Mr. Hastings kept him in prison two years, under pretence
+(as he wrote word to the Directors) that Mahomed Reza Khân himself was
+not very desirous to hasten the matter. In the mean time the Court of
+Directors, having removed him from his great offices, authorized and
+commanded Mr. Hastings (and here we come within the sphere of your
+minutes) to appoint a successor to Mahomed Reza Khân, fit to fulfil the
+duties of his station. Now I shall first show your Lordships what sort
+of person the Court of Directors described to him as most fit to fill
+the office of Mahomed Reza Khân, what sort of person he did appoint, and
+then we will trace out to you the consequences of that appointment.
+
+
+     _Letter from the Court of Directors to the President and Council at
+     Fort William, dated 28th August, 1771._
+
+     "Though we have not a doubt but that, by the exertion of your
+     abilities, and the care and assiduity of our servants in the
+     superintendency of the revenues, the collections will be conducted
+     with more advantage to the Company and ease to the natives than by
+     means of a naib dewan, we are fully sensible of the expediency of
+     supporting some ostensible minister in the Company's interest at
+     the Nabob's court, to transact the political affairs of the sircar,
+     and interpose between the Company and the subjects of any European
+     power, in all cases wherein they may thwart our interest or
+     encroach on our authority; and as Mahomed Reza Khân can no longer
+     be considered by us as one to whom such a power can be safely
+     committed, we trust to your local knowledge the selection of some
+     person well qualified for the affairs of government, and of whose
+     attachment to the Company you shall be well assured: such person
+     you will recommend to the Nabob to succeed Mahomed Reza as minister
+     of the government, and guardian of the Nabob's minority; and we
+     persuade ourselves that the Nabob will pay such regard to your
+     recommendation as to invest him with the necessary power and
+     authority.
+
+     "As the advantages which the Company may receive from the
+     appointment of such minister will depend on his readiness to
+     promote our views and advance our interest, we are willing to allow
+     him so liberal a gratification as may excite his zeal and secure
+     his attachment to the Company; we therefore empower you to grant to
+     the person whom you shall think worthy of this trust an annual
+     allowance not exceeding three lacs of rupees, (thirty thousand
+     pounds,) which we consider not only as a munificent reward for any
+     services he shall render the Company, but sufficient to enable him
+     to support his station with suitable rank and dignity. And here we
+     must add, that, in the choice you shall make of a person to be the
+     active minister of the Nabob's government, we hope and trust that
+     you will show yourselves worthy of the confidence we have placed in
+     you, by being actuated therein, by no other motives than those of
+     the public good and the safety and interest of the Company."
+
+Here, my Lords, a person was to be named fit to fill the office and
+supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khân, who was deputy-viceroy of Bengal,
+at the head of the criminal justice of the country, and, in short, at
+the head of the whole ostensible Mahometan government; he was also to
+supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khân as naib dewan, from which Reza
+Khân was to be removed: for you will observe, the Directors always speak
+of a man fit to perform all the duties of Mahomed Reza Khân; and amongst
+these he was to be as the guardian of the Nabob's person, and the
+representative of his authority and government.
+
+Mr. Hastings, having received these orders from the Court of Directors,
+did--what? He alleges in his defence, that no positive commands were
+given him. But a very sufficient description was given of the person who
+ought to succeed Mahomed Reza Khân, in whom the Company had before
+recognized all the necessary qualities; and they therefore desire him to
+name a similar person. But what does Mr. Hastings do in consequence of
+this authority? He names no man at all. He searches into the seraglio of
+the Nabob, and names a woman to be the viceroy of the province, to be
+the head of the ostensible government, to be the guardian of the Nabob's
+person, the conservator of his authority, and a proper representative of
+the remaining majesty of that government.
+
+Well, my Lords, he searched the seraglio. When you have to take into
+consideration the guardianship of a person of great dignity, there are
+two circumstances to be attended to: one, a faithful and affectionate
+guardianship of his person; and the other, a strong interest in his
+authority, and the means of exercising that authority in a proper and
+competent manner. Mr. Hastings, when he was looking for a woman in the
+seraglio, (for he could find women only there,) must have found actually
+in authority there the Nabob's own mother: certainly a person who by
+nature was most fit to be his guardian; and there is no manner of doubt
+of her being sufficiently competent to that duty. Here, then, was a
+legitimate wife of the Nabob Jaffier Ali Khân, a woman of rank and
+distinction, fittest to take care of the person and interests, as far as
+a woman could take care of them, of her own son. In this situation she
+had been placed before, during the administration of Mahomed Reza Khân,
+by the direct orders of the Governor, Sir John Cartier. She had, I say,
+been put in possession of that trust which it was natural and proper to
+give to such a woman. But what does Mr. Hastings do? He deposes this
+woman. He strips her of her authority with which he found her invested
+under the sanction of the English government. He finds out a woman in
+the seraglio, called Munny Begum, who was bound to the Nabob by no tie
+whatever of natural affection. He makes this woman the guardian of the
+young Nabob's person. She had a son who had been placed upon the musnud
+after the death of his father, Sujah Dowlah, and had been appointed his
+guardian. This young Nabob died soon afterwards, and was succeeded by
+Nujim ul Dowlah, another natural son of Sujah Dowlah. This prince being
+left without a mother, this woman was suffered to retain the
+guardianship of the Nabob till his death. When Mobarek ul Dowlah, a
+legitimate son of Sujah Dowlah, succeeded him, Sir John Cartier did what
+his duty was: he put the Nabob's own mother into the place which she was
+naturally entitled to hold, the guardianship of her own son, and
+displaced Munny Begum. The whole of the arrangement by which Munny Begum
+was appointed guardian of the two preceding Nabobs stands in the
+Company's records stigmatized as a transaction base, wicked, and
+corrupt. We will read to your Lordships an extract from a letter which
+has the signature of Mr. Sumner, the gentleman who sits here by the side
+of Mr. Hastings, and from which you will learn what the Company and the
+Council thought of the original nomination of Munny Begum and of her
+son. You will find that they considered her as a great agent and
+instrument of all the corruption there; and that this whole transaction,
+by which the bastard son of Munny Begum was brought forward to the
+prejudice of the legitimate son of the Nabob, was considered to be, what
+it upon the very face of it speaks itself to be, corrupt and scandalous.
+
+
+     _Extract of a General Letter from the President and Council at
+     Calcutta, Bengal, to the Select Committee of the Directors._
+
+     Paragraph 5.--"At Fort St. George we received the first advices of
+     the demise of Mir Jaffier, and of Sujah Dowlah's defeat. It was
+     there firmly imagined that no definitive measures would be taken,
+     either with respect to a peace or filling the vacancy in the
+     nizamut, before our arrival,--as the 'Lapwing' arrived in the month
+     of January with your general letter, and the appointment of a
+     committee with express powers to that purpose, for the successful
+     exertion of which the happiest occasion now offered. However, a
+     contrary resolution prevailed in the Council. The opportunity of
+     acquiring immense fortunes was too inviting to be neglected, and
+     the temptation too powerful to be resisted. A treaty was hastily
+     drawn up by the board,--or rather, transcribed, with few
+     unimportant additions, from that concluded with Mir Jaffier,--and a
+     deputation, consisting of Messrs. Johnstone, senior, Middleton, and
+     Leycester, appointed to raise the natural son of the deceased Nabob
+     to the subahdarry, in prejudice of the claim of the grandson; and
+     for this measure such reasons assigned as ought to have dictated a
+     diametrically opposite resolution. Meeran's son was a minor, which
+     circumstance alone would have naturally brought the whole
+     administration into our hands at a juncture when it became
+     indispensably necessary we should realize the shadow of power and
+     influence, which, having no solid foundation, was exposed to the
+     danger of being annihilated by the first stroke of adverse fortune.
+     But this inconsistence was not regarded, nor was it material to the
+     views for precipitating the treaty, which was pressed on the young
+     Nabob at the first interview, in so earnest and indelicate a manner
+     as highly disgusted him and chagrined his ministers, while not a
+     single rupee was stipulated for the Company, whose interests were
+     sacrificed that their servants might revel in the spoils of a
+     treasury, before impoverished, but now totally exhausted.
+
+     "6. This scene of corruption was first disclosed at a visit the
+     Nabob paid to Lord Clive and the gentlemen of the Committee a few
+     days after our arrival. He there delivered to his Lordship a letter
+     filled with bitter complaints of the insults and indignity he had
+     been exposed to, and the embezzlement of near twenty lacs of rupees
+     issued from his treasury for purposes unknown during the late
+     negotiations. So public a complaint could not be disregarded, and
+     it soon produced an inquiry. We referred the letter to the board in
+     expectation of obtaining a satisfactory account of the application
+     of this money, and were answered only by a warm remonstrance
+     entered by Mr. Leycester against that very Nabob in whose elevation
+     he boasts of having been a principal agent.
+
+     "7. Mahomed Reza Khân, the naib subah, was then called upon to
+     account for this large disbursement from the treasury; and he soon
+     delivered to the Committee the very extraordinary narrative entered
+     in our Proceedings the 6th of June, wherein he specifies the
+     several names and sums, by whom paid, and to whom, whether in cash,
+     bills, or obligations. So precise, so accurate an account as this
+     of money for secret and venal services was never, we believe,
+     before this period, exhibited to the Honorable Court of Directors,
+     at least never vouched by undeniable testimony and authentic
+     documents: by Juggut Seet, who himself was obliged to contribute
+     largely to the sums demanded; by Muley Ram, who was employed by Mr.
+     Johnstone in all these pecuniary transactions; by the Nabob and
+     Mahomed Reza Khân, who were the heaviest sufferers; and, lastly, by
+     the confession of the gentlemen themselves whose names are
+     specified in the distribution list.
+
+     "8. Juggut Seet expressly declared in his narrative, that the sum
+     which he agreed to pay the deputation, amounting to 125,000 rupees,
+     was extorted by menaces; and since the close of our inquiry, and
+     the opinions we delivered in the Proceedings of the 21st of June,
+     it fully appears that the presents from the Nabob and Mahomed Reza
+     Khân, exceeding the immense sum of seventeen lacs, were not the
+     voluntary offerings of gratitude, but contributions levied on the
+     weakness of the government, and violently exacted from the
+     dependent state and timid disposition of the minister. The charge,
+     indeed, is denied on the one hand, as well as affirmed on the
+     other. Your honorable board must therefore determine how far the
+     circumstance of extortion may aggravate the crime of disobedience
+     to your positive orders,--the exposing the government in a manner
+     to sale, and receiving the infamous wages of corruption from
+     opposite parties and contending interests. We speak with boldness,
+     because we speak from conviction founded upon indubitable evidence,
+     that, besides the above sums specified in the distribution account,
+     to the amount of 228,125_l._ sterling, there was likewise to the
+     value of several lacs of rupees procured from Nundcomar and Roy
+     Dullub, each of whom aspired at and obtained a promise of that very
+     employment it was predetermined to bestow on Mahomed Reza Khân.
+
+        (Signed at the end,)
+        "CLIVE.
+        W^M B. SUMNER.
+        JOHN CARNAC.
+        H. VERELST.
+        FRA^S SYKES."
+
+My Lords, the persons who sign this letter are mostly the friends, and
+one of them is the gentleman who is bail for and sits near Mr. Hastings.
+They state to you this horrible and venal transaction, by which the
+government was set to sale, by which a bastard son was elevated to the
+wrong of the natural and legitimate heir, and in which a prostitute, his
+mother, was put in the place of the honorable and legitimate mother of
+the representative of the family.
+
+Now, if there was one thing more than another under heaven, which Mr.
+Hastings ought to have shunned, it was the suspicion of being concerned
+in any such infamous transaction as that which is here recorded to be
+so,--a transaction in which the country government had before been sold
+to this very woman and her offspring, and in which two great candidates
+for power in that country fought against each other, and perhaps the
+largest offerer carried it.
+
+When a Governor-General sees the traces of corruption in the conduct of
+his predecessors, the traces of injustice following that corruption, the
+traces of notorious irregularity in setting aside the just claimants in
+favor of those that have no claim at all, he has that before his eyes
+which ought to have made him the more scrupulously avoid, and to keep at
+the farthest distance possible from, the contagion and even the
+suspicion of being corrupted by it. Moreover, my Lords, it was in
+consequence of these very transactions that the new covenants were made,
+which bind the servants of the Company never to take a present of above
+two hundred pounds, or some such sum of money, from any native in
+circumstances there described. This covenant I shall reserve for
+consideration in another part of this business. It was in pursuance of
+this idea, and to prevent the abuse of the prevailing custom of visiting
+the governing powers of that country with a view of receiving presents
+from them, that the House of Commons afterwards, in its inquiries, took
+up this matter and passed the Regulating Act in 1773.
+
+But to return to Munny Begum.--This very person, that had got into power
+by the means already mentioned, did Mr. Hastings resort to, knowing her
+to be well skilled in the trade of bribery,--knowing her skilful
+practice in business of this sort,--knowing the fitness of her eunuchs,
+instruments, and agents, to be dealers in this kind of traffic. This
+very woman did Mr. Hastings select, stigmatized as she was in the
+Company's record, stigmatized by the very gentleman who sits next to
+him, and whose name you have heard read to you as one of those members
+of the Council that reprobated the horrible iniquity of the transaction
+in which this woman was a principal agent. For though neither the young
+Nabob nor his mother ought to have been raised to the stations in which
+they were placed, and were placed there for the purpose of facilitating
+the receipt of bribes, yet the order of Nature was preserved, and the
+mother was made the guardian of her own son: for though she was a
+prostitute and he a bastard, yet still she was a mother and he a son;
+and both Nature and legitimate disposition with regard to the
+guardianship of a son went together.
+
+But what did Mr. Hastings do? Improving upon the preceding transaction,
+improving on it by a kind of refinement in corruption, he drives away
+the lawful mother from her lawful guardianship; the mother of nature he
+turns out, and he delivers her son to the stepmother to be the guardian
+of his person. That your Lordships may see who this woman was, we shall
+read to you a paper from your Lordships' minutes, produced before Mr.
+Hastings's face, and never contradicted by him from that day to this.
+
+     At a Consultation, 24th July, 1775.--"Shah Chanim, deceased, was
+     sister to the Nabob Mahub ul Jung by the same father, but different
+     mothers; she married Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khân, by whom she had a
+     son and a daughter; the name of the former was Mir Mahomed Sadduc
+     Ali Khân, and the latter was married to Mir Mahomed Cossim Khân
+     Sadduc. Ali Khân had two sons and two daughters; the sons' names
+     are Mir Sydoc and Mir Sobeem, who are now living; the daughters
+     were married to Sultan Mirza Daood.
+
+     "Baboo Begum, the mother of the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah, was the
+     daughter of Summin Ali Khân, and married Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khân.
+     The history of Munny Begum is this. At a village called Balkonda,
+     near Sekundra, there lived a widow, who, from her great poverty,
+     not being able to bring up her daughter Munny, gave her to a slave
+     girl belonging to Summin Ali Khân, whose name was Bissoo. During
+     the space of five years she lived at Shahjehanabad, and was
+     educated by Bissoo after the manner of a dancing-girl. Afterwards
+     the Nabob Shamut Jung, upon the marriage of Ikram ul Dowlah,
+     brother to the Nabob Surajah ul Dowlah, sent for Bissoo Beg's set
+     of dancing-girls from Shahjehanabad, of which Munny Begum was one,
+     and allowed them ten thousand rupees for their expenses, to dance
+     at the wedding. While this ceremony was celebrating, they were kept
+     by the Nabob; but some months afterwards he dismissed them, and
+     they took up their residence in this city. Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khân
+     then took them into keeping, and allowed Munny and her set five
+     hundred rupees per month, till at length, finding that Munny was
+     pregnant, he took her into his own house. She gave birth to the
+     Nabob Nujim ul Dowlah, and in this manner she has remained in the
+     Nabob's family ever since."
+
+My Lords, I do not mean to detain you long upon this part of the
+business, but I have thought it necessary to advert to these
+particulars. As to all the rest, the honorable and able Manager who
+preceded me has sufficiently impressed upon your Lordships' minds the
+monstrous nature of the deposing of the Nabob's mother from the
+guardianship of her son, for the purpose of placing this woman there at
+the head of all his family and of his domestic concerns in the seraglio
+within doors, and at the head of the state without, together with the
+disposal of the whole of the revenue that was allowed him. Mr. Hastings
+pretends, indeed, to have appointed at the same time a trusty mutsuddy
+to keep the accounts of the revenue; but he has since declared that no
+account had been kept, and that it was in vain to desire it or to call
+for it. This is the state of the case with respect to the appointment of
+Munny Begum.
+
+With regard to the reappointment of Mahomed Reza Khân, you have heard
+from my worthy fellow Manager that he was acquitted of the charges that
+had been brought against him by Mr. Hastings, after a long and lingering
+trial. The Company was perfectly satisfied with the acquittal, and
+declared that he was not only acquitted, but honorably acquitted; and
+they also declared that he had a fair claim to a compensation for his
+sufferings. They not only declared him innocent, but meritorious. They
+gave orders that he should be considered as a person who was to be
+placed in office again upon the first occasion, and that he had entitled
+himself to this favor by his conduct in the place which he had before
+filled.
+
+The Council of the year 1775, (whom I can never mention nor shall
+mention without honor,) who complied faithfully with the act of
+Parliament, who never disobeyed the orders of the Company, and to whom
+no man has imputed even the shadow of corruption, found that this Munny
+Begum had acted in the manner which my honorable fellow Manager has
+stated: that she had dissipated the revenue, that she had neglected the
+education of the Nabob, and had thrown the whole judicature of the
+country into confusion. They ordered that she should be removed from her
+situation; that the Nabob's own mother should be placed at the head of
+the seraglio, a situation to which she was entitled; and with regard to
+the rest of the offices, that Mahomed Reza Khân should be employed to
+fill them.
+
+Mr. Hastings resisted these propositions with all his might; but they
+were by that happy momentary majority carried against him, and Mahomed
+Reza Khân was placed in his former situation. But Mr. Hastings, though
+thus defeated, was only waiting for what he considered to be the
+fortunate moment for returning again to his corrupt, vicious,
+tyrannical, and disobedient habits. The reappointment of Mahomed Reza
+Khân had met with the fullest approbation of the Company; and they
+directed, that, as long as his good behavior entitled him to it, he
+should continue in the office. Mr. Hastings, however, without alleging
+any ill behavior, and for no reason that can be assigned, but his
+corrupt engagement with Munny Begum, overturned (upon the pretence of
+restoring the Nabob to his rights) the whole of the Company's
+arrangement, as settled by the late majority, and approved by the Court
+of Directors.
+
+I have now to show you what sort of a man the Nabob was, who was thus
+set up in defiance of the Company's authority; what Mr. Hastings himself
+thought of him; what the judges thought of him; and what all the world
+thought of him.
+
+I must first make your Lordships acquainted with a little preliminary
+matter. A man named Roy Rada Churn had been appointed vakeel, or agent,
+to manage the Nabob's affairs at Calcutta. One of this man's creditors
+attached him there. Roy Rada Churn pleaded his privilege as the vakeel
+or representative of a sovereign prince. The question came to be tried
+in the Supreme Court, and the issue was, Whether the Nabob was a
+sovereign prince or not. I think the court did exceedingly wrong in
+entertaining such a question; because, in my opinion, whether he was or
+was not a sovereign prince, any person representing him ought to be left
+free, and to have a proper and secure means of concerting his affairs
+with the Council. It was, however, taken otherwise; the question was
+brought to trial, whether the Nabob was a sovereign prince sufficient to
+appoint and protect a person to manage his affairs, under the name of an
+ambassador. In that cause did Mr. Hastings come forward to prove, by a
+voluntary affidavit, that he had no pretensions, no power, no authority
+at all,--that he was a mere pageant, a thing of straw,--and that the
+Company exercised every species of authority over him, in every
+particular, and in every respect; and that, therefore, to talk of him as
+an efficient person was an affront to the common sense of mankind: and
+this you will find the judges afterwards declared to be their opinion.
+
+I will here press again one remark, which perhaps you may recollect that
+I have made before, that the chief and most usual mode in which all the
+villanies perpetrated in India, by Mr. Hastings and his co-partners in
+iniquity, has been through the medium and instrumentality of persons
+whom they pretended to have rights of their own, and to be acting for
+themselves; whereas such persons were, in fact, totally dependent upon
+him, Mr. Hastings, and did no one act that was not prescribed by him.
+In order, therefore, to let you see the utter falsehood, fraud,
+prevarication, and deceit of the pretences by which the native powers of
+India are represented to be independent, and are held up as the
+instruments of defying the laws of this kingdom, under pretext of their
+being absolute princes, I will read the affidavit of Warren Hastings,
+Esquire, Governor-General of Bengal, made the 31st July, 1775.
+
+     "This deponent maketh oath, and saith, That the late President and
+     Council did, in or about the month of August, 1772, by their own
+     authority appoint Munny Begum, relict of the late Nabob, Mir
+     Jaffier Ali Khân, to be guardian to the present Nabob, Mobarek ul
+     Dowlah, and Rajah Gourdas, son of Maha Rajah Nundcomar, to be dewan
+     of the said Nabob's household, allowing to the said Munny Begum a
+     salary of 140,000 rupees per annum, and to the said Rajah Gourdas,
+     for himself and officers, a salary of 100,000 rupees per annum:
+     That the said late President and Council did, in or about the month
+     of August, 1772, plan and constitute regular and distinct courts of
+     justice, civil and criminal, by their own authority, for
+     administration of justice to the inhabitants throughout Bengal,
+     without consulting the said Nabob or requiring his concurrence, and
+     that the said civil courts were made solely dependent on the
+     Presidency of Calcutta; and the said criminal courts were put under
+     the inspection and control of the Company's servants, although
+     ostensibly under the name of the Nazim, as appears from the
+     following extracts from the plan for the administration of justice,
+     constituted by the President and Council as aforesaid."
+
+My Lords, we need not go through all the circumstances of this
+affidavit, which is in your minutes, and, to save time, I will refer
+your Lordships to them. This affidavit, as I have already said, was put
+into the court to prove that the Nabob had no power or authority at all;
+but what is very singular in it, and which I recommend to the particular
+notice of your Lordships, when you are scrutinizing this matter, is,
+that there is not a single point stated, to prove the nullity of this
+Nabob's authority, that was not Mr. Hastings's on particular act. Well,
+the Governor-General swears; the judge of the court refers to him in his
+decision; he builds and bottoms it upon the Governor-General's
+affidavit;--he swears, I say, that the Council, by their own authority,
+appointed Munny Begum to be guardian to the Nabob.
+
+"By what authority," the Governor-General asks, "did the Council erect
+courts of law and superintend the administration of justice, without any
+communication with the Nabob? Had the Nabob himself any idea that he was
+a sovereign? Does he complain of the reduction of his stipend or the
+infringement of treaties? No; he appears to consider himself to be, what
+in fact he really is, absolutely dependent on the Company, and to be
+willing to accept any pittance they would allow him for his maintenance:
+he claims no rights. Does he complain that the administration of justice
+is taken into the hands of the Company? No: by the treaty, the
+protection of his subjects is delivered up to the Company; and he well
+knew, that, whoever may be held up as the ostensible prince, the
+administration of justice must be in the hands of those who have power
+to enforce it." He goes on,--"The Governor-General, who, I suppose, had
+a delicacy to state more than what had before been made public, closes
+his affidavit with saying that all he has deposed to he believes to be
+publicly known, as it is particularly set forth in the printed book
+entitled 'Reports of the Committee of the House of Commons.' I knew," he
+adds, "it was there, and was therefore surprised at this application; it
+is so notorious, that everybody in the settlement must have known it:
+when I say everybody, I mean with an exception to the gentlemen who have
+applied to the court. The only reason I can give for their applying is
+the little time they have been in the country." The judge (I think it is
+Chief-Justice Impey) then goes on,--"Perhaps this question might have
+been determined merely on the dates of the letters to the
+Governor-General; but as the Council have made the other a serious
+question, I should not have thought that I had done my duty, if I had
+not given a full and determinate opinion upon it: I should have been
+sorry, if I had left it doubtful whether the empty name of a Nabob
+should be thrust between a delinquent and the laws, so as effectually to
+protect him from the hand of justice."
+
+My Lords, the court, as you see, bottoms its determination on what we
+stand upon here, Mr. Hastings's evidence, that the empty name of a
+pretended sovereign should not be thrust forth between a delinquent and
+justice.
+
+What does Mr. Le Maistre, the other judge, say upon this occasion? "With
+regard to this phantom, that man of straw, Mobarek ul Dowlah, it is an
+insult on the understanding of the court to have made the question of
+his sovereignty. But as it came from the Governor-General and Council, I
+have too much respect for that body to treat it ludicrously, and I
+confess I cannot consider it seriously, and we always shall consider a
+letter of business from the Nabob the same as a letter from the
+Governor-General and Council."
+
+This is the unanimous opinion of all the judges concerning the state and
+condition of the Nabob. We have thus established the point we mean to
+establish: that any use which shall be made of the Nabob's name for the
+purpose of justifying any disobedience to the orders of the Company, or
+of bringing forward corrupt and unfit persons for the government, could
+be considered as no other than the act of the persons who shall make
+such a use of it; and that no letter that the Nabob writes to any one in
+power was or could be considered as any other than the letter of that
+person himself. This we wish to impress upon your Lordships, because, as
+you have before seen the use that has been made in this way of the Nabob
+of Oude, you may judge of the use that has been made of the name of
+Hyder Beg Khân, and of the names of all the eminent persons of the
+country.
+
+One word more and I have done. If, whilst you remark the use that is
+made of this man's name, your Lordships shall find that this use has
+ever been made of his name for his benefit, or for the purpose of giving
+him any useful or substantial authority, or of meliorating his condition
+in any way whatever; forgive the fraud, forgive the disobedience. But if
+we have shown your Lordships that it was for no other purpose than to
+disobey the orders of the Company, to trample upon the laws of his
+country, to introduce back again, and to force into power, those very
+corrupt and wicked instruments which had formerly done so much
+mischief, and for which mischief they were removed, then we shall not
+have passed our time in vain, in endeavoring to prove that this man, in
+the opinion of a court of justice, and by public notoriety, and by Mr.
+Hastings's own opinion, was held to be fit for nothing but to be made a
+tool in his hands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having stated to your Lordships generally the effects produced upon the
+Mahometan interest of Bengal by the misconduct of the prisoner at your
+bar with respect to the appointment of the guardian of the Nabob or
+Subahdar of that province, and of the ministers of his government, I
+shall have the honor of attending your Lordships another day, and shall
+show you the use that has been made of this government and of the
+authority of the Nabob, who, as your Lordships have seen, was the mere
+phantom of power; and I shall show how much a phantom he was for every
+good purpose, and how effectual an instrument he was made for every bad
+one.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+EIGHTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 1794
+
+
+My Lords,--Your Lordships heard, upon the last day of the meeting of
+this high court, the distribution of the several matters which I should
+have occasion to lay before you, and by which I resolved to guide
+myself in the examination of the conduct of Mr. Hastings with regard to
+Bengal. I stated that I should first show the manner in which he
+comported himself with regard to the people who were found in possession
+of the government when we first entered into Bengal. We have shown to
+your Lordships the progressive steps by which the native government was
+brought into a state of annihilation. We have stated the manner in which
+that government was solemnly declared by a court of justice to be
+depraved, and incompetent to act, and dead in law. We have shown to your
+Lordships (and we have referred you to the document) that its death was
+declared upon a certificate of the principal attending physician of the
+state, namely, Mr. Warren Hastings himself. This was declared in an
+affidavit made by him, wherein he has gone through all the powers of
+government, of which he had regularly despoiled the Nabob Mobarek ul
+Dowlah, part by part, exactly according to the ancient formula by which
+a degraded knight was despoiled of his knighthood: they took, I say,
+from him all the powers of government, article by article,--his helmet,
+his shield, his cuirass; at last they hacked off his spurs, and left him
+nothing. Mr. Hastings laid down all the premises, and left the judges to
+draw the conclusion.
+
+Your Lordships will remark (for you will find it on your minutes) that
+the judges have declared this affidavit of Mr. Hastings to be a
+_delicate_ affidavit. We have heard of affidavits that were true; we
+have heard of affidavits that were perjured; but this is the first
+instance that has come to our knowledge (and we receive it as a proof of
+Indian refinement) of a delicate affidavit. This affidavit of Mr.
+Hastings we shall show to your Lordships is not entitled to the
+description of a good affidavit, however it might be entitled, in the
+opinion of those judges, to the description of a delicate affidavit,--a
+phrase by which they appear to have meant that he had furnished all the
+proofs of the Nabob's deposition, but had delicately avoided to declare
+him expressly deposed. The judges drew, however, this indelicate
+conclusion; the conclusion they drew was founded upon the premises; it
+was very just and logical; for they declared that he was a mere cipher.
+They commended Mr. Hastings's delicacy, though they did not imitate it;
+but they pronounced sentence of deposition upon the said Nabob, and they
+declared that any letter or paper that was produced from him could not
+be considered as an act of government. So effectually was he removed by
+the judges out of the way, that no minority, no insanity, no physical
+circumstances, not even death itself, could put a man more completely
+out of sight. They declare that they would consider his letters in no
+other light than as the letters of the Company, represented by the
+Governor-General and Council. Thus, then, we find the Nabob legally
+dead.
+
+We find next, that he was politically dead. Mr. Hastings, not satisfied
+with the affidavit he made in court, has thought proper upon record to
+inform the Company and the world of what he considered him to be civilly
+and politically.
+
+
+     _Minute entered by the Governor-General._
+
+     "_The Governor-General._--I object to this motion," (a motion
+     relative to the trial above alluded to,) "because I do not
+     apprehend that the declaration of the judges respecting the Nabob's
+     sovereignty will involve this government in any difficulties with
+     the French or other foreign nations." (Mark, my Lords, these
+     political effects.) "How little the screen of the Nabob's name has
+     hitherto availed will appear in the frequent and inconclusive
+     correspondence which has been maintained with the foreign
+     settlements, the French especially, since the Company have thought
+     proper to stand forth in their real character in the exercise of
+     the dewanny. From that period the government of these provinces has
+     been wholly theirs; nor can all the subtleties and distinctions of
+     political sophistry conceal the possession of power, where the
+     exercise of it is openly practised and universally felt in its
+     operation. In deference to the commands of the Company, we have
+     generally endeavored, in all our correspondence with foreigners, to
+     evade the direct avowal of our possessing the actual rule of the
+     country,--employing the unapplied term government, for the power to
+     which we exacted their submission; but I do not remember any
+     instance, and I hope none will be found, of our having been so
+     disingenuous as to disclaim our own power, or to affirm that the
+     Nabob was the real sovereign of these provinces. In effect, I do
+     not hesitate to say that I look upon this state of indecision to
+     have been productive of all the embarrassments which we have
+     experienced with the foreign settlements. None of them have ever
+     owned any dominion but that of the British government in these
+     provinces. Mr. Chevalier has repeatedly declared, that he will not
+     acknowledge any other, but will look to that only for the support
+     of the privileges possessed by his nation, and shall protest
+     against that alone as responsible for any act of power by which
+     their privileges may be violated or their property disturbed. The
+     Dutch, the Danes, have severally applied to this government, as to
+     the ruling power, for the grant of indulgences and the redress of
+     their grievances. In our replies to all, we have constantly assumed
+     the prerogatives of that character, but eluded the direct avowal of
+     it; under the name of influence we have offered them protection,
+     and we have granted them the indulgences of government under
+     elusive expressions, sometimes applied to our treaties with the
+     Nabobs, sometimes to our own rights as the dewan; sometimes openly
+     declaring the virtual rule which we held of these provinces, we
+     have contended with them for the rights of government, and
+     threatened to repel with force the encroachments on it; we in one
+     or two instances have actually put these threats into execution, by
+     orders directly issued to the officers of government and enforced
+     by detachments from our own military forces; the Nabob was never
+     consulted, nor was the pretence ever made that his orders or
+     concurrence were necessary: in a word, we have always allowed
+     ourselves to be treated as principals, we have treated as
+     principals, but we have contented ourselves with letting our
+     actions insinuate the character which we effectually possessed,
+     without asserting it.
+
+     "For my own part, I have ever considered the reserve which has been
+     enjoined us in this respect as a consequence of the doubts which
+     have long prevailed, and which are still suffered to subsist,
+     respecting the rights of the British government and the Company to
+     the property and dominion of these provinces, not as inferring a
+     doubt with respect to any foreign power. It has, however, been
+     productive of great inconveniences; it has prevented our acting
+     with vigor in our disputes with the Dutch and French. The former
+     refuse to this day the payment of the _bahor peshcush_, although
+     the right is incontestably against them, and we have threatened to
+     enforce it. Both nations refuse to be bound by our decrees, or to
+     submit to our regulations; they refuse to submit to the payment of
+     the duties on the foreign commerce but in their own way, which
+     amounts almost to a total exemption; they refuse to submit to the
+     duty of ten per cent which is levied upon foreign salt, by which,
+     unless a stop can be put to it by a more decisive rule, they will
+     draw the whole of that important trade into their own colonies; and
+     even in the single instance in which they have allowed us to
+     prescribe to them, namely, the embargo on grain, on the
+     apprehension of a dearth, I am generally persuaded that they
+     acquiesced from the secret design of taking advantage of the
+     general suspension, by exporting grain clandestinely under cover of
+     their colors, which they knew would screen them from the rigorous
+     examination of our officers. We are precluded from forming many
+     arrangements of general utility, because of the want of control
+     over the European settlements; and a great part of the defects
+     which subsist in the government and commercial state of the country
+     are ultimately derived from this source. I have not the slightest
+     suspicion that a more open and decided conduct would expose us to
+     worse consequences from the European nations; on the contrary, we
+     have the worst of the argument while we contend with them under
+     false colors, while they know us under the disguise, and we have
+     not the confidence to disown it. What we have done and may do under
+     an assumed character is full as likely to involve us in a war with
+     France, a nation not much influenced by logical weapons, (if such
+     can be supposed to be the likely consequence of our own trifling
+     disagreements with them,) as if we stood forth their avowed
+     opponents. To conclude, instead of regretting, with Mr. Francis,
+     the occasion which deprives us of so useless and hurtful a
+     disguise, I should rather rejoice, were it really the case, and
+     consider it as a crisis which freed the constitution of our
+     government from one of its greatest defects."
+
+Now, my Lords, the delicacy of the affidavit is no more; the great
+arcanum of the state is avowed: it is avowed that the government is
+ours,--that the Nabob is nothing. It is avowed to foreign nations; and
+the disguise which we have put on, Mr. Hastings states, in his opinion,
+to be hurtful to the affairs of the Company. Here we perceive the exact
+and the perfect agreement between his character as a delicate
+affidavit-maker in a court of justice and his indelicate declarations
+upon the records of the Company for the information of the whole world
+concerning the real arcanum of the Bengal government.
+
+Now I cannot help praising his consistency upon this occasion, whether
+his policy was right or wrong. Hitherto we find the whole consistent, we
+find the affidavit perfectly supported. The inferences which delicacy at
+first prevented him from producing better recollection and more perfect
+policy made him here avow. In this state things continued. The Nabob,
+your Lordships see, is dead,--dead in law, dead in politics, dead in a
+court of justice, dead upon the records of the Company. Except in mere
+animal existence, it is all over with him.
+
+I have now to state to your Lordships, that Mr. Hastings, who has the
+power of putting even to death in this way, possesses likewise the art
+of restoring to life. But what is the medicine that revives them? Your
+Lordships, I am sure, will be glad to know what nostrum, not hitherto
+pretended to by quacks in physic, by quacks in politics, nor by quacks
+in law, will serve to revive this man, to cover his dead bones with
+flesh, and to give him life, activity, and vigor. My Lords, I am about
+to tell you an instance of a recipe of such infallible efficacy as was
+never before discovered. His cure for all disorders is disobedience to
+the commands of his lawful superiors. When the orders of the Court of
+Directors are contrary to his own opinions, he forgets them all. Let the
+Court of Directors but declare in favor of his own system and his own
+positions, and that very moment, merely for the purpose of declaring his
+right of rebellion against the laws of his country, he counteracts them.
+Then these dead bones arise,--or, to use a language more suitable to
+the dignity of the thing, Bayes's men are all revived. "Are these men
+dead?" asks Mr. Bayes's friend. "No," says he, "they shall all get up
+and dance immediately." But in this ludicrous view of Mr. Hastings's
+conduct, your Lordships must not lose sight of its great importance. You
+cannot have in an abstract, as it were, any one thing that better
+develops the principles of the man, that more fully develops all the
+sources of his conduct, and of all the frauds and iniquities which he
+has committed, in order at one and the same time to evade his duty to
+the Court of Directors, that is to say, to the laws of his country, and
+to oppress, crush, rob, and ill-treat the people that are under him.
+
+My Lords, you have had an account of the person who represented the
+Nabob's dignity, Mahomed Reza Khân; you have heard of the rank he bore,
+the sufferings that he went through, his trial and honorable acquittal,
+and the Company's order that the first opportunity should be taken to
+appoint him Naib Subah, or deputy of the Nabob, and more especially to
+represent him in the administering of justice. Your Lordships are also
+acquainted with what was done in consequence of those orders by the
+Council-General, in the restoration and reëstablishment of the executive
+power in this person,--not in the poor Nabob, a poor, helpless,
+ill-bred, ill-educated boy, but in the first Mussulman of the country,
+who had before exercised the office of Naib Subah, or deputy
+viceroy,--in order to give some degree of support to the expiring honor
+and justice of that country. The majority, namely, General Clavering,
+Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, whose names, as I have before said,
+will, for obedience to the Company, fidelity to the laws, honor to
+themselves, and a purity untouched and unimpeached, stand distinguished
+and honored, in spite of all the corrupt and barking virulence of India
+against them,--these men, I say, obeyed the Company: they had no secret
+or fraudulent connection with Mahomed Reza Khân; but they reinstated him
+in his office.
+
+The moment that real death had carried away two of the most virtuous of
+this community, and that Mr. Hastings was thereby reëstablished in his
+power, he returned to his former state of rebellion to the Company, and
+of fraud and oppression upon the people. And here we come to the
+revivificating medicine. I forgot to tell your Lordships, that this
+Nabob, whose letters were declared by a court of law, with his own
+approbation, to be in effect letters of the Governor-General and
+Council, concludes a formal application transmitted to them, and dated
+17th November, 1777, with a demand of the restoration of his rights. Mr.
+Hastings upon this enters the following minute:--
+
+     "The Nabob's demands are grounded upon positive rights, which will
+     not admit of a discussion; he has an incontestable right to the
+     management of his own household; he has an incontestable right to
+     the nizamut."
+
+My Lords, you have heard his affidavit, you have heard his avowed and
+recorded opinion. In direct defiance of both, because he wishes to make
+doubtful the orders of the Company and to evade his duty, he here makes
+without any delicacy a declaration, which if it be true, the affidavit
+is a gross perjury, let it be managed with what delicacy he pleases. The
+word _nizamut_, which he uses, may be unfamiliar to your Lordships. In
+India it signifies the whole executive government, though the word
+strictly means viceroyalty: all the princes of that country holding
+their dominions as representatives of the Mogul, the great nominal
+sovereign of the empire. To convince you that it does so, take his own
+explanation of it.
+
+     "It is his by inheritance: the adawlut and the foujdarry having
+     been repeatedly declared by the Company and by this government to
+     appertain to the nizamut. The adawlut, namely, the distribution of
+     civil justice, and the foujdarry, namely, the executive criminal
+     justice of that country, that is to say, the whole sovereign
+     government of the courts of justice, have been declared by the
+     Company to appertain to the nizamut."
+
+I beg of your Lordships to recollect, when you take into your
+consideration the charges of the House of Commons, that the person they
+accuse, and persons suborned by him, have never scrupled to be guilty,
+without sense of shame, of the most notorious falsehoods, the most
+glaring inconsistencies, and even of perjury itself; and that it is thus
+they make the power of the Company dead or alive, as best suits their
+own wicked, clandestine, and fraudulent purposes, and the great end of
+all their actions and all their politics plunder and peculation.
+
+I must here refer your Lordships to a minute of Mr. Francis's, which I
+recommend to your reading at large, and to your very serious
+recollection, in page 1086; because it contains a complete history of
+Mr. Hastings's conduct, and of its effects upon this occasion.
+
+And now to proceed.--The Nabob, in a subsequent application to the
+Company's government at Calcutta, desires that Munny Begum may be
+allowed to take on herself the whole administration of the affairs of
+the nizamut, (not the superiority in the administration of the affairs
+of the seraglio only, though this would have been a tyrannical
+usurpation of the power belonging to the legitimate mother of the
+Nabob,) without the interference of any person whatever; and he adds,
+that by this the Governor will give him complete satisfaction. In all
+fraudulent correspondence you are sure to find the true secret of it at
+last. It has been said by somebody, that the true sense of a letter is
+to be learnt from its postscript. But this matter is so clumsily
+managed, that, in contempt of all decency, the first thing the Nabob
+does is to desire he may be put into the hands of Munny Begum, and that
+without the interference of anybody whatever.
+
+The next letter, immediately following on the heels of the former, was
+received by the Council on the 12th of February, 1778. In this letter he
+desires that Mahomed Reza Khân may be removed from his office in the
+government; and he expresses his hopes, that, as he himself is now come
+to years of maturity, and by the blessing of God is not so devoid of
+understanding as to be incapable of conducting his affairs, he says, "I
+am therefore hopeful, from your favor and regard to justice, that you
+will deliver me from the authority of the aforesaid Mahomed Reza Khân,
+and give your permission that I take on myself the management of the
+adawlut and foujdarry." There is no doubt of this latter application, in
+contradiction to the former, having arisen from a suspicion that the
+appointment of Munny Begum would be too gross, and would shock the
+Council; and Mr. Hastings therefore orders the second letter to be
+written from the Nabob, in which he claims the powers of government for
+himself. Then follows a letter from the Governor-General, informing the
+Nabob that it had been agreed, that, his Excellency being now arrived at
+years of maturity, the control of his own household, and the courts
+dependent on the nizamut and foujdarry, should be placed in his hands;
+and Mahomed Reza Khân was directed at the same time to resign his
+authority to the Nabob.
+
+Here your Lordships see Munny Begum in effect completely invested with,
+and you will see how she has used her power: for I suppose your
+Lordships are sick of the name of Nabob, as a real actor in the
+government. You now see the true parties in the transaction,--namely,
+the lover, Warren Hastings, Esquire, and Munny Begum, the object of his
+passion and flame, to which he sacrifices as much as Antony ever did to
+Cleopatra. You see the object of his love and affection placed in the
+administration of the viceroyalty; you see placed at her disposal the
+administration of the civil judicature, and of the executory
+justice,--together with the salary which was intended for Mahomed Reza
+Khân.
+
+Your Lordships will be pleased to remember that this distribution of the
+Nabob's government was made in direct defiance of the orders of the
+Company. And as a further proof of this defiance, it will not escape
+your Lordships, that, before this measure was carried into execution,
+Mr. Barwell being one day absent from the Council, Mr. Hastings fell
+into a minority; and it was agreed, upon that occasion, that the whole
+affair should be referred home to the Court of Directors, and that no
+arrangement should be made till the Directors had given their opinion.
+Mr. Hastings, the very moment after Mr. Barwell's return to his seat in
+the Council, rescinds this resolution, which subjected the orders of the
+Court of Directors to their own reconsideration; and he hurries headlong
+and precipitately into the execution of his first determination. Your
+Lordships will also see in this act what sort of use Mr. Hastings made
+of the Council; and I have therefore insisted upon all these practices
+of the prisoner at your bar, because there is not one of them in which
+some principle of government is not wounded, if not mortally wounded.
+
+My Lords, we have laid before you the consequences of this proceeding.
+We have shown what passed within the walls of the seraglio, and what
+tyranny was exercised by this woman over the multitude of women there. I
+shall now show your Lordships in what manner she made use of her power
+over the _supreme judicature_, to peculate, and to destroy the country;
+and I shall adduce, as proofs of this abuse of her authority, the facts
+I am about to relate, and of which there is evidence before your
+Lordships.
+
+There was an ostensible man, named Sudder ul Huk Khân, placed there at
+the head of the administration of justice, with a salary of seven
+thousand pounds a year of the Company's money. This man, in a letter to
+the Governor-General and Council, received the 1st of September, 1778,
+says,--"His Highness himself [the Nabob] is not deficient in regard for
+me, but certain bad men have gained an ascendency over his temper, by
+whose instigation he acts." You will see, my Lords, how this poor man
+was crippled in the execution of his duty, and dishonored by the
+corruption of this woman and her eunuchs, to whom Mr. Hastings had given
+the supreme government, and with it an uncontrolled influence over all
+the dependent parts. After thus complaining of the slights he receives
+from the Nabob, he adds,--"Thus they cause the Nabob to treat me,
+sometimes with indignity, at others with kindness, just as they think
+proper to advise him: their view is, that, by compelling me to
+displeasure at such unworthy treatment, they may force me either to
+relinquish my station, or to join with them and act with their advice,
+and appoint creatures of their recommendation to the different offices,
+from which they might draw profit to themselves." In a subsequent letter
+to the Governor, Sudder ul Huk Khân says,--"The Begum's ministers,
+before my arrival, with the advice of their counsellors, caused the
+Nabob to sign a receipt, in consequence of which they received, at two
+different times, near fifty thousand rupees, in the name of the officers
+of the adawlut, foujdarry, &c., from the Company's sircar; and having
+drawn up an account current in the manner they wished, they got the
+Nabob to sign it, and then sent it to me." In the same letter he asserts
+that these people have the Nabob entirely in their power.
+
+Now I have only to remark to your Lordships, that the first and
+immediate operation of Mr. Hastings's regulation, which put everything
+into the hands of this wicked woman for her corrupt purposes, was, that
+the office of chief-justice was trampled upon and depraved, and made use
+of to plunder the Company of money, which was appropriated to their own
+uses,--and that the person ostensibly holding this office was forced to
+become the instrument in the hands of this wicked woman and her two
+wicked eunuchs. This, then, was the representation which the
+chief-justice made to Mr. Hastings, as one of the very first fruits of
+his new arrangement. I am now to tell you what his next step was. This
+same Mr. Hastings, who had made the Nabob master of everything and
+placed everything at his disposal, who had maintained that the Nabob was
+not to act a secondary part and to be a mere instrument in the hands of
+the Company, who had, as you have seen, revived the Nabob, now puts him
+to death again. He pretends to be shocked at these proceedings of the
+Nabob, and, not being able to prevent their coming before the Council of
+the Directors at home, he immediately took Sudder ul Huk Khân under his
+protection.
+
+Now your Lordships see Mr. Hastings appearing in his own character
+again,--exercising the power he had pretended to abdicate, whilst the
+Nabob sinks and subsides under him. He becomes the supporter of Sudder
+ul Huk Khân, now that the infamy of the treatment he received could no
+longer be concealed from the Council. On the 1st of September, 1778, the
+Governor informs the Nabob, "that it is highly expedient that Sudder ul
+Huk Khân should have full control in all matters relative to his office,
+and the sole appointment and dismission of the sudder and mofussil
+officers; and that his seal and signature should be authentic to all
+papers having relation to the business intrusted to him: I therefore
+intimate to you, that he should appoint and dismiss all the officers
+under him, and that your Excellency should not interfere in any one
+[way?]."
+
+The Nabob, in a letter to the Governor, received the 3d of September,
+1778, says,--"Agreeably to your pleasure, I have relinquished all
+concern with the affairs of the foujdarry and adawlut, leaving the
+entire management in Sudder ul Huk Khân's hands." Here you see the Nabob
+again reduced to his former state of subordination. This
+chief-justiceship, which was declared to be his inherent right, he is
+obliged to submit to the control of Mr. Hastings, and to declare that he
+will not interfere at all in a matter which Mr. Hastings had declared to
+be his incommunicable attribute. I do not say that Mr. Hastings
+interfered improperly. Certainly it was not fit that the highest court
+of justice in all Bengal should be made the instrument of the rapacity
+of a set of villains with a prostitute at their head: just as if a gang
+of thieves in England, with their prostitutes at their head, should
+seize the judge which ought to punish them, and endeavor to make use of
+his name in their iniquitous transactions. But your Lordships will find
+that Mr. Hastings is here acting a merely ostensible part, and that he
+has always a means of defeating privately what he declares publicly to
+be his intention. Your Lordships will see soon how this ended. Mr.
+Hastings gets the Nabob to give up all his authority over the
+chief-justice; but he says not one word of Munny Begum, the person who
+had the real authority in her hands, and who was not forbidden to
+interfere with him. Mr. Hastings's order is dated the 1st September,
+1778. On the 3d of September, the Nabob is said to have relinquished all
+concern with Sudder ul Huk Khân. In a letter received the 30th of
+September, (that is, about twenty-seven days after the date of Mr.
+Hastings's order,) you will see how this pretended order was managed.
+Sudder ul Huk Khân thus writes, in a letter received the 30th of
+September.
+
+     "Yatibar Ali Khân," (Munny Begum's chief eunuch,) "from the amount
+     of salaries of the officers of the adawlut and foujdarry, which
+     before my arrival he had received for two months from the sircar,
+     made disbursements according to his own pleasure. He had before
+     caused the sum of 7,400 rupees, on account of the price of mine and
+     my peshcar's khelauts, to be carried to account, and now
+     continually sends a man to demand from me 4,300 and odd rupees, as
+     a balance of the price of khelauts, and constantly presses me to
+     take it from the amount of the salaries of the officers of the
+     adawlut and foujdarry and send it to him; and I shall be under the
+     necessity of complying. I mention this for your information."
+
+My Lords, you see again how Mr. Hastings's pretended orders were obeyed.
+They were orders addressed to the Nabob, whom he knew to be nothing, and
+who could neither control or take the least share in the execution of
+them; but he leaves the thing loose as to Manny Begum and her eunuchs,
+who he knew could alone carry them into effect. Your Lordships see that
+the first use made of the restored authority of the Nabob was, under
+various pretences, to leave the salaries of the officers of government
+unprovided for, to rob the public treasury, and to give the Company's
+money to the eunuchs, who were acting in the manner I have stated to
+you.
+
+Information of these proceedings reaches Calcutta; a regular complaint
+from a person in the highest situation in the government is made, and
+the Governor-General is obliged again to take up the matter; and I
+shall now read to your Lordships a letter of the 10th of October, 1778,
+which contains a representation so pointed and so very just of the fatal
+effects which his interference in the administration of justice had
+produced as not to stand in need of any comment from me. It speaks too
+plainly to require any.
+
+
+     _The Governor-General's Letter to the Nabob_.
+
+     "At your Excellency's request I sent Sudder ul Huk Khân to take on
+     him the administration of the affairs of the adawlut and foujdarry,
+     and hoped by that means not only to have given satisfaction to your
+     Excellency, but that, through his abilities and experience, these
+     affairs would have been conducted in such manner as to have secured
+     the peace of the country and the happiness of the people; and it is
+     with the greatest concern I learn that this measure is so far from
+     being attended with the expected advantages, that the affairs both
+     of the foujdarry and adawlut are in the greatest confusion
+     imaginable, and daily robberies and murders are perpetrated
+     throughout the country. This is evidently owing to the want of a
+     proper authority in the person appointed to superintend them. I
+     therefore addressed your Excellency on the importance and delicacy
+     of the affairs in question, and of the necessity of lodging full
+     power in the hands of the person chosen to administer them, in
+     reply to which your Excellency expressed sentiments coincident with
+     mine; notwithstanding which, your dependants and people, actuated
+     by selfish and avaricious views, have by their interference so
+     impeded the business as to throw the whole country into a state of
+     confusion, from which nothing can retrieve it but an unlimited
+     power lodged in the hands of the superintendent. I therefore
+     request that your Excellency will give the strictest injunctions to
+     all your dependants not to interfere in any manner with any matter
+     relative to the affairs of the adawlut and foujdarry, and that you
+     will yourself relinquish all interference therein, and leave them
+     entirely to the management of Sudder ul Huk Khân. This is
+     absolutely necessary to restore the country to a state of
+     tranquillity; and if your Excellency has any plan to propose for
+     the management of the affairs in future, be pleased to communicate
+     it to me, and every attention shall be paid to give your Excellency
+     satisfaction."
+
+My Lords, I think I have read enough to you for our present
+purpose,--referring your Lordships for fuller information to your
+Minutes, page 1086, which I beg you to read with the greatest attention.
+
+I must again beg your Lordships to remark, that, though Mr. Hastings has
+the impudence still to pretend that he wishes for the restoration of
+order and justice in the country, yet, instead of writing to Munny Begum
+upon the business, whom he knew to be the very object complained of, and
+whose eunuchs are expressly mentioned in the complaint, he writes to the
+Nabob, whom he knew to be a pageant in his own court and government, and
+whose name was not even mentioned in this last complaint. Not one word
+is said, even in this letter to the Nabob, of Munny Begum or of her
+eunuchs. My Lords, when you consider his tacit support of the authors of
+the grievance, and his ostensible application for redress to the man
+who he knew never authorized and could not redress the grievance, you
+must conclude that he meant to keep the country in the same state for
+his own corrupt purposes. In this state the country in fact continued;
+Munny Begum and her eunuchs continued to administer and squander the
+Company's money, as well as the Nabob's; robberies and murders continued
+to prevail throughout the country. No appearance was left of order, law,
+or justice, from one end of Bengal to the other.
+
+The account of this state of things was received by the Court of
+Directors with horror and indignation. On the 27th of May, 1779, they
+write, as you will find in page 1063 of your printed Minutes, a letter
+to their government at Calcutta, condemning their proceedings and the
+removal of Mahomed Reza Khân, and they order that Munny Begum shall be
+displaced, and Mahomed Reza Khân restored again to the seat of justice.
+
+Mr. Francis, upon the arrival of these reiterated orders, moved in
+Council for an obedience to them. Mr. Hastings, notwithstanding he had
+before his eyes all the horrible consequences that attended his new
+arrangement, still resists that proposition. By his casting voice in the
+Council he counter-orders the orders of the Court of Directors, and
+sanctions a direct disobedience to their authority, by a resolution that
+Mahomed Reza Khân should not be restored to his employment, but that
+this Sudder ul Huk Khân, who still continued in the condition already
+described, should remain in the possession of his office. I say nothing
+of Sudder ul Huk Khân; he seems to be very well disposed to do his duty,
+if Mr. Hastings's arrangements had suffered him to do it; and indeed,
+if Mahomed Reza Khân had been reinstated, and no better supported by Mr.
+Hastings than Sudder ul Huk Khân, he could probably have kept the
+country in no better order, though, perhaps, his name, and the authority
+and weight which still adhered to him in some degree, might have had
+some influence.
+
+My Lords, you have seen his defiance of the Company; you have seen his
+defiance of all decency; you see his open protection of prostitutes and
+robbers of every kind ravaging Bengal; you have seen this defiance of
+the authority of the Court of Directors flatly, directly, and
+peremptorily persisted in to the last. Order after order was reiterated,
+but his disobedience arose with an elastic spring in proportion to the
+pressure that was upon it.
+
+My Lords, here there was a pause. The Directors had been disobeyed; and
+you might suppose that he would have been satisfied with this act of
+disobedience. My Lords, he was resolved to let the native governments of
+the country know that he despised the orders of the Court of Directors,
+and that, whenever he pretended to obey them, in reality he was resolved
+upon the most actual disobedience. An event now happened, the
+particulars of which we are not to repeat here. Disputes, conducted, on
+Mr. Francis's side, upon no other principle, that we can discover, but a
+desire to obey the Company's orders, and to execute his duty with
+fidelity and disinterestedness, had arisen between him and Mr. Hastings.
+Mr. Francis, about the time we have been speaking of, finding resistance
+was vain, reconciles himself to him,--but on the most honorable terms as
+a public man, namely, that he should continue to follow and obey the
+laws, and to respect the authority of the Court of Directors. Upon this
+reconciliation, it was agreed that Mahomed Reza Khân should be restored
+to his office. For this purpose Mr. Hastings enters a minute, and writes
+to the Nabob an ostensible letter. But your Lordships will here see an
+instance of what I said respecting a double current in all Mr.
+Hastings's proceedings. Even when he obeys or pretends to obey the
+Company's orders, there is always a private channel through which he
+defeats them all.
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Hastings to the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah, written
+     the 10th of February, 1780._
+
+     "The Company, whose orders are peremptory, have directed that
+     Mahomed Reza Khân shall be restored to the offices he held in
+     January, 1778. It is my duty to represent this to your Excellency,
+     and to recommend your compliance with their request, that Mahomed
+     Reza Khân may be invested with the offices assigned to him under
+     the nizamut by the Company."
+
+Your Lordships see here that Mr. Hastings informs the Nabob, that,
+having received peremptory orders from the Company, he restores and
+replaces Mahomed Reza Khân. Mahomed Reza Khân, then, is in
+possession,--and in possession by the best of all titles, the orders of
+the Company. But you will also see the manner in which he evades his
+duty, and vilifies in the eyes of these miserable country powers the
+authority of the Directors. He is prepared, as usual, with a defeasance
+of his own act; and the manner in which that defeasance came to our
+knowledge is this. We knew nothing of this private affair, till Mr.
+Hastings, in his answer before the House of Commons, finding it
+necessary to destroy the validity of some of his own acts, brought
+forward Sir John D'Oyly. He was brought forward before us, not as a
+witness in his own person for the defence of Mr. Hastings, but as a
+narrator who had been employed by Mr. Hastings as a member of that
+Council which, as you have heard, drew up his defence. My Lords, you
+have already seen the public agency of this business, you have heard
+read the public letter sent to the Nabob: there you see the ostensible
+part of the transaction. Now hear the banian, Sir John D'Oyly, give an
+account of his part in it, extracted from Mr. Hastings's defence before
+the House of Commons.
+
+     "I was appointed Resident [at the Court of the Nabob] on the
+     resignation of Mr. Byam Martin, in the month of January, 1780, and
+     took charge about the beginning of February of the same year. The
+     substance of the instructions I received was, to endeavor, by every
+     means in my power, to conciliate the good opinion and regard of the
+     Nabob and his family, that I might be able to persuade him to adopt
+     effectual measures for the better regulation of his expenses, which
+     were understood to have greatly exceeded his income; that I might
+     prevent his forming improper connections, or taking any steps
+     derogatory to his rank, and by every means in my power support his
+     credit and dignify in the eyes of the world; and with respect to
+     the various branches of his family, I was instructed to endeavor to
+     put a stop to the dissensions which had too frequently prevailed
+     amongst them. The Nabob, on his part, was recommended to pay the
+     same attention to my advice as he would have done to that of the
+     Governor-General in person. Some time, I think, in the month of
+     February of the same year, I received a letter from Mr. Hastings,
+     purporting that the critical situation of affairs requiring the
+     union and utmost exertion of every member of the government to give
+     vigor to the acts necessary for its relief, he had agreed to an
+     accommodation with Mr. Francis; but to effect this point he had
+     been under the necessity of making some painful sacrifices, and
+     particularly that of the restoration of Mahomed Reza Khân to the
+     office of Naib Subah, a measure which he knew must be highly
+     disagreeable to the Nabob, and which nothing but the urgent
+     necessity of the case should have led him to acquiesce in; that he
+     relied on me to state all these circumstances in the most forcible
+     manner to the Nabob, and to urge his compliance, assuring him that
+     it should not continue longer than until the next advices were
+     received from the Court of Directors."
+
+Here Mr. Hastings himself lets us into the secrets of his government. He
+writes an ostensible letter to the Nabob, declaring that what he does is
+in conformity to the orders of the Company. He writes a private letter,
+in which he directs his agent to assure the Nabob that what he had done
+was not in compliance with the orders of the Company, but in consequence
+of the arrangement he had made with Mr. Francis, which arrangement he
+thought necessary for the support of his own personal power. His design,
+in thus explaining the transaction to the Nabob, was in order to
+prevent the native powers from looking to any other authority than his,
+and from having the least hopes of redress of their complaints from the
+justice of this country or from any legal power in it. He therefore
+tells him that Mahomed Reza Khân was replaced, not in obedience to the
+orders of the Company, but to gratify Mr. Francis. If he quarrels with
+Mr. Francis, he makes that a reason for disobeying the orders of his
+masters; if he agrees with him, he informs the people concerned in the
+transaction, privately, that he acts, not in consequence of the orders
+that he has received, but from other motives. But that is not all. He
+promises that he will take the first opportunity to remove Mahomed Reza
+Khân from his office again. Thus the country is to be re-plunged into
+the same distracted and ruined state in which it was before. And all
+this is laid open fully and distinctly before you. You have it on the
+authority of Sir John D'Oyly. Sir John D'Oyly is a person in the secret;
+and one man who is in the secret is worth a thousand ostensible persons.
+
+Mahomed Reza Khân, I must now tell you, was accordingly reinstated in
+all his offices, and the Nabob was reduced to the situation, as Mr.
+Hastings upon another occasion describes it, of a mere cipher. But mark
+what followed,--mark what this Sir John D'Oyly is made to tell you, or
+what Mr. Hastings tells you for him: for whether Sir John D'Oyly has
+written this for Mr. Hastings, or Mr. Hastings for Sir John D'Oyly, I do
+not know; because they seem, as somebody said of two great friends, that
+they had but one will, one bed, and one hat between them. These
+gentlemen who compose Mr. Hastings's Council have but one style of
+writing among them; so that it is impossible for you to determine by
+which of the masters of this Roman school any paper was
+written,--whether by D'Oyly, by Shore, or by Hastings, or any other of
+them. They have a style in common, a kind of bank upon which they have a
+general credit; and you cannot tell to whose account anything is to be
+placed.
+
+But to proceed.--Sir John D'Oyly says there, that the Nabob is reduced
+again to a cipher. Now hear what he afterwards says. "About the month of
+June, 1781, Mr. Hastings, being then at Moorshedabad, communicated to me
+his intention of performing his promise to the Nabob, by restoring him
+to the management of his own affairs,"--that is to say, by restoring
+Munny Begum again, and by turning out Mahomed Reza Khân. Your Lordships
+see that he communicated privately his intentions to Sir John D'Oyly,
+without communicating one word of them to his colleagues in the Supreme
+Council, and without entering any minute in the records of the Council,
+by which it could be known to the Directors.
+
+Lastly, in order to show you in what manner the Nabob was to be restored
+to his power, I refer your Lordships to the order he gave to Sir John
+D'Oyly for investigating the Nabob's accounts, and for drawing up
+articles of instructions for the Nabob's conduct in the management of
+his affairs. You will there see clearly how he was restored: that is to
+say, that he was taken out of the hands of the first Mussulman in that
+country, the man most capable of administering justice, and whom the
+Company had expressly ordered to be invested with that authority, and to
+put him into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly. Is Sir John D'Oyly a
+Mussulman? Is Sir John D'Oyly fit to be at the head of such a
+government? What was there that any person could see about him, that
+entitled him to or made him a fit person to be intrusted with this
+power, in defiance of the Company's orders? And yet Mahomed Reza Khân,
+who was to have the management of the Nabob's affairs, was himself put
+under the most complete and perfect subjection to this Sir John D'Oyly.
+But, in fact, Munny Begum had the real influence in everything. Sir John
+D'Oyly himself was only Mr. Hastings's instrument there to preserve it,
+and between them they pillaged the Nabob in the most shocking manner,
+and must have done so to the knowledge of Mr. Hastings. A letter written
+at this time by Mr. Hastings to the Nabob discovers the secret beyond
+all power of evasion.
+
+
+     _Instructions from the Governor-General to the Nabob Mobarek ul
+     Dowlah, respecting his Conduct in the Management of his Affairs._
+
+     "9th. These I make the conditions of the compliance which the
+     Governor-General and Council have yielded to your late requisition.
+     It is but just that you should possess what is your acknowledged
+     right; but their intention would be defeated, and you would be in a
+     worse situation, if you were to be left a prey, without a guide,
+     until you have acquired experience, (which, to the strength and
+     goodness of your understanding, will be the work but of a short
+     period,) to the rapacity, frauds, and artifices of mankind. You
+     have offered to give up the sum of four lacs of rupees to be
+     allowed the free use of the remainder of your stipend. This we have
+     refused, because it would be contrary to justice. You should
+     consider this as a proof of the sincerity of the above
+     arrangements which have been recommended to you, and of their
+     expediency to your real interests; and your attention to them will
+     be a means of reconciling the Company to the resolution which we
+     have taken, and which will be reported to them in a light very
+     hurtful both to you and to us, if an improper effect should attend
+     it. These I have ordered Sir John D'Oyly to read in your presence,
+     and to explain them to you, that no part of them may escape your
+     notice; and he has my positive orders to remonstrate to you against
+     every departure from them. Upon all these occasions, I hope and
+     expect that you will give him a particular and cordial attention,
+     and regard what he shall say as if said by myself; for I know him
+     to be a person of the strictest honor and integrity. I have a
+     perfect reliance on him; and you cannot have a more attached or
+     more disinterested counsellor. Although I desire to receive your
+     letters frequently, yet, as many matters will occur which cannot so
+     easily be explained by letter as by conversation, I desire that you
+     will on such occasions give your orders to him respecting such
+     points as you may desire to have imparted to me; and I, postponing
+     every other concern, will give you an immediate and the most
+     satisfactory reply concerning them."
+
+My Lords, here is a man who is to administer his own affairs, who has
+arrived at sufficient age to supersede the counsel and advice of the
+great Mahometan doctors and the great nobility of the country, and he is
+put under the most absolute guardianship of Sir John D'Oyly. But Mr.
+Hastings has given Sir John D'Oyly a great character. I cannot confirm
+it, because I can confirm the character of none of Mr. Hastings's
+instruments. They must stand forth here, and defend their own character
+before you.
+
+Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to another circumstance in
+this transaction. You see here 40,000_l._ a year offered by this man for
+his redemption. "I will give you," he says, "40,000_l._ a year to have
+the management of my own affairs." Good heavens! Here is a man, who,
+according to Mr. Hastings's assertion, had an indisputable right to the
+management of his own affairs, but at the same time was notoriously so
+little fit to have the management of them as to be always under some
+corrupt tyranny or other, offers 40,000_l._ a year out of his own
+revenues to be left his own master, and to be permitted to have the
+disposal of the remainder. Judge you of the bribery, rapine, and
+peculation which here stare you in the face. Judge of the nature and
+character of that government for the management of which 40,000_l._, out
+of 160,000_l._ a year of its revenue, is offered by a subordinate to the
+supreme authority of the country. This offer shows that at this time the
+Nabob had it not himself. Who had it? Sir John D'Oyly; he is brought
+forward as the person to whom is given the management of the whole.
+Munny Begum had the management before. But, whether it be an Englishman,
+a Mussulman, a white man or a black man, a white woman or a black woman,
+it is all Warren Hastings.
+
+With respect to the four lacs of rupees, he gets Sir John D'Oyly, in the
+narrative that he makes before the House of Commons, positively to deny
+in the strongest manner, and he says the Nabob would give oath of it,
+that the Nabob never gave a commission to any one to make such an
+offer. That such an offer was made had been long published and long in
+print, with the remarks such as I have made upon it in the Ninth Report
+of the Select Committee; that the Committee had so done was well known
+to Mr. Hastings and Sir John D'Oyly; not one word on the part of Mr.
+Hastings, not one word on the part of Sir John D'Oyly was said to
+contradict it, until the appearance of the latter before the House of
+Commons. But, my Lords, there is something much more serious in this
+transaction. It is this,--that the evidence produced by Mr. Hastings is
+the evidence of witnesses who are mere phantoms; they are persons who
+could not, under Mr. Hastings's government, eat a bit of bread but upon
+his own terms, and they are brought forward to give such evidence as may
+answer his purposes.
+
+You would naturally have imagined, that, in the House of Commons, where
+clouds of witnesses had been before produced by the friends and agents
+of Mr. Hastings, he would then have brought forward Sir John to
+contradict this reported offer; but not a word from Sir John D'Oyly. At
+last he is examined before the Committee of Managers. He refuses to
+answer. Why? Because his answers might criminate himself. My Lords,
+every answer that most of them have been required to make they are
+sensible they cannot make without danger of criminating themselves,
+being all involved in the crimes of the prisoner. He has corrupted and
+ruined the whole service; there is not one of them that dares appear and
+give a fair and full answer in any case, as you have seen in Mr.
+Middleton, and many others at your bar. "I will not answer this
+question," they say, "because it tends to criminate myself." How comes
+it that the Company's servants are not able to give evidence in the
+affairs of Mr. Hastings, without its tending to criminate themselves?
+
+Well,--Sir John D'Oyly is in England,--why is he not called now? I have
+not the honor of being intimately acquainted with him, but he is a man
+of a reputable and honorable family. Why is he not called by Mr.
+Hastings to verify the assertion, and why do they suffer this black
+record to stand before your Lordships to be urged by us, and to press it
+as we do against him? If he knows that Sir John D'Oyly can acquit him of
+this part of our accusation, he would certainly bring him as a witness
+to your bar; but he knows he cannot. When, therefore, I see upon your
+records that Sir John D'Oyly and Mr. Hastings received such an offer for
+the redemption of the Nabob's affairs out of their hands, I conclude,
+first, that at the time of this offer the Nabob had not the disposal of
+his own affairs,--and, secondly, that those who had the disposal of them
+disposed of them so corruptly and prodigally that he thought they could
+hardly be redeemed at too high a price. What explanation of this matter
+has been attempted? There is no explanation given of it at all. It
+stands clear, full, bare in all its nakedness before you. They have not
+attempted to produce the least evidence against it. Therefore in that
+state I leave it with you; and I shall only add, that Mr. Hastings
+continued to make Munny Begum the first object of his attention, and
+that, though he could not entirely remove Mahomed Reza Khân from the
+seat of justice, he was made a cipher in it. All his other offices were
+taken out of his hands and put into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly,
+directly contrary to the orders of the Company, which certainly implied
+the restitution of Mahomed Reza Khân to all the offices which he had
+before held. He was stripped of everything but a feeble administration
+of justice, which, I take for granted, could not, under the
+circumstances, have been much better in his hands than it had been in
+Sudder ul Huk Khân's.
+
+Mr. Hastings's protection of this woman continued to the last; and when
+he was going away, on the 3d of November, 1783, he wrote a sentimental
+letter to the Court of Directors in her praise. This letter was
+transmitted without having been communicated to the Council. You have
+heard of delicate affidavits; here you have a sentimental official
+despatch: your Lordships will find it in page 1092 and 1093 of your
+printed Minutes. He writes in such a delicate, sentimental strain of
+this woman, that I will venture to say you will not find in all the
+"Arcadia," in all the novels and romances that ever were published, an
+instance of a greater, a more constant, and more ardent affection,
+defying time, ugliness, and old age, did ever exist, than existed in Mr.
+Hastings towards this old woman, Munny Begum. As cases of this kind,
+cases of gallantry abounding in sentimental expressions, are rare in the
+Company's records, I recommend it as a curiosity to your Lordships'
+reading, as well as a proof of what is the great spring and movement of
+all the prisoner's actions. On this occasion he thus speaks of Munny
+Begum.
+
+     "She, too, became the victim of your policy, and of the resentments
+     which succeeded. Something, too, she owed of the source of her
+     misfortunes to the belief of the personal gratitude which she
+     might entertain for the public attention which I had shown to her.
+     Yet, exposed as she was to a treatment which a ruffian would have
+     shuddered at committing, and which no recollection of past enmities
+     shall compel me to believe, even for a moment, proceeded from any
+     commission of authority, she still maintained the decorum of her
+     character; nor even then, nor before, nor since that period, has
+     the malice of calumny ever dared to breathe on her
+     reputation."--Delicate! sentimental!--"Pardon, honorable Sirs, this
+     freedom of expostulation. I must in honest truth repeat, that your
+     commands laid the first foundation of her misfortunes; to your
+     equity she has now recourse through me for their alleviation, that
+     she may pass the remainder of her life in a state which may at
+     least efface the remembrance of the years of her affliction; and to
+     your humanity she and an unseen multitude of the most helpless of
+     her sex cry for subsistence."
+
+Moving and pathetic!--I wish to recommend every word of this letter to
+your Lordships' consideration, as a model and pattern of perfection.
+Observe his pity for a woman who had suffered such treatment from the
+servants of the Company (a parcel of ruffians!)--treatment that a
+ruffian would be ashamed of! Your Lordships have seen, in the evidence,
+what this ruffianism was. It was neither more nor less than what was
+necessary in order to get at the accounts, which she concealed, as his
+own corrupt transactions. She was told, indeed, that she must privately
+remove to another house whilst her papers were examining. Mr. Hastings
+can never forget this. He cannot believe that anybody dare send such an
+order; and he calls upon you to consider the helplessness of their sex,
+and the affronts offered to women.
+
+For Heaven's sake, my Lords, recollect the manner in which Mr. Hastings
+and his creatures treated the Begums of Oude, and consider that this
+woman was only threatened (for the threat was never attempted to be
+executed) that she must, if she did not deliver up the accounts,
+probably be removed to another house, and leave the accounts behind her.
+This blot can never be effaced; and for this he desires the Court of
+Directors to make her a large allowance to comfort her in her old age.
+In this situation Mr. Hastings leaves her. He leaves in the situation I
+have described the justice of the country. The only concern he has at
+parting is, that this woman may have a large allowance.
+
+But I have yet to tell your Lordships, and it appears upon your printed
+Minutes, that this woman had a way of comforting herself:--for old
+ladies of that description, who have passed their youth in amusements,
+in dancing, and in gallantries, in their old age are apt to take comfort
+in brandy. This lady was a smuggler, and had influence enough to avoid
+payment of the duty on spirits, in which article she is the largest
+dealer in the district,--as, indeed, she is in almost every species of
+trade. Thus your Lordships see that this sentimental lady, whom Mr.
+Hastings recommends to the Directors, had ways of comforting herself.
+She carried on, notwithstanding her dignity, a trade in spirits. Now a
+Mahometan of distinction never carries on any trade at all,--it is an
+unknown thing,--very few Mahometans of any rank carry on any trade at
+all; but that a Mahometan should carry on a trade in spirits is a
+prodigy never heard of before; for a woman of quality, for a woman of
+sentiment, to become a dealer in spirits is, my Lords, a thing reserved
+for the sentimental age of Mr. Hastings; and I will venture to say that
+no man or woman could attempt any such a trade in India, without being
+dishonored, ruined in character, and disgraced by it. But she appears
+not only to have been a dealer in it, but, through the influence which
+Mr. Hastings gave her, to have monopolized the trade in brandy, and to
+have evaded the duties. This, then, is the state in which we leave the
+two sentimental lovers,--the one consoling herself with brandy, the
+other wheedling and whining; and, as Swift describes the progress of an
+intrigue in some respects similar, which he calls "The Progress of
+Love," whereas this is the Progress of Sentiment,
+
+    "They keep at Staines the Old Blue Boar,
+    Are cat and dog, and rogue and whore."
+
+Here they set up the sign of the Old Blue Boar. Munny Begum monopolizes
+the trade in spirits; and hence she and Mr. Hastings commence their
+sentimental correspondence.--And now, having done with this progress of
+love, we return to the progress of justice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have seen how Sudder ul Huk Khân, the chief-justice of Mr. Hastings's
+own nomination, was treated. Now you shall see how justice was left to
+shift for herself under Mahomed Reza Khân. In page 1280 of your
+Lordships' Minutes you will see the progress of all these
+enormities,--of Munny Begum's dealing in spirits, of her engrossing the
+trade, of her evading duties,--and, lastly, the extinction of all order
+in that country, and the funeral of justice itself. Mr. Shore's evidence
+respecting this state of the country will admit of no doubt.
+
+
+     _Mr. Shore's Remarks accompanying the Governor-General's Minutes of
+     the 18th May, 1785._
+
+     "Foujdarry jurisdiction.--Of the foujdarry jurisdiction nothing has
+     yet been said. In this department criminal justice is administered,
+     and it is the only office left to the Nabob. I do not see any
+     particular reason for changing the system itself, and perhaps it
+     would on many accounts be improper; but some regulations are highly
+     necessary. Mahomed Reza is at the head of this department, and is
+     the only person I know in the country qualified for it. If he were
+     left to himself, I have not a doubt but he would conduct it well;
+     but he is so circumscribed by recommendations of particular
+     persons, and by the protection held out to his officers by
+     Europeans, that to my knowledge he has not been able to punish
+     them, even when they have been convicted of the greatest
+     enormities; and he has often on this account been blamed, where his
+     hands were tied up."
+
+My Lords, you now see in this minute of Sir John Shore, now
+Governor-General of Bengal, one of Mr. Hastings's own committee for
+drawing up his defence, the review which he had just then taken of the
+ruins of the government which had been left to him by Mr. Hastings. You
+see here not the little paltry things which might deserve in their
+causes the animadversion of a rough satirist like Doctor Swift, whom I
+have just quoted, but you see things ten thousand times more serious,
+things that deserve the thunderbolt of vindictive justice upon the head
+of the prisoner at your bar. For you see, that, after he had ostensibly
+restored Mahomed Reza Khân, the man who could and would have executed
+his office with fidelity and effect, the man who was fit for and
+disposed to do his duty, there was still neither law, order, nor justice
+in the country. Why? Because of the interposition of Europeans, and men
+who must have been patronized and supported by Europeans. All this
+happened before Mr. Hastings's departure: so that the whole effect of
+the new arrangement of government was known to him before he left
+Calcutta. The same pretended remedy was applied. But in fact he left
+this woman in the full possession of her power. His last thoughts were
+for her; for the justice of the country, for the peace and security of
+the people of Bengal, he took no kind of care; these great interests
+were left to the mercy of the woman and her European associates.
+
+My Lords, I have taken some pains in giving you this history. I have
+shown you his open acts and secret stratagems, in direct rebellion to
+the Court of Directors,--his double government, his false pretences of
+restoring the Nabob's independence, leading in effect to a most servile
+dependence, even to the prohibition of the approach of any one, native
+or European, near him, but through the intervention of Sir John D'Oyly.
+I therefore again repeat it, that Sir John D'Oyly, and the English
+gentlemen who were patronized and countenanced by Mr. Hastings, had
+wrought all that havoc in the country before Mr. Hastings left it.
+
+I have particularly dwelt upon the administration of justice, because I
+consider it as the source of all good, and the maladministration of it
+as the source of all evil in the country. Your Lordships have heard how
+it was totally destroyed by Mr. Hastings through Sir John D'Oyly, who
+was sent there by him for the purpose of forming a clandestine
+government of corruption and peculation. This part of our charge speaks
+for itself, and I shall dismiss it with a single observation,--that not
+the least trace of an account of all these vast sums of money delivered
+into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly for the use of the Nabob appears in
+any part of the Company's records. The undeniable inferences to be drawn
+from this fact are, first, that, wherever we find concealment of money,
+and the ceasing of an account, there has been fraud,--and, secondly,
+that, if we find this concealment accompanied with the devastation of a
+country, and the extinction of justice in it, that devastation of the
+country and that extinction of justice have been the result of that
+fraudulent peculation.
+
+I am sure your Lordships will not think that a charge of the
+annihilation of administrative justice, in which the happiness and
+prosperity of a great body of nobility, of numerous ancient and
+respectable families, and of the inhabitants in general of extensive and
+populous provinces are concerned, can, if it stood single and alone, be
+a matter of trifling moment. And in favor of whom do all these
+sacrifices appear to have been made? In favor of an old prostitute, who,
+if shown to your Lordships here, like Helen to the counsellors of Troy,
+would not, I think, be admitted to have charms that could palliate this
+man's abominable conduct; you would not cry out with them,--
+
+    Οὐ νέμεσις, ...
+    Τοιῇδ' ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἂλγεα πάσχειν.
+
+For I will fairly say that there are some passions that have their
+excuses; but the passion towards this woman was the passion of avarice
+and rapacity only,--a passion, indeed, which lasted to the end of his
+government, and for which he defied the orders of the Court of
+Directors, rebelled against his masters, and finally subverted the
+justice of a great country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, I have done with this business. I come next to the third
+division of the natives, those who form the landed interest of the
+country. A few words only will be necessary upon this part of the
+subject. The fact is, that Mr. Hastings, at one stroke, put up the
+property of all the nobility and gentry, and of all the freeholders, in
+short, the whole landed interest of Bengal, to a public auction, and let
+it to the highest bidder. I will make no observations upon the nature of
+this measure to your Lordships, who represent so large a part of the
+dignity, together with so large a part of the landed interest of this
+kingdom: though I think, that, even under your Lordships' restrictive
+order, I am entitled so to do; because we have examined some witnesses
+upon this point, in the revenue charge. Suffice it to say, that it is in
+evidence before your Lordships that this sale was ordered. Mr. Hastings
+does not deny it. He says, indeed, he did it not with an ill intention.
+My answer is, that it could have been done with no other than a bad
+intention. The owners of the land had no way left to save themselves but
+to become farmers of their own estates; and from the competition which
+naturally took place, (and he himself declared, that the persons,
+whether owners or strangers, to whom he let the lands, had agreed to
+rents which surpassed their abilities to pay,) I need not tell you what
+must have been the consequence, when it got into such rapacious hands,
+and was taken out of the hands of its natural proprietors: that the
+public revenue had sunk and lost by it, and that the country was wasted
+and destroyed. I leave it to your Lordships' own meditation and
+reflection; and I shall not press it one step further than just to
+remind you of what has been so well opened and pressed by my fellow
+Managers. He, Mr. Hastings, confesses that he let the lands to his own
+banians; he took his own domestic servants and put them in the houses of
+the nobility of the country; and this he did in direct violation of an
+express order made by himself, that no banian of a collector (the spirit
+of which order implied ten thousand times more strongly the exclusion of
+any banians of a Governor-General) should have any one of those farms.
+We also find that he made a regulation that no farmers should rent more
+than a lac of rupees; but at the same time we find his banians holding
+several farms to more than that amount. In short, we find that in every
+instance, where, under some plausible pretence or other, the fixed
+regulations are violated, it touches him so closely as to make it
+absolutely impossible not to suppose that he himself had the advantage
+of it.
+
+For, in the first place, you have proof that he does take bribes, and
+that he has corrupt dealings. This is what he admits; but he says that
+he has done it from public-spirited motives. Now there is a rule,
+formed upon a just, solid presumption of law, that, if you find a man
+guilty of one offence contrary to known law, whenever there is a
+suspicious case against him of the same nature, the _onus probandi_ that
+he is not guilty is turned upon him. Therefore, when I find the
+regulations broken,--when I find farms given of more than a lac of
+rupees,--when I find them given to the Governor-General's own banian,
+contrary to the principle of the regulation, contrary, I say, in the
+strongest way to it,--when I find that he accumulates farms beyond the
+regulated number,--when I find all these things done, and besides that
+the banian has great balances of account against him,--then, by the
+presumption of law, I am bound to believe that all this was done, not
+for the servants, but for the master.
+
+It is possible Mr. Hastings might really be in love with Munny Begum; be
+it so,--many great men have played the fool for prostitutes, from Mark
+Antony's days downwards; but no man ever fell in love with his own
+banian. The persons for whom Mr. Hastings was guilty of all this rapine
+and oppression have neither relations nor kindred whom they own, nor
+does any trace of friendship exist among them; they do not live in
+habits of intimacy with any one; they are good fellows and
+bottle-companions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I must now proceed to observe upon another matter which has been stated
+to your Lordships,--namely, that, as soon as he obtained the majority in
+the Council, (that beginning of all evils, that opening of Pandora's
+box,) by the death of General Clavering and Colonel Monson, the first
+thing he did was to appoint a commission, called an _aumeeny_, to go
+through the whole country, to enter every man's house, to examine his
+title-deeds, and to demand his papers of accounts of every kind, for the
+purpose of enabling himself to take advantage of the hopes and fears of
+all the parties concerned, and thus to ravage and destroy all their
+property.
+
+And whom does he place at the head of this commission, to be the manager
+of the whole affair? Gunga Govind Sing, another banian of his, and one
+of his own domestic servants. This we have discovered lately, and not
+without some surprise; for though I knew he kept a rogue in his house,
+yet I did not think that it was a common receptacle of thieves and
+robbers. I did not know till lately that this Gunga Govind Sing was his
+domestic servant; but Mr. Hastings, in a letter to the Court of
+Directors, calls him his faithful domestic servant, and as such calls
+upon the Company to reward him. To this banian all the Company's
+servants are made subject; they are bound to obey all his orders, and
+those of his committee. I hope I need not tell your Lordships what sort
+of stuff this committee was made of, by which Gunga Govind Sing was
+enabled to ravage the whole country.
+
+But, say his counsel, Mr. Hastings thought that the value of the lands
+was thoroughly known; they had been investigated three times over, and
+they were all let by public auction to the highest bidder.--This may or
+may not be a true test of their value; but it is a test which, as it led
+to the almost entire confiscation of the landed interest of Bengal,
+Bahar, and Orissa, three great kingdoms, by a dash of that man's pen,
+into the hands of his banians and creatures, I can never think of it,
+or of its author, without horror.
+
+Some people say, you ought to hate the crime and love the criminal. No,
+that is the language of false morality; you ought to hate the crime and
+the criminal, if the crime is of magnitude. If the crime is a small one,
+then you ought to be angry with the crime and reluctant to punish the
+criminal; but when there are great crimes, then you may hate them
+together. What! am I to love Nero? to fall in love with Heliogabalus? is
+Domitian to be the subject of my affection? No, we hate the crime, and
+we hate the criminal ten times more; and if I use indignant language, if
+I use the language of scorn and horror with respect to the criminal, I
+use the language that becomes me.
+
+But, says one of the counsel, the Company might possess a knowledge of
+the country in general, but they could not know every _bega_, of it,
+(about the third part of an acre of land,) without such a commission.
+That is to say, you could not squeeze everything out of the people,
+without ordering such a villain as Gunga Govind Sing, (I call things, by
+their names,) that most atrocious and wicked instrument of the most
+atrocious and wicked tyranny, to examine every man's papers, to oblige
+every man to produce his titles and accounts upon pain of criminal
+punishment, to be inflicted at the discretion of this commissioner, this
+Gunga Govind Sing. For an account of these acts, and for a description
+of an aumeeny, I refer your Lordships to the evidence in your Minutes,
+from page 1287 to 1301; and I pass on, expressing only my horror and
+detestation at it, and wishing to kindle in your Lordships' minds the
+same horror and detestation of it.
+
+Thus you see that Mr. Hastings was not satisfied with confiscation only.
+He comes just afterwards with a blister upon the sore. He lets loose
+another set of ravagers and inquisitors upon them, under Gunga Govind
+Sing, and these poor people are ravaged by the whole tribe of Calcutta
+banians.
+
+Mr. Hastings has himself defined an aumeen in page 1022, where he states
+that Nundcomar desired him to make his son an aumeen. "The promise which
+he [Nundcomar] says I made him, that he should be constituted aumeen,
+that is, inquisitor-general over the whole country, and that I would
+delegate to him my whole power and influence, is something more than a
+negative falsehood." He justly and naturally reprobates the proposition
+of appointing an inquisitor-general over the whole country; and yet we
+see him afterwards appointing Gunga Govind Sing such an
+inquisitor-general over the whole country, in order that a bega of land
+should not escape him.
+
+Let us see how all this ended, and what it is that leads me directly to
+the presumption of corruption against him in this wicked _aumeeny_
+scheme. Now I will admit the whole scheme to have been well intended, I
+will forgive the letting all the lands of Bengal by public auction, I
+will forgive all he has done with regard to his banians, I shall forgive
+him even this commission itself, if he will show your Lordships that
+there was the smallest use made of it with regard to the settlement of
+the revenues of the Company. If there was not, then there is obviously
+one use only that could be made of it, namely, to put all the people of
+the whole country under obedience to Gunga Govind Sing. What, then, was
+done? Titles and accounts were exacted; the estimate was made, acre by
+acre; but we have not been able to find one word on their records of any
+return that was made to the Company of this investigation, or of any
+settlement or assessment of the country founded upon it, or of any
+regulation that was established upon it. Therefore, as an honest man,
+and as a man who is standing here for the Commons of Great Britain, I
+must not give way to any idle doubts and ridiculous suppositions. I
+cannot, I say, entertain any doubts that the only purpose it was
+designed to answer was to subject the whole landed interest of the
+country to the cruel inquisition of Gunga Govind Sing, and to the cruel
+purposes of Mr. Hastings. Show me another purpose and I will give up the
+argument: for if there are two ways of accounting for the same act, it
+is possible it may be attributed to the better motive; but when we see
+that a bad thing was done under pretence of some good, we must attach a
+bad motive to it, if the pretence be never fulfilled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have now done with the landed interest of Bengal. I have omitted much
+which might have been pressed upon your Lordships, not from any
+indisposition to remark upon the matter more fully, but because it has
+been done already by abler persons; I only wished to make some practical
+inferences, which, perhaps, in the hurry of my brother Managers, might
+possibly have escaped them; I wished to show you that one system of
+known or justly presumed corruption pervades the whole of this business,
+from one end to the other. Having thus disposed of the native landed
+interest, and the native zemindars or landholders of the country, I pass
+to the English government.
+
+My Lords, when we have shown plainly the utter extinction of the native
+Mahometan government, when we have shown the extinction of the native
+landed interest, what hope can there be for that afflicted country but
+in the servants of the Company? When we have shown the corrupt state of
+that service, what hope but from the Court of Directors, what hope but
+in the superintending control of British tribunals? I think as well of
+the body of my countrymen as any man can do. I do not think that any man
+sent out to India is sent with an ill purpose, or goes out with bad
+dispositions. No: I think the young men who go there are fair and
+faithful representatives of the people of the same age,--uncorrupted,
+but corruptible from their age, as we all are. They are sent there
+young. There is but one thing held out to them,--"You are going to make
+your fortune." The Company's service is to be the restoration of decayed
+noble families; it is to be the renovation of old, and the making of new
+ones. Now, when such a set of young men are sent out with these hopes
+and views, and with little education, or a very imperfect one,--when
+these people, from whatever rank of life selected, many from the best,
+most from the middling, very few from the lowest, but, high, middling,
+or low, they are sent out to make two things coincide which the wit of
+man was never able to unite, to make their fortune and form their
+education at once. What is the education of the generality of the world?
+Reading a parcel of books? No. Restraint of discipline, emulation,
+examples of virtues and of justice, form the education of the world. If
+the Company's servants have not that education, and are left to give
+loose to their natural passions, some would be corrupt of course, and
+some would be uncorrupt; but probably the majority of them would be
+inclined to pursue moderate courses between these two. Now I am to show
+you that Mr. Hastings left these servants but this alternative: "Be
+starved, be depressed, be ruined, disappoint the hopes of your families,
+or be my slaves, be ready to be subservient to me in every iniquity I
+shall order you to commit, and to conceal everything I shall wish you to
+conceal." This was the state of the service. Therefore the Commons did
+well and wisely, when they sent us here, not to attack this or that
+servant who may have peculated, but to punish the man who was sent to
+reform abuses, and to make Bengal furnish to the world a brilliant
+example of British justice.
+
+I shall now proceed to state briefly the abuses of the Company's
+government,--to show you what Mr. Hastings was expected to do for their
+reformation, and what he actually did do; I shall then show your
+Lordships the effects of the whole.
+
+I shall begin by reading to your Lordships an extract from the
+Directors' letter to Bengal, of the 10th April, 1773.
+
+     "We wish we could refute the observation, that almost every attempt
+     made by us and our administrations at your Presidency for the
+     reforming of abuses has rather increased them, and added to the
+     miseries of the country we are so anxious to protect and cherish.
+     The truth of this observation appears fully in the late appointment
+     of supervisors and chiefs. Instituted as they were, to give relief
+     to the industrious tenants, to improve and enlarge our investments,
+     to destroy monopolies and retrench expenses, the end has by no
+     means been answerable to the institution. Are not the tenants more
+     than ever oppressed and wretched? Are our investments improved?
+     Have not the raw silk and cocoons been raised upon us fifty per
+     cent in price? We can hardly say what has not been made a monopoly.
+     And as to the expenses of your Presidency, they are at length
+     swelled to a degree we are no longer able to support. These facts
+     (for such they are) should have been stated to us as capital
+     reasons why neither our orders of 1771, nor indeed any regulations
+     whatever, could be carried into execution. But, perhaps, as this
+     would have proved too much, it was not suggested to us; for nothing
+     could more plainly indicate a state of anarchy, and that there was
+     no government existing in our servants in Bengal."
+
+     "And therefore, when oppression pervades the whole country, when
+     youths have been suffered with impunity to exercise sovereign
+     jurisdiction over the natives, and to acquire rapid fortunes by
+     monopolizing of commerce, it cannot be a wonder to us or
+     yourselves, that dadney merchants do not come forward to contract
+     with the Company, that the manufactures find their way through
+     foreign channels, or that our investments are at once enormously
+     dear and of a debased quality.
+
+     "It is evident that the evils which have been so destructive to us
+     lie too deep for any partial plans to reach or correct; it is
+     therefore our resolution to aim at the root of these evils: and we
+     are happy in having reason to believe that in every just and
+     necessary regulation we shall meet with the approbation and support
+     of the legislature, who consider the public as materially
+     interested in the Company's prosperity.
+
+     "In order to effectuate this great end, the first step must be to
+     restore perfect obedience and due subordination to your
+     administration. Our Governor and Council must reassume and exercise
+     their delegated powers upon every just occasion,--punish
+     delinquents, cherish the meritorious, discountenance that luxury
+     and dissipation which, to the reproach of government, prevailed in
+     Bengal. Our President, Mr. Hastings, we trust, will set the example
+     of temperance, economy, and application; and upon this, we are
+     sensible, much will depend. And here we take occasion, to indulge
+     the pleasure we have in acknowledging Mr. Hastings's services upon
+     the coast of Coromandel, in constructing, with equal labor and
+     ability, the plan which has so much improved our investments there;
+     and as we are persuaded he will persevere in the same laudable
+     pursuit through every branch of our affairs in Bengal, he, in
+     return, may depend on the steady support and favor of his
+     employers.
+
+     "Your settlement being thus put into a train of reform, (without
+     which, indeed, all regulations will prove ineffectual,) you are
+     next to revert to the old system, when the business of your
+     Presidency was principally performed by our own servants, who then
+     had knowledge of our investments, and every other department of our
+     concerns: you will therefore fill the several offices with the
+     factors and writers upon your establishment, (for, with our present
+     appointments, we are assured there will be sufficient for this
+     purpose,) and thus you will banish idleness, and its attendants,
+     extravagance and dissipation. And here we enjoin you to transmit to
+     us a faithful and minute state of the pay and every known
+     emolument of all below Council: for, as it is notorious that even
+     youths in our service expend in equipage, servants, dress, and
+     living infinitely more than our stated allowances can afford, we
+     cannot but be anxious to discover the means by which they are
+     enabled to proceed in this manner; and, indeed, so obnoxious is
+     this conduct to us, and so injurious in its consequences, that we
+     expect and require you to show your displeasure to all such as
+     shall transgress in this respect, contrasting it at the same time
+     with instances of kindness towards the sober, frugal, and
+     industrious."
+
+My Lords, you see the state in which the Directors conceived the country
+to be. That it was in this state is not denied by Mr. Hastings, who was
+sent out for the purpose of reforming it. The Directors had swept away
+almost the whole body of their Bengal servants for supposed corruption;
+and they appointed a set of new ones, to regenerate, as it were, the
+government of that country.
+
+Mr. Hastings says, "I was brought to India like other people." This,
+indeed, is true; and I hope it will prove an example and instruction to
+all mankind never to employ a man who has been bred in base and corrupt
+practices, from any hope that his local knowledge may make him the
+fittest person to correct such practices. Mr. Hastings goes on to say,
+that you could not expect more from him than could be done by a man bred
+up, as he was, in the common habits of the country. This is also true.
+My Lords, you might as well expect a man to be fit for a perfumer's
+shop, who has lain a month in a pig's stye, as to expect that a man who
+has been a contractor with the Company for a length of time is a fit
+person for reforming abuses. Mr. Hastings has stated in general his
+history, his merits, and his services. We have looked over with care the
+records relative to his proceedings, and we find that in 1760 and 1761
+he was in possession of a contract for bullocks and a contract for
+provisions. It is no way wrong for any man to take a contract, provided
+he does not do what Mr. Hastings has condemned in his
+regulations,--become a contractor with his masters. But though I do not
+bear upon Mr. Hastings for having spent his time in being a
+bullock-contractor, yet I say that he ought to have laid aside all the
+habits of a bullock-contractor when he was made a great minister for the
+reformation of a great service full of abuses. I will show your
+Lordships that he never did so; that, on the contrary, being bred in
+those bad habits, and having had the education that I speak of, he
+persevered in the habits which had been formed in him to the very last.
+
+I understand it has been imputed as a sort of a crime in me, that I
+stated something of the obscurity of Mr. Hastings's birth. The
+imputation has no foundation. Can it be believed that any man could be
+so absurd as to attack a man's birth, when he is accusing his actions?
+No, I have always spoken of the low, sordid, and mercenary habits in
+which he was bred; I said nothing of his birth. But, my Lords, I was a
+good deal surprised when a friend of his and mine yesterday morning put
+into my hands, who had been attacking Mr. Hastings's life and conduct, a
+pedigree. I was appealing to the records of the Company; they answer by
+sending me to the Herald's Office. Many of your Lordships' pedigrees
+are obscure in comparison with that of Mr. Hastings; and I only wonder
+how he came to derogate from such a line of nobles by becoming a
+contractor for bullocks.
+
+A man may be an honest bullock-contractor, (God forbid that many of them
+in this country should not be very honest!) but I find his terms were
+nearly four times as high as those which the House of Commons had
+condemned as exorbitant. They were not only unusually high, but the
+bullocks were badly supplied, and the contract had not been fairly
+advertised. It was therefore agreed to declare the same void at the
+expiration of twelve months, on the 1st December, 1763. I say again,
+that I do not condemn him for being a bullock-contractor; but I am
+suspicious of his honesty, because he has been nursed in bad and vicious
+habits. That of contracting with his masters is a bad habit, as he
+himself has stated in a record which is printed by the House of Commons.
+I condemn him for being a fraudulent bullock-contractor: for he was
+turned out of that contract for fraudulent practices; it was declared
+void, and given to another at a lower price. After it was so disposed
+of, Mr. Hastings himself, condemning his own original contract, which
+was at twelve rupees for a certain species of bullocks, took the
+contract again at seven; and on these terms it continued. What I
+therefore contend for is this, that he carried with him the spirit of a
+fraudulent bullock-contractor through the whole of the Company's
+service, in its greatest and most important parts.
+
+My Lords, the wading through all these corruptions is an unpleasant
+employment for me; but what am I to think of a man who holds up his
+head so high, that, when a matter of account is in discussion, such as
+appears in this very defence that I have in my hand, he declares he does
+not know anything about it? He cannot keep accounts: that is beneath
+him. We trace him throughout the whole of his career engaged in a great
+variety of mercantile employments; and yet, when he comes before you,
+you would imagine that he had been bred in the study of the sublimest
+sciences, and had no concern in anything else,--that he had been engaged
+in writing a poem, an Iliad, or some work that might revive fallen
+literature. There is but one exception to his abhorrence of accounts: he
+always contrives to make up a good account for himself.
+
+My Lords, we have read to you a letter in which the Court of Directors
+have described the disorders of their service, the utter ruin of it, the
+corruption that prevailed in it, and the destruction of the country by
+it. When we are said to exaggerate, we use no stronger words than they
+do. We cannot mince the matter; your Lordships should not mince it; no
+little paltry delicacies should hinder you, when there is a country
+expiring under all these things, from calling the authors to a strict
+account. The Court of Directors sent him that statement; they
+recommended to him a radical reformation. What does he do? We will read
+his letter of 1773, in which you will find seeds sown for the
+propagation of all those future abuses which terminated in the utter and
+irremediable destruction of the whole service. After he has praised the
+Directors for the trust that they had placed in him, after expressing
+his highest gratitude, and so on, he says,--
+
+     "While I indulge the pleasure which I receive from the past
+     successes of my endeavors, I own I cannot refrain from looking back
+     with a mixture of anxiety on the omissions by which I am sensible I
+     may since have hazarded the diminution of your esteem. All my
+     letters addressed to your Honorable Court, and to the Secret
+     Committee, repeat the strongest promises of prosecuting the
+     inquiries into the conduct of your servants, which you have been
+     pleased to commit particularly to my charge. You will readily
+     perceive that I must have been sincere in those declarations; since
+     it would have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I
+     foreseen my inability to perform them. I find myself now under the
+     disagreeable necessity of avowing that inability; at the same time
+     I will boldly take upon me to affirm, that, on whomsoever you might
+     have delegated that charge, and by whatever powers it might have
+     been accompanied, it would have been sufficient to occupy the
+     entire attention of those who were intrusted with it, and, even
+     with all the aids of leisure and authority, would have proved
+     ineffectual. I dare appeal to the public records, to the testimony
+     of those who have opportunities of knowing me, and even to the
+     detail which the public voice can report of the past acts of this
+     government, that my time has been neither idly nor uselessly
+     employed; yet such are the cares and embarrassments of this various
+     state, that, although much may be done, much more, even in matters
+     of moment, must necessarily remain neglected. To select from the
+     miscellaneous heap which each day's exigencies present to our
+     choice those points on which the general welfare of your affairs
+     most essentially depends, to provide expedients for future
+     advantages, and guard against probable evils, are all that your
+     administration can faithfully promise to perform for your service,
+     with their united labors most diligently exerted. They cannot look
+     back without sacrificing the objects of their immediate duty, which
+     are those of your interest, to endless researches, which can
+     produce no real good, and may expose your affairs to all the
+     ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both here and at
+     home."
+
+My Lords, you see here, that, after admitting that he has promised to
+the Court of Directors to do what they ordered him to do, (and he had
+promised to make a radical reform in their whole service, and to cure
+those abuses which they have stated,) he declares that he will not
+execute them; he pleads a variety of other occupations; but as to that
+great fundamental grievance he was appointed to eradicate, he declares
+he will not even attempt it. "Why did you promise?"--it naturally occurs
+to ask him that question. "Why," says he, "you will readily perceive
+that I must have been sincere in those declarations; since it would
+have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I known my
+inability to perform them." This is a kind of argument that belongs to
+Mr. Hastings exclusively. Most other people would say, "You may judge of
+the sincerity of my promises by my zeal in the performance"; but he
+says, "You may judge of the sincerity of my promises, because I would
+not promise, if I had not thought I should be able to perform." It runs
+in this ridiculous circle: "I promised to obey the Court of Directors;
+therefore I knew that I could obey them: but I could not obey them;
+therefore I was absolved from my promise, and did not attempt to obey
+them." In fact, there is not so much as one grievance or abuse in the
+country, that he reformed. And this was systematical in Mr. Hastings's
+conduct,--that he was resolved to connive at the whole of the iniquities
+of the service, because he was resolved that every one of those existing
+iniquities should be practised by himself. "But," says he, "the
+reformation required can produce no real good, and may expose your
+affairs to all the ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both
+here and at home." This he gives you as a reason why he will not
+prosecute the inquiry into abuses abroad,--because he is afraid that you
+should punish him at home for doing his duty abroad,--that it will
+expose him to malevolence at home; and therefore, to avoid being subject
+to malevolence at home, he would not do his duty abroad.
+
+He follows this with something that is perfectly extraordinary: he
+desires, instead of doing his duty, which he declares it is impossible
+to do, that he may be invested with an arbitrary power. I refer your
+Lordships to pages 2827, 2828, and 2829 of the printed Minutes, where
+you will find the system of his government to be formed upon a
+resolution not to use any one legal means of punishing corruption, or
+for the prevention of corruption; all that he desires is, to have an
+absolute arbitrary power over the servants of the Company. There you
+will see that arbitrary power for corrupt purposes over the servants of
+the Company is the foundation of every part of his whole conduct. Remark
+what he says here, and then judge whether these inferences are to be
+eluded by any chicane.
+
+     "In the charge of oppression, although supported by the cries of
+     the people and the most authentic representations, it is yet
+     impossible, in most cases, to obtain legal proofs of it; and unless
+     the discretionary power which I have recommended be somewhere
+     lodged, the assurance of impunity from any formal inquiry will
+     baffle every order of the board; as, on the other hand, the fear of
+     the consequences will restrain every man within the bounds of his
+     duty, if he knows himself liable to suffer by the effects of a
+     single control."
+
+My Lords, you see two things most material for you to consider in the
+judgment of this great cause, which is the cause of nations. The first
+thing for you to consider is the declaration of the culprit at your bar,
+that a person may be pursued by the cries of a whole people,--that
+documents the most authentic and satisfactory, but deficient in
+technical form, may be produced against him,--in short, that he may be
+guilty of the most enormous crimes,--and yet that legal proofs may be
+wanting. This shows you how seriously you ought to consider, before you
+reject any proof upon the idea that it is not technical legal proof. To
+this assertion of Mr. Hastings I oppose, however, the opinion of a
+gentleman who sits near his side, Mr. Sumner, which is much more
+probable.
+
+Mr. Hastings says, that the power of the Council is not effectual
+against the inferior servants, that [it?] is too weak to coerce them.
+With much more truth Mr. Sumner has said, in his minute, you might
+easily coerce the inferior servants, but that the dread of falling upon
+persons in high stations discourages and puts an end to complaint. I
+quote the recorded authority of the gentleman near him, as being of
+great weight in the affairs of the Company, to prove what is infinitely
+more probable, the falsehood of Mr. Hastings's assertion, that an
+inferior servant cannot be coerced, and that they must riot with
+impunity in the spoils of the people.
+
+But we will go to a much more serious part of the business. After
+desiring arbitrary power in this letter, he desires a perpetuation of
+it. And here he has given you a description of a bad Governor, to which
+I must call your attention, as your Lordships will find it, in every
+part of his proceeding, to be exactly applicable to himself and to his
+own government.
+
+     "The first command of a state so extensive as that of Bengal is not
+     without opportunities of private emoluments; and although the
+     allowance which your bounty has liberally provided for your
+     servants may be reasonably expected to fix the bounds of their
+     desires, yet you will find it extremely difficult to restrain men
+     from profiting by other means, who look upon their appointment as
+     the measure of a day, and who, from the uncertainty of their
+     condition, see no room for any acquisition but of wealth, since
+     reputation and the consequences which follow the successful conduct
+     of great affairs are only to be attained in a course of years.
+     Under such circumstances, however rigid your orders may be, or
+     however supported, I am afraid that in most instances they will
+     produce no other fruits than either avowed disobedience or the
+     worst extreme of falsehood and hypocrisy. These are not the
+     principles which should rule the conduct of men whom you have
+     constituted the guardians of your property, and checks on the
+     morals and fidelity of others. The care of self-preservation will
+     naturally suggest the necessity of seizing the opportunity of
+     present power, when the duration of it is considered as limited to
+     the usual term of three years, and of applying it to the provision
+     of a future independency; therefore every renewal of this term is
+     liable to prove a reiterated oppression. It is perhaps owing to the
+     causes which I have described, and a proof of their existence, that
+     this appointment has been for some years past so eagerly solicited
+     and so easily resigned. There are yet other inconveniences
+     attendant on this habit, and perhaps an investigation of them all
+     would lead to endless discoveries. Every man whom your choice has
+     honored with so distinguished a trust seeks to merit approbation
+     and acquire an _éclat_ by innovations, for which the wild scene
+     before him affords ample and justifiable occasion."
+
+You see, my Lords, he has stated, that, if a Governor is appointed to
+hold his office only for a short time, the consequence would be either
+an avowed disobedience, or, what is worse, extreme falsehood and
+hypocrisy. Your Lordships know that this man has held his office for a
+long time, and yet his disobedience has been avowed, and his hypocrisy
+and his falsehood have been discovered, and have been proved to your
+Lordships in the course of this trial. You see this man has declared
+what are the principles which should rule the conduct of men whom you
+have constituted the guardians of your property, and checks upon the
+morals and fidelity of others. Mr. Hastings tells you himself directly
+what his duty was; he tells you himself, and he pronounces his own
+condemnation, what was expected from him, namely, that he should give a
+great example himself, and be a check and guardian of the fidelity of
+all that are under him. He declares, at the end of this letter, that a
+very short continuance in their service would enable him to make a
+fortune up to the height of his desire. He has since thought proper to
+declare to you that he is a beggar and undone, notwithstanding all his
+irregular resources in that very service.
+
+I have read this letter to your Lordships, that you may contrast it with
+the conduct of the prisoner, as stated by us, and proved by the evidence
+we have adduced. We have stated and proved that Mr. Hastings did enter
+upon a systematic connivance at the peculation of the Company's
+servants, that he refused to institute any check whatever for the
+purpose of preventing corruption, and that he carried into execution no
+one measure of government agreeably to the positive and solemn
+engagements into which he had entered with the Directors. We therefore
+charge him, not only with his own corruptions, but with a systematic,
+premeditated corruption of the whole service, from the time when he was
+appointed, in the beginning of the year 1772, down to the year 1785,
+when he left it. He never attempted to detect any one single abuse
+whatever; he never endeavored once to put a stop to any corruption in
+any man, black or white, in any way whatever. And thus he has acted in a
+government of which he himself declares the nature to be such that it is
+almost impossible so to detect misconduct as to give legal evidence of
+it, though a man should be declared by the cries of the whole people to
+be guilty.
+
+My Lords, he desires an arbitrary power over the Company's servants to
+be given to him. God forbid arbitrary power should be given into the
+hands of any man! At the same time, God forbid, if by power be meant the
+ability to discover, to reach, to check, and to punish subordinate
+corruption, that he should not be enabled so to do, and to get at, to
+prosecute, and punish delinquency by law! But honesty only, and not
+arbitrary power, is necessary for that purpose. We well know, indeed,
+that a government requiring arbitrary power has been the situation in
+which this man has attempted to place us.
+
+We know, also, my Lords, that there are cases in which the act of the
+delinquent may be of consequence, while the example of the criminal,
+from the obscurity of his situation, is of little importance: in other
+cases, the act of the delinquent may be of no great importance, but the
+consequences of the example dreadful. We know that crimes of great
+magnitude, that acts of great tyranny, can but seldom be exercised, and
+only by a few persons. They are privileged crimes. They are the dreadful
+prerogatives of greatness, and of the highest situations only. But when
+a Governor-General descends into the muck and filth of peculation and
+corruption, when he receives bribes and extorts money, he does acts that
+are imitable by everybody. There is not a single man, black or white,
+from the highest to the lowest, that is possessed in the smallest degree
+of momentary authority, that cannot imitate the acts of such a
+Governor-General. Consider, then, what the consequences will be, when it
+is laid down as a principle of the service, that no man is to be called
+to account according to the existing laws, and that you must either
+give, as he says, arbitrary power, or suffer your government to be
+destroyed.
+
+We asked Mr. Anderson, whether the covenant of every farmer of the
+revenue did not forbid him from giving any presents to any persons, or
+taking any. He answered, he did not exactly remember, (for the memory of
+this gentleman is very indifferent, though the matter was in his own
+particular province,) but he thought it did; and he referred us to the
+record of it. I cannot get at the record; and therefore you must take it
+as it stands from Mr. Anderson, without a reference to the record,--that
+the farmers were forbidden to take or give any money to any person
+whatever, beyond their engagements. Now, if a Governor-General comes to
+that farmer, and says, "You must give a certain sum beyond your
+engagements," he lets him loose to prey upon the landholders and
+cultivators; and thus a way is prepared for the final desolation of the
+whole country, by the malversation of the Governor, and by the
+consequent oppressive conduct of the farmers.
+
+Mr. Hastings being now put over the whole country to regulate it, let us
+see what he has done. He says, "Let me have an arbitrary power, and I
+will regulate it." He assumed arbitrary power, and turned in and out
+every servant at his pleasure. But did he by that arbitrary power
+correct any one corruption? Indeed, how could he? He does not say he
+did. For when a man gives ill examples in himself, when he cannot set on
+foot an inquiry that does not terminate in his own corruption, of course
+he cannot institute any inquiry into the corruption of the other
+servants.
+
+But again, my Lords, the subordinate servant will say, "I cannot rise"
+(properly here, as Mr. Hastings has well observed) "to the height of
+greatness, power, distinction, rank, or honor in the government; but I
+can make my fortune, according to my degree, my measure, and my place."
+His views will be then directed so to make it. And when he sees that the
+Governor-General is actuated by no other views,--when he himself, as a
+farmer, is confidently assured of the corruptions of his superior,--when
+he knows it to be laid down as a principle by the Governor-General, that
+no corruption is to be inquired into, and that, if it be not expressly
+laid down, yet that his conduct is such as to make it the same as if he
+had actually so laid it down,--then, I say, every part of the service is
+instantly and totally corrupted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall next refer your Lordships to the article of contracts. Five
+contracts have been laid before you, the extravagant and corrupt profits
+of which have been proved to amount to 500,000_l._ We have shown you, by
+the strongest presumptive evidence, that these contracts were given for
+the purpose of corrupting the Company's servants in India, and of
+corrupting the Company itself in England. You will recollect that
+40,000_l._ was given in one morning for a contract which the contractor
+was never to execute: I speak of Mr. Sulivan's contract. You will also
+recollect that he was the son of the principal person in the Indian
+direction, and who, in or out of office, was known to govern it, and to
+be supported by the whole Indian interest of Mr. Hastings. You have seen
+the corruption of Sir Eyre Coote, in giving to Mr. Croftes the bullock
+contract. You have seen the bullock contracts stated to Mr. Hastings's
+face, and not denied, to have been made for concealing a number of
+corrupt interests. You have seen Mr. Auriol's contract, given to the
+secretary of the Company by Mr. Hastings in order that he might have the
+whole records and registers of the Company under his control. You have
+seen that the contract and commission for the purchase of stores and
+provisions, an enormous job, was given to Mr. Belli, an obscure man, for
+whom Mr. Hastings offers himself as security, under circumstances that
+went to prove that Mr. Belli held this commission for Mr. Hastings.
+These, my Lords, are things that cannot be slurred over. The
+Governor-General is corrupt; he corrupts all about him; he does it upon
+system; he will make no inquiry.
+
+My Lords, I have stated the amount of the sums which he has squandered
+away in these contracts; but you will observe that we have brought
+forward but five of them. Good God! when you consider the magnitude and
+multiplicity of the Company's dealings, judge you what must be the
+enormous mass of that corruption of which he has been the cause, and in
+the profits of which he has partaken. When your Lordships shall have
+considered this document, his defence, which I have read in part to you,
+see whether you are not bound, when he imputes to us and throws upon us
+the cause of all his corruption, to throw back the charge by your
+decision, and hurl it with indignation upon himself.
+
+But there is another shameless and most iniquitous circumstance, which I
+have forgotten to mention, respecting these contracts. He not only
+considered them as means of present power, and therefore protected his
+favorites without the least inquiry into their conduct, and with
+flagrant suspicion of a corrupt participation in their delinquency, but
+he goes still farther: he declares, that, if he should be removed from
+his government, he will give them a lease in these exorbitant profits,
+for the purpose of securing a corrupt party to support and bear him out
+by their evidence, upon the event of any inquiry into his conduct,--to
+give him a _razinama_, to give him a flourishing character, whenever he
+should come upon his trial. Hear what his principles are; hear what the
+man himself avows.
+
+        "_Fort William, October 4, 1779._
+
+     "In answer to Mr. Francis's insinuation, that it is natural enough
+     for the agent to wish to secure himself before the expiration of
+     the present government, I avow the fact as to myself as well as the
+     agent. When I see a systematic opposition to every measure proposed
+     by me for the service of the public, by which an individual may
+     eventually benefit, I cannot hesitate a moment to declare it to be
+     my firm belief, that, should the government of this country be
+     placed in the hands of the present minority, they would seek the
+     ruin of every man connected with me; it is therefore only an act
+     of common justice in me to wish to secure them, as far as I legally
+     can, from the apprehension of future oppression."
+
+Here is the principle avowed. He takes for granted, and he gives it the
+name of oppression, that the person who should succeed him would take
+away those unlawful and wicked emoluments, and give them to some other.
+"But," says he, "I will put out of the Company's power the very means
+of redress."
+
+The document which I am now going to read to your Lordships contains a
+declaration by Mr. Hastings of another mean which he used of corrupting
+the whole Company's service.
+
+
+     _Minute of the Governor-General.--Extract from that Minute._
+
+     "Called upon continually by persons of high rank and station, both
+     in national and in the Company's councils, to protect and prefer
+     their friends in the army, and by the merits and services which
+     have come under my personal knowledge and observation, I suffer
+     both pain and humiliation at the want of power to reward the
+     meritorious, or to show a proper attention to the wishes of my
+     superiors, without having recourse to means which must be
+     considered as incompatible with the dignity of my station. The
+     slender relief which I entreat of the board from this state of
+     mortification is the authority to augment the number of my staff,
+     which will enable me to show a marked and particular attention in
+     circumstances such as above stated, and will be no considerable
+     burden to the Company."
+
+My Lords, you here see what he has been endeavoring to effect, for the
+express purpose of enabling him to secure himself a corrupt influence in
+England. But there is another point much more material, which brings the
+matter directly home to this court, and puts it to you either to punish
+him or to declare yourselves to be accomplices in the corruption of the
+whole service. Hear what the man himself says. I am first to mention to
+your Lordships the occasion upon which the passage which I shall read to
+you was written. It was when he was making his enormous and shameful
+establishment of a Revenue Board, in the year 1781,--of which I shall
+say a few words hereafter, as being a gross abuse in itself: he then
+felt that the world would be so much shocked at the enormous prodigality
+and corrupt profusion of what he was doing, that he at last spoke out
+plainly.
+
+
+     _A Minute of Mr. Hastings, transmitted in a Letter by Mr. Wheler._
+
+     "In this, as it must be the case in every reformation, the interest
+     of individuals has been our principal, if not our only impediment.
+     We could not at once deprive so large a body of our fellow-servants
+     of their bread, without feeling that reluctance which humanity must
+     dictate,--not unaccompanied, perhaps, with some concern for the
+     consequence which our own credit might suffer by an act which
+     involved the fortunes of many, and extended its influence to all
+     their connections. This, added to the justice which was due to your
+     servants, who were removed for no fault of theirs, but for the
+     public convenience, induced us to continue their allowances until
+     other offices could be provided for them, and the more cheerfully
+     to submit to the expediency of leaving others in a temporary or
+     partial charge of the internal collections. In effect, the civil
+     officers [offices?] of this government might be reduced to a very
+     scanty number, were their exigency alone to determine the list of
+     your covenanted servants, which at this time consist of no less a
+     number than two hundred and fifty-two,--many of them the sons of
+     the first families in the kingdom of Great Britain, and every one
+     aspiring to the rapid acquisition of lacs, and to return to pass
+     the prime of their lives at home, as multitudes have done before
+     them. Neither will the revenues of this country suffice for such
+     boundless pretensions, nor are they compatible with yours and the
+     national interests, which may eventually suffer as certain a ruin
+     from the effects of private competition and the claims of patronage
+     as from the more dreaded calamities of war, or the other ordinary
+     causes which lead to the decline of dominion."
+
+My Lords, you have here his declaration, that patronage, which he avows
+to be one of the principles of his government, and to be the principle
+of the last of his acts, is worse than war, pestilence, and famine,--and
+that all these calamities together might not be so effectual as this
+patronage in wasting and destroying the country. And at what time does
+he tell you this? He tells it you when he himself had just wantonly
+destroyed an old regular establishment for the purpose of creating a new
+one, in which he says he was under the necessity of pensioning the
+members of the old establishment from motives of mere humanity. He here
+confesses himself to be the author of the whole mischief. "I could,"
+says he, "have acted better; I might have avoided desolating the country
+by peculation; but," says he, "I had sons of the first families in the
+kingdom of Great Britain, every one aspiring to the rapid acquisition of
+lacs, and this would not suffer me to do my duty." I hope your Lordships
+will stigmatize the falsehood of this assertion. Consider, my Lords,
+what he has said,--two hundred and fifty men at once, and in
+succession, aspiring to come home in the prime of their youth with
+_lacs_. You cannot take _lacs_ to be less than two; we cannot make a
+plural less than two. Two lacs make 20,000_l._ Then multiply that, by
+252, and you will find more than 2,500,000_l._ to be provided for that
+set of gentlemen, and for the claims of patronage. Undoubtedly such a
+patronage is worse than the most dreadful calamities of war, and all the
+other causes which lead to decline of dominion.
+
+My Lords, I beseech you to consider this plan of corrupting the
+Company's servants, beginning with systematical corruption, and ending
+with an avowed declaration that he will persist in this iniquitous
+proceeding, and to the utmost of his power entail it upon the Company,
+for the purpose of securing his accomplices against all the consequences
+of any change in the Company's government. "I dare not," says he, "be
+honest: if I make their fortunes, you will judge favorably of me; if I
+do not make their fortunes, I shall find myself crushed with a load of
+reproach and obloquy, from which I cannot escape in any other way than
+by bribing the House of Peers." What a shameful avowal this to be made
+in the face of the world! Your Lordships' judgment upon this great cause
+will obliterate it from the memory of man.
+
+But his apprehension of some change in the Company's government is not
+his only pretext for some of these corrupt proceedings; he adverts also
+to the opposition which he had to encounter with his colleagues, as
+another circumstance which drove him to adopt others of these scandalous
+expediences. Now there was a period when he had no longer to contend
+with, or to fear, that opposition.
+
+When he had got rid of the majority in the Council, which thwarted him,
+what did he do? Did he himself correct any of the evils and disorders
+which had prevailed in the service, and which his hostile majority had
+purposed to reform? No, not one,--notwithstanding the Court of Directors
+had supported the majority in all their declarations, and had accused
+him of corruption and rebellion in every part of his opposition to them.
+Now that he was free from the yoke of all the mischief of that cursed
+majority which he deprecates, and which I have heard certain persons
+consider as a great calamity, (a calamity indeed it was to
+patronage,)--as soon, I say, as he was free from this, you would imagine
+he had undertaken some great and capital reformation; for all the power
+which the Company could give was in his hands,--total, absolute, and
+unconfined.
+
+I must here remind your Lordships, that the Provincial Councils was an
+establishment made by Mr. Hastings. So confident was he in his own
+opinion of the expediency of them, that he transmitted to the Court of
+Directors a draught of an act of Parliament to confirm them. By this act
+it was his intention to place them beyond the possibility of mutation.
+Whatever opinion others might entertain of their weakness, inefficacy,
+or other defects, Mr. Hastings found no such things in them. He had
+declared in the beginning that he considered them as a sort of
+experiment, but that in the progress he found them answer so perfectly
+well that he proposed even an act of Parliament to support them. The
+Court of Directors, knowing the mischiefs that innovation had produced
+in their service, and the desolations which it had brought on the
+country, commanded him not to take any step for changing them, without
+their orders. Contrary, however, to his own declarations, contrary to
+the sketch of an act of Parliament, which, for aught he knew, the
+legislature might then have passed, (I know that it was in contemplation
+to pass, about that time, several acts for regulating the Company's
+affairs, and, for one, I should have been, as I always have been, a good
+deal concerned in whatever tended to fix some kind of permanent and
+settled government in Bengal,)--in violation, I say, of his duty, and in
+contradiction to his own opinion, he at that time, without giving the
+parties notice, turns out of their employments, situations, and bread,
+the Provincial Councils.
+
+And who were the members of those Provincial Councils? They were of high
+rank in the Company's service; they were not junior servants, boys of a
+day, but persons who had gone through some probation, who knew something
+of the country, who were conversant in its revenues and in the course of
+its business; they were, in short, men of considerable rank in the
+Company's service. What did he do with these people? Without any regard
+to their rank in the service,--no more than he had regarded the rank of
+the nobility of the country,--he sweeps them all, in one day, from their
+independent situations, without reference to the Directors, and turns
+them all into pensioners upon the Company. And for what purpose was this
+done? It was done in order to reduce the Company's servants, who, in
+their independent situations, were too great a mass and volume for him
+to corrupt, to an abject dependence upon his absolute power. It was,
+that he might tell them, "You have lost your situations; you have
+nothing but small alimentary pensions, nothing more than a maintenance;
+and you must depend upon me whether you are to have anything more or
+not." Thus at one stroke a large division of the Company's servants, and
+one of the highest orders of them, were reduced, for their next bread,
+to an absolute, submissive dependence upon his will; and the Company was
+loaded with the pensions of all these discarded servants. Thus were
+persons in an honorable, independent situation, earned by long service
+in that country, and who were subject to punishment for their crimes, if
+proved against them, all deprived, unheard, of their employments. You
+would imagine that Mr. Hastings had at least charged them with
+corruption. No, you will see upon your minutes, that, when he abolished
+the Provincial Councils, he declared at the same time that he found no
+fault with the persons concerned in them.
+
+Thus, then, he has got rid, as your Lordships see, of one whole body of
+the Company's servants; he has systematically corrupted the rest, and
+provided, as far as lay in his power, for the perpetuation of their
+corruption; he has connived at all their delinquencies, and has
+destroyed the independence of all the superior orders of them.
+
+Now hear what he does with regard to the Council-General itself. They
+had, by the act that made Mr. Hastings Governor, the management of the
+revenues vested in them. You have been shown by an honorable and able
+fellow Manager of mine, that he took the business of this department
+wholly out of the hand of the Council; that he named a committee for
+the management of it, at an enormous expense,--committee made up of his
+own creatures and dependants; and that, after destroying the Provincial
+Councils, he brought down the whole management of the revenue to
+Calcutta. This committee took this important business entirely out of
+the hands of the Council, in which the act had vested it, and this
+committee he formed without the orders of the Court of Directors, and
+directly contrary to the act, which put the superintendence in the hands
+of the Council.
+
+Oh, but he reserved a superintendence over them.--You shall hear what
+the superintendence was; you shall see, feel, smell, touch; it shall
+enter into every avenue and pore of your soul. It will show you what was
+the real principle of Mr. Hastings's government. We will read to you
+what Sir John Shore says of that institution, and of the only ends and
+purposes which it could answer; your Lordships will then see how far he
+was justifiable in violating an act of Parliament, and giving out of the
+Council's hands the great trust which the laws of his country had vested
+in them. It is part of a paper written in 1785 by Mr. Shore, who was
+sole acting president of this committee to which all Bengal was
+delivered. He was an old servant of the Company, and he is now at the
+head of the government of that country. He was Mr. Hastings's particular
+friend, and therefore you cannot doubt either of his being a competent
+evidence, or that he is a favorable evidence for Mr. Hastings, and that
+he would not say one word against the establishment of which he himself
+was at the head, that was not perfectly true, and forced out of him by
+the truth of the case. There is not a single part of it that does not
+point out some abuse.
+
+     "In the actual collection of the revenues, nothing is more
+     necessary than to give immediate attention to all complaints, which
+     are preferred daily without number, and to dispatch them in a
+     summary manner. This cannot be done where the control is remote. In
+     every purgunnah throughout Bengal there are some distinct usages,
+     which cannot be clearly known at a distance; yet in all complaints
+     of oppression or extortion, these must be known before a decision
+     can be pronounced. But to learn at Calcutta the particular customs
+     of a district of Rajeshahye or Dacca is almost impossible; and
+     considering the channel through which an explanation must pass, and
+     through which the complaint is made, any coloring may be given to
+     it, and oppression and extortion, to the ruin of a district, may be
+     practised with impunity. This is a continual source of
+     embarrassment to the Committee of Revenue in Calcutta.
+
+     "One object of their institution was to bring the revenues without
+     the expenses of agency to the Presidency, and to remove all local
+     control over the farmers, who were to pay their rents at Calcutta.
+     When complaints are made against farmers by the occupiers of the
+     lands, it is almost impossible to discriminate truth from
+     falsehood; but to prevent a failure in the revenue, it is found
+     necessary, in all doubtful cases, to support the farmer,--a
+     circumstance which may give rise to and confirm the most cruel acts
+     of oppression. The real state of any district cannot be known by
+     the Committee. An occupier or zemindar may plead, that an
+     inundation has ruined him, or that his country is a desert through
+     want of rain. An aumeen is sent to examine the complaint. He
+     returns with an exaggerated account of losses, proved in volumes of
+     intricate accounts, which the Committee have no time to read, and
+     for which the aumeen is well paid. Possibly, however, the whole
+     account is false. Suppose no aumeen is employed, and the renter is
+     held to the tenor of his engagement, the loss, if real, must
+     occasion his ruin, unless his assessment is very moderate indeed.
+
+     "I may venture to pronounce that the real state of the districts is
+     now less known, and the revenue less understood, than in the year
+     1774. Since the natives have had the disposal of accounts, since
+     they have been introduced as agents and trusted with authority,
+     intricacy and confusion have taken place. The records and accounts
+     which have been compiled are numerous, yet, when any particular
+     account is wanted, it cannot be found. It is the business of all,
+     from the ryots to the dewan, to conceal and deceive. The simplest
+     matters of fact are designedly covered with a veil through which no
+     human understanding can penetrate.
+
+     "With respect to the present Committee of Revenue, it is morally
+     impossible for them to execute the business they are intrusted
+     with. They are invested with a general control, and they have an
+     executive authority larger than ever was before given to any board
+     or body of men. They may and must get through the business; but to
+     pretend to assert that they really execute it would be folly and
+     falsehood.
+
+     "The grand object of the native dewannies was to acquire
+     independent control, and for many years they have pursued this
+     with wonderful art. The farmers and zemindars under the Committee
+     prosecute the same plan, and have already objections to anything
+     that has the least appearance of restriction. All control removed,
+     they can plunder as they please.
+
+     "The Committee must have a dewan, or executive officer, call him by
+     what name you please. This man, in fact, has all the revenues paid
+     at the Presidency at his disposal, and can, if he has any
+     abilities, bring all the renters under contribution. It is of
+     little advantage to restrain the Committee themselves from bribery
+     or corruption, when their executive officer has the power of
+     protecting [practising?] both undetected.
+
+     "To display the arts employed by a native on such an occasion would
+     fill a volume. He discovers the secret resources of the zemindars
+     and renters, their enemies and competitors, and by the engines of
+     hope and fear raised upon these foundations he can work them to his
+     purpose. The Committee, with the best intentions, best abilities,
+     and steadiest application, must, after all, be a tool in the hand
+     of their dewan."
+
+Here is the account of Mr. Hastings's new Committee of Revenue,
+substituted in the place of an establishment made by act of Parliament.
+Here is what he has substituted for Provincial Councils. Here is what he
+has substituted in the room of the whole regular order of the service,
+which he totally subverted. Can we add anything to this picture? Can we
+heighten it? Can we do anything more than to recommend it to your
+Lordships' serious consideration?
+
+But before I finally dismiss this part of our charge, I must request
+your Lordships' most earnest attention to the true character of these
+atrocious proceedings, as they now stand proved before you, by direct or
+the strongest presumptive evidence, upon the Company's records, and by
+his own confessions and declarations, and those of his most intimate
+friends and avowed agents.
+
+Your Lordships will recollect, that, previously to the appointment of
+Mr. Hastings to be the Governor-General, in 1772, the collection of the
+revenues was committed to a naib dewan, or native collector, under the
+control of the Supreme Council,--and that Mr. Hastings did at that time,
+and upon various occasions afterwards, declare it to be his decided and
+fixed opinion, that nothing would be so detrimental to the interests of
+the Company, and to the happiness and welfare of the inhabitants of
+their provinces, as changes, and more especially sudden changes, in the
+collection of their revenues. His opinion was also most strongly and
+reiteratedly pressed upon him by his masters, the Court of Directors.
+The first step taken after his appointment was to abolish the office of
+naib dewan, and to send a committee through the provinces, at the
+expense of 50,000_l._ a year, to make a settlement of rents to be paid
+by the natives for five years. At the same time he appointed one of the
+Company's servants to be the collector in each province, and he
+abolished the General Board of Revenue, which had been established at
+Moorshedabad, chiefly for the following reasons: that, by its exercising
+a separate control, the members of the Supreme Council at Calcutta were
+prevented from acquiring that intimate acquaintance with the revenues
+which was necessary to persons in their station; and because many of the
+powers necessary for the collection of the revenues could not be
+delegated to a subordinate council. In consideration of these opinions,
+orders, and declarations, he, in 1773, abolished the office of
+collector, and transferred the management of the revenues to several
+councils of revenue, called Provincial Councils, and recommended their
+perpetual establishment by act of Parliament. In the year 1774, in
+contradiction of his former opinion respecting the necessity of the
+Supreme Council possessing all possible means of becoming acquainted
+with the details of the revenue, he again recommended the continuance of
+the Provincial Councils in all their parts. This he again declared to be
+his deliberate opinion in 1775 and in 1776.
+
+In the mean time a majority of the Supreme Council, consisting of
+members who had generally differed in opinion from Mr. Hastings, had
+transmitted their advice to the Court of Directors, recommending some
+changes in the system of Provincial Councils. The Directors, in their
+reply to this recommendation, did in 1777 order the Supreme Council to
+form a new plan for the collection of the revenues, and to transmit it
+to them for their consideration.
+
+No such plan was transmitted; but in the year 1781, Mr. Hastings having
+obtained a majority in the Council, he again changed the whole system,
+both of collection of the revenue and of the executive administration of
+civil and criminal justice. And who were the persons substituted in the
+place of those whom he removed? Names, my Lords, with which you are
+already but too well acquainted. At their head stands Munny Begum; then
+comes his own domestic, and private bribe-agent, Gunga Govind Sing; then
+his banian, Cantoo Baboo; then that instrument of all evil, Debi Sing;
+then the whole tribe of his dependants, white and black, whom he made
+farmers of the revenue, with Colonel Hannay at their head; and, lastly,
+his confidential Residents, secret agents, and private secretaries, Mr.
+Middleton, Major Palmer, &c., &c. Can your Lordships doubt, for a single
+instant, of the real spirit of these proceedings? Can you doubt of the
+whole design having originated and ended in corruption and peculation?
+
+We have fully stated to you, from the authority of these parties
+themselves, the effects and consequences of these proceedings,--namely,
+the dilapidation of the revenues, and the ruin and desolation of the
+provinces. And, my Lords, what else could have been expected or designed
+by this sweeping subversion of the control of the Company's servants
+over the collections of the revenue, and the vesting of it in a black
+dewan, but fraud and peculation? What else, I say, was to be expected,
+in the inextricable turnings and windings of that black mystery of
+iniquity, but the concealment of every species of wrong, violence,
+outrage, and oppression?
+
+Your Lordships, then, have seen that the whole country was put into the
+hands of Gunga Govind Sing; and when you remember who this Gunga Govind
+Sing was, and how effectually Mr. Hastings had secured him against
+detection, in every part of his malpractices and atrocities, can you for
+a moment hesitate to believe that the whole project was planned and
+executed for the purpose of putting all Bengal under contribution to Mr.
+Hastings? But if you are resolved, after all this, to entertain a good
+opinion of Mr. Hastings,--if you have taken it into your heads, for
+reasons best known to yourselves, to imagine that he has some hidden
+virtues, which in the government of Bengal he has not displayed, and
+which, to us of the House of Commons, have not been discernible in any
+one single instance,--these virtues may be fit subjects for paragraphs
+in newspapers, they may be pleaded for him by the partisans of his
+Indian _faction_, but your Lordships will do well to remember that it is
+not to Mr. Hastings himself that you are trusting, but to Gunga Govind
+Sing. If the Committee were tools in his hands, must not Mr. Hastings
+have also been a tool in his hands? If they with whom he daily and
+hourly had to transact business, and whose office it was to control and
+restrain him, were unable so to do, is this control and restraint to be
+expected from Mr. Hastings, who was his confidant, and whose corrupt
+transactions he could at any time discover to the world? My worthy
+colleague has traced the whole of Mr. Hastings's bribe account, in the
+most clear and satisfactory manner, to Gunga Govind Sing,--him first,
+him last, him midst, and without end. If we fail of the conviction of
+the prisoner at your bar, your Lordships will not have acquitted Mr.
+Hastings merely, but you will confirm all the robberies and rapines of
+Gunga Govind Sing. You will recognize him as a faithful governor of
+India. Yes, my Lords, let us rejoice in this man! Let us adopt him as
+our own! Let our country, let this House, be proud of him! If Mr.
+Hastings can be acquitted, we must admit Gunga Govind Sing's government
+to be the greatest blessing that ever happened to mankind. But if Gunga
+Govind Sing's government be the greatest curse that ever befell
+suffering humanity, as we assert it to have been, there is the man that
+placed him in it; there is his father, his godfather, the first author
+and origin of all these evils and, calamities. My Lords, remember
+Dinagepore; remember the bribe of 40,000_l._ which Gunga Govind Sing
+procured for Mr. Hastings in that province, and the subsequent horror of
+that scene.
+
+But, my Lords, do you extend your confidence to Gunga Govind Sing? Not
+even the face of this man, to whom the revenues of the Company, together
+with the estates, fortunes, reputations, and lives of the inhabitants of
+that country were delivered over, is known in those provinces. He
+resides at Calcutta, and is represented by a variety of under-agents. Do
+you know Govind Ghose? Do you know Nundulol? Do you know the whole tribe
+of peculators, whom Mr. Hastings calls his faithful domestic servants?
+Do you know all the persons that Gunga Govind Sing must employ in the
+various ramifications of the revenues throughout all the provinces? Are
+you prepared to trust all these? The Board of Revenue has confessed that
+it could not control them. Mr. Hastings himself could not control them.
+The establishment of this system was like Sin's opening the gates of
+Hell: like her, he could open the gate,--but to shut, as Milton says,
+exceeded his power. The former establishments, if defective, or if
+abuses were found in them, might have been corrected. There was at least
+the means of detecting and punishing abuse. But Mr. Hastings destroyed
+the means of doing either, by putting the whole country into the hands
+of Gunga Govind Sing.
+
+Now, having seen all these things done, look to the account. Your
+Lordships will now be pleased to look at this business as a mere account
+of revenue. You will find, on comparing the three years in which Mr.
+Hastings was in the minority with the three years after the appointment
+of this Committee, that the assessment upon the country increased, but
+that the revenue was diminished; and you will also find, which is a
+matter that ought to astonish you, that the expenses of the collections
+were increased by no less a sum than 500,000_l._ You may judge from this
+what riot there was in rapacity and ravage, both amongst the European
+and native agents, but chiefly amongst the natives: for Mr. Hastings did
+not divide the greatest part of this spoil among the Company's servants,
+but among this gang of black dependants. These accounts are in pages
+1273 and 1274 of your Minutes.
+
+My Lords, weighty indeed would have been the charge brought before your
+Lordships by the Commons of Great Britain against the prisoner at your
+bar, if they had fixed upon no other crime or misdemeanor than that
+which I am now pressing upon you,--his throwing off the allegiance of
+the Company, his putting a black master over himself, and his subjecting
+the whole of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, the whole of the Company's
+servants, the Company's revenues, the Company's farms, to Gunga Govind
+Sing. But, my Lords, it is a very curious and remarkable thing, that we
+have traced this man as Mr. Hastings's bribe-broker up to the time of
+the nomination of this Committee; we have traced him through a regular
+series of bribery; he is Mr. Hastings's bribe-broker at Patna; he is Mr.
+Hastings's bribe-broker at Nuddea; he is his bribe-broker at Dinagepore;
+we find him his bribe-broker in all these places; but from the moment
+that this Committee was constituted, it became a gulf in which the
+prevention, the detection, and the correction of all kind of abuses
+were sunk and lost forever. From the time when this Committee and Gunga
+Govind Sing were appointed, you do not find one word more of Mr.
+Hastings's bribes. Had he then ceased to receive any? or where are you
+to look for them? You are to look for them in that 500,000_l._ excess of
+expense in the revenue department, and in the rest of all that corrupt
+traffic of Gunga Govind Sing of which we gave you specimens at the time
+we proved his known bribes to you. These are nothing but index-hands to
+point out to you the immense mass of corruption which had its origin,
+and was daily accumulating in these provinces, under the protection of
+Mr. Hastings. And can you think, and can we talk of such transactions,
+without feeling emotions of indignation and horror not to be described?
+Can we contemplate such scenes as these,--can we look upon those
+desolated provinces, upon a country so ravaged, a people so
+subdued,--Mahometans, Gentoos, our own countrymen, all trampled under
+foot by this tyrant,--can we do this; without giving expression to those
+feelings which, after animating us in this life, will comfort us when we
+die, and will form our best part in another?
+
+My Lords, I am now at the last day of my endeavors to inspire your
+Lordships with a just sense of these unexampled atrocities. I have had a
+great encyclopedia of crimes to deal with; I will get through them as
+soon as I can; and I pray your Lordships to believe, that, if I omit
+anything, it is to time I sacrifice it,--that it is to want of strength
+I sacrifice it,--that it is to necessity, and not from any despair of
+making, from the records and from the evidence, matter so omitted as
+black as anything that I have yet brought before you.
+
+The next thing of which I have to remind your Lordships respecting these
+black agents of the prisoner is, that we find him, just before his
+departure from India, recommending three of them, Gunga Govind Sing,
+Gunga Ghose, and Nundulol, as persons fit and necessary to be rewarded
+for their services by the Company. Now your Lordships will find, that,
+of these faithful domestic servants, there is not one of them who was
+not concerned in these enormous briberies, and in betraying their own
+native and natural master. If I had time for it, I believe I could trace
+every person to be, in proportion to Mr. Hastings's confidence in him,
+the author of some great villany. These persons he thinks had not been
+sufficiently rewarded, and accordingly he recommends to the board, as
+his dying legacy, provision for these faithful attached servants of his,
+and particularly for Gunga Govind Sing. The manner in which this man was
+to be rewarded makes a part of the history of these transactions, as
+curious, perhaps, as was ever exhibited to the world. Your Lordships
+will find it in page 2841 of your Minutes.
+
+The Rajah of Dinagepore was a child at that time about eleven years old,
+and had succeeded to the Rajahship (by what means I shall say nothing)
+when he was about five years old. He is made to apply to Mr. Hastings
+for leave to grant a very considerable part of his estate to Gunga
+Govind Sing, as a reward for his services. These services could only be
+known to the Rajah's family by having robbed it of at least 40,000_l._,
+the bribe given to Mr. Hastings. But the Rajah's family is so little
+satisfied with this bountiful and liberal donation to Gunga Govind
+Sing, that they desire that several purgunnahs, or farms, that are
+mentioned in the application made to the Council, should be separated
+from the family estate and given to this man. Such was this
+extraordinary gratitude: gratitude, not for money received, but for
+money taken away,--a species of gratitude unknown in any part of the
+world but in India; gratitude pervading every branch of the family; his
+mother coming forward and petitioning likewise that her son should be
+disinherited; his uncle, the natural protector and guardian of his
+minority, coming forward and petitioning most earnestly that his nephew
+should be disinherited: all the family join in one voice of supplication
+to Mr. Hastings, that Gunga Govind Sing may have a very large and
+considerable part of their family estate given to him. Mr. Hastings,
+after declaring that certain circumstances respecting this property,
+which are mentioned in his minutes, were to his knowledge true, but
+which your Lordships, upon examination, will find to be false, and
+falsified in every particular, recommends, in the strongest manner, to
+the board, a compliance with this application. He was at this time on
+the eve of his departure from India, in haste to provide for his
+faithful servants; and he well knew that this his last act would be held
+binding upon his successors, who were devoted to him.
+
+Here, indeed, is genuine and heroic gratitude,--gratitude for money
+received, not for money taken away; and yet this gratitude was towards a
+person who had paid himself out of the benefit which had been conferred,
+at the expense of a third party. For Gunga Govind Sing had kept for
+himself 20,000_l._ out of 40,000_l._ taken from the Rajah. For this
+cheat, stated by Mr. Larkins to be such, and allowed by Mr. Hastings
+himself to be such, he, with a perfect knowledge of that fraud and cheat
+committed upon the public, (for he pretends that the money was meant for
+the Company,) makes this supplication to his colleagues, and departs.
+
+After his departure, Gunga Govind Sing, relying upon the continuance of
+the corrupt influence which he had gained, had the impudence to come
+forward and demand the confirmation of this grant by the
+Council-General. The Council, though willing to accede to Mr. Hastings's
+proposition, were stopped in a moment by petitions much more natural,
+but of a direct contrary tenor. The poor infant Rajah raises his cries
+not to be deprived of his inheritance; his mother comes forward and
+conjures the Council not to oppress her son and wrong her family; the
+uncle comes and supplicates the board to save from ruin these devoted
+victims which were under his protection. All these counter-petitions
+come before the Council while the ink is hardly dry upon the petitions
+which Mr. Hastings had left behind him, as proofs of the desire of this
+family to be disinherited in favor of Gunga Govind Sing. Upon the
+receipt of these remonstrances, the board could not proceed in the
+business, and accordingly Gunga Govind Sing was defeated.
+
+But Gunga Govind Sing was unwilling to quit his prey. And what does he
+do? I desire your Lordships to consider seriously the reply of Gunga
+Govind Sing, as it appears upon your minutes. It is a bold answer. He
+denies the right of the Rajah to these estates. "Why," says he, "all
+property in this country depends upon the will of your government. How
+came this Rajah's family into possession of this great zemindary? Why,
+they got it at first by the mere favor of government. The whole was an
+iniquitous transaction. This is a family that in some former age has
+robbed others; and now let me rob them." In support of this claim, he
+adds the existence of other precedents, namely, "that many clerks or
+mutsuddies and banians at Calcutta had," as he says, "got possession of
+the lands of other people without any pretence of right;--why should not
+I?" Good God! what precedents are these!
+
+Your Lordships shall now hear the razinama, or testimonial, which, since
+Mr. Hastings's arrival in England, this Rajah has been induced to send
+to the Company from India, and you will judge then of the state in which
+Mr. Hastings has left that country. Hearken, my Lords, I pray you, to
+the razinama of this man, from whom 40,000_l._ was taken by Mr. Hastings
+and Gunga Govind Sing, and against whom an attempt was made by the same
+persons to deprive him of his inheritance. Listen to this razinama, and
+then judge of all the other testimonials which have been produced on the
+part of the prisoner at your bar. His counsel rest upon them, they glory
+in them, and we shall not abate them one of these precious testimonials.
+They put the voice of grateful India against the voice of ungrateful
+England. Now hear what grateful India says, after our having told you
+for what it was so grateful.
+
+     "I, Radanaut, Zemindar of Purgunnah Havelly Punjera, commonly
+     called Dinagepore:--As it has been learnt by me, the mutsuddies and
+     respectable officers of my zemindary, that the ministers of
+     England are displeased with the late Governor, Warren Hastings,
+     Esquire, upon the suspicion that he oppressed us, took money from
+     us by deceit and force, and ruined the country, therefore we, upon
+     the strength of our religion, which we think it incumbent on and
+     necessary for us to abide by, following the rules laid down in
+     giving evidence, declare the particulars of the acts and deeds of
+     Warren Hastings, Esquire, full of circumspection and caution,
+     civility and justice, superior to the conduct of the most learned,
+     and by representing what is fact wipe away the doubts that have
+     possessed the minds of the ministers of England; that Mr. Hastings
+     is possessed of fidelity and confidence, and yielding protection to
+     us; that he is clear from the contamination of mistrust and wrong,
+     and his mind is free of covetousness and avarice. During the time
+     of his administration, no one saw other conduct than that of
+     protection to the husbandmen, and justice; no inhabitant ever
+     experienced affliction, no one ever felt oppression from him. Our
+     reputations have always been guarded from attacks by his prudence,
+     and our families have always been protected by his justice."
+
+Good God! my Lords, "_our families protected by his justice_"! What!
+after Gunga Govind Sing, in concert with Mr. Hastings, had first robbed
+him of 40,000_l._, and then had attempted to snatch, as it were, out of
+the mouths of babes and sucklings the inheritance of their fathers, and
+to deprive this infant of a great part of his family estate? Here is a
+child, eleven years old, who never could have seen Mr. Hastings, who
+could know nothing of him but from the heavy hand of oppression,
+affliction, wrong, and robbery, brought to bear testimony to the virtues
+of Mr. Hastings before a British Parliament! Such is the confidence they
+repose in their hope of having bribed the English nation by the millions
+and millions of money, the countless lacs of rupees, poured into it from
+India, that they had dared to bring this poor robbed infant to bear
+testimony to the character of Mr. Hastings! These are the things which
+are to be opposed to the mass of evidence which the House of Commons
+bring against this man,--evidence which they bring from his own acts,
+his own writing, and his own records,--a cloud of testimony furnished by
+himself in support of charges brought forward and urged by us agreeably
+to the magnitude of his crimes, with the horror which is inspired by
+them, and with the contempt due to this paltry attempt towards his
+defence, which they had dared to produce from the hands of an infant but
+eleven years old when Mr. Hastings quitted that country!
+
+But to proceed with the razinama.
+
+     "He never omitted the smallest instance of kindness towards us, but
+     healed the wounds of despair with the salve of consolation, by
+     means of his benevolent and kind behavior, never permitting one of
+     us to sink in the pit of despondence. He supported every one by his
+     goodness, overset the designs of evil-minded men by his authority,
+     tied the hand of oppression with the strong bandage of justice, and
+     by these means expanded the pleasing appearance of happiness and
+     joy over us. He reëstablished justice and impartiality. We were
+     during his government in the enjoyment of perfect happiness and
+     ease, and many of us are thankful and satisfied. As Mr. Hastings
+     was well acquainted with our manners and customs, he was always
+     desirous in every respect of doing whatever would preserve our
+     religious rites, and guard them against every kind of accident and
+     injury, and at all times protected us. Whatever we have experienced
+     from him, and whatever happened from him, we have written without
+     deceit or exaggeration."
+
+My Lords, before I take leave of this affair of bribes and of the great
+bribe-broker, let me just offer a remark to your Lordships upon one
+curious transaction. My Lords, we have charged a bribe taken from the
+Nabob of Oude, and we have stated the corrupt and scandalous proceeding
+which attended it. I thought I had done with Oude; but as there is a
+golden chain between all the virtues, so there is a golden chain which
+links together all the vices. Mr. Hastings, as you have seen, and as my
+honorable colleague has fully opened it to you, received a bribe or
+corrupt present from the Nabob of Oude in September, 1781. We heard no
+more of this bribe than what we had stated, (no other trace of it ever
+appearing in the Company's records, except in a private letter written
+by Mr. Hastings to the Court of Directors, and afterwards in a
+communication such as you have heard through Mr. Larkins,) till October,
+1783.
+
+But, my Lords, we have since discovered, through and in consequence of
+the violent disputes which took place between Mr. Hastings and the clan
+of Residents that were in Oude,--the Resident of the Company, Mr.
+Bristow, the two Residents of Mr. Hastings, Mr. Middleton and Mr.
+Johnson, and the two Residents sent by him to watch over all the rest,
+Major Palmer and Major Davy,--upon quarrels, I say, between them, we
+discovered that Mr. Middleton had received the offer of a present of
+100,000_l._ in February, 1782. This circumstance is mentioned in a
+letter of Mr. Middleton's, in which he informs Mr. Hastings that the
+Nabob had destined such a sum for him.
+
+Now the first thing that will occur to your Lordships upon such an
+affair will be a desire to know what it was that induced the Nabob to
+make this offer. It was but in the September preceding that Mr. Hastings
+had received, for his private use, as the Nabob conceived, so bountiful
+a present as 100,000_l._; what motive, then, could he have had in
+February to offer him another 100,000_l._? This man, at the time, was
+piercing heaven itself with the cries of despondency, despair, beggary,
+and ruin. You have seen that he was forced to rob his own family, in
+order to satisfy the Company's demands upon him; and yet this is
+precisely the time when he thinks proper to offer 100,000_l._ to Mr.
+Hastings. Does not the mind of every man revolt, whilst he exclaims, and
+say, "What! another 100,000_l._ to Mr. Hastings?" What reason had the
+Nabob to think Mr. Hastings so monstrously insatiable, that, having but
+the September before received 100,000_l._, he must give him another in
+February? My Lords, he must, in the interval, have threatened the Nabob
+with some horrible catastrophe, from which he was to redeem himself by
+this second present. You can assign no other motive for his giving it.
+We know not what answer Mr. Hastings made to Mr. Middleton upon that
+occasion, but we find that in the year 1783 Mr. Hastings asserts that he
+sent up Major Palmer and Major Davy to persuade the Nabob to transfer
+this present, which the Nabob intended for him, to the Company's
+service. Remark, my Lords, the progress of this affair. In a formal
+accusation preferred against Mr. Middleton, he charges him with
+obstructing this design of his. In this accusation, my Lords, you find
+him at once in the curious character of prosecutor, witness, and judge.
+
+Let us see how he comports himself. I shall only state to you one of the
+articles of his impeachment; it is the third charge; it is in page 1267
+of your Lordships' Minutes.
+
+     "For sending repeatedly to the Vizier, and to his minister, Hyder
+     Beg Khân, to advise them against transferring the ten lacs of
+     rupees intended as a present to the Governor-General to the
+     Company's account; as it would be a precedent for further demands,
+     which if the Vizier did not refuse in the first instance, the
+     government would never cease to harass him for money."
+
+The first thing that will occur to your Lordships is an assertion of the
+accuser's:--"I am morally certain, that jaidads or assets for ten lacs,
+either in assignment of land or in bills, had been prepared, and were in
+the charge or possession of Mr. Middleton, before Major Palmer's
+arrival, and left with Mr. Johnson on Mr. Middleton's departure."
+
+My Lords, here is an accusation that Mr. Middleton had actually received
+money, either in bills or assets of some kind or other,--and that, upon
+quitting his Residency, he had handed it over to his successor, Mr.
+Johnson. Here are, then, facts asserted, and we must suppose
+substantiated. Here is a sum of money to be accounted for, in which
+there is a gross malversation directly charged as to these particulars,
+in Mr. Hastings's opinion. Mr. Macpherson, another member of the
+Council, has declared, that he understood at the time that the ten lacs
+were actually deposited in bills, and that it was not a mere offer made
+by the Nabob to pay such a sum from the future revenue of the country.
+Mr. Hastings has these facts disclosed to him. He declares that he was
+"_morally_ certain" of it,--that is, as certain as a man can be of
+anything; because physical certitude does not belong to such matters.
+The first thing you will naturally ask is, "Why does he not ask Mr.
+Johnson how he had disposed of that money which Mr. Middleton had put in
+his hands?" He does no such thing; he passes over it totally, as if it
+were no part of the matter in question, and the accusation against Mr.
+Middleton terminates in the manner you will there find stated. When Mr.
+Johnson is asked, "Why was not that money applied to the Company's
+service?" he boldly steps forward, and says, "I prevented it from being
+so applied. It never was, it never ought to have been, so applied; such
+an appropriation of money to be taken from the Nabob would have been
+enormous upon that occasion."
+
+What, then, does Mr. Hastings do? Does he examine Mr. Middleton upon the
+subject, who charges himself with having received the money? Mr.
+Middleton was at that very time in Calcutta, called down thither by Mr.
+Hastings himself. One would naturally expect that he would call upon him
+to explain for what purpose he left the money with Mr. Johnson. He did
+no such thing. Did he examine Mr. Johnson himself, who was charged with
+having received the money from Mr. Middleton? Did he ask him what he had
+done with that money? Not one word. Did he send for Major Palmer and
+Major Davy to account for it? No. Did he call any shroff, any banker,
+any one person concerned in the payment of the money, or any one person
+in the management of the revenue? No, not one. Directly in the face of
+his own assertions, directly contrary to his moral conviction of the
+fact that the money had been actually deposited, he tries Mr. Johnson
+collusively and obliquely, not upon the account of what was done with
+the money, but why it was prevented from being applied to the Company's
+service; and he acquits him in a manner that (taking the whole of it
+together) will give your Lordships the finest idea possible of a Bengal
+judicature, as exercised by Mr. Hastings.
+
+"I am not sorry," says he, "that Mr. Johnson chose to defeat my
+intentions; since it would have added to the Nabob's distresses, but
+with no immediate relief to the Company. If, in his own breast, he can
+view the secret motives of this transaction, and on their testimony
+approve it, I also acquit him."
+
+Merciful God! Here is a man accused by regular articles of impeachment.
+The accuser declares he is morally certain that the money had been
+received, but was prevented from being applied to its destination by the
+person accused; and he acquits him. Does he acquit him from his own
+knowledge, or from any evidence? No: but he applies to the man's
+conscience, and says, "If you in your conscience can acquit yourself, I
+acquit you."
+
+Here, then, is a proceeding the most astonishing and shameless that
+perhaps was ever witnessed: a court trying a man for a delinquency and
+misapplication of money, destined, in the first instance, for the use of
+the judge, but which he declares ought, in his own opinion, to be set
+apart for the public use, and which he was desirous of applying to the
+Company's service, without regard to his own interest, and then the
+judge declaring he is not sorry that his purpose had been defeated by
+the party accused. Instead, however, of censuring the accused, he
+applies to the man's own conscience. "Does your conscience," says he,
+"acquit you of having acted wrong?" The accused makes no reply; and then
+Mr. Hastings, by an hypothetical conclusion, acquits him.
+
+Mr. Hastings is accused by the Commons for that, having a moral
+certainty of the money's being intended for his use, he would not have
+ceased to inquire into the actual application of it but from some
+corrupt motive and intention. With this he is charged. He comes before
+you to make his defence. Mr. Middleton is in England. Does he call Mr.
+Middleton to explain it here? Does he call upon Mr. Johnson, who was the
+other day in this court, to account for it? Why did he not, when he sent
+for these curious papers and testimonials to Major Palmer, (the person
+authorized, as he pretends, by him, to resign all his pretensions to the
+money procured,) send for Major Palmer, who is the person that accused
+him in this business,--why not send for him to bear some testimony
+respecting it? No: he had time enough, but at no one time and in no
+place did he do this; therefore the imputation of the foulest corruption
+attaches upon him, joined with the infamy of a collusive prosecution,
+instituted for the sake of a collusive acquittal.
+
+Having explained to your Lordships the nature, and detailed the
+circumstances, as far as we are acquainted with them, of this fraudulent
+transaction, we have only further to remind you, that, though Mr.
+Middleton was declared guilty of five of the six charges brought against
+him by Mr. Hastings, yet the next thing you hear is, that Mr. Hastings,
+after declaring that this conduct of Mr. Middleton had been very bad,
+and that the conduct of the other servants of the Company concerned with
+him had been ten times worse, he directly appoints him to one of the
+most honorable and confidential offices the Company had to dispose of:
+he sends him ambassador to the Nizam,--to give to all the courts of
+India a specimen of the justice, honor, and decency of the British
+government.
+
+My Lords, with regard to the bribe for the _entertainment_, I only beg
+leave to make one observation to you upon that article. I could say, if
+the time would admit it, a great deal upon that subject; but I wish to
+compress it, and I shall therefore only recommend it in general to your
+Lordships' deliberate consideration. The covenant subsisting between the
+Company and its servants was made for the express purpose of putting an
+end to all such entertainments. By this convention it is ordered that no
+presents exceeding 200_l._ [400_l._?] shall be accepted upon any
+pretence for an entertainment. The covenant was intended to put an end
+to the custom of receiving money for entertainments, even when visiting
+an independent Oriental prince. But your Lordships know that the Nabob
+was no prince, but a poor, miserable, undone dependant upon, the
+Company. The present was also taken by Mr. Hastings at a time when he
+went upon the cruel commission of cutting down the Nabob's allowance
+from 400,000_l._ to 260,000_l._ [160,000_l._?], and when he was reducing
+to beggary thousands of persons who were dependent for bread upon the
+Nabob, and ruining, perhaps, forty thousand others. I shall say no more
+upon that subject, though, in truth, it is a thing upon which much
+observation might be made.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall now pass on to another article connected with, though not making
+a direct part of, that of corrupt bribery: I mean the swindling
+subterfuges by which he has attempted to justify his corrupt practices.
+At one time, he defends them by pleading the necessities of his own
+affairs,--as when he takes presents and entertainments avowedly for his
+own profits. At another time he defends them by pleading the goodness of
+his intentions: he intended, he says, to give the money to the Company.
+His last plea has something in it (which shall I say?) of a more awful
+or of a more abandoned character, or of both. In the settlement of his
+public account, before he left India, he takes credit for a bond which
+he had received from Nobkissin upon some account or other. He then,
+returns to England, and what does he do? Pay off? No. Give up the bond
+to the Company? No. He says, "I will account to the Company for this
+money." And when he comes to give this account of the expenditure of
+this money, your Lordships will not be a little astonished at the items
+of it. One is for founding a Mahometan college. It is a very strange
+thing that Rajah Nobkissin, who is a Gentoo, should be employed by Mr.
+Hastings to found a Mahometan college. We will allow Mr. Hastings, who
+is a Christian, or would be thought a Christian, to grow pious at last,
+and, as many others have done, who have spent their lives in fraud,
+rapacity, and peculation, to seek amends and to expiate his crimes by
+charitable foundations. Nay, we will suppose Mr. Hastings to have taken
+it into his head to turn Mahometan, (Gentoo he could not,) and to have
+designed by a Mahometan foundation to expiate his offences. Be it so;
+but why should Nobkissin pay for it? We will pass over this also. But
+when your Lordships shall hear of what nature that foundation was, I
+believe you will allow that a more extraordinary history never did
+appear in the world.
+
+In the first place, he stated to the Council, on the 18th of April,
+1781, that in the month of November, 1780, a petition was presented to
+him by a considerable number of Mussulmen, in compliance with which this
+Mahometan college appears to have been founded. It next appears from his
+statement, that in the April following, (that is, within about six
+months after the foundation,) many students had finished their
+education. You see what a hot-bed bribery and corruption is. Our
+universities cannot furnish an education in six years: in India they
+have completed it within six months, and have taken their degrees.
+
+Mr. Hastings says, "I have supported this establishment to this time at
+my own expense; I desire the Company will now defray the charge of it."
+He then calculates what the expenses were; he calculates that the
+building would cost about 6,000_l._, and he gets from the Company a bond
+to raise money for paying this 6,000_l._ You apparently have the
+building now at the public expense, and Mr. Hastings still stands
+charged with the expense of the college for six months. He then proposes
+that a tract of land should be given for the college, to the value of
+about three thousand odd pounds a year,--and that in the mean time there
+should be a certain sum allotted for its expenses. After this Mr.
+Hastings writes a letter from the Ganges to the Company, in which he
+says not a word about the expense of the building, but says that the
+college was founded and maintained at his own expense, though it was
+thought to be maintained by the Company; and he fixes the commencement
+of the expense in September, 1779. But, after all, we find that the very
+professor who was to be settled there never so much as arrived in
+Calcutta, or showed his face there, till some time afterwards. And look
+at Mr. Larkins's private accounts, and you will find that he charges the
+expense to have commenced not until October, 1781. It is no error,
+because it runs through and is so accounted in the whole: and it thus
+appears that he has charged, falsely and fraudulently, a year more for
+that establishment than it cost him.
+
+At last, then, when he was coming away, (for I hasten to the conclusion
+of an affair ludicrous indeed in some respects, but not unworthy of your
+Lordships' consideration,) "after remarking that he had experienced for
+three years the utility of this institution, he recommends that they
+will establish a fund for 3,000_l._ a year for it, and give it to the
+master." He had left Gunga Govind Sing as a Gentoo legacy, and he now
+leaves the Mussulman as a Mahometan legacy to the Company.
+
+Your Lordships shall now hear what was the upshot of the whole. The
+Company soon afterwards hearing that this college was become the
+greatest nuisance in Calcutta, and that it had raised the cries of all
+the inhabitants against it, one of their servants, a Mr. Chapman, was
+deputed by the Governor, Sir John Shore, to examine into it, and your
+Lordships will find the account he gives of it in your minutes. In
+short, my Lords, we find that this was a seminary of robbers,
+housebreakers, and every nuisance to society; so that the Company was
+obliged to turn out the master, and to remodel the whole. Your Lordships
+will now judge of the merits and value of this, one of the sets-off
+brought forward by the prisoner against the charges which we have
+brought forward against him: it began in injustice and peculation, and
+ended in a seminary for robbers and housebreakers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nothing now remains to be pressed by me upon your Lordships'
+consideration, but the account given by the late Governor-General, Earl
+Cornwallis, of the state in which he found the country left by his
+predecessor, Mr. Hastings, the prisoner at your bar. But, patient as I
+know your Lordships to be, I also know that your strength is not
+inexhaustible; and though what I have farther to add will not consume
+much of your Lordships' time, yet I conceive that there is a necessity
+for deferring it to another day.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+NINTH DAY: MONDAY, JUNE 16, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--I should think it necessary to make an apology to your
+Lordships for appearing before you one day more, if I were inclined to
+measure this business either by the standard of my own ability, or by my
+own impatience, or by any supposed impatience of yours. I know no
+measure, in such a case, but the nature of the subject, and the duty
+which we owe to it. You will therefore, my Lords, permit me, in a few
+words, to lead you back to what we did yesterday, that you may the
+better comprehend the manner in which I mean to conclude the business
+to-day.
+
+My Lords, we took the liberty of stating to you the condition of Bengal
+before our taking possession of it, and of the several classes of its
+inhabitants. We first brought before you the Mahometan inhabitants, who
+had the judicial authority of the country in their hands; and we proved
+to you the utter ruin of that body of people, and with them of the
+justice of the country, by their being, both one and the other, sold to
+an infamous woman called Munny Begum. We next showed you, that the whole
+landed interest, the zemindars, or Hindoo gentry of the country, was
+likewise ruined by its being given over, by letting it on a five years'
+lease, to infamous farmers, and giving it up to their merciless
+exactions,--and afterwards by subjecting the rank of those zemindars,
+their title-deeds, and all their pecuniary affairs, to the minutest
+scrutiny, under pain of criminal punishment, by a commission granted to
+a nefarious villain called Gunga Govind Sing. We lastly showed you that
+the remaining third class, that of the English, was partly corrupted, or
+had its authority dissolved, and that the whole superintending English
+control was subverted or subdued,--that the products of the country were
+diminished, and that the revenues of the Company were dilapidated, by an
+overcharge of expenses, in four years, to the amount of 500,000_l._, in
+consequence of these corrupt, dangerous, and mischievous projects.
+
+We have farther stated, that the Company's servants were corrupted by
+contracts and jobs; we proved that those that were not so corrupted were
+removed from their stations or reduced to a state of abject dependence;
+we showed you the destruction of the Provincial Councils, the
+destruction of the Council-General, and the formation of a committee for
+no other ends whatever but for the purposes of bribery, concealment, and
+corruption. We next stated some of the most monstrous instances of that
+bribery; and though we were of opinion that in none of them any
+satisfactory defence worth mentioning had been made, yet we have thought
+that this should not hinder us from recalling to your Lordships'
+recollection the peculiar nature and circumstances of one of those
+proceedings.
+
+The proceedings to which we wish to call your attention are those
+belonging to the second bribe given by the Nabob of Oude to Mr.
+Hastings. Mr. Hastings's own knowledge and opinion that that money was
+set apart for his use, either in bills or assets, I have before stated;
+and I now wish to call your Lordships' minute recollection to the manner
+in which the fraudulent impeachment of Mr. Middleton, for the purpose of
+stifling an inquiry into that business, was carried on. Your Lordships
+will remember that I proved to you, upon the face of that proceeding,
+the collusive nature of the accusation, and that the real state of the
+case was not charged,--and that Mr. Hastings acquitted the party accused
+of one article of the charge, not upon the evidence of the case,
+contrary to his own avowed, declared, moral certainty of his guilt, but
+upon a pretended appeal to the conscience of the man accused. He did
+not, however, give him a complete, formal, official acquittal, but
+referred the matter to the Court of Directors, who could not possibly
+know anything of the matter, without one article of evidence whatever
+produced at the time or transmitted. We lastly proved to you, that,
+after finding him guilty of five charges, and leaving the other to the
+Court of Directors, Mr. Hastings, without any reason assigned, appointed
+him to a great office in the Company's service.
+
+These proceedings were brought before you for two purposes: first, to
+show the corrupt principle of the whole proceeding; next, to show the
+manner in which the Company's servants are treated. They are accused and
+persecuted, until they are brought to submit to whatever terms it may be
+thought proper to impose upon them; they are then formally, indeed,
+acquitted of the most atrocious crimes charged against them, but
+virtually condemned upon some articles, with the scourge hung over
+them,--and in some instances rewarded by the greatest, most honorable,
+and most lucrative situations in the Company's service. My Lords, it is
+on the same ground of the wicked, pernicious, and ruinous principles of
+Mr. Hastings's government, that I have charged this with everything that
+is chargeable against him, namely, that, if your Lordships should ratify
+those principles by your acquittal of him, they become principles of
+government,--rejected, indeed, by the Commons, but adopted by the
+Peerage of Great Britain.
+
+There is another article which I have just touched, but which I must do
+more than barely notice, upon account of the evil example of it: I mean
+the taking great sums of money, under pretence of an entertainment. Your
+Lordships will recollect, that, when this business was charged against
+him in India, Mr. Hastings neither affirmed nor denied the fact.
+Confession could not be there extorted from him. He next appeared before
+the House of Commons, and he still evaded a denial or a confession of
+it. He lastly appeared before your Lordships, and in his answer to our
+charge he in the same manner evaded either a confession or a denial. He
+forced us to employ a great part of a session in endeavoring to
+establish what we have at last established, the receipt of the sums
+first charged, and of seven lacs more, by him. At length the proof could
+not be evaded; and after we had fought through all the difficulties
+which the law could interpose in his defence, and of which he availed
+himself with a degree of effrontery that has, I believe, no example in
+the world, he confesses, avows, and justifies his conduct. If the custom
+alleged be well founded, and be an honorable and a proper and just
+practice, why did he not avow it in every part and progress of our
+proceedings here? Why should he have put us to the necessity of wasting
+so many months in the proof of the fact? And why, after we have proved
+it, and not before, did he confess it, avow it, and even glory in it?
+
+I must remind your Lordships that the sum charged to be so taken by way
+of entertainment made only a part, a single article, of the bribes
+charged by Nundcomar to have been received by Mr. Hastings; and when we
+find him confessing, what he could not deny, that single article, and
+evading all explanation respecting the others, and not giving any reason
+whatever why one was received and the others rejected, your Lordships
+will judge of the strong presumption of his having taken them all, even
+if we had given no other proofs of it. We think, however, that we have
+proved the whole very satisfactorily. But whether we have or not, the
+proof of a single present received is sufficient; because the principle
+to be established respecting these bribes is this,--whether or not a
+Governor-General, paying a visit to any of the poor, miserable,
+dependent creatures called sovereign princes in that country, (men whom
+Mr. Hastings has himself declared to be nothing but phantoms, and that
+they had no one attribute of sovereignty about them,) whether, I say, he
+can consider them to be such sovereign princes as to justify his taking
+from them great sums of money by way of a present. The Nabob, in fact,
+was not a sovereign prince, nor a country power, in any sense but that
+which the Company meant to exempt from the custom of making presents. It
+was their design to prevent their servants from availing themselves of
+the real dependence of the nominal native powers to extort money from
+them under the pretence of their sovereignty. Such presents, so far from
+being voluntary, were in reality obtained from their weakness, their
+hopeless and unprotected condition; and you are to decide whether or not
+this custom, which is insisted upon by the prisoner's counsel, with
+great triumph, to be a thing which he could not evade, without breaking
+through all the usages of the country, and violating principles
+established by the most clear law of India, is to be admitted as his
+justification.
+
+It was on this very account, namely, the extortion suffered by these
+people, under the name or pretence of presents, that the Company first
+bound their servants by a covenant, which your Lordships shall now hear
+read.
+
+     "That they shall not take any grant of lands, or rents or revenues
+     issuing out of lands, or any territorial possession, jurisdiction,
+     dominion, power, or authority whatsoever, from any of the Indian
+     princes, sovereigns, subahs, or nabobs, or any of their ministers,
+     servants, or agents, for any service or services, or upon any
+     account or pretence whatsoever, without the license or consent of
+     the Court of Directors."
+
+This clause in the covenant had doubtless a regard to Lord Clive, and to
+Sir Hector Munro, and to some others, who had received gifts, and grants
+of jaghires, and other territorial revenues, that were confirmed by the
+Company. But though this confirmation might be justifiable at a time
+when we had no real sovereignty in the country, yet the Company very
+wisely provided afterwards, that under no pretence whatever should their
+servants have the means of extorting from the sovereigns or pretended
+sovereigns of the country any of their lands or possessions. Afterwards
+it appeared that there existed abuses of a similar nature, and
+particularly (as was proved before us in the year 1773, and reported to
+our House, upon the evidence of Mahomed Reza Khân) the practice of
+frequently visiting the princes, and of extorting, under pretence of
+such visits, great sums of money. All their servants, and the
+Governor-General particularly, were therefore obliged to enter into the
+following covenant:--
+
+     "That they shall not, directly or indirectly, accept, take, or
+     receive, or agree to accept, take, or receive, any gift, reward,
+     gratuity, allowance, donation, or compensation, in money, effects,
+     jewels, or otherwise howsoever, from any of the Indian princes,
+     sovereigns, subahs, or nabobs, or any of their ministers, servants,
+     or agents, exceeding the value of four thousand rupees, for any
+     service or services performed or to be performed by them in India,
+     or upon any other account or pretence whatsoever."
+
+By this covenant, my Lords, Mr. Hastings is forbidden to accept, upon
+any pretence and under any name whatsoever, any sum above four thousand
+rupees,--that is to say, any sum above four hundred pounds. Now the sum
+that was here received is eighteen thousand pounds sterling, by way of a
+present, under the name of an allowance for an entertainment, which is
+the precise thing which his covenant was made to prevent. The covenant
+suffered him to receive four hundred pounds: if he received more than
+that money, he became a criminal, he had broken his covenant, and
+forfeited the obligation he had made with his masters. Think with
+yourselves, my Lords, what you will do, if you acquit the prisoner of
+this charge. You will avow the validity, you will sanction the principle
+of his defence: for, as the fact is avowed, there is an end of that.
+
+Good God! my Lords, where are we? If they conceal their gifts and
+presents, they are safe by their concealment; if they avow them, they
+are still safer. They plead the customs of the country, or rather, the
+customs which we have introduced into the country,--customs which have
+been declared to have their foundation in a system of the most
+abominable corruption, the most flagitious extortion, the most dreadful
+oppression,--those very customs which their covenant is made to abolish.
+Think where your Lordships are. You have before you a covenant declaring
+that he should take under no name whatever (I do not know how words
+could be selected in the English language more expressive) any sum more
+than four hundred pounds. He says, "I have taken eighteen thousand
+pounds." He makes his counsel declare, and he desires your Lordships to
+confirm their declaration, that he is not only justifiable in so doing,
+but that he ought to do so,--that he ought to break his covenant, and
+act in direct contradiction to it. He does not even pretend to say that
+this money was intended, either inwardly or outwardly, avowedly or
+covertly, for the Company's service. He put absolutely into his own
+pocket eighteen thousand pounds, besides his salary.
+
+Consider, my Lords, the consequences of this species of iniquity. If any
+servant of the Company, high in station, chooses to make a visit from
+Calcutta to Moorshedabad, which Moorshedabad was then the residence of
+our principal revenue government,--if he should choose to take an
+airing for his health, if he has a fancy to make a little voyage for
+pleasure as far as Moorshedabad, in one of those handsome barges or
+budgeros of which you have heard so much in his charge against
+Nundcomar, he can put twenty thousand pounds into his pocket any day he
+pleases, in defiance of all our acts of Parliament, covenants, and
+regulations.
+
+Do you make your laws, do you make your covenants, for the very purpose
+of their being evaded? Is this the purpose for which a British tribunal
+sits here, to furnish a subject for an epigram, or a tale for the
+laughter of the world? Believe me, my Lords, the world is not to be thus
+trifled with. But, my Lords, you will never trifle with your duty. You
+have a gross, horrid piece of corruption before you,--impudently
+confessed, and more impudently defended. But you will not suffer Mr.
+Hastings to say, "I have only to go to Moorshedabad, or to order the
+Nabob to meet me half way, and I can set aside and laugh at all your
+covenants and acts of Parliament." Is this all the force and power of
+the covenant by which you would prevent the servants of the Company from
+committing acts of fraud and oppression, that they have nothing to do
+but to amuse themselves with a tour of pleasure to Moorshedabad in order
+to put any sum of money in their pocket that they please?
+
+But they justify themselves by saying, such things have been practised
+before. No doubt they have; and these covenants were made that they
+should not be practised any more. But your Lordships are desired to say,
+that the very custom which the covenant is made to destroy, the very
+grievance itself, may be pleaded; the abuse shall be admitted to
+destroy the law made to prevent it. It is impossible, I venture to say,
+that your Lordships should act thus. The conduct of the criminal is not
+half so abhorrent as the justification is affronting to justice, whilst
+it tends to vilify and degrade the dignity of the Peerage and the
+character of the Commons of Great Britain, before the former and against
+the latter of which such a justification is produced in the face of the
+world.
+
+At the same time that we call for your justice upon this man, we beseech
+you to remember the severest justice upon him is the tenderest pity
+towards the innocent victims of his crimes. Consider what was at that
+time the state of the people from whom, in direct defiance of his
+covenant, he took this sum of money. Were they at this time richer, were
+they more opulent, was the state of the country more flourishing than
+when Mr. Sumner, when Mr. Vansittart, in short, than when the long line
+of Mr. Hastings's predecessors visited that country? No, they were not.
+Mr. Hastings at this very time had reduced the Nabob's income from
+450,000_l._ [400,000_l._?] sterling a year, exclusive of other
+considerable domains and revenues, to 160,000_l._ He was, indeed, an
+object of compassion. His revenues had not only been reduced during his
+state of minority, but they were reduced when he afterwards continued in
+a state in which he could do no one valid act; and yet, in this state,
+he was made competent to give away, under the name of compensation for
+entertainments, the sum of 18,000_l._,--perhaps at that time nearly all
+he had in the world.
+
+Look at your minutes, and you will find Mr. Hastings had just before
+this time said that the bread of ten thousand persons, many of them of
+high rank, depended upon the means possessed by the Nabob for their
+support,--that his heart was cut and afflicted to see himself obliged to
+ruin and starve so many of the Mahometan nobility, the greatest part of
+whose yet remaining miserable allowances were now taken away. You know,
+and you will forgive me again remarking, that it is the nature of the
+eagles and more generous birds of prey to fall upon living, healthy
+victims, but that vultures and carrion crows, and birds of that base and
+degenerate kind, always prey upon dead or dying carcases. It is upon
+ruined houses, it is upon decayed families, it is upon extinguished
+nobility, that Mr. Hastings chooses to prey, and to justify his making
+them his prey.
+
+But again we hear, my Lords, that it is a custom, upon ceremonial and
+complimentary visits, to receive these presents. Do not let us deceive
+ourselves. Mr. Hastings was there upon no visit either of ceremony or
+politics. He was a member, at that time, of the Committee of Circuit,
+which went to Moorshedabad for the purpose of establishing a system of
+revenue in the country. He went up upon that business only, as a member
+of the Committee of Circuit, for which business he was, like other
+members of the Committee of Circuit, amply paid, in addition to his
+emoluments as Governor, which amounted to about 30,000_l._ a year. Not
+satisfied with those emoluments, and without incurring new known expense
+of any kind or sort, he was paid for the extra expenses of his journey,
+as appears in your minutes, like other members of the Committee of
+Circuit. In fact, he was on no visit there at all. He was merely
+executing his duty in the settlement of the revenue, as a member of the
+Committee of Circuit. I do not mean to praise the Committee of Circuit
+in anyway: God forbid I should!--for we know that it was a committee of
+robbers. He was there as one of that committee, which I am pretty well
+justified in describing as I have done, because the Court of Directors,
+together with the Board of Control, did, in the year 1786, declare that
+the five years' settlement (which originated in that committee) was a
+thing bought and sold: your Lordships may read it whenever you please,
+in the 80th paragraph of their letter.
+
+Your Lordships are now fully in possession of all the facts upon which
+we charge the prisoner with peculation, by extorting or receiving large
+sums of money, upon pretence of visits, or in compensation of
+entertainments. I appeal to your Lordships' consciences for a serious
+and impartial consideration of our charge. This is a business not to be
+hurried over in the mass, as amongst the acts of a great man, who may
+have his little errors among his great services; no, you cannot, as a
+judicial body, huddle all this into a hotchpotch, and decide upon it in
+a heap. You will have to ask yourselves,--Is this justifiable by his
+covenant? Is this justifiable by law? Is this justifiable, under the
+circumstances of the case, by an enlarged discretion? Is it to be
+justified under any principles of humanity? Would it be justifiable by
+local customs, if such were applicable to the case in question? and even
+if it were, is it a practice fit for an English Governor-General to
+follow?
+
+I dwell the longer upon this, because the fact is avowed; the whole is
+an issue of law between us,--whether a Governor-General, in such a case,
+ought to take such money; and therefore, before I finally dismiss it, I
+beg leave to restate it briefly once more for your Lordships'
+consideration.
+
+First I wish to leave fixed in your Lordships' minds, what is distinctly
+fixed, and shall never go out of ours, that his covenant did not allow
+him to take above four hundred pounds as a present, upon any pretence
+whatsoever.
+
+Your Lordships will observe we contend, that, if there was a custom,
+this covenant puts an end to that custom. It was declared and intended
+so to do. The fact is, that, if such custom existed at all, it was a
+custom applicable only to an ambassador or public minister sent on a
+necessary complimentary visit to a sovereign prince. We deny,
+positively, that there is any such general custom. We say, that he never
+was any such minister or that he ever went upon any such complimentary
+visit. We affirm, that, when he took this money, he was doing an act of
+quite another nature, and came upon that business only to Moorshedabad,
+the residence of the prince of the country. Now do you call a man who is
+going to execute a commission, a commission more severe than those
+issued against bankrupts, a commission to take away half a man's income,
+and to starve a whole body of people dependent upon that income,--do you
+call this a complimentary visit? Is this a visit for which a man is to
+have great entertainments given him? No, the pretence for taking this
+money is worse than the act itself. When a man is going to execute upon
+another such harsh cruelty, when he is going upon a service at which he
+himself says his mind must revolt, is that precisely the time when he is
+to take from his undone host a present, as if he was upon a visit of
+compliment, or about to confer some honor or benefit upon him,--to
+augment his revenues, to add to his territories, or to conclude some
+valuable treaty with him? Was this a proper time to take at all from an
+helpless minor so large a sum of money?
+
+And here I shall leave this matter for your Lordships' consideration,
+after reminding you that this poor Nabob is still at Moorshedabad, and
+at the mercy of any English gentleman who may choose to take 18,000_l._,
+or any other given sum of money from him, after the example of the
+prisoner at your bar, if it should be sanctioned by your connivance. Far
+different was the example set him by General Clavering. In page 1269
+your Lordships will find the most honorable testimony to the uprightness
+and fidelity of this meritorious servant of the Company. It runs thus:
+"Conceiving it to be the intention of the legislature that the
+Governor-General and members of the Council should receive no presents,
+either from the Indian powers or any persons whatever, he [General
+Clavering] has strictly complied, since his arrival here, both with the
+spirit and the letter of the act of Parliament, and has accordingly
+returned all the presents which have been made to him." I have dwelt
+thus long upon this subject, not merely upon account of its own corrupt
+character, which has been sufficiently stigmatized by my honorable
+colleague, but upon account of the principle that is laid down by the
+prisoner, in his defence of his conduct,--a principle directly leading
+to a continuance of the same iniquitous practice, and subversive of
+every attempt to check or control it.
+
+I must beg leave to recall your Lordships' attention to another, but
+similar instance of his peculation, another and new mode of taking
+presents: I mean, the present which Mr. Hastings took, through Gunga
+Govind Sing, from those farmers of the revenues amongst whom he had
+distributed the pillage of the whole country. This scandalous breach of
+his covenant he attempts to justify by the inward intention of his own
+mind to apply the money so taken to the public service. Upon this, my
+Lords, I shall only observe, that this plea of an inward intention in
+his own mind may, if admitted, justify any evil act whatever of this
+kind. You have seen how presents from the Nabob are justified; you have
+seen how the taking a sum of money or allowance for entertainment,
+directly contrary to the covenant, how that is attempted to be
+justified; you see in what manner he justifies this last-mentioned act
+of peculation; and your Lordships will now have to decide upon the
+validity of these pleas.
+
+There still remains, unobserved upon, an instance of his malversation,
+wholly new in its kind, to which I will venture to desire your Lordships
+very seriously to turn your attention. In all the causes of peculation
+or malversation in office that ever have been tried before this high
+court, or before any lower court of judicature, in all the judicial
+records of modern crimes, or of antiquity, you will not find anything in
+any degree like it. We have all, in our early education, read the
+Verrine Orations. We read them not merely to instruct us, as they will
+do, in the principles of eloquence, and to acquaint us with the manners,
+customs, and laws of the ancient Romans, of which they are an abundant
+repository, but we may read them from a much higher motive. We may read
+them from a motive which the great author had doubtless in his view,
+when by publishing them he left to the world and to the latest posterity
+a monument by which it might be seen what course a great public accuser
+in a great public cause ought to pursue, and, as connected with it, what
+course judges ought to pursue in deciding upon such a cause. In these
+orations you will find almost every instance of rapacity and peculation
+which we charge upon Mr. Hastings. Undoubtedly, many Roman and English
+governors have received corrupt gifts and bribes, under various
+pretences. But in the cause before your Lordships there is one species
+of disgrace, in the conduct of the party accused, which I defy you to
+find in Verres, or in the whole tribe of Roman peculators, in any
+governor-general, proconsul, or viceroy. I desire you to consider it not
+included in any other class of crimes, but as a species apart by itself.
+It is an individual, a single case; but it is like the phœnix,--it
+makes a class or species by itself: I mean the business of Nobkissin.
+The money taken from him was not money pretended to be received in lieu
+of entertainment; it was not money taken from a farmer-general of
+revenue, out of an idea that his profits were unreasonable, and greater
+than government ought to allow; it was not a donation from a great man,
+as an act of his bounty. No, it was a sum of money taken from a private
+individual,--or rather, as has been proved to you by Mr. Larkins, his
+own book-keeper, money borrowed, for which he had engaged to give his
+bond. That he had actually deposited his bond for this money Mr. Larkins
+has proved to you,--and that the bond was carried to Nobkissin's credit,
+in his account with the government. But Mr. Hastings, when he was
+called upon for the money, withdraws the bond; he will not pay the
+money; he refused to pay it upon the applications made to him both in
+India and here at home; and he now comes to your Lordships and says, "I
+borrowed this money, I intended to give my bond for it, as has been
+proved before you; but I must have it for my own use." We have heard of
+governors being everything that is bad and wicked; but a governor
+putting himself in the situation of a common cheat, of a common
+swindler, never was, I believe, heard of since the creation of the world
+to this day. This does not taste of the common oppressions of power;
+this does not taste of the common abuses of office; but it in no way
+differs from one of those base swindling cases that come to be tried and
+heavily punished in the King's Bench every day. This is neither more nor
+less than a plain, barefaced cheat.
+
+Now, my Lords, let us see how it is justified. To justify openly and
+directly a cheat, to justify a fraud upon an individual, is reserved for
+our times. But, good Heavens, what a justification have we here! Oh, my
+Lords, consider into what a state Indian corruption has brought us in
+this country, when any person can be found to come to the bar of the
+House of Lords and say, "I did cheat, I did defraud; I did promise, and
+gave my bond; I have now withdrawn it, but I will account for it to you
+as to a gang of robbers concerned with me in the transaction. I confess
+I robbed this man; but I have acted as trustee for the gang. Observe
+what I have done for the gang. Come forward, Mr. Auriol, and prove what
+handsome budgeros I gave the company: were not they elegantly painted,
+beautifully gilt, charming and commodious? I made use of them as long
+as I had occasion; and though they are little worse for wear, and would
+hardly suffer the least percentage deduction from prime cost upon them,
+I gave them to the company. Oh, I did not put the money into my own
+pocket. I provided for myself and wore a suit of lace clothes, when I
+was Jew bail for some of this company: it will turn, for it is hardly
+the worse for wear, though I appeared two or three times, in different
+characters, as bail for you on such and such an occasion. I therefore
+set off these items against this money which I gained by swindling on
+your account. It is true I also picked such a one's pocket of a watch;
+here it is; I have worn it as long as it was convenient; now I give the
+watch to the company, and let them send it to the pawnbroker for what it
+will bring. Besides all this, I maintained aide-de-camps for you, and
+gave them house-rent." (By the way, my Lords, what sort of aide-de-camps
+were these? Who made him a military man, and to have such a legion of
+aide-de-camps?) "But," says he, "I paid house-rent for them; that is, in
+other words, I paid, at night-cellars and houses in Saint Giles's,
+sixpence a week for some of the gang." (This, my Lords, is the real
+spirit of the whole proceeding, and more especially of the last item in
+it.) "Then," says he, "I was the gang's schoolmaster, and taught lessons
+on their account. I founded a Mahometan school." (Your Lordships have
+already heard something of this shameful affair, of this scene of
+iniquity,--I think of such iniquity as the world never yet had to blush
+at.) "I founded a Mahometan college for your use; and I bore the expense
+of it from September, 1780, when I placed a professor there, called
+Mudjed-o-Din."--This Mudjed-o-Din was to perfect men, by contract, in
+all the arts and sciences, in about six months; and the chief purpose of
+the school was, as Mr. Hastings himself tells you, to breed theologians,
+magistrates, and moulavies, that is to say, judges and doctors of law,
+who were to be something like our masters in chancery, the assessors of
+judges, to assist them in their judgments. Such was the college founded
+by Mr. Hastings, and he soon afterwards appropriated one of the
+Company's estates, (I am speaking of matters of public notoriety,) worth
+3,000_l._ a year, for its support. Heaven be praised, that Mr. Hastings,
+when he was resolved to be pious and munificent, and to be a great
+founder, chose a Mahometan rather than a Christian foundation, so that
+our religion was not disgraced by such a foundation!
+
+Observe how he charges the expense of the foundation to the Company
+twice over. He first makes them set aside an estate of 3,000_l._ a year
+for its support. In what manner this income was applied during Mr.
+Hastings's stay in India no man living knows; but we know, that, at his
+departure, one of the last acts he did was to desire it should be put
+into the hands of Mudjed-o-Din. He afterwards, as you have seen, takes
+credit to himself with the Company for the expenses relative to this
+college.
+
+I must now introduce your Lordships to the last visitation that was made
+of this college. It was visited by order of Lord Cornwallis in the year
+1788, upon the complaints made against it which I have already mentioned
+to your Lordships,--that it was a sink of filth, vermin, and misery. Mr.
+Chapman, who was the visitor, and the friend of Mr. Hastings, declares
+that he could not sit in it even for a few minutes; his words are,--"The
+wretched, squalid figures that from every part ran out upon me appeared
+to be more like anything else than students." In fact, a universal
+outcry was raised by the whole city against it, not only as a receptacle
+of every kind of abuse, not only of filth and excrements which made it
+stink in the natural nostrils, but of worse filth, which made it
+insufferably offensive to the moral nostrils of every inhabitant. Such
+is the account given of a college supported at an expense of 3,000_l._ a
+year, (a handsome foundation for a college,) and for building which the
+Company was charged 5,000_l._: though no vouchers of its expenditure
+were ever given by Mr. Hastings. But this is not all. When Lord
+Cornwallis came to inquire into it, he found that Mudjed-o-Din had sunk
+the income of the estate from 3,000_l._ to 2,000_l._ a year,--in short,
+that it had been a scene of peculation, both by the masters and
+scholars, as well as of abandonment to every kind of vicious and
+licentious courses; and all this without the shadow of any benefit
+having been derived from it. The visitors expressly inquired whether
+there was any good mixed with all this evil; and they found it was all
+bad and mischievous, from one end to the other. Your Lordships will
+remark, that the greatest part of this disgusting business must have
+been known to Mr. Hastings when he gave to Mudjed-o-Din the disposal of
+3,000_l._ a year. And now, my Lords, can you vote this money, expended
+in the manner which I have stated to you, to be a set-off in his favor,
+in an account for money which was itself swindled from a private
+individual?
+
+But there still remains behind another more serious matter belonging to
+this affair; and I hope you will not think that I am laying too much
+stress upon it, when I declare, that, if I were to select from the whole
+of his conduct one thing more dishonorable than another to the British
+nation, it would be that which I am now about to mention. I will leave
+your Lordships to judge of the sincerity of this declaration, when you
+shall have heard read a paper produced by the prisoner in justification
+of conduct such as I have stated his to have been. It is the _razinama_,
+or attestation, of Munny Begum (the woman whom Mr. Hastings placed in
+the seat of justice in that country) concerning this college, made
+precisely at the time of this inquisition by Lord Cornwallis into the
+management of it. Your Lordships will see what sort of things
+attestations are from that country: that they are attestations procured
+in diametrical contradiction to the certain knowledge of the party
+attesting. It is in page 2350 of your Minutes. Indeed, my Lords, these
+are pages which, unless they are effaced by your judgment, will rise up
+in judgment against us, some day or other.
+
+     "He [Mr. Hastings] respected the learned and wise men, and, in
+     order for the propagation of learning, he built a college, and
+     endowed it with a provision for the maintenance of the students,
+     insomuch that thousands reaping the benefits thereof offer up their
+     prayers for the prosperity of the King of England, and for the
+     success of the Company."
+
+I must here remind your Lordships of another attestation of the same
+character, and to the same effect. It comes from Mahomed Reza Khân, who,
+as your Lordships will remember, had been reduced by Mr. Hastings from
+a situation of the highest rank and authority, with an income of
+suitable magnitude, to one of comparative insignificance, with a small
+salary annexed. This man is made to disgrace himself, and to abet the
+disgrace and injury done to his country, by bearing his testimony to the
+merits of this very college.
+
+I hope your Lordships will never lose sight of this aggravating
+circumstance of the prisoner's criminality,--namely, that you never find
+any wicked, fraudulent, and criminal act, in which you do not find the
+persons who suffered by it, and must have been well acquainted with it,
+to be the very persons who are brought to attest in its favor. O Heaven!
+but let shame for one moment veil its face, let indignation suppress its
+feelings, whilst I again call upon you to view all this as a mere
+swindling transaction, in which the prisoner was attempting to defraud
+the Company.
+
+Mr. Hastings has declared, and you will find it upon the Company's
+records, that this institution (which cost the Company not less than
+40,000_l._ in one way or other) did not commence before October in the
+year 1780; and he brings it before the board in April, 1781,--that is,
+about six months after its foundation. Now look at his other account, in
+which he makes it to begin in the year 1779, and in which he has
+therefore overcharged the expenses of it a whole year.--But Mr. Larkins,
+who kept this latter account for him, may have been inaccurate.--Good
+Heavens! where are we? Mr. Hastings, who was bred an accountant, who was
+bred in all sorts of trade and business, declares that he keeps no
+accounts. Then comes Mr. Larkins, who keeps an account for him; but he
+keeps a false account. Indeed, all the accounts from India, from one
+end to another, are nothing but a series of fraud, while Mr. Hastings
+was concerned in them. Mr. Larkins, who keeps his private account just
+as his master kept the public accounts, has swindled from the Company a
+whole year's expenses of this college. I should not thus repeatedly
+dwell upon this transaction, but because I wish your Lordships to be
+cautious how you admit such accounts at all to be given in evidence,
+into the truth of which you cannot penetrate in any regular way. Upon
+the face of the two accounts there is a gross fraud. It is no matter
+which is true or false, as it is an account which you are in no
+situation to decide upon. I lay down this as a fixed judicial rule, that
+no judge ought to receive an account (which, is as serious a part of a
+judicial proceeding as can be) the correctness of which he has no means
+of ascertaining, but must depend upon the sole word of the accountant.
+
+Having stated, therefore, the nature of the offence, which differs
+nothing from a common dog-trot fraud, such as we see amongst the meanest
+of mankind, your Lordships will be cautious how you admit these, or any
+other of his pretended services, to be set off against his crimes. These
+stand on record confessed before you; the former, of which you can form
+no just estimate, and into which you cannot enter, rest for their truth
+upon his own assertions, and they all are found, upon the very face of
+them, to carry marks of fraud as well as of wickedness.
+
+I have only further to observe to your Lordships, that this
+Mudjed-o-Din, who, under the patronage of Mr. Hastings, was to do all
+these wonders, Lord Cornwallis turned out of his office with every mark
+of disgrace, when he attempted to put into some more respectable state
+that establishment which Mr. Hastings had made a sink of abuse.
+
+I here conclude all that I have to say upon this business, trusting that
+your Lordships will feel yourselves more offended, and justice more
+insulted, by the defence than by the criminal acts of the prisoner at
+your bar; and that your Lordships will concur with us in thinking, that
+to make this unhappy people make these attestations, knowing the direct
+contrary of every word which they say to be the truth, is a shocking
+aggravation of his guilt. I say they must know it; for Lord Cornwallis
+tells you it is notorious; and if you think fit to inquire into it, you
+will find that it was unusually notorious.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, we have now brought to a conclusion our observations upon the
+effects produced by that mass of oppression which we have stated and
+proved before your Lordships,--namely, its effects upon the revenues,
+and upon the public servants of the Company. We have shown you how
+greatly the former were diminished, and in what manner the latter were
+reduced to the worst of all bad states, a state of subserviency to the
+will of the Governor-General. I have shown your Lordships that in this
+state they were not only rendered incapable of performing their own
+duty, but were fitted for the worst of all purposes, coöperation with
+him in the perpetration of his criminal acts, and collusion with him in
+the concealment of them. I have lastly to speak of these effects as they
+regard the general state and welfare of the country. And here your
+Lordships will permit me to read the evidence given by Lord Cornwallis,
+a witness called by the prisoner at your bar, Mr. Hastings himself.
+
+
+     _The Evidence of Lord Cornwallis. Page 2721._
+
+     "_Q._ Whether your Lordship recollects an account that you have
+     given to the Court of Directors, in your letter of the 2d of
+     August, 1789, concerning the state of those provinces?--_A._ I
+     really could not venture to be particular as to any letter I may
+     have written so long since, as I have brought no copies of my
+     letters with me from India, having left them at Bengal when I went
+     to the coast.--_Q._ Whether your Lordship recollects, in any letter
+     that you wrote about the 2d of August, 1789, paragraph 18, any
+     expressions to this effect, namely: 'I am sorry to be obliged to
+     say, that agriculture and internal commerce have for many years
+     been gradually declining, and that at present, excepting the class
+     of shroffs and banians, who reside almost entirely in great towns,
+     the inhabitants of these provinces are advancing hastily to a
+     general state of poverty and wretchedness':--whether your Lordship
+     recollects that you have written a letter to that effect?--_A._ I
+     cannot take upon me to recollect the words of a letter that I have
+     written five years ago, but I conclude I must have written to that
+     effect.--_Q._ Whether your Lordship recollects that in the
+     immediately following paragraph, the 19th, you wrote to this
+     effect: 'In this description' (namely, the foregone description) 'I
+     must even include almost every zemindar in the Company's
+     territories, which, though it may have been partly occasioned by
+     their own indolence and extravagance, I am afraid must also be in a
+     great measure attributed to the defects of our former system of
+     management.' (Paragraph 20.) 'The settlement, in conformity to
+     your orders, will only be made for ten years certain, with the
+     notification of its being your intention to declare it a perpetual,
+     an unalterable assessment of these provinces, if the amount and the
+     principles upon which it has been made should meet with your
+     approbation':--whether your Lordship recollects to have written
+     something to the effect of these two last paragraphs, as well as of
+     the first?--_A._ I do recollect that I did write it; but in that
+     letter I alluded to the former system of annual assessments.--_Q._
+     Whether your Lordship recollects that you wrote, on or about the
+     18th of September, 1789, in one of your minutes, thus: 'I may
+     safely assert that one third of the Company's territory in
+     Hindostan is now a jungle, inhabited only by wild beasts: will a
+     ten years' lease induce any proprietor to clear away that jungle,
+     and encourage the ryot to come and cultivate his lands, when at the
+     end of that lease he must either submit to be taxed _ad libitum_
+     for the newly cultivated lands, or lose all hopes of deriving any
+     benefit from his labor, for which perhaps by that time he will
+     hardly be repaid?'--whether your Lordship recollects a minute to
+     that effect?--_A._ I perfectly recollect to have written that
+     minute.--_Q._ Now with respect to a letter, dated November the 3d,
+     1788, paragraph 38, containing the following sentiments: 'I shall
+     therefore only remark in general, that, from frequent changes of
+     system or other reasons, much is wanting to establish good order
+     and regulations in the internal business of the country, and that,
+     from various causes, by far the greatest part of the zemindars, and
+     other landholders and renters, are fallen into a state much below
+     that of wealth and affluence. This country, however, when the
+     fertility of its soil, and the industry and ingenuity of its
+     numerous inhabitants are taken into consideration, must
+     unquestionably be admitted to be one of the finest in the world;
+     and, with the uniform attention of government to moderation in
+     exaction, and to a due administration of justice, may long prove a
+     source of great riches both to the Company and to Britain.'
+     (Paragraph 39.) 'I am persuaded, that, by a train of judicious
+     measures, the land revenue of these provinces is capable in time of
+     being increased; but, consistent with the principles of humanity,
+     and even those of your own interest, it is only by adopting
+     measures for the gradual cultivation and improvement of these waste
+     lands, and by a gentle and cautious plan for the resumption of
+     lands that have been fraudulently alienated, that it ought ever to
+     be attempted to be accomplished. Men of speculative and sanguine
+     dispositions, and others, either from ignorance of the subject, or
+     with views of recommending themselves to your favor, may
+     confidently hold forth specious grounds to encourage you to hope
+     that a great and immediate accession to that branch of your revenue
+     might be practicable. My public duty obliges me to caution you, in
+     the most serious manner, against listening to propositions which
+     recommend this attempt; because I am clearly convinced, that, if
+     carried into execution, they would be attended with the most
+     baneful consequences.' (Paragraph 40.) 'Desperate adventurers,
+     without fortune or character, would undoubtedly be found, as has
+     already been too often experienced, to rent the different districts
+     of the country at the highest rates that could be put upon them;
+     that [but?] the delusion would be of a short duration, and the
+     impolicy and inhumanity of the plan would, when perhaps too late
+     for effectual remedy, become apparent by the complaints of the
+     people and the disappointments at the treasury in the payments of
+     the revenue, and would probably terminate in the ruin and
+     depopulation of the unfortunate country':--whether your Lordship
+     recollects to have written anything to that effect about that
+     time?--_A._ I perfectly recollect having written the extracts that
+     have been read."
+
+My Lords, Lord Cornwallis has been called, he has been examined before
+you. We stopped our proceedings ten days for the purpose of taking his
+evidence. We do not regret this delay. And he has borne the testimony
+which you have heard to the effects of Mr. Hastings's government of a
+country once the most fertile and cultivated, of a people the most
+industrious, flourishing, and happy,--that the one was wasted and
+desolated, the other reduced to a condition of want and misery, and that
+the zemindars, that is, the nobility and gentry of the country, were so
+beggared as not to be able to give even a common decent education to
+their children, notwithstanding the foundation of Mr. Hastings's
+colleges. You have heard this noble person, who had been an eye-witness
+of what he relates, supplicating for their relief, and expressly stating
+that most of the complicated miseries, and perhaps the cruelest of the
+afflictions they endured, arose from the management of the country
+having been taken out of the hands of its natural rulers, and given up
+to Mr. Hastings's farmers, namely, the banians of Calcutta. These are
+the things that ought to go to your Lordships' hearts. You see a country
+wasted and desolated. You see a third of it become a jungle for wild
+beasts. You see the other parts oppressed by persons in the form and
+shape of men, but with all the character and disposition of beasts of
+prey. This state of the country is brought before you, and by the most
+unexceptionable evidence,--being brought forward through Mr. Hastings
+himself. This evidence, whatever opinion you may entertain of the
+effrontery or of the impudence of the criminal who has produced it, is
+of double and treble force. And yet at the very time when Lord
+Cornwallis is giving this statement of the country and its inhabitants,
+at the very time when he is calling for pity upon their condition, are
+these people brought forward to bear testimony to the benign and
+auspicious government of Mr. Hastings, directed, as your Lordships know
+it was, by the merciful and upright Gunga Govind Sing.
+
+My Lords, you have now the evidence of Lord Cornwallis on the one hand,
+and the razinamas of India on the other. But before I dismiss this part
+of my subject, I must call your Lordships' attention to another
+authority,--to a declaration, strictly speaking, _legal_, of the state
+to which our Indian provinces were reduced, and of the oppressions which
+they have suffered, during the government of Mr. Hastings: I speak of
+the act 24 Geo. III. cap. 25, intituled, "An act for the better
+regulation and management of the affairs of the East India Company, and
+of the British possessions in India, and for establishing a court of
+judicature for the more speedy and effectual trial of persons accused of
+offences committed in the East Indies," § 39.
+
+My Lords, here is an act of Parliament; here are regulations enacted in
+consequence of an inquiry which had been directed to be made into the
+grievances of India, for the redress of them. This act of Parliament
+declares the existence of oppressions in the country. What oppressions
+were they? The oppressions which it suffered by being let out to the
+farmers of the Company's revenues. Who was the person that sold these
+revenues to the farmers? Warren Hastings. By whom were these oppressions
+notified to the Court of Directors? By Lord Cornwallis. Upon what
+occasion were these letters written by my Lord Cornwallis? They were
+answers to inquiries made by the Court of Directors, and ordered by an
+act of Parliament to be made. The existence, then, of the grievances,
+and the cause of them, are expressly declared in an act of Parliament.
+It orders an inquiry; and Lord Cornwallis, in consequence of that
+inquiry, transmits to the Court of Directors this very information; he
+gives you this identical state of the country: so that it is
+consolidated, mixed, and embodied with an act of Parliament itself,
+which no power on earth, I trust, but the power that made it, can shake.
+I trust, I say, that neither we, the Commons, nor you, the Lords, nor
+his Majesty, the sovereign of this country, can shake one word of this
+act of Parliament,--can invalidate the truth of its declaration, or the
+authority of the persons, men of high honor and character, that made
+that inquiry and this report. Your Lordships must repeal this act in
+order to acquit Mr. Hastings.
+
+But Mr. Hastings and his counsel have produced evidence against this act
+of Parliament, against the order of the Court of Directors by which an
+inquiry and report were made under that act, against Lord Cornwallis's
+return to that inquiry; and now, once for all, hear what the miserable
+wretches are themselves made to say, to invalidate the act of
+Parliament, to invalidate the authority of the Court of Directors, to
+invalidate the evidence of an official return of Lord Cornwallis under
+the act. Pray hear what these miserable creatures describe as an
+elysium, speaking with rapture of their satisfaction, under the
+government of Mr. Hastings.
+
+     "All we zemindars, chowdries, and talookdars of the district of
+     Akbarnagur, commonly called Rajamahal, in the kingdom of Bengal,
+     have heard that the gentlemen in England are displeased with Mr.
+     Hastings, on suspicion that he oppressed us inhabitants of this
+     place, took our money by deceit and force, and ruined the country;
+     therefore we, upon the strength of our religion and religious
+     tenets, which we hold as a duty upon us, and in order to act
+     conformable to the duties of God in delivering evidence, relate the
+     praiseworthy actions, full of prudence and rectitude, friendship
+     and politeness, of Mr. Hastings, possessed of great abilities and
+     understanding, and, by representing facts, remove the doubts that
+     have possessed the minds of the gentlemen in England;--that Mr.
+     Hastings distributed protection and security to religion, and
+     kindness and peace to all; he is free from the charge of
+     embezzlement and fraud, and that his heart is void of covetousness
+     and avidity; during the period of his government, no one
+     experienced from him other than protection and justice, never
+     having felt hardships from him, nor did the poor ever know the
+     weight of an oppressive hand from him; our characters and
+     reputations have always been guarded in quiet from attack by the
+     vigilance of his power and foresight, and preserved by the terror
+     of his justice; he never omitted the smallest instance of kindness
+     and goodness towards us and those entitled to it, but always
+     applied by soothings and mildness the salve of comfort to the
+     wounds of affliction, not allowing a single person to be
+     overwhelmed by despair; he displayed his friendship and kindness to
+     all; he destroyed the power of the enemies and wicked men by the
+     strength of his terror; he tied the hands of tyrants and oppressors
+     by his justice, and by this conduct he secured happiness and joy to
+     us; he reëstablished the foundation of justice, and we at all
+     times, during his government, lived in comfort and passed our days
+     in peace; we are many, many of us satisfied and pleased with him.
+     As Mr. Hastings was perfectly well acquainted with the manners and
+     customs of these countries, he was always desirous of performing
+     that which would tend to the preservation of our religion, and of
+     the duties of our sects, and guard the religious customs of each
+     from the effects of misfortune and accidents; in every sense he
+     treated us with attention and respect. We have represented without
+     deceit what we have ourselves seen, and the facts that happened
+     from him."
+
+This, my Lords, is in page 2374 of the printed Minutes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, we spare you the reading of a great number of these
+attestations; they are all written in the same style; and it must appear
+to your Lordships a little extraordinary, that, as they are said to be
+totally voluntary, as the people are represented to be crowding to make
+these testimonials, there should be such an unison in the heart to
+produce a language that is so uniform as not to vary so much as in a
+single tittle,--that every part of the country, every province, every
+district, men of every caste and of every religion, should all unite in
+expressing their sentiments in the very same words and in the very same
+phrases. I must fairly say it is a kind of miraculous concurrence, a
+miraculous gratitude. Mr. Hastings says that gratitude is lost in this
+part of the world. There it blooms and flourishes in a way not to be
+described. In proportion as you hear of the miseries and distresses of
+these very people, in the same proportion do they express their comfort
+and satisfaction, and that they never knew what a grievance was of any
+sort. Lord Cornwallis finds them aggrieved, the Court of Directors find
+them aggrieved, the Parliament of Great Britain find them aggrieved, and
+the court here find them aggrieved; but they never found themselves
+aggrieved. Their being turned out of house and home, and having all
+their land given to farmers of revenue for five years to riot in and
+despoil them of all they had, is what fills them with rapture. They are
+the only people, I believe, upon the face of the earth, that have no
+complaints to make of their government, in any instance whatever. Theirs
+must be something superior to the government of angels; for I verily
+believe, that, if one out of the choir of the heavenly angels were sent
+to govern the earth, such is the nature of man, that many would be found
+discontented with it. But these people have no complaint, they feel no
+hardships, no sorrow; Mr. Hastings has realized more than the golden
+age. I am ashamed for human nature, I am ashamed for our government, I
+am ashamed for this court of justice, that these things are brought
+before us; but here they are, and we must observe upon them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, we have done, on our part; we have made out our case; and it
+only remains for me to make a few observations upon what Mr. Hastings
+has thought proper to put forward in his defence. Does he meet our case
+with anything but these general attestations, upon which I must first
+remark, that there is not one single matter of fact touched upon in
+them? Your Lordships will observe, and you may hunt them out through the
+whole body of your minutes, that you do not find a single fact mentioned
+in any of them. But there is an abundance of panegyric; and if we were
+doing nothing but making satires, as the newspapers charge us with
+doing, against Mr. Hastings, panegyric would be a good answer.
+
+But Mr. Hastings sets up pleas of merit upon this occasion. Now,
+undoubtedly, no plea of merit can be admitted to extinguish, as your
+Lordships know very well, a direct charge of crime. Merit cannot
+extinguish crime. For instance, if Lord Howe, to whom this country owes
+so much as it owes this day for the great and glorious victory which
+makes our hearts glad, and I hope will insure the security of this
+country,--yet if Lord Howe, I say, was charged with embezzling the
+King's stores, or applying them in any manner unbecoming his situation,
+to any shameful or scandalous purpose,--if he was accused of taking
+advantage of his station, to oppress any of the captains of his
+ships,--if he was stated to have gone into a port of the allies of this
+country, and to have plundered the inhabitants, to have robbed their
+women, and broken into the recesses of their apartments,--if he had
+committed atrocities like these, his glorious victory could not change
+the nature and quality of such acts. My Lord Malmesbury has been lately
+sent to the King of Prussia; we hope and trust that his embassy will be
+successful, and that this country will derive great benefit from his
+negotiations; but if Lord Malmesbury, from any subsidy that was to be
+paid to the King of Prussia, was to put 50,000_l._ in his own pocket, I
+believe that his making a good and advantageous treaty with the King of
+Prussia would never be thought a good defence for him. We admit, that,
+if a man has done great and eminent services, though they cannot be a
+defence against a charge of crimes, and cannot obliterate them, yet,
+when sentence comes to be passed upon such a man, you will consider,
+first, whether his transgressions were common lapses of human frailty,
+and whether the nature and weight of the grievances resulting from them
+were light in comparison with the services performed. I say that you
+cannot acquit him; but your Lordships might think some pity due to him,
+that might mitigate the severity of your sentence. In the second place,
+you would consider whether the evidence of the services alleged to be
+performed was as clear and undoubted as that of the crimes charged. I
+confess, that, if a man has done great services, it may be some
+alleviation of lighter faults; but then they ought to be urged as
+such,--with modesty, with humility, with confession of the faults, and
+not with a proud and insolent defiance. They should not be stated as
+proofs that he stands justified in the eye of mankind for committing
+unexampled and enormous crimes. Indeed, humility, suppliant guilt,
+always makes impression in our bosoms, so that, when we see it before
+us, we always remember that we are all frail men; and nothing but a
+proud defiance of law and justice can make us forget this for one
+moment. I believe the Commons of Great Britain, and I hope the persons
+that speak to you, know very well how to allow for the faults and
+frailties of mankind equitably.
+
+Let us now see what are the merits which Mr. Hastings has set up against
+the just vengeance of his country, and against his proved delinquencies.
+From the language of the prisoner, and of his counsel, you would imagine
+some great, known, acknowledged services had been done by him. Your
+Lordships recollect that most of these presumed services have been
+considered, and we are persuaded justly considered, as in themselves
+crimes. He wishes your Lordships to suppose and believe that these
+services were put aside either because we could not prove the facts
+against him or could not make out that they were criminal, and
+consequently that your Lordships ought to presume them to have been
+meritorious; and this is one of the grounds upon which he demands to be
+acquitted of the charges that have been brought forward and proved
+against him. Finding in our proceedings, and recorded upon our journals,
+an immense mass of criminality with which he is charged, and finding
+that we had selected, as we were bound to select, such parts as might be
+most conveniently brought before your Lordships, (for to have gone
+through the whole would have been nearly impossible,) he takes all the
+rest that we have left behind and have not brought here as charges, and
+converts them, by a strange metamorphosis, into merits.
+
+My Lords, we must insist, on the part of the House of Commons, we must
+conjure your Lordships, for the honor of a coördinate branch of the
+legislature, that, whenever you are called upon to admit what we have
+condemned as crimes to be merits, you will at least give us an
+opportunity of being heard upon the matter,--that you will not suffer
+Mr. Hastings, when attempting to defend himself against our charges, in
+an indirect and oblique manner to condemn or censure the House of
+Commons itself, as having misrepresented to be crimes the acts of a
+meritorious servant of the public. Mr. Hastings has pleaded a variety of
+merits, and every one of these merits, without the exception of one of
+them, have been either directly censured by the House of Commons, and
+censured as a ground for legislative provision, or they remain upon the
+records of the House of Commons, with the vouchers for them, and proofs;
+and though we have not actually come to the question upon every one of
+them, we had come, before the year 1782, to forty-five direct
+resolutions upon his conduct. These resolutions were moved by a person
+to whom this country is under many obligations, and whom we must always
+mention with honor, whenever we are speaking of high situations in this
+country, and of great talents to support them, and of long public
+services in the House of Commons: I mean Mr. Dundas, then Lord Advocate
+of Scotland, and now one of the principal Secretaries of State, and at
+the head, and worthily and deservedly at the head, of the East Indian
+department. This distinguished statesman moved forty-five resolutions,
+the major part of them directly condemning these very acts which Mr.
+Hastings has pleaded as his merits, as being delinquencies and crimes.
+All that the House of Commons implore of your Lordships is, that you
+will not take these things, which we call crimes, to be merits, without
+hearing the House of Commons upon the subject-matter of them. I am sure
+you are too noble and too generous, as well as too just and equitable,
+to act in such a manner.
+
+The first thing that Mr. Hastings brings forward in his defence is,
+that, whereas the Company were obliged to pay a certain tribute to the
+Mogul, in consideration of a grant by which the Moguls gave to us the
+legal title under which we hold the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and
+Orissa, he did stop the payment of that tribute, or acknowledgment,
+small as it was,--that, though bound by a treaty recognized by the
+Company and recognized by the nation, though bound by the very sunnud by
+which he held the very office he was exercising, yet he had broken the
+treaty, and refused to pay the stipulated acknowledgment. Where are we,
+my Lords? Is this merit? Good God Almighty! the greatest blockhead, the
+most ignorant, miserable wretch, a person without either virtue or
+talents, has nothing to do but to order a clerk to strike a pen through
+such an account, and then to make a merit of it to you. "Oh!" says he,
+"I have by a mere breach of your faith, by a single dash of my pen,
+saved you all this money which you were bound to pay. I have exonerated
+you from the payment of it. I have gained you 250,000_l._ a year
+forever. Will you not reward a person who did you such a great and
+important service, by conniving a little at his delinquencies?"
+
+But the House of Commons will not allow that this was a great and
+important service; on the contrary, they have declared the act itself to
+be censurable. There is our resolution,--Resolution the 7th:--
+
+"That the conduct of the Company and their servants in India to the
+King," (meaning the Mogul king) "and Nudjif Khân, with respect to the
+tribute payable to the one, and the stipend to the other, and with
+respect to the transfer of the provinces of Corah, and Allahabad to the
+Vizier, was contrary to policy and good faith; and that such wise and
+practicable measures should be adopted in future as may tend to redeem
+the national honor, and recover the confidence and attachment of the
+princes of India."
+
+This act of injustice, against which we have fulminated the thunder of
+our resolutions as a heavy crime, as a crime that dishonored the nation,
+and which measures ought to be taken to redress, this man has the
+insolence to bring before your Lordships as a set-off against the crimes
+we charge him with. This outrageous defiance of the House of Commons,
+this outrageous defiance of all the laws of his country, I hope your
+Lordships will not countenance. You will not let it pass for nothing: on
+the contrary, you will consider it as aggravating heavily his crimes.
+And, above all, you will not suffer him to set off this, which we have
+declared to be injurious to our national honor and credit, and which he
+himself does not deny to be a breach of the public faith, against other
+breaches of the public faith with which we charge him,--or to justify
+one class of public crimes by proving that he has committed others.
+
+Your Lordships see that he justifies this crime upon the plea of its
+being profitable to the Company; but he shall not march off even on this
+ground with flying colors. My Lords, pray observe in what manner he
+calculates these profits. Your Lordships will find that he makes up the
+account of them much in the same manner as he made up the account of
+Nobkissin's money. There is, indeed, no account which he has ever
+brought forth that does not carry upon it not only ill faith and
+national dishonor, but direct proofs of corruption. When Mr. Hastings
+values himself upon this shocking and outrageous breach of faith, which
+required nothing but a base and illiberal mind, without either talents,
+courage, or skill, except that courage which defies all consequences,
+which defies shame, which defies the judgment and opinion of his country
+and of mankind, no other talents than may be displayed by the dash of a
+pen, you will at least expect to see a clear and distinct account of
+what was gained by it.
+
+In the year 1775, at a period when Mr. Hastings was under an eclipse,
+when honor and virtue, in the character of General Clavering, Colonel
+Monson, and Mr. Francis, sat for a short period at the
+Council-Board,--during that time, Mr. Hastings's conduct upon this
+occasion was called into question. They called for an account of the
+revenues of the country,--what was received, and what had been paid; and
+in the account returned they found the amount of the tribute due to the
+Mogul, 250,000_l._, entered as paid up to October, 1774. Thus far all
+appeared fair upon the face of it; they took it for granted, as your
+Lordships would take it for granted, at the first view, that the tribute
+in reality had been paid up to the time stated. The books were balanced:
+you find a debtor; you find a creditor; every item posted in as regular
+a manner as possible. Whilst they were examining this account, a Mr.
+Croftes, of whom your Lordships have heard very often, as
+accountant-general, comes forward and declares that there was a little
+error in the account. And what was the error? That he had entered the
+Mogul's tribute for one year more than it had actually been paid. Here
+we have the small error of a payment to the Mogul of 250,000_l._ This
+appeared strange. "Why," says Mr. Croftes, "I never discovered it; nor
+was it ever intimated to me that it had been stopped from October, 1773,
+till the other day, when I was informed that I ought not to have made an
+entry of the last payments." These were his expressions. You will find
+the whole relation in the Bengal Appendix, printed by the orders of the
+Court of Directors. When Mr. Croftes was asked a very natural question,
+"Who first told you of your mistake? who acquainted you with Mr.
+Hastings's orders that the payment should be expunged from the account?"
+what is his answer? It is an answer worthy of Mr. Middleton, an answer
+worthy of Mr. Larkins, or of any of the other white banians of Mr.
+Hastings:--"Oh, I have forgotten." Here you have an accountant-general
+kept in ignorance, or who pretends to be ignorant, of so large a payment
+as 250,000_l._; who enters it falsely in his account; and when asked who
+apprised him of his mistake, says that he has really forgotten.
+
+Oh, my Lords, what resources there are in oblivion! what resources there
+are in bad memory! No genius ever has done so much for mankind as this
+mental defect has done for Mr. Hastings's accountants. It was said by
+one of the ancient philosophers, to a man who proposed to teach people
+memory,--"I wish you could teach me oblivion; I wish you could teach me
+to forget." These people have certainly not been taught the art of
+memory, but they appear perfect masters of the art of forgetting. My
+Lords, this is not all; and I must request your Lordships' attention to
+the whole of the account, as it appears in the account of the arrears
+due to the King, annexed to your minutes. Here is a kind of labyrinth,
+where fraud runs into fraud. On the credit side you find stated there,
+eight lacs paid to the Vizier, and to be taken from the Mogul's tribute,
+for the support of an army, of which he himself had stipulated to bear
+the whole expenses. These eight lacs are thus fraudulently accounted for
+upon the face of the thing; and with respect to eighteen lacs, the
+remainder of the tribute, there is no account given of it at all. This
+sum Mr. Hastings must, therefore, have pocketed for his own use, or that
+of his gang of peculators; and whilst he was pretending to save you
+eight lacs by one fraud, he committed another fraud of eighteen lacs for
+himself: and this is the method by which one act of peculation begets
+another in the economy of fraud.
+
+Thus much of these affairs I think myself bound to state to your
+Lordships upon this occasion; for, although not one word has been
+produced by the counsel to support the allegations of the prisoner at
+your bar, yet, knowing that your Lordships, high as you are, are still
+but men, knowing also that bold assertions and confident declarations
+are apt to make some impression upon all men's minds, we oppose his
+allegations. But how do we oppose them? Not by things of the like
+nature. We oppose them by showing you that the House of Commons, after
+diligent investigation, has condemned them, and by stating the grounds
+upon which the House founded its condemnation. We send you to the
+records of the Company, if you want to pursue this matter further, to
+enlighten your own minds upon the subject. Do not think, my Lords, that
+we are not aware how ridiculous it is for either party, the accuser or
+the accused, to make here any assertions without producing vouchers for
+them: we know it; but we are prepared and ready to take upon us the
+proof; and we should be ashamed to assert anything that we are not able
+directly to substantiate by an immediate reference to uncontradicted
+evidence.
+
+With regard to the merits pleaded by the prisoner, we could efface that
+plea with a single stroke, by saying there is no evidence before your
+Lordships of any such merits. But we have done more: we have shown you
+that the things which he has set up as merits are atrocious crimes, and
+that there is not one of them which does not, in the very nature and
+circumstances of it, carry evidence of base corruption, as well as of
+flagrant injustice and notorious breach of public faith.
+
+The next thing that he takes credit for is precisely an act of this
+description. The Mogul had, by solemn stipulation with the Company, a
+royal domain insured to him, consisting of two provinces, Corah and
+Allahabad. Of both these provinces Mr. Hastings deprived the Mogul, upon
+weak pretences, if proved in point of fact, but which were never proved
+in any sense, against him. I allude particularly to his alleged alliance
+with the Mahrattas,--a people, by the way, with whom we were not then
+at war, and with whom he had as good a right as Nudjif Khân to enter
+into alliance at that time. He takes these domains, almost the last
+wrecks of empire left to the descendant of Tamerlane, from the man, I
+say, to whose voluntary grants we owe it that we have put a foot in
+Bengal. Surely, we ought, at least, to have kept our faith in leaving
+this last retreat to that unfortunate prince. The House of Commons was
+of that opinion, and consequently they resolved, "That the transfer of
+Corah and Allahabad to the Vizier was contrary to policy and good
+faith." This is what the Commons think of this business which Mr.
+Hastings pleads as merits.
+
+But I have not yet done with it. These provinces are estimated as worth
+twenty-two lacs, or thereabouts, that is, about 220,000_l._, a year. I
+believe they were improvable to a good deal more. But what does Mr.
+Hastings do? Instead of taking them into the Company's possession for
+the purpose of preserving them for the Mogul, upon the event of our
+being better satisfied with his conduct, or of appropriating them to the
+Company's advantage, he sells them to the Nabob of Oude, who he knew had
+the art, above all men, of destroying a country which he was to keep, or
+which he might fear he was not to keep, permanent possession of. And
+what do you think he sold them for? He sold them at a little more than
+two years' purchase. Will any man believe that Mr. Hastings, when he
+sold these provinces to the Vizier for two years' purchase, and when
+there was no man that would not have given ten years' purchase for them,
+did not put the difference between the real and pretended value into his
+own pocket, and that of his associates?
+
+We charge, therefore, first, that this act for which he assumes merit
+was in itself a breach of faith; next, that the sale of these provinces
+was scandalously conducted; and thirdly, that this sale, at one fifth of
+the real value, was effected for corrupt purposes. Thus an act of
+threefold delinquency is one of the merits stated with great pomp by his
+counsel.
+
+Another of his merits is the stoppage of the pension which the Company
+was under an obligation to pay to Nudjif Khân: a matter which, even if
+admitted to be a merit, is certainly not worth, as a set-off, much
+consideration.
+
+But there is another set-off of merit upon which he plumes himself, and
+sets an exceedingly high value: the sale of the Rohilla nation to that
+worthless tyrant, the Vizier, their cruel and bitter enemy,--the
+cruelest tyrant, perhaps, that ever existed, and their most implacable
+enemy, if we except Mr. Hastings, who appears to have had a concealed
+degree of animosity, public, private, or political, against them. To
+this man he sold this whole nation, whose country, cultivated like a
+garden, was soon reduced, as Mr. Hastings, from the character of the
+Vizier, knew would be the consequence, to a mere desert, for 400,000_l._
+He sent a brigade of our troops to assist the Vizier in extirpating
+these people, who were the bravest, the most honorable, and generous
+nation upon earth. Those who were not left slaughtered to rot upon the
+soil of their native country were cruelly expelled from it, and sent to
+publish the merciless and scandalous behavior of Great Britain from one
+end of India to the other. I believe there is not an honest, ingenuous,
+or feeling heart upon the face of the globe, I believe there is no man
+possessing the least degree of regard to honor and justice, humanity
+and good policy, that did not reprobate this act. The Court of
+Directors, when they heard of it, reprobated it in the strongest manner;
+the Court of Proprietors reprobated it in the strongest manner; by the
+House of Commons, after the most diligent investigation, it was, in a
+resolution moved by Mr. Dundas, reprobated in the strongest manner: and
+this is the act which Mr. Hastings brings forward before your Lordships
+as a merit.
+
+But, again, I can prove that in this, perhaps the most atrocious of all
+his demerits, there is a most horrid and nefarious secret corruption
+lurking. I can tell your Lordships that Sir Robert Barker was offered by
+this Vizier, for about one half of this very country, namely, the
+country of the Rohillas, a sum of fifty lacs of rupees,--that is,
+500,000_l._ Mr. Hastings was informed of this offer by Sir Robert
+Barker, in his letter of the 24th March, 1773. Still, in the face of
+this information, Mr. Hastings took for the Company only forty lacs of
+rupees. I leave your Lordships to draw your own conclusion from these
+facts. You will judge what became of the difference between the price
+offered and the price accounted for as taken. Nothing on earth can hide
+from mankind why Mr. Hastings made this wicked, corrupt bargain for the
+extermination of a brave and generous people,--why he took 400,000_l._
+for the whole of that, for half of which he was offered and knew he
+might have had 500,000_l._
+
+Your Lordships will observe, that for all these facts there is no
+evidence, on the one side or on the other, directly before you. Their
+merits have been insisted upon, in long and laborious details and
+discussions, both by Mr. Hastings himself and by his counsel. We have
+answered them for that reason; but we answer them with a direct
+reference to records and papers, from which your Lordships may judge of
+them as set-offs and merits. I believe your Lordships will now hardly
+receive them as merits to set off guilt, since in every one of them
+there is both guilt in the act, and strong ground for presuming that he
+had corruptly taken money for himself.
+
+The last act of merit that has been insisted upon by his counsel is the
+Mahratta peace. They have stated to you the distresses of the Company to
+justify the unhandsome and improper means that he took of making this
+peace. Mr. Hastings himself has laid hold of the same opportunity of
+magnifying the difficulties which, during his government, he had to
+contend with. Here he displays all his tactics. He spreads all his
+sails, and here catches every gale. He says, "I found all India
+confederated against you. I found not the Mahrattas alone; I found war
+through a hundred hostile states fulminated against you; I found the
+Peshwa, the Nizam, Hyder Ali, the Rajah of Berar, all combined together
+for your destruction. I stemmed the torrent: fortitude is my character.
+I faced and overcame all these difficulties, till I landed your affairs
+safe on shore, till I stood the saviour of India."
+
+My Lords, we of the House of Commons have before heard all this; but we
+cannot forget that we examined into every part of it, and that we did
+not find a single fact stated by him that was not a ground of censure
+and reprobation. The House of Commons, in the resolutions to which I
+have alluded, have declared, that Mr. Hastings, the first author of
+these proceedings, took advantage of an ambiguous letter of the Court
+of Directors to break and violate the most solemn, the most
+advantageous, and useful treaty that the Company had ever made in India;
+and that this conduct of his produced the strange and unnatural junction
+which he says he found formed against the Company, and with which he had
+to combat. I should trouble your Lordships with but a brief statement of
+the facts; and if I do not enter more at large in observing upon them,
+it is because I cannot but feel shocked at the indecency and impropriety
+of your being obliged to hear of that as merit which the House of
+Commons has condemned in every part. Your Lordships received obliquely
+evidence from the prisoner at your bar upon this subject; yet, when we
+came and desired your full inquiry into it, your Lordships, for wise and
+just reasons, I have no doubt, refused our request. I must, however,
+again protest on the part of the Commons against your Lordships
+receiving such evidence at all as relevant to your judgment, unless the
+House of Commons is fully heard upon it.
+
+But to proceed.--The government of Bombay had offended the Mahratta
+States by a most violent and scandalous aggression. They afterwards made
+a treaty of peace with them, honorable and advantageous to the Company.
+This treaty was made by Colonel Upton, and is called the Treaty of
+Poorunder. Mr. Hastings broke that treaty, upon his declared principle,
+that you are to look in war for the resources of your government. All
+India was at that time in peace. Hyder Ali did not dare to attack us,
+because he was afraid that his natural enemies, the Mahrattas, would
+fall upon him. The Nizam could not attack us, because he was also afraid
+of the Mahrattas. The Mahratta state itself was divided into such
+discordant branches as to make it impossible for them to unite in any
+one object; that commonwealth, which, certainly at that time was the
+terror of India, was so broken, as to render it either totally
+ineffective or easy to be resisted. There was not one government in
+India that did not look up to Great Britain as holding the balance of
+power, and in a position to control and do justice to every individual
+party in it. At that juncture Mr. Hastings deliberately broke the treaty
+of Poorunder; and afterwards, by breaking faith with and attacking all
+the powers, one after another, he produced that very union which one
+would hardly have expected that the incapacity or ill faith of any
+Governor could have effected. Your Lordships shall hear the best and
+most incontrovertible evidence both of his incapacity and ill faith, and
+of the consequences which they produced. It is the declaration of one of
+the latest of their allies concerning all these proceedings. It is
+contained in a letter from the Rajah of Berar, directly and strongly
+inculpating Mr. Hastings, upon facts which he has never denied and by
+arguments which he has never refuted, as being himself the cause of that
+very junction of all the powers of India against us.
+
+
+     _Letter from Benaram Pundit._
+
+     "As the friendship of the English is, at all events, the first and
+     most necessary consideration, I will therefore exert myself in
+     establishing peace: for the power of making peace with all is the
+     best object; to this all other measures are subservient, and will
+     certainly be done by them, the English. You write, that, after
+     having laid the foundation of peace with the Pundit Purdhaun, it
+     is requisite that some troops should be sent with General Goddard
+     against Hyder Naig, and take possession of his country, when all
+     those engagements and proposals may be assented to. My reason is
+     confounded in discussing this suggestion, at a time when Hyder Naig
+     is in every respect in alliance with the Peshwa, and has assisted
+     with his soul and life to repel the English. For us to unite our
+     troops with those of the enemy and extirpate him, would not this
+     fix the stamp of infamy upon us forever? Would any prince, for
+     generations to come, ever after assist us, or unite with the
+     Peshwa? Be yourself the judge, and say whether such a conduct would
+     become a prince or not. Why, then, do you mention it? why do you
+     write it?
+
+     "The case is as follows.--At first there was the utmost enmity
+     between Hyder Naig and the Pundit Purdhaun, and there was the
+     fullest intention of sending troops into Hyder Naig's country; and
+     after the conclusion of the war with Bombay and the capture of
+     Ragonaut Row, it was firmly resolved to send troops into that
+     quarter; and a reliance was placed in the treaty which was entered
+     into by the gentlemen of Bombay before the war. But when Ragonaut
+     again went to them, and General Goddard was ready to commence
+     hostilities,--when no regard was paid to the friendly proposals
+     made by us and the Pundit Peshwa,--when they desisted from coming
+     to Poonah, agreeable to their promise, and a categorical answer was
+     given to the deputies from Poonah,--the ministers of Poonah then
+     consulted among themselves, and, having advised with the Nabob
+     Nizam ul Dowlah, they considered that as enemies were appearing on
+     both sides, and it would be difficult to cope with both, what was
+     to be done? Peace must be made with one of them, and war must be
+     carried on with the other. They wished above all things, in their
+     hearts, to make peace with the English gentlemen, and to unite with
+     them to punish Hyder Naig; but these gentlemen had plainly refused
+     to enter into any terms of reconciliation. It was therefore
+     advisable to accommodate matters with Hyder Naig, although he had
+     been long an enemy. What else could be done? Having nothing left
+     for it, they were compelled to enter into an union with Hyder."
+
+My Lords, this declaration, made to Mr. Hastings himself, was never
+answered by him. Indeed, answered it could not be; because the thing was
+manifest, that all the desolation of the Carnatic by Hyder Ali, all
+these difficulties upon which he has insisted, the whole of that union
+by which he was pressed, and against which, as he says, he bore up with
+such fortitude, was his own work, the consequences of his bad faith, and
+his not listening to any reasonable terms of peace.
+
+But, my Lords, see what sort of peace he afterwards made. I could prove,
+if I were called upon so to do, from this paper that they have had the
+folly and madness to produce to you for other purposes, that he might at
+any time have made a better treaty, and have concluded a more secure and
+advantageous peace, than that which at last he acceded to; that the
+treaty he made was both disadvantageous and dishonorable, inasmuch as we
+gave up every ally we had, and sacrificed them to the resentment of the
+enemy; that Mahdajee Sindia gained by it an empire of a magnitude
+dangerous to our very existence in India; that this chief was permitted
+to exterminate all the many little gallant nations that stood between us
+and the Mahrattas, and whose policy led them to guard against the
+ambitious designs of that government. Almost all these lesser powers,
+from Central India, quite up to the mountains that divide India from
+Tartary, almost all these, I say, were exterminated by him, or were
+brought under a cruel subjection. The peace he made with Mr. Hastings
+was for the very purpose of doing all this; and Mr. Hastings enabled
+him, and gave him the means of effecting it.
+
+Advert next, my Lords, to what he did with other allies. By the treaty
+of Poorunder, made by Colonel Upton, and which he flagitiously broke, we
+had acquired, what, God knows, we little merited from the Mahrattas,
+twelve lacs, (112,000_l._) for the expenses of the war,--and a country
+of three lacs of annual revenue, the province of Baroach and the isle of
+Salsette, and other small islands convenient for us upon that coast.
+This was a great, useful, and momentous accession of territory and of
+revenue: and we got it with honor; for not one of our allies were
+sacrificed by this treaty. We had even obtained from the Mahrattas for
+Ragonaut Row, our support of whom against that government was a
+principal cause of the war, an establishment of a thousand horse, to be
+maintained at their expense, and a jaghire for his other expenses of
+three lacs of rupees per annum, payable monthly, with leave to reside
+within their territories, with no other condition than that he should
+not remove from the place fixed for his residence for the purpose of
+exciting disturbances against their government. They also stipulated for
+the pardon, of all his adherents except four; and the only condition
+they required from us was, that we should not assist him in case of any
+future disturbance. But Mr. Hastings, by his treaty, surrendered that
+country of three lacs of revenue; he made no stipulation for the
+expenses of the war, nor indemnity for any of the persons whom he had
+seduced into the rebellion in favor of Ragonaut Row; he gave them all up
+to the vengeance of their governments, without a stroke of a pen in
+their favor, to be banished, confiscated, and undone; and as to Ragonaut
+Row, instead of getting him this honorable and secure retreat, as he was
+bound to do, this unfortunate man was ordered to retire to his enemy's
+(Mahdajee Sindia's) country, or otherwise he was not to receive a
+shilling for his maintenance.
+
+I will now ask your Lordships, whether any man but Mr. Hastings would
+claim a merit with his own country for having broken the treaty of
+Poorunder? Your Lordships know the opinion of the House of Commons
+respecting it; his colleagues in Council had remonstrated with him upon
+it, and had stated the mischiefs that would result from it; and Sir Eyre
+Coote, the commander of the Company's forces, writing at the same time
+from Madras, states, that he thought it would infallibly bring down upon
+them Hyder Ali, who, they had reason to think, was bent upon the utter
+destruction of the power of this country in India, and was only waiting
+for some crisis in our affairs favorable to his designs. This, my Lords,
+is to be one of the set-offs against all the crimes, against the
+multiplied frauds, cruelties, and oppressions, all the corrupt
+practices, prevarications, and swindlings, that we have alleged against
+him.
+
+My Lords, it would be an endless undertaking, and such as, at this hour
+of the day, we, as well as your Lordships, are little fitted to engage
+in, if I were to attempt to search into and unveil all the secret
+motives, or to expose as it deserves the shameless audacity of this
+man's conduct. None of your Lordships can have observed without
+astonishment the selection of his merits, as he audaciously calls them,
+which has been brought before you. The last of this selection, in
+particular, looks as if he meant to revile and spit upon the legislature
+of his country, because we and you thought it fit and were resolved to
+publish to all India that we will not countenance offensive wars, and
+that you felt this so strongly as to pass the first act of a kind that
+was ever made, namely, an act to limit the discretionary power of
+government in making war solely,--and because you have done this solely
+and upon no other account and for no other reason under heaven than the
+abuse which that man at your bar has made of it, and for which abuse he
+now presumes to take merit to himself. I will read this part of the act
+to your Lordships.
+
+     [_Mr. Burke here read 24th Geo. III. cap. 25, sect. 34._]
+
+     "And whereas to pursue schemes of conquest and extension of
+     dominion in India are measures repugnant to the wish, the honor,
+     and policy of this nation, be it therefore further enacted by the
+     authority aforesaid, that it shall not be lawful for the
+     Governor-General and Council of Port William aforesaid, without the
+     express command and authority of the said Court of Directors, or of
+     the Secret Committee of the said Court of Directors, in any case,
+     (except where hostilities have actually been commenced, or
+     preparations actually made for the commencement of hostilities,
+     against the British nation in India, or against some of the princes
+     or states dependent thereon, or whose territories the said United
+     Company shall be at such time engaged by any subsisting treaty to
+     defend or guaranty,) either to declare war, or commence
+     hostilities, or enter into any treaty for making war, against any
+     of the country princes or states in India, or any treaty for
+     guarantying the possessions of any country princes or states; and
+     that in such case it shall not be lawful for the said
+     Governor-General and Council to declare war, or commence
+     hostilities, or enter into treaty for making war, against any other
+     prince or state than such as shall be actually committing
+     hostilities or making preparations as aforesaid, or to make such
+     treaty for guarantying the possessions of any prince or state, but
+     upon the consideration of such prince or state actually engaging to
+     assist the Company against such hostilities commenced or
+     preparations made as aforesaid; and in all cases where hostilities
+     shall be commenced or treaty made, the said Governor-General and
+     Council shall, by the most expeditious means they can devise,
+     communicate the same unto the said Court of Directors, together
+     with a full state of the information and intelligence upon which
+     they shall have commenced such hostilities or made such treaties,
+     and their motives and reasons for the same at large."
+
+It is the first act of the kind that ever was made in this kingdom, the
+first statute, I believe, that ever was made by the legislature of any
+nation, upon the subject; and it was made solely upon the resolutions
+to which we had come against the violent, intemperate, unjust, and
+perfidious acts of this man at your Lordships' bar, and which acts are
+now produced before your Lordships as merits.
+
+To show further to your Lordships how necessary this act was, here is a
+part of his own correspondence, the last thing I shall beg to read to
+your Lordships, and upon which I shall make no other comment than that
+you will learn from it how well British faith was kept by this man, and
+that it was the violation of British faith which prevented our having
+the most advantageous peace, and brought on all the calamities of war.
+It is part of a letter from the minister of the Rajah of Berar, a man
+called Benaram Pundit, with whom Mr. Hastings was at the time treating
+for a peace; and he tells him why he might have had peace at that time,
+and why he had it not,--and that the cause of it was his own ridiculous
+and even buffoonish perfidiousness, which exposed him to the ridicule of
+all the princes of India, and with him the whole British nation.
+
+     "But afterwards reflecting that it was not advisable for me to be
+     in such haste before I had fully understood all the contents of the
+     papers, I opened them in the presence of the Maha Rajah, when all
+     the kharetas, letters, copies, and treaties were perused with the
+     greatest attention and care. First, they convinced us of your great
+     truth and sincerity, and that you never, from the beginning to this
+     time, were inclined to the present disputes and hostilities; and
+     next, that you have not included in the articles of the treaty any
+     of your wishes or inclinations; and in short, the garden of the
+     treaty appeared to us, in all its parts, green and flourishing:
+     but though the fruit of it was excellent yet they appeared
+     different from those of Colonel Upton's treaty, (the particulars of
+     which I have frequently written to you,) and, upon tasting them,
+     proved to be bitter and very different, when compared to the former
+     articles. How can any of the old and established obligations be
+     omitted, and new matters agreed to, when it is plain that they will
+     produce losses and damages? Some points which you have mentioned,
+     under the plea of the faith and observance of treaties, are of such
+     a nature that the Poonah ministers can never assent to them. In all
+     engagements and important transactions, in which the words _but_,
+     and _although_, and _besides_, and _whereas_, and _why_, and other
+     such words of doubt, are introduced, it gives an opening to
+     disputes and misunderstandings. A treaty is meant for the entire
+     removal of all differences, not for increase of them. My departure
+     to Poonah has therefore been delayed."
+
+My Lords, consider to what ironies and insults this nation was exposed,
+and how necessary it was for us to originate that bill which your
+Lordships passed into an act of Parliament, with his Majesty's assent.
+The words _but_, _although_, _besides_, _whereas_, and _why_, and such
+like, are introduced to give an opening, and so on. Then he desires him
+to send another treaty, fit for him to sign.
+
+     "I have therefore kept the treaty with the greatest care and
+     caution in my possession, and, having taken a copy of it, I have
+     added to each article another, which appeared to me proper and
+     advisable, and without any loss or disadvantage to the English, or
+     anything more in favor of the Pundit Purdhaun than what was
+     contained in the former treaties. This I have sent to you, and hope
+     that you will prepare and send a treaty conformable to that,
+     without any _besides_, or _if_, or _why_, or _but_, and _whereas_,
+     that, as soon as it arrives, I may depart for Poonah, and, having
+     united with me Row Mahdajee Sindia, and having brought over the
+     Nabob Nizam ul Dowlah to this business, I may settle and adjust all
+     matters which are in this bad situation. As soon as I have received
+     my dismission from thence, I would set off for Calcutta, and
+     represent to you everything which for a long while I have had on my
+     mind, and by this transaction erect to the view of all the world
+     the standard of the greatness and goodness of the English and of my
+     master, and extinguish the flames of war with the waters of
+     friendship. The compassing all these advantages and happy prospects
+     depends entirely upon your will and consent; and the power of
+     bringing them to an issue is in your hands alone."
+
+My Lords, you may here see the necessity there was for passing the act
+of Parliament which I have just read to you, in order to prevent in
+future the recurrence of that want of faith of which Mr. Hastings had
+been so notoriously guilty, and by which he had not only united all
+India against us, and had hindered us from making, for a long time, any
+peace at all, but had exposed the British character to the irony, scorn,
+derision, and insult of the whole people of that vast continent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, in the progress of this impeachment, you have heard our
+charges; you have heard the prisoner's plea of merits; you have heard
+our observations on them. In the progress of this impeachment, you have
+seen the condition in which Mr. Hastings received Benares; you have seen
+the condition in which Mr. Hastings received the country of the
+Rohillas; you have seen the condition in which he received the country
+of Oude; you have seen the condition in which he received the provinces
+of Bengal; you have seen the condition of the country when the native
+government was succeeded by that of Mr. Hastings; you have seen the
+happiness and prosperity of all its inhabitants, from those of the
+highest to those of the lowest rank. My Lords, you have seen the very
+reverse of all this under the government of Mr. Hastings,--the country
+itself, all its beauty and glory, ending in a jungle for wild beasts.
+You have seen flourishing families reduced to implore that pity which
+the poorest man and the meanest situation might very well call for. You
+have seen whole nations in the mass reduced to a condition of the same
+distress. These things in his government at home. Abroad, scorn,
+contempt, and derision cast upon and covering the British name, war
+stirred up, and dishonorable treaties of peace made, by the total
+prostitution of British faith. Now take, my Lords, together, all the
+multiplied delinquencies which we have proved, from the highest degree
+of tyranny to the lowest degree of sharping and cheating, and then
+judge, my Lords, whether the House of Commons could rest for one moment,
+without bringing these matters, which have baffled all legislation at
+various times, before you, to try at last what judgment will do.
+Judgment is what gives force, effect, and vigor to laws; laws without
+judgment are contemptible and ridiculous; we had better have no laws
+than laws not enforced by judgments and suitable penalties upon
+delinquents. Revert, my Lords, to all the sentences which have
+heretofore been passed by this high court; look at the sentence passed
+upon Lord Bacon, look at the sentence passed upon Lord Macclesfield; and
+then compare the sentences which your ancestors have given with the
+delinquencies which were then before them, and you have the measure to
+be taken in your sentence upon the delinquent now before you. Your
+sentence, I say, will be measured according to that rule which ought to
+direct the judgment of all courts in like cases, lessening it for a
+lesser offence, and aggravating it for a greater, until the measure of
+justice is completely full.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, I have done; the part of the Commons is concluded. With a
+trembling solicitude we consign this product of our long, long labors to
+your charge. Take it!--take it! It is a sacred trust. Never before was a
+cause of such magnitude submitted to any human tribunal.
+
+My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and
+surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing
+generations, between which, as a link in the great chain of eternal
+order, we stand. We call this nation, we call the world to witness, that
+the Commons have shrunk from no labor, that we have been guilty of no
+prevarication, that we have made no compromise with crime, that we have
+not feared any odium whatsoever, in the long warfare which we have
+carried on with the crimes, with the vices, with the exorbitant wealth,
+with the enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern corruption. This
+war, my Lords, we have waged for twenty-two years, and the conflict has
+been fought at your Lordships' bar for the last seven years. My Lords,
+twenty-two years is a great space in the scale of the life of man; it is
+no inconsiderable space in the history of a great nation. A business
+which has so long occupied the councils and the tribunals of Great
+Britain cannot possibly be huddled over in the course of vulgar, trite,
+and transitory events. Nothing but some of those great revolutions that
+break the traditionary chain of human memory, and alter the very face of
+Nature itself, can possibly obscure it. My Lords, we are all elevated to
+a degree of importance by it; the meanest of us will, by means of it,
+more or less become the concern of posterity,--if we are yet to hope for
+such a thing, in the present state of the world, as a recording,
+retrospective, civilized posterity: but this is in the hands of the
+great Disposer of events; it is not ours to settle how it shall be.
+
+My Lords, your House yet stands,--it stands as a great edifice; but let
+me say, that it stands in the midst of ruins,--in the midst of the ruins
+that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed
+and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it has pleased Providence to
+place us in such a state that we appear every moment to be upon the
+verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only,
+which defies all mutation,--that which existed before the world, and
+will survive the fabric of the world itself: I mean justice,--that
+justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of
+every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and
+with regard to others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned
+to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He
+comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.
+
+My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your Lordships;
+there is nothing sinister which can happen to you, in which we shall not
+be involved: and if it should so happen that we shall be subjected to
+some of those frightful changes which we have seen,--if it should happen
+that your Lordships, stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human
+society, should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those
+scaffolds and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious
+queens have shed their blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the nobles,
+amidst the magistrates who supported their thrones, may you in those
+moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they felt in the
+critical moments of their dreadful agony!
+
+My Lords, there is a consolation, and a great consolation it is, which
+often happens to oppressed virtue and fallen dignity. It often happens
+that the very oppressors and persecutors themselves are forced to bear
+testimony in its favor. I do not like to go for instances a great way
+back into antiquity. I know very well that length of time operates so as
+to give an air of the fabulous to remote events, which lessens the
+interest and weakens the application of examples. I wish to come nearer
+to the present time. Your Lordships know and have heard (for which of us
+has not known and heard?) of the Parliament of Paris. The Parliament of
+Paris had an origin very, very similar to that of the great court before
+which I stand; the Parliament of Paris continued to have a great
+resemblance to it in its constitution, even to its fall: the Parliament
+of Paris, my Lords, WAS; it is gone! It has passed away; it has
+vanished like a dream! It fell, pierced by the sword of the Comte de
+Mirabeau. And yet I will say, that that man, at the time of his
+inflicting the death-wound of that Parliament, produced at once the
+shortest and the grandest funeral oration that ever was or could be made
+upon the departure of a great court of magistracy. Though he had himself
+smarted under its lash, as every one knows who knows his history, (and
+he was elevated to dreadful notoriety in history,) yet, when he
+pronounced the death sentence upon that Parliament, and inflicted the
+mortal wound, he declared that his motives for doing it were merely
+political, and that their hands were as pure as those of justice itself,
+which they administered. A great and glorious exit, my Lords, of a great
+and glorious body! And never was a eulogy pronounced upon a body more
+deserved. They were persons, in nobility of rank, in amplitude of
+fortune, in weight of authority, in depth of learning, inferior to few
+of those that hear me. My Lords, it was but the other day that they
+submitted their necks to the axe; but their honor was unwounded. Their
+enemies, the persons who sentenced them to death, were lawyers full of
+subtlety, they were enemies full of malice; yet lawyers full of
+subtlety, and enemies full of malice, as they were, they did not dare to
+reproach them with having supported the wealthy, the great, and
+powerful, and of having oppressed the weak and feeble, in any of their
+judgments, or of having perverted justice, in any one instance whatever,
+through favor, through interest, or cabal.
+
+My Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! But if you stand,--and
+stand I trust you will, together with the fortune of this ancient
+monarchy, together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and
+illustrious kingdom,--may you stand as unimpeached in honor as in power!
+May you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of
+virtue, as a security for virtue! May you stand long, and long stand the
+terror of tyrants! May you stand the refuge of afflicted nations! May
+you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual residence of an inviolable
+justice!
+
+
+
+
+GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS,
+
+AND
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+
+
+GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+Advertisement to the Reader, Prefixed to the First Octavo Edition      v
+
+Advertisement to the Second Octavo Edition                          xvii
+
+A Vindication of Natural Society: or, A View of the Miseries and
+  Evils arising to Mankind from every Species of Artificial Society    1
+
+A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
+  and Beautiful; with an Introductory Discourse concerning Taste      67
+
+A Short Account of a late Short Administration                       263
+
+Observations on a late Publication, intituled,
+  "The Present State of the Nation"                                  269
+
+Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents                     433
+
+
+VOL. II.
+
+Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774                            1
+
+Speeches on Arrival at Bristol and at the Conclusion of the Poll,
+  October 13 and November 3, 1774                                     81
+
+Speech on moving Resolutions for Conciliation with America,
+  March 22, 1775                                                      99
+
+Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the Affairs of America,
+  April 3, 1777                                                      187
+
+Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol, on the Bills depending in
+  Parliament relative to the Trade of Ireland, April 23 and
+  May 2, 1778                                                        247
+
+Speech on presenting to the House of Commons a Plan for the Better
+  Security of the Independence of Parliament, and the Economical
+  Reformation of the Civil and other Establishments,
+  February 11, 1780                                                  265
+
+Speech at Bristol previous to the Election, September 6, 1780        365
+
+Speech at Bristol on declining the Poll, September 9, 1780           425
+
+Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill, December 1, 1783                431
+
+A Representation to his Majesty, moved in the House of Commons,
+  June 14, 1784                                                      537
+
+
+VOL. III.
+
+Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, February 28, 1785;               1
+  with an Appendix
+
+Substance of Speech on the Army Estimates, February 9, 1790          211
+
+Reflections on the Revolution in France                              231
+
+
+VOL. IV.
+
+Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, in Answer to some
+  Objections to his Book on French Affairs                             1
+
+Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs                                  57
+
+Letter to a Peer of Ireland on the Penal Laws against Irish
+  Catholics                                                          217
+
+Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Subject of the Roman
+  Catholics of Ireland                                               241
+
+Hints for a Memorial to be delivered to Monsieur de M.M.             307
+
+Thoughts on French Affairs                                           313
+
+Heads for Consideration on the Present State of Affairs              379
+
+Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with respect to France: with
+  an Appendix                                                        403
+
+
+VOL. V.
+
+Observations on the Conduct of the Minority, particularly in the
+  last Session of Parliament, 1793                                     1
+
+Preface to the Address of M. Brissot to his Constituents:
+  with an Appendix                                                    65
+
+Letter to William Elliot, Esq., occasioned by a Speech made in
+  the House of Lords by the **** of *******, in the Debate concerning
+  Lord Fitzwilliam, 1795                                             107
+
+Thoughts and Details on Scarcity                                     131
+
+Letter to a Noble Lord on the Attacks made upon Mr. Burke and his
+  Pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the
+  Earl of Lauderdale, 1796                                           171
+
+Three Letters to a Member of Parliament on the Proposals for
+  Peace with the Regicide Directory of France.
+
+    Letter I. On the Overtures of Peace                              233
+
+    Letter II. On the Genius and Character of the French
+      Revolution as it regards other Nations                         342
+
+    Letter III. On the Rupture of the Negotiation; the Terms
+       of Peace proposed; and the Resources of the Country for
+       the Continuance of the War                                    384
+
+
+VOL. VI.
+
+Preface to the Second Posthumous Volume, in a Letter to the Right
+  Hon. William Elliot                                                  v
+
+Fourth Letter on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory
+   of France: with the Preliminary Correspondence                      1
+
+Letter to the Empress of Russia, November 1, 1791                    113
+
+Letter to Sir Charles Bingham, Bart., on the Irish Absentee Tax,
+  October 30, 1773                                                   121
+
+Letter to the Hon. Charles James Fox, on the American War,
+  October 8, 1777                                                    135
+
+Letter to the Marquis of Rockingham, with Addresses to the King,
+  and the British Colonists in North America, in Relation to the
+  Measures of Government in the American Contest, and a Proposed
+  Secession of the Opposition from Parliament, January, 1777         149
+
+Letter to the Right Hon. Edmund S. Pery, in relation to a Bill
+  for the Relief of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, July 18, 1778    197
+
+Two Letters to Thomas Burgh, Esq., and John Merlott, Esq., in
+  Vindication of his Parliamentary Conduct relative to the Affairs
+  of Ireland, 1780                                                   207
+
+Letters and Reflections on the Executions of the Rioters in 1780     239
+
+Letter to the Right Hon. Henry Dundas: with the Sketch of a Negro
+  Code, 1792                                                         255
+
+Letter to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting, held at
+  Aylesbury, April 13, 1780, on the Subject of Parliamentary
+  Reform                                                             291
+
+Fragments of a Tract relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland  299
+
+Letter to William Smith, Esq., on the Subject of Catholic
+  Emancipation, January 29, 1795                                     361
+
+Second Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Catholic Question,
+  May 26, 1795                                                       375
+
+Letter to Richard Burke, Esq., on Protestant Ascendency in Ireland,
+  1793                                                               385
+
+Letter on the Affairs of Ireland, 1797                               413
+
+
+VOL. VII.
+
+Fragments and Notes of Speeches In Parliament.
+
+  Speech on the Acts of Uniformity, February 8, 1772                   3
+
+  Speech on a Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters,
+    March 17, 1773                                                    21
+
+  Speech on a Motion, for Leave to bring in a Bill to repeal and
+    alter certain Acts respecting Religious Opinions, upon the
+    Occasion of a Petition of the Unitarian Society, May 11, 1792     39
+
+  Speech relative to the Middlesex Election, February 7, 1771         59
+
+  Speech on a Bill for shortening the Duration of Parliaments,
+    May 8, 1780                                                       69
+
+  Speech on a Motion for a Committee to inquire into the State of
+    the Representation of the Commons in Parliament, May 7, 1782      89
+
+  Speech on a Motion for Leave to bring in a Bill for explaining
+    the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels, March 7, 1771.
+    Together with a Letter in Vindication of that Measure, and a
+    Copy of the proposed Bill                                        105
+
+  Speech on a Bill for the Repeal of the Marriage Act,
+    June 15, 1781                                                    129
+
+  Speech on a Motion for Leave to bring in a Bill to quiet the
+    Possessions of the Subject against Dormant Claims of the Church,
+    February 17, 1772                                                137
+
+Hints for an Essay on the Drama                                      143
+
+An Essay towards an Abridgment of the English History. In Three Books.
+
+  Book I. To the Fall of the Roman Power In Britain                  159
+
+  Book II. To the Norman Invasion                                    227
+
+  Book III. Through the Reign of John                                327
+
+    Fragment.--An Essay towards an History of the Laws of England    475
+
+
+VOL. VIII.
+
+Ninth Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons
+  on the Affairs of India, June 25, 1783.
+
+  Observations on the State of the Company's Affairs in India          3
+
+  Connection of Great Britain with India                              41
+
+  Effect of the Revenue Investment on the Company                     56
+
+  Internal Trade of Bengal                                            76
+    Silk                                                              83
+    Raw Silk                                                          88
+    Cloths, or Piece-Goods                                            99
+    Opium                                                            116
+    Salt                                                             142
+    Saltpetre                                                        170
+
+  British Government in India                                        173
+
+Eleventh Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on
+  the Affairs of India. With Extracts from the Appendix.
+  November 18, 1783                                                  217
+
+Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against Warren
+  Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General of Bengal: presented to
+  the House of Commons in April and May, 1788.--Articles I.-VI.
+
+  Art. I. Rohilla War                                                307
+      II. Shah Allum                                                 319
+     III. Benares.
+       Part I. Rights and Titles of the Rajah of Benares             327
+       Part II. Designs of Mr. Hastings to ruin the Rajah of Benares 339
+       Part III. Expulsion of the Rajah of Benares                   354
+       Part IV. Second Revolution in Benares                         380
+       Part V. Third Revolution in Benares                           386
+      IV. Princesses of Oude                                         397
+       V. Revolutions in Furruckabad                                 467
+      VI. Destruction of the Rajah of Sahlone                        484
+
+
+VOL. IX.
+
+Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against
+  Warren Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General of Bengal: presented
+  to the House of Commons in April and May, 1786.--Articles VII.-XXII.
+
+Art. VII. Contracts                                                    3
+    VIII. Presents                                                    22
+      IX. Resignation of the Office of Governor-General               42
+       X. Surgeon-General's Contract                                  60
+      XI. Contracts for Poolbundy Repairs                             60
+     XII. Contracts for Opium                                         63
+    XIII. Appointment of R.J. Sulivan                                 70
+     XIV. Ranna of Gohud                                              72
+      XV. Revenues. Part I.                                           79
+                    Part II.                                          87
+     XVI. Misdemeanors in Oude                                        95
+    XVII. Mahomed Reza Khân                                          179
+   XVIII. The Mogul delivered up to the Mahrattas                    202
+     XIX. Libel on the Court of Directors                            228
+      XX. Mahratta War and Peace                                     238
+     XXI. Correspondence                                             266
+    XXII. Fyzoola Khân
+            Part I. Rights of Fyzoola Khân, etc., before the
+              Treaty of Lall-Dang                                    268
+            Part II. Rights of Fyzoola Khân under the Treaty
+              of Lall-Dang                                           275
+            Part III. Guaranty of the Treaty of Lall-Dang            278
+            Part IV. Thanks of the Board to Fyzoola Khân             286
+            Part V. Demand of Five Thousand Horse                    287
+            Part VI. Treaty of Chunar                                296
+            Part VII. Consequences of the Treaty of Chunar           302
+            Part VIII. Pecuniary Commutation of the Stipulated Aid   306
+            Part IX. Full Vindication of Fyzoola Khân by Major
+              Palmer and Mr. Hastings                                313
+
+Appendix to the Eighth and Sixteenth Charges                         319
+
+Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal.
+
+  Speech in Opening the Impeachment.
+    First Day: Friday, February 15, 1788                             329
+    Second Day: Saturday, February 16                                396
+
+
+VOL. X.
+
+Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal.
+
+  Speech in Opening the Impeachment.
+    Third Day: Monday, February 18, 1788                               3
+    Fourth Day: Tuesday, February 19                                  99
+
+  Speech on the Sixth Article of Charge.
+    First Day: Tuesday, April 21, 1789                               149
+    Second Day: Saturday, April 25                                   240
+    Third Day: Tuesday, May 5                                        306
+    Fourth Day: Thursday, May 7                                      396
+
+
+VOL. XI.
+
+Report from the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to
+  inspect the Lords' Journals in Relation to their Proceedings on
+  the Trial of Warren Hastings, Esq. With an Appendix. Also,
+   Remarks in Vindication of the Same from the Animadversions of
+   Lord Thurlow. 1794                                                  1
+
+Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal. (Continued.)
+
+  Speech in General Reply.
+    First Day: Wednesday, May 28, 1794                               157
+    Second Day: Friday, May 30                                       227
+    Third Day. Tuesday, June 3                                       300
+    Fourth Day: Thursday, June 5                                     372
+
+
+VOL. XII.
+
+Speeches In the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal. (Continued.)
+
+  Speech in General Reply.
+    Fifth Day: Saturday, June 7, 1794                                  3
+    Sixth Day: Wednesday, June 11                                     75
+    Seventh Day: Thursday, June 12                                   143
+    Eighth Day: Saturday, June 14                                    235
+    Ninth Day: Monday, June 16                                       335
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Accidental things ought to be carefully distinguished from
+    permanent causes and effects, v. 234.
+
+Account, capital use of an, what, i. 511.
+
+Act of navigation, i. 378; ii. 30, 33.
+
+Acts of grace, impolicy of, ii. 386.
+
+Acts of indemnity and oblivion, probable effects of, as a
+    means of reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.
+
+Addison, Mr., the correctness of his opinion of the cause of
+    the grand effect of the rotund questioned, i. 150.
+  his fine lines on honorable political connections, i. 529.
+
+Administration, Short Account of a Late Short, (Marquis of
+    Rockingham's,) i. 263.
+  censures on that administration, i. 379.
+  state of public affairs at the time of its formation, i. 381.
+  character and conduct of it, i. 388.
+  idea of it respecting America, i. 397.
+  remarks on its foreign negotiations, i. 412.
+  character of a united administration, i. 419.
+  of a disunited one, i. 425.
+  the administration should be correspondent to the legislature, i. 471.
+
+Admiration, the first source of obedience, iv. 251.
+  one of the principles which interest us in the characters
+    of others, vii. 148.
+
+Adrian, first contracts the hounds of the Roman Empire, vii. 214.
+
+Advice, compulsive, from constituents, its authority first
+    resisted by Mr. Burke, iv. 95.
+
+Adviser, duty of an, iv. 42.
+
+Agricola, Julius, character and conduct of, vii. 199.
+
+Aix, the Archbishop of, his offer of contribution, why refused
+    by the French National Assembly, iii. 390.
+
+Aix-la-Chapelle, the treaty of, remarks on, v. 441.
+
+Akbar, the Emperor, obtains possession of Bengal, ix. 392
+
+Alfred the Great, character and conduct of, vii. 261.
+  his care and sagacity in improving the laws and institutions
+    of England, vii. 482.
+
+Allegiance, oath of, remarkable one taken by the nobility to
+    King Stephen, vii. 388.
+
+Alliance, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.
+  the famous Triple Alliance negotiated by Temple and De Witt, v. 438.
+  alliance between Church and State in a Christian commonwealth,
+    a fanciful speculation, vii. 43.
+
+Ambition, one of the passions belonging to society, i. 124.
+  nature and end of, i. 124.
+  misery of disappointed, i. 335.
+  ought to be influenced by popular motives, i. 474.
+  influence of, iii. 107.
+  one of the natural distempers of a democracy, iv. 164.
+  legislative restraints on it in democracies always violent
+    and ineffectual, iv. 164.
+  not an exact calculator, vii. 82.
+  virtue of a generous ambition for applause for public services, x. 176.
+
+America, advantage of, to England, i. 297.
+  nature of various taxes there, i. 355.
+  project of a representation of in Parliament, its difficulties, i. 372.
+  its rapidly increasing commerce, ii. 112.
+  eloquent description of rising glories of, in vision, ii. 115.
+  temper and character of its inhabitants, ii. 120.
+  their spirit of liberty, whence, ii. 120, 133
+  proposed taxation of, by grant instead of imposition, ii. 154.
+  danger in establishing a military government there, vi. 176.
+
+American Stamp Act, its origin, i. 385.
+  repeal of the, i. 265, 389.
+  reasons of the repeal, ii. 48.
+  good effects of the repeal, i. 401; ii. 59.
+
+Ancestors, our, reverence due to them, iii. 562; iv. 213.
+
+Angles, in buildings, prejudicial to their grandeur, i. 151.
+
+Animals, their cries capable of conveying great ideas, i. 161.
+
+Anniversaries, festive, advantages of, iv. 369.
+
+Anselm, appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, vii. 373.
+  supports Henry I. against his brother Robert, vii. 377.
+
+Apparitions, singular inconsistency in the ideas of the vulgar
+    concerning them, vii. 181.
+
+Arbitrary power, steals upon a people by lying dormant for a
+    time, or by being rarely exercised, ii. 201.
+  cannot be exercised or delegated by the legislature, ix. 455.
+  not recognized in the Gentoo code, xi. 208.
+
+Arbitrary system, must always be a corrupt one, x. 5.
+  danger in adopting it as a principle of action, xi. 322.
+
+Areopagus, court and senate of, remarks on the, iii. 507.
+
+Ariosto, a criticism of Boileau on, vii. 154.
+
+Aristocracy, affected terror at the growth of the power of the,
+    in the reign of George II., i. 457.
+  influence of the, i. 457.
+  too much spirit not a fault of the, i. 458.
+  general observations on the, iii. 415.
+  character of a true natural one, iv. 174.
+  regulations in some states with respect to, iv. 250.
+  must submit to the dominion of prudence and virtue, v. 127.
+  character of the aristocracy of France before the Revolution,
+    iii. 412; vi. 39.
+
+Aristotle, his caution against delusive geometrical accuracy
+    in moral arguments, ii. 170.
+  his observations on the resemblance between a democracy and
+    a tyranny, iii. 397.
+  his distinction between tragedy and comedy, vii. 153.
+  his natural philosophy alone unworthy of him, vii. 252.
+  his system entirely followed by Bede, vii. 252.
+
+Armies yield a precarious and uncertain obedience to a senate, iii. 524.
+  remarks on the standing armies of France and England, iii. 224.
+
+Army commanded by General Monk, character of it, iv. 36.
+
+Art, every work of, great only as it deceives, i. 152.
+
+Artist, a true one effects the noblest designs by easy methods, i. 152.
+
+Artois, Comte d', character of, iv. 430.
+
+Ascendency, Protestant, observations on it, vi. 393.
+
+Asers, their origin and conquests, vii. 228.
+
+Assassination, recommended and employed by the National Assembly
+    of France, iv. 34.
+  the dreadful consequences of this policy, in case of war, iv. 34.
+
+Astonishment, cause and nature of, i. 160, 217.
+
+Atheism by establishment, what, v. 310.
+  ought to be repressed by law, vii. 35.
+  schools of, set up by the French regicides at the public charge, vi. 106.
+
+Atheists, modern, contrasted with those of antiquity, iv. 355.
+
+Athenians, at the head of the democratic interests of Greece, iv. 321.
+
+Athens, the plague of, remarkable prevalence of wickedness
+    during its continuance, vii. 84.
+
+Augustin, state of religion in Britain when he arrived there, vii. 233.
+  introduced Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons, vii. 235.
+
+Aulic Council, remarks on the, v. 119.
+
+Austria began in the reign of Maria Theresa to support great
+    armies, v. 368.
+  her treaty of 1756 with France, deplored by the French in 1773, v. 370.
+
+Authority, its only firm seat in public opinion, ii. 224; vi. 165.
+  the people the natural control on it, iv. 164.
+  the exercise and control of it together contradictory, iv. 164.
+  the monopoly of it an evil, v. 151.
+
+Avarice, an instrument and source of oppression in India,
+    iii. 107; ix. 491.
+
+
+Bacon, Lord, a remark of his applied to the revolution in France, v. 175.
+  his demeanor at his impeachment, xi. 173.
+
+Bacon, N., his work on the laws of England not entitled to
+    authority, vii. 479.
+
+Bail, method of giving it introduced by Alfred, vii. 265.
+  advantage of it, vii. 265.
+
+Ball, John, abstract of a discourse of, iv. 178.
+
+Ballot, all contrivances by it vain to prevent a discovery of
+    the inclinations, iii. 507.
+
+Balmerino, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 34.
+
+Banian, functions and character of the, ix. 363.
+
+Bank paper in England, owing to the flourishing condition of
+    commerce, iii. 541.
+
+Bards, the, character of their verses, vii. 178.
+
+Bartholomew, St., massacre of, iii. 420.
+
+Bathurst, Lord, his imagined vision of the rising glories of
+    America, ii. 114.
+
+Bayle, Mr., an observation of his on religious persecution, vi. 333.
+
+Beauchamp, Lord, his bill concerning imprisonment; Mr. Burke's
+    course with respect to it, ii. 382.
+
+Beauty, a cause of love, i. 114, 165.
+  proportion not the cause of it in vegetables, i. 166.
+  nor in animals, i. 170.
+  nor in the human species, i. 172.
+  beauty and proportion not ideas of the same nature, i. 181.
+  the opposite to beauty not disproportion or deformity, but
+    ugliness, i. 181.
+  fitness not the cause of beauty, i. 181.
+  nor perfection, i. 187.
+  how far the idea of beauty applicable to the qualities of the
+    mind, i. 188.
+  how far applicable to virtue, i. 190.
+  the real cause of beauty, i. 191.
+  beautiful objects, small, i. 191.
+  and smooth, i. 193.
+  and of softly varied contour, i. 194.
+  and delicate, i. 195.
+  and of clear, mild, or diversified, colors, i. 196.
+  beauty of the physiognomy, i. 198.
+  beauty of the eye, i. 198.
+  the beautiful in feeling, i. 201.
+  the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.
+  physical effects of beauty, i. 232.
+
+Bede, the Venerable, brief account of him and his works, vii. 250.
+
+Bedford, the first earl of, who, v. 201.
+
+Begums of Oude, accused by the East India Company of rebellion, ii. 475.
+  pretence for seizing their treasures, xii. 33.
+
+Benares, city of, the capital of the Indian religion, ii. 477, 484.
+  province of, its projected sale to the Nabob of Oude, xi. 259.
+  devastation of, during Mr. Hastings's government, xi. 302, 347.
+  the Rajah of, nature of his authority, xi. 240.
+  imprisoned by Mr. Hastings's order, xi. 277.
+  the Ranny of, the soldiery incited by Mr. Hastings to plunder her,
+    ii. 486.
+
+Benfield, Paul, his character and conduct, iii. 97.
+
+Bengal, extent and condition, of, ii. 498.
+  conquest of, by the Emperor Akbar, ix. 392.
+  era of the independent subahs of, ix. 392.
+  era of the British empire in, ix. 393.
+  nature of the government exercised there by Mr. Hastings, xii. 211.
+
+Bengal Club, observations on the, iv. 324.
+
+Bidjegur, fortress of, taken by order of Mr. Hastings, xi. 291.
+
+Biron, Duchess of, murdered by the French regicides, vi. 41.
+
+Bitterness, in description, a source of the sublime, i. 162.
+
+Blackness, effects of, i. 229.
+
+Boadicea, Roman outrages against, vii. 197.
+
+Boileau, his criticism on a tale in Ariosto, vii. 154.
+
+Bolingbroke, Lord, animadversions on his philosophical works, i. 3.
+  some characteristics of his style, i. 7.
+  a presumptuous and superficial writer, iii. 398.
+  a remark of his on the superiority of a monarchy over other
+    forms of government, iii. 398.
+
+Boncompagni, Cardinal, character of him, iv. 338.
+
+Borrower, the public, and the private lender, not adverse
+    parties with contending interests, v. 455.
+
+Bouillon, Godfrey of, engages in the Crusade, vii. 372.
+
+Boulogne, fortress of, surrendered to France, v. 204.
+  importance of it to England, v. 204.
+
+Bouvines, victory of, important advantages of it to France, vii. 458.
+
+Brabançons, mercenary troops in the time of Henry II., their
+    character, vii. 420.
+
+Bribing, by means of it, rather than by being bribed, wicked
+    politicians bring ruin on mankind, iii. 107.
+
+Brissot, his character and conduct, iv. 371.
+  Preface to his Address to his Constituents, v. 65.
+
+Britain, invasion of, by Cæsar, vii. 165.
+  account of its ancient inhabitants, vii. 170.
+  invaded by Claudius, vii. 191.
+  reduced by Ostorius Scapula, vii. 191.
+  finally subdued by Agricola, vii. 199.
+  why not sooner conquered, vii. 202.
+  nature of the government settled there by the Romans, vii. 205.
+  first introduction of Christianity into, vii. 221.
+  deserted by the Romans, vii. 223.
+  entry and settlement of the Saxons there, and their conversion
+    to Christianity, vii. 227.
+
+Britons, more reduced than any other nation that fell under the
+    German power, vii. 232.
+
+Brown, Dr., effect of his writings on the people of England, v. 239.
+
+Buch, Captal de, his severe treatment of the Jacquerie in France, iv. 177.
+
+Buildings, too great length in them, prejudicial to grandeur
+    of effect, i. 152.
+  should be gloomy to produce an idea of the sublime, i. 158.
+
+Burke, Mr., his sentiments respecting several leading members
+    of the Whig party, iv. 66.
+  and respecting a union of Ireland with Great Britain, iv. 297.
+  respecting acts of indemnity and oblivion as a means of
+    reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.
+  his animadversions on the conduct of Mr. Fox, v. 7.
+  his pathetic allusion to his deceased son, v. 207.
+
+Burnet, Bishop, his statement of the methods which carried men
+    of parts to Popery in France, iii. 430.
+
+Bute, Earl of, his resignation, i. 381.
+  his successors recommended by him, i. 381.
+  supposed head of the court party called "King's Men," i. 467.
+
+
+Cæsar, Julius, his policy with respect to the Gauls, vii. 163.
+  his invasion of Germany, vii. 164.
+  and of Britain, vii. 165.
+
+Calais, lost by the surrender of Boulogne, v. 204.
+
+Calamity, its deliberations rarely wise, iii. 540.
+  public calamity often arrested by the seasonable energy of a
+    single man, v. 124.
+
+Caligula undertakes an expedition against Britain, vii. 190.
+
+Calonne, M. de, remarks on his work, "L'État de la France," iii. 479.
+  extract from it, iii. 549.
+
+Campanella, curious story concerning him, i. 212.
+
+Canada Bills, convention for their liquidation, i. 409.
+
+Canterbury, dispute between the suffragan bishops of the province
+    and the monks of the Abbey of St. Austin, vii. 446.
+
+Cantons, French, their origin, nature, and function, iii. 462, 464, 471.
+
+Cantoo Baboo, Mr. Hastings's banian, x. 19.
+
+Canute, his character and conduct, vii. 276.
+  remarks on his code of laws, vii. 483.
+
+Capital, monopoly of, not an evil, v. 151.
+
+Care, appearance of, highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence, i. 154.
+
+Carnatic, the extent, nature, and condition of the country,
+    ii. 492; iii. 65.
+  dreadful devastation of it by Hyder Ali Khân, iii. 62.
+
+Caste, consequences of losing it in India, x. 89.
+
+Castile, different from Catalonia and Aragon, iv. 340.
+
+Castles, great numbers of them built in the reign of Stephen, vii. 389.
+
+Casuistry, origin and requisites of, iv. 168.
+  danger of pursuing it too far, iv. 168.
+
+Catholics, Letter to an Irish Peer on the Penal Laws against, iv. 217.
+
+Celsus, his opinion that internal remedies were not of early
+    use proved to be erroneous, vii. 184.
+
+Cerealis, extract from his fine speech to the Gauls, iv. 272.
+
+Change and reformation, distinction between, v. 186.
+
+Characters of others, principles which interest us in them, vii. 148.
+
+Charity, observations on, v. 146.
+  not to be interfered with by the magistrate, v. 146.
+
+Charles I. defended himself on the practice of his predecessors, ii. 279.
+  his ill-judged attempt to establish the rites of the Church
+    of England in Scotland, vii. 8.
+
+Charles II. obliged by the sense of the nation to abandon
+    the Dutch war, ii. 219.
+  brief character of him, iv. 37.
+  his government compared with that of Cromwell, iv. 467.
+
+Charles XII. of Sweden, parallel between him and Richard I.
+    of England, vii. 436.
+
+Charters are kept when their purposes are maintained, ii. 565.
+
+Chatham, Lord, his character, ii. 61.
+
+Cheselden, Mr., his story of a boy who was couched for a cataract, i. 226.
+
+Chester, the County Palatine of, admitted to representation
+    in Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII., ii. 150.
+
+Chesterfield, Lord, his conduct (when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland)
+    with respect to the Roman Catholics, iv. 235.
+
+Cheyt Sing, Rajah of Benares, nature of his authority, ii. 479; xi. 240.
+  imprisoned by order of Mr. Hastings, xi. 277.
+
+Christendom, the several states of, have all been formed slowly
+    and without any unity of design, v. 373.
+
+Christianity, original introduction of, into Britain, vii. 221.
+
+Church, the, has power to reform her doctrine, discipline,
+    and rites, vii. 7.
+
+Church establishment in England, observations on it, iii. 352.
+  the provision made for its clergy by the state, iii. 364.
+  education of its clergy contrasted with that of the Roman
+    Catholic clergy, iv. 231.
+  eulogy on it, vi. 401; vii. 36, 56.
+
+Cicero, remarks on his orations against Verres, xii. 349.
+
+Circumstances, importance of them in all political principles,
+    iii. 240; vii. 55.
+
+Citizens, not to be listened to, in matters relating to agriculture,
+    v. 146.
+
+Civil list, debts due on it, request for a supply for discharging
+    them, how made, i. 508.
+  plan of economy relative to it, ii. 350.
+
+Civil society, great purpose of, vi. 333.
+
+Civil vicinity, law of, what, v. 322.
+
+Civil wars corrupt the morals of the people, ii. 203.
+
+Clamor, justifiable when it is caused by abuse, vii. 121.
+
+Clarendon, Constitutions of, vii. 403.
+
+Claudius, the Emperor invades Britain, vii. 191.
+
+Clavering, Sir John, eulogy on him, x. 246; xii. 348.
+
+Clear expression, different from a strong one, i. 260.
+
+Clearness not necessary for affecting the passions, i. 133.
+
+Clergy, convocation of, a part of the constitution, ii. 226.
+  observations on the provision made by the state for them, iii. 364, 448.
+  Roman Catholic, in France, character of them before the
+    Revolution, iii. 424.
+  laws of William and Anne respecting the Popish clergy, vi. 317.
+  review of the state of the clergy in England down to the reign
+    of Henry II., vii. 398.
+
+Clive, Lord, sent to India, ix. 438.
+  his conduct there, ix. 439.
+
+Clootz, Anacharsis, his masquerade embassy to the Constituent
+    Assembly of France, vi. 49.
+
+Coke, Lord, ingenious quotation in his Reports, i. 5.
+  his observation on discretion in judicature, iv. 292.
+
+Colonies, commercial, mode of levying taxes in them, an important
+    and difficult consideration, i. 354.
+  American, import ten times more from Great Britain, than they
+    spend in return, i. 393.
+
+Colonists, the British, in America, character of, i. 395.
+  Address to, vi. 183.
+
+Colors, soft and cheerful ones unfit to produce grand images, i. 158.
+
+Comedy, observations on, vii. 150.
+  Aristotle's distinction between it and tragedy, vii. 153.
+
+Comines, Philip de, his remarks on the English civil wars, vi. 252.
+
+Commerce and liberty, the two main sources of power to Great
+    Britain, ii. 87.
+  great increase of, in America, ii. 112.
+
+Common law, nature of the, vii. 462.
+
+Common Pleas, court of, its origin, vii. 466.
+
+Commons, the House of, observations on its nature and character, i. 491.
+  what qualities recommend a man to a seat in it, in popular
+    elections, i. 497.
+  can never control other parts of the government, unless the
+    members themselves are controlled by their constituents, i. 503.
+  ought to be connected with and dependent on the people, i. 508.
+  has a collective character, distinct from that of its members, ii. 66.
+  duty of the members to their constituents, ii. 95.
+  general observations on its privileges and duties, ii. 544.
+  the collective sense of the people to be received from it, ii. 545.
+  its powers and capacities, ii. 552.
+  cannot renounce its share of authority, iii. 258.
+  its composition, iii. 289.
+  the most powerful and most corruptible part of the constitution, vii. 62.
+  a superintendence over the doctrines and proceedings of the
+    courts of justice, one of its principal objects, vii. 107.
+  concise view of its proceedings on the East India question, ii. 559.
+
+Commonwealths, not subject to laws analogous to those of
+    physical life, v. 124, 234.
+
+Communes, in France, their origin, nature, and function,
+    iii. 462, 464, 472.
+
+Compurgators, in Saxon law, what, vii. 318.
+
+Condorcet, brief character of him, iv. 356, 372.
+  extract from a publication of his, iv. 356.
+
+Confidence, unsuspecting, in government, importance of it, ii. 234.
+  of mankind, how to be secured, v. 414.
+
+Connections, party, political, observations on them, i. 527, 530.
+  commended by patriots in the commonwealths of antiquity, i. 527.
+  the Whig connection in Queen Anne's reign, i. 529.
+
+Conquest cannot give a right to arbitrary power, ix. 456.
+
+Conscience, a tender one ought to be tenderly handled, vii. 54.
+
+Constantine the Great, changes made by him in the internal
+    policy of the Roman Empire, vii. 220.
+
+Constantinople, anecdote of the visit of an English country
+    squire to, v. 387.
+  anecdote of the Greeks at the taking of, vi. 96.
+
+Constituents, in England, more in the spirit of the constitution
+    to lessen than to enlarge their number, i. 370.
+  their duty to their representatives, ii. 370.
+  compulsive instruction from them first rejected by Mr. Burke, iv. 95.
+  points in which they are incompetent to instruct their
+    representatives, vii. 74, 75.
+
+Constitution, a, cannot defend itself, vi. 100.
+  consequences of disgracing the frame and constitution of
+    the state, vii. 103.
+  the English, a change in it, an immense and difficult operation,
+    i. 371, 520.
+  English, changes in it to be attempted only in times of general
+    confusion, i. 371.
+  eulogy on it, iii. 561; v. 210; vii. 100.
+  the whole scheme of it to prevent any one of its principles
+    from being carried to an extreme, iv. 207.
+  not struck out at a heat, iv. 209.
+  commendation of it by Montesquieu, iv. 212.
+  the only means of its subversion, what, v. 49, 52.
+
+Constitutional Society, The, its nature and design, iii. 236.
+
+Conti, Prince de, his character and conduct, iv. 436.
+
+Contract, an implied, one, always, between the laborer and
+    his employer, v. 137.
+
+Contracting parties, not necessary that they should have
+    different interests, v. 139.
+
+Control and exercise of authority together contradictory, iv. 164.
+
+Convocation of the clergy, though a part of the constitution,
+    now called for form only, ii. 226.
+
+Conway, General, moves the repeal of the American Stamp Act, ii. 52.
+
+Cornwallis, Lord, (Baron,) proceedings in his trial, xi. 30.
+
+Cornwallis, Lord, (Marquis,) his evidence at the trial of
+    Warren Hastings, xii. 359.
+
+Coronation oath, its obligations with respect to Roman Catholics, iv. 259.
+
+Corporate bodies, their usefulness as instruments, iii. 441.
+  more under the direction of the state than private citizens, iii. 447.
+
+Corruption, of nature and example, what the only security against, ii. 238.
+  in pecuniary matters, the suspicion of it how to be avoided, iii. 95.
+
+Cossim, Ali Khân, his character and conduct, ix. 405.
+
+Country, lore of, remarks on, xi. 422.
+
+Credit and power incompatible, i. 368.
+
+Crimes, the acts of individuals, not of denominations, ii. 418.
+  according to the criminal law, what, vi. 340.
+
+Cromwell, brief character of him, iii. 294.
+  his principle in the appointment of judges, iv. 13.
+  his conduct in government, iv. 37.
+  his government compared with that of Charles II., iv. 467.
+
+Cross, the effect of it not so grand in architecture as that of
+    the parallelogram, i. 150.
+
+Crown, the influence of it, what, i. 444.
+  inheritable nature of it, iii. 258.
+  this principle maintained at the Revolution, iii. 254.
+  the only legitimate channel of communication with other nations, v. 10.
+
+Crusade, origin and progress of the, vii. 369.
+
+Curfew, origin and policy of the, vii. 354.
+
+Curiosity, the first and simplest emotion of the human mind, i. 101.
+  general observations on it, i. 101.
+
+Custom, considered in relation to deformity and beauty, i. 179.
+  not the cause of pleasure, i. 180.
+
+Cyprus, account of the conquest of it by Richard I., vii. 428.
+
+
+Danger and pain, the idea of them a source of the sublime, i. 110, 130.
+  with certain modifications, delightful, i. 111.
+  the danger of anything very dear to us removes for the time
+    all other affections from the mind, iv. 95.
+
+Darkness more productive of sublime ideas than light, i. 156.
+  necessary to the highest degree of the sublime in building, i. 158.
+  Locke's opinion concerning, i. 225.
+  terrible in its own nature, i. 226.
+  why, i. 227.
+
+Davies, Sir John, his statement of the benefits of the extension
+    of English constitutional law to Ireland, ii. 147; iv. 273.
+
+Day, not so sublime as night, i. 158.
+
+Debi Sing, his character and conduct, x. 69.
+
+Debt, the interest of, not the principal, that which distresses
+    a nation, i. 329.
+
+Debts, civil, faults of the law with regard to, ii. 384.
+  public, excessive, their tendency to subvert government, iii. 437.
+
+Deceivers and cheats never can repent, iv. 9.
+
+Declaration of Right, contains the principles of the Revolution
+    of 1688, iii. 252.
+  drawn by Lord Somers, iii. 254.
+  proceeds upon the principle of reference to antiquity, iii. 273.
+
+Defensive measures, though vigorous at first, relax by degrees, iv. 355.
+  necessary considerations with regard to them, vi. 100.
+
+Definitions, frequently fallacious, i. 81.
+
+Deformity not opposed to beauty, but to the complete common form, i. 178.
+
+Deity, power the most striking of his attributes, i. 143.
+
+Delamere, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 31.
+
+Delight, what, i. 107.
+  distinguished from pleasure, i. 108.
+  the misfortunes of others sometimes a source of, i. 118.
+  the attendant of every passion which animates us to any active
+    purpose, i. 119.
+  how pain can be a cause of, i. 215.
+
+Democracy, no example in modern times of a considerable one, iii. 396.
+  an absolute one, not to be reckoned among the legitimate forms
+    of government, iii. 396.
+  Aristotle's observation on the resemblance between a democracy
+    and a tyranny; iii. 397.
+  the vice of the ancient democracies, what, iii. 508.
+  the foodful nurse of ambition, iv. 104.
+
+Departments in France, their origin, nature, and function, iii. 461, 465.
+
+Depth thought to have a grander effect than height, i. 147.
+
+Description, verbal, a means of raising a stronger emotion
+    than painting, i. 133.
+
+Desirable things always practicable, ii. 357.
+
+Despotism, nature of, i. 446; ix. 458.
+
+D'Espréménil, the illustrious French magistrate, murdered by
+    the Revolutionists, vi. 40.
+
+Dialogue, advantages and disadvantages of it as a mode of
+    argumentation, vi. 9.
+
+Difference in taste, commonly so called, whence, i. 89.
+
+Difficulty, a source of greatness in idea, i. 153.
+  its disciplinary uses, iii. 453.
+  political difficulties, ill consequences of attempting to
+    elude them, iii. 454.
+
+Dignity, national, no standard for rating the conditions of peace, v. 257.
+
+Dimension, greatness of, a powerful cause of the sublime, i. 147.
+  necessary to the sublime in building, i. 152.
+  but incompatible with beauty, i. 242.
+
+Dinagepore, Rajah of, account of him, xii. 318.
+
+Diogenes, anecdote of him, iv. 61.
+
+Directory, the, by whom settled, vii. 13.
+  rejected at the Restoration, vii. 13.
+
+Disappointment, what, i. 108.
+
+Discontents, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present, i. 433.
+  produced by a system of favoritism, i. 469.
+
+Discretion, Lord Coke's remark on, iv. 292.
+
+Discretionary powers of the monarch, should be exercised upon
+    public principles, i. 469.
+
+Discrimination, a coarse, the greatest enemy to accuracy of
+    judgment, v. 143.
+
+Dissenters, observations on the Test Act, in reference to them, iv. 264.
+
+Distress, great, never teaches wise lessons to mankind, iv. 10.
+
+Distrust, advantages of, iv. 443.
+
+Disunion in government, mischief of, i. 425.
+
+Divorce, observations on, v. 313.
+
+Domesday Book, origin, and nature of it, vii. 354.
+
+Double cabinet, project of a, in the English court, i. 447.
+  nature and design of it, i. 454.
+  mischievous influence of it, i. 478.
+  how recommended at court, i. 485.
+  its operation upon Parliament, i. 490.
+  singular doctrine propagated by it, i. 525.
+
+Drama, Hints for an Essay on the, vii. 143.
+
+Dramatic writing, difficulty of, vii. 145.
+  origin of, vii. 149.
+
+Druids, some account of their origin, character, and functions, vii. 176.
+  the opinion that their religion was founded on the unity of
+    the Godhead, confuted, vii. 185.
+
+Dryden, his translation of a passage in Virgil, v. 391.
+
+Du Bos, his theory of the greater effect of painting than of
+    poetry on the passions, controverted, i. 134.
+
+Dunkirk, demolition of, i. 412.
+
+Dunning, Mr., brief character of, ii. 398.
+
+Du Pin, M. de la Tour, his account of the state of the army
+    in France, iii. 512.
+
+Durham, County Palatine of, admitted to representation in
+    Parliament, in the reign of Charles II., ii. 152.
+
+Duty, effectual execution of it, how to be secured, ii. 353.
+  determined by situation, ii. 465; iv. 167.
+  people do not like to be told of it, iv. 163.
+  not dependent on the will, iv. 165.
+
+
+Easter, whence the name derived, vii. 237.
+  disputes about the time of celebrating it promote the study
+    of astronomy and chronology, vii. 252.
+
+East India Company, origin of the, ix. 348.
+  system of its service, ix. 350.
+  a fundamental part of its constitution, that its government
+    shall be a written one, ix. 369.
+  two sources of its power, ix. 345.
+  its negotiations with government, i. 362.
+  observations on its charter, ii. 438.
+  extent and population of its possessions, ii. 443, 444.
+  observations on its conduct, ii. 446.
+  its treatment of the nations indirectly subject to its
+    authority, ii. 466.
+  its administration in the countries immediately under its
+    government, ii. 497.
+  concise view of the proceedings of the House of Commons
+    relative to it, ii. 559.
+
+East Indies, origin of the extensive British possessions there, ii. 560.
+
+Ecclesiastical investiture, origin and nature of, vii. 382.
+
+Economy and war not easily reconciled, i. 310.
+  admirable system of, in France, under Necker, ii. 273.
+  difficulty of attempting a plan of public economy, ii. 268.
+  rules for a proper plan of, ii. 286.
+  things prescribed by the principles of radical economy, ii. 310.
+  distinction between economy and parsimony, v. 195.
+  political economy, had its origin in England, v. 192.
+
+Education, effect of it on the colonists in America, ii. 124.
+  description of a good one, iv. 24; xii. 280.
+
+Edward the Confessor, his character and conduct, vii. 278.
+
+Election, popular, of magistrates, importance of it to a state, i. 472.
+  right of, what, i. 505.
+  mischief of frequent elections, i. 517; vii. 75.
+  the expense of them an important consideration, vii. 78.
+
+Elizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., murdered by the French regicides, vi. 41.
+
+Emphyteusis of the Romans, nature of it, vi. 354.
+
+Empires do not fall by their own weight, vi. 27.
+
+England, nature of its monarchy, ii. 288.
+  eulogy on its constitution, v. 210;
+  natural representation of its people, what it is, v. 284.
+  its constant policy with regard to France, iv. 397.
+  always necessarily the soul and head of any confederacy
+    against France, iv. 397; v. 245.
+
+English History, An Abridgment of the, vii. 157.
+
+Enmity, when avowed, is always felt, vi. 57.
+
+Enthusiasm, excited by other causes besides religion, v. 361.
+
+Eostre, the name of a Saxon goddess,--whence the term Easter, vii. 237.
+
+Epicureans, the, why tolerated in their atheism by the supporters
+    of the ancient heathen religions, vii. 31.
+  their physics the most rational of the ancient systems, vii. 251.
+  why discredited, vii. 251.
+
+Equity, criminal, a monster in jurisprudence, i. 500.
+
+Established Church, the, should be powerful, but comprehensive
+    and tolerant, vii. 36.
+
+Established religion of a state, has often torn to pieces the
+    civil establishment, vi. 357.
+
+Establishment, legal, ground of a legislative alteration of it, vii. 10.
+  ground of the constitutional provision for the exclusive
+    application of tithes to its support, vii. 12.
+
+Etiquette, its signification and uses, v. 434.
+
+Europe, general division of, before the universal prevalence
+    of the Roman power, vii. 159.
+  the original inhabitants of Greece and Italy of the same race
+    with the people of Northern Europe, vii. 161.
+  view of the state of Europe at the time of the Norman invasion, vii. 327.
+
+Evidence, circumstantial, remarks on it, xi. 93.
+
+Example, of men of principle, never without use, i. 426.
+  the only argument of effect in civil life, i. 499.
+  what the only security against a corrupt one, ii. 238.
+  the school of mankind, v. 331.
+
+Executions of criminals, observations on them, vi. 245.
+
+Exercise necessary to the finer organs, i. 216.
+
+Expression, difference between a clear and a strong one, i. 260.
+
+Eye, the, in what its beauty consists, i. 198.
+
+Eyre, Sir Robert, (Solicitor-General,) extracts from his
+    speech at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 138.
+
+
+Factions, formed upon and generate opinions, vii. 44.
+
+Fame, a passion for it, the instinct of all great souls, ii. 65.
+  the separation of it from virtue, a harsh divorce, ii. 243.
+
+Fanaticism, epidemical, formidable nature of it, iii. 435.
+  may be caused by a theory concerning government as much as by
+    a dogma in religion, iv. 192.
+
+Farmer, dangerous to try experiments on him, v. 147.
+  amount of his usual profits, what, v. 148.
+  difficulties of his business, v. 152.
+
+Favoritism, a system of, in the executory government of England,
+    at variance with the plan of the legislature, i. 469.
+
+Fear, cause of it, i. 210.
+  early and provident fear the mother of safety, vii. 50.
+
+Feeling, the beautiful in, i. 201.
+
+Female sex, the moral sensibility more acute in them then in men, xii. 164.
+
+Finances, three standards to judge of the condition of a nation
+    with regard to them, i. 330.
+  importance of them to a state, iii. 534.
+  admirable management of the French finances under Necker, ii. 273.
+
+Financier, duty of a judicious one in respect to his calculations, i. 348.
+  his objects, what, iii. 538, 558.
+
+Fire, a chief object of worship to the Druids, why, vii. 182.
+
+Firmness, a virtue only when it accompanies the most perfect
+    wisdom, i. 440.
+
+Fitness, not the cause of beauty, i. 181.
+  the real effects of it, i. 184.
+
+Flattery, why so prevalent, i. 124.
+
+Florence, republic of, its origin, vii. 331.
+
+Force, not impaired, either in effect or opinion, by an
+    unwillingness to exert itself, ii. 108.
+  objections to its employment against the American colonies, ii. 118.
+
+Forest lands, plan of economical reform concerning them, ii. 300.
+
+Foster, Justice, extracts from his Crown Cases and Discourses on
+    the Crown Law, xi. 28, 123.
+
+Fox, (C.J.) panegyrics on him, ii. 533; iii. 219.
+  reluctant dissent from his opinion concerning the assumption
+    of citizenship by the French army, iii. 218.
+  animadversions on his commendation of the French Revolution,
+    iv. 77; v. 7.
+  policy of a treaty with France maintained by him, v. 26.
+  his conduct contrasted with that of Mr. Pitt, v. 60.
+
+France, from its vicinity, always an object of English vigilance
+    with regard to its power or example, iii. 216.
+  Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with respect to, iv. 403.
+  the liberties of Europe dependent on its being a great and
+    preponderating power, iv. 455.
+  character of its government before the Revolution, as shown
+    by a review of the condition of the kingdom, iii. 400.
+  its exterior splendor just before the Revolution, v. 236.
+  state of things there during the Revolution, iv. 70.
+  barbarous treatment of the king and queen at the outbreak of
+    the Revolution, iii. 325.
+  eloquent description of the queen as Dauphiness, and of the
+    revolution in her fortunes, iii. 331.
+  observations on her execution, vi. 40.
+  degraded office to which the king was appointed by the Revolutionists,
+    iii. 496; iv. 20.
+  with his own hand pulled down the pillars of his throne, iv. 362.
+  character of the king's brothers, iv. 429.
+  character of the aristocracy before the Revolution, iii. 412; vi. 39.
+
+Franchise and office, difference between them, iv. 252.
+  effect of separating property from franchise, iv. 256.
+
+Franklin, Dr., conjectures on his visit to Paris, vi. 152.
+
+Freedom, the great contests for it in England chiefly on the
+    question of taxation, ii. 120.
+  but in the ancient commonwealths chiefly on the right of
+    election of magistrates, or on the balance among the
+    several orders of the state, ii. 120.
+  character of civil freedom, ii. 229.
+  our best securities for it obtained from princes who were
+    either war-like or prodigal, vi. 35.
+
+French Affairs, Thoughts on, iv. 313.
+
+French Directory, the character of its members, v. 448.
+  their conduct towards the foreign ministers, vi. 48.
+
+French emigrants, capable of being serviceable in restoring
+    order to France, iv. 427.
+
+French literary cabal, their plan for the destruction of
+    Christianity, iii. 378.
+
+French moneyed interest, at variance with the landed interest, iii. 376.
+
+French Revolution, characterized as one of doctrine and theoretic
+    dogma, iv. 319.
+  its fundamental principle, iv. 322.
+
+Frenchmen naturally more intense in their application than
+    Englishmen, iv. 54.
+  mischievous consequences of this, iv. 55.
+
+Friends of the Liberty of the Press, a club formed under the
+    auspices of Mr. Fox, v. 20.
+  origin and character of it, v. 20.
+
+Friends of the People, origin, composition, and proceedings of
+    the club so called, v. 12.
+  a libellous petition of theirs, v. 47.
+
+Frugality, founded on the principle that all riches have limits, ii. 308.
+
+
+Gaming, a principle inherent in human nature, ii. 293.
+  a general spirit of it encouraged by the Revolutionists
+    in France, iii. 488.
+  they who are under its influence treat their fortunes lightly, iv. 204.
+
+Garrick, David, anecdote of him, vi. 47.
+
+Gauls, their early incursions into Greece and Italy, vii. 161.
+  reduced at last by the Romans under Cæsar, vii. 162.
+  policy of Cæsar with regard to them, vii. 163.
+
+Geneva, possible benefits to it from state granaries, v. 155.
+
+Genghis Khân, observations on his code, xi. 212.
+
+Genoa, republic of, its origin, vii. 831.
+
+Gentoo law, the primeval law of India, xi. 207.
+
+Gentoos, the original inhabitants of Hindostan, ix. 377.
+  distribution of the people into orders or castes, ix. 380.
+  origin and character of their laws, ix. 482.
+  extracts from Halhed's translation of them, xi. 209.
+
+George II., character of his reign, i. 456.
+
+George III., advantages under which he came to the throne, i. 450.
+
+Germanic Custumary, the source of the polity of every country
+    in Europe, v. 319.
+
+Germans, of Scythian original, vii. 322.
+  brief account of their manners and institutions, vii. 291.
+  in certain of their institutions the outlines of the
+    constitution of England delineated, vii. 293.
+
+Germany, how likely to be affected by the Revolution in France, iv. 328.
+
+Gibraltar, the object of England in retaining it, iv. 383.
+
+Glastonbury Abbey, its extraordinary wealth and splendor, vii. 245.
+
+Go-betweens, the world governed by, iv. 189.
+  their mode of influence, iv. 190.
+
+Good fame of every man, ought to be protected by the laws, vii. 112.
+
+Gothic Custumary, the source of the polity of every country
+    in Europe, v. 319.
+
+Government, the forms of a free one not altogether incompatible
+    with the ends of an arbitrary one, i. 444.
+  project of government devised in the court of Frederick,
+    Prince of Wales, i. 447.
+  considered, i. 450.
+  nature and design of it, i. 460.
+  name of it, i. 466.
+  important ends of a mixed government, i. 469.
+  folly of hazarding plans of government except from a seat
+    of authority, ii. 104.
+  government a practical thing, ii. 227; iii. 310.
+  character of a free one, ii. 227.
+  an eminent criterion of a wise one, what, ii. 278.
+  reform in it should be early and temperate, ii. 280.
+  without means of some change, is without the means of its
+    conservation, iii. 259.
+  difficulty of forming a free one, iii. 560.
+  the particular form of it to be determined by the circumstances
+    and habits of a country, iv. 109.
+  a theory concerning it may be as much a cause of fanaticism as
+    a dogma in religion, iv. 192.
+  the establishment of one a difficult undertaking for foreign
+    powers to act in as principals, iv. 410.
+  not subject to laws analogous to those or physical life, v. 124, 234.
+  restraint the great purpose of, v. 133, 189.
+  policy of, in times of scarcity, v. 156.
+  important problem concerning, v. 166.
+  perishes only through its own weakness, v. 169.
+  impossible where property does not rule, v. 377.
+  the great objects of, v. 466; vii. 72.
+  its duty and right to attend much to opinions, vii. 44.
+  stands on opinion, vii. 91.
+
+Grace, acts of, impolicy of them, ii. 386.
+
+Gracefulness, an idea belonging to posture and motion, i. 200.
+
+Granaries, public, danger in erecting them, v. 153.
+  fit only for a state too small for agriculture, v. 155.
+
+Grand Seignior, the, not an arbitrary monarch, ix. 464.
+
+Great personages, wisely provided that we should interest
+    ourselves in their fate, xi. 308.
+  everywhere made the objects of tragedy, xi. 308.
+
+Greece, its original inhabitants of the same race as the
+    people of Northern Europe, vii. 161.
+  situation of it from a remote period, vii. 161.
+
+Greek Church, character of its secular clergy, iv. 230.
+
+Green Cloth, Court of, its origin and composition, ii. 304.
+
+Grenville, Mr., character of him, ii. 37.
+
+Grenville, Lord, eulogy of him, v. 174.
+
+Grief, cause of, i. 108.
+
+Guienne, William, Duke of, engages in the Crusade, vii. 374.
+
+Guilt, gigantic, overpowers our ideas of justice, iv. 466.
+  expedients for concealing it, frequently the cause of its
+    detection, x. 49.
+  is never wise, x. 49; xi. 261.
+
+
+Habeas Corpus, remarks upon the suspension of it in respect
+    to Americans, ii. 190.
+
+Habit and use, not causes of pleasure, i. 180.
+
+Hale, Sir Matthew, Cromwell's declaration to him when he
+    appointed him judge, iv. 13.
+  defect in his History of the Common Law, vii. 476.
+  causes of it, vii. 476.
+
+Halhed's translation of the Gentoo code, remarks on it, xi. 207.
+
+Hallmote, or Court Baron, what, vii. 301.
+
+Hannay, Colonel, his character and conduct, xi. 418.
+
+Happiness, civil, what, x. 135.
+
+Hardwicke, Lord, his declaration as to the general rule of
+    evidence, xi. 77.
+
+Harrington, his opinion as to a commonwealth not governed
+    by its property, v. 377.
+
+Hastings, Mr., articles of charge against him presented to
+    the House of Commons, 1786, viii. 305-ix. 318.
+  appendix to the eighth and sixteenth charges, ix. 319.
+  speeches of Mr. Burke in his impeachment, ix. 327-x. 451;
+    xi. 155-xii. 398.
+  Report from the Committee appointed to inspect the Lords'
+    Journals, in relation to their proceedings on his trial, xi. 1.
+  his conduct in the treaty with the Mahrattas, ii. 454.
+  brief account of his treatment of the Nabob of Oude, ii. 467.
+  of the Begums of Oude, ii. 476.
+  of the Ranny of Benares, ii. 485.
+  his venal agreement for the extirpation of the Rohillas, viii. 308.
+  his fraudulent sale of the territories of the Mogul, viii. 322.
+  his designs against the Rajah of Benares, viii. 339.
+  orders the arrest of the Rajah, viii. 361.
+  instigates the plunder of his family by the soldiery, viii. 368.
+  usurps the government of Benares, viii. 380.
+  his oppressive impositions and exactions, viii. 381.
+  enforces the confiscation of the landed estates of the
+    Begums of Oude, viii. 403.
+  orders the seizure of their treasures, viii. 409.
+  severities practised upon their ministers in the execution of
+    those orders, viii. 414.
+  endeavors to stifle an inquiry into his proceedings, viii. 448.
+  corruptly abandons the Nabob of Furruckabad and his country
+    to the oppressions of the Nabob of Oude, viii. 472.
+  causes the destruction of the Rajah of Sahlone, viii. 486.
+  sets at defiance the orders of the Company with respect to
+    contracts, ix. 4.
+  and with respect to salaries, ix. 11.
+  his illegal and extravagant allowances to Sir Eyre Coote, ix. 12.
+  and to Brigadier-General Stibbert, ix. 13.
+  and to Sir John Day, ix. 15.
+  and for the civil establishment of Fort William, ix. 17.
+  his appointment of the Secretary of the Council as agent for
+    the supply of rice, with enormous commissions, ix. 19.
+  his corrupt receipt of presents in numerous instances, ix. 23.
+  tender and subsequent disavowal of his resignation, and
+    refusal to vacate office, ix. 42.
+  his illegal contract with the Surgeon-General, ix. 60.
+  his contracts for Poolbundy repairs, ix. 60.
+  his opium contracts, ix. 63.
+  his appointment of R.J. Sulivan to office, ix. 70.
+  his conduct with regard to the Ranna of Gohud, ix. 72.
+  his frequent, violent, and unauthorized changes in the
+    revenue and judicial systems of Bengal, ix. 79, 87.
+  permits his own banian to hold farms to a large amount in
+    different districts, in violation of his own regulations, ix. 83.
+  refuses relief to the distresses of the Nabob of Oude, ix. 98.
+  seeks to enforce unjust demands against the Nabob, ix. 98.
+  illegally assumes the delegation of the whole functions of the
+    Council, for the purpose of making a treaty with the Nabob, ix. 104.
+  in contravention of treaty stipulations, burdens the Nabob
+    with the continued maintenance of British troops, ix. 109, 112.
+  makes unjustifiable demands on, and receives unlawful presents
+    from the Nabob, ix. 110, 114.
+  on his own simple allegation of indefinite offences, urges the
+    Nabob to put to death Almas Ali Khân, ix. 154.
+  establishes a system of disreputable and ruinous interference
+    in the government of the Nabob, ix. 162.
+  attempts to abandon the British army to the sole discretion of
+    the Nabob, ix. 168.
+  arrests and continues in long imprisonment Mahomed Reza Khân,
+    without any proofs of guilt, ix. 185.
+  appoints Munny Begum to be guardian to the Nabob of Bengal,
+    and administratrix of the government, ix. 187.
+  seeks the aggrandizement of the Mahrattas, ix. 220, 228.
+  the Mogul delivered up to them through his instrumentality, ix. 221.
+  he libels and asperses the Court of Directors, ix. 228.
+  forces the Mahrattas into a war, by repeatedly invading
+    their country, ix. 253.
+  concludes a dishonorable treaty of peace and alliance with them, ix. 254.
+  withholds and conceals his official correspondence and
+    proceedings from the Directors and Council, ix. 267.
+  his conduct with regard to Fyzoola Khân, ix. 268.
+  his arbitrary principles of government, ix. 446; xi. 194.
+  his corrupt system of government, x. 5.
+  general farming of the lands at auction, in derogation of
+    the rights of proprietors, x. 15.
+  sale of offices, x. 21.
+  conduct in reference to the accusations of Nundcomar, x. 24, 205.
+  in the case of Munny Begum and the Nabob of Bengal,
+    x. 26, 193, 278; xii. 218, 245.
+  the receipt of bribes justified by an intention to apply
+    them to the Company's service, x. 43, 324.
+  account given of some of these transactions to the Directors, x. 44, 338.
+  delegation of the management of the revenues to a nominal
+    council, with Gunga Govind Sing as agent, x. 53.
+  appointment of Debi Sing to the charge of the province
+    of Dinagepore, x. 65.
+  the enormities of this man, mock inquiries into them, and
+    Mr. Hastings's responsibility in the premises, x. 77, 92, 186.
+  Mr. Hastings's measures justified by himself, as producing
+    an increase of revenue, x. 136.
+  remarks on the testimonials of the natives in his favor,
+    x. 154; xii. 356.
+  proofs of personal corruption, x. 161-295.
+  charged with peculation by General Clavering, x. 244.
+  opinions of counsel concerning his proposed prosecution
+    by the Directors, x. 257.
+  his connivance in the general corruption of the Service,
+    x. 296; xii. 294.
+  recriminatory charges against the House of Commons, xi. 166.
+  powers claimed by him, and the manner and results of their
+    exercise, xi. 195, 236, 238.
+  in the case of Cheyt Sing and the province of Benares, xi. 236.
+  of the Nabob of Oude, his kindred and country, xi. 372; xii. 3.
+  of the province of Bengal, xii. 208.
+  his extravagant and corrupt contracts, xii. 297.
+  his conduct in reference to various presents, xii. 324, 338, 350.
+  observations on the Mahometan college founded by him, xii. 352.
+  Lord Cornwallis's testimony to the disastrous effects of
+    his revenue system, xii. 359.
+  examination of the merits set up by him, xii. 370.
+
+Hawles, Sir John, extracts from his speech at the trial of
+    Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 126, 135.
+
+Height, less grand than depth, i. 147.
+
+Helvetii, remarkable emigration of them related by Cæsar, vii. 172.
+
+Henry I. of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 375.
+
+Henry II. of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 394.
+
+Henry IV. of England, severs the Duchy and County Palatine of
+    Lancaster from the crown, ii. 296.
+
+Henry IV. of France, brief character of him, iii. 411.
+
+Hii, or Columbkill, brief account of it, vii. 249.
+
+Hindoo institutions, characteristics of, ix. 382.
+
+Hindoo polity, destroyed by Mr. Hastings, ix. 394.
+
+Hindostan, eras in its history, ix. 386.
+
+History, moral lessons to be drawn from it, iii. 418, 421.
+  caution with regard to the study of it, iv. 468.
+
+Hobbes, his view of war as the state of Nature, i. 15.
+
+Holland, Sir John, extracts from his speech at the trial of
+    Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 146.
+
+Holy Land, view of its condition at the commencement of the
+    third Crusade, vii. 426.
+
+Homer, his similitudes seldom exact, i. 88.
+  a simile from the Iliad, i. 105.
+  his representation of Discord, obscure and magnificent, i. 138.
+  no instance in the Iliad of the fall of any man remarkable
+    for stature and strength that touches us with pity, i. 243.
+  has given to the Trojans more of the amiable and social virtues
+    than to the Greeks, i. 243.
+  would excite pity for the Trojans, admiration for the Greeks, i. 243.
+  his masterly representation of the grief of Priam over the
+    body of Hector, iv. 95.
+  observation on his representation of the ghosts of heroes at
+    the sacrifices of Ulysses, vii. 181.
+  his works introduced into England by Theodorus, Archbishop of
+    Canterbury, vii. 249.
+
+Honest men, no safety for them but by believing all possible
+    evil of evil men, iv. 7.
+
+Horace, the truth of an observation in his Art of Poetry,
+    discussed, i. 134.
+  a passage from him of similar import to one from David, i. 143.
+
+Household, the royal, has strong traces of feudality, ii. 303.
+
+Howard, the philanthropist, his labors, ii. 387.
+
+Hudibras, humorous lines from, applicable to the modern Whigs, iv. 150.
+
+Hume, Mr., his account of the secret of Rousseau's principles
+    of composition, iii. 459.
+  his remark on the doctrines of John Ball, iv. 355.
+
+Humility, the basis of the Christian system, iv. 26.
+  humanity cannot be degraded by it, v. 253.
+
+Husbandry, classification of laborers in, v. 144.
+
+Hyder Ali Khân, scheme of the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot
+    to extirpate him, iii. 61.
+  dreadful devastation of the Carnatic by him, iii. 83.
+
+Hypæthra of the Greeks, what, vii. 187.
+
+
+Imagination, what, i. 86.
+  no bounds to men's passions when they are under its influence, iv. 192.
+
+Imitation, one of the passions belonging to society, i. 122.
+  its source and use, i. 122.
+
+Impeachment, the great guardian of the purity of the constitution, i. 495.
+
+Impey, Sir Elijah, (Chief Justice of Bengal,) accused of the
+    official murder of Nundcomar, x. 218.
+  resolution of the House of Commons concerning this accusation, x. 311.
+  serves as bearer of Mr. Hastings's order to seize the
+    treasures of the Begums of Oude, xii. 32.
+  acts as commissioner to seek affidavits against the Begums, xii. 82.
+
+Indecision, the natural accomplice of violence, iv. 190.
+
+Indemnification, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.
+
+Indemnity and oblivion, acts of, their probable effects as
+    means of reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.
+
+Independence of mind, always more or less influenced by
+    independence of fortune, vii. 78.
+
+India, the people of, classification of them, ix. 376; xi. 207.
+
+Indians, British alliances with them in the American war denounced,
+    vi. 171.
+
+Indifference, pleasure, and pain, viewed in relation to each
+    other, as states of the mind, i. 103.
+
+Indolence, the prevailing characteristic of the class of
+    elegant, weak-minded people, vii. 147.
+
+Industry, effect of the Irish Popery laws in discouraging it,
+    vi. 351.
+
+Infinite, the artificial, consists in succession and uniformity
+    of parts, i. 149, 220.
+
+Infinity, a source of the sublime, i. 148.
+  in agreeable images, a cause of pleasure, i. 153.
+
+Influence of the crown, operation of it, i. 444.
+
+Inheritance, value of this principle in the British constitution, iii. 274.
+
+Injury is quick and rapid, justice slow, x. 151; xi. 181.
+
+Innocence, contrasted with guilt, ix. 371.
+
+Insolvency, who ought to suffer in a case of, iii. 381.
+
+Institutions, ancient juridical ones in England, intended to
+    retard the headlong course of violence and oppression, ii. 193.
+  in political institutions, soundness of the materials of
+    more importance than the fashion of the work, v. 120.
+  how, when revolutionized, to be reëstablished, v. 126.
+  benefits of institution, properly conditional, vii. 15.
+
+Interest of a debt, not the principal, distresses a nation, i. 329.
+
+Intolerance, mischief of it, vii. 34.
+
+Ireland, danger of a proposed tax upon, i. 352.
+  early transmission thither of English liberties and institutions,
+    ii. 146.
+  Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol relative to the Trade of Ireland,
+    ii. 247.
+  Mr. Burke's defence of his Parliamentary conduct with regard to it,
+    ii. 377.
+  the plan for the government of Ireland until 1782, what, iv. 233.
+  the true revolution there, that of 1782, iv. 276.
+  state of religion there before the grant of Pope Adrian IV., vi. 342.
+  object of the grant, vi. 342.
+  mutual importance of Ireland and Great Britain to one another, vi. 420.
+  reduction of Ireland by Henry II., vii. 410.
+  nature and previous condition of the country, vii. 410.
+  motives which led Adrian to commission Henry to reduce it, vii. 410, 413.
+  the English laws said to have been established there at its
+    subjugation by John, vii. 449.
+
+Irish language, names of the letters of it taken from the names
+    of several species of trees, vii. 412.
+
+Isocrates, observation of his in one of his orations against
+    the Sophists, i. 5.
+
+Italy, its original inhabitants of the same race as the people
+    of Northern Europe, vii. 161.
+  its situation from a remote period, vii. 161.
+
+
+Jacobinism by establishment, what, v. 309.
+
+Jacobins, their character, iv. 437, v. 285, vi. 367.
+  their great object, v. 39.
+
+Jacquerie, brief notice of the, iv. 177.
+
+Jaffier Ali Khân, made Nabob of Bengal by the English, ix. 401.
+
+Jaghires, Indian, nature of them, xii. 9.
+
+Jekyl, Sir Joseph, his character, iv. 130.
+  extracts from his speech at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell,
+    iv. 130, 131, 132, 136, 137, 142, 143.
+
+Jews, a source of great revenue to William the Conqueror, vii. 351.
+
+Job, observations on its sublime representation of a vision
+    in the night, i. 137.
+  its sublime descriptions of the war-horse, the wild ass,
+    and the unicorn and leviathan, i. 140.
+
+John, King of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 437.
+
+Judge, duty of one, xi. 104.
+
+Judges, ought to be the very last to feel the necessities
+    of the state, ii. 351.
+
+Judgment and wit, difference between them, i. 87.
+  the senses should be put under the tuition of the judgment, iii. 15.
+  a coarse discrimination the greatest enemy to accuracy of
+    judgment, v. 143.
+
+Juridical and legislative acts, difference between them, vii. 63.
+
+Juries, an institution of gradual formation, vii. 115.
+  not attributable to Alfred, vii. 264.
+  never prevalent amongst the Saxons, vii. 264.
+
+Jurisprudence, nature and importance of the science, iii. 357.
+  abrogation of it in France at the Revolution, v. 307.
+  state of the study of it in England, vii. 476.
+  whole frame of it altered since the Conquest, vii. 478.
+
+Justice is slow, injury quick and rapid, x. 151; xi. 181.
+  general observations on it, xii. 393, 395.
+
+
+Keppel, Lord, character of him, v. 222.
+
+Kilkenny, Statutes of, prove the ancient existence in Ireland
+    of the spirit of the Popery laws, iv. 273.
+
+King, the things in which he has an individual interest, i. 485.
+  nature of his office, iii. 497.
+  just powers of the king of France, iv. 49.
+  power of the king of England, iv. 50.
+  Address to the, in relation to the Measures of Government in
+    the American Contest, vi. 161.
+
+Kings, naturally lovers of low company, ii. 337.
+  in what sense the servants of the people, iii. 269.
+
+King's Men, or King's Friends, character of the court corporation
+    so called, i. 466.
+
+Knight-errantry, origin of it, vii. 390.
+
+
+Labor, necessary, why, i. 215.
+  human labor called by the ancients _instrumentum vocale_, v. 140.
+  that on which the farmer is most to rely for the repayment
+    of his capital, v. 140.
+
+Laborer and employer, always an implied contract between them, v. 137.
+  the first and fundamental interest of the laborer, what, v. 140.
+
+Laboring poor, impropriety of the expression, v. 135, 466.
+
+Lacedemonians, at the head of the aristocratic interests of Greece,
+    iv. 321.
+
+La Fontaine, has not one original story, vii. 145.
+
+Lancaster, Duchy and County Palatine of, severed from the crown
+    by Henry IV., ii. 296.
+
+Landed estate of the crown, remarks on it, ii. 299.
+
+Landed Interest, policy of the French Republic with regard to it, iv. 323.
+
+Landed property, the firm basis of every stable government, v. 491.
+
+Lanfranc, character of him, vii. 363.
+
+Langton, Stephen, his appointment to the see of Canterbury
+    through the influence of the Pope, vii. 447, 451.
+  oath administered by him to King John on his absolution, vii. 455.
+
+Law's Mississippi scheme, character of it, iii. 554.
+
+Law of neighborhood, what, v. 321.
+
+Law, remarks on the study of it, ii. 125.
+
+Laws, reach but a very little way, i. 470.
+  their severity tempered by trial by jury, i. 499.
+  superseded by occasions of public necessity, ii. 329.
+  bad ones the worst sort of tyranny, ii. 395.
+  laws and manners, a knowledge of what belongs to each the duty
+    of a statesman, v. 167.
+  civil laws not all merely positive, v. 321.
+  two things requisite to the solid establishment of them, vi. 321.
+  equity and utility, the two foundations of them, vi. 323.
+  ought to be in unison with manners, vii. 27.
+  of England, Essay towards an History of the, vii. 475.
+  of England, written in the native language until the Norman
+    Conquest, vii. 481.
+  of other Northern nations, written in Latin, vii. 481.
+  cause of this difference, vii. 481.
+  of Canute the Great, remarks on them, vii. 483.
+  of Edward the Confessor, so called, vii. 484.
+  ancient Saxon, review of their sanctions, vii. 484.
+  sources of them, vii. 487.
+  Gentoo, sources of them, ix. 482.
+  Mahometan, sources of them, ix. 480; xi. 216.
+
+Lawful enjoyment, the surest method to prevent unlawful
+    gratification, iv. 256.
+
+Lawsuit, observations on that comedy, vii. 152.
+
+Learning, an attention to it necessary to Christianity, vii. 246.
+  contributed, in the early ages, to the temporal power of the
+    clergy, vii. 399.
+
+Lechmere, Mr., extracts from his speeches at the trial of
+    Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 122, 124, 142.
+
+Legislation, important problem in, v. 166.
+
+Legislative and juridical acts, the difference between them, vii. 63.
+
+Legislative right, not to be exercised without regard to the
+    general opinion of those who are to be governed, ii. 224.
+
+Legislators, bound only by the great principles of reason and
+    equity, and the general sense of mankind, ii. 196.
+  character of a true legislator, ii. 456.
+  duties of legislators, v. 166; vi. 319.
+  the mode of proceeding of the ancient legislators, iii. 476.
+
+Legislature, the true end of it, what, ii. 225; iii. 457.
+  its power of regulating the succession to the crown, iv. 134.
+
+Leland, Dr., his book (View of Deistical Writers) the best on
+    the subject, vii. 34.
+
+Length, too great, in buildings, prejudicial to grandeur of effect, i. 152.
+
+Letter of Mr. Burke to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on American
+    Affairs, ii. 187.
+  to Gentlemen of Bristol, on the Trade of Ireland, ii. 249, 258.
+  to a Member of the National Assembly, on French Affairs, iv. 1.
+  to a Peer of Ireland, on the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics, iv. 217.
+  to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Roman Catholics of Ireland,
+    iv. 241; vi. 375.
+  to William Elliot, Esq., on a Speech in the House of Lords,
+    in the Debate concerning Lord Fitzwilliam, v. 107.
+  to a Noble Lord, on the Attacks upon himself and his Pension, v. 171.
+  on a Regicide Peace, v. 233, 342, 384; vi. 1.
+  to the Empress of Russia, vi. 113.
+  to Sir Charles Bingham, on the Irish Absentee Tax, vi. 121.
+  to Hon. Charles James Fox, on the American War, vi. 135.
+  to the Marquis of Rockingham, on the Plans of the Opposition
+    in reference to the American War, vi. 151.
+  to Rt. Hon. Edmund S. Pery, on the Relief of the Roman
+    Catholics of Ireland, vi. 197.
+  to Thomas Burgh, Esq., in Vindication of his Parliamentary
+    Conduct relative to Ireland, vi. 209.
+  to John Merlott, Esq., on the same subject, vi. 235.
+  to the Lord Chancellor and others, with Thoughts on the
+    Executions of the Rioters in 1780, vi. 239.
+  to Rt. Hon. Henry Dundas, with the Sketch of a Negro Code, vi. 255.
+  to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting, on
+    Parliamentary Reform, vi. 291.
+  to William Smith, Esq., on Catholic Emancipation, vi. 361.
+  to Richard Burke, Esq., on Protestant Ascendency in Ireland, vi. 385.
+  on the Affairs of Ireland in 1797, vi. 413.
+  on Mr. Dowdeswell's Bill for explaining the Powers of Juries
+    in Prosecutions for Libels, vii. 123.
+
+Libel, the elements of a, vii. 113.
+
+Libelling, not the crime of an illiterate people, vii. 111.
+
+Liberty and commerce, the two main sources of power to Great Britain,
+    ii. 87.
+  mistakes about liberty, ii. 228.
+  cannot long exist among a people generally corrupt, ii. 242.
+  necessity of regulating it, iii. 240, 559,
+  how far men are qualified for it, iv. 51.
+  the distinguishing part of the British constitution, iv. 97.
+  its preservation the peculiar duty of the House of Commons, iv. 97.
+  order and virtue necessary to its existence, iv. 97.
+  a constitution uniting public and private liberty with the elements of
+    a beneficent and stable government, an elaborate contrivance, iv. 211.
+  partial freedom and true liberty contrasted, vi. 389.
+  review of the causes of the revolution in favor of liberty in
+    the reign of King John, vii. 472.
+
+Light, how a cause of the sublime, i. 156.
+  when excessive, resembles darkness in its effects, i. 157.
+  light and riant colors opposed to the sublime, i. 159.
+
+Limerick, treaty of, observations on two of its articles, vi. 345.
+
+Lindisfarne, brief account of, vii. 250.
+
+Liturgy of the Established Church, alteration of it ineffectual
+    for the quieting of discontent, vii. 13.
+
+Locke, Mr., his opinion concerning pleasure and pain, i. 105.
+  his opinion concerning darkness, i. 225.
+
+Longinus, an observation of his on the effect of sublime
+    passages in poets and orators, i. 124.
+
+Lords, House of, affected alarm at a supposed intrenchment by it on
+    the balance of the constitution, in the reign of George II., i. 457.
+  the feeblest part of the constitution, v. 49.
+
+Loudness, a source of the sublime, i. 159.
+
+Louis XIII., his hatred of Richelieu, iii. 499.
+
+Louis XIV., his dislike to Mazarin and Louvois, iii. 499.
+  his conduct at the peace of Ryswick, vi. 58.
+  reason given by him for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, vi. 328.
+
+Louis XVI., barbarous treatment experienced by him at the Revolution,
+    iii. 325; iv. 19.
+  unjustly called an arbitrary monarch, iii. 339.
+  degraded office to which he was appointed by the Revolutionists,
+    iii. 496; iv. 20.
+  not the first cause of the evil by which he suffered, v. 366.
+  his character, v. 378.
+  character of his brothers, iv. 429.
+
+Love, its origin, nature, and objects, i. 125.
+  the physical cause of it, i. 232.
+  nature of that taught by Rousseau, iv. 30.
+  observations on the love of parents to their children, xi. 422.
+  and on the love of country, xi. 422; iii. 292, 494.
+
+Lucretius, passages from him, illustrative of the sublime, i. 144, 257.
+
+Luxury, some good consequences of it, i. 424.
+  a tax on it, the only contribution that can be termed voluntary, v. 461.
+
+
+Machiavel, an observation of his on war and peace, i. 15.
+  his maxim concerning wickedness by halves, vi. 43.
+
+Madmen, a frequent appearance in them accounted for, i. 149.
+
+Magna Charta, observations on it, iii. 272; iv. 266.
+  origin and nature of it, vii. 460.
+
+Magnanimity, in politics, often the truest wisdom, ii. 181.
+
+Magnificence, a source of the sublime, i. 154.
+
+Magnitude, in building, necessary to the sublime, i. 152.
+
+Mahomed Reza Khân, arrested by Mr. Hastings, x. 184.
+
+Mahometanism, its conquests in Hindostan, ix. 387.
+
+Mahometan government, character of it, ix. 463.
+  laws, sources of them, ix. 480; xi. 216.
+
+Mahrattas, their territories invaded by the East India Company, ii. 453.
+  treaties with them, ii. 453, 454.
+
+Majority, in a commonwealth, question as to the proper power of,
+    iii. 299; iv. 170.
+  not true that in all contests the decision will be in their favor,
+    vii. 53.
+
+Malesherbes, murdered by the French Revolutionists, vi. 40.
+
+Malvoisins, what, vii. 389.
+
+Man, a creature of habit and opinions, ii. 234; xii. 164.
+
+Manifestoes, implying superiority over an enemy, when commonly made,
+    iv. 405.
+  matters usually contained in them, iv. 405.
+
+Manilla ransom, remarks on it, i. 407.
+
+Manners, while they remain entire, correct the vices of law, ii. 202.
+  corrupted by civil wars, ii. 203.
+  maintained in Europe for ages by the spirit of nobility and of
+    religion, iii. 335.
+  in England, derived from France, iii. 336.
+  have done alone in England what institutions and manners
+    together have done in France, iv. 327.
+  statesmen ought to know what appertains respectively to manners
+    and laws, v. 167.
+  of more importance than laws, v. 310.
+  laws ought to be in unison with them, vii. 27.
+
+Mansfield, Lord, his declarations concerning rules of evidence, xi. 84.
+
+Mara, the name of a Saxon goddess,--whence the term Night-Mare, vii. 237.
+
+Marriage, beneficial results of the Christian doctrine concerning it,
+    v. 312.
+  endeavors of the French Constituent Assembly to desecrate it, v. 312.
+  ends for which it was instituted, vii. 131.
+  restraints upon it in the reign of King John, vii. 464.
+
+Marriage Act, principles upon which it is grounded, vii. 131.
+
+Mathematical and metaphysical reasoning, compared with moral, vii. 73.
+
+Mazarin, Cardinal, not loved by Louis XIV., iii. 499.
+  bon-mot of a flatterer of his, on the match between Louis XIV.
+    and a daughter of Spain, vi. 20.
+
+Mediterranean Sea, importance to England of keeping a strong
+    naval force there, v. 421.
+
+Memorial to be delivered to Monsieur de M.M., Hints for a, iv. 307.
+
+Merchants, English, their evidence, petitions, and consultations
+    respecting America, i. 399, 405, 406.
+  principles and qualities of, ii. 506.
+
+Mercy, not opposed to justice, iv. 465; vi. 252.
+  consists not in the weakness of the means, but in the benignity
+    of the ends, vi. 168.
+
+Metaphysician, nothing harder than the heart of a thorough-bred one,
+    v. 216.
+
+Migration, in early times, caused by pasturage and hunting, vii. 171.
+  and by wars, vii. 171.
+
+Military life, its attractions to those who have had experience of it,
+    v. 464.
+
+Military and naval officers, the fortitude required of them, v. 468.
+
+Militia, probable origin of it, vii. 422.
+
+Milton, his admirable description of Death, i. 132.
+  his celebrated portrait of Satan, i. 135.
+  his description of the appearance of the Deity, i. 156.
+  example from him of the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.
+  of the power of words, i. 259.
+
+Ministers, Prussian, infected with the principles of the
+    French Revolution, iv. 359.
+  British, to be controlled by the House of Commons, v. 57.
+  observations on their duty in giving information to the public, vi. 14.
+
+Minority, Observations on the Conduct of the, in Parliament,
+    in the Session of 1792, v. 1.
+  power of a restless one, v. 285.
+
+Mistletoe, veneration of the Druids for it, vii. 183.
+
+Modes of life, injustice of sudden legislative violence to suc
+     as the laws had previously encouraged, iii. 439.
+
+Modesty, heightens all other virtues, i. 188; v. 128.
+  but sometimes their worst enemy, v. 129.
+
+Mogul, the Great, his grants to the East India Company, ii. 560; ix. 345.
+  sold by the Company, ii. 448.
+  the Company's treaties with him broken by them, ii. 452.
+  conspiracy to murder his son, ix. 412.
+
+Mohun, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 32.
+
+Mona, the principal residence of the Druids in the beginning of
+    Nero's reign, vii. 195.
+  reduced by Suetonius Paulinus, vii. 196.
+
+Monarchy, preferred by Bolingbroke to other governments, iii. 398.
+  one of its advantages, to have no local seat, iv. 431.
+
+Monastic institutions, their important uses, iii. 440; vii. 244, 245.
+
+Money, the value of it how to be judged, v. 454.
+
+Moneyed companies, dangerous to tax great ones, i. 368.
+
+Moneyed interest, when dangerous to a government, iii. 437.
+
+Moneyed men, ought to be allowed to set a value on their money, v. 455.
+
+Monk, General, character of the army commanded by him, iv. 36.
+
+Monopoly of authority, an evil; of capital, a benefit, v. 151.
+
+Montesquieu, his remark on the legislators of antiquity, iii. 477.
+  character of him, iv. 211.
+  his false view of the people of India, xi. 207.
+
+Moral duties, not necessary that the reasons of them should be made
+    clear to all, i. 7.
+
+Moral order of things, great disasters in it affect the mind like
+    miracles in the physical, iii. 337.
+
+Moral questions never abstract ones, vii. 55.
+
+Moral reasoning, compared with mathematical and metaphysical, vii. 73.
+
+Mortality, a general one always a time of remarkable wickedness, vii. 84.
+
+Multitudes, the shouting of, a source of the sublime, i. 159.
+  a multitude told by the head, not the people, iv. 183.
+
+Munny Begum, (of Bengal,) her history, x. 195; xii. 226.
+  appointed by Mr. Hastings regent of Bengal, and guardian of the
+    Nabob, x. 196; xii. 218.
+  (of Oude,) her noble birth, rank, and connections, xii. 46.
+
+Music, remark concerning the beautiful in it, i. 204.
+
+Mystery, in any matter of policy, affords presumption of fraud, xii. 79.
+
+
+Nabob of Arcot, the Subah of the Deccan sold to him by the
+    East India Company, ii. 450.
+  nature of his debts, iii. 25, 28, 29, 35, 39, 47.
+
+Nabob of Oude, conduct of the East India Company towards him, ii. 466.
+
+Nantes, Edict of, reason assigned by Louis XIV. for the revocation
+    of it, vi. 328.
+  observations thereon, vi. 328.
+
+Naples, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France, iv. 337.
+
+Nation, Present State of the, Observations on a late Publication
+    so intituled, i. 269.
+  character of this publication, i. 274.
+  state of the nation in 1770, i. 437.
+  speculation of the ministry on the cause of it, i. 438.
+  animadversions on their views, i. 439.
+
+National Assembly of France, corresponds with the Revolution
+    Society of London, iii. 237.
+  its composition and character, iii. 283, 450.
+  studies recommended by it to the youth of France, iv. 25.
+  its worship of Rousseau, iv. 25.
+
+Natural powers in man, the senses, the imagination, and the judgment,
+    i. 82.
+
+Nature, state of, inconveniences of it, i. 10.
+  the social, impels a man to propagate his principles, v. 361.
+
+Navigation, Act of, its policy, i. 378; ii. 30, 38.
+
+Navy, the great danger of economical experiments upon it, i. 345.
+
+Necessity, the plea of, remarks on it, v. 450.
+
+Negro Code, Sketch of a, vi. 262.
+
+Negro slaves, denunciation of attempts to excite insurrections among them
+    in the colonies by proclamations of the English governors, vi. 171.
+
+Neighborhood, the law of, what, v. 321.
+
+Newfoundland, view of the trade with it, i. 320.
+
+Newspapers, powerful influence of them in the diffusion of French
+    principles, iv. 327.
+
+Night, a cause of the sublime, i. 132, 158.
+
+Norman conquest, extraordinary facility of it, vii. 287.
+  attempt to account for it, vii. 288.
+  the great era of the English laws, vii. 487.
+
+Normandy, reunion of it to the crown of France, vii. 445.
+
+North, Lord, observations on his character, v. 182; vi. 216, 223.
+
+Novelty, the first and simplest source of pleasure to the mind, i. 101.
+  the danger of indulging a desire for it in practical cases, iv. 76.
+
+Nundcomar, accuses Mr. Hastings of corruption, x. 24.
+
+Nuzzer, or Nuzzerana, what, x. 171.
+
+
+Oak, the, why venerated by the Druids, vii. 183.
+
+Oath, the Coronation, observations upon it in reference to the
+    Roman Catholics, iv. 260.
+
+Obscurity, generally necessary to the terrible, i. 132.
+  why more affecting than clearness, i. 135.
+
+Obstinacy, though a great and very mischievous vice, closely
+    allied to the masculine virtues, ii. 66.
+
+Office, men too much conversant in it rarely have enlarged minds, ii. 38.
+  in feudal times, the lowest offices often held by considerable persons,
+    ii. 303.
+  the reason of this, ii. 304.
+
+Officers, military and naval, nature of the fortitude required
+    of them, v. 468.
+
+Opinion, popular, the support of government, ii. 224; vi. 165; vii. 91.
+  an equivocal test of merit, v. 183.
+  the generality of it not always to be judged of by the noise of the
+    acclamation, v. 286.
+
+Opinions, men impelled to propagate their own by their social nature,
+    v. 361.
+  their influence on the affections and passions, v. 403; vii. 44.
+  the most decided often stated in the form of questions, vi. 28.
+  the interest and duty of government to attend much to them, vii. 44.
+
+Oppression, the poorest and most illiterate are judges of it, iv. 281.
+
+Orange, Prince of, (afterwards William III.,) extracts from his
+    Declaration, iv. 147.
+
+Ordeal, purgation by, vii. 314.
+
+Oude, extent and government of, under Sujah ul Dowlah, xi. 373.
+
+
+Pain, pleasure, and indifference, their mutual relation as states
+    of the mind, i. 103.
+  nature and cause of pain, i. 210.
+  how a cause of delight, i. 215.
+
+Paine, Thomas, remarks on his character, v. iii; vi. 60.
+
+Painting and poetry, their power, when due to imitation, and when
+    to sympathy, i. 123.
+
+Pandulph, the Pope's legate, his politic dealing with King John, vii. 451.
+  parallel between his conduct to King John and that of the
+    Roman consuls to the Carthaginians in the last Punic war, vii. 453.
+
+Papal power, uniform steadiness of it in the pursuit of its
+    ambitious projects, vii. 449.
+
+Papal pretensions, sources of their growth and support, vii. 384.
+
+Papal States, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France,
+    iv. 337.
+
+Parliament, remarks on it, i. 491.
+  the power of dissolving it, the most critical and delicate
+    of all the trusts vested in the crown, ii. 553.
+  disadvantages of triennial parliaments, vii. 79.
+
+Parliaments of France, character of them, iii. 505.
+
+Parliament of Paris, observations on its subversion, xii. 396.
+
+Parliamentary disorders, ideas for the cure of them, i. 516.
+
+Parsimony, a leaning towards it in war may be the worst management, i. 310.
+
+Party divisions, inseparable from free government, i. 271.
+  definition of the term, party, i. 530.
+  evils of party domination, vi. 390.
+
+Passions, all concern either self-preservation or society, i. 110.
+  final cause of the difference between those belonging to
+    self-preservation and those which regard the society of the sexes,
+    i. 113.
+  those which belong to self-preservation turn upon pain and danger,
+    i. 125.
+  nature and objects of those belonging to society, i. 125.
+  a control over them necessary to the existence of society, iv. 52.
+  strong ones awaken the faculties, v. 287.
+  vehement passion not always indicative of an infirm judgment, v. 407.
+  mere general truths interfere very little with them, vi. 326.
+  passions which interest men in the characters of others, vii. 148.
+
+Pasturage and hunting, weaken men's ties to any particular
+    habitation, vii. 171.
+
+Paulus, observation of his on law, vi. 324.
+
+Peace, requisites of a good one, i. 295.
+  the steps taken to bring one about always an augury of what
+    it is likely to be, v. 251.
+  a ground of peace never laid until it is as good as concluded, v. 260.
+  an arrangement of peace in its nature a permanent settlement, v. 349.
+
+Penal statute of William III. against the Papists, repeal of it, ii. 391.
+
+People, accurate idea of the term, iv. 169.
+  evils of an abuse of it, iv. 411.
+  the temper of the people the first study of a statesman, i. 436.
+  in seasons of popular discontent, something generally amiss
+    in the government, i. 440.
+  the people have no interest in disorder, i. 441.
+  generally fifty years behindhand in their politics, i. 442.
+  a connection with their interests a necessary qualification
+    of a minister, i. 474.
+  sense of the people, how to be ascertained by the king, i. 475.
+  should show themselves able to protect every representative
+    in the performance of his duty, i. 503.
+  liberty cannot long exist where they are generally corrupt, ii. 242.
+  the people of England love a mitigated monarchy more than
+    even the best republic, iv. 149.
+  danger of teaching them to think lightly of their engagements
+    to their governors, iv. 162.
+  the natural control on authority, iv. 164.
+  dangerous nature of a power capable of resisting even their
+    erroneous choice of an object, vi. 296.
+  points on which they are incompetent to give advice to their
+    representatives, vii. 74, 75.
+
+Perfection not the cause of beauty, i. 187.
+
+Persecution, religious, an observation of Mr. Bayle concerning it, vi. 333.
+  general observations on it, vi. 394.
+
+Persecutor, a violent one, frequently an unbeliever in his own creed,
+    vi. 86.
+
+Peshcush, what, x. 171.
+
+Peters, Hugh, remarks on a passage in a sermon of his, iii. 318.
+
+Petition of Right, rests the franchises of the subject not on
+    abstract right, but on inheritance, iii. 273.
+
+Philosophical inquiries, how to be conducted, i. 70.
+  use of them, i. 72.
+
+Philosophy, Lord Bolingbroke's, animadversions on it, i. 4.
+
+Physic, the profession of it, in ancient times, annexed to
+    the priesthood, vii. 183.
+
+Physiognomy, has a considerable share in the beauty of the
+    human species, i. 198.
+
+Pilgrimages of the Middle Ages, benefits of them, vii. 247.
+
+Pitt, Mr., remarks on his conduct in 1784, v. 57.
+  his Declaration on the war with the French Republic, v. 278; vi. 21.
+  eulogy of it, v. 279, 390; vi. 22.
+  and of his speech on that war, v. 390.
+
+Place Bill, proposed remedy for parliamentary disorders, i. 518.
+
+Plagues, in Athens and in London, wickedness remarkably prevalent
+    during their continuance, vii. 84.
+
+Pleasure and pain, observations on them, i. 102.
+  pleasure, pain, and indifference, their mutual relation,
+    as states of the mind, i. 103.
+
+Poetry, more powerful than painting in moving the passions, i. 134.
+  does not depend for its effect on raising ideas or sensible
+    images of things, i. 246, 255.
+  this exemplified, i. 252.
+  affects rather by sympathy than imitation, i. 257.
+  dramatic poetry strictly imitation, i. 257.
+  descriptive poetry operates chiefly by substitution, i. 257.
+
+Poland, character of the revolution there, iv. 195.
+  contrasted with the revolution in France, iv. 198.
+
+Policy, a refined one, the parent of confusion, ii. 106.
+  inseparable from justice, iii. 438.
+
+Political connection, how regarded by the ancient Romans, i. 528.
+  England governed by one in the reign of Queen Anne, i. 529.
+  general observations on, i. 530.
+
+Political economy, had its origin in England, v. 192.
+
+Political system, an unwise or mischievous one not necessarily
+    of short duration, iv. 353.
+
+Politician, duties of one, iii. 557, 559.
+
+Politics, ought to be adjusted to, human nature, i. 398.
+  different in different ages, i. 442.
+  unsuitable to the pulpit, iii. 246.
+
+Polybius, anecdote concerning him, iv. 285.
+
+Poor, the laboring, their poverty owing to their numbers, v. 134.
+  proper compassion for them, v. 135, 466.
+
+Poorunder, treaty of, broken by Mr. Hastings, xii. 382.
+
+Pope, the, his dispute with Henry I., vii. 384.
+  his pretext for giving Henry II. a commission to conquer
+    Ireland, vii. 413.
+  his excommunication of King John, vii. 449.
+  treatment of him by the French Revolutionists, v. 418.
+
+Popery Laws, Tract on the, vi. 299.
+
+Popular election, a mighty evil, vii. 72.
+
+Popular opinion, an equivocal test of merit, v. 183.
+
+Population, rapid increase of it in America, ii. 110.
+  state of it, a standard by which, to estimate the effects
+    of a government on any country, iii. 400.
+  view of that of France, at different periods, iii. 400.
+  comparative effects of peace and war on it, as regards the
+    higher classes, v. 472.
+
+Power, all sublimity some modification of it, i. 138.
+  incompatible with credit, i. 368.
+  the civil power, when it calls in the aid of the military,
+    perishes by the assistance it receives, i. 484.
+  arbitrary power steals upon a people by being rarely exercised, ii. 201.
+  persons possessed of power ought to have a strong sense of
+    religion, iii. 354.
+  the ability to use it for the great and lasting benefit of
+    a country a test of statesmanship, iii. 441.
+  not willingly abandoned by its possessors, iv. 11.
+  dissensions in the commonwealth mostly concerning the hands
+    in which it is to be placed, iv. 163.
+  necessity of teaching men to restrain the immoderate exercise
+    and inordinate desire of it, iv. 163.
+  active power never willingly placed by legislators in the hands
+    of the multitude, iv. 164.
+  danger of a resumption of delegated power by the people, iv. 168.
+  does not always accompany property, iv. 349.
+  the possession of it discovers a man's true character, v. 362.
+  men will incur the greatest risks for the sake of it, vii. 82.
+  originates from God alone, ix. 456.
+  the supreme power in every constitution must be absolute, ix. 460.
+  ends to which a superintending, controlling power ought to
+    be directed, xi. 417.
+
+Prejudice, cannot be created, vi. 368.
+
+Prerogative, remarks on the exercise of it, ii. 225.
+
+Presbyterianism, remarks on it, iv. 452.
+
+Prescription, part of the law of Nature, iii. 433.
+  the most solid of all titles, and the most recognized in
+    jurisprudence, vi. 412; vii. 94.
+
+Present State of Affairs, Heads for Consideration on the, iv. 379.
+
+Price, Dr. Richard, observations on his sermon on the Love of
+    our Country, iii. 244, 301, 304, 316.
+
+Price of commodities, how raised, v. 142.
+  danger of attempting to raise it by authority, v. 143.
+
+Primogeniture, right of, operation of the Popery Laws in taking
+    it away, vi. 302.
+
+Principal of a debt, cannot distress a nation, i. 329.
+
+Principalities, the, proposal to unite them to the crown, ii. 298.
+
+Privations, all general ones great, i. 146.
+
+Profit, an honorable and fair one, the best security against
+    avarice and rapacity, ii. 335.
+
+Projects, new, requirements of men of sense with respect to them, i. 367.
+
+Property, ought greatly to predominate over ability in the
+    representation, iii. 298.
+  importance of the power of perpetuating it in families, iii. 298.
+  not always accompanied with power, iv. 349.
+
+Proportion, what, i. 166.
+  not the cause of beauty in vegetables, i. 166.
+  nor in animals, i. 170.
+  nor in the human species, i. 172.
+  whence the idea of proportion, as the principal component
+    of beauty, arose, i. 178.
+
+Prosperity, discovers the real character of a man, iv. 22.
+  a prejudice in favor of it, however obtained, iv. 425.
+
+Protestant, the state so declared at the Revolution, with a
+    qualification, iv. 257.
+
+Protestant ascendency, observations on, vi. 391.
+
+Protestant Association, the, animadversions on it, ii. 389, 415.
+
+Protestantism, at no period established, undefined, in England, iv. 258.
+
+Protestants, errors of the early, ii. 390.
+  misconduct of those in the South of France at the Revolution, iv. 452.
+
+Provisions, trade of, danger of tampering with it, v. 133.
+
+Prudence, the first in rank of the political and moral virtues, iv. 81.
+  its decisions differ from those of judicature, iv. 251.
+  its rules and definitions rarely exact, never universal, v. 241.
+
+Psalms, and Prophets, crowded with instances of the introduction of the
+    terrible in Nature to heighten the awe of the Divine presence, i. 144.
+
+Public affairs, state of them previous to the formation of the
+    Rockingham administration, i. 381.
+
+Public men, not all equally corrupt, ii. 240.
+
+Public service, means of rewarding it necessary in every state, ii. 330.
+
+Punishment, considerations necessary to be observed in inflicting
+    it, iv. 466; vi. 245.
+  under the Saxon laws, extremely moderate, vii. 321.
+
+Purveyance and receipt in kind, what, ii. 306.
+  taken away by the 12th Charles II., ii. 306.
+  revived the next year, ii. 306.
+
+Pythagoras, his discipline contrasted with that of Socrates, vii. 179.
+  why silence enjoined by him, vii. 179.
+
+
+Raimond, Count of Toulouse, engages in the Crusade, vii. 372.
+
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, abusive epithet applied to him by Lord Coke, xi. 175.
+
+Reason, sound, no real virtue without it, iv. 24.
+  never inconvenient but when it comes to be applied, vi. 326.
+
+Reasoners, men generally the worse reasoners for having been
+    ministers, i. 338.
+
+Reformation, in government, should be early and temperate, ii. 280.
+  and slow, iii. 456.
+  different from change, v. 186.
+  general observations on it, iii. 455; iv. 111; vi. 294; vii. 71.
+  in England, has always proceeded upon the principle of
+    reference to antiquity, iii. 272.
+
+Reformation, the, observations on it, ii. 389.
+  effects of it, iv. 319.
+
+Reformers, English, character of them, iii. 430.
+
+Regicide by establishment, what, v. 309.
+
+Regicide Peace, Letters on, v. 233, 342, 384; vi. 9.
+
+Religion, writers against it never set up any of their own, i. 7.
+  effects of it on the colonists of America, ii. 122.
+  the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and
+    of all comfort, iii. 350.
+  the respect entertained for it in England, iii. 352.
+  a strong sense of it necessary to those in power, iii. 354.
+  mischievous consequences of changing it, except under
+    strong conviction, iv. 453.
+  the magistrate has a right to direct the exterior ceremonies
+    of it, vii. 30.
+  the Christian, in its rise overcame all opposition, vii. 25.
+
+Religious opinions, not the only cause of enthusiasm, v. 361.
+
+Repetition, of the same story, effect of it, iv. 328.
+
+Report on the Affairs of India, Ninth, viii. 1.
+  Eleventh, viii. 217.
+  on the Lords' Journals, xi. 1.
+  Vindication of, this Report from the Animadversions of
+    Lord Thurlow, xi. 149.
+
+Representation, ought to include both the ability and the
+    property of a state, iii. 297.
+  virtual, what, iv. 293.
+  natural, what, v. 284.
+  of America in the British Parliament, project of, i. 372.
+  consideration of its difficulties, i. 373.
+  of England, and that of France in the National Assembly,
+    compared, iii. 481.
+
+Representation to his Majesty on the Speech from the Throne, ii. 537.
+
+Representative, his duty to his constituents, ii. 95, 281, 357.
+
+Republican government, remarks on, iv. 109.
+
+Reputation, public, how to be secured, ix. 341.
+
+Resemblance, pleasing to the imagination, i. 87.
+
+Responsibility of ministers of state, nature of it, iii. 501; v. 507.
+
+Revenge, observations on, xi. 179.
+
+Revenue, great importance of it to a state, iii. 534.
+  its administration the sphere of every active virtue, iii. 535.
+
+Revolution of 1688, diminished influence of the crown at that
+    time how compensated, i. 445.
+  principles of it contained in the Declaration of Right, iii. 252.
+  the subversion of the old, and the settlement of the new
+    government, inseparably combined in it, iv. 80.
+  grounds of it, iv. 121.
+  contrasted with the French Revolution, iii. 225.
+
+Revolution in France, Reflections on the, iii. 231.
+  general observations on it, iii. 220.
+  characterized as a revolution of doctrine and theoretic dogma, iv. 319.
+  contrasted with the English Revolution of 1688, iii. 225.
+
+Revolution Society, correspond with the National Assembly of France,
+    iii. 238.
+  remarks on its principles and proceedings, iii. 238.
+
+Reynolds, Sir Joshua, on idiosyncrasy in taste and judgment, iv. 212.
+
+Rich, need the consolations of religion, iii. 366.
+  trustees for those who labor, v. 134.
+
+Richard I., brief account of his reign, vii. 425.
+  parallel between him and Charles XII. of Sweden, vii. 436.
+
+Richelieu, Cardinal, hated by Louis XIII., iii. 499.
+
+Rights, assumed, their consequences of great moment in deciding
+    on their validity, iv. 183.
+
+Rights of Men, Jacobinical theory of, animadversions on it, iii. 307.
+  sophistically confounded with their power, iii. 313.
+
+Robespierre, his character, vi. 62.
+
+Rochford, Lord, his remonstrance with regard to Corsica, i. 480.
+
+Rockingham, Marquis of, Short Account of his Administration, i. 263.
+  formation of his administration, i. 379.
+  state of public affairs at the time, i. 381.
+  character and conduct of it, i. 388.
+  ideas of it with regard to America, i. 403.
+  his Lordship's conduct in American affairs, ii. 40.
+
+Rohilla nation, sale of it by the East India Company, ii. 449.
+
+Roland, character of him, v. 70.
+
+Roman Catholics, Mr. Burke's defence of his Parliamentary
+    conduct with regard to them, ii. 388.
+  Letter on the Penal Laws against, iv. 217.
+  mode of education necessary for their clergy, iv. 229, 231.
+  condition of their clergy before the restraint on marriage, iv. 230.
+  mischievous consequences of placing the appointment of the Irish
+    Roman Catholic clergy in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant, iv. 234.
+
+Roman politics, under the Empire, different from those which
+    actuated the Republic, vii. 203.
+  dominion over the Britons and other conquered nations, methods
+    by which it was preserved, vii. 205.
+  procurators under the Emperors, why invested with greater
+    powers than the legates, vii. 208.
+  military ways, character and purpose of them, vii. 211.
+  number and extent of the principal ones in Britain, vii. 211.
+  revenues, nature of them, vii. 211.
+  three great changes in the government after the dissolution of
+    the Commonwealth, vii. 220.
+
+Rome, ancient, destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, vii. 80.
+  and by its heavy taxes, vii. 213.
+  bounds of the empire first contracted by Adrian, vii. 214.
+
+Rome, modern, its example a caution not to attempt to feed the
+    people by the hands of the magistrates, v. 155.
+
+Rota, in the French National Assembly, effect of it, iv. 350.
+
+Rotund, noble effect of it, i. 150.
+  accounted for, i. 150.
+
+Rousseau, the secret of his principles of composition, iii. 459.
+  a resemblance to him an object of rivalry to the leaders of
+    the National Assembly, iv. 25.
+  vanity his ruling passion, iv. 26.
+  brief character of him, iv. 27.
+  totally destitute of taste, iv. 30.
+  morality of the passions in his Nouvelle Éloise, iv. 31.
+  character of his style, iv. 32.
+
+Russell, Baron, the first, his character, v. 201.
+
+Russia, the Emperor of, the true policy of his government, v. 422.
+
+Russian treaty of commerce, i. 410.
+
+
+Sacheverell, Dr., his impeachment carried on for the purpose of
+    stating the grounds and principles of the Revolution, iv. 119.
+  extracts from speeches of Managers at his trial, iv. 122-146.
+  proceedings in his trial, xi. 16.
+
+Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, reduces Palestine, vii. 427.
+  defeated by Richard I., vii. 429.
+
+Salaries, objections to a tax upon them, ii. 283.
+
+Sallust, remarks on his finely contrasted characters of Cæsar and Cato,
+    i. 189.
+
+Salt, monopoly of, by the French government, i. 332.
+
+Santerre, his brutal conduct to Louis XVI., vi. 101.
+
+Saracens, their fierce irruptions and conquests, vii. 328.
+
+Savile, Sir George, his bill for the repeal of the statute of
+    William III. against Papists, ii. 396.
+  his character, ii. 397.
+
+Saxons, a brief account of their laws and institutions, vii. 291.
+  under their rule, the succession to the crown in England
+    partly hereditary and partly elective, vii. 297.
+  their laws wholly abolished in England since the Conquest, vii. 478.
+  sources of them, vii. 487.
+
+Scarcity, Thoughts and Details on, v. 131.
+  proper policy in respect to the poor, in times of, v. 156.
+
+Scotland, beneficial effects on trade of its union with England, ii. 254.
+  its Church establishment under the Union, iv. 258.
+
+Scripture, indefinite nature of subscription to it, vii. 18.
+
+Scythians, all Northern Europe originally inhabited by them, vii. 160.
+
+Selden, his statement of the Parliamentary practice in the
+    examination of witnesses, xi. 108.
+
+Self-preservation, the passions which concern it the strongest
+    ones, i. 110.
+  the sublime an idea belonging to it, i. 164.
+
+Senses, general remarks on them, i. 82.
+  ought to be put under the tuition of the judgment, iii. 15.
+
+Serpent, why an object of idolatry, vii. 184.
+
+Shakspeare, his description of the king's army in Henry IV. an
+    example of the sublime, i. 155.
+
+Shelburne, Lord, animadversions on a passage in a speech of his, ii. 544.
+
+Silence, why enjoined by Pythagoras and the Druids, vii. 178.
+
+Sirach, Son of, fine example of the sublime from his Book of Wisdom,
+    i. 155.
+
+Slaves, never so beneficial to their masters as freemen, v. 147.
+
+Smells, a source of the sublime, i. 162.
+
+Smith, Sir Sydney, Captain, observations on his case, v. 400.
+
+Smoothness, why beautiful, i. 234.
+
+Social nature, the, impels a man to propagate his principles, v. 361.
+
+Society, Natural, A Vindication of, i. 1.
+  definition of the term, i. 11.
+  notion of, how first introduced, i. 11.
+  political society, its nature and origin, i. 11; iii. 359; iv. 165.
+  its continuance under a permanent covenant, iii. 359; iv. 165.
+  the great purpose of it, what, vi. 333.
+  society and solitude compared, as sources of pleasure or pain, i. 115.
+
+Socrates, his discipline contrasted with that of Pythagoras, vii. 179.
+
+Solitude, something may be done in it for society, v. 125.
+
+Somers, Lord, the Declaration of Right drawn by him, iii. 254.
+
+Sophia, the Princess, why named in the Act of Settlement as
+    the root of inheritance to the kings of England, iii. 262.
+
+Sophia, St., Church of, anecdote of the Greeks assembled there,
+    at the taking of Constantinople, vi. 96.
+
+Sound, a source of the sublime, i. 159.
+  grand effect of a single one of some strength repeated after
+    intervals, i. 160.
+  a low, tremulous, intermitting one productive of the sublime, i. 160.
+  the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.
+
+Spain, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France, iv. 339.
+  not a substantive power, iv. 385.
+
+Speech of Mr. Burke on American Taxation, ii. 1.
+  at his Arrival at Bristol, ii. 85.
+  at the Conclusion of the Poll, ii. 89.
+  on Conciliation with America, ii. 99.
+  on Economical Reform, ii. 265.
+  previous to the Election in 1780, ii. 365.
+  on Declining the Poll, ii. 425.
+  on Mr. Fox's East India Bill, ii. 431.
+  on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, iii. 1.
+  on the Army Estimates, iii. 211.
+  on the Acts of Uniformity, vii. 3.
+  on the Relief of Protestant Dissenters, vii. 21.
+  on the Petition of the Unitarians, vii. 39.
+  on the Middlesex Election, vii. 59.
+  on Shortening the Duration of Parliaments, vii. 69.
+  on Reform of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament, vii. 89.
+  on the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels, vii. 105.
+  on the Repeal of the Marriage Act, vii. 129.
+  on Dormant Claims of the Church, vii. 137.
+  in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, ix. 327-x. 145;
+    x. 147-451; xi. 155-xii. 393.
+
+Spelman, Sir Henry, his difficulties in the study of the law, vii. 477.
+
+Spirituous liquors, beneficial effects of them, v. 164.
+
+Spon, M., his curious story of Campanella, i. 212.
+
+Spring, why the pleasantest of the seasons, i. 153.
+
+Stability, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.
+
+Stafford, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 31.
+  remarks on the prosecution, xi. 112.
+
+Stamp Act, American, its origin, i. 385.
+  repeal of it, i. 389; ii. 47.
+  motives for the repeal, i. 391, 399.
+  good effects of the repeal, i. 401; ii. 59.
+
+Stanhope, General, extracts from his speech at the trial
+    of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 127.
+
+Starry heaven, why productive of the idea of grandeur, i. 154.
+
+State, the, meaning of the term, iv, 248.
+  consideration of its fitness for an oligarchical form, connected with the
+    question of vesting it solely in some one description of citizens,
+    iv. 251.
+  not subject to laws analogous to those of physical life, v. 124, 234.
+  the internal causes affecting the fortunes of states uncertain
+    and obscure, v. 235.
+  great irregularities in their rise, culmination, and decline, v. 235.
+  in a conflict between equally powerful states, an infinite advantage
+    afforded by unyielding determination, v. 243.
+
+Statesmen, duties of, i. 436; v. 167.
+  standard of one, iii. 440.
+  difference between them and professors in universities, vii. 41.
+
+Stephen, brief account of his reign, vii. 386.
+
+Stonehenge, wherein an object of admiration, i. 153; vii. 179.
+
+Stones, rude ones, why objects of veneration, vii. 185.
+
+Strafford, Earl of, proceedings in his trial, xi. 14. 113.
+
+Sublime, sources of it, i. 110.
+  the strongest emotion of the mind, i. 110.
+  in all things abhors mediocrity, i. 157.
+
+Sublime and Beautiful, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin
+    of our Ideas of the, i. 67.
+  stand on very different foundations, i. 192.
+  comparison between them, i. 205.
+  on the efficient cause of them, i. 208.
+
+Succession, hereditary, the principle of it recognized at
+    the Revolution, iii. 252.
+
+Succession, in visual objects, effects of it explained, i. 222.
+
+Suddenness, a source of the sublime, i. 160.
+
+Suffering, the force to endure, needful to those who aspire to
+    act greatly, v. 250.
+
+Sujah ul Dowlah, his character, xi. 373.
+
+Sully, M. de, an observation of his on revolutions in great
+    states, i. 441.
+
+Superstition, nature of it, iii. 442.
+
+Surplus produce, nature and application of it, iii. 444.
+
+Sweetness, its nature, i. 235.
+  relaxing, i. 237.
+
+Swift, Dr., a saying of his concerning public benefactors, ii. 472.
+
+Sympathy, observations on it, i. 177; v. 398.
+
+
+Taille, nature of, i. 330, 333.
+
+Talents, eminent, obscure and vulgar vices sometimes blended with, iv. 26.
+
+Tallien, the regicide, his sanguinary brutality, vi. 102.
+
+Tamerlane, his conquests in Hindostan, ix. 388.
+  remarks on his Institutes, ix. 467; xi. 214.
+
+Tanistry, what, vii. 297.
+
+Taste, discourse concerning it, i. 79.
+  definition of it, i. 81.
+  want of it, whence, i. 95.
+  a wrong or bad one, what, i. 95.
+  a good one, i. 96.
+  of no mean importance in the regulation of life, iv. 30.
+
+Taxes, mode of levying them in commercial colonies an
+    important and difficult consideration, i. 354.
+  nature of several in America, i. 355.
+  colonial, Lord North's project of a ransom of them by auction, ii. 171.
+  the great contests for freedom in England chiefly upon the
+    question of taxing, ii. 120.
+  taxes on different establishments, remarks concerning them, i. 368.
+  upon salaries, ii. 283.
+  details of English taxes, v. 476.
+
+Terror, sometimes a source of delight, i. 119.
+  how, i. 214.
+  an effect of the sublime, i. 130.
+  its physical effects, i. 211.
+
+Test Act, observations on it, iv. 264.
+
+Thanes, brief account of them, vii. 300.
+
+Theatre, general observations on the, iii. 338.
+  prosperous condition of it in England, v. 485.
+  made an affair of state in the French Republic, vi. 104.
+
+Theodorus, Archbishop of Canterbury, brief account of him, vii. 249.
+  his services to the cause of letters in England, vii. 249.
+
+Three Seals, the history of the affair so called, ix. 408.
+
+Time blends the conquered with the conquerors, iv. 272.
+
+Toleration, true, exemplified, iii. 431.
+  ought to be tender and large, iv. 258.
+  favorable to, and a part of Christianity, vii. 25.
+  not a virtue of the ancient heathens, vii. 31.
+
+Toulon, fleet of, injudicious measures of the English government
+    with regard to it, iv. 445.
+
+Townshend, Charles, character of him, ii. 64.
+
+Trade, sometimes seems to perish when it only assumes a
+    different form, i. 313.
+  quickly and deeply affected by taxes, i. 391.
+  tests of the state of it, what, v. 493.
+  Board of, its character and history, ii. 340.
+
+Tragedy, observations on the effects of, i. 120.
+  its subjects and passions, vii. 150.
+  great personages everywhere made the objects of it, xi. 308.
+
+Transmigration of souls, origin of the doctrine, vii. 181.
+
+Treasurer's staff, Lord Coke's account of the purpose of it, ii. 354.
+
+Trent, Council of, its wise introduction of the discipline of
+    seminaries for priests, iv. 231.
+
+Triangle, the poorest of all figures in its effect, i. 152.
+
+Triennial Parliaments, evils of them, vii. 79.
+
+Trinoda necessitas, in Saxon law, what, vii. 325.
+
+Turkey, power sought there with avidity, notwithstanding the
+    danger and insecurity of its tenure, vii. 82.
+
+Tyranny, aggravated by contumely, ii. 484.
+  the desire and design of it often lurk in the claim of an
+    extravagant liberty, iv. 115.
+  never learns moderation from the ill success of first oppressions, x. 83.
+
+
+Ugliness, the opposite to beauty, but not to proportion and fitness,
+    i. 199.
+  consistent with the sublime, i. 199.
+
+Uniformity and succession of parts constitute the artificial infinite,
+    i. 149.
+
+Universal, nothing of this nature can be rationally affirmed or any
+    moral or political subject, iv. 80.
+
+Use, to be carefully attended to in most works of art, i. 154.
+  use and habit not causes of pleasure, i. 180.
+
+
+Vanity, nature and tendency of, iv. 26.
+
+Variation, beautiful, why, i. 239.
+
+Vastness, a cause of the sublime, i. 147.
+  unity why necessary to it, i. 219.
+
+Vattel, extracts from his Law of Nations, iv. 471.
+
+Venice, its restrictions with respect to offices of state, iv. 249.
+  origin of the republic, vii. 331.
+  acquires the island of Cyprus, vii. 428.
+  the only state in Europe which benefited by the Crusades, vii. 428.
+
+Verbal description, a means of raising a stronger emotion
+    than painting, i. 133.
+
+Vice, the instances rare of an immediate transition to it
+    from virtue, i. 421.
+
+Vices, obscure and vulgar ones sometimes blended with eminent
+    talents, iv. 26.
+  in common society receive palliating names, xi. 177.
+
+Vicinity, civil, law of, what, v. 322.
+
+Virgil, his figure of Fame obscure, yet magnificent, i. 138.
+  remarks on his combination of images at the mouth of hell, i. 146.
+  an example from him of the sublime effect of an uncertain light, i. 161.
+  and of the cries of animals, i. 162.
+  and of powerful smells, i. 163.
+  his picture of the murder of Priam, i. 259.
+  of the Harpies, v. 187
+
+Virtue, how far the idea of beauty may be applied to it, i. 190.
+  description of the gradual extinguishment of it in public men, i. 421.
+  will catch, as well as vice by contact, ii. 242.
+  virtues which cause admiration, i. 188.
+  virtues which engage the heart, i. 188.
+
+Visual objects of great dimensions, why sublime, i. 217.
+  effects of succession in them explained, i. 222.
+
+Voters, more in the spirit of the English constitution to lessen
+    than to enlarge their number, i. 370.
+
+
+Wages, the rate of them has no direct relation, to the price
+    of provisions, v. 136.
+
+Wales, misgovernment of, by England, for two hundred years, ii. 148.
+  alteration of the system in the reign of Henry VIII., ii. 150.
+
+Wales, Frederick, Prince of, project of government devised
+    in his court, i. 447.
+  means adopted for its introduction and recommendation to
+    popular favor, i. 451, 453.
+  nature of the party formed for its support, i. 459.
+  name of this party, i. 466.
+  and of the new system, i. 466.
+
+Walpole, Mr., (afterwards Sir Robert,) his character, iv. 128.
+  extract from his speech in the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 129.
+  forced into the war with Spain by popular clamor, v. 288.
+  fault in his general proceeding, v. 289.
+
+War, its original may be very far from being its principal purpose, i. 298.
+  not easily reconciled with economy, i. 310.
+  the ground of a political war, laborers and manufacturers
+    not capable of conceiving, v. 38.
+  of England with the French Republic, a war with an armed doctrine,
+    v. 250.
+  can never be carried on long against the will of the people, v. 283.
+  general observations on, v. 318.
+  the power of making it, why put under the discretion of the crown,
+    v. 335.
+  principle of the law of nations with regard to it, vi. 349.
+
+Warwick, Earl of, proceedings in his trial, xi. 32.
+
+Water, why venerated by the Druids, vii. 182.
+
+Weakness, human, in adversity, never pitied by those who applaud
+    prosperous folly and guilt, iv. 183.
+
+Wealth, internal, consists in useful commodities as much as in
+    gold and silver, i. 321.
+  of a country, a standard by which to estimate the character
+    of the government, iii. 402.
+  can never rank first in England, iv. 327.
+  ought always to be the servant of virtue and public honor, v. 242.
+  remark of a foreigner on the display of it in the shops in London,
+    v. 496.
+
+Whigs, the great connection of, in the reign of Queen Anne, i. 529.
+  the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell, for what purpose carried
+    on by them, iv. 119.
+  statement of the principles of the new Whigs, iv. 120, 151.
+  opinion of the new, with respect to the power of the people
+    over the commonwealth, iv. 161.
+  Appeal from the New to the Old, iv. 57.
+
+Wilkes, Mr., his contest with the court party, i. 497.
+  pretence for punishing him, i. 500.
+
+Will and duty contradictory terms, iv. 165.
+  duty not subject to will, iv. 165.
+
+William of Normandy, the extraordinary facility of his conquest
+    of England explained, vii. 288.
+  his numerous followers accounted for, vii. 333.
+  brief account of his reign, vii. 335.
+  view of his revenue, vii. 346.
+  his character, vii. 362.
+
+William Rufus, brief account of his reign, vii. 364.
+
+William III., his elevation to the throne an act not of choice,
+    but of necessity, iii. 254.
+  his judicious appointments to the vacant bishoprics, iv. 14.
+  the spirited address of the Commons to him respecting the war
+    with France, v. 296.
+  the Grand Alliance against France his masterpiece, v. 297.
+  his indomitable perseverance in pressing this measure, v. 299.
+  address of the House of Lords respecting it, v. 300.
+
+Wintoun, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 22.
+
+Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, example of the sublime from that
+    book, i. 155.
+
+Wishes, vehement, the discovery of them generally frustrates
+    their attainment, v. 252.
+
+Wit and judgement, difference between them, i. 87.
+
+Words, the proper medium for conveying the affections of the mind, i. 133.
+  affect us in a manner very different from natural objects,
+    painting, or architecture, i. 246.
+  three sorts of them, i. 247.
+  general words before ideas, i. 249.
+  effect of them, i. 250.
+  may affect without raising images, i. 252.
+  this exemplified in the case of the poet Blacklock, i. 252.
+  and of Saunderson, the mathematician, i. 253.
+  how words influence the passions, i. 258.
+  the only means by which many ideas have ever been at all
+    presented to the senses, i. 259.
+  the source of a great part of the mischiefs that vex the world, vi. 397.
+  the world much influenced by them, xi. 172.
+
+Writers, when they act in a body and with one direction, have
+    great influence on the public mind, iii. 380
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable
+Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.), by Edmund Burke
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF EDMUND BURKE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 18315-0.txt or 18315-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/3/1/18315/
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Susan Skinner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at
+http://gallica.bnf.fr)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/18315-0.zip b/18315-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..430fe6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/18315-0.zip
diff --git a/18315-8.txt b/18315-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..514da3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/18315-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14580 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund
+Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.), by Edmund Burke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.)
+
+Author: Edmund Burke
+
+Release Date: May 5, 2006 [EBook #18315]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF EDMUND BURKE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Susan Skinner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Biblioth�que nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at
+http://gallica.bnf.fr)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS
+
+OF
+
+THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
+
+EDMUND BURKE
+
+
+IN TWELVE VOLUMES
+
+VOLUME THE TWELFTH
+
+
+[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms.]
+
+
+LONDON
+JOHN C. NIMMO
+14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
+MDCCCLXXXVII
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. XII.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+SPEECHES IN THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS,
+ESQUIRE, LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL. (CONTINUED.)
+
+  SPEECH IN GENERAL REPLY.
+
+    FIFTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1794                                  3
+
+    SIXTH DAY: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11                                     75
+
+    SEVENTH DAY: THURSDAY, JUNE 12                                   143
+
+    EIGHTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 14                                    235
+
+    NINTH DAY: MONDAY, JUNE 16                                       335
+
+GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS                                            401
+
+INDEX                                                                407
+
+
+
+
+SPEECHES
+
+IN
+
+THE IMPEACHMENT
+
+OF
+
+WARREN HASTINGS, ESQUIRE,
+
+LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL.
+
+
+SPEECH IN GENERAL REPLY.
+
+(CONTINUED.)
+
+June, 1794.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+FIFTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--We will now resume the consideration of the remaining part of
+our charge, and of the prisoner's attempts to defend himself against it.
+
+Mr. Hastings, well knowing (what your Lordships must also by this time
+be perfectly satisfied was the case) that this unfortunate Nabob had no
+will of his own, draws down his poor victim to Chunar by an order to
+attend the Governor-General. If the Nabob ever wrote to Mr. Hastings,
+expressing a request or desire for this meeting, his letter was
+unquestionably dictated to him by the prisoner. We have laid a ground of
+direct proof before you, that the Nabob's being at Chunar, that his
+proceedings there, and that all his acts were so dictated, and
+consequently must be so construed.
+
+I shall now proceed to lay before your Lordships the acts of oppression
+committed by Mr. Hastings through his two miserable instruments: the
+one, his passive instrument, the Nabob; the other, Mr. Middleton, his
+active instrument, in his subsequent plans for the entire destruction of
+that country. In page 513 of the printed Minutes you have Mr.
+Middleton's declaration of his promptitude to represent everything
+agreeably to Mr. Hastings's wishes.
+
+     "My dear Sir,--I have this day answered your public letter in the
+     form you seemed to expect. I hope there is nothing in it that may
+     to you appear too pointed. If you wish the matter to be otherwise
+     understood than I have taken up and stated it, I need not say I
+     shall be ready to conform to whatever you may prescribe, and to
+     take upon myself any share of the blame of the hitherto
+     non-performance of the stipulations made on behalf of the Nabob;
+     though I do assure you I myself represented to his Excellency and
+     the ministers, conceiving it to be your desire, that the apparent
+     assumption of the reins of his government, (for in that light he
+     undoubtedly considered it at the first view,) as specified in the
+     agreement executed by him, was not meant to be fully and literally
+     enforced, but that it was necessary you should have something to
+     show on your side, as the Company were deprived of a benefit
+     without a requital; and upon the faith of this assurance alone, I
+     believe I may safely affirm, his Excellency's objections to signing
+     the treaty were given up. If I have understood the matter wrong, or
+     misconceived your design, I am truly sorry for it. However, it is
+     not too late to correct the error; and I am ready to undertake,
+     and, God willing, to carry through, whatever you may, on the
+     receipt of my public letter, tell me is your final resolve.
+
+     "If you determine, at all events, that the measures of reducing the
+     Nabob's army, &c., shall be immediately undertaken, I shall take it
+     as a particular favor, if you will indulge me with a line at
+     Fyzabad, that I may make the necessary previous arrangements with
+     respect to the disposal of my family, which I would not wish to
+     retain here, in the event either of a rupture with the Nabob, or
+     the necessity of employing our forces on the reduction of his
+     aumils and troops. This done, I can begin the work in three days
+     after my return from Fyzabad."
+
+Besides this letter, which I think is sufficiently clear upon the
+subject, there is also another much more clear upon your Lordships'
+minutes, much more distinct and much more pointed, expressive of his
+being resolved to make such representations of every matter as the
+Governor-General may wish. Now a man who is master of the manner in
+which facts are represented, and whose subsequent conduct is to be
+justified by such representations, is not simply accountable for his
+conduct; he is accountable for culpably attempting to form, on false
+premises, the judgment of others upon that conduct. This species of
+delinquency must therefore be added to the rest; and I wish your
+Lordships to carry generally in your minds, that there is not one single
+syllable of representation made by any of those parties, except where
+truth may happen to break out in spite of all the means of concealment,
+which is not to be considered as the representation of Mr. Hastings
+himself in justification of his own conduct.
+
+The letter which I have just now read was written preparatory to the
+transaction which I am now going to state, called _the treaty of
+Chunar_. Having brought his miserable victim thither, he forced him to
+sign a paper called a treaty: but such was the fraud in every part of
+this treaty, that Mr. Middleton himself, who was the instrument and the
+chief agent in it, acknowledges that the Nabob was persuaded to sign it
+by the assurance given to him that it never was to be executed. Here,
+then, your Lordships have a prince first compelled to enter into a
+negotiation, and then induced to accede to a treaty by false assurances
+that it should not be executed, which he declares nothing but force
+should otherwise have compelled him to accede to.
+
+The first circumstance in this transaction that I shall lay before your
+Lordships is that the treaty is declared to have for its objects two
+modes of relieving the Nabob from his distresses,--from distresses which
+we have stated, and which Mr. Hastings has not only fully admitted, but
+has himself proved in the clearest manner to your Lordships. The first
+was by taking away that _wicked rabble_, the British troops, represented
+by Mr. Hastings as totally ruinous to the Nabob's affairs, and
+particularly by removing that part of them which was called the new
+brigade. Another remedial part of the treaty regarded the British
+pensioners. It is in proof before your Lordships that Mr. Hastings
+agreed to recall from Oude that body of pensioners, whose conduct there
+is described in such strong terms as being ruinous to the Vizier and to
+all his affairs. These pensioners Mr. Hastings engaged to recall; but he
+never did recall them. We refer your Lordships to the evidence before
+you, in proof that these odious pensioners, so distressing to the Nabob,
+so ruinous to his affairs, and so disgraceful to our government, were
+not only _not_ recalled by Mr. Hastings, but that, both afterwards, and
+upon the very day of signing the treaty, (as Mr. Middleton himself tells
+you,) upon that very day, I say, he recommended to the Nabob that these
+pensioners might remain upon that very establishment which, by a solemn
+treaty of his own making and his own dictating, he had agreed to
+relieve from this intolerable burden.
+
+Mr. Hastings, your Lordships will remember, had departed from Benares,
+frustrated in his designs of extorting 500,000_l._ from the Rajah for
+the Company's use. He had ravaged the country, without obtaining any
+benefit for his masters: the British soldiers having divided the only
+spoil, and nothing remaining for the share of his employers but
+disgrace. He was therefore afraid to return without having something of
+a lucrative pecuniary nature to exhibit to the Company. Having this
+object in view, Oude appears to have first presented itself to his
+notice, as a country from which some advantage of a pecuniary kind might
+be derived; and accordingly he turned in his head a vast variety of
+stratagems for effecting his purpose.
+
+The first article that occurs in the treaty of Chunar is a power given
+to the Nabob to resume all the jaghires not guarantied by the Company,
+and to give pensions to all those persons who should be removed from
+their jaghires.
+
+Now the first thing which would naturally occur to a man, who was going
+to raise a revenue through the intervention of the prince of the
+country, would be to recommend to that prince a better economy in his
+affairs, and a rational and equal assessment upon his subjects, in order
+to furnish the amount of the demand which he was about to make upon him.
+I need not tell your Lordships, trained and formed as your minds are to
+the rules and orders of good government, that there is no way by which a
+prince can justly assess his subjects but by assessing them all in
+proportion to their respective abilities, and that, if a prince should
+make such a body as the House of Lords in this kingdom (which comes
+near the case I am going to state) separately the subject of assessment,
+such a thing would be contrary to all the principles of regular and just
+taxation in any country in the universe. Some men may possibly, by
+locality or privileges, be excepted from certain taxes, but no taxation
+ever can be just that is thrown upon some particular class only; and if
+that class happen to be small and the demand great, the injustice done
+is directly proportionable to the greatness of the exaction, and
+inversely to the number of the persons who are the objects of it: these
+are clear, irrefragable, and eternal principles. But if, instead of
+exacting a part by a proportionable rate, the prince should go further
+and attempt to shake the whole mass of property itself, a mass perhaps
+not much less than that which is possessed by the whole peers of Great
+Britain, by confiscating the whole of the estates at once, as a
+government resource, without the charge or pretence of any crime, I say
+that such an act would be oppressive, cruel, and wicked in the highest
+degree. Yet this is what Mr. Hastings projected, and actually did
+accomplish.
+
+My Lords, at the treaty of Chunar, as it is called, Mr. Hastings (for he
+always artfully feels his way as he proceeds) first says, that the Nabob
+shall be permitted to do this act, if he pleases. He does not assume the
+government. He does not compel the Nabob to do anything. He does not
+force upon him this abandoned and wicked confiscation of the property of
+the whole nobility of a great country. All that he says is this,--"The
+Nabob _may be permitted_ to resume these jaghires." Why permitted? If
+the act had been legal, proper, and justifiable, he did not want our
+permission; he was a sovereign in his own dominions. But Mr. Hastings
+recollected that some of these jaghires (as they are called, and on
+which I shall say a very few words to your Lordships) were guarantied by
+the Company. The jaghires of his own house, of his mother and
+grandmother, were guarantied by us. I must inform your Lordships, that,
+upon some of our other exactions at an earlier period, the Nabob had
+endeavored to levy a forced loan upon the jaghiredars. This forced loan
+was made and submitted to by those people upon a direct assurance of
+their rights in the jaghires, which right was guarantied by the British
+Resident, not only to the Begums, and to the whole family of the Nabob,
+but also to all the other objects of the tax.
+
+Before I proceed, I will beg leave to state to you briefly the nature of
+these jaghires. The jaghiredars, the holders of jaghires, form the body
+of the principal Mahometan nobility. The great nobility of that country
+are divided into two parts. One part consists of the zemindars, who are
+the ancient proprietors of land, and the hereditary nobility of the
+country: these are mostly Gentoos. The Mahometans form the other part,
+whose whole interest in the land consists in the jaghires: for very few
+indeed of them are zemindars anywhere, in some of the provinces none of
+them are so; the whole of them are jaghiredars.
+
+We have heard, my Lords, much discussion about jaghires. It is in proof
+before your Lordships that they are of two sorts: that a jaghire
+signifies exactly what the word _fee_ does in the English language, or
+_feodum_ in the barbarous Latin of the Feudists; that it is a word which
+signifies a salary or a maintenance, as did originally the English word
+_fee_, derived from the word _feod_ and _feodum_. These jaghires, like
+other fees and like other feods, were given in land, as a maintenance:
+some with the condition of service, some without any condition; some
+were annexed to an office, some were granted as the support of a
+dignity, and none were granted for a less term than life, except those
+that were immediately annexed to a lease. We have shown your Lordships
+(and in this we have followed the example of Mr. Hastings) that some of
+them are fees granted actually in perpetuity; and in fact many of them
+are so granted. We are farther to tell your Lordships, that by the
+custom of the empire they are almost all grown, as the feods in Europe
+are grown, by use, into something which is at least virtually an
+inheritance. This is the state of the jaghires and jaghiredars.
+
+Among these jaghires we find, what your Lordships would expect to find,
+an ample provision for all the nobility of that illustrious family of
+which the Nabob is the head: a prince whose family, both by father and
+mother, notwithstanding the slander of the prisoner against his
+benefactor, was undoubtedly of the first and most distinguished nobility
+of the Mahometan empire. Accordingly, his uncles, all his near
+relations, his mother, grandmother, all possessed jaghires, some of very
+long standing, and most of them not given by the Nabob.
+
+I take some pains in explaining this business, because I trust your
+Lordships will have a strong feeling against any confiscation for the
+purpose of revenue. Believe me, my Lords, if there is anything which
+will root the present order of things out of Europe, it will begin, as
+we see it has already begun in a neighboring country, by confiscating,
+for the purposes of the state, grants made to classes of men, let them
+be held by what names or be supposed susceptible of what abuses soever.
+I will venture to say that Jacobinism never can strike a more deadly
+blow against property, rank, and dignity than your Lordships, if you
+were to acquit this man, would strike against your own dignity, and the
+very being of the society in which we live.
+
+Your Lordships will find in your printed Minutes who the jaghiredars
+were, and what was the amount of their estates. The jaghires of which
+Mr. Hastings authorized the confiscation, or what he calls a
+_resumption_, appear from Mr. Purling's account, when first the forced
+loan was levied upon them under his Residentship, to amount to
+285,000_l._ sterling per annum; which 285,000_l._, if rated and valued
+according to the different value of provisions and other necessaries of
+life in that country and in England, will amount, as near as may be, to
+about 600,000_l._ a year. I am within compass. Everybody conversant with
+India will say it is equivalent at least to 600,000_l._ a year in
+England; and what a blow such a confiscation as this would be on the
+fortunes of the peers of Great Britain your Lordships will judge. I like
+to see your estates as great as they are; I wish they were greater than
+they are; but whatever they are, I wish, above all that they should be
+perpetual. For dignity and property in this country, _Esto perpetua_
+shall be my prayer this day, and the last prayer of my life. The
+Commons, therefore, of Great Britain, those guardians of property, who
+will not suffer the monarch they love, the government which they adore,
+to levy one shilling upon the subject in any other way than the law and
+statutes of this kingdom prescribe, will not suffer, nor can they bear
+the idea, that any single class of people should be chosen to be the
+objects of a contrary conduct, nor that even the Nabob of Oude should be
+permitted to act upon such a flagitious principle. When an English
+governor has substituted a power of his own instead of the legal
+government of the country, as I have proved this man to have done, if he
+found the prince going to do an act which would shake the property of
+all the nobility of the country, he surely ought to raise his hand and
+say, "You shall not make my name your sanction for such an atrocious and
+abominable act as this confiscation would be."
+
+Mr. Hastings, however, whilst he gives, with an urbanity for which he is
+so much praised, his consent to this confiscation, adds, there must be
+pensions secured for all persons losing their estates, who had the
+security of our guaranty. Your Lordships know that Mr. Hastings, by his
+guaranty, had secured their jaghires to the Nabob's own relations and
+family. One would have imagined, that, if the estates of those who were
+without any security were to be confiscated at his pleasure, those at
+least who were guarantied by the Company, such as the Begums of Oude and
+several of the principal nobility of the Nabob's family, would have been
+secure. He, indeed, says that pensions shall be given them; for at this
+time he had not got the length of violating, without shame or remorse,
+all the guaranties of the Company. "There shall," says he, "be pensions
+given." If pensions were to be given to the value of the estate, I ask,
+What has this violent act done? You shake the security of property, and,
+instead of suffering a man to gather his own profits with his own hands,
+you turn him into a pensioner upon the public treasury. I can conceive
+that such a measure will render these persons miserable dependants
+instead of independent nobility; but I cannot conceive what financial
+object can be answered by paying that in pension which you are to
+receive in revenue. This is directly contrary to financial economy. For
+when you stipulate to pay out of the treasury of government a certain
+pension, and take upon you the receipts of an estate, you adopt a
+measure by which government is almost sure of being a loser. You charge
+it with a certain fixed sum, and, even upon a supposition that under the
+management of the public the estate will be as productive as it was
+under the management of its private owner, (a thing highly improbable,)
+you take your chance of a reimbursement subject to all the extra
+expense, and to all the accidents that may happen to a public revenue.
+This confiscation could not, therefore, be justified as a measure of
+economy; it must have been designed merely for the sake of shaking and
+destroying the property of the country.
+
+The whole transaction, my Lords, was an act of gross violence, ushered
+in by a gross fraud. It appears that no pensions were ever intended to
+be paid; and this you will naturally guess would be the event, when such
+a strange metamorphosis was to be made as that of turning a great landed
+interest into a pensionary payment. As it could answer no other purpose,
+so it could be intended for no other, than that of getting possession of
+these jaghires by fraud. This man, my Lords, cannot commit a robbery
+without indulging himself at the same time in the practice of his
+favorite arts of fraud and falsehood.
+
+And here I must again remind your Lordships, that at the time of the
+treaty of Chunar the jaghires were held in the following manner. Of the
+285,000_l._ a year which was to be confiscated, the old grants of Sujah
+Dowlah, [and?] the grandfather of the Nabob, amounted to near two thirds
+of the whole, as you will find in the paper to which we refer you. By
+this confiscation, therefore, the Nabob was authorized to _resume_
+grants of which he had not been the grantor.
+
+    [_Mr. Burke here read the list of the jaghires._]
+
+Now, my Lords, you see that all these estates, except 25,782_l._ a year,
+were either jaghires for the Nabob's own immediate family, settled by
+his father upon his mother, and by his father's father upon his
+grandmother, and upon Salar Jung, his uncle, or were the property of the
+most considerable nobility, to the gross amount of 285,000_l._ Mr.
+Hastings confesses that the Nabob reluctantly made the confiscation to
+the extent proposed. Why? "Because," says he, "the orderlies, namely,
+certain persons so called, subservient to his debaucheries, were persons
+whom he wished to spare." Now I am to show you that this man, whatever
+faults he may have in his private morals, (with which we have nothing at
+all to do,) has been slandered throughout by Mr. Hastings. Take his own
+account of the matter. "The Nabob," says he, "would have confiscated all
+the rest, except his orderlies, whom he would have spared; but I,
+finding where his partiality lay, compelled him to sacrifice the whole;
+for otherwise he would have sacrificed the good to save the bad:
+whereas," says Mr. Hastings, "in effect my principle was to sacrifice
+the good, and at the same time to punish the bad." Now compare the
+account he gives of the proceedings of Asoph ul Dowlah with his own.
+Asoph ul Dowlah, to save some unworthy persons who had jaghires, would,
+if left to his own discretion, have confiscated those only of the
+deserving; while Mr. Hastings, to effect the inclusion of the worthless
+in the confiscation, confiscates the jaghires of the innocent and the
+virtuous men of high rank, and of those who had all the ties of Nature
+to plead for the Nabob's forbearance, and reduced them to a state of
+dependency and degradation.
+
+Now, supposing these two villanous plans, neither of which your
+Lordships can bear to hear the sound of, to stand equal in point of
+morality, let us see how they stand in point of calculation. The
+unexceptionable part of the 285,000_l._ amounted to 260,000_l._ a year;
+whereas, supposing every part of the new grants had been made to the
+most unworthy persons, it only amounted to 25,000_l._ a year. Therefore,
+by his own account, given to you and to the Company, upon this occasion
+he has confiscated 260,000_l._ a year, the property of innocent, if not
+of meritorious individuals, in order to punish by confiscation those who
+had 25,000_l._ a year only. This is the account he gives you himself of
+his honor, his justice, and his policy in these proceedings.
+
+But, my Lords, he shall not escape so. It is in your minutes, that so
+far was the Nabob from wishing to save the new exceptionable grants,
+that, at the time of the forced loan I have mentioned, and also when the
+resumption was proposed, he was perfectly willing to give up every one
+of them, and desired only that his mother, his uncles, and his
+relations, with other individuals, the prime of the Mahometan nobility
+of that country, should be spared. Is it not enough that this poor
+Nabob, this wretched prince, is made a slave to the man now standing at
+your bar, that he is made by him a shame and a scandal to his family,
+his race, and his country, but he must be cruelly aspersed, and have
+faults and crimes attributed to him that do not belong to him? I know
+nothing of his private character and conduct: Mr. Hastings, who deals in
+scandalous anecdotes, knows them: but I take it upon the face of Mr.
+Purling's assertion, and I say, that the Nabob would have consented to
+an arbitrary taxation of the jaghires, and would have given up to
+absolute confiscation every man except those honorable persons I have
+mentioned.
+
+The prisoner himself has called Mr. Wombwell to prove the names of those
+infamous persons with a partiality for whom Mr. Hastings has aspersed
+the Nabob, in order to lay the ground for the destruction of his family.
+They amount to only six in number; and when we come to examine these
+six, we find that their jaghires were perfectly contemptible. The list
+of the other jaghiredars, your Lordships see, fills up pages; and the
+amount of their incomes I have already stated. Your Lordships now see
+how inconsiderable, both in number and amount, were the culpable
+jaghires, in the destruction of which he has involved the greater number
+and the meritorious. You see that the Nabob never did propose any
+exemption of the former at any time; that this was a slander and a
+calumny on that unhappy man, in order to defend the violent acts of the
+prisoner, who has recourse to slander and calumny as a proper way to
+defend violence, outrage, and wrongs.
+
+We have now gone through the first stage of Mr. Hastings's confiscation
+of the estates of these unhappy people. When it came to be put in
+execution, Mr. Middleton finds the Nabob reluctant in the greatest
+degree to make this sacrifice of his family and of all his nobility. It
+touched him in every way in which shame and sympathy can affect a man.
+He falls at the feet of Mr. Middleton; he says, "I signed the treaty of
+Chunar upon an assurance that it was never meant to be put in force."
+Mr. Middleton nevertheless proceeds; he sends the family of the Nabob
+out of the country; but he entertains fears of a general revolt as the
+consequence of this tyrannical act, and refers the case back to Mr.
+Hastings, who insists upon its being executed in its utmost extent. The
+Nabob again remonstrates in the strongest manner; he begs, he prays, he
+dissembles, he delays. One day he pretends to be willing to submit, the
+next he hangs back, just as the violence of Mr. Hastings or his own
+natural feelings and principles of justice dragged him one way or
+dragged him another. Mr. Middleton, trembling, and under the awe of that
+_dreadful responsibility_ under which your Lordships may remember Mr.
+Hastings had expressly laid him upon that occasion, ventures at once to
+usurp the Nabob's government. He usurped it openly and avowedly. He
+declared that he himself would issue his purwannahs as governor of the
+country, for the purpose of executing this abominable confiscation. He
+assumed, I say, to himself the government of the country, and Mr.
+Hastings had armed him with a strong military force for that purpose; he
+declared he would order those troops to march for his support; he at
+last got this reluctant, struggling Nabob to consent in the manner we
+have described.
+
+I shall now read to your Lordships Mr. Middleton's letters, that you may
+hear these men with their own mouths describing their own acts, and that
+your Lordships may then judge whether the highest tone and language of
+crimination comes up to their own description of their own proceedings.
+
+        "_Lucknow, the 6th of Dec., 1781._
+
+     "Finding the Nabob wavering in his determination about the
+     resumption of the jaghires, I this day, in presence of, and with
+     the minister's concurrence, ordered the necessary purwannahs to be
+     written to the several aumils for that purpose, and it was my firm
+     resolution to have dispatched them this evening, with proper people
+     to see them punctually and implicitly carried into execution; but
+     before they were all transcribed, I received a message from the
+     Nabob, who had been informed by the minister of the resolution I
+     had taken, entreating that I would withhold the purwannahs till
+     to-morrow morning, when he would attend me, and afford me
+     satisfaction on this point. As the loss of a few hours in the
+     dispatch of the purwannahs appeared of little moment, and as it is
+     possible the Nabob, seeing that the business will at all events be
+     done, may make it an act of his own, I have consented to indulge
+     him in his request; but, be the result of our interview whatever it
+     may, nothing shall prevent the orders being issued to-morrow,
+     either by him or myself, with the concurrence of the ministers.
+     Your pleasure respecting the Begums I have learnt from Sir Elijah,
+     and the measure heretofore proposed will soon follow the resumption
+     of the jaghires; from both, or, indeed, from the former alone, I
+     have no doubt of the complete liquidation of the Company's
+     balance."
+
+
+       "_Lucknow, the 7th Dec., 1781._
+
+     "My dear Sir,--I had the honor to address you yesterday, informing
+     you of the steps I had taken in regard to the resumption of the
+     jaghires. This morning the Vizier came to me, according to his
+     agreement, but seemingly without any intention or desire to yield
+     me satisfaction on the subject under discussion; for, after a great
+     deal of conversation, consisting on his part of trifling evasion
+     and puerile excuses for withholding his assent to the measure,
+     though at the same time professing the most implicit submission to
+     your wishes, I found myself without any other resource than the one
+     of employing that exclusive authority with which I consider your
+     instructions to vest me. I therefore declared to the Nabob, in
+     presence of the minister and Mr. Johnson, who I desired might bear
+     witness of the conversation, that I construed his rejection of the
+     measure proposed as a breach of his solemn promise to you, and an
+     unwillingness to yield that assistance which was evidently in his
+     power towards liquidating his heavy accumulated debt to the
+     Company, and that I must in consequence determine, in my own
+     justification, to issue immediately the purwannahs, which had only
+     been withheld in the sanguine hope that he would be prevailed upon
+     to make that his own act, which nothing but the most urgent
+     necessity could force me to make mine. He left me without any
+     reply, but afterwards sent for his minister, and authorized him to
+     give me hopes that my requisition would be complied with; on which
+     I expressed my satisfaction, but declared that I could admit of no
+     further delays, and, unless I received his Excellency's formal
+     acquiescence before the evening, I should then most assuredly issue
+     my purwannahs: which I have accordingly done, not having had any
+     assurances from his Excellency that could justify a further
+     suspension. I shall as soon as possible inform you of the effect of
+     the purwannahs, which in many parts I am apprehensive it will be
+     found necessary to enforce with military aid; I am not, however,
+     entirely without hopes that the Nabob, when he sees the inefficacy
+     of further opposition, may alter his conduct, and prevent the
+     confusion and disagreeable consequences which would be too likely
+     to result from the prosecution of a measure of such importance
+     without his concurrence. His Excellency talks of going to Fyzabad,
+     for the purpose heretofore mentioned, in three or four days; I wish
+     he may be serious in this intention, and you may rest assured I
+     shall spare no pains to keep him to it."
+
+
+       "_Lucknow, 28th December, 1781._
+
+     "If your new demand is to be insisted upon, which your letter seems
+     to portend, I must beg your precise orders upon it; as, from the
+     difficulties I have within these few days experienced in carrying
+     the points you had enjoined with the Nabob, I have the best grounds
+     for believing that he would consider it a direct breach of the late
+     agreement, and totally reject the proposal as such; and I must own
+     to you, that, in his present fermented state of mind, I could
+     expect nothing less than despair and a declared rupture.
+
+     "He has by no means been yet able to furnish me with means of
+     paying off the arrears due to the temporary brigade, to the
+     stipulated term of its continuance in his service. The funds
+     necessary for paying off and discharging his own military
+     establishment under British officers, and his pension list, have
+     been raised, on the private credit of Mr. Johnson and myself, from
+     the shroffs of this place, to whom we are at this moment pledged
+     for many lacs of rupees; and without such aid, which I freely and
+     at all hazards yielded, because I conceived it was your anxious
+     desire to relieve the Nabob as soon as possible of this heavy
+     burden, the establishment must have been at his charge to this
+     time, and probably for months to come, while his resources were
+     strained to the utmost to furnish jaidads for its maintenance to
+     this period. I therefore hesitate not to declare it utterly
+     impossible for him, under any circumstances whatever, to provide
+     funds for the payment of the troops you now propose to send him.
+
+     "The wresting Furruckabad, Kyraghur, and Fyzoola Kh�n's country
+     from his government, (for in that light, my dear Sir, I can
+     faithfully assure you, he views the measures adopted in respect to
+     those countries,) together with the resumption of all the jaghires,
+     so much against his inclination, have already brought the Nabob to
+     a persuasion that nothing less than his destruction, or the
+     annihilation of every shadow of his power, is meant; and all my
+     labors to convince him to the contrary have proved abortive. A
+     settled melancholy has seized him, and his health is reduced beyond
+     conception; and I do most humbly believe that the march of four
+     regiments of sepoys towards Lucknow, under whatever circumstances
+     it might be represented, would be considered by him as a force
+     ultimately to be used in securing his person. In short, my dear
+     Sir, it is a matter of such immediate moment, and involving,
+     apparently, such very serious and important consequences, that I
+     have not only taken upon me to suspend the communication of it to
+     the Nabob until I should be honored with your further commands, but
+     have also ventured to write the inclosed letter to Colonel Morgan:
+     liberties which I confidently trust you will excuse, when you
+     consider that I can be actuated by no other motive than a zeal for
+     the public service, and that, if, after all, you determine that the
+     measure shall be insisted on, it will be only the loss of six or at
+     most eight days in proposing it. But in the last event, I earnestly
+     entreat your orders may be explicit and positive, that I may
+     clearly know what lengths you would wish me to proceed in carrying
+     them into execution. I again declare it is my firm belief, and
+     assure yourself, my dear Mr. Hastings, I am not influenced in this
+     declaration by any considerations but my public duty and my
+     personal attachment to you, that the enforcing the measure you have
+     proposed would be productive of an open rupture between us and the
+     Nabob; nay, that the first necessary step towards carrying it into
+     effect must be, on our part, a declaration of hostility."
+
+Your Lordships have now before your eyes proofs, furnished by Mr.
+Hastings himself from his correspondence with Mr. Middleton,
+irrefragable proofs, that this Nabob, who is stated to have made the
+proposition himself, was dragged to the signature of it; and that the
+troops which are supposed, and fraudulently stated, (and I wish your
+Lordships particularly to observe this,) to have been sent to assist
+him in this measure, were considered by him as a body of troops sent to
+imprison him, and to free him from all the troubles and pains of
+government.
+
+When Mr. Hastings sent the troops for the purpose, as he pretended, of
+assisting the Nabob in the execution of a measure which was really
+adopted in direct opposition to the wishes of that prince, what other
+conclusion could be drawn, but that they were sent to overawe, not to
+assist him? The march of alien troops into a country upon that occasion
+could have no object but hostility; they could have been sent with no
+other design but that of bringing disgrace upon the Nabob, by making him
+the instrument of his family's ruin, and of the destruction of his
+nobility. Your Lordships, therefore, will not wonder that this miserable
+man should have sunk into despair, and that he should have felt the
+weight of his oppression doubly aggravated by its coming from such a man
+as Mr. Hastings, and by its being enforced by such a man as Mr.
+Middleton.
+
+And here I must press one observation upon your Lordships: I do not know
+a greater insult that can be offered to a man born to command than to
+find himself made the tool of a set of obscure men, come from an unknown
+country, without anything to distinguish them but an usurped power.
+Never shall I, out of compliment to any persons, because they happen to
+be my own countrymen, disguise my feelings, or renounce the dictates of
+Nature and of humanity. If we send out obscure people, unknowing and
+unknown, to exercise such acts as these, I must say it is a bitter
+aggravation of the victim's suffering. Oppression and robbery are at all
+times evils; but they are more bearable, when exercised by persons whom
+we have been habituated to regard with awe, and to whom mankind for ages
+have been accustomed to bow.
+
+Now does the history of tyranny furnish, does the history of popular
+violence deposing kings furnish, anything like the dreadful deposition
+of this prince, and the cruel and abominable tyranny that has been
+exercised over him? Consider, too, my Lords, for what object all this
+was done. Was Mr. Hastings endeavoring, by his arbitrary interference
+and the use of his superior power, to screen a people from the
+usurpation and power of a tyrant,--from any strong and violent acts
+against property, against dignity, against nobility, against the freedom
+of his people? No: you see here a monarch deposed, in effect, by persons
+pretending to be his allies, and assigning what are pretended to be his
+wishes as the motive for using his usurped authority in the execution of
+these acts of violence against his own family and his subjects. You see
+him struggling against this violent prostitution of his authority. He
+refuses the sanction of his name, which before he had given up to Mr.
+Hastings to be used as he pleased, and only begs not to be made an
+instrument of wrong which his soul abhors, and which would make him
+infamous throughout the world. Mr. Middleton, however, assumes the
+sovereignty of the country. "I," he says, "am Nabob of Oude: the
+jaghires shall be confiscated: I have given my orders, and they shall be
+supported by a military force."
+
+I am ashamed to have so far distrusted your Lordships' honorable and
+generous feelings as to have offered you, upon this occasion, any
+remarks which you must have run before me in making. Those feelings
+which you have, and ought to have, feelings born in the breasts of all
+men, and much more in men of your Lordships' elevated rank, render my
+remarks unnecessary. I need not, therefore, ask what you feel, when a
+foreign resident at a prince's court takes upon himself to force that
+prince to act the part of a tyrant, and, upon his resistance, openly and
+avowedly assumes the sovereignty of the country. You have it in proof
+that Mr. Middleton did this. He not only put his own name to the orders
+for this horrible confiscation, but he actually proceeded to dispossess
+the jaghiredars of their lands, and to send them out of the country. And
+whom does he send, in the place of this plundered body of nobility, to
+take possession of the country? Why, the usurers of Benares. Yes, my
+Lords, he immediately mortgages the whole country to the usurers of
+Benares, for the purpose of raising money upon it: giving it up to those
+bloodsuckers, dispossessed of that nobility, whose interest, whose duty,
+whose feelings, and whose habits made them the natural protectors of the
+people.
+
+My Lords, we here see a body of usurers put into possession of all the
+estates of the nobility: let us now see if this act was necessary, even
+for the avowed purposes of its agents,--the relief of the Nabob's
+financial difficulties, and the payment of his debts to the Company. Mr.
+Middleton has told your Lordships that these jaghires would pay the
+Company's debt completely in two years. Then would it not have been
+better to have left these estates in the hands of their owners, and to
+have oppressed them in some moderate, decent way? Might they not have
+left the jaghiredars to raise the sums required by some settlement with
+the bankers of Benares, in which the repayment of the money within five
+or six years might have been secured, and the jaghiredars have had in
+the mean time something to subsist upon? Oh, no! these victims must have
+nothing to live upon. They must be turned out. And why? Mr. Hastings
+commands it.
+
+Here I must come in aid of Mr. Middleton a little; for one cannot but
+pity the miserable instruments that have to act under Mr. Hastings. I do
+not mean to apologize for Mr. Middleton, but to pity the situation of
+persons who, being servants of the Company, were converted, by the
+usurpation of this man, into his subjects and his slaves. The mind of
+Mr. Middleton revolts. You see him reluctant to proceed. The Nabob begs
+a respite. You find in the Resident a willingness to comply. Even Mr.
+Middleton is placable. Mr. Hastings alone is obdurate. His resolution to
+rob and to destroy was not to be moved, and the estates of the whole
+Mahometan nobility of a great kingdom were confiscated in a moment. Your
+Lordships will observe that his orders to Mr. Middleton allow no
+forbearance. He writes thus to him.
+
+     "Sir,--My mind has been for some days suspended between two
+     opposite impulses: one arising from the necessity of my return to
+     Calcutta; the other, from the apprehension of my presence being
+     more necessary and more urgently wanted at Lucknow. Your answer to
+     this shall decide my choice.
+
+     "I have waited thus long in the hopes of hearing that some progress
+     had been made in the execution of the plan which I concluded with
+     the Nabob in September last. I do not find that any step towards
+     it has been yet taken, though three months are elapsed, and little
+     more than that period did appear to me requisite to have
+     accomplished the most essential parts of it, and to have brought
+     the whole into train. This tardiness, and the opposition prepared
+     to the only decided act yet undertaken, have a bad appearance. I
+     approve the Nabob's resolutions to deprive the Begums of their
+     ill-employed treasures. In both services, it must be your care to
+     prevent an abuse of the powers given to those that are employed in
+     them. You yourself ought to be personally present. You must not
+     allow any negotiation or forbearance, but must prosecute both
+     services, until the Begums are at the entire mercy of the Nabob,
+     their jaghires in the quiet possession of his aumils, and their
+     wealth in such charge as may secure it against private
+     embezzlement. You will have a force more than sufficient to effect
+     both these purposes.
+
+     "The reformation of his army and the new settlement of his revenues
+     are also points of immediate concern, and ought to be immediately
+     concluded. Has anything been done in either?
+
+     "I now demand and require you most solemnly to answer me. Are you
+     confident in your own ability to accomplish all these purposes, and
+     the other points of my instructions? If you reply that you are, I
+     will depart with a quiet and assured mind to the Presidency, but
+     leave you a dreadful responsibility, if you disappoint me. If you
+     tell me that you cannot rely upon your power, and the other means
+     which you possess for performing these services, I will free you
+     from the charge. I will proceed myself to Lucknow, and I will
+     myself undertake them; and in that case, I desire that you will
+     immediately order bearers to be stationed, for myself and two other
+     gentlemen, between Lucknow and Allahabad, and I will set out from
+     hence in three days after the receipt of your letter.
+
+     "I am sorry that I am under the necessity of writing in this
+     pressing manner. I trust implicitly to your integrity, I am certain
+     of your attachment to myself, and I know that your capacity is
+     equal to any service; but I must express my doubts of your firmness
+     and activity, and above all of your recollection of my
+     instructions, and of their importance. My conduct in the late
+     arrangements will be arraigned with all the rancor of disappointed
+     rapacity, and my reputation and influence will suffer a mortal
+     wound from the failure of them. They have already failed in a
+     degree, since no part of them has yet taken place, but the removal
+     of our forces from the Dooab and Rohilcund, and of the British
+     officers and pensioners from the service of the Nabob, and the
+     expenses of the former thrown without any compensation on the
+     Company.
+
+     "I expect a supply of money equal to the discharge of all the
+     Nabob's arrears, and am much disappointed and mortified that I am
+     not now able to return with it.
+
+     "Give me an immediate answer to the question which I have herein
+     proposed, that I may lose no more time in fruitless inaction."
+
+About this time Mr. Hastings had received information of our inquiries
+in the House of Commons into his conduct; and this is the manner in
+which he prepares to meet them. "I must get money. I must carry with me
+that great excuse for everything, that salve for every sore, that
+expiation for every crime: let me provide that, all is well. You, Mr.
+Middleton, try your nerves: are you equal to these services? Examine
+yourself; see what is in you: are you man enough to come up to it?" says
+the great robber to the little robber, says Roland the Great to his puny
+accomplice. "Are you equal to it? Do you feel yourself a man? If not,
+send messengers and dawks to me, and I, the great master tyrant, will
+come myself, and put to shame all the paltry delegate tools of
+despotism, that have not edge enough to cut their way through and do the
+services I have ordained for them."
+
+I have already stated to your Lordships his reason and motives for this
+violence, and they are such as aggravated his crime by attempting to
+implicate his country in it. He says he was afraid to go home without
+having provided for the payment of the Nabob's debt. Afraid of what? Was
+he afraid of coming before a British tribunal, and saying, "Through
+justice, through a regard for the rights of an allied sovereign, through
+a regard to the rights of his people, I have not got so much as I
+expected"? Of this no man could be afraid. The prisoner's fear had
+another origin. "I have failed," says he to himself, "in my first
+project. I went to Benares to rob; I have lost by my violence the fruits
+of that robbery. I must get the money somewhere, or I dare not appear
+before a British House of Commons, a British House of Lords, or any
+other tribunal in the kingdom; but let me get money enough, and they
+won't care how I get it. The estates of whole bodies of nobility may be
+confiscated; a people who had lived under their protection may be given
+up into the hands of foreign usurers: they will care for none of these
+things; they will suffer me to do all this, and to employ in it the
+force of British troops, whom I have described as a set of robbers,
+provided I can get money." These were Mr. Hastings's views; and, in
+accordance with them, the jaghires were all confiscated, the jaghiredars
+with their families were all turned out, the possessions delivered up to
+the usurer, in order that Mr. Hastings might have the excuse of money to
+plead at the bar of the House of Commons, and afterwards at the bar of
+the House of Lords. If your Lordships, in your sacred character of the
+first tribunal in the world, should by your judgment justify those
+proceedings, you will sanction the greatest wrongs that have been ever
+known in history.
+
+But to proceed. The next thing to be asked is, Were the promised
+pensions given to the jaghiredars? I suppose your Lordships are not idle
+enough to put that question to us. No compensation, no consideration,
+was given or stipulated for them. If there had been any such thing, the
+prisoner could have proved it,--he would have proved it. The means were
+easy to him. But we have saved him the trouble of the attempt. We have
+proved the contrary, and, if called upon, we will show you the place
+where this is proved.
+
+I have now shown your Lordships how Mr. Hastings, having with such
+violent and atrocious circumstances usurped the government of Oude, (I
+hope I need not use any farther proof that the Nabob was in effect
+non-existent in the country,) treated all the landed property. The next
+question will be, How has he treated whatever moneyed property was left
+in the country? My Lords, he looked over that immense waste of his own
+creating, not as Satan viewed the kingdoms of the world and saw the
+power and glory of them,--but he looked over the waste of Oude with a
+diabolical malice which one could hardly suppose existed in the
+prototype himself. He saw nowhere above-ground one single shilling that
+he could attach,--no, not one; every place had been ravaged; no money
+remained in sight. But possibly some might be buried in vaults, hid from
+the gripe of tyranny and rapacity. "It must be so," says he. "Where can
+I find it? how can I get at it? There is one illustrious family that is
+thought to have accumulated a vast body of treasures, through a course
+of three or four successive reigns. It does not appear openly; but we
+have good information that very great sums of money are bricked up and
+kept in vaults under ground, and secured under the guard and within the
+walls of a fortress": the residence of the females of the family, a
+guard, as your Lordships know, rendered doubly and trebly secure by the
+manners of the country, which make everything that is in the hands of
+women sacred. It is said that nothing is proof against gold,--that the
+strongest tower will not be impregnable, if Jupiter makes love in a
+golden shower. This Jupiter commences making love; but he does not come
+to the ladies with gold for their persons, he comes to their persons for
+their gold. This impetuous lover, Mr. Hastings, who is not to be stayed
+from the objects of his passion, would annihilate space and time between
+him and his beloved object, the jaghires of these ladies, had now,
+first, their treasure's affection.
+
+Your Lordships have already had a peep behind the curtain, in the first
+orders sent to Mr. Middleton. In the treaty of Chunar you see a desire,
+obliquely expressed, to get the landed estates of all these great
+families. But even while he was meeting with such reluctance in the
+Nabob upon this point, and though he also met with some resistance upon
+the part even of Mr. Middleton, Mr. Hastings appears to have given him
+in charge some other still more obnoxious and dreadful acts. "While I
+was meditating," says Mr. Middleton, in one of his letters, "upon this
+[the resumption of the jaghires], your orders came to me through Sir
+Elijah Impey." What these orders were is left obscure in the letter: it
+is yet but as in a mist or cloud. But it is evident that Sir Elijah
+Impey did convey to him some project for getting at more wealth by some
+other service, which was not to supersede the first, but to be
+concurrent with that upon which Mr. Hastings had before given him such
+dreadful charges and had loaded him with such horrible responsibility.
+It could not have been anything but the seizure of the Begum's
+treasures. He thus goaded on two reluctant victims,--first the reluctant
+Nabob, then the reluctant Mr. Middleton,--forcing them with the bayonet
+behind them, and urging on the former, as at last appears, to violate
+the sanctity of his mother's house.
+
+Your Lordships have been already told by one of my able fellow Managers,
+that Sir Elijah Impey is the person who carried up the message alluded
+to in Mr. Middleton's letter. We have charged it, as an aggravation of
+the offences of the prisoner at your bar, that the Chief-Justice, who,
+by the sacred nature of his office, and by the express provisions of the
+act of Parliament under which he was sent out to India to redress the
+wrongs of the natives, should be made an instrument for destroying the
+property, real and personal, of this people. When it first came to our
+knowledge that all this private intrigue for the destruction of these
+high women was carried on through the intrigue of a Chief-Justice, we
+felt such shame and such horror, both for the instrument and the
+principal, as I think it impossible to describe, or for anything but
+complete and perfect silence to express.
+
+But by Sir Elijah Impey was that order carried up to seize and
+confiscate the treasures of the Begums. We know that neither the Company
+nor the Nabob had any claim whatever upon these treasures. On the
+contrary, we know that two treaties had been made for the protection of
+them. We know that the Nabob, while he was contesting about some
+elephants and carriages, and some other things that he said were in the
+hands of their steward, did allow that the treasures in the custody of
+his grandmother and of his mother's principal servants were their
+property. This is the Nabob who is now represented by Mr. Hastings and
+his counsel to have become the instrument of destroying his mother and
+grandmother, and everything else that ought to be dear to mankind,
+throughout the whole train of his family.
+
+Mr. Hastings, having resolved to seize upon the treasures of the Begums,
+is at a loss for some pretence of justifying the act. His first
+justification of it is on grounds which all tyrants have ready at their
+hands. He begins to discover a legal title to that of which he wished to
+be the possessor, and on this title sets up a claim to these treasures.
+I say Mr. Hastings set up this claim, because by this time I suppose
+your Lordships will not bear to hear the Nabob's name on such an
+occasion. The prisoner pretended, that, by the Mahometan law, these
+goods did belong to the Nabob; but whether they did or did not, he had
+himself been an active instrument in the treaty for securing their
+possession to the Begums,--a security which he attempts to unlock by his
+constructions of the Mahometan law. Having set up this title, the
+guaranty still remained; and how is he to get rid of that? In his usual
+way. "You have rebelled, you have taken up arms against your own son,"
+(for that is the pretext,) "and therefore my guaranty is gone, and your
+goods, whether you have a title to them or not, are to be confiscated
+for your rebellion." This is his second expedient by way of
+justification.
+
+Your Lordships will observe the strange situation in which we are here
+placed. If the fact of the rebellion can be proved, the discussion of
+the title to the property in question will be totally useless; for, if
+the ladies had actually taken up arms to cut the Nabob's throat, it
+would require no person to come from the dead to prove to us that the
+Nabob, but not Mr. Hastings, had a right, for his own security and for
+his own indemnification, to take those treasures, which, whether they
+belonged to him or not, were employed in hostilities against him. The
+law of self-defence is above every other law; and if any persons draw
+the sword against you, violence on your part is justified, and you may
+use your sword to take from them that property by which they have been
+enabled to draw their sword against you.
+
+But the prisoner's counsel do not trust to this justification; they set
+up a title of right to these treasures: but how entirely they have
+failed in their attempts to substantiate either the one or the other of
+these his alleged justifications your Lordships will now judge. And
+first with regard to the title. The treasure, they say, belonged to the
+state. The grandmother and mother have robbed the son, and kept him out
+of his rightful inheritance. They then produce the Hedaya to show you
+what proportion of the goods of a Mussulman, when he dies, goes to his
+family; and here, certainly, there is a question of law to be tried. But
+Mr. Hastings is a great eccentric genius, and has a course of proceeding
+of his own: he first seizes upon the property, and then produces some
+Mahometan writers to prove that it did not belong to the persons who
+were in possession of it. You would naturally expect, that, when he was
+going to seize upon those goods, he would have consulted his
+Chief-Justice, (for, as Sir Elijah Impey went with him, he might have
+consulted him,) and have thus learnt what was the Mahometan law: for,
+though Sir Elijah had not taken his degree at a Mahometan college,
+though he was not a mufti or a moulavy, yet he had always muftis and
+moulavies near him, and he might have consulted them. But Mr. Hastings
+does not even pretend that such consultations or conferences were ever
+had. If he ever consulted Sir Elijah Impey, where is the report of the
+case? When were the parties before him? Where are the opinions of the
+moulavies? Where is the judgment of the Chief-Justice? Was he fit for
+nothing but to be employed as a messenger, as a common tipstaff? Was he
+not fit to try these rights, or to decide upon them? He has told you
+here, indeed, negatively, that he did not know any title Mr. Hastings
+had to seize upon the property of the Begums, except upon his hypothesis
+of the rebellion. He was asked if he knew any other. He answered, No. It
+consequently appears that Mr. Hastings, though he had before him his
+doctors of all laws, who could unravel for him all the enigmas of all
+the laws in the world, and who had himself shone upon questions of
+Mahometan law, in the case of the Nuddea Begum, did not dare to put this
+case to Sir Elijah Impey, and ask what was his opinion concerning the
+rights of these people. He was tender, I suppose, of the reputation of
+the Chief-Justice. For Sir Elijah Impey, though a very good man to write
+a letter, or take an affidavit in a corner, or run on a message, to do
+the business of an under-sheriff, tipstaff, or bum-bailiff, was not fit
+to give an opinion on a question of Mahometan law.
+
+You have heard Ali Ibrahim Kh�n referred to. This Mahometan lawyer was
+carried by Mr. Hastings up to Benares, to be a witness of the vast good
+he had done in that province, and was made Chief-Justice there. All,
+indeed, that we know of him, except the high character given of him by
+Mr. Hastings, is, I believe, that he is the Ali Ibrahim Kh�n whom in the
+Company's records I find mentioned as a person giving bribes upon some
+former occasion to Mr. Hastings; but whatever he was besides, he was a
+doctor of the Mahometan law, he was a mufti, and was made by Mr.
+Hastings the principal judge in a criminal court, exercising, as I
+believe, likewise a considerable civil jurisdiction, and therefore he
+was qualified as a lawyer; and Mr. Hastings cannot object to his
+qualifications either of integrity or of knowledge. This man was with
+him. Why did not he consult him upon this law? Why did he not make him
+out a case of John Doe and Richard Roe, of John Stokes and John � Nokes?
+Why not say, "Sinub possesses such things, under such and such
+circumstances: give me your opinion upon the legality of the
+possession"? No, he did no such thing.
+
+Your Lordships, I am sure, will think it a little extraordinary, that
+neither this chief-justice made by himself, nor that other chief-justice
+whom he led about with him in a string,--the one an English
+chief-justice, with a Mahometan suit in his court, the other a Mahometan
+chief-justice of the country,--that neither of them was consulted as
+lawyers by the prisoner. Both of them were, indeed, otherwise employed
+by him. For we find Ali Ibrahim Kh�n employed in the same subservient
+capacity in which Sir Elijah Impey was,--in order, I suppose, to keep
+the law of England and the law of Mahomet upon a just par: for upon this
+equality Mr. Hastings always values himself. Neither of these two
+chief-justices, I say, was ever consulted, nor one opinion taken; but
+they were both employed in the correspondence and private execution of
+this abominable project, when the prisoner himself had not either
+leisure or perhaps courage to give his public order in it till things
+got to greater ripeness.
+
+To Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, he did put a question; and, upon my word,
+it did not require an Oedipus or a Sphinx to answer it. Says he, "I
+asked Sir Elijah Impey." What? a question on the title between the Nabob
+and his mother? No such thing. He puts an hypothetical question.
+"Supposing," says he, "a rebellion to exist in that country; will the
+Nabob be justified in seizing the goods of the rebels?" That is a
+question decided in a moment; and I must have a malice to Sir Elijah
+Impey of which I am incapable, to deny the propriety of his answer. But
+observe, I pray you, my Lords, there is something peculiarly good and
+correct in it. He does not take upon him to say one word of the actual
+existence of a rebellion, though he was at the time in the country, and,
+if there had been any, he must have been a witness to it; but, so chaste
+was his character as a judge, that he would not touch upon the juries'
+office. "I am chief-justice here," says he, "though a little wandering
+out of my orbit; yet still the sacred office of justice is in me. Do you
+take upon you the fact; I find the law." Were it not for this sacred
+attention to separate jurisdictions, he might have been a tolerable
+judge of the fact,--just as good a judge as Mr. Hastings: for neither of
+them knew it any other way, as it appears afterwards, but by rumor and
+reports,--reports, I believe, of Mr. Hastings's own raising; for I do
+not know that Sir Elijah Impey had anything to do with them.
+
+But to proceed. With regard to the title of these ladies, according to
+the Mahometan law, you have nothing laid before you by the prisoner's
+counsel but a quotation cut out with the scissors from a Mahometan
+law-book, (which I suspect very much the learned gentlemen have never
+read through,) declaring how a Mahometan's effects are to be
+distributed. But Mr. Hastings could not at the time have consulted that
+learned counsel who now defends him upon the principles of the Hedaya,
+the Hedaya not having been then published in English; and I will venture
+to say, that neither Sir Elijah Impey nor Ali Ibrahim Kh�n, nor any
+other person, high or low, in India, ever suggested this defence, and
+that it was never thought of till lately found by the learned counsel in
+the English translation of the Hedaya. "God bless me!" now says Mr.
+Hastings, "what ignorance have I been in all this time! I thought I was
+seizing this unjustly, and that the pretence of rebellion was necessary;
+but my counsel have found out a book, since published, and from it they
+produce the law upon that subject, and show that the Nabob had a right
+to seize upon the treasures of his mother." But are your Lordships so
+ignorant--(your Lordships are not ignorant of anything)--are any men so
+ignorant as not to know that in every country the common law of
+distribution of the estate of an intestate amongst private individuals
+is no rule with regard to the family arrangements of great princes? Is
+any one ignorant, that, from the days of the first origin of the Persian
+monarchy, the laws of which have become rules ever since for almost all
+the monarchs of the East, the wives of great men have had, independent
+of the common distribution of their goods, great sums of money and great
+estates in land, one for their girdle, one for their veil, and so on,
+going through the rest of their ornaments and attire,--and that they
+held great estates and other effects over which the reigning monarch or
+his successor had no control whatever? Indeed, my Lords, a more curious
+and extraordinary species of trial than this of a question of right
+never was heard of since the world began. Mr. Hastings begins with
+seizing the goods of the Begums at Fyzabad, nine thousand miles from
+you, and fourteen years after tries the title in an English court,
+without having one person to appear for these miserable ladies. I trust
+you will not suffer this mockery; I hope this last and ultimate shame
+will be spared us: for I declare to God, that the defence, and the
+principles of it, appear to me ten thousand times worse than the act
+itself.
+
+Now, my Lords, this criminal, through his counsel, chooses, with their
+usual flippancy, to say that the Commons have been _cautious_ in stating
+this part of the charge, knowing that they were on tender ground, and
+therefore did not venture to say _entitled_, but _possessed of_ only. A
+notable discovery indeed! We are as far from being taken in by such
+miserable distinctions as we are incapable of making them. We certainly
+have not said that the Begums were entitled to, but only that they were
+possessed of, certain property. And we have so said because we were not
+competent to decide upon their title, because your Lordships are not
+competent to decide upon their title, because no part of this tribunal
+is competent to decide upon their title. You have not the parties before
+you; you have not the cause before you,--but are getting it by oblique,
+improper, and indecent means. You are not a court of justice to try that
+question. The parties are at a distance from you; they are neither
+present themselves, nor represented by any counsel, advocate, or
+attorney: and I hope no House of Lords will ever judge and decide upon
+the title of any human being, much less upon the title of the first
+women in Asia, sequestered, shut up from you, at nine thousand miles'
+distance.
+
+I believe, my Lords, that the Emperor of Hindostan little thought, while
+Delhi stood, that an English subject of Mr. Hastings's description
+should domineer over the Vizier of his empire, and give the law to the
+first persons in his dominions. He as little dreamed of it as any of
+your Lordships now dream that you shall have your property seized by a
+delegate from Lucknow, and have it tried by what tenure a peer or
+peeress of Great Britain hold, the one his estate, and the other her
+jointure, dower, or her share of goods, her paraphernalia, in any court
+of Adawlut in Hindostan. If any such thing should happen, (for we know
+not what may happen; we live in an age of strange revolutions, and I
+doubt whether any more strange than this,) the Commons of Great Britain
+would shed their best blood sooner than suffer that a tribunal at
+Lucknow should decide upon any of your titles, for the purpose of
+justifying a robber that has taken your property. We should do the best
+we could, if such a strange circumstance occurred.
+
+The House of Commons, who are virtually the representatives of Lucknow,
+and who lately took 500,000_l._ of their money, will not suffer the
+natives first to be robbed of their property, and then the titles, which
+by the laws of their own country they have to the goods they possess, to
+be tried by any tribunal in Great Britain. Why was it not tried in India
+before Mr. Hastings? One would suppose that an English governor, if
+called to decide upon such a claim of the Nabob's, would doubtless be
+attended by judges, muftis, lawyers, and all the apparatus of legal
+justice. No such thing. This man marches into the country, not with
+moulavies, not with muftis, not with the solemn apparatus of Oriental
+justice,--no: he goes with colonels, and captains, and majors,--these
+are his lawyers: and when he gets there, he demands from the parties,
+not their title,--no: "Give me your money!" is his cry. It is a shame
+(and I will venture to say, that these gentlemen, upon recollection,
+will feel ashamed) to see the bar justify what the sword is ashamed of.
+In reading this correspondence, I have found these great muftis and
+lawyers, these great chief-justices, attorneys-general, and
+solicitors-general, called colonels and captains, ashamed of these
+proceedings, and endeavoring to mitigate their cruelty; yet we see
+British lawyers in a British tribunal supporting and justifying these
+acts, on the plea of defective titles.
+
+The learned counsel asks, with an air of triumph, whether these ladies
+possessed these treasures by jointure, dower, will, or settlement. What
+was the title? Was it a deed of gift?--was it a devise?--was it _donatio
+caus� mortis?_--was it dower?--was it jointure?--what was it? To all
+which senseless and absurd questions we answer, You asked none of these
+questions of the parties, when you guarantied to them, by a solemn
+treaty, the possession of their goods. Then was the time to have asked
+these questions: but you asked none of them. You supposed their right,
+and you guarantied it, though you might then have asked what was their
+right. But besides the force and virtue of the guaranty, these unhappy
+princesses had ransomed themselves from any claim upon their property.
+They paid a sum of money, applied to your use, for that guaranty. They
+had a treble title,--by possession, by guaranty, by purchase.
+
+Again, did you ask these questions, when you went to rob them of their
+landed estates, their money, their ornaments, and even their
+wearing-apparel? When you sent those great lawyers, Major ----, Major
+----, and the other majors, and colonels, and captains, did you call on
+them to exhibit their title-deeds? No: with a pistol at their breast,
+you demanded their money. Instead of forging a charge of rebellion
+against these unhappy persons, why did you not then call on them for
+their vouchers? No rebellion was necessary to give validity to a civil
+claim. What you could get by an ordinary judgment did not want
+confiscation called to its aid. When you had their eunuchs, their
+ministers, their treasurers, their agents and attorneys in irons, did
+you then ask any of these questions? No. "Discover the money you have in
+trust, or _you_ go to corporal punishment,--_you_ go to the castle of
+Chunar,--here is another pair of irons!"--this was the only language
+used.
+
+When the Court of Directors, alarmed at the proceedings against these
+ancient ladies, ordered their Indian government to make an inquiry into
+their conduct, the prisoner had then an opportunity and a duty imposed
+upon him of entering into a complete justification of his conduct: he
+might have justified it by every civil, and by every criminal mode of
+process. Did he do this? No. Your Lordships have in evidence the manner,
+equally despotic, _rebellious_, insolent, fraudulent, tricking, and
+evasive, by which he positively refused all inquiry into the matter. How
+stands it now, more than twelve years after the seizure of their goods,
+at ten thousand miles' distance? You ask of these women, buried in the
+depths of Asia, secluded from human commerce, what is their title to
+their estate. Have you the parties before you? Have you summoned them?
+Where is their attorney? Where is their agent? Where is their counsel?
+Is this law? Is this a legal process? Is this a tribunal,--the highest
+tribunal of all,--that which is to furnish the example for, and to be a
+control on all the rest? But what is worse, you do not come _directly_
+to the trial of this right to property. You are desired to surround and
+circumvent it; you are desired obliquely to steal an iniquitous
+judgment, which you dare not boldly ravish. At this judgment you can
+only arrive by a side wind. You have before you a criminal process
+against an offender. One of the charges against him is, that he has
+robbed matrons of high and reverend place. His defence is, that they had
+not the apt deeds to entitle them in law to this property. _In_ this
+cause, with only the delinquent party before you, you are called upon to
+try their title on his allegations of its invalidity, and by acquitting
+him to divest them not only of their goods, but of their honor,--to call
+them disseizors, wrong-doers, cheats, defrauders of their own son. No
+hearing for them,--no pleading,--all appeal cut off. Was ever a man
+indicted for a robbery, that is, for the forcible taking of the goods
+possessed by another, suffered to desire the prosecutor to show the
+deeds or other instruments by which he acquired those goods? The idea is
+contemptible and ridiculous. Do these men dream? Do they conceive, in
+their confused imaginations, that you can be here trying such a
+question, and venturing to decide upon it? Your Lordships will never do
+that, which if you did do, you would be unfit to subsist as a tribunal
+for a single hour; and if we, on our part, did not bring before you this
+attempt, as the heaviest aggravation of the prisoner's crimes, we
+should betray our trust as representatives of the Commons of Great
+Britain. Having made this protest in favor of law, of justice, and good
+policy, permit me to take a single step more.
+
+I will now show your Lordships that it is very possible, nay, very
+probable, and almost certain, that a great part of what these ladies
+possessed was a saving of their own, and independent of any grant. It
+appears in the papers before you, that these unfortunate ladies had
+about 70,000_l._ a year, landed property. Mr. Bristow states in evidence
+before your Lordships, that their annual expenses did not exceed a lac
+and a half, and that their income was about seven lacs; that they had
+possessed this for twenty years before the death of Sujah Dowlah, and
+from the death of that prince to the day of the robbery. Now, if your
+Lordships will calculate what the savings from an income of 70,000_l._ a
+year will amount to, when the party spends about 15,000_l._ a year, you
+will see that by a regular and strict economy these people may have
+saved considerable property of their own, independent of their titles to
+any other property: and this is a rational way of accounting for their
+being extremely rich. It may be supposed, likewise, that they had all
+those advantages which ladies of high rank usually have in that
+country,--gifts at marriage, &c. We know that there are deeds of gift by
+husbands to their wives during their lifetime, and many other legal
+means, by which women in Asia become possessed of very great property.
+But Mr. Hastings has taught them the danger of much wealth, and the
+danger of economy. He has shown them that they are saving, not for their
+families, for those who may possibly stand in the utmost need of it,
+but for tyrants, robbers, and oppressors.
+
+My Lords, I am really ashamed to have said so much upon the subject of
+their titles. And yet there is one observation more to be made, and then
+I shall have done with this part of the prisoner's defence. It is, that
+the Nabob himself never has made a claim on this ground; even Mr.
+Hastings, his despotic master, could never get him regularly and
+systematically to make such a claim; the very reverse of this is the
+truth. When urged on to the commission of these acts of violence by Mr.
+Middleton, you have seen with what horror and how reluctantly he lends
+his name; and when he does so, he is dragged like a victim to the stake.
+At the beginning of this affair, where do we find that he entered this
+claim, as the foundation of it? Upon one occasion only, when dragged to
+join in this wicked act, something dropped from his lips which seemed
+rather to have been forced into his mouth, and which he was obliged to
+spit out again, about the possibility that he might have had some right
+to the effects of the Begums.
+
+We next come to consider the manner in which these acts of violence were
+executed. They forced the Nabob himself to accompany their troops, and
+their Resident, Mr. Middleton, to attack the city and to storm the fort
+in which these ladies lived, and consequently to outrage their persons,
+to insult their character, and to degrade their dignity, as well as to
+rob them of all they had.
+
+That your Lordships may learn something of one of these ladies, called
+the Munny Begum, I will refer you to Major Browne's evidence,--a man who
+was at Delhi, the fountain-head of all the nobility of India, and must
+have known who this lady was that has been treated with such indignity
+by the prisoner at your bar. Major Browne was asked, "What was the
+opinion at Delhi respecting the rank, quality, and character of the
+Princesses of Oude, or of either of them?"--"The elder, or Munny Begum,
+was," says he, "a woman of high rank: she was, I believe, the daughter
+of Saadut Ali Kh�n, a person of high rank in the time of Mahommed
+Shah."--"Do you know whether any woman in all Hindostan was considered
+of superior rank or birth?"--He answers, "I believe not, except those of
+the royal family. She was a near relation to Mirza Shaffee Kh�n, who was
+a noble of nobles, the first person at that day in the empire." In
+answer to another question put by a noble Lord, in the same examination,
+respecting the conversation which he had with Mirza Shaffee Kh�n, and of
+which he had given an account, he says, "He [Mirza Shaffee Kh�n] spoke
+of the attempt to seize the treasures of the Begums, which was then
+suspected, in terms of resentment, and as a disgrace in which he
+participated, as being related by blood to the house of Sufdar Jung, who
+was the husband of the old Begum." He says afterwards, in the same
+examination, that he, the Begum's husband, was the second man, and that
+her father was the first man, in the Mogul empire. Now the Mogul empire,
+when this woman came into the world, was an empire of that dignity that
+kings were its subjects; and this very Mirza Shaffee Kh�n, that we speak
+of, her near relation, was then a prince with a million a year revenue,
+and a man of the first rank, after the Great Mogul, in the whole empire.
+
+My Lords, these were people that ought to have been treated with a
+little decorum. When we consider the high rank of their husbands, their
+fathers, and their children, a rank so high that we have nothing in
+Great Britain to compare with theirs, we cannot be surprised that they
+were left in possession of great revenues, great landed estates, and
+great moneyed property. All the female parts of these families, whose
+alliance was, doubtless, much courted, could not be proffered in
+marriage, and endowed in a manner agreeably to the dignity of such
+persons, but with great sums of money; and your Lordships must also
+consider the multitude of children of which these families frequently
+consisted. The consequences of this robbery were such as might naturally
+be expected. It is said that not one of the females of this family has
+since been given in marriage.
+
+But all this has nothing to do with the rebellion. If they had, indeed,
+rebelled to cut their own son's throat, there is an end of the business.
+But what evidence have you of this fact? and if none can be produced,
+does not the prisoner's defence aggravate infinitely his crime and that
+of his agents? Did they ever once state to these unfortunate women that
+any such rebellion existed? Did they ever charge them with it? Did they
+ever set the charge down in writing, or make it verbally, that they had
+conspired to destroy their son, a son whom Mr. Hastings had brought
+there to rob them? No, this was what neither Mr. Hastings nor his agent
+ever did: for as they never made a civil demand upon them, so they never
+made a criminal charge against them, or against any person belonging to
+them.
+
+I save your Lordships the trouble of listening to the manner in which
+they seized upon these people, and dispersed their guard. Mr. Middleton
+states, that they found great difficulties in getting at their
+treasures,--that they stormed their forts successively, but found great
+reluctance in the sepoys to make their way into the inner inclosures of
+the women's apartments. Being at a loss what to do, their only resource,
+he says, was to threaten that they would seize their eunuchs. These are
+generally persons who have been bought slaves, and who, not having any
+connections in the country where they are settled, are supposed to guard
+both the honor of the women, and their treasures, with more fidelity
+than other persons would do. We know that in Constantinople, and in many
+other places, these persons enjoy offices of the highest trust, and are
+of great rank and dignity; and this dignity and rank they possess for
+the purpose of enabling them to fulfil their great trusts more
+effectually. The two principal eunuchs of the Begums were Jewar and
+Behar Ali Kh�n, persons of as high rank and estimation as any people in
+the country. These persons, however, were seized, not, says Mr.
+Hastings, for the purpose of extorting money, as assumed in the charge,
+but as agents and principal instruments of exciting the insurrection
+before alluded to, &c. Mr. Hastings declares that they were not seized
+for the purpose of extorting money, but that they were seized in order
+to be punished for their crimes, and, _eo nomine_, for this crime of
+rebellion. Now this crime could not have been committed immediately by
+[the?] women themselves; for no woman can come forward and head her own
+troops. We have not heard that any woman has done so since the time of
+Zenobia, in another part of the East; and we know that in Persia no
+person can behold the face of a woman of rank, or speak to females of
+condition, but through a curtain: therefore they could not go out
+themselves, and be active in a rebellion. But, I own, it would be some
+sort of presumption against them, if Jewar Ali Kh�n and Behar Ali Kh�n
+had headed troops, and been concerned in acts of rebellion; and the
+prisoner's counsel have taken abundance of pains to show that such
+persons do sometimes head armies and command legions in the East. This
+we acknowledge that they sometimes do. If these eunuchs had behaved in
+this way, if they had headed armies and commanded legions for the
+purposes of rebellion, it would have been a fair presumption that their
+mistresses were concerned in it. But instead of any proof of such facts,
+Mr. Hastings simply says, "We do not arrest them for the purpose of
+extorting money, but as a punishment for their crimes." By Mr.
+Middleton's account you will see the utter falsity of this assertion.
+God knows what he has said that is true. It would, indeed, be singular
+not to detect him in a falsity, but in a truth. I will now show your
+Lordships the utter falsity of this wicked allegation.
+
+There is a letter from Mr. Middleton to Sir Elijah Impey, dated Fyzabad,
+the 25th of January, 1782, to which I will call your Lordships'
+attention.
+
+     "Dear Sir Elijah,--I have the satisfaction to inform you that we
+     have at length so far obtained the great object of our expedition
+     to this place as to commence on the receipt of money, of which, in
+     the course of this day, we have got about six lacs. I know not yet
+     what amount we shall actually realize, but I think I may safely
+     venture to pronounce it will be equal to the liquidation of the
+     Company's balance. It has been at once the most important and the
+     most difficult point of duty which has ever occurred in my office;
+     and the anxiety, the hopes and fears, which have alternately
+     agitated my mind, cannot be described or conceived but by those who
+     have been witness to what has passed in the course of this long
+     contest. The [Nabob's] ministers have supported me nobly, and
+     deserve much commendation. Without the shrewd discernment and
+     knowledge of the finesse and tricks of the country which Hyder Beg
+     Kh�n possesses, I believe we should have succeeded but
+     indifferently; for I soon found that no real advantage was to be
+     obtained by proceeding at once to violent extremities with the
+     Begum, and that she was only to be attacked through the medium of
+     her confidential servants, who it required considerable address to
+     get hold of. However, we at last effected it; and by using some few
+     severities with them, we at length came at the secret hoards of
+     this old lady. I will write you more particulars hereafter.
+
+     "I am sorry to inform you my little boy still continues in a very
+     precarious way, though somewhat better than when I had last the
+     honor to address you. My respects to Lady Impey. And believe me,
+     with great regard, my dear Sir Elijah, your faithful, obliged, and
+     most affectionate humble servant,
+
+       "NATHANIEL MIDDLETON."
+
+My Lords, we produce this letter to your Lordships, because it is a
+letter which begins with "_Dear Sir Elijah_," and alludes to some family
+matters, and is therefore more likely to discover the real truth, the
+true genius of a proceeding, than all the formal and official stuff that
+ever was produced. You see the tenderness and affection in which they
+proceed. You see it is his _dear Sir Elijah_. You see that he does not
+tell the dear Sir Elijah, the Chief-Justice of India, the pillar of the
+law, the great conservator of personal liberty and private property,--he
+does not tell him that he has been able to convict these eunuchs of any
+crime; he does not tell him he has the pleasure of informing him what
+matter he has got upon which a decision at law may be grounded; he does
+not tell him that he has got the least proof of the want of title in
+those ladies: not a word of the kind. You cannot help observing the soft
+language used in this tender billet-doux between Mr. Middleton and Sir
+Elijah Impey. You would imagine that they were making love, and that you
+heard the voice of the turtle in the land. You hear the soft cooing, the
+gentle addresses,--"Oh, my hopes!" to-day, "My fears!" to-morrow,--all
+the language of friendship, almost heightened into love; and it comes at
+last to "_I have got at the secret hoards of these ladies_.--Let us
+rejoice, my dear Sir Elijah; this is a day of rejoicing, a day of
+triumph; and this triumph we have obtained by seizing upon the old
+lady's eunuchs,--in doing which, however, we found a great deal of
+difficulty." You would imagine, from this last expression, that it was
+not two eunuchs, with a few miserable women clinging about them, that
+they had to seize, but that they had to break through all the guards
+which we see lovers sometimes breaking through, when they want to get at
+their ladies. Hardly ever did the beauty of a young lady excite such
+rapture; I defy all the charms this country can furnish to produce a
+more wonderful effect than was produced by the hoards of these two old
+women, in the bosoms of Sir Elijah Impey and Mr. Middleton. "We have
+got," he exultingly says, "we have got to the secret hoards of this old
+lady!" And I verily believe there never was a passion less dissembled;
+there Nature spoke; there was truth triumphant, honest truth. Others may
+feign a passion; but nobody can doubt the raptures of Mr. Hastings, Sir
+Elijah Impey, and Mr. Middleton.
+
+My Lords, one would have expected to have found here something of their
+crimes, something of their rebellion, for he talks of a few "necessary
+severities." But no: you find the real criminal, the real object, was
+the secret hoards of the old ladies. It is true, _a few severities_ were
+necessary to obtain that object: however, they did obtain it. How then
+did they proceed? First, they themselves took and received, in weight
+and tale, all the money that was in the place. I say _all_; for whether
+there was any more they never have discovered, with all their search,
+from that day to this. Therefore we fairly presume that they had
+discovered all that there was to discover with regard to money. They
+next took from these unfortunate people an engagement for the amount of
+treasure at a definite sum, without knowing whether they had it or not,
+whether they could procure it or not. The Bhow Begum has told us, as
+your Lordships have it in evidence, that they demanded from her a
+million of money; that she, of course, denied having any such sums; but
+Mr. Middleton forced her unfortunate eunuchs or treasurers, by some _few
+severities_, to give their bond for 600,000_l._
+
+You would imagine, that, when these eunuchs had given up all that was in
+their power, when they had given a bond for what they had not, (for they
+were only the treasurers of other people,) that the bond would not have
+been rigidly exacted. But what do Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton, as
+soon as they get their plunder? They went to their own assay-table, by
+which they measured the rate of exchange between the coins in currency
+at Oude and those at Calcutta, and add the difference to the sum for
+which the bond was given. Thus they seize the secret hoards, they
+examine it as if they were receiving a debt, and they determine what
+this money would and ought to produce at Calcutta: not considering it as
+coming from people who gave all they had to give, but as what it would
+produce at the mint at Calcutta, according to a custom made for the
+profit of the Residents; even though Mr. Hastings, upon another
+occasion, charged upon Mr. Bristow as a crime that he had made that
+profit. This money, my Lords, was taken to that assay-table, which they
+had invented for their own profit, and they made their victims pay a
+rupee and a half batta, or exchange of money, upon each gold mohur; by
+which and other charges they brought them 60,000_l._ more in debt, and
+forced them to give a bond for that 60,000_l._
+
+Your Lordships have seen in what manner these debts were
+contracted,--and that they were contracted by persons engaging, not for
+themselves, for they had nothing; all their property was apparently
+their mistresses'. You will now see in what manner the payment of them
+was exacted; and we shall beg leave to read to you their own accounts of
+their own proceedings. Your Lordships will then judge whether they were
+proceeding against rebels as rebels, or against wealthy people as
+wealthy people, punishing them, under pretence of crimes, for their own
+profit.
+
+In a letter from Mr. Middleton to Mr. Hastings, after two other
+paragraphs, he goes on thus.
+
+"It remained only to get possession of her wealth; and to effect this,
+it was then and is still my firm and unalterable opinion that it was
+indispensably necessary to employ temporizing expedients, and to work
+upon the hopes and fears of the Begum herself, and more especially upon
+those of her principal agents, through whose means alone there appeared
+any probable chance of our getting access to the hidden treasures of the
+late Vizier; and when I acquaint you that by far the greatest part of
+the treasure which has been delivered to the Nabob was taken from the
+most secret recesses in the houses of the two eunuchs, whence, of
+course, it could not have been extracted without the adoption of those
+means which could induce the discovery, I shall hope for your
+approbation of what I did. I must also observe, that no further rigor
+than that which I exerted could have been used against females in this
+country, to whom there can be no access. The Nabob and Salar Jung were
+the only two that could enter the zenanah: the first was a son, who was
+to address a parent, and, of course, could use no language or action but
+that of earnest and reiterated solicitation; and the other was, in all
+appearance, a traitor to our cause. Where force could be employed, it
+was not spared: the troops of the Begum were driven away and dispersed;
+their guns taken; her fort, and the outward walls of her house seized
+and occupied by our troops, at the Nabob's requisition; and her chief
+agents imprisoned and put in irons. No further step was left. And in
+this situation they still remain, and are to continue (excepting only a
+remission of the irons) until the final liquidation of the payment; and
+if then you deem it proper, no possible means of offence being left in
+her hands or those of her agents, all her lands and property having been
+taken, I mean, with your sanction, to restore her house and servants to
+her, and hope to be favored with your early reply, as I expect that a
+few days will complete the final surrender of all that is further
+expected from the Begum."
+
+There are some things in this letter which I shall beg your Lordships to
+remark. There is mention made of a few preliminary severities used by
+Mr. Middleton, in order to get at their money. Well, he did get at the
+money, and he got a bond for the payment of an additional sum, which
+they thought proper to fix at about six hundred thousand pounds, to
+which was added another usurious bond for sixty thousand; and in order
+to extort these forced bonds, and to make up their aggravated crimes of
+usury, violence, and oppression, they put these eunuchs into prison,
+without food and water, and loaded their limbs with fetters. This was
+their second imprisonment; and what followed these few severities your
+Lordships will remark,--still more severities. They continued to
+persecute, to oppress, to work upon these men by torture and by the fear
+of torture, till at last, having found that all their proceedings were
+totally ineffectual, they desire the women to surrender their house;
+though it is in evidence before you, that to remove a woman from her own
+house to another house without her consent is an outrage of the greatest
+atrocity, on account of which many women have not only threatened, but
+have actually put themselves to death. Mr. Hastings himself, in the case
+of Munny Begum, had considered such a proposition as the last degree of
+outrage that could be offered. These women offered to go from house to
+house while their residence was searched; but "No," say their
+tormentors, "the treasure may be bricked up, in so large a house, in
+such a manner that we cannot find it."
+
+But to proceed with the treatment of these unfortunate men. I will read
+to your Lordships a letter of Mr. Middleton to Captain Leonard Jaques,
+commanding at Fyzabad, 18th March, 1782.
+
+     "Sir,--I have received your letter of the 13th instant. The two
+     prisoners, Behar and Jewar Ali Kh�n, having violated their written
+     solemn engagement with me for the payment of the balance due to the
+     Honorable Company on the Nabob's assignments accepted by them, and
+     declining giving me any satisfactory assurances on that head, I am
+     under the disagreeable necessity of recurring to severities to
+     enforce the said payment. This is, therefore, to desire that you
+     immediately cause them to be put in irons, and kept so until I
+     shall arrive at Fyzabad, to take further measures, as may be
+     necessary."
+
+Here is the answer of Captain Jaques to Mr. Middleton.
+
+        "_April 23d, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--Allow me the honor of informing you that the place the
+     prisoners Behar Ali Kh�n and Jewar Ali Kh�n are confined in is
+     become so very unhealthy, by the number obliged to be on duty in so
+     confined a place at this hot season of the year, and so situated,
+     that no reduction can with propriety be made from their guard, it
+     being at such a distance from the battalion."
+
+You see, my Lords, what a condition these unfortunate persons were in at
+that period; you see they were put in irons, in a place highly
+unhealthy; and from this you will judge of the treatment which followed
+the _few severities_. The first yielded a bond for 600,000_l._; the
+second, a bond for 60,000_l._; the third was intended to extort the
+payment of these bonds, and completed their series.
+
+I will now read a letter from Captain Jaques to Mr. Middleton, from the
+printed Minutes, dated _Palace, Fyzabad, May 18th, 1782_, consequently
+written nearly a month after the former.
+
+     "Sir,--The prisoners Behar and Jewar Ali Kh�n, who seem to be very
+     sickly, have requested their irons might be taken off for a few
+     days, that they might take medicine, and walk about the garden of
+     the place where they are confined, to assist the medicine in its
+     operation. Now, as I am sure they would be equally as secure
+     without their irons as with them, I think it my duty to inform you
+     of this request, and desire to know your pleasure concerning it.
+
+       (Signed) "LEONARD JAQUES."
+
+On the 22d May, 1782, Captain Jaques's humane proposal is thus replied
+to by Mr. Middleton.
+
+     "I am sorry it is not in my power to comply with your proposal of
+     easing the prisoners for a few days of their fetters. Much as my
+     humanity may be touched by their sufferings, I should think it
+     inexpedient to afford them any alleviation while they persist in a
+     breach of their contract with me; and, indeed, no indulgence could
+     be shown them without the authority of the Nabob, who, instead of
+     consenting to moderate the rigors of their situation, would be most
+     willing to multiply them.
+
+       (Signed) "NATHANIEL MIDDLETON."
+
+I will now call your Lordships' attention to other letters connected
+with this transaction.
+
+     _Letter from Major Gilpin to Mr. Middleton, June 5th, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--Agreeably to your instructions, I went to the prisoners,
+     Behar and Jewar Ali Kh�n, accompanied by Hoolas Roy, who read the
+     papers respecting the balance now due, &c., &c.
+
+     "In general terms they expressed concern at not being able to
+     discharge the same without the assistance of the Begum, and
+     requested indulgence to send a message to her on that subject, and
+     in the evening they would give an answer.
+
+     "I went at the time appointed for the answer, but did not receive a
+     satisfactory one; in consequence of which I desired them to be
+     ready, at the shortest notice, to proceed to Lucknow, and explained
+     to them every particular contained in your letter of the 1st
+     instant respecting them.
+
+     "Yesterday morning I sent for Letafit Ali Kh�n, and desired him to
+     go to the Bhow Begum, and deliver the substance of my instructions
+     to her, which he did, and returned with the inclosed letter from
+     her. From some circumstances which I have heard to-day, I am
+     hopeful the prisoners will soon think seriously of their removal,
+     and pay the balance rather than submit themselves to an
+     inconvenient journey to Lucknow."
+
+
+     _To Major Gilpin, commanding at Fyzabad, from Mr. Middleton._
+
+     "Sir,--I have been favored with your letter of the 5th instant,
+     informing me of the steps you had taken in consequence of my
+     instructions of the 1st, and covering a letter from the Bhow Begum,
+     which is so unsatisfactory that I cannot think of returning an
+     answer to it. Indeed, as all correspondence between the Begum and
+     me has long been stopped, I request you will be pleased to inform
+     her that I by no means wish to resume it, or maintain any friendly
+     intercourse with her, until she has made good my claim upon her for
+     the balance due.
+
+     "I have now, in conformity to my former instructions, to desire
+     that the two prisoners, Behar and Jewar Ali Kh�n, may be
+     immediately sent, under a sufficient guard, to Lucknow, unless,
+     upon your imparting to them this intimation, either they or the
+     Begum should actually pay the balance, or give you such assurances
+     or security for the assets to be immediately forthcoming as you
+     think can be relied upon; in which case you will of course suspend
+     the execution of this order."
+
+
+     _Mr. Richard Johnson to Major Gilpin. Lucknow, 24th June, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I have received the honor of your letter of the 20th. The
+     prisoners arrived here this morning. Lieutenant Crow has delivered
+     them over to Captain Waugh, and returns to you in a day or two.
+
+     "I think their hint to you a very good one, and worth improving
+     upon. Was the Bhow Begum to think that she must go to Allahabad, or
+     any other place, while her palace is searched for the hidden
+     treasure of the late Vizier, it might go further than any other
+     step that can be immediately taken towards procuring payment of the
+     balance outstanding.
+
+     "The prisoners are to be threatened with severities to-morrow, to
+     make them discover where the balance may be procurable, the fear of
+     which may possibly have a good effect; and the apprehensions of the
+     Begum lest they should discover the hidden treasure may induce her
+     to make you tenders of payment, which you may give any reasonable
+     encouragement to promote that may occur to you.
+
+     "The jaghire cannot be released to her on any other terms, nor even
+     to the Nabob, until the five lacs for which it was granted be paid
+     up; and the prisoners must also be detained until the full fifty
+     lacs be liquidated: consequently nothing but the fear of an
+     increase of demand, upon breach of the first engagement on her
+     part, will induce her to prompt payment."
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Richard Johnson to the Commanding Officer of the
+     Guard. Lucknow, 23d July, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--Some violent demands having been made for the release of the
+     prisoners, it is necessary that every possible precaution be taken
+     for their security. You will therefore be pleased to be very strict
+     in guarding them; and I herewith send another pair of fetters, to
+     be added to those now upon the prisoners."
+
+
+     _Letter from Robert Steere Allen to Richard Johnson, Esq., Acting
+     Resident. Lucknow, 23d July, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I have received your instructions, and ordered the fetters
+     to be added; but they are by much too small for their feet. The
+     utmost regard shall be paid to the security of the prisoners. I
+     have sent back the fetters, that you may have them altered, if you
+     think proper."
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Johnson to the Officer commanding the Guard.
+     Lucknow, 28th June, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--The Nabob having determined to inflict corporal punishment
+     upon the prisoners under your guard, this is to desire that his
+     officers, when they shall come, may have free access to the
+     prisoners, and be permitted to do with them as they shall see
+     proper, only taking care that they leave them always under your
+     charge."
+
+I will now trouble your Lordships with the following passages from Mr.
+Holt's evidence.
+
+     "_Q._ Did you ever see the two ministers of the Begum?--_A._ I saw
+     them brought into Lucknow.--_Q._ In what situation were they, when
+     you saw them brought into Lucknow?--_A._ They were brought in their
+     palanquins, attended by a guard of sepoys.--_Q._ Under whose
+     command were the sepoys?--_A._ That they were brought in by?--_Q._
+     Yes.--_A._ I do not recollect.--_Q._ Were those sepoys that brought
+     in the prisoners part of the Nabob's army, or were they any British
+     troops?--_A._ To the best of my recollection, they were detached
+     from a regiment then stationed at Fyzabad.--_Q._ In whose service
+     was that regiment?--_A._ In the Company's.--_Q._ Were they
+     imprisoned in any house near that in which you resided?--_A._ They
+     were imprisoned immediately under the window of the house in which
+     I resided, close to it.--_Q._ Did you or did you not ever see any
+     preparations made for any corporal punishment?--_A._ I saw
+     something of a scaffolding.--_Q._ For what purpose?--_A._ I heard
+     it was for the purpose of tying them up.--_Q._ Whose prisoners did
+     you consider these men to be?--_A._ I considered them as prisoners
+     of the Resident; they were close to his house, and under an
+     European officer."
+
+Your Lordships have now seen the whole process, except one dreadful part
+of it, which was the threatening to send the Begum to the castle at
+Chunar. After all these cruelties, after all these menaces of further
+cruelties, after erecting a scaffold for actually exercising the last
+degree of criminal punishment, namely, by whipping these miserable
+persons in public,--after everything has been done but execution, our
+inability to prove by evidence this part of their proceedings has
+secured to your Lordships a circumstance of decorum observed on the
+stage where murders, executions, whippings, and cruelties are performed
+behind the scenes. I know as certainly as a man can know such a thing,
+from a document which I cannot produce in evidence here, but I have it
+in the handwriting of the Resident, Mr. Bristow, that Behar Ali Kh�n was
+actually scourged in the manner that we speak of. I had it in writing in
+the man's hand; I put the question to him, but he refused to answer it,
+because he thought it might criminate himself, and criminate us all; but
+if your Lordships saw the scaffold erected for the purpose, (and of
+this we have evidence,) would you not necessarily believe that the
+scourging did follow? All this was done in the name of the Nabob; but if
+the Nabob is the person claiming his father's effects, if the Nabob is
+the person vindicating a rebellion against himself upon his nearest
+relations, why did he not in person take a single step in this matter?
+why do we see nothing but his abused name in it? We see no order under
+his own hand. We see all the orders given by the cool Mr. Middleton, by
+the outrageous Mr. Johnson, by all that gang of persons that the
+prisoner used to disgrace the British name. Who are the officers that
+stormed their fort? who put on the irons? who sent them? who supplied
+them? They are all, all, English officers. There is not an appearance,
+even, of a minister of the Nabob's in the whole transaction. The actors
+are all Englishmen; and we, as Englishmen, call for punishment upon
+those who have thus degraded and dishonored the English name.
+
+We do not use torture or cruelties, even for the greatest crimes, but
+have banished them from our courts of justice; we never suffer them in
+any case. Yet those men, in order to force others to break their most
+sacred trust, inflict tortures upon them. They drag their poor victims
+from dungeon to dungeon, from one place of punishment to another, and
+wholly on account of an extorted bond,--for they owed no money, they
+could not owe any,--but to got this miserable balance of 60,000_l._,
+founded upon their tables of exchange: after they had plundered these
+ladies of 500,000_l._ in money, and 70,000_l._ a year in land, they
+could not be satisfied without putting usury and extortion upon tyranny
+and oppression. To enforce this unjust demand, the miserable victims
+were imprisoned, ironed, scourged, and at last threatened to be sent
+prisoners to Chunar. This menace succeeded. The persons who had resisted
+irons, who had been, as the Begums say, refused food and water, stowed
+in an unwholesome, stinking, pestilential prison, these persons
+withstood everything till the fort of Chunar was mentioned to them; and
+then their fortitude gave way: and why? The fort of Chunar was not in
+the dominions of the Nabob, whose rights they pretended to be
+vindicating: to name a British fort, in their circumstances, was to name
+everything that is most horrible in tyranny; so, at least, it appeared
+to them. They gave way; and thus were committed acts of oppression and
+cruelty unknown, I will venture to say, in the history of India. The
+women, indeed, could not be brought forward and scourged, but their
+ministers were tortured, till, for their redemption, these princesses
+gave up all their clothes, all the ornaments of their persons, all their
+jewels, all the memorials of their husbands and fathers,--all were
+delivered up, and valued by merchants at 50,000_l._; and they also gave
+up 5,000_l._ in money, or thereabouts: so that, in reality, only about
+5,000_l._, a mere nothing, a sum not worth mentioning, even in the
+calculations of extortion and usury, remained unpaid.
+
+But, my Lords, what became of all this money? When you examine these
+witnesses here, they tell you it was paid to Hyder Beg Kh�n. Now they
+had themselves received the money in tale at their own assay-table. And
+when an account is demanded of the produce of the goods, they shrink
+from it, and say it was Hyder Beg Kh�n who received the things and sold
+them. Where is Hyder Beg Kh�n's receipt? The Begums say (and the thing
+speaks for itself) that even gold and jewels coming from them lost their
+value; that part of the goods were spoilt, being kept long unsold in
+damp and bad warehouses; and that the rest of the goods were sold, as
+thieves sell their spoil, for little or nothing. In all this business
+Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton were themselves the actors, chief actors;
+but now, when they are called to account, they substitute Hyder Beg Kh�n
+in their place, a man that is dead and gone, and you hear nothing more
+of this part of the business.
+
+But the sufferings of these eunuchs did not end here; they were, on
+account of this odd 5,000_l._, confined for twelve months,--not
+prisoners at large, like this prisoner who thrusts his sore leg into
+your Lordships' faces every day, but in harsh and cruel confinement.
+These are the persons that I feel for. It is their dungeon, it is their
+unrevenged wrongs that move me. It is for these innocent, miserable,
+unhappy men, who were guilty of no offence but fidelity to their
+mistresses, in order to vex and torture whom (the first women in Asia)
+in the persons of their ministers these cruelties were exercised,--these
+are they for whom I feel, and not for the miserable sore leg or whining
+cant of this prisoner. He has been the author of all these wrongs; and
+if you transfer to him any of the sympathy you owe to these sufferers,
+you do wrong, you violate compassion. Think of their irons. Has not this
+criminal, who put on these irons, been without one iron? Has he been
+threatened with torture? Has he been locked up without food and water?
+Have his sufferings been aggravated as the sufferings of these poor men
+were aggravated? What punishment has been inflicted, and what can be
+inflicted upon him, in any manner commensurate with the atrocity of his
+crimes?
+
+At last, my Lords, these unhappy men were released. Mr. Bristow, who had
+been sent to Lucknow, writes to Mr. Hastings, and informs him that
+severities could do no more, that imprisonments and menaces could get no
+more money. I believe not, for I doubt much whether any more was to be
+got. But whether there was or not, all the arts of extortion, fortified
+by all the arts of tyranny, of every name and species, had failed, and
+therefore Mr. Bristow released the prisoners,--but without any warrant
+for so doing from Mr. Hastings, who, after having received this letter
+from Mr. Bristow, gets the Supreme Council to order these very
+severities to be continued till the last farthing was paid. In order to
+induce the Council to sanction this measure, he suppressed Mr. Bristow's
+declaration, that severities could do nothing more in exacting further
+payments; and the Resident, I find, was afterwards obliquely punished
+for his humanity by Mr. Hastings.
+
+Mr. Bristow's letter is dated the 12th of December, and he thus writes.
+
+"The battalion at Fyzabad" (where the Begums and their ministers had
+been confined) "is recalled, and my letter to the board of the 1st
+instant has explained my conduct to the Begum. The letter I addressed
+her, a translation of which I beg leave to inclose, (No. 2,) was with a
+view of convincing her that you readily assented to her being freed from
+the restraints which had been imposed upon her, and that your
+acquiescence in her sufferings was a measure of necessity, to which you
+were forced by her extraordinary conduct. I wished to make it appear
+this was a matter on which you directed me to consult the Vizier's
+pleasure, that it might be known you were the spring from whence she was
+restored to her dignity and consequence."
+
+On the 3d of March following, the Council agree to send the following
+order to Mr. Bristow.
+
+"We desire you will inform us if any and what means have been taken for
+recovering the balance due from the Begum at Fyzabad, and, if necessary,
+that you recommend it to the Vizier to enforce the most effectual means
+for that purpose."
+
+My Lords, you see the fraud he has put upon the Council. You will find
+that Mr. Bristow's letters, up to the 3d of March, had been suppressed;
+and though then communicated, yet he instigated his cat's-paw, that
+blind and ignorant Council, to demand from the Vizier the renewal of
+these very severities and cruelties, the continuance of which the
+letters in his pocket had shown him were of no effect. Here you have an
+instance of his implacable cruelty; you see that it never relaxes, never
+remits, and that, finding all the resources of tyranny useless and
+ineffective, he is still willing to use them, and for that purpose he
+makes a fraudulent concealment of the utter inefficacy of all the means
+that had been used.
+
+But, you will ask, what could make him persevere in these acts of
+cruelty, after his avarice had been more than satiated? You will find it
+is this. He had had some quarrel with these women. He believed that they
+had done him some personal injury or other, of which he nowhere informs
+you. But, as you find that in the case of Cheyt Sing he considered his
+visit to General Clavering as an horrid outrage against himself, which
+he never forgave, and revenged to the ruin of that miserable person, so
+you find that he has avowed the same malicious disposition towards the
+Begums, arising from some similar cause. In page 367 of your printed
+Minutes, he says,--"I am sorry that I must in truth add, that a part of
+the resentment of the Begums was, as I had too much reason to suspect,
+directed to myself personally. The incidents which gave rise to it are
+too light to be mixed with the professed subject and occasion of this
+detail; and as they want the authenticity of recorded evidence, I could
+lay no claim to credit in my relation of them. At some period I may be
+induced to offer them to the world, my ultimate and unerring judges,
+both of that and of every other trait in my political character."
+
+My Lords, you have an anecdote here handed to you which is the key of a
+great part of this transaction. He had determined upon some deep and
+desperate revenge for some injury or affront of some kind or other that
+he thought he had received from these people. He accuses them of a
+personal quarrel with himself; and yet he has not the honor or honesty
+to tell you what it was,--what it was that could induce them to
+entertain such a personal resentment against him as to ruin themselves
+and their country by their supposed rebellion. He says, that some time
+or other he will tell it to the world. Why did he not tell his counsel,
+and authorize them to tell a story which could not be unimportant, as it
+was connected with a rebellion which shook the British power in India to
+its foundation? And if it be true that this rebellion had its rise in
+some wicked act of this man, who had offended these women, and made
+them, as he says, his mortal enemies, you will then see that you never
+can go so deep with this prisoner that you do not find in every criminal
+act of his some other criminal act. In the lowest deep there is still a
+lower deep. In every act of his cruelty there is some hidden, dark
+motive, worse than the act itself, of which he just gives you a hint,
+without exposing it to that open light which truth courts and falsehood
+basely slinks from.
+
+But cruelly as they have suffered, dreadfully as they have been robbed,
+insulted as they have been, in every mode of insult that could be
+offered to women of their rank, all this must have been highly
+aggravated by coming from such a man as Mr. Middleton. You have heard the
+audacious and insulting language he has held to them, his declining to
+correspond with them, and the mode of his doing it. There are, my Lords,
+things that embitter the bitterness of oppression itself: contumelious
+acts and language, coming from persons who the other day would have
+licked the dust under the feet of the lowest servants of these ladies,
+must have embittered their wrongs, and poisoned the very cup of malice
+itself.
+
+Oh! but they deserved it. They were concerned in a wicked, outrageous
+rebellion: first, for expelling their own son from his dominions; and,
+secondly, for expelling and extirpating the English nation out of
+India.--Good God Almighty! my Lords, do you hear this? Do you understand
+that the English nation had made themselves so odious, so particularly
+hateful, even to women the most secluded from the world, that there was
+no crime, no mischief, no family destruction, through which they would
+not wade, for our extermination? Is this a pleasant thing to hear of?
+Rebellion is, in all parts of the world, undoubtedly considered as a
+great misfortune: in some countries it must be considered as a
+presumption of some fault in government: _nowhere is it boasted of as
+supplying the means of justifying acts of cruelty and insult, but with
+us_.
+
+We have, indeed, seen that a rebellion did exist in Baraitch and
+Goruckpore. It was an universal insurrection of the people: an
+insurrection for the very extermination of Englishmen,--for the
+extermination of Colonel Hannay,--for the extermination of Captain
+Gordon,--for the extermination of Captain Williams, and of all the other
+captains and colonels exercising the office of farmer-general and
+sub-farmer-general in the manner that we have described. We know that
+there did exist in that country such a rebellion. But mark, my Lords,
+against whom!--against these mild and gracious sovereigns, Colonel
+Hannay, Captain Gordon, Captain Williams. Oh, unnatural and abominable
+rebellion!--But will any one pretend to say that the Nabob himself was
+ever attacked by any of these rebels? No: the attacks were levelled
+against the English. The people rose in favor of their lawful sovereign,
+against a rebellion headed by Mr. Middleton, who, you see, usurped his
+authority,--headed by Colonel Hannay,--headed by Captain Gordon,--headed
+by all those abominable persons exercising, under the Nabob's name, an
+authority destructive to himself and his subjects. Against them there
+was a rebellion. But was this an unnatural rebellion,--a rebellion
+against usurped authority, to save the prince, his children, and state,
+from a set of vile usurpers?
+
+My Lords, I shall soon close our proceeding for this day, because I wish
+to leave this part of our charge strongly and distinctly impressed upon
+your Lordships' memory, and because nothing can aggravate it. I shall
+next proceed, in the farther examination of the prisoner's defence, to
+dissipate, as I trust we have done, and as I hope we shall do, all the
+miserable stuff they have given by way of defence. I shall often have
+occasion to repeat and press upon your Lordships that that miserable
+defence is a heavy aggravation of his crime. At present, I shall
+conclude, leaving this part of our charge with the impression upon your
+Lordships' minds that this pretended rebellion was merely an
+insurrection against the English, excited by their oppression.
+
+If the rebellion was against the Nabob, or if he was the author of the
+oppression which caused it, why do the English only appear to be
+concerned in both of them? How comes it that the Nabob never appears to
+have expressed any resentment against the rebels? We shall prove beyond
+a doubt, that the Begums had nothing to do with it. There was, indeed,
+as I have already said, what may be called a rebellion; but it was a
+rebellion against--not the Nabob, but in favor of the lawful prince of
+the country,--against the usurpers of his authority and the destroyers
+of his country. With this, as a rebellion, Mr. Hastings has charged
+these women; he has charged them with a war against their son, for the
+purpose of exterminating the English. Look, I pray you, at the whole
+business, consider all the circumstances of it, and ask yourselves
+whether this is not a charge, not only so grossly improbable, but so
+perfectly impossible, that there is not any evidence which can make it
+even plausible. Consider next, my Lords, on the other side, the evidence
+of their innocence, and then ask yourselves whether any additional
+matter could make its probability in the least degree more probable. My
+Lords, the evidence we have produced is neither more nor less than that
+of almost all the persons who have had a share in exciting that
+rebellion, and who, to justify their own horrible cruelty, have
+attempted to charge the natural consequences of that cruelty upon these
+unhappy women.
+
+But where, all this time, is the Nabob, against whom this rebellion is
+pretended to be directed? Was it ever even insinuated to him that his
+mother had raised a rebellion against him? When were the proofs shown to
+him? Did he ever charge her with it? He surely must have been most
+anxious to prevent and suppress a rebellion against himself: but not one
+word on that subject has ever come out of his mouth; nor has any one
+person been produced to show that he was informed of the existence of
+such a rebellion. The persons said to be rebels are his mother and
+grandmother; and I again ask, Was there the least intimation given to
+him by Mr. Middleton, or by any other person, of their being even
+suspected of rebellion against him? There was, indeed, a hint of some
+rebellion, which the creatures of Mr. Hastings got at obliquely; but
+neither the person against whom the rebellion is supposed to exist, nor
+the persons who were said to be guilty of it, were ever either informed
+of or charged with it. I defy the prisoner and his whole gang to produce
+one word ever uttered by any one of them, from which the Nabob or
+Begums could learn that they were supposed to be concerned in the
+rebellion: so that none of those who were said to be the principal
+actors in the scene ever heard of the parts they were acting from the
+actual authors and managers of the business. Not one word was uttered of
+a charge made, much less of proof given. Nothing was heard but "Give me
+the money!"--irons,--new irons,--new imprisonment,--and at last the
+castle of Chunar.
+
+And here I beg leave to pause, and to leave upon your minds the
+impression, first, of the wrong that was done, the violence, and the
+robbery,--and, secondly, of the pretences, both civil and criminal, by
+which they have attempted to justify their proceedings.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+SIXTH DAY, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--Your Lordships will recollect that we closed the last day of
+your proceeding in this trial at a most interesting part of our charge,
+or rather of our observations upon that charge. We closed at that awful
+moment when we found the first women of Oude pillaged of all their
+landed and of all their moneyed property, in short, of all they
+possessed. We closed by reciting to you the false pretence on which this
+pillage was defended, namely, that it was the work of the Nabob. Now we
+had before proved to you, from evidence adduced by the prisoner himself,
+that this Nabob was a mere tool in his hands; and therefore, if this
+pretence be true, it aggravates his guilt: for surely the forcing a son
+to violate the property of his mother must everywhere be considered a
+crime most portentous and enormous. At this point we closed; and after
+the detail which has been given you already of these horrible and
+iniquitous proceedings, some apology may perhaps be necessary for
+entering again into the refutation of this iniquitous pretence.
+
+My honorable fellow Manager who preceded me in this business did, in his
+remarks upon the inference drawn by the prisoner's counsel from the
+seizure of the Begums' treasures by the Nabob, as evidence of their
+guilt, as he ought to do,--he treated it with proper contempt. I
+consider it, indeed, to be as little an evidence of their guilt as he
+does, and as little a defence of that seizure as he does. But I consider
+it in another and in a new light, namely, as a heavy aggravation of the
+prisoner's crimes, and as a matter that will let you into the whole
+spirit of his government; and I warn your Lordships against being
+imposed on by evasions, of which if it were possible for you to be the
+dupes, you would be unfit to be judges of the smallest matters in the
+world, civil or criminal.
+
+The first observation which I shall beg leave to make to your Lordships
+is this, that the whole of the proceedings, from beginning to end, has
+been a mystery of iniquity, and that in no part of them have the orders
+of the Company been regarded, but, on the contrary, the whole has been
+carried on in a secret and clandestine manner.
+
+It is necessary that your Lordships should be acquainted with the manner
+in which the correspondence of the Company's servants ought to be
+carried on and their proceedings regulated; your Lordships, therefore,
+will please to hear read the orders given concerning correspondence of
+every kind with the country powers. You will remember the period when
+these orders were issued, namely, the period at which the act passed for
+the better direction of the servants of the Company. By this act Mr.
+Hastings was appointed to be Governor-General, and the Court of
+Directors was required by that act to prepare orders and instructions,
+which Mr. Hastings was required by the same act to comply with. You will
+see what these instructions and orders were, and in what manner he has
+complied with them.
+
+
+     _Extract of General Instructions to the Governor-General and
+     Council, 29th of March, 1774._
+
+     "We direct that you assemble in Council twice every week, and that
+     all the members be duly summoned; that the correspondence with the
+     princes or country powers in India be carried on by the
+     Governor-General only, but that all letters sent by him be first
+     approved in Council, and that he lay before the Council, at their
+     next meeting, all letters received by him in the course of such
+     correspondence, for their information. We likewise direct that a
+     copy of such parts of the country correspondence be communicated to
+     our Board of Trade: (to be constituted as hereinafter mentioned) as
+     may any ways relate to the business of their department."
+
+You will observe, my Lords, two important circumstances in these
+instructions: first, that, after the board had regularly met, the
+Persian correspondence, kept by the Governor only, was to be
+communicated to the Council; and, secondly, that he should write no
+answer to any part of the business until he had previously consulted the
+Council upon it. Here is the law of the land,--an order given in
+pursuance of an act of Parliament. Your Lordships will consider how Mr.
+Hastings comported himself with regard to those orders: for we charge it
+as a substantive crime, independent of the criminal presumptions arising
+from it, that he violated an act of Parliament which imposed direct
+instructions upon him as to the manner in which he was to conduct all
+matters of business with the native powers.
+
+My Lords, we contend strongly that all the positive rules and
+injunctions of the law, though they are merely positive, and do not
+contain anything but mere matters of regulation, shall be strictly
+observed. The reason is this, and a serious reason it is: official
+tyranny and oppression, corruption, peculation, and bribery are crimes
+so secret in their nature that we can hardly ever get to the proof of
+them without the assistance of rules, orders, and regulations of a
+positive nature, intended to prevent the perpetration of these crimes,
+and to detect the offender in case the crimes should be actually
+perpetrated. You ought, therefore, to presume, that, whenever such rules
+or laws are broken, these crimes are intended to be committed; for you
+have no means of security against the commission of secret crimes but by
+enforcing positive laws, the breach of which must be always plain, open,
+and direct. Such, for instance, is the spirit of the laws, that,
+although you cannot directly prove bribery or smuggling in a hundred
+cases where they have been committed, you can prove whether the proper
+documents, proper cockets, proper entries in regular offices have been
+observed and performed, or not. By these means you lock the door against
+bribery, you lock the door against corruption, against smuggling and
+contraband trade. But how? By falling upon and attacking the offence?
+No, by falling upon and attacking the breach of the regulation. You
+prove that the man broke the regulation, and, as he could have no other
+motive or interest in breaking it, you presume that he broke it
+fraudulently, and you punish the man not for the crime the regulation
+was meant to prevent, but you punish him for the breach of the
+regulation itself.
+
+Next to the breach of these positive instructions, your Lordships will
+attend to the consequent concealment and mystery by which it was
+accompanied. All government must, to preserve its authority, be sincere
+in its declarations and authentic in its acts. Whenever in any matter of
+policy there is a mystery, you must presume a fraud; whenever in any
+matter of money there is concealment, you must presume misconduct: you
+must therefore affix your punishment to the breach of the rule;
+otherwise the conviction of public delinquents would be unattainable.
+
+I have therefore put before you that rule which he has violated; and we,
+the Commons, call upon your Lordships to enforce that rule, and to
+avenge the breach of it. You have seen the consequences of breaking the
+rule; and we have charged and do charge it as a heavy aggravation of
+those consequences, that, instead of consulting the Council, instead of
+laying the whole correspondence before them, instead of consulting them
+upon his answers, he went himself up into the country, took his
+Majesty's chief-justice along with him, and made that person the
+instrument of those wrongs, violences, robberies, and concealments
+which we call upon your Lordships to punish.
+
+My Lords, an extraordinary circumstance occurred in the course of our
+proceedings in another place, which I must state, to show you in what a
+horrible manner your laws have been trampled upon and despised. None of
+the proceedings which have been last stated to your Lordships respecting
+the seizure of the treasures of the Begums appear upon any public record
+whatever. From the manner in which they came to our knowledge, your
+Lordships will perceive what must have been the prisoner's own opinion
+of the horrible nature of proceedings which he thought so necessary to
+be concealed.
+
+Whilst we were inquiring into the violences committed against the
+Begums, in breach of the treaty entered into with them, there came into
+my hands an anonymous letter containing a full account of all the matter
+which has lately been stated to you. It came anonymously; and I did not
+know from what quarter it came. I do not even know with certainty at
+this hour: I say, not with certainty, for I can only form a conjecture.
+This anonymous communication enabled us to produce all the
+correspondence with Mr. Middleton respecting the cruelties exercised
+towards the Begums and their eunuchs in order to extort money. We found
+the names of Major Gilpin and several other persons in these letters. We
+also found in them a strong fox smell of a Sir Elijah Impey, that his
+brush and crime had left behind him; we traced him by that scent; and as
+we proceeded, we discovered the footsteps of as many of the wolves as
+Mr. Hastings thought proper to leave there. We sent for and examined Mr.
+Middleton, and Major Gilpin produced his correspondence. When we applied
+to Mr. Middleton, we found that all this part of his correspondence had
+been torn out of his book; but having come at it by means of our
+anonymous communication, we subsequently proved and established it, in
+the manner we have done before your Lordships. Here, then, you have
+important matter which this anonymous letter has brought to light; and
+otherwise the whole of this correspondence, so essential to the
+interests and justice of Great Britain, would have been concealed by
+this wicked man. Thus, I say, his violation of a positive law would have
+remained undiscovered, if mere accident had not enabled us to trace this
+iniquity to its source. Therefore I begin our proceedings this day by
+stating to your Lordships this fact, and by calling upon your justice to
+punish him for this violation of the laws of his country.
+
+We have told you who the instruments were by which all this wickedness
+was committed, Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson, persons who were sent as
+ambassadors to represent the interests of the Company at the court of an
+independent prince. Over this prince they usurped an absolute power;
+they even made use of British officers in his own service and receiving
+his pay, to enslave his person, and to force him to rob his kindred.
+These agents were aided by an English chief-justice, sent under the
+authority of an act of Parliament to represent the sovereign majesty of
+English justice, and to be a restraint upon the misconduct of the
+Company's servants. These are the instruments with which this man works.
+We have shown you his system; we have shown you his instruments: we will
+now proceed with the examination of the pretences upon which this horrid
+and nefarious act is attempted to be justified. We have not entered into
+this examination for the sake of refuting things that want no
+refutation, but for the purpose of showing you the spirit of the whole
+proceeding, and making it appear to your Lordships, as I trust it will
+appear, that the wicked act done there is not half so bad as the wicked
+defence made here.
+
+The first part of Sir Elijah Impey's commission, as your Lordships will
+remember, was to seize upon the Begums' treasures. He had likewise
+another budget of instructions, which has been discovered in the trunks
+of which your Lordships have heard,--secret instructions to be given by
+him to Mr. Middleton for the furtherance of this business. And that his
+office of Chief-Justice should not lie dormant, he was commissioned to
+seek for affidavits or written testimony from any persons, for the
+purpose of convicting these women of a design of atrociously revolting
+against their son, and deposing him from the government, with a view of
+getting rid of the English inhabitants. This was the accusation; and the
+evidence to support it Sir Elijah Impey was sent to collect.
+
+My Lords, I must here observe to your Lordships that there is no act of
+violence which, merely as an act of violence, may not in some sort be
+borne: because an act of violence infers no principle; it infers nothing
+but a momentary impulse of a bad mind, proceeding, without law or
+justice, to the execution of its object. For at the same time that it
+pays no regard to law, it does not debauch it, it does not wrest it to
+its purposes: the law disregarded still exists; and hope still exists in
+the sufferer, that, when law shall be resorted to, violence will cease,
+and wrongs will be redressed. But whenever the law itself is debauched,
+and enters into a corrupt coalition with violence, robbery, and wrong,
+then all hope is gone; and then it is not only private persons that
+suffer, but the law itself, when so corrupted, is often perverted into
+the worst instrument of fraud and violence; it then becomes most odious
+to mankind, and an infinite aggravation of every injury they suffer.
+
+We have therefore in our charge strongly reprobated Sir Elijah Impey's
+going to take such affidavits. "Oh! but," they say, "a judge may take an
+affidavit in his chamber privately; and he may take an affidavit, though
+not exactly in the place of his jurisdiction, to authenticate a bond, or
+the like."--We are not to be cheated by words. It is not dirty shreds of
+worn-out parchments, the sweepings of Westminster Hall, that shall serve
+us in place of that justice upon, which the world stands. Affidavits! We
+know that in the language of our courts affidavits do not signify a body
+of evidence to sustain a criminal charge, but are generally relative to
+matter [matters?] in process collateral to the charge, which, not coming
+before the jury, are made known to the judge by way of affidavit.
+
+But was it ever heard, or will it be borne, that a person exercising a
+judicial office under his Majesty should walk beyond the sphere of his
+jurisdiction,--that he should desert the station in which he was placed
+for the protection of the natives, and should march to such a place as
+Lucknow in order to take depositions for criminating persons in that
+country, without so much as letting these poor victims know one article
+in the depositions so taken? These depositions, my Lords, were made to
+criminate, they were meant to justify a forfeiture, and are not in the
+nature of those voluntary affidavits which, whether made within
+jurisdiction or without, whether made publicly or privately, signify
+comparatively nothing to the cause. I do not mean, to say that any
+process of any court has not its weight, when the matter is within it in
+the ordinary course of proceedings: it is the extraordinary course, the
+extrajudicial conduct, which divests it of that just weight it otherwise
+would have.
+
+This chief-justice goes to Lucknow, where he holds his court, such as it
+was. He is ready to authenticate any process by the signature of the
+English chief-justice, in a court which he holds by night, in a court
+which he holds in darkness and secrecy. He holds his court in Fyzabad;
+he holds it, unknown to the Nabob of Oude, in his own capital, and
+without giving him the least knowledge of or any notice of what he was
+proceeding to do. He holds it at the lodgings of Colonel Morgan, a
+pensioner of the Nabob; and the person assisting him is Mr. Middleton,
+who is likewise, as we have proved to you, one of the Nabob's
+pensioners, a monopolizer of trade in the country, and a person who
+received much the major part of his emoluments from the Nabob's hands.
+
+In that clandestine manner, in the Nabob's own house, in his own capital
+city, in the lodging of his dependant and pensioner, Colonel Morgan,
+with no other witness that we know of than Mr. Middleton, was this
+iniquitous, dark procedure held, to criminate the mother of the Nabob.
+We here see a scene of dark, mysterious contrivance: let us now see what
+is brought out in the face of open day. The attestations themselves,
+which you have seen on the record before you. They were brought
+out--where? there? No: they were brought out in another place; they were
+brought out at Calcutta,--but were never communicated to the Nabob. He
+never knew anything of the matter. Let us now see what those
+attestations were. Your Lordships will bear in mind that I do not advert
+to this thing, which they bring as evidence, in the way of imputation of
+its being weak, improper, and insufficient evidence, but as an
+incontrovertible proof of crimes, and of a systematic design to ruin
+the accused party, by force there and by chicane here: these are the
+principles upon which I am going to talk to you upon this abominable
+subject,--of which, I am sorry to say, I have no words sufficient to
+express my horror. No words can express it; nor can anything but the
+severity of your Lordships' judgments find an adequate expression of it.
+It is not to be expressed in words, but in punishment.
+
+Having stated before whom the evidence collected in this body of
+affidavits was taken, I shall now state who the persons were that gave
+it. They were those very persons who were guilty of robbing and ruining
+the whole country: yes, my Lords, the very persons who had been accused
+of this in the mass by Mr. Hastings himself. They were nothing less than
+the whole body of those English officers who were usurping the office of
+farmers-general, and other lucrative offices in the Nabob's government,
+and whose pillage and peculations had raised a revolt of the whole
+kingdom against themselves. These persons are here brought in a mass to
+clear themselves of this charge by criminating other persons, and
+clandestinely imputing to them the effect of their own iniquity.
+
+But supposing these witnesses to be good for anything, supposing it fit
+that the least attention should be paid them, the matter of their
+testimony may very possibly be true without criminating the Begum. It
+criminates Saadut Ali Kh�n, the brother of the Nabob; the word Begum is
+never mentioned in the crimination but in conjunction with his; and much
+the greater part of it criminates the Nabob himself. Now, my Lords, I
+will say, that the matter of these affidavits, forgetting who the
+deponents were, may possibly be true, as far as respects Saadut Ali
+Kh�n, but that it is utterly as improbable, which is the main point and
+the stress of the thing, with respect to the Begums, as it is impossible
+with respect to the Nabob. That Saadut Ali, being a military man, a man
+ambitious and aspiring to greatness, should take advantage of the abuses
+of the English government and of the discontent of the country, that he
+should, I say, raise a revolt against his brother is very possible; but
+it is scarcely within possibility that the mother of the Nabob should
+have joined with the illegitimate son against her legitimate son. I can
+only say that in human affairs there is the possibility of truth in
+this. It is possible she might wish to depose her legitimate son, her
+only legitimate son, and to depose him for the sake of a bastard son of
+her husband's,--to exalt him at the expense of the former, and to exalt,
+of course, the mother of that bastard at her own expense, and to her own
+wrong. But I say, that this, though possible, is grossly improbable. The
+reason why the Begum is implicated in this charge with Saadut Ali by the
+affidavits cannot escape your notice. Their own acquittal might be the
+only object of the deponents in their crimination of the latter; but the
+treasures of the former were the objects of their employers, and these
+treasures could not be come at but by the destruction of the Begums.
+
+But, my Lords, there are other affidavits, or whatever your Lordships
+may call them, that go much further. In order to give a color to the
+accusation, and make it less improbable, they say that the Nabob himself
+was at the bottom of it, and that he joined with his brother and his
+mother to extirpate out of his dominions that horrible grievance, the
+English brigade officers,--those English officers who were the
+farmers-general, and who, as we have proved by Mr. Hastings's own
+evidence, had ruined the country. Nothing is more natural than that a
+man, sensible of his duty to himself and his subjects, should form a
+scheme to get rid of a band of robbers that were destroying his country
+and degrading and ruining his family. Thus you see a family compact
+naturally accounted for: the Nabob at the head of it, his mother joining
+her own son, and a natural brother joining in the general interests of
+the family. This is a possible case. But is this the case pressed by
+them? No: they pass lightly over the legitimate son; they scarcely touch
+upon Saadut Ali Kh�n; they sink the only two persons that could give
+probability or possibility to this business, and endeavor to throw the
+whole design upon these two unfortunate women.
+
+Your Lordships see the wickedness and baseness of the contrivance. They
+first, in order to keep the whole family in terror, accuse the whole
+family; then, having possessed themselves of the treasures of the Begums
+upon another pretence, they endeavor to fix upon them that improbable
+guilt which they had with some degree of probability charged upon the
+whole family, as a farther justification of that spoliation. Your
+Lordships will see what an insult is offered to the Peers of Great
+Britain, in producing before you, by way of defence, such gross,
+scandalous, and fraudulent proceedings.
+
+Who the first set of witnesses were which they produced before their
+knight-errant chief-justice, Sir Elijah Impey, who wandered in search of
+a law adventure, I have laid open to your Lordships. You have now had
+an account of the scandalous manufacture of that batch of affidavits
+which was in the budget of Sir Elijah Impey,--that Pandora's box which I
+have opened, and out of which has issued every kind of evil. This
+chief-justice went up there with the death-warrant of the Begums'
+treasures, and, for aught he knew, the death-warrant of their persons.
+At the same time that he took these affidavits he became himself a
+witness in this business; he appears as a witness. How? Did he know any
+one circumstance of the rebellion? No, he does not even pretend to do
+so. "But," says he, "in my travels I was obliged to avoid Fyzabad, upon
+account of the suspected rebellion there." Another chief-justice would
+have gone fifty miles about to avoid Lucknow, for everybody knows that
+Lucknow was the focus and centre of extortion, corruption, and
+peculation, and that a worse air for the lungs of a chief-justice could
+not be found in the world. If his lungs wanted the benefit of pure air,
+he would even have put himself in the focus of a rebellion, to have kept
+at a distance from the smell of carrion and putrid corruption of every
+kind that was at Lucknow. A chief-justice may go to a place where a
+rebellion is raging, he may die a martyr to his honor; but a
+chief-justice who puts himself into the focus of peculation, into the
+focus of bribery, into the focus of everything that is base and
+corrupt,--what can we expect from him but that he will be engaged in
+clandestine jobs there? The former might kill Sir Elijah Impey, the
+knight-errant, but the chief-justice would remain pure and entire;
+whereas Sir Elijah Impey has escaped from Lucknow, and the chief-justice
+is left by Mr. Hastings to shift for himself.
+
+After mentioning this violation of the laws of hospitality by Sir Elijah
+Impey, I would ask, Was any notice given by him, or by any of Mr.
+Hastings's agents, to the Nabob, who was so immediately interested in
+this matter? Was any notice given to the Begums that any such charge was
+entertained against them? Not a word. Was it notified to the eunuchs?
+Was it to Saadut Ali Kh�n? Not a word. They were all within their power.
+The eunuchs were a year in irons, and they were subjected to the want of
+food and water for a part of that year. They were dragged from Fyzabad
+to Lucknow, and from Lucknow to Fyzabad. During all that time was there
+a word mentioned to them by any one person on the part of Mr. Hastings,
+that they were accused of this matter? Not a word.
+
+We now submit to your Lordships' vindictive justice and condemnation
+this recriminatory defence, in which every principle of justice has been
+violated. And now I will ask your Lordships whether you would have
+suffered such a procedure in the case of the prisoner at your bar. It
+was asked by a person of great authority in this House, when we were
+going to produce certain evidence against Mr. Hastings, (we do not say
+whether we offered to produce it properly or improperly,--that is
+another matter,)--we were asked, I say, whether our intentions of
+producing that evidence had been communicated to Mr. Hastings. Had he
+had an opportunity of cross-examining the witnesses who had given that
+evidence? No, he added, that evidence must be rejected. Now I say to
+your Lordships, upon the same ground, deal with the Begums as you dealt
+with Mr. Hastings. Do not keep two weights and measures for different
+persons in the same cause. You would not suffer such evidence to be
+produced against him; you will not assuredly suffer such evidence to be
+produced to you in his favor and against them.
+
+My Lords, the cause between this man and these unfortunate women is at
+last come into Westminster Hall; the cause is come to a solemn trial;
+and we demand other witnesses and other kinds of proof than what these
+affidavits furnish. My Lords, the persons who have been examined here
+are almost all of them the same persons who made these affidavits; but
+there is this material difference in their evidence: at your Lordships'
+bar they sunk all those parts of their former evidence which criminated
+the Nabob and Saadut Ali, and confined their testimony wholly to what
+related to the Begums. We were obliged, by a cross-examination, to
+squeeze out of them the disavowal of what they had deposed on the former
+occasion. The whole of their evidence we leave to the judgment of your
+Lordships, with these summary remarks: first, that they are the persons
+who were to profit by their own wrong; they are the persons who had
+seven months' arrears paid to them out of the money of these unfortunate
+ladies; they are the persons who, to justify the revolt which they had
+caused in the country by their robbery, charge their own guilt upon
+others. The credibility of their evidence is therefore gone. But if it
+were not affected by these circumstances, Mr. Hastings has put an end to
+it by telling you that there is not one of them who is to be credited
+upon his oath,--no, not in a court-martial; and can it, therefore, be
+expected that in a case of peculation they will do otherwise than acquit
+the party accused? He has himself laid before you the horrible state of
+the whole service; your Lordships have it fresh in your memories, and
+ringing in your ears. You have also heard from witnesses brought by Mr.
+Hastings himself, that these soldiers committed misdemeanors of the very
+same kind with those which we have stated. They ought not, therefore, to
+be listened to for a moment; and we aver that it is an aggravation of
+the prisoner's crimes, that he has brought the instruments of his guilt,
+the persons of whom he has complained as having ruined and destroyed
+that country, and whom he had engaged, at the Nabob's desire, in the
+treaty of Chunar, to send out of the country, as being a nuisance in
+it,--to bring, I say, these people here, to criminate, at a distance of
+nine thousand miles, these unfortunate women, where they have neither
+attorney or agent who can from local knowledge cross-examine them. He
+has the audacity to bring these people here; and in what manner they
+comport themselves, when they come here, your Lordships have seen.
+
+There is one of them whom we cannot pass by: that is, Captain Gordon.
+The other witnesses, who appeared here as evidences to criminate the
+Begums, did it by rumors and hearsays. They had heard some person say
+that the Begums had encouraged rebellion, always coupling them with
+Saadut Ali Kh�n, and sometimes with the Nabob, because there might have
+been some probability for their charge in the transactions with Saadut
+Ali Kh�n, which, though impossible with regard to the Begums, they
+thought would implicate him [them?] in his designs. But Captain Gordon
+is to give a different account of the proceedings.
+
+Captain Gordon was one of Colonel Hannay's under-farmers. He was hunted
+out of the country and, as one of the Begums says, pursued by a
+thousand of the zemindars, for robbing the whole country. This woman,
+through respect to the British name, that name which guarantied her
+possessions to her, receives this Captain Gordon and Captain Williams
+with every mark of kindness, hospitality, and protection, that could be
+given them. She conveys them from the borders to the city of Fyzabad,
+and from Fyzabad, her capital, supposed to be the nest of her rebellion,
+on to their place of destination. They both write her letters full of
+expressions of gratitude and kindness for the services that they had
+received. They then pass on to Lucknow to Sir Elijah Impey, and there
+they sink every word of kindness, of any service or protection that they
+had received, or of any acknowledgment that they had ever made of it.
+They sink all this: not one word of it appears in their affidavits.
+
+How, then, did we come to the knowledge of it? We got it from Major
+Gilpin, who was examined in the course of these proceedings; and we used
+it in our charge, from the papers that we hold in our hands. Mr.
+Hastings has confessed the fact; and Mr. Middleton has endeavored to
+slur it over, but could not completely conceal it. We have established
+the fact, and it is in evidence before your Lordships.
+
+You have now, then, in this manner, got these testimonials given by
+English officers in favor of these women; and by the same means the
+letters of the latter accusing the former are come to your hands: and
+now these same English officers come here with their recriminatory
+accusation. Now why did they not make it at Lucknow? Why did not Mr.
+Hastings, when Mr. Middleton had such papers for him in his hands, why,
+I ask, did not Mr. Hastings procure some explanation of the
+circumstances whilst he was in India? I will read your Lordships the
+letter, that you may not only know, but feel, the iniquity of this
+business.
+
+
+     _Letter from the Mother of the Vizier to Mr. Hastings; received the
+     6th of January, 1782._
+
+     "Our situation is pretty well, and your good health is constantly
+     prayed for. I had sent Behar Ali Kh�n to you. Accordingly people
+     invented a falsehood, that Behar Ali Kh�n was gone to get the
+     deputyship of the Subah; and some persons here were saying,
+     'Wherefore has she sent Behar Ali Kh�n to Calcutta to the Nabob
+     Amaud ul Dowlah? We will never permit the affair to succeed.' And
+     accordingly it has so happened. For they say that you also have not
+     put your seal to the treaty: and the people here say, 'Why does the
+     noble lady correspond with the English gentlemen?' On this account,
+     I did not send a letter at the time when you came this way. Now the
+     state of affairs here is thus. On the 27th Zehedja, Asoph ul Dowlah
+     Banadur, without my knowledge, sent his own aumils into my
+     jaghires. I accordingly wrote several times to Mr. Middleton on
+     this business: that his seal was to the treaty and writing of
+     discharge; why did he not negotiate in my favor? Mr. Middleton
+     replied, 'The Nabob is the master.' I wrote frequently, but without
+     effect. Being helpless, I represent to you the state of my affairs,
+     that, notwithstanding the existence of this treaty, I have been
+     treated in this manner. It is useless for me to stay here. Whatever
+     is is a compact; whenever any one deviates from his compact, he
+     meets with no credit for the future; and the light of mine eyes,
+     Asoph ul Dowlah, wrote to me that he had sent his own aumils into
+     my jaghires, and would pay ready money from his treasury. Reflect
+     on my security for his adhering to his future engagements, from the
+     consideration of his conduct under his past promises. I do not
+     agree to his ready money. Let me have my jaghires as formerly;
+     otherwise, leaving this place, I will wait on you at Benares, and
+     thence will go towards Shahjehanabad, because he has not adhered to
+     his engagement. Send letters to Asoph ul Dowlah, and to Mr.
+     Middleton, and Hussein Reza Kh�n, and Hyder Beg Kh�n, not to molest
+     the Begum's jaghires, and to let them remain, as formerly, with the
+     Begum's aumils. And it is here suspected of me that my aumil
+     plundered the property of Mr. John Gordon. The case is this. Mr.
+     John Gordon arrived at Taunda, a jaghire of mine, fighting with the
+     zemindars of Acberpore, which belongs to the Khalseh. Accordingly,
+     Mr. John Gordon having come to Taunda, my aumil performed whatever
+     appertained to his duty. Afterwards Mr. John Gordon wrote to me to
+     send my people, that he might come with them to Fyzabad. I sent
+     people accordingly to bring Mr. John Gordon, and the said gentleman
+     arrived here in complete safety; and Mr. John Gordon is now
+     present. Ask him yourself of these matters. Mr. John Gordon will
+     represent matters in detail; the truth will then become known, how
+     ill-founded the calumny is. Should you come here for a few days, it
+     will be very well, and if not, I will wait on you; and your coming
+     here is very necessary, that all my affairs may become arranged.
+     And send a speedy answer to my letters, and a letter to Asoph ul
+     Dowlah, and Mr. Middleton, and Hussein Reza Kh�n, and Hyder Beg
+     Kh�n, on the subject of ceasing to molest my jaghires. And send me
+     constantly news of your health, for my peace of mind depends
+     thereon."
+
+This letter was transmitted to Mr. Hastings. I desire your Lordships
+will remark upon this letter, for it is a most important one indeed. It
+is hardly worth observing that all this correspondence came out of the
+various trunks of which your Lordships have already heard, and that this
+letter is out of the trunk of Mr. Hastings's private Persian secretary
+and interpreter, Mr. Jonathan Scott. Now, my Lords, in this letter there
+are several things worthy of your Lordships' observation. The first is,
+that this woman is not conscious of having ever been accused of any
+rebellion: the only accusation that ever came to her ears was, that
+Captain Gordon said that his baggage had been robbed by one of her
+aumils. She denies the truth of this charge; and she produces
+testimonials of their good behavior to him; and, what is the essential
+point of all, she desires Mr. Hastings to apply to this Mr. John Gordon,
+and to know from him what truth or falsehood there is in that
+accusation, and what weight there is in the attestation she produces.
+"Mr. Gordon is now present," says she; "ask him yourself of these
+matters." This reasonable request was not complied with. Mr. Gordon
+swears before Sir Elijah Impey to the robbery; but he never mentions the
+paper he had written, in which he confessed that he owed his life to
+this very lady. No inquiry was made into this matter. Colonel Hannay
+was then alive. Captain Gordon was alive, and she refers to him: yet
+that very man was sworn before Sir Elijah Impey, and accuses his
+prisoner. Did the prisoner at your bar make that attestation known to
+the Begum, whose letter at that very time was in his possession, in Mr.
+Scott's trunk,--that very letter in which he is desired to make the
+inquiry from Captain Gordon?
+
+Mr. Hastings is acquainted with the facts stated by the Begum, and with
+Captain Gordon's accusation. Did he afterwards inform her of this
+accusation? or did he ask this Captain Gordon one question in India,
+where the matter might be ventilated? Not one word, my Lords. Therefore
+we fix upon him fraud, deceit, and the production of false evidence,
+after the woman had desired to have the man who was the evidence against
+her examined upon the spot. This he does not do, but with much more
+prudence he brings him here. And for what? To discredit his own
+testimony, and the written evidence. And how does he discredit them?
+There are two of these papers, which I beg leave to read to your
+Lordships.
+
+
+     _Copy of a Letter to Jewar and Behar Ali Kh�n, from Mr. Gordon._
+
+     "Sirs, my indulgent friends, remain under, &c., &c., &c. After
+     compliments, I have the pleasure to inform you, that yesterday,
+     having taken leave of you, I passed the night at Noorgunge, and
+     next morning about ten or eleven o'clock, through your favor and
+     benevolence, arrived safe at Goondah. Mir Aboo Buksh Zemindar and
+     Mir Rustum Ali accompanied me.
+
+     "To what extent can I prolong the praises of you, my beneficent
+     friends? May the Supreme Being, for this benign, compassionate,
+     humane action, have you in His keeping, and increase your property,
+     and speedily grant me the pleasure of an interview; until which
+     time continue to favor me with friendly letters, and oblige me by
+     any commands in my power to execute. May your wishes be ever
+     crowned with success! My compliments," &c., &c., &c.
+
+
+     _Copy of an Address from Mr. Gordon to the Begum._
+
+     "Begum Saib of exalted dignity and generosity, whom God preserve!
+     After presenting the usual professions of servitude, &c., in the
+     customary manner, my address is presented.
+
+     "Your gracious letter, in answer to the petition of your servant
+     from Goondah, exalted me. From the contents, I became unspeakably
+     impressed with the honor it conferred. May the Almighty protect
+     that royal purity, and bestow happiness, increase of wealth, and
+     prosperity! The welfare of your servant is entirely owing to your
+     favor and benevolence; a few days have elapsed since I arrived at
+     Goondah, with the Colonel Saib.
+
+     "This is presented for your Highness's information. I cherish hopes
+     from your generosity, that, considering me in the light of one of
+     your servants, you will always continue to exalt and honor me with
+     your gracious letters. May the sun of prosperity continually
+     shine!"
+
+These acknowledgments of the Begum's friendly disposition and services
+were concealed, when the charge was made against this woman at Lucknow
+before Sir Elijah Impey: I wish to impress this upon your Lordships'
+mind; and that before Mr. Hastings left Bengal, in the trunk of Major
+Scott, his private Persian interpreter, was this letter. Did he make
+that inquiry of Captain Gordon? No. Did he make that inquiry of Colonel
+Hannay? Did he make any inquiry into the matter, after his perusal of
+these letters? Or did he give this poor woman any opportunity of
+obtaining justice against this Captain Gordon, who, after acknowledging
+that he owed his life to her favor, calumniates and traduces her to her
+utter destruction? No, he never did; and therefore he is chargeable, and
+I charge him, with everything that is wrongful in Captain Gordon's
+evidence.
+
+These papers, which carry with them a clear refutation of all the
+charges against the Begum, are never once produced, though Captain
+Gordon was referred to expressly for inquiry and explanation of the
+whole transaction by the woman herself. You hear nothing of them; there
+is no appearance of them in the affidavits; no such papers were laid
+before the Supreme Council; none were transmitted to the Court of
+Directors: but at last the House of Commons having come at the truth of
+this matter, Mr. Hastings, not daring to deny the existence of these
+papers, brings Captain Gordon to be examined here, in order to prove
+that papers which he had himself written were false. Is this to be
+tolerated? What will your Lordships think of a man that comes to attest
+his own infamy,--to declare that he has written papers containing
+falsehoods, and to invalidate the false testimony which he had before
+given? Is he to be suffered, I say, to come here, and endeavor to prove
+the absolute falsity of his own deeds by his own evidence?
+
+The next point for your Lordships' consideration is the evidence which
+he produces to prove the falsity of a paper written by himself. Why, he
+himself is the sole evidence. And how does he prove it? Why, says he,
+"The reason of my writing that letter was this: she had sent a person
+with me as an escort, and this person was desirous of receiving some
+proof that he had done his duty; and therefore I wrote a complaisant
+letter. I meant nothing by it. It was written merely to satisfy the mind
+of the man." Now is that the way in which formal and solemn letters,
+written upon great occasions to great people, are to be explained away?
+If he had said nothing but "Your servant, such a one, has done his
+duty," this explanation might pass. But you see it has another
+complexion. It speaks of his owing his life to her. But if you admit
+that it is possible (for possibilities have an unknown extent) that he
+wrote such a letter at such a time and for such a purpose, and that the
+letter he wrote was false, and that the falsity of the letter is proved
+by his own testimony given in an affidavit which we have also reason to
+believe is false, your Lordships must at the same time admit that it is
+one of the most complex pieces of fraud and falsehood that, I believe,
+ever existed in the world. But it is worse than all this. There is
+another letter, written some days after, which I will read to you, and
+which he has not pretended to say was written only to testify that a
+messenger had executed his commission properly.
+
+"Your gracious letter," (he thus writes,) "in answer to the petition of
+your servant from Goondah, exalted me. From the contents, I became
+unspeakably impressed with the honor it conferred."
+
+My Lords, this letter was not sent back by a messenger, in
+acknowledgment of his having done his duty, but was written in
+consequence of a correspondence in the nature of a petition for
+something or other which he made to the Begum. That petition they have
+suppressed and sunk. It is plain, however, that the petition had been
+sent, and was granted; and therefore the apology that is made for the
+former letter does not apply to this letter, which was written
+afterwards.
+
+How, then, do they attempt to get rid of this difficulty? Why, says
+Captain Gordon, "_The Colonel Saib_ (by whom was meant Colonel Hannay)
+was not at Goondah, as stated in the letter, but at Succara, about
+eighteen miles from it, and therefore you ought not to pay much regard
+to this paper." But he does not deny the letter, nor was it possible for
+him to deny it. He says Colonel Hannay was not there. But how do we know
+whether Colonel Hannay was there or not? We have only his own word for
+it. But supposing he was not there, and that it was clearly proved that
+he was eighteen miles distant from it, Major Naylor was certainly with
+Captain Gordon at the time. Might not his Persian scribe (for he does
+not pretend to say he wrote the letter himself) take Major Naylor for a
+colonel, (for he was the superior officer to Captain Gordon,) and think
+him the Colonel Saib? For errors of that kind may be committed in our
+own country. Every day we may take a major for a lieutenant-colonel.
+This was an error that might easily have happened in such a case. He was
+in as high rank as Colonel Hannay; for Colonel Hannay at that time was
+only a major. I do not believe either of them was properly entitled to
+the name of Colonel Saib. I am ashamed, my Lords, to be obliged to
+remark upon this prevarication. Their own endeavors to get rid of their
+own written acts by contradictory evidence and false constructions
+sufficiently clear these women of the crimes of which they were accused;
+and I may now ask the prisoner at your bar how he dares to produce
+Captain Gordon here, how he dares thus to insult the Peers, how he dares
+thus to insult the public justice of his country, after not having dared
+to inquire, upon the spot, of this man, to whom he was referred by the
+Begums for an account of this very transaction?
+
+I hope your Lordships have got enough of this kind of evidence. All the
+rest is of the same batch, and of the same description,--made up of
+nothing but hearsays, except in one particular only. This I shall now
+mention to your Lordships. Colonel Popham and another gentleman have
+told you, that, in a battle with Cheyt Sing's forces, they took
+prisoners two wounded nudjeeves or swordsmen, and that these men told
+them that they were sent there by the Begums,--that they had got two
+rupees and two wounds, but that they thought two rupees a bad
+compensation for two wounds. These two men, with their two wounds and
+two rupees, had, however, been dismissed. It does not appear that this
+accident was considered by these officers to be of consequence enough to
+make them ever tell one word of it to Mr. Hastings, though they knew he
+was collecting evidence of the disaffection of the Begums, of all kinds,
+good, bad, and indifferent, from all sorts of persons.
+
+My Lords, I must beg leave to say a few words upon this matter; because
+I consider it as one of the most outrageous violations of your
+Lordships' dignity, and the greatest insult that was ever offered to a
+court of justice. A nudjeeve is a soldier armed with a sword. It appears
+in evidence that the Nabob had several corps of nudjeeves in his
+service; that the Begums had some nudjeeves; and that Colonel Hannay had
+a corps of nudjeeves. It is well known that every prince in Hindostan
+has soldiers of that description,--in like manner, probably, as the
+princes of Europe have their guards. The whole, then, amounts to this:
+that a story told by two men who were wounded in an action far from the
+place from which they were supposed to come, who were not regularly
+examined, not cross-examined, not even kept for examination, and whose
+evidence was never reported, is to be a reason why you are to believe
+that these Begums were concerned in a rebellion against their son, and
+deserved to forfeit all their lands and goods, and to suffer the
+indignities that we have stated.
+
+My Lords, I am really ashamed to mention so scandalous a thing; but let
+us put a case: let us suppose that we had accused Mr. Hastings of
+instigating the Rajah of Berar to fall upon some of the country powers,
+and that the evidence we produced at your bar to prove it was, that an
+officer had taken two nudjeeves, who declared they were instigated by
+Mr. Hastings to go into the service of that Rajah: could you bear such a
+thing? would you suffer such evidence to be produced? or do you think
+that we should have so little regard for our own reputation as to
+venture to produce such evidence before you? Again, we have charged Mr.
+Hastings with committing several acts of violence against the Begums.
+Let us suppose our proof to be, that two persons who never appeared
+before nor since, that two grenadiers in English uniforms, (which would
+be a great deal stronger than the case of the nudjeeves, because they
+have no particular uniform belonging to them,) that two English
+grenadiers, I say, had been taken prisoners in some action and let go
+again, who said that Mr. Hastings had instigated them to make war upon
+the Begums: would your Lordships suffer such evidence to be produced
+before you? No. And yet two of the first women in India are to be
+stripped of all they have in the world upon no better evidence than that
+which you would utterly reject. You would not disgrace the British
+peerage, you would not disgrace this court of justice, you would not
+disgrace human reason itself, by confiscating, on such evidence, the
+meanest property of the meanest wretch. You would not subject to the
+smallest fine for the smallest delinquency, upon such evidence. I will
+venture to say, that, in an action of assault and battery, or in an
+action for the smallest sum, such evidence would be scouted as odious
+and contemptible, even supposing that a perfect reliance might be placed
+upon its truth. And yet this is the sort of evidence upon which the
+property, the dignity, and the rank of some of the first persons in Asia
+are to be destroyed,--by which a British guaranty, and the honor and
+dignity of the crown of Great Britain, and of the Parliament itself,
+which sent out this man, are to be forfeited.
+
+Observe, besides, my Lords, that the two swordsmen said they were sent
+by the Begums. Now they could not be sent by the Begums in their own
+person. This was a thing in India impossible. They might, indeed, have
+been sent by Jewar and Behar Ali Kh�n: and then we ask again, How came
+these ministers not to be called to an account at the time? Why were
+they not called upon for their muster-rolls of these nudjeeves? No,
+these men and women suffer the penalty, but they never hear the
+accusation nor the evidence.
+
+But to proceed with the evidence of this pretended rebellion. Captain
+Williams has told your Lordships that he once had a great number of
+letters and papers to prove this rebellion of the Begums. But he
+declares that he has lost all these letters. A search was ordered to be
+made in Mr. Hastings's record-office, called a trunk; and accordingly in
+the trunk is found a paper worthy of such a place and such a cause. This
+letter, which has been made use of to criminate the Begums, has not
+their names mentioned, nor is there any possibility of their being
+included in it. By this paper which is preserved you may judge of the
+whole of the papers that are lost. Such a letter, I believe, was never
+before brought as evidence in a court of justice. It is a letter said to
+have been intercepted, and is as follows.
+
+     "To the most noble * * * * *, whose prosperity be everlasting!
+
+     "It is represented, that the august purwannah [command], having
+     completed his honorable arrival on the 16th of the month in the
+     evening, highly exalted me. It is ordered that I should charge
+     Medeporee, and the other enrolled sepoys belonging to my district,
+     and take bonds from them that none of them go for service to the
+     Rajah; and that, when four or five hundred men, nudjeeves and
+     others, are collected, I should send them to the presence.
+     According to the order, I have written to Brejunekar Shah Rehemet
+     Ullah, who is in Bhooaparah, charging him to take bonds from them,
+     and that whatever sepoys fit for service are collected he should
+     send to the presence. As at this time the wind is contrary, the
+     sepoys will not * * * * without travelling charges; for I have
+     learnt from a letter previously received from Brejunekar Shah
+     Rehemet Ullah, that the people there also are badly inclined. By
+     the grace of God, the unalterable glory shall be * * * * *. Zehan
+     Beg and the nudjeeves who were in the fort of Aneelah have gone off
+     to Goruckpore."
+
+This is a letter of somebody or other employed by somebody or other for
+the recruiting service,--it should seem, by the word "presence,"
+somebody employed in enlisting forces for the Nabob. The charge against
+the Begum was, that she had joined with the rebellious Rajahs to
+exterminate her son's government and the English influence in that
+country. In this very paper you see that the soldiers entering into that
+service, and officers who are to contract for soldiers, are expressly
+bound not to join the Rajahs; and this they produce as proof that the
+Begums had joined the Rajahs, and had joined them in a rebellion, for
+the purpose of exterminating their son, in the first instance, and the
+English afterwards.
+
+There is another circumstance which makes their own acts the refutation
+of their false pretences. This letter says that the country is
+disaffected, and it mentions the ill-disposed parts of the country. Now
+we all know that the country was ill-disposed; and we may therefore
+conclude this paper was written by, and addressed to, some person who
+was employed against the persons so ill-disposed,--namely, the very
+Rajahs so mentioned before. The prisoner's counsel, after producing this
+paper, had the candor to declare that they did not see what use could be
+made of it. No, to be sure, they do not see what use can be made of it
+for their cause; but I see the use that can be made of it against their
+cause. I say that the lost papers, upon which they do so much insist,
+deserve no consideration, when the only paper that they have preserved
+operates directly against them; and that therefore we may safely infer,
+that, if we had the rest of the contents of this trunk, we should
+probably find them make as strongly against them as this paper does. You
+have no reason to judge of them otherwise than by the specimen: for how
+can you judge of what is lost but from what remains?
+
+The man who hid these papers in his trunk never understood one word of
+the Persian language, and consequently was liable to every kind of
+mistake, even though he meant well. But who is this man? Why, it is
+Captain Williams,--the man who in his affidavits never mentioned the
+Begums without mentioning Saadut Ali. It is Captain Williams,--whom we
+charge to have murdered a principal man of the country by his own hand,
+without law or legal process. It is Captain Williams,--one of those
+British officers whom Mr. Hastings states to be the pests of the
+country. This is the man who comes here as evidence against these women,
+and produces this monstrous paper.
+
+All the evidence they had produced to you amounts to no more than that
+such a man _believes_ such a man _heard of something_; and to close the
+whole of this hearsay account, Sir Elijah Impey, who always comes in as
+a supplement, declares that no man doubted of the existence of this
+rebellion, and of the guilt of the Begums, any more than of the
+rebellion of 1745: a comparison which, I must say, is, by way of
+evidence, a little indecorous in a chief-justice of India. Your
+Lordships are sufficiently acquainted with the history of that rebellion
+to know, that, when Lord Lovat was tried at this bar, the proceedings
+against him were not founded on second-hand hearsay. The existence of
+the rebellion of 1745 was proved, notwithstanding its notoriety; but
+neither notoriety nor proof would have signified anything, if Lord
+Lovat's participation in it had not been brought home to him directly,
+personally, and particularly. Yet a chief-justice, sent to India to
+represent the sacred majesty of the crown of England, has gone so far as
+to say at your bar that no more doubt could be entertained of the
+existence either of the rebellion or the guilt of the Begums than of the
+rebellion in 1745. Besides, he forgets that he himself carried the order
+to confiscate these people's property without any trial whatever. But
+this is the way of proceeding by an English chief-justice in India,--a
+chief-justice who had rendered himself the instrument, the
+letter-carrier, the messenger, I had almost said the executioner of Mr.
+Hastings.
+
+From this view of the whole matter your Lordships will form an estimate
+of the spirit of Indian government and Indian justice. But to blow away
+and to put an end to all their false pretences, their hearsays, and talk
+of nudjeeves, and wounds, and the like, I ask, Who is the first witness
+that we have produced upon this occasion? It is the Nabob himself,
+negativing all these pretences. Did he believe them? Not a word from him
+of any rebellion, actual or suspected. Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, said
+that he was obliged to wheel round, and to avoid that dangerous place,
+Fyzabad. His friends urged him to this. "For God's sake," say they,
+"have a reverend care of your sacred person! What will become of the
+justice of India, what will become of the natives, if you, their
+legitimate protector, should fall into the hands of these wicked,
+rebellious women at Fyzabad?" But although the Chief-Justice does this,
+the Nabob, whose deposition is said to be the first object of this
+rebellion, takes leave of Mr. Hastings at the very moment when it is
+raging in the highest possible degree, and gallops into its very focus.
+
+And under what circumstances does he do this? He had brought some
+considerable forces with him. No man of his rank in that country ever
+goes without them. He left a part of these forces with Mr. Hastings,
+notwithstanding he was going into the centre of the rebellion. He then
+went on with a corps of about a thousand horse. He even left a part of
+these with Mr. Middleton, and galloped, attended by a few horse, into
+the very capital, where the Begums, we are told, had ten thousand armed
+men. He put himself into their power, and, not satisfied with this, the
+very first thing we hear of him after his arrival is, that he paid his
+mother a friendly visit,--thus rushing into the den of a lioness who was
+going to destroy her own whelp. Is it to be credited, my Lords, that a
+prince would act thus who believed that a conspiracy was formed against
+him by his own mother? Is it to be credited that any man would trust a
+mother who, contrary to all the rules of Nature and policy, had
+conspired to destroy her own son?
+
+Upon this matter your Lordships have the evidence of Captain Edwards,
+who was aide-de-camp to the Nabob, who was about his person, his
+attendant at Chunar, and his attendant back again. I am not producing
+this to exculpate the Begums,--for I say you cannot try them here, you
+have not the parties before you, they ought to have been tried on the
+spot,--but I am going to demonstrate the iniquity of this abominable
+plot beyond all doubt: for it is necessary your Lordships should know
+the length, breadth, and depth of this mystery of iniquity.
+
+Captain Edwards being asked,--"Whether he ever heard any native of
+credit and authority in the Nabob's dominions, who appeared to believe
+the rebellion of the Begums?--_A._ No, I never did.--_Q._ Have you any
+reason to believe that the Nabob gave credit to it?--_A._ I really
+cannot rightly presume to say whether the Nabob did or did not; but I am
+apt to believe that he did not.--_Q._ Have you any reason, and what, to
+form a belief about it?--_A._ I have. I think, if he supposed the
+rebellion, ever existed at Fyzabad, he would have been the first person
+to take and give the alarm to the British troops.--_Q._ And no such
+alarm was taken or given to the British troops?--_A._ No, I think not:
+as I was always about his person, and in the camp, I think I certainly
+must have known it or heard of it; but I never did."
+
+We assure your Lordships, you will find upon your printed Minutes, that
+Captain Edwards says he was credibly informed that the Nabob left behind
+him a part of his guard of horse; and that, so desirous was he to go
+into the power of this cruel lioness, his mother, that he advanced, as
+he is a vigorous man, and a bold and spirited rider, leaving all his
+guards behind him, and rode before them into the middle of Fyzabad.
+There is some more evidence to the same purpose in answer to the
+question put next to that which I read before.
+
+"_Q._ When you did hear of the rebellion, did not you understand it to
+have been alleged that one object of it was to dethrone the Nabob
+himself, as well as to extirpate the English?--_A._ I understood that
+the intention of the princesses, the Begums, was to extirpate the
+English troops out of the country and out of those dominions, and
+likewise to depose her son, and set another son, who seems to have been
+a greater favorite of that family, upon the throne, in the room of the
+present Nabob; and that son's name is Saadut Ali. I have only heard this
+from report. I have no other knowledge but mere report. I understood
+from the report, she was to extirpate the English, and depose her son
+who is now upon the throne.--_Q._ Was it after or before the seizing of
+the treasures, that you heard a circumstantial account of the supposed
+object of the rebellion?--_A._ The report was more general after the
+seizing of the treasures; but yet there were reports prevailing in the
+neighborhood that our troops were sent there in consequence of the
+charge that was made by Colonel Hannay and some of his officers of
+rebellion existing then at Fyzabad, or having existed, I cannot rightly
+say which.--_Q._ Was that report after the order for the troops to march
+to Fyzabad?--_A._ It was more general, it was very general then when the
+troops did march there, and more general after the seizing of the
+treasures.--_Q._ When did the troops first march?--_A._ It was some time
+in the month of January, I believe, in the year 1782.--_Q._ While you
+was with the Nabob in passing from Lucknow to Chunar, and while you was
+with him or the army returning from Chunar, did you then, out of the
+whole army, regular or irregular, ever hear of any report of the Begums
+being in rebellion?--_A._ No, I do not recollect I ever did.--_Q. (Upon
+cross-examination.)_ Do you recollect at what time in August, 1781, you
+left Lucknow to proceed with the Nabob to Chunar?--_A._ No, I cannot
+rightly mention the date: all that I know is this, that I accompanied
+the Nabob, Mr. Middleton, and his attendants, all the way from Lucknow
+to Chunargur. I really cannot recollect; I have no notes, and it is so
+distant a time since that I do not recollect the particulars of the
+month or the day; but I recollect perfectly I accompanied the Nabob all
+the way from Lucknow to Chunar, and returned again with him until he
+struck off on the road for Fyzabad."
+
+Your Lordships see plainly the whole of this matter. When they had
+resolved to seize the Begums' treasures, they propagated this report
+just in proportion to their acts. As they proceeded, the report grew
+hotter and hotter. This man tells you when it was that the propagation
+of this report first began, when it grew hot, and when it was in its
+greatest heat. He tells you that not one native of credit in the country
+believed it,--that he did not think the Nabob himself believed it; and
+he gives a reason that speaks for itself, namely, that he, the Nabob,
+would have been the first man to give the alarm, if he believed in a
+rebellion, as he was to be the object of it. He says the English were
+the principal spreaders of the report. It was, in fact, a wicked report,
+propagated by Mr. Middleton and the English agents for the purpose of
+justifying their iniquitous spoliation of the Begums.
+
+This is the manner in which the matter stands upon the ground of
+rebellion, with the exception of Major Gilpin's and Hyder Beg Kh�n's
+testimony. This last man we have proved to have been kept in his office
+by Mr. Hastings's influence, and to have been entirely under his
+government. When this dependant comes to give his attestation, he gives
+a long account of all the proceedings of Cheyt Sing's rebellion, with
+which the rebellion charged on the Begums was supposed to be coincident;
+and he ends it very remarkably,--that he tells the whole truth, and
+nothing but the truth. But it is also remarkable, that even this Hyder
+Beg Kh�n never mentions by name the rebellion of the Begums, nor says
+that he ever heard a word about it: a strong proof that he did not dare,
+in the face of his country, to give countenance to such a falsehood.
+
+Major Gilpin's evidence leaves not even the shadow of a pretence for
+this charge. He had the Begums and their eunuchs under his custody for a
+full year; he was strictly ordered to watch them and to guard them; and
+during all that time he lived at Fyzabad. He was the man who commanded
+the troops, who had all the witnesses in his power, who had daily access
+to all parties at Fyzabad, and who, moreover, was a person attached to
+Mr. Hastings in the strongest manner. Your Lordships will now be pleased
+to hear read to you this part of Major Gilpin's evidence.
+
+"_Q._ Had you any opportunity of knowing the character of the Begums,
+and whether they were disaffected to our government?--_A._ I had a very
+good opportunity of knowing, from the circumstance of my having
+commanded so long there. The elder Begum, it was generally understood,
+(and I have reason to believe,) was disaffected to our government; and
+my sentiments of her conduct stand recorded in my correspondence to the
+court of Lucknow to that effect; but with respect to the Bhow Begum, I
+acquit her entirely of any disaffection to our government, so far as
+comes to my knowledge: appearances were for some time against her; but,
+on cool, deliberate inquiry, I found there was no ground for supposing
+her guilty of any rebellious principles, at the time of Cheyt Sing's
+rebellion.--_Q._ Whether that, according to your belief, is not your
+present opinion?--_A._ I think I have answered that very fully, that it
+was upon those very principles that I did form an opinion of her
+innocence; how far they are justifiable or right I will not take upon me
+to say upon oath; there was no one circumstance that came to my
+knowledge, during my residence at Fyzabad or my residence in India, that
+I would wish to withhold from your Lordships.--_Q._ You state here,
+'upon cool, deliberate inquiry': what was that cool, deliberate
+inquiry?--_A._ That cool, deliberate inquiry was the conversations I had
+with the ministers and the people of Fyzabad, and the letters from
+herself expressing her innocence; and it appeared to me from those
+letters that she really was our friend and ally."
+
+The same witness goes on afterwards to say:--
+
+"_Q._ I understood you to say, that originally the report prevailed with
+respect to both the Begums, but that you was induced to alter that
+opinion with respect to the younger Begum, in consequence of Mr.
+Gordon's letters, and the intelligence of some of her ministers and
+other persons: were not those other persons in the interest of the
+younger Begum?--_A._ In general the town of Fyzabad were in her
+interest.--_Q._ In what sense do you mean generally in her interest?
+Were the persons you conversed with merely those who were in her service
+and household, or the inhabitants of Fyzabad in general?--_A._ Both: I
+held conversations with both her own body-servants and the inhabitants
+of the city."
+
+A little lower down, in the same page:--
+
+"_Q._ What do you mean by the word rebellion, as applied to the Begums?
+In what sense do you use it?--_A._ In raising troops, and in other acts
+of rebellion, in the common acceptation of the word.--_Q._ Against
+whom?--_A._ Against the Nabob's government and the British government
+jointly: but I beg to know the particular time and circumstance the
+question alludes to.--_Q._ I understand you to have said you understood
+the elder Begum was in a constant state of rebellion. In what sense do
+you use the word rebellion? Did you say the elder Begum was in a
+constant state of rebellion?--_A._ I always understood her to be
+disaffected to the English government: it might not be a proper
+expression of mine, the word rebellion.--_Q._ Do you know of any act by
+the elder Begum against the Vizier?--_A._ I cannot state any.--_Q._ Do
+you know of any act which you call rebellion, committed by the elder
+Begum against the Company?--_A._ I do not know of any particular
+circumstance, only it was generally supposed that she was disaffected to
+the Company.--_Q._ What acts of disaffection or hostility towards the
+English do you allude to, when you speak of the conversation of the
+world at the time?--_A._ I have answered that question as fully as I
+can,--that it was nothing but conversation,--that I knew of no
+particular act or deed myself."
+
+This man, then, declares, as your Lordships have heard, that, upon cool,
+deliberate inquiry made at Fyzabad from all the inhabitants, he did not
+believe in the existence of any rebellion;--that as to the Bhow Begum,
+the grandmother, who was a person that could only be charged with it in
+a secondary degree, and as conspiring with the other, he says he knows
+no facts against her, except that at the battle of Buxar, in the year
+1764, she had used some odd expressions concerning the English, who were
+then at war with her son Sujah Dowlah. This was long before we had any
+empire or pretence to empire in that part of India: therefore the
+expression of a rebellion, which he had used with regard to her, was, he
+acknowledged, improper, and that he only meant he had formed some
+opinion of her disaffection to the English.
+
+As to the Begum, he positively acquits her of any rebellion. If he,
+therefore, did not know it, who was an active officer in the very centre
+of the alleged rebellion, and who was in possession of all the persons
+from whom information was to be got, who had the eunuchs in prison, and
+might have charged them with this rebellion, and might have examined and
+cross-examined them at his pleasure,--if this man knew nothing about it,
+your Lordships will judge of the falsehood of this wicked rumor, spread
+about from hand to hand, and which was circulated by persons who at the
+same time have declared that they never heard of it before Sir Elijah
+Impey went up into the country, the messenger of Mr. Hastings's orders
+to seize the treasures of the Begums, and commissioned to procure
+evidence in justification of that violence and robbery.
+
+I now go to another part of this evidence. There is a person they call
+Hoolas Roy,--a man in the employment of the Resident, Mr. Middleton. The
+gentlemen who are counsel for the prisoner have exclaimed, "Oh! he was
+nothing but a news-writer. What! do you take any notice of him?" Your
+Lordships would imagine that the man whom they treat in this manner, and
+whose negative evidence they think fit to despise, was no better than
+the writers of those scandalous paragraphs which are published in our
+daily papers, to misrepresent the proceedings of this court to the
+public. But who in fact is this Hoolas Roy, whom they represent, for the
+convenience of the day, to be nothing but a news-writer? I will read to
+your Lordships a letter from Major Naylor to Colonel Jaques, commanding
+the second battalion, twentieth regiment.
+
+     "Sir,--Hoolas Roy, the person appointed by the Nabob for
+     transacting the business for which the troops are required here,
+     will hold constant communication and intercourse with you; and as
+     he is instructed and acquainted with the best method to accomplish
+     this business, Mr. Middleton requests implicit attention to be paid
+     to what he may from time to time represent respecting the prisoners
+     or the business on which he is employed; in short, as he is the
+     person nominated by the Nabob, he wishes Hoolas Roy to be
+     considered in the same light as if he himself was present."
+
+Mr. Middleton, in a letter to Lieutenant Francis Rutledge, writes thus
+of him:--
+
+     "Sir,--When, this note is delivered to you by Hoolas Roy, I have to
+     desire that you order the two prisoners to be put in irons, keeping
+     them from all food, &c., agreeable to my instructions of
+     yesterday."
+
+You will first see in how confidential a manner Hoolas Roy was employed,
+and in what light he was held: that he was employed to carry some
+instructions which do not indeed appear, but were accompanied by an
+order from Mr. Middleton. "When these instructions shall come to you, to
+put these prisoners in irons and keep them without food, &c." The Begums
+say, without food and water. _Et cetera_ are words of large import; but
+he was "to keep them without food, &c., agreeable to my instructions of
+yesterday." This was a pretty general warrant for sufferings. This
+Hoolas Roy, this mere news-writer, was not only intrusted with this
+warrant, but Mr. Middleton declares him to be a person who was to be
+received there, and to represent the Nabob, and very justly too; for he,
+Mr. Middleton, was undoubtedly the real nabob of the country. The man,
+therefore, whom they talk of in this contemptuous manner in order to
+make slight of an observation we made, and which I shall make again, and
+whom they affect to consider as a mere paragraph-monger in some
+scandalous newspaper, was a man vested by Mr. Middleton with authority
+equal to that of the Nabob himself.
+
+Mr. Hastings not only thought him of consequence enough to be a witness
+to the severities used on the ministers of the Begums, but he considered
+that he would afterwards be a fit witness to the rebellion. I pray your
+Lordships to mark this: he sent for this Hoolas Roy, (who is now nothing
+but a mere paragraph-monger,)--he sent for him from Fyzabad to
+Benares,--a pretty long journey; and at last caused him to be examined
+before Sir Elijah Impey. He has, however, sunk his evidence: a
+suppression which is strongly in favor of the Begums, and equally strong
+against their accuser. Here we have a man who was intrusted with all
+their orders,--who represented the English government,--who represented
+the Nabob's government: this man is sent for by Mr. Hastings; he gives
+his deposition before Sir Elijah Impey; and the deposition so given is
+not to be found either upon the Company's record, in Sir Elijah Impey's
+trunk, in Jonathan Scott's trunk, nor in any other place whatever. The
+evidence of a witness who could speak most clearly, as probably he did,
+and most decisively, upon this subject, is sunk. They suppress, and dare
+not produce, the affidavit of the man who was at the bottom of every
+secret of both governments. They had the folly to let you know,
+obliquely, that he had been sent for by Mr. Hastings, but they conceal
+the information obtained from him: a silence more damning than any
+positive evidence could be. You have here a proof of their practice of
+producing such evidence only as they thought most favorable to their
+wicked purposes, in the destruction of this great and ancient family.
+
+But all the English, they say, believed in the existence of this
+rebellion. This we deny. Mr. Purling, who was Resident the year before
+its pretended explosion, has told you that he never knew of anything
+like a plot carrying on by these women. We were almost ashamed to put
+the question to him. Did Mr. Bristow, the next Resident, know or
+believe in this plot? He seems, indeed, to have been induced to give
+some oblique hints to Mr. Hastings of improper conduct on the part of
+the Begums, but without stating what it was. In a letter to Mr.
+Hastings, he appears to endeavor to soften the cruel temper of this
+inflexible man by going a little way with him, by admitting that he
+thought they had behaved improperly. When Mr. Wombwell, another
+Resident, is asked whether any Englishman doubted of it, he says Mr.
+Bristow doubted of it. No one, indeed, who reads these papers, can avoid
+seeing that Mr. Bristow did not believe one word of it,--no more, in
+fact, than did Mr. Hastings, or anybody else.
+
+But, my Lords, let us go from these inferior agents and servants of the
+Company to their higher officers. Did Mr. Stables believe it? This
+gentleman was Mr. Hastings's colleague in the Council,--a man of as
+much honor, I really believe, as ever went to India,--a faithful old
+servant of the Company, and very worthy of credit. I believe there is
+not a spot upon him during all his long service under the Company: if
+any, it is his being a little too obsequious, sometimes, to Mr.
+Hastings. Did he believe it? No, he did not: and yet he was one of the
+persons authorized to investigate it coolly, and most able to do so.
+
+Upon the whole, then, the persons who best knew the state of the country
+did not believe it; the Nabob did not believe it; the Begums were never
+charged with it; no ground of suspicion is suggested, except loose
+rumors and the story of two nudjeeves. Under these circumstances the
+treasures of these ancient ladies were seized, their property
+confiscated, and the Nabob dragged most reluctantly to this act. Yes,
+my Lords, this poor, miserable victim was forced to violate all the laws
+of Nature, all decency, all property, to rob his own mother, for the
+benefit of Mr. Hastings. All this he was forced to do: he was made the
+reluctant instrument of punishing his mother and grandmother for a plot
+of which even their accusers do not pretend to say that the parties
+accused had ever received any intimation.
+
+My Lords, in forming your judgment upon this nefarious proceeding, your
+Lordships will not fail to advert to the fundamental principles, the
+acknowledged maxims and established rules, of all judgment and
+justice,--that conviction ought to precede execution, that trial ought
+to precede conviction, and that a prosecutor's information and evidence
+ought to be the preliminary step and substance of the trial. Here
+everything was reversed: Sir Elijah Impey goes up with the order for
+execution; the party accused is neither arraigned nor tried; this same
+Sir Elijah then proceeds to seek for witnesses and to take affidavits;
+and in the mean time neither the Nabob, the ostensible prosecutor, nor
+his mother and grandmother, the parties accused, knew one word of the
+matter.
+
+But possibly some peculiarity in the circumstances of the case rendered
+such a proceeding necessary, and may justify it. No such peculiarity has
+been proved or even alleged; nay, it is in the highest degree improbable
+that it could have existed. Mr. Hastings had another opportunity of
+doing himself justice. When an account of this business was transmitted
+to the Court of Directors, they ordered him to inquire into it: and your
+Lordships will see what he did in consequence of this order. Your
+Lordships will then judge of the extreme audacity of the defence which
+he has made of this act at your bar, after having refused to institute
+any inquiry into it, although, he had the positive order of the Court of
+Directors, and was in the place where that inquiry could be made
+effectually, and in the place where the unfortunate women could have an
+opportunity of clearing themselves.
+
+I will first read to your Lordships an extract from the letter of the
+Court of Directors to the board at Calcutta, dated the 14th of February,
+1783.
+
+     "4. By the second article of the treaty [of Chunar] the Nabob is
+     permitted to resume such jaghires as he shall think proper, with a
+     reserve, that all such jaghiredars, for the amount of whose
+     jaghires the Company are guaranties, shall, in case of a resumption
+     of their lands, be paid the amount of the net collections through
+     the Resident.
+
+     "5. We do not see how the Governor-General could consent to the
+     resumption of such lands as the Company had engaged should remain
+     in the hands of those who possessed them previous to the execution
+     of the late treaty, without stronger proofs of the Begums'
+     defection than have been laid before us; neither can we allow it to
+     be good policy to reduce the several jaghiredars, and thus uniting
+     the territory, and the troops maintained for the protection of that
+     territory, under one head, who, by that means, at some future
+     period, may become a very powerful enemy to the Company.
+
+     "6. With respect to the resumption of the jaghires possessed by the
+     Begums in particular, and the subsequent seizure of the treasure
+     deposited with the Vizier's mother, which the Governor-General, in
+     his letter to the board, 23d January, 1782, has declared he
+     strenuously encouraged and supported, we hope and trust, for the
+     honor of the British nation, that the measure appeared to be fully
+     justified in the eyes of all Hindostan. The Governor-General has
+     informed us that it can be well attested, that the Begums
+     principally excited and supported the late commotions, and that
+     they carried their inveteracy to the English nation so far as to
+     aim at our utter extirpation.
+
+     "7. It must have been publicly known that in 1775 the Resident at
+     the Vizier's court not only obtained from the Begum, widow of the
+     late Sujah Dowlah, on the Nabob's account, thirty lacs of rupees,
+     half of which was to be paid to the Company, but also the
+     forbearance of twenty-six lacs, for the repayment of which she had
+     security in land, on the Nabob's agreeing to renounce all further
+     claims upon her, and that to this agreement the Company were
+     guaranties.
+
+     "8. We find that on the 21st December, 1775, the Begum complained
+     of a breach of engagements on the part of the Nabob, soliciting
+     your protection for herself, her mother, and for all the women
+     belonging to the seraglio of the late Nabob, from the distresses to
+     which they were reduced; in consequence whereof it was agreed in
+     consultation, 3d January, 1776, to remonstrate with the
+     Vizier,--the Governor-General remarking, that, as the
+     representative of our government has become an agent in this
+     business, and has pledged the honor and faith of the Company for
+     the punctual observance of the conditions under which the treaty
+     was concluded, you had a right to interfere, and justice demanded
+     it, if it should appear that those engagements have been violated.
+     And the board at the same time resolved, that, as soon as the
+     Begum's engagements with the Nabob, to which Mr. Bristow is a
+     party, shall be fulfilled on her part, this government will think
+     themselves bound to protect her against any further demand or
+     molestation.
+
+     "9. If, therefore, the disaffection of the Begums was not a matter
+     of public notoriety, we cannot but be alarmed for the effects which
+     these subsequent transactions must have had on the minds of the
+     natives of India. The only consolation we feel upon this occasion
+     is, that the amount of those jaghires for which the Company were
+     guaranties is to be paid through our Resident at the court of the
+     Vizier; and it very materially concerns the credit of your
+     government on no account to suffer such payments to be evaded.
+
+     "10. If it shall hereafter be found that the Begums did not take
+     that hostile part against the Company which has been represented,
+     as well in the Governor-General's Narrative as in several documents
+     therein referred to,--and as it nowhere appears, from the papers at
+     present in our possession, that they excited any commotion previous
+     to the imprisonment of Rajah Cheyt Sing, but only armed themselves
+     in consequence of that transaction,--and as it is probable that
+     such a conduct proceeded entirely from motives of self-defence,
+     under an apprehension that they themselves might likewise be laid
+     under unwarrantable contributions,--we direct that you use your
+     influence with the Vizier that their jaghires may be restored to
+     them; but if they should be under apprehensions respecting the
+     future conduct of the Vizier, and wish our further protection, it
+     is our pleasure that you afford those ladies an asylum within the
+     Company's territories, and there be paid the amount of the net
+     collections of their jaghires, agreeably to the second article of
+     the late treaty, through the medium of our Resident, as may be
+     ascertained upon an average estimate of some years back."
+
+You see, my Lords, the Directors had received every one of his false
+impressions. They had conceived an idea, that, after the rebellion of
+Cheyt Sing, (but not before, upon his own showing,) the Begums had shown
+a disposition to arm. They here assume a false fact, which Mr. Hastings
+stated in his representation of the business to them. They assume a
+variety of other false facts: they assume that the amount of the
+jaghires of the Begums were to be paid them in regular pensions; whereas
+they were totally confiscated, without any compensation at all. And yet,
+upon Mr. Hastings's own showing, they found the transaction to be so
+dishonorable to the British government, that they desire him to make
+inquiry into it, and give redress accordingly.
+
+Here, then, is another order of the Company, another call upon Mr.
+Hastings to examine to the bottom of this affair. The Directors, after
+giving him credit for that enormous mass of falsehoods which we have
+proved him to have stated in his Narrative, found themselves so utterly
+dissatisfied, that they gave this conditional order to restore the
+Begums to their jaghires. Your Lordships will find it in evidence upon
+your minutes, that he contumaciously disobeyed this order,--that he
+would not consent to the propositions of the Council for inquiring into
+the conduct of these injured women, but stifled every attempt that was
+made by others to do them justice. And yet he here has the effrontery to
+propose that your Lordships should inquire into the business at your
+bar,--that you should investigate a matter here which he refused to
+inquire into on the spot, though expressly ordered by his masters so to
+do.
+
+I will now read to your Lordships a short extract from his own narrative
+of his own proceedings. It begins with reciting part of a note entered
+by Mr. Macpherson in the Consultations of the Council, at the time when
+the orders of the Court of Directors which I have just alluded to were
+taken into consideration.
+
+"What the Court of Directors seem to have most at heart are, first, that
+the engagement of the second article of the Benares treaty should be
+faithfully fulfilled,--and, secondly, to guard against the future
+misconduct of the Vizier, if he should be disposed to oppress the
+Begums; that we should therefore ascertain whether the amount of the
+jaghires of the Begums is regularly paid to them through the Company's
+Resident, and give them notice that no future demands shall be made upon
+them. This the Governor-General might, I think, do in a letter that
+would make the Begums sensible of their past misconduct, yet inform them
+of the lenity and gracious intentions of the Company, in ordering them
+an asylum in Bengal, in case of future distress."
+
+In consequence of the foregoing opinion from Mr. Macpherson, the
+following minute was delivered by the Governor-General.
+
+"I should gladly acquiesce in the motion made by Mr. Macpherson, if I
+thought it possible to frame a letter to the Begums in any terms which
+should at the same time convey the intimation proposed by it and not
+defeat the purpose of it, or be productive of evils greater than any
+which exist in consequence of the proceedings which have already taken
+place, and which time has almost obliterated. The orders of the Court of
+Directors are conditional; they require nothing, but in the event of
+discoveries made subsequent to the advices which were before you on the
+14th February last, in alleviation of the former conduct of the Begums.
+Nothing has since appeared in relation to them, but their refusal, or
+rather that of one, to fulfil her engagements for the payment of the
+remainder of the sum exacted from her by the Nabob Vizier in the
+beginning of last year. Whatever obedience may be due to the clear
+ascertained spirit of the orders of the Court of Directors, this
+obligation cannot extend to points to which neither the letter nor
+evident spirit of their orders apply. If I am rightly informed, the
+Nabob Vizier and the Begums are on terms of mutual good-will. It would
+ill become this government to interpose its influence by any act which
+might tend to revive their animosities: and a very slight occasion would
+be sufficient to effect it. It will be to little purpose to tell them
+that their conduct has, in our estimation of it, been very wrong, and at
+the same time to announce to them the orders of our superiors, which
+more than indicate the reverse. They will instantly take fire on such a
+declaration, proclaim the judgment of the Company in their favor, demand
+a reparation of the acts which they will construe wrongs with such a
+sentence warranting that construction,--and either accept the
+invitation, to the proclaimed scandal of the Vizier, which will not add
+to the credit of our government, or remain in his dominions, but not
+under his authority, to add to his vexations and the disorders of the
+country, by continual intrigues and seditions. Enough already exists to
+affect his peace, and the quiet of his people; if we cannot heal, let us
+not inflame the wounds which have been inflicted.
+
+"If the Begums think themselves aggrieved to such a degree as to justify
+them in an appeal to a foreign jurisdiction,--to appeal to it against a
+man standing in the relation of son and grandson to them,--to appeal to
+the justice of those who have been the abettors and instruments of their
+imputed wrongs,--let us at least permit them to be the judges of their
+own feelings, and prefer their complaints before we offer to redress
+them: they will not need to be prompted. I hope I shall not depart from
+the simplicity of official language, in saying, that the majesty of
+justice ought to be approached with solicitation, not descend to provoke
+or invite it, much less to debase itself by the suggestion of wrongs and
+the promise of redress, with the denunciation of punishment before
+trial, and even before accusation."
+
+My Lords, if, since the beginning of the world, such a paper as this was
+ever before written by a person standing in the relation of a servant to
+his master, I shall allow that every word we have said to your Lordships
+upon this occasion to mark his guilt ought to be expunged from your
+minutes and from our charges.
+
+Before I proceed to make any observations upon this act of open
+rebellion against his superiors, I must beg your Lordships to remark the
+cruelty of purpose, the hostile feeling, towards these injured women,
+which were displayed in this daring defiance. Your Lordships will find
+that he never is a rebel to one party without being a tyrant to some
+others; that _rebel_ and _tyrant_ are correlative terms, when applied to
+him, and that they constantly go together.
+
+It is suggested by the Directors, that the Nabob is the persecutor, the
+oppressor, and that Mr. Hastings is the person who is to redress the
+wrong. But here they have mistaken the matter totally. For we have
+proved to your Lordships that Mr. Hastings was the principal in the
+persecution, and that the Nabob was only an instrument. "If I am rightly
+informed," he says, "the Nabob and the Begums are on terms of mutual
+good-will. It would ill become this government to interpose its
+influence by any act which might tend to revive their animosities: and a
+very slight occasion would be sufficient to effect it." What animosities
+had they towards each other? None that we know of. Mr. Hastings gets the
+Nabob to rob his mother; and then he supposes, contrary to truth,
+contrary to fact, contrary to everything your Lordships have heard, that
+the Nabob would fall into a fury, if his mother was to obtain any
+redress,--and that, if the least inquiry into this business was made, it
+would create a flame in the Nabob's mind, on account of the active,
+energetic, spirited part he had taken in these transactions.
+"Therefore," says he, "oh, for God's sake, soothe the matter! It is a
+green wound; don't uncover it; do nothing to irritate. It will be to
+little purpose to tell them that their conduct has in our estimation of
+it been very wrong, and at the same time announce to them the orders of
+our superiors, which more than indicate the reverse." Now, my Lords, to
+what does all this amount? "First," says he, "I will not do them
+justice,--I will not enter upon an inquiry into their wrongs." Why?
+"Because they charge us with having inflicted them." Then, surely, for
+that reason, you ought to commence an inquiry. "No," says he, "that
+would be telling them that our superiors suspect we are in the wrong."
+But when his superiors more than indicated suspicions, was he not bound
+tenfold to make that inquiry, for his honor and for their satisfaction,
+which they direct him to make? No, he will not do it, "because," says
+he, "the Begums would either accept the offer of an asylum in the
+Company's territories, to the proclaimed scandal of the Vizier, which
+would not add to the credit of our government, or they would remain in
+his dominions, but not under his authority, to add to his vexations, and
+the disorders of the country, by continual intrigues and seditions."
+
+You see, my Lords, this man is constantly thrusting this peaceable Nabob
+before him; goading and pushing him on, as if with a bayonet behind, to
+the commission of everything that is base and dishonorable. You have him
+here declaring that he will not satisfy the Directors, his masters, in
+their inquiries about those acts, for fear of the Nabob's taking
+umbrage, and getting into a flame with his mother,--and for fear the
+mother, supported by the opinion of the Directors, should be induced to
+resent her wrongs. What, I say, does all this amount to? It amounts to
+this:--"The Begums accuse me of doing them injustice; the Directors
+indicate a suspicion that they have been injured; therefore I will not
+inquire into the matter." Why? "Because it may raise disturbances." But
+what disturbance could it raise? The mother is disarmed, and could not
+hurt the Nabob. All her landed estates he knew were confiscated; he knew
+all her money was in his own possession; he knew she had not the means,
+if she had been disposed, to create intrigues and cabals;--what
+disturbance, then, could be created by his sending a letter to know what
+she had to say upon the subject of her wrongs?
+
+"_If_" says he, "_the Begums think themselves aggrieved._" Observe, my
+Lords, that the institution of an inquiry is no measure of the Begums;
+it is an order of the Court of Directors, made by them upon his own
+representation of his own case, and upon nothing else. The Begums did
+not dare to murmur; they did not dare to ask for redress, God knows the
+poor creatures were, at or about the time, his
+prisoners,--robbed,--stripped of everything,--without hope and without
+resource. But the Directors, doing their duty upon that occasion, did
+condemn him upon his own false representations contained in that bundle
+of affidavits upon which his counsel now contend that your Lordships
+should acquit him.--"But," says he, "are they to _appeal to a foreign
+jurisdiction_?" When these women were to be robbed, we were not
+foreigners to them; on the contrary, we adjudged them guilty of
+rebellion. We sent an English chief-justice to collect materials of
+accusation against them. We sent English officers to take their money.
+The whole was an English transaction. When wrong is to be done, we have
+then an interest in the country to justify our acting in it; but when
+the question is of redressing wrongs, when the question is of doing
+justice, when the question is of inquiry, when the question is of
+hearing complaints, then it is a foreign jurisdiction. You are to suffer
+Mr. Hastings--to make it foreign, or to make it domestic, just as it
+answers his purposes.--But they are "_to appeal against a man standing
+in the relation of son and grandson to them, and to appeal to the
+justice of those who have been the abettors and instruments of their
+imputed wrongs_." Why, my Lords, if he allows that he is the abettor of,
+and the instrument to which the Directors impute these wrongs, why, I
+ask, does he, with those charges lying upon him, object to all inquiry
+in the manner you have seen?
+
+But the Company's Governor is, it seems, all at once transformed into a
+great sovereign;--"_the majesty of justice ought to be approached with
+solicitation_." Here, my Lords, he forgets at once the Court of
+Directors, he forgets the laws of England, he forgets the act of
+Parliament, he forgets that any obedience is due to his superiors. The
+Begums were to approach him by the orders of the Court of Directors; he
+sets at nought these orders, and asserts that he must be approached with
+solicitations.
+
+"_Time_," says he, "_has obliterated their sufferings._" Oh, what a balm
+of oblivion time spreads over the wrongs, wounds, and afflictions of
+others, in the mind of the person who inflicts those wrongs and
+oppressions! The oppressor soon forgets. This robbery took place in
+17[81]; it was in the year 1783 when he asserted that the waters of
+Lethe had been poured over all their wrongs and oppressions. Your
+Lordships will mark this insulting language, when he says that both the
+order of the Directors and the application of the Begums for redress
+must be _solicitations to him_.
+
+     [Here Mr. Burke was interrupted by Mr. Hastings, who said, "My
+     Lords, there was no order. I find a man's patience may be
+     exhausted. I hear so many falsehoods, that I must declare there was
+     no order of the Court of Directors. Forgive me, my Lords. He may
+     say what he pleases; I will not again controvert it. But there is
+     no order; if there is, read it." Mr. Burke then proceeded.]
+
+Judge you, my Lords, what the insolence, audacity, and cruelty of this
+man must have been, from his want of patience in his present situation,
+and when he dares to hold this language here. Your Lordships will reckon
+with him for it, or the world will reckon with you.
+
+     [Mr. Hastings here again interrupted Mr. Burke, and said, "There
+     was no order for inquiry."]
+
+_Mr. Burke._--Your Lordships have heard the letter read,--I mean the
+letter from the Directors, which I read just now. You will judge whether
+it is an order or not. I did hope within these two days to put an end to
+this business; but when your Lordships hear us charged with direct
+falsehood at your bar, when you hear this wicked wretch who is before
+you--
+
+     [_From a Lord._--Order! order! order!]
+
+_Mr. Burke._--Order, my Lords, we call for, in the name of the Commons!
+Your Lordships have heard us accused at your bar of falsehood, after we
+had read the order upon which our assertion was founded. This man, whom
+we have described as the scourge and terror of India, this man gets up,
+and charges us, not with a mistake, an error, a wrong construction, but
+a direct falsehood,--and adds, that his patience is worn out with the
+falsehood he hears. This is not an English court of justice, if such a
+thing is permitted. We beg leave to retire, and take instructions from
+our constituents. He ought to be sent to Bridewell for going on in this
+manner.
+
+     [_Mr. Wyndham here read the letter again._]
+
+_Mr. Burke._--With regard to the ravings of this unhappy man, I am sure,
+if I were only considering what passed from him to the Managers in this
+box, and knowing what allowance is due to a wounded conscience, brought
+before an awful tribunal, and smarting under the impressions of its own
+guilt, I would pass them over. But, my Lords, we have the honor of the
+Commons, we have the honor of this court to sustain. [Your Lordships,
+the other day, for an offence committed against a constable, who was
+keeping the way under your orders, did, very justly, and to the great
+satisfaction of the public, commit the party to Bridewell, for a much
+slighter insult against the honor and dignify of your court.] And I
+leave it, therefore, for the present, till your Lordships can seriously
+consider what the mode of proceeding in this matter ought to be.--I now
+proceed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have read to your Lordships the orders of the Court of Directors: I
+again say we consider them as orders: your Lordships are as good judges
+of the propriety of the term as we are. You have heard them read; you
+have also heard that the Council at Calcutta considered them as orders,
+for resolutions were moved upon them; and Mr. Stables, in evidence
+before you here, who was one of the Council, so considered them: and yet
+this man has the frantic audacity in this place to assert that they were
+not orders, and to declare that he cannot stand the repetition of such
+abominable falsehoods as are perpetually urged against him. We cannot
+conceive that your Lordships will suffer this; and if you do, I promise
+you the Commons will not suffer the justice of the country to be trifled
+with and insulted in this manner: because, if such conduct be suffered
+by your Lordships, they must say that very disagreeable consequences
+will ensue, and very disagreeable inferences will be drawn by the public
+concerning it. You will forgive, and we know how to forgive, the ravings
+of people smarting under a conscious sense of their guilt. But when we
+are reading documents given in evidence, and are commenting upon them,
+the use of this kind of language really deserves your Lordships'
+consideration. As for us, we regard it no more than we should other
+noise and brawlings of criminals who in irons may be led through the
+streets, raving at the magistrate that has committed them. We consider
+him as a poor, miserable man, railing at his accusers: it is natural he
+should fall into all these frantic ravings, but it is not fit or natural
+that the Court should indulge him in them. Your Lordships shall now hear
+in what sense Mr. Wheler and Mr. Stables, two other members of the
+Council, understood this letter.
+
+Mr. Wheler thus writes.--"It always has been and always will be my wish
+to conform implicitly to the orders of the Court of Directors, and I
+trust that the opinion which I shall give upon that part of the Court's
+letter which is now before us will not be taken up against its meaning,
+as going to a breach of them. The orders at present under the board's
+consideration are entirely provisional. Nothing has passed since the
+conclusion of the agreement made by the Governor-General with the Vizier
+at Chunar which induces me to alter the opinion which I before held, as
+well from the Governor-General's reports to this board as the opinions
+which I have heard of many individuals totally unconcerned in the
+subject, that the Begums at Fyzabad did take a hostile part against the
+Company during the disturbances in Benares; and I am impressed with a
+conviction that the conduct of the Begums did not proceed entirely from
+motives of self-defence. But as the Court of Directors appear to be of a
+different opinion, and conceive that there ought to be stronger proofs
+of the defection of the Begums than have been laid before them, I think,
+that, before we decide on their orders, the late and present Resident at
+the Vizier's court, and the commanding officers in the Vizier's country,
+ought to be required to collect and lay before the board all the
+information they can obtain with respect to the defection of the Begums
+during the troubles in Benares, and their present disposition to the
+Company."
+
+Mr. Stables, September 9th, 1783, writes thus.--"The Court of Directors,
+by their letter of the 14th February, 1783, seem not to be satisfied
+that the disaffection of the Begums to this government is sufficiently
+proved by the evidence before them. I therefore think that the late and
+present Resident and commanding officers in the Vizier's country at the
+time should be called upon to collect what further information they can
+on this subject, in which the honor and dignity of this government is so
+materially concerned, that such information may be immediately
+transmitted to the Court of Directors."
+
+When questioned upon this subject at your Lordships' bar, he gives this
+evidence.--"_Q._ What was your motive for proposing that
+investigation?--_A._ A letter from the Court of Directors; I conceived
+it to be ordered by them.--_Q._ Did you conceive the letter of the Court
+of Directors positively to direct that inquiry?--_A._ I did so certainly
+at the time, and I beg to refer to the minutes which expressed it."--A
+question was put to the same witness by a noble lord. "_Q._ The witness
+has stated, that at the time he has mentioned he conceived the letter
+from the Court of Directors to order an inquiry, and that it was upon
+that opinion that he regulated his conduct, and his proposal for such
+inquiry. I wish to know whether the expression, '_at the time_,' was
+merely casual, or am I to understand from it that the witness has
+altered his opinion of the intention of this letter since that
+time?--_A._ I certainly retain that opinion, and I wished the inquiry to
+go on."
+
+My Lords, you see that his colleagues so understood it; you see that we
+so understood it; and still you have heard the prisoner, after charging
+us with falsehood, insultingly tell us we may go on as we please, we may
+go on in our own way. If your Lordships think that it was not a positive
+order, which Mr. Hastings was bound to obey, you will acquit him of the
+breach of it. But it is a most singular thing, among all the astonishing
+circumstances of this case, that this man, who has heard from the
+beginning to the end of his trial breaches of the Company's orders
+constantly charged upon him,--(nay, I will venture to say, that there is
+not a single step that we have taken in this prosecution, or in
+observations upon evidence, in which we have not charged him with an
+avowed direct breach of the Company's order,--you have heard it ten
+times this day,--in his defence before the Commons he declares he did
+intentionally, in naming Mr. Markham, break the Company's orders,)--it
+is singular, I say, that this man should now pretend to be so sore upon
+this point. What is it now that makes him break through all the rules of
+common decency and common propriety, and show all the burnings of guilt,
+upon being accused of the breach of one of the innumerable orders which
+he has broken, of which he has avowed the breaking, and attempted to
+justify himself a thousand times in the Company's books for having
+broken?
+
+My Lords, one of his own body, one of the Council, has sworn at your bar
+what he repeatedly declared to be his sense of it. We consider it as one
+of the strongest orders that can be given, because the reason of the
+order is added to it: the Directors declaring, that, if it should not be
+found upon inquiry, (you see, my Lords, it puts the very case,)--"if you
+do not find such and such things, we shall consider the English honor
+wounded and stained, and we direct you to make reparation." There are,
+in fact, two orders contained in this letter, which we take to be
+equally strong and positive,--and we charge him with the breach of both:
+namely, the order for inquiry, and the conditional order of restoring to
+the Begums their jaghires, or making satisfaction for them; and in case
+of any apprehension of reluctance in the Nabob, to bring them for
+security into the Company's territories. The two last positive orders
+are preceded by the supposition of an inquiry which was to justify him
+either in the acts he had done or to justify him in making restitution.
+He did neither the one nor the other. We aver that he disobeyed all
+these orders. And now let his impatience break out again.
+
+Your Lordships have seen, amongst the various pretences by which this
+man has endeavored to justify his various delinquencies, that of fearing
+to offend the Nabob by the restoration of their jaghires to the Begums
+is one. Your Lordships will form your own judgment of the truth or
+falsehood of this pretence, when you shall have heard the letter which I
+shall now read to you, written to Mr. Hastings by the Nabob himself.
+
+
+     _Letter from the Nabob Vizier to Mr. Hastings, 25th February,
+     1782._
+
+     "You performed on every occasion towards me whatever was becoming
+     of friendship: I, too, have done whatever affection required and
+     you commanded; and in future also, whatever may be your pleasure,
+     there shall be no deviation therefrom, because whatever you direct
+     is altogether for my benefit. The business for which I came to
+     Fyzabad is become settled by your favor: particulars will become
+     known to your wisdom from the writings of Mr. Middleton. I am
+     grateful for your favors. If in these matters you sincerely approve
+     me, communicate it, for it will be a comfort to me. Having
+     appointed my own aumils to the jaghire of the lady mother, I have
+     engaged to pay her cash. She has complied with my views. Her
+     pleasure is, that, after receiving an engagement, he should deliver
+     up the jaghires. What is your pleasure in this matter? If you
+     command, it will comfort the lady mother giving her back the
+     jaghire after I have obtained my views; or I will have it under my
+     aumil. I am obedient to your pleasure."
+
+Your Lordships here see the Begum a suppliant to have her jaghire
+restored, (after entering into some engagement that might have been
+required of her,) and the Nabob, in a tone equally suppliant, expressing
+his consent, at least, that her request should be complied with, if the
+command of Mr. Hastings could be procured.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, in order to save your Lordships' time, and that I might not
+overload this business, I did not intend to have troubled you with any
+observations upon this part of it; but the charge of falsehood which the
+prisoner at your bar has had the audacity to bring against us has
+induced me to lay it more particularly before, you. We have now done
+with it; but before we retire, your Lordships will permit me to
+recapitulate briefly the substance of what has now been urged respecting
+his conduct towards these miserable women. We accuse him of reiterated
+breaches of the orders of the Court of Directors, both in the letter and
+spirit of them, and of his contempt of the opinions which his colleagues
+in office had formed of them. We charge him with the aggravation of
+these delinquencies, by the oppression and ruin which they brought upon
+the family of the Nabob, by the infraction of treaties, and by the
+disrepute which in his person was sustained by the government he
+represented, and by the stain left upon the justice, honor, and good
+faith of the English nation. We charge him with their farther
+aggravation by sundry false pretences alleged by him in justification of
+this conduct, the pretended reluctance of the Nabob, the fear of
+offending him, the suggestion of the Begums having forgotten and
+forgiven the wrongs they had suffered, and of the danger of reviving
+their discontent by any attempt to redress them, and by his insolent
+language, that the majesty of justice with which he impudently invests
+himself was only to be approached with solicitation. We have farther
+stated, that the pretence that he was only concerned in this business as
+an accessary is equally false; it being, on the contrary, notorious,
+that the Nabob was the accessary, forced into the service, and a mere
+instrument in his hands, and that he and Sir Elijah Impey (whose
+employment in this business we stated as a farther aggravation) were the
+authors and principal agents. And we farther contend, that each of these
+aggravations and pretences is itself, in fact and in its principle, a
+substantive crime.
+
+Your Lordships witnessed the insolence with which this man, stung to the
+quick by the recital of his crime, interrupted me; and you heard his
+recrimination of falsehood against us. We again avouch the truth of all
+and every word we have uttered, and the validity of every proof with
+which we have supported them. Let his impatience, I say, now again burst
+forth,--he who feels so sensibly everything that touches him, and yet
+seeks for an act of indemnity for his own atrocities, by endeavoring to
+make you believe that the wrongs of a desolated family are within one
+year forgotten by them, and buried in oblivion.
+
+I trust, my Lords, that both his prosecutors and his judges will evince
+that patience which the criminal wants. Justice is not to wait to have
+its majesty approached with solicitation. We see that throne in which
+resides invisibly, but virtually, the majesty of England; we see your
+Lordships representing, in succession, the juridical authority in the
+highest court in this kingdom: but we do not approach you with
+solicitation; we make it a petition of right; we claim it; we demand it.
+The right of seeking redress is not suppliant, even before the majesty
+of England; it comes boldly forward, and never thinks it offends its
+sovereign by claiming what is the right of all his people.
+
+We have now done with this business: a business as atrocious as any that
+is known in the history of mankind; a business that has stained,
+throughout all Asia, the British character, and by which our fame for
+honor, integrity, and public faith has been forfeited; a business which
+has introduced us throughout that country as breakers of faith,
+destroyers of treaties, plunderers of the weak and unprotected, and has
+dishonored and will forever dishonor the British name. Your Lordships
+have had all this in evidence. You have seen in what manner the Nabob,
+his country, his revenues, his subjects, his mother, his family, his
+nobility, and all their fortunes, real and personal, have been disposed
+of by the prisoner at your bar; and having seen this, you will by the
+impatience of this criminal estimate the patience of the unfortunate
+women into whose injuries he refused to inquire. What he would not do
+the Commons have done. They know that you have a feeling different from
+that which he manifested on this occasion; they do not approach you
+suppliantly, but demand justice; they insist, that, as the Commons have
+done their part, your Lordships will perform yours.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We shall next proceed to show your Lordships how he acted towards
+another set of women, the women of the late Sujah Dowlah, and for whom
+the Directors had ordered a maintenance to be secured by an express
+treaty. You will see that he is cruel towards the weak sex, and to all
+others in proportion as they are weak and powerless to resist him. You
+will see, I say, when he had usurped the whole government of Oude, and
+brought it into a servile dependence on himself, how these women fared;
+and then your Lordships will judge whether or not, and in what degree,
+he is criminal.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+SEVENTH DAY. THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--When I had last the honor of addressing your Lordships from
+this place, my observations were principally directed to the unjust
+confiscation and seizure of the jaghires and treasures of the Begums,
+without previous accusation, or trial, or subsequent inquiry into their
+conduct, in violation of a treaty made with them and guarantied by the
+East India Company,--to the long imprisonment and cruel treatment of
+their ministers, and to the false pretences and abominable principles by
+which the prisoner at your bar has attempted to justify his conduct. The
+several acts of violence and of oppression were, as we have shown your
+Lordships, committed with circumstances of aggravated atrocity highly
+disgraceful to the British name and character,--and particularly by his
+forcing the Nabob to become the means and instrument of reducing his
+mother and grandmother and their families to absolute want and distress.
+
+I have now to call your attention to his treatment of another branch of
+this miserable family,--the women and children of the late Nabob Sujah
+ul Dowlah. These persons were dependent upon the Begums, and by the
+confiscation of their property, and by the ruin of various persons who
+would otherwise have contributed to their maintenance, were reduced to
+the last extremity of indigence and want. Being left without the common
+necessaries of life, they were driven to the necessity of breaking
+through all those local principles of decorum which constitute the
+character of the female sex in that part of the world; and after
+fruitless supplications and shrieks of famine, they endeavored to break
+the inclosure of the palace, and to force their way to the market-place,
+in order to beg for bread. When they had thus been forced to submit to
+the extremity of disgrace and degradation, by exposing themselves to
+public view with the starving children of their late sovereign, the
+brothers and sisters of the reigning prince, they were, in this attempt,
+attacked by the sepoys armed with bludgeons, and driven back by blows
+into the palace.
+
+My Lords, we have first laid before you the sufferings and disgraces of
+women of the first distinction in Asia, protected by their rank,
+protected by their sex, protected by their near relation to the prince
+of the country, protected by two guaranties of the representative of the
+British government in India. We now come to another class of women, who
+suffered by the violent misappropriation of the revenues of the Nabob,
+by which their regular allowance was taken from them; and your Lordships
+will find that this man's crimes, at every step we take, ripen in guilt,
+his acts of positive injustice are always aggravated by his conduct with
+regard to the consequences of them, and form but a small part in the
+mass of oppression and tyranny which we have brought before you.
+
+My Lords, the unjust seizure of the jaghires and treasures of the
+Begums, out of which those women were maintained, reduced them to a
+state of indigence, and exposed them not only to the sufferings which
+belong to the physical nature of man, but also to the indignities which
+particularly affected their sex and condition. But before I proceed, I
+will beg leave to restate to your Lordships and recall to your memory
+who these women were.
+
+The Nabob Sujah Dowlah had but one legitimate wife. Though the Mahometan
+law admits of this number's being extended in certain cases even to
+four, yet it is for the most part held disreputable, especially when a
+person is married to a woman of the first distinction, to have more than
+one legitimate wife. Upon looking into the Hedaya, your Lordships will
+see with what extreme rigor fornication is forbidden; but we know that
+persons of high rank, by customs that supersede both religion and laws,
+add to the number of their wives, or substitute in their room wives of a
+subordinate description, and indulge themselves in this license to an
+unlimited degree. You will find in Chardin's Travels, where he treats of
+the subject of marriage, that such is the custom of all the princes of
+the East. The wives of this subordinate class, though they are in
+reality no better than concubines, and are subject to the power and
+caprices of their lords, are yet allowed, in the eye of the severest
+moralists, to have some excuse for their frailty and their weakness; and
+they accordingly always do find a degree of favor in this world, and
+become the object of particular protection.
+
+We know that Sujah ul Dowlah was a man unquestionably in his manners
+very licentious with regard to women, that he had a great number of
+these women in his family, and that his women and the women attendant
+upon the persons of his favorites had increased to a very great number.
+We know that his sons amounted to twenty,--or, according to Mr.
+Hastings's own account, to nineteen. Montesquieu supposes that there are
+more females born in the East than in the West. But he says this upon no
+good ground. We know by better and more regular information concerning
+this matter, that the birth of males and females in that country is in
+the same proportion as it is here; and therefore, if you suppose that he
+had twenty sons, you may suppose he had about nineteen daughters. By the
+customs of that country, all these sons and daughters were considered as
+persons of eminent distinction, though inferior to the legitimate
+children,--assuming the rank of their father, without considering the
+rank which their mother held. All these wives with their children, and
+all their female servants and attendants, amounting in the whole to
+about eight hundred persons, were shut up in what they call the _Khord
+Mohul_, or Lesser Palace. This place is described by one of the
+witnesses to be about as large as St. James's Square. Your Lordships
+have been told, that, in other circumstances as well as this, these
+women were considered as objects of a great degree of respect, and of
+the greatest degree of protection. I refer your Lordships to the treaty
+by which their maintenance was guarantied by the English government.
+
+In order to let your Lordships see that I state nothing to you but what
+is supported not only by general history, which is enough to support an
+account of general manners, but by the particular and peculiar opinions
+of a person best informed of the nature of the case, I will refer you to
+the Nabob himself: for, undoubtedly, the Nabob of Oude, the Vizier of
+the Empire, the Subahdar of the country, was most likely to be the best
+judge of what respect was due to the women of his father's family. I
+will therefore read to your Lordships, from his own letters, what the
+Nabob's opinion was upon this subject.
+
+
+     _Extract of a Letter from the Vizier, received 23d of August,
+     1782._
+
+     "I never found resource equal to the necessary expenses. Every
+     year, by taking from the ministers, and selling the articles of my
+     harkhanna, I with great distress transacted the business. But I
+     could not take care of my dependants: so that some of my brothers,
+     from their difficulties, arose and departed; and the people of the
+     Khord Mohul of the late Nabob, who are all my mothers, from their
+     distresses are reduced to poverty and involved in difficulties. No
+     man of rank is deficient in the care of his dependants, in
+     proportion to his ability."
+
+
+     _Another Letter from the Vizier, received the 31st July, 1784._
+
+     "My brother, dear as life, Saadut Ali Kh�n, has requested that I
+     would permit his mother to go and reside with him. My friend, all
+     the mothers of my brothers, and the women of the late Nabob, whom I
+     respect as my own mothers, are here, and it is incumbent upon me to
+     support them: accordingly I do it; and it is improper that they
+     should be separated, nor do I approve it. By God's blessing and
+     your kindness, I hope that all the women of the late Nabob may
+     remain here; it is the wish also of my grandmother and my mother
+     that they should."
+
+Your Lordships now see in what degree of estimation the Nabob held these
+women. He regarded the wives of his father as his honorary mothers; he
+considers their children as his brethren; he thinks it would be highly
+dishonorable to his government, if one of them was taken out of the
+sanctuary in which they are placed, and in which, he says, the great of
+the country are obliged to maintain their dependants. This is the
+account given by the person best acquainted with the usages of the
+country, best acquainted with his own duties, best acquainted with his
+own wishes.
+
+Now, my Lords, you will see in what light another person, the agent of a
+trading company, who designates himself under the name of Majesty, and
+assumes other great distinctions, presumes also to consider these
+persons,--and in what contempt he is pleased to hold what is respected
+and what is held sacred in that country. What I am now going to quote is
+from the prisoner's second defence. For I must remind your Lordships
+that Mr. Hastings has made three defences,--one in the House of Commons,
+another in the lobby of the House of Commons, and a third at your
+Lordships' bar. The second defence, though delivered without name, to
+the members in the lobby of the House of Commons, has been proved at
+your Lordships' bar to be written by himself. This lobby, this
+out-of-door defence, militates in some respects, as your Lordships will
+find, with the in-door defence; but it probably contains the real
+sentiments of Mr. Hastings himself, delivered with a little more
+freeness when he gets into the open air,--like the man who was so vain
+of some silly plot he had hatched, that he told it to the
+hackney-coachman, and every man he met in the streets.
+
+He says,--"Begums are the ladies of an Eastern prince; but these women
+are also styled the ladies of the late Vizier, and their sufferings are
+painted in such strong colors that the unsuspecting reader is led to mix
+the subjects together, and to suppose that these latter, too, were
+princesses of Oude, that all their sufferings proceeded from some act of
+mine, or had the sanction of my authority or permission. The fact is,
+that the persons of the Khord Mohul (or Little Seraglio) were young
+creatures picked up wherever youth and beauty could be found, and mostly
+purchased from amongst the most necessitous and meanest ranks of the
+people, for the Nabob's pleasures." In the in-door defence, he says,
+"The said women, who were mostly persons of low condition, and the said
+children, if any such there were, lived in the Khord Mohul, on an
+establishment entirely distinct from the said Begums'."
+
+My Lords, you have seen what was the opinion of the Nabob, who ought to
+know the nature and circumstances of his father's palace, respecting
+these women; you hear what Mr. Hastings's opinion is: and now the
+question is, whether your Lordships will consider these women in the
+same light in which the person does who is most nearly connected with
+them and most likely to know them, or in the way in which Mr. Hastings
+has thought proper, within doors and without doors, to describe them.
+Your Lordships will be pleased to observe that he has brought no proof
+whatever of facts which are so boldly asserted by him in defiance of
+proof to the contrary, totally at variance with the letter of the son of
+the man to whom these women belonged. Your Lordships, I say, will remark
+that he has produced not one word of evidence, either within the House
+of Commons or the House of Peers, or in the lobby, or anywhere else, to
+verify any one word he has said. He slanders these women in order to
+lessen that compassion which your Lordships might have for the
+sufferings he inflicted upon them. But admitting that some of these
+women were of a meaner condition, and that they derived nothing from
+their connection with the dignity of the person by whom they had
+children, (and we know that in the whole they amounted to about
+fourscore children, the Nabob having a race like the patriarchs of old,
+as many great persons in that part of the world still have,)--supposing,
+I say, all this to be true, yet, when persons are reduced from ease and
+affluence to misery and distress, they naturally excite in the mind a
+greater degree of compassion by comparing the circumstances in which
+they once stood with those into which they are fallen: for famine,
+degradation, and oppression were famine, degradation, and oppression to
+those persons, even though they were as mean as Mr. Hastings chooses to
+represent them. But I hope, as you will sympathize with the great on
+account of their condition, that you will sympathize with all mankind on
+the ground of the common condition of humanity which belongs to us all;
+therefore I hope your Lordships will not consider the calumny of Mr.
+Hastings against those women as any other than as an aggravation of his
+offence against them. That is the light in which the House of Commons
+considered it; for they had heard both his in-door and out-door defence,
+and they still persevered in making the charge, and do persevere in
+making it still.
+
+We have first stated what these women were,--in what light they stood
+with the Nabob,--in what light they stood with the country at large. I
+have now to state in what light they stood with the British government,
+previous to this invasion of their rights; and we will prove they were
+the actual subjects of a guaranty by the Company.
+
+
+     _Extract from an Agreement made by Mr. Middleton, to all the
+     Particulars of which he engages to procure a Treaty from the Nabob
+     Asoph ul Dowlah, after his Arrival, and that he will also sign it,
+     as follows._
+
+     "First, That, whenever the Begum shall choose to go to Mecca, she
+     shall be permitted to go.
+
+     "Second, That, when the Nabob shall arrive, I [Mr. Middleton] will
+     procure suitable allowances to be made to the ladies of the zenanah
+     and the children of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah, and take care
+     that they are paid.
+
+     "Third, That the festivals (_shadee_) and marriages of the children
+     of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah shall be at the disposal of the
+     Begum: whenever she thinks proper, she shall marry them; and
+     whatever money shall be necessary for these expenses shall be paid
+     by the Nabob.
+
+     "Fourth, That the syer of Coda Gunge and Ali Gunge shall be
+     retained by the Begum as heretofore.
+
+     "Fifth, That I [Mr. Middleton] will, upon the arrival of the Nabob,
+     procure Vizier Gunge and the garden of Sepoy Dand Kh�n, or their
+     equivalent, for the Begum.
+
+     "Sixth, That I [Mr. Middleton] will endeavor to obtain from the
+     Nabob the sum of 1,150,000 rupees on account of the purchase of
+     Metchee Bohaun, and the house of Sahebjee, and the fort of the
+     Gossim, with the land and garden and the barraderry on the banks of
+     Goomply [Goomty?], and bazaar and garden of the house of Mahnarain
+     and the house of Beng Peofand at Lucknow: all of which the Nabob
+     Asoph ul Dowlah has assumed possession of.
+
+     "Seventh, That I will settle with the Nabob the allowances to be
+     made in ready money to the ladies of the zenanah and others
+     specified, in the following amount: Total, 17 lacs 250 rupees per
+     month.
+
+     "Eighth, Upon the arrival of the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah Bahadur, I
+     will endeavor with all my influence to settle the monthly
+     allowances of Mohrum Ali Kh�n and Mahmud Eltifant Kh�n, &c., the
+     attendants of the Begums.
+
+     "Ninth, That, if the Begum shall go to Mecca, she shall leave her
+     mahals and jaghires to the Begum, the mother of Asoph ul Dowlah,
+     who shall remit the revenues thereof to the Burree Begum: no one
+     shall prevent her enjoying her jaghires."
+
+Now, my Lords, we will read the copy of an engagement under the seal of
+the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah, and under the seal and signature, in English,
+of Mr. Middleton, as follows.
+
+     "First, I, who am the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah Bahadur, do agree that
+     the jaghires and the gunges and monthly allowance of the officers
+     and servants, and of the ladies of the zenanah, and of those
+     specified in the accounts annexed, shall be at the disposal and
+     under the management and authority of the Begum, and no one shall
+     oppose or prevent it: this I will punctually observe. In this
+     agreement Mr. Middleton and the English are engaged.
+
+     "Second, Whenever the Begum may choose to go to Mecca, I will not
+     oppose it.
+
+     "Third, Whenever the Begum should go to Mecca, she shall leave her
+     lands, jaghires, &c., either in the care of my mother or of me; and
+     I will procure bills for the amount of their revenues, and send
+     them to her: no one shall oppose this.
+
+     "Fourth, The Begum shall have authority over all the ladies of her
+     zenanah; she shall let them remain with me, and not let them go
+     anywhere without my permission, or keep them with her.
+
+     "Fifth, The jaghires Coda Gunge and Ali Gunge, &c., with the mahal
+     and syer belonging to the Begum and made over, shall remain as
+     heretofore in her possession: Total, 14,460 rupees per month.
+
+     "Eighth, The Begum has authority over the ladies and attendants of
+     the zenanah; neither myself nor any one else will oppose it.
+
+     "Ninth, The Begum, my grandmother, shall have the authority in all
+     festivals, and in the marriage of the children of the late Nabob
+     Sujah ul Dowlah, and, with the consent of my mother and myself,
+     shall regulate them: excepting in the festivals (_shadee_), the
+     authority is mine.
+
+     "The English are guaranties to the above engagements, so long as
+     the Begum shall exist."
+
+
+Your Lordships will observe something here worthy of your notice. You
+will first perceive, that the very treaty in which Mr. Hastings, by his
+representative, Mr. Middleton, was a party concerned, supposes that the
+Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah had other children besides the reigning prince by
+his sole legitimate wife; and yet Mr. Hastings, in his defence, has
+thought proper, with a full knowledge of that circumstance, to doubt
+whether there were any other children. You next see that these women
+have Mr. Middleton's (that is, Mr. Hastings's) guaranty for the
+allowances which are made and settled upon them, and for the maintenance
+of their attendants, for the security and enjoyment of their own
+possessions, for their having a law officer of high rank, a moulavy, of
+their own. In short, there is a regular establishment formed for all
+these women: they are not separated as a part distinct from the Begums,
+but they are put by this very guaranty entirely under their management;
+the maintenance of the children is secured; the whole order and economy
+of their establishment is delivered entirely to the Begum, the
+grandmother, and the Begum, the mother, of the Nabob.
+
+My Lords, you see that all these arrangements have the solemn guaranty
+of the Company, and that these women form a very considerable part of
+that guaranty; and therefore your Lordships will not treat their
+sufferings, inflicted in violation of the Company's own settlement and
+guaranty, as a matter of no consideration for you.
+
+But to proceed.--We have proved to your Lordships that the Nabob was
+reduced to a state of the greatest possible misery and distress; that
+his whole revenue was sequestered into the hands of Mr. Hastings's
+agents; that by the treaty of Chunar he was to be relieved from the
+expense of a body of troops with which he had been burdened without his
+own voluntary consent,--nay, more, the temporary brigade, which Mr.
+Hastings proposed to take off, but kept on, which he considers not only
+as a great distress to his finances, but a dreadful scourge and calamity
+to his country,--there was a whole pension-list upon it, with such
+enormous pensions as 18,000_l._ a year to Sir Eyre Coote, and other
+pensions, that Mr. Hastings proposed to take off, but did not; that, in
+proportion as the Nabob's distress increased, Mr. Hastings's demands
+increased too; he was not satisfied, with taking from him for the
+Company, but he took from him for himself; he demanded six hundred
+thousand pounds as a loan, when he knew he had neither money nor credit.
+
+The consequence of these acts of violence was, that these people,
+besieged by the English troops, and deprived of every resource, even of
+the funds of charity, by which the protectors of the family, male and
+female, might have relieved them, but which the cruel rapacity of Mr.
+Hastings had either entirely taken away or greatly diminished, were
+reduced to the last extremity of distress.
+
+After the length of time which has elapsed since we first brought these
+matters with their proofs, I shall beg leave, before you go to judgment,
+to refresh your memory with a recital of a part of that evidence, in
+order that your Lordships may again fully and distinctly comprehend the
+nature and extent of the oppression, cruelty, and injustice committed by
+Mr. Hastings, and by which you may estimate the punishment you will
+inflict upon him.
+
+
+     _Letter from Captain Leonard Jaques to Richard Johnson, Esq.,
+     Resident at the Vizier's Court; March 6th, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--The women belonging to the Khord Mohul complain of their
+     being in want of every necessary of life, and are at last drove to
+     that desperation, that they at night get on the top of the zenanah,
+     make a great disturbance, and last night not only abused the
+     sentinels posted in the gardens, but threw dirt at them; they
+     threatened to throw themselves from the walls of the zenanah, and
+     also to break out of it. Humanity obliges me to acquaint you of
+     this matter, and to request to know if you have any direction to
+     give me concerning it. I also beg leave to acquaint you, I sent for
+     Letafit Ali Kh�n, the cojah who has the charge of them, who informs
+     me their complaint is well grounded,--that they have sold
+     everything they had, even to the clothes from their backs, and now
+     have no means of existing. Inclosed, I transmit you a letter from
+     Mandall on the subject."
+
+
+     _Letter from Captain Jaques to Richard Johnson, Esq., March 7th,
+     1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I beg leave to address you again concerning the women in the
+     Khord Mohul. Their behavior last night was so furious that there
+     seemed the greatest probability of their proceeding to the utmost
+     extremities, and that they would either throw themselves from the
+     walls or force the doors of the zenanah. I have made every inquiry
+     concerning the cause of their complaints, and find from Letafit Ali
+     Kh�n that they are in a starving condition, having sold all their
+     clothes and necessaries, and now have not wherewithal to support
+     nature. And as my instructions are quite silent upon this head,
+     should be glad to know how to proceed in case they were to force
+     the doors of the zenanah; as I suspect it will happen, should no
+     subsistence be very quickly sent to them."
+
+
+     _Letter from Major Gilpin to John Bristow, Esq., Resident at the
+     Court of Lucknow; 30th October, 1782._
+
+     "Last night, about eight o'clock, the women in the Khord Mohul
+     Zenanah, under the charge of Letafit Ali Kh�n, assembled on the
+     tops of the buildings, crying in a most lamentable manner for
+     food,--that for the last four days they had got but a very scanty
+     allowance, and that yesterday they had got none. The melancholy
+     cries of famine are more easily imagined than described; and from
+     their representations, I fear that the Nabob's agents for that
+     business are very inattentive. I therefore think it requisite to
+     make you acquainted with the circumstance, that his Excellency the
+     Nabob may cause his agents to be more circumspect in their conduct
+     to these poor, unhappy women."
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Bristow to Major Gilpin; Fyzabad, 4th November,
+     1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I have received your letters of the 12th, 19th, 27th, and
+     30th ultimo. I communicated the contents of that of the 30th to the
+     minister, who promised me to issue orders for the payment of a sum
+     of money to relieve the distress of the Khord Mohul. I shall also
+     forward a bill for 10,000 rupees to you in the course of three or
+     four days; and if in the mean time you may find means to supply to
+     the amount of that sum, I will become personally responsible to
+     you for the repayment."
+
+
+     _Letter from Major Gilpin to John Bristow, Esq., at the Court of
+     Lucknow; Fyzabad, 15th November, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--The repeated cries of the women in the Khord Mohul Zenanah
+     for subsistence have been truly melancholy. They beg most piteously
+     for liberty, that they may earn their daily bread by laborious
+     servitude, or be relieved from their misery by immediate death. In
+     consequence of their unhappy situation, I have this day taken the
+     liberty of drawing on you in favor of Ramnarain at ten days' sight,
+     for twenty son Kerah rupees, ten thousand of which I have paid to
+     Cojah Letafit Ali Kh�n, under whose charge that zenanah is."
+
+These, my Lords, are the state of the distresses in the year 1782, and
+your Lordships will see that they continued almost, with only occasional
+reliefs, during the period of that whole year. Now we enter into the
+year 1783, to show you that it continued during the whole time; and then
+I shall make a very few remarks upon it.
+
+I will now read to your Lordships a part of Mr. Holt's evidence, by
+which it is proved that Mr. Hastings was duly advertised of all these
+miserable and calamitous circumstances.
+
+    "_Q._ Whether you saw a letter of intelligence from Fyzabad
+    containing a relation of the treatment of the women in the Khord
+    Mohul?--_A._ Yes, I did, and translated it.--_Q._ From whom did it
+    come?--_A._ Hoolas Roy.--_Q._ Who was he?--_A._ An agent of the
+    Resident at Fyzabad, employed for the purpose of transmitting
+    information to the Resident.--_Q._ Was that paper transmitted to
+    Mr. Hastings?--_A._ To the best of my recollection, it was
+    transmitted to the Board, after I had attested it.--_Q._ Do you
+    remember at what distance of time after the receipt of the
+    intelligence respecting the distresses of the Khord Mohul that paper
+    was transmitted to Calcutta?--_A._ I cannot say.--_Q._ Do you
+    believe it was transmitted within ten months after the time it was
+    received?--_A._ I understood it to be a letter received just before
+    it was transmitted.--_Q._ Then you understand it was transmitted
+    as soon as received?--_A._ Yes, in the course of three days.--_Q._
+    Can you bring to your mind the time at which the translation was
+    made?--_A._ To the best of my recollection, it was in January,
+    1784.--_Q._ Whether the distresses that had been complained of had
+    ceased for above a twelvemonth before the distresses of the Khord
+    Mohul?--_A._ I understood they were new distresses.--_Q._ Then you
+    state that that account transmitted in 1784 was, as you understand,
+    an account of new distresses?--_A._ Yes."
+
+I shall now refer your Lordships to page 899 of your printed Minutes.
+
+     [The Managers for the Commons acquainted the House, that they would
+     next read the paper of intelligence which had been authenticated by
+     Mr. Holt, in his evidence at the bar, relative to the miserable
+     situation of these women, which they meant to bring home to Mr.
+     Hastings.]
+
+
+     _An Extract of a Consultation of the 17th February, 1784._
+
+     "At a Council: present, the Honorable Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+     Governor-General, President, Edward Wheler and John Stables,
+     Esqrs.; Mr. Macpherson absent from the Presidency for the benefit
+     of his health: the following letter and its inclosures were
+     received from Mr. Bristow on the 8th instant, and circulated.
+
+     "'Honorable Sir, and Gentlemen,--I have the honor to forward, for
+     your further information, the inclosure No. 3; it contains a
+     relation of the hardships endured by the ladies of the late
+     Vizier's zenanah.'
+
+       (Signed) 'JOHN BRISTOW.'
+
+
+     "_Translation of a Paper of Intelligence from Fyzabad._
+
+     "'The ladies, their attendants, and servants were still as
+     clamorous as last night. Letafit, the darogah, went to them, and
+     remonstrated with them on the impropriety of their conduct, at the
+     same time assuring them that in a few days all their allowances
+     would be paid, and should that not be the case, he would advance
+     them ten days' subsistence, upon condition that they returned to
+     their habitations. None of them, however, consented to his
+     proposal, but were still intent upon making their escape through
+     the bazaar, and in consequence formed themselves in the following
+     order,--the children in the front, behind them the ladies of the
+     seraglio, and behind them again their attendants; but their
+     intentions were frustrated by the opposition which they met with
+     from Letafit's sepoys. The next day Letafit went twice to the
+     women, and used his endeavors to make them return into the zenanah,
+     promising to advance them ten thousand rupees, which, upon the
+     money being paid down, they agreed to comply with; but night coming
+     on, nothing transpired.
+
+     "'On the day following, their clamors were more violent than usual.
+     Letafit went to confer with them on the business of yesterday,
+     offering the same terms. Depending upon the fidelity of his
+     promises, they consented to return to their apartments, which they
+     accordingly did, except two or three of the ladies, and most of
+     their attendants. Letafit went then to Hossmund Ali Kh�n, to
+     consult with him about what means they should take. They came to a
+     resolution of driving them in by force, and gave orders to their
+     sepoys to beat any one of the women who should attempt to move
+     forward; the sepoys accordingly assembled, and each one being
+     provided with a bludgeon, they drove them, by dint of beating, into
+     the zenanah. The women, seeing the treachery of Letafit, proceeded
+     to throw stones and bricks at the sepoys, and again attempted to
+     get out; but finding that impossible, from the gates being shut,
+     they kept up a continual discharge till about twelve o'clock, when,
+     finding their situation desperate, they returned into the Rung
+     Mohul, and forced their way from thence into the palace, and
+     dispersed themselves about the house and gardens. After this they
+     were desirous of getting into the Begum's apartments; but she,
+     being apprised of their intentions, ordered the doors to be shut.
+     In the mean time Letafit and Hossmund Ali Kh�n posted sentries to
+     secure the gates of the Lesser Mohul. During the whole of this
+     conflict, the ladies and women remained exposed to the view of the
+     sepoys.
+
+     "'The Begum then sent for Letafit and Hossmund Ali Kh�n, whom she
+     severely reprimanded, and insisted upon knowing the cause of this
+     infamous behavior. They pleaded in their defence the impossibility
+     of helping it, as the treatment the women had met with had only
+     been conformable to his Excellency the Vizier's orders. The Begum
+     alleged, that, even admitting that the Nabob had given these
+     orders, they were by no means authorized in this manner to disgrace
+     the family of Sujah Dowlah, and should they not receive their
+     allowances for a day or two, it could be of no great moment; what
+     had passed was now at an end, but that the Vizier should certainly
+     be acquainted with the whole of the affair, and that whatever he
+     directed she should implicitly comply with. The Begum then sent for
+     two of the children who were wounded in the affray of last night,
+     and after endeavoring to soothe them, she again sent to Letafit and
+     Hossmund Ali Kh�n, and in the presence of the children again
+     expressed her disapprobation of their conduct, and the
+     improbability of Asoph ul Dowlah's suffering the ladies and
+     children of Sujah Dowlah to be disgraced by being exposed to the
+     view of the sepoys. Upon which Letafit produced the letter from the
+     Nabob, representing that he was amenable only to the order of his
+     Excellency, and that whatever he ordered it was his duty to obey;
+     and that, had the ladies thought proper to have retired quietly to
+     their apartments, he would not have used the means he had taken to
+     compel them. The Begum again observed, that what had passed was now
+     over. She then gave the children four hundred rupees and dismissed
+     them, and sent word by Sumrud and the other eunuchs, that, if the
+     ladies would peaceably retire to their apartments, Letafit would
+     supply them with three or four thousand rupees for their present
+     expenses, and recommended them not to incur any further disgrace,
+     and that, if they did not think proper to act agreeably to her
+     directions, they would do wrong. The ladies followed her advice,
+     and about ten at night went back to the zenanah. The next morning
+     the Begum waited upon the mother of Sujah Dowlah, and related to
+     her all the circumstances of the disturbance. The mother of Sujah
+     Dowlah returned for answer, that, after there being no accounts
+     kept by crores of revenue, she was not surprised that the family of
+     Sujah Dowlah, in their endeavors to procure subsistence, should be
+     obliged to expose themselves to the meanest of the people. After
+     bewailing their misfortunes and shedding many tears, the Begum took
+     her leave and returned home.'"
+
+As a proof of the extremity of the distress which reigned in the Khord
+Mohul, your Lordships have been told that these women must have perished
+through famine, if their gaolers, Captain Jaques and Major Gilpin, had
+not raised money upon their own credit, and supplied them with an
+occasional relief. And therefore, when they talk of his peculation, of
+his taking but a bribe here and a bribe there, see the consequences of
+his system of peculation, see the consequences of a usurpation which
+extinguishes the natural authority of the country, see the consequences
+of a clandestine correspondence that does not let the injuries of the
+country come regularly before the authorities in Oude to relieve it,
+consider the whole mass of crimes, and then consider the sufferings that
+have arisen in consequence of it.
+
+My Lords, it was not corporal pain alone that these miserable women
+suffered. The unsatisfied cravings of hunger and the blows of the
+sepoys' bludgeons could touch only the physical part of their nature.
+But, my Lords, men are made of two parts,--the physical part, and the
+moral. The former he has in common with the brute creation. Like theirs,
+our corporeal pains are very limited and temporary. But the sufferings
+which touch our moral nature have a wider range, and are infinitely more
+acute, driving the sufferer sometimes to the extremities of despair and
+distraction. Man, in his moral nature, becomes, in his progress through
+life, a creature of prejudice, a creature of opinions, a creature of
+habits, and of sentiments growing out of them. These form our second
+nature, as inhabitants of the country and members of the society in
+which Providence has placed us. This sensibility of our moral nature is
+far more acute in that sex which, I may say without any compliment,
+forms the better and more virtuous part of mankind, and which is at the
+same time the least protected from the insults and outrages to which
+this sensibility exposes them. This is a new source of feelings, that
+often make corporal distress doubly felt; and it has a whole class of
+distresses of its own. These are the things that have gone to the heart
+of the Commons.
+
+We have stated, first, the sufferings of the Begum, and, secondly, the
+sufferings of the two thousand women (I believe they are not fewer in
+number) that belong to them, and are dependent upon them, and dependent
+upon their well-being. We have stated to you that the Court of Directors
+were shocked and astonished, when they received the account of the
+first, before they had heard the second. We have proved they desired him
+to redress the former, if, upon inquiry, he found that his original
+suspicions concerning their conduct were ill-founded. He has declared
+here that he did not consider these as orders. Whether they were orders
+or not, could anything have been more pressing upon all the duties and
+all the sentiments of man than at least to do what was just,--that is,
+to make such an inquiry as in the result might justify his acts, or have
+entitled them to redress? Not one trace of inquiry or redress do we
+find, except we suppose, as we hear nothing after this of the famine,
+that Mr. Bristow, who seems to be a man of humanity, did so effectually
+interpose, that they should no longer depend for the safety of their
+honor on the bludgeons of the sepoys, by which alone it seems they were
+defended from the profane view of the vulgar, and which we must state as
+a matter of great aggravation in this case.
+
+The counsel on the other side say that all this intelligence comes in an
+anonymous paper without date, transmitted from a newspaper-writer at
+Fyzabad. This is the contempt with which they treat this serious paper,
+sent to Mr. Hastings himself by official authority,--by Hoolas Roy, who
+was the news-writer at Fyzabad,--the person appointed to convey
+authentic intelligence concerning the state of it to the Resident at
+Lucknow. The Resident received it as such; he transmitted it to Mr.
+Hastings; and it was not till this hour, till the counsel were
+instructed (God forgive them for obeying such instructions!) to treat
+these things with ridicule, that we have heard this Hoolas Roy called a
+common news-writer of anonymous information, and the like. If the
+information had come in any way the least authentic, instead of coming
+in a manner the most authentic in which it was possible to come to Mr.
+Hastings, he was bound by every feeling of humanity, every principle of
+regard to his own honor and his employers', to see whether it was true
+or false; if false, to refute it; if true, to afford redress: he has
+done neither. Therefore we charge him with being the cause; we charge
+upon him the consequences, with all the aggravations attending them; and
+we call both upon justice and humanity for redress, as far as it can be
+afforded to these people, and for the severest punishments which your
+Lordships can inflict upon the author of these evils. If, instead of the
+mass of crimes that we have brought before you, this singly had been
+charged upon the prisoner, I will say that it is a greater crime than
+any man has ever been impeached for before the House of Lords, from the
+first records of Parliament to this hour.
+
+I need not remind your Lordships of one particular circumstance in this
+cruel outrage. No excuse or pretence whatever is brought forward in its
+justification. With respect to the Begums, they have been charged with
+rebellion; but who has accused the miserable inhabitants of the Khord
+Mohul of rebellion, or rebellious designs? What hearsay is there, even,
+against them of it? No: even the persons permitted by Mr. Hastings to
+rob and destroy the country, and who are stated by him to have been so
+employed,--not one of that legion of locusts which he had sent into the
+country to eat up and devour the bread of its inhabitants, and who had
+been the cause both of the famine itself and of the inability of the
+Begums to struggle with it,--none of these people, I say, ventured even
+a hearsay about these women.
+
+Were the sufferers few? There were eight hundred of them, besides
+children. Were they persons of any rank and consequence? We are told
+that they were persons of considerable rank and distinction, connected
+with and living under the protection of women of the first rank in Asia.
+Were they persons not deserving pity? We know that they were innocent
+women and children, not accused, and unsuspected, of any crime. He has
+taken into his head to speak contemptuously of these women of the Khord
+Mohul: but your Lordships will consider both descriptions generally with
+some respect; and where they are not objects of the highest respect,
+they will be objects of your compassion. Your Lordships, by your
+avenging justice, will rescue the name of the British government from
+the foulest disgrace which this man has brought upon it.
+
+An account of these transactions, as we have proved by Mr. Holt's
+evidence, was regularly transmitted and made known to him. But why do I
+say made known to him? Do not your Lordships know that Oude was
+his,--that he treated it like his private estate,--that he managed it in
+all its concerns as if it were his private demesne,--that the Nabob
+dared not do a single act without him,--that he had a Resident there,
+nominated by himself, and forced upon the Nabob, in defiance of the
+Company's orders? Yet, notwithstanding all this, we do not find a trace
+of anything done to relieve the aggravated distresses of these
+unfortunate people.
+
+These are some of the consequences of that abominable system which, in
+defiance of the laws of his country, Mr. Hastings established in Oude.
+He knew everything there; he had spies upon his regular agents, and
+spies again upon them. We can prove, (indeed, he has himself proved,)
+that, besides his correspondence with his avowed agents, Major Palmer
+and Major Davy, he had secret correspondence with a whole host of agents
+and pensioners, who did and must have informed him of every circumstance
+of these affairs. But if he had never been informed of it at all, the
+Commons contend, and very well and justly contend, that he who usurps
+the government of a country, who extinguishes the authority of its
+native sovereign, and places in it instruments of his own, and that in
+defiance of those whose orders he was bound to obey, is responsible for
+everything that was done in the country. We do charge him with these
+acts of delinquencies and omissions, we declare him responsible for
+them; and we call for your Lordships' judgment upon these outrages
+against humanity, as cruel perhaps as ever were suffered in any country.
+
+My Lords, if there is a spark of manhood, if there is in your breasts
+the least feeling for our common humanity, and especially for the
+sufferings and distresses of that part of human nature which is made by
+its peculiar constitution more quick and sensible,--if, I say, there is
+a trace of this in your breasts, if you are yet alive to such feelings,
+it is impossible that you should not join with the Commons of Great
+Britain in feeling the utmost degree of indignation against the man who
+was the guilty cause of this accumulated distress. You see women, whom
+we have proved to be of respectable rank and condition, exposed to what
+is held to be the last of indignities in that country,--the view of a
+base, insulting, ridiculing, or perhaps vainly pitying populace. You
+have before you the first women in Asia, who consider their honor as
+joined with that of these people, weeping and bewailing the calamities
+of their house. You have seen that in this misery and distress the sons
+of the Nabob were involved, and that two of them were wounded in an
+attempt to escape: and yet this man has had the impudence to declare his
+doubts of the Nabob's having had any children in the place, though the
+account of what was going on had been regularly transmitted to him.
+After this, what is there in his conduct that we can wonder at?
+
+My Lords, the maintenance of these women had been guarantied by the
+Company; but it was doubly guarantied under the great seal of humanity.
+The conscience of every man, and more especially of the great and
+powerful, is the keeper of that great seal, and knows what is due to its
+authority. For the violation of both these guaranties, without even the
+vain and frivolous pretence of a rebellion, and for all its
+consequences, Mr. Hastings is answerable; and he will not escape your
+justice by those miserable excuses which he has produced to the Court of
+Directors, and which he has produced here in his justification. My
+Lords, that justification we leave with your Lordships.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We now proceed to another part of our charge, which Mr. Hastings has not
+thought proper to deny, but upon which we shall beg leave to make a few
+observations. You will first hear read to you, from the 17th article of
+our charge, the subject-matter to which we now wish to call your
+attention.
+
+     "That in or about the month of March, 1783, three of the said
+     brothers of the Nabob, namely, Mirza Hyder Ali, Mirza Imayut Ali,
+     and Mirza Syef Ali, did represent to the said Bristow that they
+     were in distress for dry bread and clothes, and in consequence of
+     such representation were relieved by the intervention of the said
+     Bristow, but soon after the deputation of the said Warren Hastings
+     to Oude, in the year 1784, that is to say, some time in or about
+     the month of September, in the said year 1784, the said Mirza Hyder
+     Ali, one of the three princes aforesaid, did fly to the province of
+     Benares, and did remain there in great distress; and that, although
+     the said Warren Hastings did write to the said Nabob an account of
+     the aforesaid circumstances, in certain loose, light, and
+     disrespectful expressions concerning the said Mirza Hyder Ali, he
+     did not, as he was in duty bound to do, in any wise exert that
+     influence which he actually and notoriously possessed over the mind
+     of the said Nabob, for the relief of the said prince, the brother
+     of the said Nabob, but, without obtaining any satisfactory and
+     specific assurances, either from the said Nabob or the said
+     minister, the said Warren Hastings did content himself with
+     advising the said prince to return to his brother, the said Nabob."
+
+The answer of Mr. Hastings to that part of the 17th article states:--
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings says, that in or about the month of
+     July, in the year 1783, a paper was received, inclosed in a letter
+     to the Governor-General and Council, from Mr. Bristow, purporting
+     to be a translation of a letter from three brothers of the said
+     Vizier, in which they did represent themselves to be in distress
+     for dry bread and clothes; but whether such distress actually
+     existed, and was relieved by the said Bristow, the said Warren
+     Hastings cannot set forth.
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that some time in the
+     month of September, 1784, the said Warren Hastings, being then at
+     Benares, did receive information that Mirza Hyder Ali was arrived
+     there, and the said Warren Hastings, not knowing before that time
+     that there was any such person, did write to the Nabob Vizier, to
+     the purport or effect following:--'A few days since I learnt that a
+     person called Mirza Hyder Ali was arrived at Benares, and calls
+     himself a son of the deceased Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah, and I was also
+     told that he came from Fyzabad; as I did not know whether he left
+     Fyzabad with or without your consent, I therefore did not pay him
+     much attention, and I now trouble you to give me every information
+     on this subject, how he came here, and what your intentions are
+     about him; he remains here in great distress, and I therefore wish
+     to know your sentiments.'
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that, having received
+     an answer from the said Vizier, he did, on or about the 13th of
+     October, 1784, inclose the same in a letter to the said Mirza, of
+     which letter the following is a copy:--'An answer is arrived to
+     what I wrote on your account to the Nabob Vizier, which I inclose
+     to you: having read it, you will send it back. I conceive you had
+     better go to the Nabob Vizier's presence, who will certainly afford
+     you protection and assistance. I will write what is proper to carry
+     with you to the Nabob, and it will in every respect be for your
+     good; whatever may be your intention on this head, you will write
+     to me.'
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings submits, that it was no part of his
+     duty as Governor-General to interfere with the said Vizier on
+     behalf of the said Mirza, or to obtain from the said Vizier any
+     specific assurances on the subject."
+
+Continuation of the 17th article of the charge:--
+
+     "That, in order to avoid famine at home, another of the said
+     Nabob's brothers, by name Mirza Jungli, was under the necessity of
+     flying from his native country, and did seek protection from a
+     certain Mahometan lord called Mirza Shuffee Kh�n, then
+     prime-minister of the Mogul, from whom he did go to the camp of the
+     Mahratta chief Mahdajee Sindia, where he did solicit and obtain a
+     military command, together with a grant of lands, or jaghire, for
+     the subsistence of himself, his family, and followers; but wishing
+     again to be received under the protection of the British
+     government, the said Mirza Jungli, in 1783, did apply to the said
+     Resident Bristow, through David Anderson, Esquire, then on an
+     embassy in the camp of the said Sindia; and in consequence of such
+     application, the said Bristow, sensible of the disgrace which the
+     exile of the said Mirza Jungli reflected both on the said Nabob of
+     Oude and the British nation, did negotiate with the said Nabob and
+     his ministers for the return of the said Mirza Jungli, and for the
+     settlement and regular payment of some proper allowance for the
+     maintenance of the said Mirza Jungli; but the allowance required
+     was ultimately refused; and although the whole of the transactions
+     aforesaid were duly represented to the said Warren Hastings by the
+     said Anderson and by the said Bristow, and although he had himself
+     received, so early as the 23d of August, 1782, a letter from the
+     Vizier, grievously complaining of the cruel and extortious demands
+     made upon him by the said Warren Hastings, in which letter he did
+     expressly mention the flight of his brothers, and the distresses of
+     the women of his late father, who he said were all as his mothers,
+     and that his said brothers, from the resumption of their jaghires,
+     were reduced to great affliction and distress, and he did attribute
+     the said flight of some of his brethren, and the distresses of the
+     rest, and of the women who stood in a species of maternal relation
+     to him, as owing to the aforesaid oppressive demands, yet he, the
+     said Warren Hastings, did cruelly, inhumanly, and corruptly decline
+     to make any order for the better provision of any of the said
+     eminent family, or for the return of the said prince, who had fled
+     from his brother's court to avoid the danger of perishing by
+     famine."
+
+Answer of Mr. Hastings to that part of the charge:--
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that he was informed
+     that Mirza Jungli, in the said article also mentioned, did leave
+     his native country in distress, and did go to Mirza Shuffee Kh�n,
+     in the said article also mentioned; and the said Warren Hastings
+     likewise admits he was informed that the said Mirza Jungli did
+     afterwards leave the said Mirza Shuffee Kh�n, and repair to the
+     camp of Mahdajee Sindia, with a view of obtaining some
+     establishment for himself and followers.
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that in certain letters
+     written by David Anderson, Esquire, and John Bristow, Esquire, it
+     was represented that the said Mirza Jungli did apply to the said
+     Bristow, through the said Anderson, then on an embassy in the camp
+     of the said Sindia, and that in consequence thereof the said
+     Bristow did, amongst other things, apply to the said Nabob Vizier
+     for a certain allowance to be made for the said Mirza, and for the
+     regular payment thereof, and that a certain allowance was
+     accordingly settled by the said Vizier on the said Mirza; and the
+     said Warren Hastings says, that information of the above
+     transactions was transmitted to the Board of Council, and that a
+     letter from the said Vizier was received on the 23d of August,
+     1782, containing certain representations of the distresses of
+     himself and his family; and he admits that no order was made by
+     him, the said Warren Hastings, for the provision of any of the said
+     family, or for the return of the said Mirza; but the said Warren
+     Hastings denies that he was guilty of any cruelty, inhumanity, or
+     corruption, or of any misconduct whatsoever, in the matters
+     aforesaid."
+
+Continuation of the charge:--
+
+     "That some time in or about the month of December, 1783, the Nabob
+     Bahadur, another of the brothers of the said Nabob of Oude, did
+     represent to the said Bristow, that he, the said Nabob Bahadur, had
+     not received a farthing of his allowance for the current year, and
+     was without food; and being wounded by an assassin, who had also
+     murdered his aunt in the very capital of Oude, the said Nabob
+     Bahadur had not a daum to pay the surgeon, who attended him for the
+     love of God alone. That at or about the period of this said
+     representation the said Bristow was recalled, and the said Warren
+     Hastings proceeded up to Lucknow, but did not inquire into the said
+     representations transmitted by the said Bristow to Calcutta, nor
+     did order any relief."
+
+Mr. Hastings's answer to the part of the charge last read:--
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that on the 29th of
+     January, 1784, after the recall of the said Bristow, he, the said
+     Bristow, did transmit to the Governor-General and Council two
+     letters, one dated 28th of December, 1783, the other 7th of
+     January, 1784, purporting to be written by the said Nabob Bahadur,
+     addressed to him, the said Bristow, to the effect in the said
+     article stated; and the said Warren Hastings admits, that, when at
+     Lucknow, he did not institute any inquiry into the supposed
+     transaction in the said 17th article stated, or make any order
+     concerning the said Bahadur, and he denies that it was his duty so
+     to do."
+
+Here is the name of this Nabob from a list of the jaghiredars stated by
+Mr. Purling, page 485 printed Minutes. Amongst the names of jaghiredars,
+the times when granted, and the amount of the jaghires, there occurs
+that of the Nabob Bahadur, with a grant of a jaghire of the amount of
+20,000 rupees.
+
+    [The _Lord Chancellor_ here remarked, that what had been
+    just read was matter of the 17th article of the charge
+    and parts of the answer to it, and that, upon looking
+    back to the former proceedings, it has escaped his
+    attention, if any matter contained in the 17th article
+    had been made matter of the charge; that it therefore
+    seemed to him that it could not be brought in upon a
+    reply, not having been made matter of the charge
+    originally.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ My Lords, I have to say to this, that I
+    believe you have heard these facts made matter of charge
+    by the House of Commons, that I conceive they have been
+    admitted by the prisoner, and that the Commons have
+    nothing to do with the proofs of anything in their
+    charge which is fully and in terms admitted. The proofs
+    which they have produced to your Lordships were upon
+    matters which were contested; but here the facts are
+    admitted in the fullest manner. We neither have
+    abandoned them, intended to abandon them, or ever shall
+    abandon them; we have made them, as a charge, upon
+    record; the answers to them have been recorded, which
+    answers are complete admissions of every fact in the
+    charge.
+
+    _Lord Chancellor._ I do not make myself understood. The
+    objection is not that there has not been evidence given
+    upon the 17th article, but at the close of the case on
+    the part of the Managers for the House of Commons no
+    mention having been made of the matter contained in the
+    17th article, that therefore, although it may all have
+    been admitted by the answer to be true, yet in justice,
+    if from that answer you ground the charge, it is
+    necessary the defendant should be heard upon it.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ If your Lordships choose that the defendant
+    shall be heard upon it, we have no kind of objection,
+    nor ever had, or proposed an objection to the defendant
+    being heard upon it. Your Lordships know that the
+    defendant's counsel value themselves upon having
+    abandoned their defence against certain parts of the
+    charge; your Lordships know that they declared that they
+    broke off thus in the middle of their defence in order
+    to expedite this business.
+
+    _Lord Chancellor._ Referring to the proceedings, I think
+    it a matter perfectly clear, that, in the course of the
+    charge, after certain articles had been gone through,
+    the Managers for the Commons closed the case there,
+    leaving therefore all the other articles, excepting
+    those that had been discussed, as matters standing with
+    the answers against them, but not insisted upon in
+    making out the charge. Of course, therefore, if the
+    defendant had gone into any of those articles, the
+    defendant must have been stopped upon them, because he
+    would then have been making a case in defence to that
+    which had not been made a case in the prosecution. The
+    objection, therefore, is not at all that no evidence has
+    been examined. To be sure, it would be an answer to that
+    to say, you are now proceeding upon an admission; but
+    even upon those facts that are admitted, (if the facts
+    are admitted that are insisted upon as matter in
+    charge,) that should come in the original state of the
+    cause, and the defendant in common justice must be heard
+    upon that, and then, and then only, come the
+    observations in reply.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ We do not know, not are informed, that any
+    charge, information, or indictment, that is before the
+    court, and upon record, and is not denied by the
+    defendant, does not stand in full force against him. We
+    conceive it to be so; we conceive it to be agreeable to
+    the analogy of all proceedings; and the reason why we
+    did not go into and insist upon it was, that, having a
+    very long cause before us, and having the most full and
+    complete admission upon this subject, we did not proceed
+    further in it. The defendant defends himself by averring
+    that _it was not his duty_. It was not our business to
+    prove that it was his duty. It was he that admitted the
+    facts assumed to be the foundation of his duty; the
+    negative he was bound to prove, and he never offered to
+    prove it. All that I can say upon this point is, that
+    his delinquency in the matter in question appeared to us
+    to be a clear, distinct case,--to be a great
+    offence,--an offence charged upon the record, admitted
+    upon the record, and never by us abandoned. As to his
+    defence having been abandoned, we refer your Lordships
+    to the last petition laid by him upon your table, (that
+    libellous petition, which we speak of as a libel upon
+    the House of Commons,) and which has no validity but as
+    it asserts a matter of fact from the petitioner; and
+    there you will find that he has declared explicitly,
+    that, for the accommodation and ease of this business,
+    and for its expedition, he did abandon his defence at a
+    certain period.
+
+    _Lord Chancellor._ A charge consisting of a variety of
+    articles in their nature (however connected with each
+    other in their subject, but in their nature) distinct
+    and specific, if only certain articles are pressed in
+    the charge, to those articles only can a defence be
+    applied; and all the other articles, that are not made
+    matter of charge _originally_, have never, in the course
+    of any proceeding whatever, been taken up _originally_
+    in reply.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ With great respect to your Lordship's
+    judgment, we conceive that the objection taken from our
+    not having at a certain period argued or observed upon
+    the prisoner's answer to the articles not insisted upon
+    is not conclusive; inasmuch as the record still stands,
+    and as our charge still stands. It was never abandoned;
+    and the defendant might have made a justification to it,
+    if he had thought fit: he never did think fit so to do.
+    If your Lordships think that we ought not to argue upon
+    it here in our reply, because we did not argue upon it
+    before,--well and good; but we have argued and do argue
+    in our reply many things to which he never gave any
+    answer at all. I shall beg leave, if your Lordships
+    please, to retire with my fellow Managers for a moment,
+    to consult whether we shall press this point or not. We
+    shall not detain your Lordships many minutes.
+
+    (_The Managers withdrew: in a few minutes the Managers
+    returned, again into the Hall._)
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ My Lords, the Managers have consulted among
+    themselves upon this business; they first referred to
+    your printed proceedings, in order to see the particular
+    circumstance on which the observation of your Lordship
+    is founded; we find it thus stated:--"Then the Managers
+    for the Commons informed the Lords, that, saving to
+    themselves their undoubted rights and privileges, the
+    Commons were content to rest their charge here." We
+    rested our charge there, not because we meant to efface
+    any precedent matter of the charge which had been made
+    by us, and of which the facts had been admitted by the
+    defendant, but, simply saving our rights and privileges,
+    that is, to resume, (and to make new matter, if we
+    thought fit,) the Commons were content to rest the
+    charge there.
+
+    I have further to remark to your Lordships, that the
+    counsel for the defendant have opened a vast variety of
+    matter that is not upon record, either on our part or on
+    theirs, in order to illustrate and to support their
+    cause; and they have spoken day after day upon the
+    principles on which their defence was made. My great
+    object now is an examination of those principles, and to
+    illustrate the effects of these principles by examples
+    which are not the less cogent, the less weighty, and the
+    less known, because they are articles in this charge.
+    Most assuredly they are not. If your Lordships recollect
+    the speeches that were made here, you know that great
+    merit was given to Mr. Hastings for matters that were
+    not at all in the charge, and which would put us under
+    the greatest difficulties, if we were to take no notice
+    of them in our reply. For instance, his merits in the
+    Mahratta war, and a great mass of matter upon that
+    subject, were obliquely, and for other purposes, brought
+    before you, upon which they argued. That immense mass of
+    matter, containing an immense mass of principles, and
+    which was sometimes supported by alleged facts,
+    sometimes by none, they have opened and argued upon, as
+    matter relative to principle. In answer to their
+    argument, we propose to show the mischiefs that have
+    happened from the mischievous principles laid down by
+    Mr. Hastings, and the mischievous consequences of them.
+
+    If, however, after this explanation, your Lordships are
+    of opinion that we ought not to be allowed to take this
+    course, wishing to fall in with your Lordships'
+    sentiments, we shall abandon it. But we will remind your
+    Lordships that such things stand upon your records; that
+    they stand unanswered and admitted on your records; and
+    consequently they cannot be destroyed by any act of
+    ours, but by a renunciation of the charge, which
+    renunciation we cannot make, because the defendant has
+    clearly and fully admitted it to be founded in fact. We
+    cannot plead error; we cannot retract it. And why?
+    Because he has admitted it. We therefore only remind
+    your Lordships that the charge stands uncontradicted;
+    and that the observation we intended to make upon it was
+    to show your Lordships that the principles upon which he
+    defends all such conduct are totally false and
+    groundless. But though your Lordships should be of
+    opinion that we cannot press it, yet we cannot abandon
+    it; it is not in your power, it is not in our power, it
+    is not in his power to abandon that charge. You cannot
+    acquit him of that charge; it is impossible. If,
+    however, your Lordships, for the accommodation of
+    business, method of proceedings, or any circumstance of
+    that kind, wish we should say no more upon the subject,
+    we close the subject there. Your Lordships are in
+    possession both of the charge and the admission; and we
+    wish, and we cannot wish better than, to leave it as it
+    is upon the record.
+
+    The _Lord Chancellor_ here said,--The opinion of the
+    Lords can only be with me matter of conjecture. I
+    certainly was not commanded by the House to state the
+    observation that had occurred to me; but in the position
+    in which it now stands, I feel no difficulty in saying,
+    as my own judgment, that nothing can be matter in reply
+    that does not relate to those articles that were pressed
+    in the original charge; and therefore, in this position
+    of the business of reply, you cannot go into new matter
+    arising out of other articles that were not originally
+    insisted upon.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ We were aware of the objection that might
+    be made to admitting our observations, if considered as
+    observations upon the 17th article, but not when
+    considered with reference to facts on the record before
+    you, for the purpose of disproving the principles upon
+    which the defendant and his counsel had relied: that was
+    the purpose for which we proposed chiefly to make them.
+    But your Lordship's [the Lord Chancellor's] own personal
+    authority will have great weight with us, and, unless we
+    perceive some other peer differ from you, we will take
+    it in the course we have constantly done. We never have
+    sent your Lordships out of the hall to consent
+    [consult?] upon a matter upon which that noble lord
+    appeared to have formed a decision in his own mind; we
+    take for granted that what is delivered from the
+    woolsack, to which no peer expresses a dissent, is the
+    sense of the House; as such we take it, and as such we
+    submit to it in this instance.
+
+    Therefore, leaving this upon the record as it stands,
+    without observing upon it, and submitting to your
+    Lordships' decision, that we cannot, according to order,
+    observe in reply upon what was not declared by us to be
+    a part of the charges we meant to insist upon, we
+    proceed to another business.]
+
+We have already stated to your Lordships, and we beg to remind you of
+it, the state and condition of the country of Oude when Mr. Hastings
+first came to it,--his subsequent and immediate usurpation of all the
+powers of government, and the use he made of them,--the tyranny he
+exercised over the Nabob himself,--the tyranny he exercised upon his
+mother and grandmother, and all the other females of his family, and
+their dependants of every description, to the number of about eight
+hundred persons,--the tyranny exercised (though we are not at liberty
+to press it now) upon his brethren. We have shown you how he confiscated
+the property of all the jaghiredars, the nobility of the country. We
+have proved to your Lordships that he was well acquainted with all the
+misery and distress occasioned by these proceedings, and that he
+afforded the sufferers no relief. We now proceed to review the effect of
+this general mass of usurpation, tyranny, and oppression upon the
+revenues and the prosperity of the country.
+
+Your Lordships will first be pleased to advert to the state in which Mr.
+Hastings found the country,--in what state he found its revenues,--who
+were the executive ministers of the government,--what their conduct was,
+and by whom they were recommended and supported. For the evidence of
+these facts we refer your Lordships to your printed Minutes: there, my
+Lords, they stand recorded: they never can be expunged out of your
+record, and the memory of mankind, whether we be permitted to press them
+at this time upon your Lordships or not. Your Lordships will there find
+in what manner the government was carried on in Oude in 1775, before the
+period of Mr. Hastings's usurpation. Mr. Hastings, you will find, has
+himself there stated that the minister was recommended by the Begums;
+and you will remark this, because Mr. Hastings afterwards makes her
+interference in the government of her son a part of his crimination of
+the Begum.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Resident at the court of Oude thus writes on the 2d of March, 1775.
+
+     "Notwithstanding the confidence the Nabob reposes in Murtezza Kh�n,
+     the Begums are much dissatisfied with his elevation. They
+     recommended to his Excellency to encourage the old servants of the
+     government, whose influence in the country, and experience, might
+     have strengthened his own authority, and seated him firmly on the
+     musnud. In some measure this, too, may appear consistent with the
+     interests of the Company; for, as Elija Kh�n and the old ministers
+     have by frequent instances within their own knowledge experienced
+     the power of our government, such men, I should conceive, are much
+     more likely to pay deference to the Company than a person who at
+     present can have but a very imperfect idea of the degree of
+     attention which ought to be paid to our connection with the Nabob."
+
+Your Lordships see that the Begums recommended the old servants,
+contrary to the maxims of Rehoboam,--those who had served his father and
+had served the country, and who were strongly inclined to support the
+English interest there. Your Lordships will remark the effects of the
+Begum's influence upon the state of things in 1775, that the Nabob had
+been advised by his mother to employ the confidential servants of his
+father,--persons conversant in the affairs of the country, persons
+interested in it, and persons who were well disposed to support the
+English connection. Your Lordships will now attend to a letter from Mr.
+Bristow, at Lucknow, to the board, dated 28th November, 1775.
+
+     "I also neglected no part of my duty on the spot, but advised the
+     minister, even at Lucknow, according to my letter of the 3d
+     instant, to recommend it to the Nabob to dismiss his useless and
+     mutinous troops, which measure seems by present appearances to have
+     succeeded beyond expectation: as the rest of the army do now pay
+     the greatest attention to his Excellency's orders; already the
+     complaints of the violences the troops used to commit are greatly
+     decreased; they profess obedience; and, by the best intelligence I
+     can obtain of their disposition, there seems to be little doubt
+     that the example made by disbanding Bussunt's corps has every good
+     effect we could wish, which had crossed the river and voluntarily
+     surrendered their arms the day before yesterday to the Nabob."
+
+His next letter is dated 13th June, 1776.
+
+     "Honorable Sir and Sirs,--It is Elija Kh�n's first object to
+     regulate the Vizier's revenue; and I must do him the justice to
+     say, that the short time he has been in office he has been
+     indefatigable, and already settled the greater part of the province
+     of Oude, and fixed on the districts for the assignments of the army
+     subsidy; Corah and Allahabad he has disposed of, and called for the
+     Dooab and Rohilcund accounts, in order to adjust them as soon as
+     possible. This activity will, I hope, produce the most salutary
+     effects,--as, the present juncture being the commencement of the
+     season for the cultivation, the aumils, by being thus early placed
+     in their offices, have the opportunity of advancing _tukavy_,
+     encouraging the ryots, and making their agreements in their several
+     districts, in letting under-farms, or disposing of the lands in
+     such a manner as they may judge most expedient. If, though similar
+     to the late minister's conduct, a delay of two or three months
+     should occur in the settlement of the lands, the people throughout
+     the country would be disheartened, and inevitably a very heavy
+     balance accrue on the revenue. I have troubled the honorable board
+     with this detail, in the first place, to show the propriety of
+     Elija Kh�n's conduct, and, in the next, the essential service that
+     will be rendered to the Vizier by continuing Colonel Parker's
+     detachment during the whole rains in Corah, if required by the
+     Vizier."
+
+My Lords, you have now had a view of the state of Oude, previous to the
+first period of our connection with it. Your Lordships have seen and
+understand that part of the middle period, with which we do not mean to
+trouble you again. You will now be pleased to attend to a letter from
+Fyzoola Kh�n to the Governor-General, received the 13th of February,
+1778.
+
+     "This country of Cuttah, which formerly depended on the Rohilla
+     States, and which I consider as now appertaining to the Company,
+     was very populous and flourishing; but since the commencement of
+     the Nabob Vizier's government, the farmers appointed by his
+     ministers have desolated the country. Its situation is at present
+     very ruinous; thousands of villages, formerly populous, are now
+     utterly deserted, and no trace left of them. I have already written
+     to Roy Buckstowr Sing a full account of the tyranny and oppression
+     exercised by the farmers, to be communicated to you: the constant
+     revenue of a country depends on the care of its rulers to preserve
+     it in a flourishing state. I have been induced to make the
+     representation by my attachment to the interest of the Company; for
+     otherwise it is no concern of mine. Should these oppressions
+     continue one or two years longer, and the rulers take no measures
+     to put a stop to them, the whole country will be a desert."
+
+My Lords, upon these statements I have only to make this remark,--that
+you have seen the first state of this country, and that the period when
+it had fallen into the state last described was about two years after
+Mr. Hastings had obtained the majority in the Council and began to
+govern this country by his lieutenants. We know that the country was put
+by him under military collectors: you see the consequences. The person
+who makes this representation to Mr. Hastings of the state of the
+country, of its distress and calamity, and of the desolation of a
+thousand of the villages formerly flourishing in it, is no less a person
+than a prince of a neighboring country, a person of whom you have often
+heard, and to whom the cause of humanity is much indebted, namely,
+Fyzoola Kh�n,--a prince whose country the English Resident, travelling
+through, declares to be cultivated like a garden. That this was the
+state of the Rohilla country is owing to its having very fortunately
+been one of those that escaped the dominion of Mr. Hastings.
+
+We will now read to your Lordships a letter from Sir Eyre Coote to the
+board at Calcutta, dated the 11th of September, 1779.
+
+     "Honorable Sir and Sirs,--The day before yesterday I encamped near
+     Allahabad, where the Vizier did me the honor of a visit; and
+     yesterday morning, in my way hither, I returned it, and was
+     received by his Excellency with every mark of respect and
+     distinction. This morning he called here, and we had some general
+     conversation, which principally turned upon the subject of his
+     attachment to the English, and his readiness to show the sincerity
+     of it upon all occasions. It is to be wished we had employed the
+     influence which such favorable sentiments must have given us more
+     to the benefit of the country and ourselves; but I fear the
+     distresses which evidently appear on the face of the one, and the
+     failure of the revenues to the other, are not to be wholly ascribed
+     to the Vizier's mismanagement."
+
+This is the testimony of Mr. Hastings's own pensioner, Sir Eyre Coote,
+respecting the known state of the country during the time of this
+horrible usurpation, which Sir Eyre Coote mentions under the soft name
+of our _influence_. But there could be but one voice upon the subject,
+and that your Lordships shall now hear from Mr. Hastings himself. We
+refer your Lordships to the Minute of the Governor-General's
+Consultation, Fort William, 21st May, 1781: he is here giving his
+reasons for going into the upper provinces.
+
+     "The province of Oude having fallen into a state of great disorder
+     and confusion, its resources being in an extraordinary degree
+     diminished, and the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah having earnestly
+     entreated the presence of the Governor-General, and declared, that,
+     unless some effectual measures are taken for his relief, he must be
+     under the necessity of leaving his country, and coming down to
+     Calcutta, to present his situation to this government,--the
+     Governor-General therefore proposes, with the concurrence of Mr.
+     Wheler, to visit the province of Oude as speedily as the affairs of
+     the Presidency will admit, in hopes that, from a minute and
+     personal observation of the circumstances of that country, the
+     system of management which has been adopted, and the characters
+     and conduct of the persons employed, he may possibly be able to
+     concert and establish some plan by which the province of Oude may
+     in time be restored to its former state of affluence, good order,
+     and prosperity."
+
+Your Lordships have now the whole chain of the evidence complete, with
+regard to the state of the country, up to the period of Mr. Hastings's
+journey into the country. You see that Mr. Hastings himself admits it to
+have been formerly in a most flourishing, orderly, and prosperous state.
+Its condition in 1781 he describes to you in words than which no enemy
+of his can use stronger, in order to paint the state in which it then
+was. In this state he found it, when he went up in the year 1781; and he
+left it, with regard to any substantial regulation that was executed or
+could be executed, in the state in which he found it,--after having
+increased every one of those grievances which he pretended to redress,
+and taken from it all the little resources that remained in it.
+
+We now come to a subsequent period, at which time the state of the
+country is thus described by Mr. Bristow, on the 12th December, 1782.
+
+     "Despotism is the principle upon which every measure is founded,
+     and the people in the interior parts of the country are ruled at
+     the discretion of the aumil or foujdar for the time being. They
+     exercise, within the limits of their jurisdiction, the powers of
+     life and death, and decisions in civil and other cases, in the same
+     extent as the sovereign at the capital. The forms prescribed by the
+     ancient institutions of the Mogul empire are unattended to, and the
+     will of the provincial magistrate is the sole law of the people.
+     The total relaxation of the Vizier's authority, his inattention and
+     dislike to business, leave the aumils in possession of this
+     dangerous power, unawed, uncontrolled by any apprehension of
+     retrospection, or the interference of justice. I can hardly quote
+     an instance, since the Vizier's accession to the musnud, of an
+     aumil having been punished for oppression, though the complaints of
+     the people and the state of the country are notorious proofs of the
+     violences daily committed: it is even become unsafe for travellers
+     to pass, except in large bodies; murders, thefts, and other
+     enormities shocking to humanity, are committed in open day."
+
+In another paragraph of the same letter, he says,--
+
+     "Such has been the system of this government, that the oppressions
+     have generally originated with the aumils. They have been rarely
+     selected for their abilities or integrity, but from favor, or the
+     means to advance a large sum upon being appointed to their office.
+     The aumil enters upon his trust ruined in reputation and fortune;
+     and unless he accomplishes his engagements, which is seldom the
+     case, disgrace and punishment follow. Though the balance of revenue
+     may be rigorously demanded of him, it has not been usual to
+     institute any inquiry for oppression. The zemindars, thus left at
+     the mercy of the aumils, are often driven to rebellion. The weak
+     are obliged to submit to his exactions, or fly the country; and the
+     aumil, unable to reduce the more powerful, is compelled to enter
+     into a disgraceful compromise. Every zemindar looks to his fort for
+     protection, and the country is crowded with them: Almas Ali Kh�n
+     asserts there are not less than seven hundred in his districts.
+     Hence it has become a general custom to seize the brother, son, or
+     some near relation or dependant of the different zemindars, as
+     hostages for the security of the revenue: a great aumil will
+     sometimes have three or four hundred of these hostages, whom he is
+     obliged to confine in places of security. A few men like Almas Ali
+     Kh�n and Coja Ain ul Din have, from their regularity in the
+     performance of pecuniary engagements, rendered themselves useful to
+     the Vizier. A strict scrutiny into his affairs was at all times
+     irksome to his Excellency, and none of the ministers or officers
+     about his person possessing the active, persevering spirit
+     requisite to conduct the detail of engagements for a number of
+     small farms, it became convenient to receive a large sum from a
+     great farmer without trouble or deficiency. This system was
+     followed by the most pernicious consequences; these men were above
+     all control, they exacted their own terms, and the districts they
+     farmed were most cruelly oppressed. The revenue of Rohilcund is
+     reduced above a third, and Almas Ali Kh�n's administration is well
+     known to have been extremely violent."
+
+We will next read to your Lordships an extract from Captain Edwards's
+evidence.
+
+    "_Q._ Had you any opportunity of observing the general face of the
+    country in the time of Sujah Dowlah?--_A._ I had.--_Q._ Did you
+    remark any difference in the general state of the country at that
+    time and the period when you made your latter observation?--did you
+    observe any difference between the condition of the country at that
+    time, that of Sujah Dowlah in the year 1774, and the latter period
+    you have mentioned?--_A._ I did,--a very material difference.--_Q._
+    In what respect?--_A._ In the general aspect that the country bore,
+    and the cultivation of the country,--that it was infinitely better
+    cultivated in 1774 than it was in 1783.--_Q._ You said you had no
+    opportunity of observing the face of the country till you was
+    appointed aide-de-camp to the Nabob?--_A._ No,--except by marching
+    and countermarching. I marched in the year 1774 through the Nabob
+    Sujah ul Dowlah's provinces into Rohilcund.--_Q._ Had you those
+    opportunities from the time of your going there in 1774?--_A._ I
+    had; but not so much as I had after being appointed aide-de-camp to
+    the Vizier, because I was always before in a subordinate situation:
+    I marched in a direct line before, with the troops; but afterwards,
+    when I was aide-de-camp to his Excellency, I was my own master, and
+    made frequent excursions into the different parts of the
+    country.--_Q._ Had you an opportunity of observing the difference in
+    the general happiness and disposition of the people?--_A._ I
+    had.--_Q._ Did you observe a difference in that respect also between
+    your first coming and the year 1783?--_A._ Yes, a very sensible
+    difference: in Sujah ul Dowlah's time the country was in a very
+    flourishing state, in merchandise, cultivation, and every article of
+    commerce, and the people then seemed to be very happy under his
+    government, which latterly was not the case; because the country in
+    reality appeared in the year 1774 in a flourishing state, and in the
+    year 1783 it appeared comparatively forlorn and desolate.--_Q._ Was
+    the court of Asoph ul Dowlah, when you left India, equal in point
+    of splendor to what it was in the time of Sujah ul Dowlah?--_A._ By
+    no means: it was not equally splendid, but far inferior.--_Q._ Were
+    the dependants and officers belonging to the court paid in the same
+    punctual manner?--_A._ No: I really cannot say whether they were
+    paid more regularly in Sujah Dowlah's time, only they appeared more
+    wealthy and more able to live in a splendid style in his time than
+    they ever have done since his death."
+
+Here, then, your Lordships see the state of the country in 1783. Your
+Lordships may trace the whole progress of these evils, step by step,
+from the death of Sujah ul Dowlah to the time of Mr. Hastings's
+obtaining a majority in the Council, after which he possessed the sole
+and uncontrolled management of the country; you have seen also the
+consequences that immediately followed till the year 1784, when he went
+up a second time into the country.
+
+I do not know, my Lords, that it is necessary to make any observation
+upon this state of things. You see that the native authority was, as we
+have proved, utterly extinguished by Mr. Hastings, and that there was
+no superintendent power but his. You have heard of the oppressions of
+the farmers of the revenues; and we have shown you that these farmers
+generally were English officers. We have shown you in what manner
+Colonel Hannay, one of these farmers sent by Mr. Hastings, acted, and
+particularly the accumulation of hostages which were made by him. We
+have shown you, that by their arbitrary and tyrannical proceedings all
+regular government was subverted, and that the country experienced the
+last and most dreadful effects of anarchy. We have shown you that no
+other security was left to any human being, but to intrench themselves
+in such forts as they could make, and that these forts, in one district
+only of the country, had increased in number to the amount of seven
+hundred. Your Lordships also know, that, when the prisons and mud forts
+in which Colonel Hannay kept his hostages confined were full, he kept
+them in uncovered cages in the open air. You know that all these farmers
+of revenue were either English and military men, or natives under an
+abject submission to them; you know that they had the whole country in
+assignments, that the jaghires were all confiscated for their benefits;
+and you find that the whole system had its origin at the time when Mr.
+Hastings alone formed in effect the authority of the Supreme Council.
+The weakness of the Nabob, as Sir Eyre Coote tells you, could not have
+been alone the cause of these evils, and that our influence over him, if
+not actually the cause of the utter ruin, desolation, and anarchy of
+that country, might have been successfully exerted in preventing.
+
+When your Lordships shall proceed to judgment upon these accumulated
+wrongs, arising out of the usurped power of the prisoner at your bar,
+and redressed by him in no one instance whatever, let not the usurpation
+itself of the Nabob's power be considered as a trivial matter. When any
+prince at the head of a great country is entirely stripped of everything
+in his government, civil or military, by which his rank may be
+distinguished or his virtues exercised, he is in danger of becoming a
+mere animal, and of abandoning himself wholly to sensual gratifications.
+Feeling no personal interest in the institutions or in the general
+welfare of the country, he suffers the former (and many wise and
+laudable institutions existed in the provinces of the Nabob, for their
+good order and government) to fall into disuse, and he leaves the
+country itself to persons in inferior situations, to be wasted and
+destroyed by them. You find that in Oude, the very appearance of justice
+had been banished out of it, and that every aumil exercised an arbitrary
+power over the lives and fortunes of the people. My Lords, we have the
+proofs of all these facts in our hands; they are in your Lordships'
+minutes; and though we can state nothing stronger than is stated in the
+papers themselves, yet we do not so far forget our duty as not to point
+out to your Lordships such observations as arise out of them.
+
+To close the whole, your Lordships shall how hear read an extract from a
+most curious and extraordinary letter, sent by him to the Court of
+Directors, preparatory to his return to England.
+
+     "My only remaining fear is, that the members of the Council, seeing
+     affairs through a different medium from that through which I view
+     them, may be disposed, if not to counteract the system which I have
+     formed, to withhold from it their countenance and active support.
+     While I myself remain, it will be sufficient if they permit it to
+     operate without interruption; and I almost hope, in the event of a
+     new administration of your affairs which shall confine itself to
+     the same forbearance, and manifest no symptoms of intended
+     interference, the objects of my arrangements will be effectually
+     attained; for I leave them in the charge of agents whose interests,
+     ambition, and every prospect of life are interwoven with their
+     success, and the hand of Heaven has visibly blest the soil with
+     every elementary source of progressive vegetation: but if a
+     different policy shall be adopted, if new agents are sent into the
+     country and armed with authority for the purpose of vengeance or
+     corruption, to no other will they be applied. If new demands are
+     raised on the Nabob Vizier, and accounts overcharged on one side
+     with a wide latitude taken on the other to swell his debt beyond
+     the means of payment,--if political dangers are portended, to
+     ground on them the pleas of burdening his country with unnecessary
+     defences and enormous subsidies,--or if, even abstaining from
+     direct encroachment on the Nabob's rights, your government shall
+     show but a degree of personal kindness to the partisans of the late
+     usurpation, or by any constructive indication of partiality and
+     disaffection furnish ground for the expectation of an approaching
+     change of system, I am sorry to say that all my labors will prove
+     abortive; for the slightest causes will be sufficient to deject
+     minds sore with the remembrance of past conflicts, and to elevate
+     those whose only dependence is placed in the renewal of the
+     confusion which I have labored with such zeal to eradicate, and
+     will of course debilitate the authority which can alone insure
+     future success. I almost fear that this denunciation of effects
+     from causes so incompetent, as they will appear to those who have
+     not had the experience which I have had of the quick sensibility
+     which influences the habits of men placed in a state of polity so
+     loose, and subject to the continual variations of capricious and
+     despotic authority, will be deemed overcharged, or perhaps void of
+     foundation; nor, if they should come to pass, will it be easy to
+     trace them with any positive evidence to their connection: yet it
+     is my duty to apprise you of what I apprehend, on grounds which I
+     deem of absolute certainty, may come to pass; and I rely on your
+     candor for a fair interpretation of my intention."
+
+Here, my Lords, the prisoner at your bar has done exactly what his
+bitterest accuser would do: he goes through, head by head, every one of
+the measures which he had himself pursued in the destruction of the
+country; and he foretells, that, if any one of those measures should
+again be pursued, or even if good cause should be given to suspect they
+would be renewed, the country must fall into a state of inevitable
+destruction. This supersedes all observation. This paper is a
+recapitulated, minute condemnation of every step which he took in that
+country, and which steps, are every one of them upon your Lordships'
+minutes.
+
+But, my Lords, we know very well the design of these pretended
+apprehensions, and why he wished to have that country left in the state
+he speaks of. He had left a secret agent of his own to control that
+ostensible government, and to enable him, sitting in the place where he
+now sits, to continue to govern those provinces in the way in which he
+now governs them.
+
+     [_A murmur having arisen here, Mr. Burke proceeded._]
+
+If I am called upon to reword what I have just said, I shall repeat my
+words, and show strong grounds and reasons to indicate that he governs
+Oude now as much as he ever did.
+
+You see, my Lords, that the reform which he pretended to make in 1781
+produced the calamities which he states to have existed in 1784. We
+shall now show that the reform which he pretended to make in 1784
+brought on the calamities which Lord Cornwallis states in his evidence
+to have existed in 1787.
+
+We will now read two letters from Lord Cornwallis: the first is dated
+the 16th November, 1787.
+
+     "I was received at Allahabad and attended to Lucknow by the Nabob
+     and his ministers with every mark of friendship and respect. I
+     cannot, however, express how much I was concerned, during my short
+     residence at his capital, and my progress through his dominions, to
+     be witness of the disordered state of his finances and government,
+     and of the desolate appearances of his country. The evils were too
+     alarming to admit of palliation, and I thought it my duty to exhort
+     him, in the most friendly manner, to endeavor to apply effectual
+     remedies to them. He began with urging as apology, that, whilst he
+     was not certain of the expense [extent?] of our demands upon him,
+     he had no real interest in being economical in his expenses, and
+     that, while we interfered in the internal management of his
+     affairs, his own authority and that of his ministers were despised
+     by his own subjects. It would have been useless to discuss these
+     topics with him; but while I repeated my former declarations of our
+     being determined to give no ground in future for similar
+     complaints, he gave me the strongest assurances of his being
+     resolved to apply himself earnestly to the encouragement of
+     agriculture, and to endeavor to revive the commerce of his
+     country."
+
+The second is dated the 25th April, 1788.
+
+     "Till I saw the Vizier's troops, I was not without hope that upon
+     an emergency he would have been able to have furnished us with some
+     useful cavalry; but I have no reason to believe that he has any in
+     his service upon which it would be prudent to place any dependence;
+     and I think it right to add, that his country appears to be in so
+     ruined a state, and his finances in so much disorder, that even in
+     case of war we ought not to depend upon any material support from
+     him."
+
+My Lords, I have only to remark upon these letters, that, so far as they
+go, they prove the effects of Mr. Hastings's reformation, from which he
+was pleased to promise the Company such great things. But when your
+Lordships know that he had left his dependant and minister, Hyder Beg
+Kh�n, there, whose character, as your Lordships will find by a reference
+to your minutes he has represented as black as hell, to be the real
+governor there, and to carry on private correspondence with him here,
+and that he had left Major Palmer, his private agent, for a considerable
+time in that country to carry on his affairs, your Lordships will easily
+see how it has come to pass that the Vizier, such a man as you have
+heard him described to be, was not alone able to restore prosperity to
+his country.
+
+My Lords, you have now seen what was the situation of the country in
+Sujah Dowlah's time, prior to Mr. Hastings's interference with the
+government of it, what it was during his government, and what situation
+it was in when Lord Cornwallis left it. Nothing now remains but to call
+your Lordships' attention to perhaps the most extraordinary part of
+these transactions. But before we proceed, we will beg leave to go back
+and read to your Lordships the Nabob's letter of the 24th February,
+1780.
+
+     "I have received your letter, and understand the contents. I cannot
+     describe the solidity of your friendship and brotherly affection
+     which subsisted between you and my late father. From the friendship
+     of the Company he received numberless advantages; and I,
+     notwithstanding I was left an orphan, from your favor and that of
+     the Company was perfectly at ease, being satisfied that everything
+     would be well, and that I should continue in the same security that
+     I was during my father's lifetime, from your protection. I
+     accordingly, from the day of his death, have never omitted to
+     cultivate your favor, and the protection of the Company; and
+     whatever was the desire and directions of the Council at that time
+     I have ever since conformed to, and obeyed with readiness. Thanks
+     be given to God that I have never as yet been backward in
+     performing the will of the English Company, of the Council, and of
+     you, and have always been from my heart ready to obey them, and
+     have never given you any trouble from my difficulties or wishes.
+     This I have done simply from my own knowledge of your favor towards
+     me, and from my being certain that you would learn the particulars
+     of my distresses and difficulties from other quarters, and would
+     then show your friendship and good-will in whatever was for my
+     advantage. But when the knife had penetrated to the bone, and I was
+     surrounded with such heavy distresses that I could no longer live
+     in expectations, I then wrote an account of my difficulties. The
+     answer which I have received to it is such, that it has given me
+     inexpressible grief and affliction. I never had the least idea or
+     expectation from you and the Council that you would ever have
+     given your orders in so afflicting a manner, in which you never
+     before wrote, and which I could not have imagined. As I am resolved
+     to obey your orders, and directions of the Council, without any
+     delay, as long as I live, I have, agreeably to those orders,
+     delivered up all my private papers to him [the Resident], that,
+     when he shall have examined my receipts and expenses, he may take
+     whatever remains. As I know it to be my duty to satisfy you, the
+     Company, and Council, I have not failed to obey in any instance,
+     but requested of him that it might be done so as not to distress me
+     in my necessary expenses: there being no other funds but those for
+     the expenses of my mutsuddies, household expenses, and servants,
+     &c. He demanded these in such a manner, that, being remediless, I
+     was obliged to comply with what he required. He has accordingly
+     stopped the pensions of my old servants for thirty years, whether
+     sepoys, mutsuddies, or household servants, and the expenses of my
+     family and kitchen, together with the jaghires of my grandmother,
+     mother, and aunts, and of my brothers and dependants, which were
+     for their support. I had raised fifteen hundred horse and three
+     battalions of sepoys to attend upon me; but, as I have no resources
+     to support them, I have been obliged to remove the people stationed
+     in the mahals, and to send his people into the mahals, so that I
+     have not now one single servant about me. Should I mention what
+     further difficulties I have been reduced to, it would lay me open
+     to contempt. Although I have willingly assented to this which
+     brings such distress on me, and have in a manner altogether ruined
+     myself, yet I failed not to do it for this reason, because it was
+     for your satisfaction, and that of the Council; and I am patient,
+     and even thankful, in this condition; but I cannot imagine from
+     what cause you have conceived displeasure against me. From the
+     commencement of my administration, in every circumstance, I
+     received strength and security from your favor, and that of the
+     Council; and in every instance you and the Council have shown your
+     friendship and affection for me; but at present, that you have sent
+     these orders, I am greatly perplexed."
+
+We will not trouble your Lordships with the remainder of the letter,
+which is all in the same style of distress and affliction, and of the
+abject dependence of a man who considers himself as insulted, robbed,
+and ruined in that state of dependence.
+
+In addition to the evidence contained in this letter, your Lordships
+will be pleased to recollect the Nabob's letter which we read to your
+Lordships yesterday, the humble and abject style of which you will never
+forget. Oh, consider, my Lords, this instance of the fate of human
+greatness! You must remember that there is not a trace anywhere, in any
+of the various trunks of Mr. Hastings, that he ever condescended so much
+as to give an answer to the suppliant letters of that unhappy man. There
+was no mode of indignity with which he did not treat his family; there
+was no mode of indignity with which he did not treat his person; there
+was no mode of indignity with which he did not treat his minister, Hyder
+Beg Kh�n,--this man whom he represents to be the most infamous and
+scandalous of mankind, and of whom he, nevertheless, at the same time
+declares, that his only support with the Vizier was the support which
+he, Warren Hastings, as representative of the English government, gave
+him.
+
+We will now read a paper which perhaps ought not to have been received
+in evidence, but which we were willing to enter in your minutes as
+evidence, in order that everything should come before you. Your
+Lordships have heard the Nabob speak of his misery, distress, and
+oppression; but here he makes a complete defeasance, as it were, of the
+whole charge, a direct disavowal of every one of the complaints, and
+particularly that of having never received an answer to these
+complaints. Oh, think, I say, my Lords, of the degraded, miserable, and
+unhappy state to which human nature may be reduced, when you hear this
+unhappy man declare that all the charges which we have made upon this
+subject relative to him, and which are all either admitted by him or
+taken from his own representation, are now stated by him in a paper
+before you to be all false, and that there is not a word of the
+representation which he had made of Mr. Hastings that has the least
+truth in it! Your Lordships will find this in that collection of various
+papers which ought to be preserved and put into every museum in Europe,
+as one of the most extraordinary productions that was ever exhibited to
+the world.
+
+
+     _Papers received the 8th of March, 1788, and translated pursuant to
+     an Order of the Governor-General in Council, dated the 21th of
+     April, 1788, under the Seal of His Excellency the Nabob Asoph ul
+     Dowlah, Asoph Jah Bahadur, Vizier ul Momalik._
+
+     "I have at this time learnt that the gentlemen in power in England,
+     upon the suspicion that Mr. Hastings, during his administration,
+     acted contrary to the rules of justice and impartiality, and,
+     actuated by motives of avidity, was inimical towards men without
+     cause; that he broke such engagements and treaties as had been made
+     between the Company and other chiefs; that he extended the hand of
+     oppression over the properties of men, tore up the roots of
+     security and prosperity from the land, and rendered the ryots and
+     subjects destitute by force and extortion.--As this accusation, in
+     fact, is destitute of uprightness and void of truth, therefore,
+     with a view to show the truth in its true colors, I have written
+     upon this sheet with truth and sincerity, to serve as an evidence,
+     and to represent real facts,--to serve also as information and
+     communication, that Mr. Hastings, from the commencement of his
+     administration until his departure for England, whether during the
+     lifetime of the deceased Nabob, of blessed memory, Vizier ul Moolk,
+     Sujah ul Dowlah Bahadur, my father, or during my government, did
+     not at any time transact contrary to justice any matter which took
+     place from the great friendship between me and the Company, nor in
+     any business depart from the path of truth and uprightness, but
+     cultivated friendship with integrity and sincerity, and in every
+     respect engaged himself in the duties of friendship with me, my
+     ministers and confidants. I am at all times, and in every way,
+     pleased with and thankful for his friendly manners and qualities;
+     and my ministers and confidants, who have always, every one of
+     them, been satisfied with his conduct, are forever grateful for his
+     friendship and thankful for his virtues. As these matters are real
+     facts, and according to truth, I have written these lines as an
+     evidence, and transmit this paper to England, through the
+     government of Calcutta, for the information of the gentlemen of
+     power and rank in England."
+
+Observe, my Lords, the candor of the Commons. We produce this evidence,
+which accuses us, as Mr. Hastings does, of uttering everything that is
+false; we choose to bring our shame before the world, and to admit that
+this man, on whose behalf and on the behalf of whose country we have
+accused Mr. Hastings, has declared that this accusation (namely, this
+impeachment) is destitute of uprightness and without truth. But, my
+Lords, this is not only a direct contradiction to all he has ever said,
+to all that has been proved to you by us, but a direct contradiction to
+all the representations of Mr. Hastings himself. Your Lordships will
+hence see what credit is to be given to these papers.
+
+Your Lordships shall now hear what Hyder Beg Kh�n says: that Hyder Beg
+Kh�n who stands recorded in your minutes as the worst of mankind; who is
+represented as writing letters without the Nabob's consent, and in
+defiance of him; the man of whom Mr. Hastings says, that the Nabob is
+nothing but a tool in his hands, and that the Nabob is and ever must be
+a tool of somebody or other. Now, as we have heard the tool speak, let
+us hear how the workman employed to work with this tool speaks.
+
+
+     _Extract from Hyder Beg Kh�n's Letter to the Governor and Council._
+
+     "It is at this time learnt by the Nabob Vizier, and us, his
+     ministers, that the gentlemen of power in England are displeased
+     with Mr. Hastings, on the suspicion that during his administration
+     in this country, from motives of avidity, he committed oppressions
+     contrary to the rules of justice, took the properties of men by
+     deceit and force, injured the ryots and subjects, and rendered the
+     country destitute and ruined. As the true and upright disposition
+     of Mr. Hastings is in every respect free of this suspicion, we
+     therefore with truth and sincerity declare by these lines, written
+     according to fact, that Mr. Hastings, from the first of his
+     appointment to the government of this country until his departure
+     for Europe, during his authority in the management of the affairs
+     of the country, whether in the lifetime of the Nabob Sujah ul
+     Dowlah Bahadur, deceased, or whether during the present reign, did
+     not, in any matters which took place from the great friendship
+     between this government and the Company, act in any wise upon
+     motives of avidity, and, not having, in any respect, other than
+     justice and propriety in intention, did not swerve from their
+     rules. He kept his Excellency the Vizier always pleased and
+     satisfied" (you will remember, my Lords, the last expressions of
+     his pleasure and satisfaction) "by his friendship and attention in
+     every matter. He at all times showed favor and kindness towards us,
+     the ministers of this government; and under his protection having
+     enjoyed perfect happiness and comfort, we are from our hearts
+     satisfied with and grateful for his benevolence and goodness."
+
+Here, my Lords, you have the character which Hyder Beg Kh�n gives of Mr.
+Hastings,--of the man who he knew had loaded him, as he had done, with
+every kind of indignity, reproach, and outrage with which a man can be
+loaded. Your Lordships will see that this testimony repeats, almost word
+for word, the testimony of the Vizier Nabob,--which shows who the real
+writer is.
+
+My Lords, it is said, that there is no word in the Persian language to
+express gratitude. With these signal instances of gratitude before us, I
+think we may venture to put one into their dictionary. Mr. Hastings has
+said he has had the pleasure to find from the people of India that
+gratitude which he has not met with from his own countrymen, the House
+of Commons. Certainly, if he has done us services, we have been
+ungrateful indeed; if he has committed enormous crimes, we are just. Of
+the miserable, dependent situation to which these people are reduced,
+that they are not ashamed to come forward and deny everything they have
+given under their own hand,--all these things show the portentous nature
+of this government, they show the portentous nature of that phalanx with
+which the House of Commons is at present at war, the power of that
+captain-general of every species of Indian iniquity, which, under him,
+is embodied, arrayed, and paid, from Leadenhall Street to the
+furthermost part of India.
+
+We have but one observation more to offer upon this collection of
+_razinamas_, upon these miserable testimonials given by these wretched
+people in contradiction to all their own previous
+representations,--directly in contradiction to those of Mr. Hastings
+himself,--directly in contradiction to those of Lord
+Cornwallis,--directly in contradiction to truth itself. It is this. Here
+is Mr. Hastings with his agents canvassing the country, with all that
+minuteness with which a county is canvassed at an election; and yet in
+this whole book of razinamas not one fact adduced by us is attempted to
+be disproved, not one fact upon which Mr. Hastings's defence can be
+founded is attempted to be proved. There is nothing but bare vile
+panegyrics, directly belied by the state of facts, directly belied by
+the persons themselves, directly belied by Mr. Hastings at your bar, and
+by all the whole course of the correspondence of the country.
+
+We here leave to your Lordships' judgment the consideration of the
+elevated rank of the persons aggrieved and degraded to the lowest state
+of dependence and actual distress,--the consideration of the condition
+of the country gentlemen, who were obliged to hide their heads, wherever
+they could, from the plunderers and robbers established under his
+authority in every part of the country, and that of the miserable common
+people, who have been obliged to sell their children through want of
+food to feed them,--the consideration, I say, of the manner in which
+this country, in the highest, in the middle, and in the lowest classes
+of its inhabitants, nay, in physical works of God, was desolated and
+destroyed by this man.
+
+Having now done with the province of Oude, we will proceed to the
+province of Bengal, and consider what was the kind of government which
+he exercised there, and in what manner it affected the people that were
+subjected to it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bengal, like every part of India subject to the British empire, contains
+(as I have already had occasion to mention) three distinct classes of
+people, forming three distinct social systems. The first is the
+Mahometans, which, about seven hundred years ago, obtained a footing in
+that country, and ever since has in a great degree retained its
+authority there. For the Mahometans had settled there long before the
+foundation of the Bengal empire, which was overturned by Tamerlane: so
+that this people, who are represented sometimes loosely as strangers,
+are people of ancient and considerable settlement in that country; and
+though, like Mahometan settlers in many other countries, they have
+fallen into decay, yet, being continually recruited from various parts
+of Tartary under the Mogul empire, and from various parts of Persia,
+they continue to be the leading and most powerful people throughout the
+peninsula; and so we found them there. These people, for the most part,
+follow no trades or occupation, their religion and laws forbidding them
+in the strictest manner to take usury or profit arising from money that
+is in any way lent; they have, therefore, no other means for their
+support but what arises from their adherence to and connection with the
+Mogul government and its viceroys. They enjoy under them various
+offices, civil and military,--various employments in the courts of law,
+and stations in the army. Accordingly a prodigious number of people,
+almost all of them persons of the most ancient and respectable families
+in the country, are dependent upon and cling to the subahdars or
+viceroys of the several provinces. They, therefore, who oppress,
+plunder, and destroy the subahdars, oppress, rob, and destroy an immense
+mass of people. It is true that a supervening government, established
+upon another, always reduces a certain portion of the dependants upon
+the latter to want. You must distress, by the very nature of the
+circumstances of the case, a great number of people; but then it is your
+business, when, by the superiority which you have acquired, however you
+may have acquired it, (for I am not now considering whether you have
+acquired it by fraud or force, or whether by a mixture of both,) when, I
+say, you have acquired it, it is your business not to oppress those
+people with new and additional difficulties, but rather to console them
+in the state to which they are reduced, and to give them all the
+assistance and protection in your power.
+
+The next system is composed of the descendants of the people who were
+found in the country by the Mahometan invaders. The system before
+mentioned comprehends the official interest, the judicial interest, the
+court interest, and the military interest. This latter body includes
+almost the whole landed interest, commercial interest, and moneyed
+interest of the country. For the Hindoos not being forbidden by their
+laws or religious tenets, as laid down in the Shaster, many of them
+became the principal money-lenders and bankers; and thus the Hindoos
+form the greatest part both of the landed and moneyed interest in that
+country.
+
+The third and last system is formed of the English interest; which in
+reality, whether it appears directly or indirectly, is the governing
+interest of the whole country,--of its civil and military interest, of
+its landed, moneyed, and revenue interest; and what to us is the
+greatest concern of all, it is this system which is responsible for the
+government of that country to the government of Great Britain. It is
+divided into two parts: one emanating from the Company, and afterwards
+regulated by act of Parliament; the other a judicial body, sent out by
+and acting under the authority of the crown itself. The persons
+composing that interest are those whom we usually call the servants of
+the Company. They enter into that service, as your Lordships know, at an
+early period of life, and they are promoted accordingly as their merit
+or their interest may provide for them. This body of men, with respect
+to its number, is so small as scarcely to deserve mentioning; but, from
+certain circumstances, the government of the whole country is fallen
+into their hands. Amongst these circumstances, the most important and
+essential are their having the public revenues and the public purse
+entirely in their own hands, and their having an army maintained by that
+purse, and disciplined in the European manner.
+
+Such was the state of that country when Mr. Hastings was appointed
+Governor in 1772. Your Lordships are now to decide upon the manner in
+which he has comported himself with regard to all these three interests:
+first, whether he has made the ancient Mahometan families as easy as he
+could; secondly, whether he has made the Hindoo inhabitants, the
+zemindars and their tenants, as secure in their property and as easy in
+their tenure as he could; and lastly, whether he has made the English
+interest a blessing to the country, and, whilst it provided moderate,
+safe, and proper emoluments to the persons that were concerned in it, it
+kept them from oppression and rapine, and a general waste and ravage of
+the country: whether, in short, he made all these three interests pursue
+that one object which all interests and all governments ought to pursue,
+the advantage and welfare of the people under them.
+
+My Lords, in support of our charge against the prisoner at your bar,
+that he acted in a manner directly the reverse of this, we have proved
+to you that his first acts of oppression were directed against the
+Mahometan government,--that government which had been before, not only
+in name, but in effect, to the very time of his appointment, the real
+government of the country. After the Company had acquired its right over
+it, some shadow still remained of the ancient government. An allowance
+was settled for the Nabob of Bengal, to support the dignity of his
+court, which amounted to between four and five hundred thousand pounds a
+year. In this was comprehended the support of the whole mass of
+nobility,--the soldiers, serving or retired,--all the officers of the
+court, and all the women that were dependent upon them,--the whole of
+the criminal jurisdiction of the country, and a very considerable part
+of the civil law and the civil government. These establishments formed
+the constitutional basis of their political government.
+
+The Company never had (and it is a thing that we can never too often
+repeat to your Lordships)--the Company never had of right despotic power
+in that country, to overturn any of these establishments. The Mogul, who
+gave them their charters, could not give them such a power,--he did not
+_de facto_ give them such a power; the government of this country did
+not by act of Parliament, and the Company did not and could not by their
+delegation, give him such a power; the act by which he was appointed
+Governor did not give him such a power. If he exercised it, he usurped
+it; and therefore, every step we take in the examination of his conduct
+in Bengal, as in every step we take upon the same subject everywhere
+else, we look for the justification of his conduct to laws,--the Law of
+Nations, the laws of this country, and the laws of the country he was
+sent to govern.
+
+The government of that country, by the ancient constitution of the Mogul
+empire, besides the numberless individual checks and counter-checks in
+the inferior officers [offices?], is divided into the viceroyal part and
+the subahdarry part. The viceroyal part takes in all criminal justice
+and political government. Mr. Hastings found the country under a
+viceroy, governing according to law, acting by proper judges and
+magistrates under him: he himself not being the judicial, but executive
+power of the country,--that which sets the other in action, and does not
+supersede it or supply its place. The other, the subahdarry power, which
+was by the grant of the dewanny conferred upon the Company, had under
+its care the revenues, as much of the civil government as is concerned
+with the revenues, and many other matters growing out of it. These two
+offices are co�rdinate and dependent on each other. The Company, after
+contracting to maintain the army out of it, got the whole revenue into
+their power. The army being thus within their power, the subahdar by
+degrees vanished into an empty name.
+
+When we thus undertook the government of the country, conscious that we
+had undertaken a task which by any personal exertion of our own we were
+unable to perform in any proper or rational way, the Company appointed a
+native of the country, Mahomed Reza Kh�n, who stands upon the records of
+the Company, I venture to say, with such a character as no man perhaps
+ever did stand, to execute the duties of both offices. Upon the
+expulsion of Cossim Ali Kh�n, the Nabob of Bengal, all his children were
+left in a young, feeble, and unprotected state; and in that state of
+things, Lord Clive, Mr. Sumner, who sits near Mr. Hastings, and the rest
+of the Council, wisely appointed Mahomed Reza Kh�n to fulfil the two
+offices of deputy-viceroy and deputy-dewan, for which he had immense
+allowances, and great jaghires and revenues, I allow. He was a man of
+that dignity, rank, and consideration, added to his knowledge of law and
+experience in business, that Lord Clive and Mr. Sumner, who examined
+strictly his conduct at that time, did not think that 112,000_l._ a
+year, the amount of the emoluments which had been allowed him, was a
+great deal too much; but at his own desire, and in order that these
+emoluments might be brought to stated and fixed sums, they reduced it to
+90,000_l._,--an allowance which they thought was not more than
+sufficient to preserve the state of so great a magistrate, and a man of
+such rank, exercising such great employments. The whole revenue of the
+Company depended upon his talents and fidelity; and you will find, that,
+on the day in which he surrendered the revenues into our hands, the
+dewanny, under his management, was a million more than it produced on
+the day Mr. Hastings left it. For the truth of this I refer your
+Lordships to a letter of the Company sent to the Board of Control. This
+letter is not in evidence before your Lordships, and what I am stating
+is merely historical. But I state the facts, and with the power of
+referring for their proof to documents as authentic as if they were
+absolutely in evidence before you. Assuming, therefore, that all these
+facts may be verified by the records of the Company, I have now to state
+that this man, by some rumors true or false, was supposed to have
+misconducted himself in a time of great calamity in that country. A
+great famine had about this time grievously afflicted the whole province
+of Bengal.--I must remark by the way, that these countries are liable to
+this calamity; but it is greatly blessed by Nature with resources which
+afford the means of speedy recovery, if their government does not
+counteract them. Nature, that inflicts the calamity, soon heals the
+wound; it is in ordinary seasons the most fertile country, inhabited by
+the most industrious people, and the most disposed to marriage and
+settlement, probably, that exists in the whole world; so that population
+and fertility are soon restored, and the inhabitants quickly resume
+their former industrious occupations.
+
+During the agitation excited in the country by the calamity I have just
+mentioned, Mahomed Reza Kh�n, through the intrigues of Rajah Nundcomar,
+one of his political rivals, and of some English faction that supported
+him, was accused of being one of the causes of the famine. In answer to
+this charge, he alleged, what was certainly a sufficient justification,
+that he had acted under the direction of the English board, to which his
+conduct throughout this business was fully known. The Company, however,
+sent an order from England to have him tried; but though he frequently
+supplicated the government at Calcutta that his trial should be
+proceeded in, in order that he might be either acquitted and discharged
+or condemned, Mr. Hastings kept him in prison two years, under pretence
+(as he wrote word to the Directors) that Mahomed Reza Kh�n himself was
+not very desirous to hasten the matter. In the mean time the Court of
+Directors, having removed him from his great offices, authorized and
+commanded Mr. Hastings (and here we come within the sphere of your
+minutes) to appoint a successor to Mahomed Reza Kh�n, fit to fulfil the
+duties of his station. Now I shall first show your Lordships what sort
+of person the Court of Directors described to him as most fit to fill
+the office of Mahomed Reza Kh�n, what sort of person he did appoint, and
+then we will trace out to you the consequences of that appointment.
+
+
+     _Letter from the Court of Directors to the President and Council at
+     Fort William, dated 28th August, 1771._
+
+     "Though we have not a doubt but that, by the exertion of your
+     abilities, and the care and assiduity of our servants in the
+     superintendency of the revenues, the collections will be conducted
+     with more advantage to the Company and ease to the natives than by
+     means of a naib dewan, we are fully sensible of the expediency of
+     supporting some ostensible minister in the Company's interest at
+     the Nabob's court, to transact the political affairs of the sircar,
+     and interpose between the Company and the subjects of any European
+     power, in all cases wherein they may thwart our interest or
+     encroach on our authority; and as Mahomed Reza Kh�n can no longer
+     be considered by us as one to whom such a power can be safely
+     committed, we trust to your local knowledge the selection of some
+     person well qualified for the affairs of government, and of whose
+     attachment to the Company you shall be well assured: such person
+     you will recommend to the Nabob to succeed Mahomed Reza as minister
+     of the government, and guardian of the Nabob's minority; and we
+     persuade ourselves that the Nabob will pay such regard to your
+     recommendation as to invest him with the necessary power and
+     authority.
+
+     "As the advantages which the Company may receive from the
+     appointment of such minister will depend on his readiness to
+     promote our views and advance our interest, we are willing to allow
+     him so liberal a gratification as may excite his zeal and secure
+     his attachment to the Company; we therefore empower you to grant to
+     the person whom you shall think worthy of this trust an annual
+     allowance not exceeding three lacs of rupees, (thirty thousand
+     pounds,) which we consider not only as a munificent reward for any
+     services he shall render the Company, but sufficient to enable him
+     to support his station with suitable rank and dignity. And here we
+     must add, that, in the choice you shall make of a person to be the
+     active minister of the Nabob's government, we hope and trust that
+     you will show yourselves worthy of the confidence we have placed in
+     you, by being actuated therein, by no other motives than those of
+     the public good and the safety and interest of the Company."
+
+Here, my Lords, a person was to be named fit to fill the office and
+supply the place of Mahomed Reza Kh�n, who was deputy-viceroy of Bengal,
+at the head of the criminal justice of the country, and, in short, at
+the head of the whole ostensible Mahometan government; he was also to
+supply the place of Mahomed Reza Kh�n as naib dewan, from which Reza
+Kh�n was to be removed: for you will observe, the Directors always speak
+of a man fit to perform all the duties of Mahomed Reza Kh�n; and amongst
+these he was to be as the guardian of the Nabob's person, and the
+representative of his authority and government.
+
+Mr. Hastings, having received these orders from the Court of Directors,
+did--what? He alleges in his defence, that no positive commands were
+given him. But a very sufficient description was given of the person who
+ought to succeed Mahomed Reza Kh�n, in whom the Company had before
+recognized all the necessary qualities; and they therefore desire him to
+name a similar person. But what does Mr. Hastings do in consequence of
+this authority? He names no man at all. He searches into the seraglio of
+the Nabob, and names a woman to be the viceroy of the province, to be
+the head of the ostensible government, to be the guardian of the Nabob's
+person, the conservator of his authority, and a proper representative of
+the remaining majesty of that government.
+
+Well, my Lords, he searched the seraglio. When you have to take into
+consideration the guardianship of a person of great dignity, there are
+two circumstances to be attended to: one, a faithful and affectionate
+guardianship of his person; and the other, a strong interest in his
+authority, and the means of exercising that authority in a proper and
+competent manner. Mr. Hastings, when he was looking for a woman in the
+seraglio, (for he could find women only there,) must have found actually
+in authority there the Nabob's own mother: certainly a person who by
+nature was most fit to be his guardian; and there is no manner of doubt
+of her being sufficiently competent to that duty. Here, then, was a
+legitimate wife of the Nabob Jaffier Ali Kh�n, a woman of rank and
+distinction, fittest to take care of the person and interests, as far as
+a woman could take care of them, of her own son. In this situation she
+had been placed before, during the administration of Mahomed Reza Kh�n,
+by the direct orders of the Governor, Sir John Cartier. She had, I say,
+been put in possession of that trust which it was natural and proper to
+give to such a woman. But what does Mr. Hastings do? He deposes this
+woman. He strips her of her authority with which he found her invested
+under the sanction of the English government. He finds out a woman in
+the seraglio, called Munny Begum, who was bound to the Nabob by no tie
+whatever of natural affection. He makes this woman the guardian of the
+young Nabob's person. She had a son who had been placed upon the musnud
+after the death of his father, Sujah Dowlah, and had been appointed his
+guardian. This young Nabob died soon afterwards, and was succeeded by
+Nujim ul Dowlah, another natural son of Sujah Dowlah. This prince being
+left without a mother, this woman was suffered to retain the
+guardianship of the Nabob till his death. When Mobarek ul Dowlah, a
+legitimate son of Sujah Dowlah, succeeded him, Sir John Cartier did what
+his duty was: he put the Nabob's own mother into the place which she was
+naturally entitled to hold, the guardianship of her own son, and
+displaced Munny Begum. The whole of the arrangement by which Munny Begum
+was appointed guardian of the two preceding Nabobs stands in the
+Company's records stigmatized as a transaction base, wicked, and
+corrupt. We will read to your Lordships an extract from a letter which
+has the signature of Mr. Sumner, the gentleman who sits here by the side
+of Mr. Hastings, and from which you will learn what the Company and the
+Council thought of the original nomination of Munny Begum and of her
+son. You will find that they considered her as a great agent and
+instrument of all the corruption there; and that this whole transaction,
+by which the bastard son of Munny Begum was brought forward to the
+prejudice of the legitimate son of the Nabob, was considered to be, what
+it upon the very face of it speaks itself to be, corrupt and scandalous.
+
+
+     _Extract of a General Letter from the President and Council at
+     Calcutta, Bengal, to the Select Committee of the Directors._
+
+     Paragraph 5.--"At Fort St. George we received the first advices of
+     the demise of Mir Jaffier, and of Sujah Dowlah's defeat. It was
+     there firmly imagined that no definitive measures would be taken,
+     either with respect to a peace or filling the vacancy in the
+     nizamut, before our arrival,--as the 'Lapwing' arrived in the month
+     of January with your general letter, and the appointment of a
+     committee with express powers to that purpose, for the successful
+     exertion of which the happiest occasion now offered. However, a
+     contrary resolution prevailed in the Council. The opportunity of
+     acquiring immense fortunes was too inviting to be neglected, and
+     the temptation too powerful to be resisted. A treaty was hastily
+     drawn up by the board,--or rather, transcribed, with few
+     unimportant additions, from that concluded with Mir Jaffier,--and a
+     deputation, consisting of Messrs. Johnstone, senior, Middleton, and
+     Leycester, appointed to raise the natural son of the deceased Nabob
+     to the subahdarry, in prejudice of the claim of the grandson; and
+     for this measure such reasons assigned as ought to have dictated a
+     diametrically opposite resolution. Meeran's son was a minor, which
+     circumstance alone would have naturally brought the whole
+     administration into our hands at a juncture when it became
+     indispensably necessary we should realize the shadow of power and
+     influence, which, having no solid foundation, was exposed to the
+     danger of being annihilated by the first stroke of adverse fortune.
+     But this inconsistence was not regarded, nor was it material to the
+     views for precipitating the treaty, which was pressed on the young
+     Nabob at the first interview, in so earnest and indelicate a manner
+     as highly disgusted him and chagrined his ministers, while not a
+     single rupee was stipulated for the Company, whose interests were
+     sacrificed that their servants might revel in the spoils of a
+     treasury, before impoverished, but now totally exhausted.
+
+     "6. This scene of corruption was first disclosed at a visit the
+     Nabob paid to Lord Clive and the gentlemen of the Committee a few
+     days after our arrival. He there delivered to his Lordship a letter
+     filled with bitter complaints of the insults and indignity he had
+     been exposed to, and the embezzlement of near twenty lacs of rupees
+     issued from his treasury for purposes unknown during the late
+     negotiations. So public a complaint could not be disregarded, and
+     it soon produced an inquiry. We referred the letter to the board in
+     expectation of obtaining a satisfactory account of the application
+     of this money, and were answered only by a warm remonstrance
+     entered by Mr. Leycester against that very Nabob in whose elevation
+     he boasts of having been a principal agent.
+
+     "7. Mahomed Reza Kh�n, the naib subah, was then called upon to
+     account for this large disbursement from the treasury; and he soon
+     delivered to the Committee the very extraordinary narrative entered
+     in our Proceedings the 6th of June, wherein he specifies the
+     several names and sums, by whom paid, and to whom, whether in cash,
+     bills, or obligations. So precise, so accurate an account as this
+     of money for secret and venal services was never, we believe,
+     before this period, exhibited to the Honorable Court of Directors,
+     at least never vouched by undeniable testimony and authentic
+     documents: by Juggut Seet, who himself was obliged to contribute
+     largely to the sums demanded; by Muley Ram, who was employed by Mr.
+     Johnstone in all these pecuniary transactions; by the Nabob and
+     Mahomed Reza Kh�n, who were the heaviest sufferers; and, lastly, by
+     the confession of the gentlemen themselves whose names are
+     specified in the distribution list.
+
+     "8. Juggut Seet expressly declared in his narrative, that the sum
+     which he agreed to pay the deputation, amounting to 125,000 rupees,
+     was extorted by menaces; and since the close of our inquiry, and
+     the opinions we delivered in the Proceedings of the 21st of June,
+     it fully appears that the presents from the Nabob and Mahomed Reza
+     Kh�n, exceeding the immense sum of seventeen lacs, were not the
+     voluntary offerings of gratitude, but contributions levied on the
+     weakness of the government, and violently exacted from the
+     dependent state and timid disposition of the minister. The charge,
+     indeed, is denied on the one hand, as well as affirmed on the
+     other. Your honorable board must therefore determine how far the
+     circumstance of extortion may aggravate the crime of disobedience
+     to your positive orders,--the exposing the government in a manner
+     to sale, and receiving the infamous wages of corruption from
+     opposite parties and contending interests. We speak with boldness,
+     because we speak from conviction founded upon indubitable evidence,
+     that, besides the above sums specified in the distribution account,
+     to the amount of 228,125_l._ sterling, there was likewise to the
+     value of several lacs of rupees procured from Nundcomar and Roy
+     Dullub, each of whom aspired at and obtained a promise of that very
+     employment it was predetermined to bestow on Mahomed Reza Kh�n.
+
+        (Signed at the end,)
+        "CLIVE.
+        W^M B. SUMNER.
+        JOHN CARNAC.
+        H. VERELST.
+        FRA^S SYKES."
+
+My Lords, the persons who sign this letter are mostly the friends, and
+one of them is the gentleman who is bail for and sits near Mr. Hastings.
+They state to you this horrible and venal transaction, by which the
+government was set to sale, by which a bastard son was elevated to the
+wrong of the natural and legitimate heir, and in which a prostitute, his
+mother, was put in the place of the honorable and legitimate mother of
+the representative of the family.
+
+Now, if there was one thing more than another under heaven, which Mr.
+Hastings ought to have shunned, it was the suspicion of being concerned
+in any such infamous transaction as that which is here recorded to be
+so,--a transaction in which the country government had before been sold
+to this very woman and her offspring, and in which two great candidates
+for power in that country fought against each other, and perhaps the
+largest offerer carried it.
+
+When a Governor-General sees the traces of corruption in the conduct of
+his predecessors, the traces of injustice following that corruption, the
+traces of notorious irregularity in setting aside the just claimants in
+favor of those that have no claim at all, he has that before his eyes
+which ought to have made him the more scrupulously avoid, and to keep at
+the farthest distance possible from, the contagion and even the
+suspicion of being corrupted by it. Moreover, my Lords, it was in
+consequence of these very transactions that the new covenants were made,
+which bind the servants of the Company never to take a present of above
+two hundred pounds, or some such sum of money, from any native in
+circumstances there described. This covenant I shall reserve for
+consideration in another part of this business. It was in pursuance of
+this idea, and to prevent the abuse of the prevailing custom of visiting
+the governing powers of that country with a view of receiving presents
+from them, that the House of Commons afterwards, in its inquiries, took
+up this matter and passed the Regulating Act in 1773.
+
+But to return to Munny Begum.--This very person, that had got into power
+by the means already mentioned, did Mr. Hastings resort to, knowing her
+to be well skilled in the trade of bribery,--knowing her skilful
+practice in business of this sort,--knowing the fitness of her eunuchs,
+instruments, and agents, to be dealers in this kind of traffic. This
+very woman did Mr. Hastings select, stigmatized as she was in the
+Company's record, stigmatized by the very gentleman who sits next to
+him, and whose name you have heard read to you as one of those members
+of the Council that reprobated the horrible iniquity of the transaction
+in which this woman was a principal agent. For though neither the young
+Nabob nor his mother ought to have been raised to the stations in which
+they were placed, and were placed there for the purpose of facilitating
+the receipt of bribes, yet the order of Nature was preserved, and the
+mother was made the guardian of her own son: for though she was a
+prostitute and he a bastard, yet still she was a mother and he a son;
+and both Nature and legitimate disposition with regard to the
+guardianship of a son went together.
+
+But what did Mr. Hastings do? Improving upon the preceding transaction,
+improving on it by a kind of refinement in corruption, he drives away
+the lawful mother from her lawful guardianship; the mother of nature he
+turns out, and he delivers her son to the stepmother to be the guardian
+of his person. That your Lordships may see who this woman was, we shall
+read to you a paper from your Lordships' minutes, produced before Mr.
+Hastings's face, and never contradicted by him from that day to this.
+
+     At a Consultation, 24th July, 1775.--"Shah Chanim, deceased, was
+     sister to the Nabob Mahub ul Jung by the same father, but different
+     mothers; she married Mir Mahomed Jaffier Kh�n, by whom she had a
+     son and a daughter; the name of the former was Mir Mahomed Sadduc
+     Ali Kh�n, and the latter was married to Mir Mahomed Cossim Kh�n
+     Sadduc. Ali Kh�n had two sons and two daughters; the sons' names
+     are Mir Sydoc and Mir Sobeem, who are now living; the daughters
+     were married to Sultan Mirza Daood.
+
+     "Baboo Begum, the mother of the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah, was the
+     daughter of Summin Ali Kh�n, and married Mir Mahomed Jaffier Kh�n.
+     The history of Munny Begum is this. At a village called Balkonda,
+     near Sekundra, there lived a widow, who, from her great poverty,
+     not being able to bring up her daughter Munny, gave her to a slave
+     girl belonging to Summin Ali Kh�n, whose name was Bissoo. During
+     the space of five years she lived at Shahjehanabad, and was
+     educated by Bissoo after the manner of a dancing-girl. Afterwards
+     the Nabob Shamut Jung, upon the marriage of Ikram ul Dowlah,
+     brother to the Nabob Surajah ul Dowlah, sent for Bissoo Beg's set
+     of dancing-girls from Shahjehanabad, of which Munny Begum was one,
+     and allowed them ten thousand rupees for their expenses, to dance
+     at the wedding. While this ceremony was celebrating, they were kept
+     by the Nabob; but some months afterwards he dismissed them, and
+     they took up their residence in this city. Mir Mahomed Jaffier Kh�n
+     then took them into keeping, and allowed Munny and her set five
+     hundred rupees per month, till at length, finding that Munny was
+     pregnant, he took her into his own house. She gave birth to the
+     Nabob Nujim ul Dowlah, and in this manner she has remained in the
+     Nabob's family ever since."
+
+My Lords, I do not mean to detain you long upon this part of the
+business, but I have thought it necessary to advert to these
+particulars. As to all the rest, the honorable and able Manager who
+preceded me has sufficiently impressed upon your Lordships' minds the
+monstrous nature of the deposing of the Nabob's mother from the
+guardianship of her son, for the purpose of placing this woman there at
+the head of all his family and of his domestic concerns in the seraglio
+within doors, and at the head of the state without, together with the
+disposal of the whole of the revenue that was allowed him. Mr. Hastings
+pretends, indeed, to have appointed at the same time a trusty mutsuddy
+to keep the accounts of the revenue; but he has since declared that no
+account had been kept, and that it was in vain to desire it or to call
+for it. This is the state of the case with respect to the appointment of
+Munny Begum.
+
+With regard to the reappointment of Mahomed Reza Kh�n, you have heard
+from my worthy fellow Manager that he was acquitted of the charges that
+had been brought against him by Mr. Hastings, after a long and lingering
+trial. The Company was perfectly satisfied with the acquittal, and
+declared that he was not only acquitted, but honorably acquitted; and
+they also declared that he had a fair claim to a compensation for his
+sufferings. They not only declared him innocent, but meritorious. They
+gave orders that he should be considered as a person who was to be
+placed in office again upon the first occasion, and that he had entitled
+himself to this favor by his conduct in the place which he had before
+filled.
+
+The Council of the year 1775, (whom I can never mention nor shall
+mention without honor,) who complied faithfully with the act of
+Parliament, who never disobeyed the orders of the Company, and to whom
+no man has imputed even the shadow of corruption, found that this Munny
+Begum had acted in the manner which my honorable fellow Manager has
+stated: that she had dissipated the revenue, that she had neglected the
+education of the Nabob, and had thrown the whole judicature of the
+country into confusion. They ordered that she should be removed from her
+situation; that the Nabob's own mother should be placed at the head of
+the seraglio, a situation to which she was entitled; and with regard to
+the rest of the offices, that Mahomed Reza Kh�n should be employed to
+fill them.
+
+Mr. Hastings resisted these propositions with all his might; but they
+were by that happy momentary majority carried against him, and Mahomed
+Reza Kh�n was placed in his former situation. But Mr. Hastings, though
+thus defeated, was only waiting for what he considered to be the
+fortunate moment for returning again to his corrupt, vicious,
+tyrannical, and disobedient habits. The reappointment of Mahomed Reza
+Kh�n had met with the fullest approbation of the Company; and they
+directed, that, as long as his good behavior entitled him to it, he
+should continue in the office. Mr. Hastings, however, without alleging
+any ill behavior, and for no reason that can be assigned, but his
+corrupt engagement with Munny Begum, overturned (upon the pretence of
+restoring the Nabob to his rights) the whole of the Company's
+arrangement, as settled by the late majority, and approved by the Court
+of Directors.
+
+I have now to show you what sort of a man the Nabob was, who was thus
+set up in defiance of the Company's authority; what Mr. Hastings himself
+thought of him; what the judges thought of him; and what all the world
+thought of him.
+
+I must first make your Lordships acquainted with a little preliminary
+matter. A man named Roy Rada Churn had been appointed vakeel, or agent,
+to manage the Nabob's affairs at Calcutta. One of this man's creditors
+attached him there. Roy Rada Churn pleaded his privilege as the vakeel
+or representative of a sovereign prince. The question came to be tried
+in the Supreme Court, and the issue was, Whether the Nabob was a
+sovereign prince or not. I think the court did exceedingly wrong in
+entertaining such a question; because, in my opinion, whether he was or
+was not a sovereign prince, any person representing him ought to be left
+free, and to have a proper and secure means of concerting his affairs
+with the Council. It was, however, taken otherwise; the question was
+brought to trial, whether the Nabob was a sovereign prince sufficient to
+appoint and protect a person to manage his affairs, under the name of an
+ambassador. In that cause did Mr. Hastings come forward to prove, by a
+voluntary affidavit, that he had no pretensions, no power, no authority
+at all,--that he was a mere pageant, a thing of straw,--and that the
+Company exercised every species of authority over him, in every
+particular, and in every respect; and that, therefore, to talk of him as
+an efficient person was an affront to the common sense of mankind: and
+this you will find the judges afterwards declared to be their opinion.
+
+I will here press again one remark, which perhaps you may recollect that
+I have made before, that the chief and most usual mode in which all the
+villanies perpetrated in India, by Mr. Hastings and his co-partners in
+iniquity, has been through the medium and instrumentality of persons
+whom they pretended to have rights of their own, and to be acting for
+themselves; whereas such persons were, in fact, totally dependent upon
+him, Mr. Hastings, and did no one act that was not prescribed by him.
+In order, therefore, to let you see the utter falsehood, fraud,
+prevarication, and deceit of the pretences by which the native powers of
+India are represented to be independent, and are held up as the
+instruments of defying the laws of this kingdom, under pretext of their
+being absolute princes, I will read the affidavit of Warren Hastings,
+Esquire, Governor-General of Bengal, made the 31st July, 1775.
+
+     "This deponent maketh oath, and saith, That the late President and
+     Council did, in or about the month of August, 1772, by their own
+     authority appoint Munny Begum, relict of the late Nabob, Mir
+     Jaffier Ali Kh�n, to be guardian to the present Nabob, Mobarek ul
+     Dowlah, and Rajah Gourdas, son of Maha Rajah Nundcomar, to be dewan
+     of the said Nabob's household, allowing to the said Munny Begum a
+     salary of 140,000 rupees per annum, and to the said Rajah Gourdas,
+     for himself and officers, a salary of 100,000 rupees per annum:
+     That the said late President and Council did, in or about the month
+     of August, 1772, plan and constitute regular and distinct courts of
+     justice, civil and criminal, by their own authority, for
+     administration of justice to the inhabitants throughout Bengal,
+     without consulting the said Nabob or requiring his concurrence, and
+     that the said civil courts were made solely dependent on the
+     Presidency of Calcutta; and the said criminal courts were put under
+     the inspection and control of the Company's servants, although
+     ostensibly under the name of the Nazim, as appears from the
+     following extracts from the plan for the administration of justice,
+     constituted by the President and Council as aforesaid."
+
+My Lords, we need not go through all the circumstances of this
+affidavit, which is in your minutes, and, to save time, I will refer
+your Lordships to them. This affidavit, as I have already said, was put
+into the court to prove that the Nabob had no power or authority at all;
+but what is very singular in it, and which I recommend to the particular
+notice of your Lordships, when you are scrutinizing this matter, is,
+that there is not a single point stated, to prove the nullity of this
+Nabob's authority, that was not Mr. Hastings's on particular act. Well,
+the Governor-General swears; the judge of the court refers to him in his
+decision; he builds and bottoms it upon the Governor-General's
+affidavit;--he swears, I say, that the Council, by their own authority,
+appointed Munny Begum to be guardian to the Nabob.
+
+"By what authority," the Governor-General asks, "did the Council erect
+courts of law and superintend the administration of justice, without any
+communication with the Nabob? Had the Nabob himself any idea that he was
+a sovereign? Does he complain of the reduction of his stipend or the
+infringement of treaties? No; he appears to consider himself to be, what
+in fact he really is, absolutely dependent on the Company, and to be
+willing to accept any pittance they would allow him for his maintenance:
+he claims no rights. Does he complain that the administration of justice
+is taken into the hands of the Company? No: by the treaty, the
+protection of his subjects is delivered up to the Company; and he well
+knew, that, whoever may be held up as the ostensible prince, the
+administration of justice must be in the hands of those who have power
+to enforce it." He goes on,--"The Governor-General, who, I suppose, had
+a delicacy to state more than what had before been made public, closes
+his affidavit with saying that all he has deposed to he believes to be
+publicly known, as it is particularly set forth in the printed book
+entitled 'Reports of the Committee of the House of Commons.' I knew," he
+adds, "it was there, and was therefore surprised at this application; it
+is so notorious, that everybody in the settlement must have known it:
+when I say everybody, I mean with an exception to the gentlemen who have
+applied to the court. The only reason I can give for their applying is
+the little time they have been in the country." The judge (I think it is
+Chief-Justice Impey) then goes on,--"Perhaps this question might have
+been determined merely on the dates of the letters to the
+Governor-General; but as the Council have made the other a serious
+question, I should not have thought that I had done my duty, if I had
+not given a full and determinate opinion upon it: I should have been
+sorry, if I had left it doubtful whether the empty name of a Nabob
+should be thrust between a delinquent and the laws, so as effectually to
+protect him from the hand of justice."
+
+My Lords, the court, as you see, bottoms its determination on what we
+stand upon here, Mr. Hastings's evidence, that the empty name of a
+pretended sovereign should not be thrust forth between a delinquent and
+justice.
+
+What does Mr. Le Maistre, the other judge, say upon this occasion? "With
+regard to this phantom, that man of straw, Mobarek ul Dowlah, it is an
+insult on the understanding of the court to have made the question of
+his sovereignty. But as it came from the Governor-General and Council, I
+have too much respect for that body to treat it ludicrously, and I
+confess I cannot consider it seriously, and we always shall consider a
+letter of business from the Nabob the same as a letter from the
+Governor-General and Council."
+
+This is the unanimous opinion of all the judges concerning the state and
+condition of the Nabob. We have thus established the point we mean to
+establish: that any use which shall be made of the Nabob's name for the
+purpose of justifying any disobedience to the orders of the Company, or
+of bringing forward corrupt and unfit persons for the government, could
+be considered as no other than the act of the persons who shall make
+such a use of it; and that no letter that the Nabob writes to any one in
+power was or could be considered as any other than the letter of that
+person himself. This we wish to impress upon your Lordships, because, as
+you have before seen the use that has been made in this way of the Nabob
+of Oude, you may judge of the use that has been made of the name of
+Hyder Beg Kh�n, and of the names of all the eminent persons of the
+country.
+
+One word more and I have done. If, whilst you remark the use that is
+made of this man's name, your Lordships shall find that this use has
+ever been made of his name for his benefit, or for the purpose of giving
+him any useful or substantial authority, or of meliorating his condition
+in any way whatever; forgive the fraud, forgive the disobedience. But if
+we have shown your Lordships that it was for no other purpose than to
+disobey the orders of the Company, to trample upon the laws of his
+country, to introduce back again, and to force into power, those very
+corrupt and wicked instruments which had formerly done so much
+mischief, and for which mischief they were removed, then we shall not
+have passed our time in vain, in endeavoring to prove that this man, in
+the opinion of a court of justice, and by public notoriety, and by Mr.
+Hastings's own opinion, was held to be fit for nothing but to be made a
+tool in his hands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having stated to your Lordships generally the effects produced upon the
+Mahometan interest of Bengal by the misconduct of the prisoner at your
+bar with respect to the appointment of the guardian of the Nabob or
+Subahdar of that province, and of the ministers of his government, I
+shall have the honor of attending your Lordships another day, and shall
+show you the use that has been made of this government and of the
+authority of the Nabob, who, as your Lordships have seen, was the mere
+phantom of power; and I shall show how much a phantom he was for every
+good purpose, and how effectual an instrument he was made for every bad
+one.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+EIGHTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 1794
+
+
+My Lords,--Your Lordships heard, upon the last day of the meeting of
+this high court, the distribution of the several matters which I should
+have occasion to lay before you, and by which I resolved to guide
+myself in the examination of the conduct of Mr. Hastings with regard to
+Bengal. I stated that I should first show the manner in which he
+comported himself with regard to the people who were found in possession
+of the government when we first entered into Bengal. We have shown to
+your Lordships the progressive steps by which the native government was
+brought into a state of annihilation. We have stated the manner in which
+that government was solemnly declared by a court of justice to be
+depraved, and incompetent to act, and dead in law. We have shown to your
+Lordships (and we have referred you to the document) that its death was
+declared upon a certificate of the principal attending physician of the
+state, namely, Mr. Warren Hastings himself. This was declared in an
+affidavit made by him, wherein he has gone through all the powers of
+government, of which he had regularly despoiled the Nabob Mobarek ul
+Dowlah, part by part, exactly according to the ancient formula by which
+a degraded knight was despoiled of his knighthood: they took, I say,
+from him all the powers of government, article by article,--his helmet,
+his shield, his cuirass; at last they hacked off his spurs, and left him
+nothing. Mr. Hastings laid down all the premises, and left the judges to
+draw the conclusion.
+
+Your Lordships will remark (for you will find it on your minutes) that
+the judges have declared this affidavit of Mr. Hastings to be a
+_delicate_ affidavit. We have heard of affidavits that were true; we
+have heard of affidavits that were perjured; but this is the first
+instance that has come to our knowledge (and we receive it as a proof of
+Indian refinement) of a delicate affidavit. This affidavit of Mr.
+Hastings we shall show to your Lordships is not entitled to the
+description of a good affidavit, however it might be entitled, in the
+opinion of those judges, to the description of a delicate affidavit,--a
+phrase by which they appear to have meant that he had furnished all the
+proofs of the Nabob's deposition, but had delicately avoided to declare
+him expressly deposed. The judges drew, however, this indelicate
+conclusion; the conclusion they drew was founded upon the premises; it
+was very just and logical; for they declared that he was a mere cipher.
+They commended Mr. Hastings's delicacy, though they did not imitate it;
+but they pronounced sentence of deposition upon the said Nabob, and they
+declared that any letter or paper that was produced from him could not
+be considered as an act of government. So effectually was he removed by
+the judges out of the way, that no minority, no insanity, no physical
+circumstances, not even death itself, could put a man more completely
+out of sight. They declare that they would consider his letters in no
+other light than as the letters of the Company, represented by the
+Governor-General and Council. Thus, then, we find the Nabob legally
+dead.
+
+We find next, that he was politically dead. Mr. Hastings, not satisfied
+with the affidavit he made in court, has thought proper upon record to
+inform the Company and the world of what he considered him to be civilly
+and politically.
+
+
+     _Minute entered by the Governor-General._
+
+     "_The Governor-General._--I object to this motion," (a motion
+     relative to the trial above alluded to,) "because I do not
+     apprehend that the declaration of the judges respecting the Nabob's
+     sovereignty will involve this government in any difficulties with
+     the French or other foreign nations." (Mark, my Lords, these
+     political effects.) "How little the screen of the Nabob's name has
+     hitherto availed will appear in the frequent and inconclusive
+     correspondence which has been maintained with the foreign
+     settlements, the French especially, since the Company have thought
+     proper to stand forth in their real character in the exercise of
+     the dewanny. From that period the government of these provinces has
+     been wholly theirs; nor can all the subtleties and distinctions of
+     political sophistry conceal the possession of power, where the
+     exercise of it is openly practised and universally felt in its
+     operation. In deference to the commands of the Company, we have
+     generally endeavored, in all our correspondence with foreigners, to
+     evade the direct avowal of our possessing the actual rule of the
+     country,--employing the unapplied term government, for the power to
+     which we exacted their submission; but I do not remember any
+     instance, and I hope none will be found, of our having been so
+     disingenuous as to disclaim our own power, or to affirm that the
+     Nabob was the real sovereign of these provinces. In effect, I do
+     not hesitate to say that I look upon this state of indecision to
+     have been productive of all the embarrassments which we have
+     experienced with the foreign settlements. None of them have ever
+     owned any dominion but that of the British government in these
+     provinces. Mr. Chevalier has repeatedly declared, that he will not
+     acknowledge any other, but will look to that only for the support
+     of the privileges possessed by his nation, and shall protest
+     against that alone as responsible for any act of power by which
+     their privileges may be violated or their property disturbed. The
+     Dutch, the Danes, have severally applied to this government, as to
+     the ruling power, for the grant of indulgences and the redress of
+     their grievances. In our replies to all, we have constantly assumed
+     the prerogatives of that character, but eluded the direct avowal of
+     it; under the name of influence we have offered them protection,
+     and we have granted them the indulgences of government under
+     elusive expressions, sometimes applied to our treaties with the
+     Nabobs, sometimes to our own rights as the dewan; sometimes openly
+     declaring the virtual rule which we held of these provinces, we
+     have contended with them for the rights of government, and
+     threatened to repel with force the encroachments on it; we in one
+     or two instances have actually put these threats into execution, by
+     orders directly issued to the officers of government and enforced
+     by detachments from our own military forces; the Nabob was never
+     consulted, nor was the pretence ever made that his orders or
+     concurrence were necessary: in a word, we have always allowed
+     ourselves to be treated as principals, we have treated as
+     principals, but we have contented ourselves with letting our
+     actions insinuate the character which we effectually possessed,
+     without asserting it.
+
+     "For my own part, I have ever considered the reserve which has been
+     enjoined us in this respect as a consequence of the doubts which
+     have long prevailed, and which are still suffered to subsist,
+     respecting the rights of the British government and the Company to
+     the property and dominion of these provinces, not as inferring a
+     doubt with respect to any foreign power. It has, however, been
+     productive of great inconveniences; it has prevented our acting
+     with vigor in our disputes with the Dutch and French. The former
+     refuse to this day the payment of the _bahor peshcush_, although
+     the right is incontestably against them, and we have threatened to
+     enforce it. Both nations refuse to be bound by our decrees, or to
+     submit to our regulations; they refuse to submit to the payment of
+     the duties on the foreign commerce but in their own way, which
+     amounts almost to a total exemption; they refuse to submit to the
+     duty of ten per cent which is levied upon foreign salt, by which,
+     unless a stop can be put to it by a more decisive rule, they will
+     draw the whole of that important trade into their own colonies; and
+     even in the single instance in which they have allowed us to
+     prescribe to them, namely, the embargo on grain, on the
+     apprehension of a dearth, I am generally persuaded that they
+     acquiesced from the secret design of taking advantage of the
+     general suspension, by exporting grain clandestinely under cover of
+     their colors, which they knew would screen them from the rigorous
+     examination of our officers. We are precluded from forming many
+     arrangements of general utility, because of the want of control
+     over the European settlements; and a great part of the defects
+     which subsist in the government and commercial state of the country
+     are ultimately derived from this source. I have not the slightest
+     suspicion that a more open and decided conduct would expose us to
+     worse consequences from the European nations; on the contrary, we
+     have the worst of the argument while we contend with them under
+     false colors, while they know us under the disguise, and we have
+     not the confidence to disown it. What we have done and may do under
+     an assumed character is full as likely to involve us in a war with
+     France, a nation not much influenced by logical weapons, (if such
+     can be supposed to be the likely consequence of our own trifling
+     disagreements with them,) as if we stood forth their avowed
+     opponents. To conclude, instead of regretting, with Mr. Francis,
+     the occasion which deprives us of so useless and hurtful a
+     disguise, I should rather rejoice, were it really the case, and
+     consider it as a crisis which freed the constitution of our
+     government from one of its greatest defects."
+
+Now, my Lords, the delicacy of the affidavit is no more; the great
+arcanum of the state is avowed: it is avowed that the government is
+ours,--that the Nabob is nothing. It is avowed to foreign nations; and
+the disguise which we have put on, Mr. Hastings states, in his opinion,
+to be hurtful to the affairs of the Company. Here we perceive the exact
+and the perfect agreement between his character as a delicate
+affidavit-maker in a court of justice and his indelicate declarations
+upon the records of the Company for the information of the whole world
+concerning the real arcanum of the Bengal government.
+
+Now I cannot help praising his consistency upon this occasion, whether
+his policy was right or wrong. Hitherto we find the whole consistent, we
+find the affidavit perfectly supported. The inferences which delicacy at
+first prevented him from producing better recollection and more perfect
+policy made him here avow. In this state things continued. The Nabob,
+your Lordships see, is dead,--dead in law, dead in politics, dead in a
+court of justice, dead upon the records of the Company. Except in mere
+animal existence, it is all over with him.
+
+I have now to state to your Lordships, that Mr. Hastings, who has the
+power of putting even to death in this way, possesses likewise the art
+of restoring to life. But what is the medicine that revives them? Your
+Lordships, I am sure, will be glad to know what nostrum, not hitherto
+pretended to by quacks in physic, by quacks in politics, nor by quacks
+in law, will serve to revive this man, to cover his dead bones with
+flesh, and to give him life, activity, and vigor. My Lords, I am about
+to tell you an instance of a recipe of such infallible efficacy as was
+never before discovered. His cure for all disorders is disobedience to
+the commands of his lawful superiors. When the orders of the Court of
+Directors are contrary to his own opinions, he forgets them all. Let the
+Court of Directors but declare in favor of his own system and his own
+positions, and that very moment, merely for the purpose of declaring his
+right of rebellion against the laws of his country, he counteracts them.
+Then these dead bones arise,--or, to use a language more suitable to
+the dignity of the thing, Bayes's men are all revived. "Are these men
+dead?" asks Mr. Bayes's friend. "No," says he, "they shall all get up
+and dance immediately." But in this ludicrous view of Mr. Hastings's
+conduct, your Lordships must not lose sight of its great importance. You
+cannot have in an abstract, as it were, any one thing that better
+develops the principles of the man, that more fully develops all the
+sources of his conduct, and of all the frauds and iniquities which he
+has committed, in order at one and the same time to evade his duty to
+the Court of Directors, that is to say, to the laws of his country, and
+to oppress, crush, rob, and ill-treat the people that are under him.
+
+My Lords, you have had an account of the person who represented the
+Nabob's dignity, Mahomed Reza Kh�n; you have heard of the rank he bore,
+the sufferings that he went through, his trial and honorable acquittal,
+and the Company's order that the first opportunity should be taken to
+appoint him Naib Subah, or deputy of the Nabob, and more especially to
+represent him in the administering of justice. Your Lordships are also
+acquainted with what was done in consequence of those orders by the
+Council-General, in the restoration and re�stablishment of the executive
+power in this person,--not in the poor Nabob, a poor, helpless,
+ill-bred, ill-educated boy, but in the first Mussulman of the country,
+who had before exercised the office of Naib Subah, or deputy
+viceroy,--in order to give some degree of support to the expiring honor
+and justice of that country. The majority, namely, General Clavering,
+Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, whose names, as I have before said,
+will, for obedience to the Company, fidelity to the laws, honor to
+themselves, and a purity untouched and unimpeached, stand distinguished
+and honored, in spite of all the corrupt and barking virulence of India
+against them,--these men, I say, obeyed the Company: they had no secret
+or fraudulent connection with Mahomed Reza Kh�n; but they reinstated him
+in his office.
+
+The moment that real death had carried away two of the most virtuous of
+this community, and that Mr. Hastings was thereby re�stablished in his
+power, he returned to his former state of rebellion to the Company, and
+of fraud and oppression upon the people. And here we come to the
+revivificating medicine. I forgot to tell your Lordships, that this
+Nabob, whose letters were declared by a court of law, with his own
+approbation, to be in effect letters of the Governor-General and
+Council, concludes a formal application transmitted to them, and dated
+17th November, 1777, with a demand of the restoration of his rights. Mr.
+Hastings upon this enters the following minute:--
+
+     "The Nabob's demands are grounded upon positive rights, which will
+     not admit of a discussion; he has an incontestable right to the
+     management of his own household; he has an incontestable right to
+     the nizamut."
+
+My Lords, you have heard his affidavit, you have heard his avowed and
+recorded opinion. In direct defiance of both, because he wishes to make
+doubtful the orders of the Company and to evade his duty, he here makes
+without any delicacy a declaration, which if it be true, the affidavit
+is a gross perjury, let it be managed with what delicacy he pleases. The
+word _nizamut_, which he uses, may be unfamiliar to your Lordships. In
+India it signifies the whole executive government, though the word
+strictly means viceroyalty: all the princes of that country holding
+their dominions as representatives of the Mogul, the great nominal
+sovereign of the empire. To convince you that it does so, take his own
+explanation of it.
+
+     "It is his by inheritance: the adawlut and the foujdarry having
+     been repeatedly declared by the Company and by this government to
+     appertain to the nizamut. The adawlut, namely, the distribution of
+     civil justice, and the foujdarry, namely, the executive criminal
+     justice of that country, that is to say, the whole sovereign
+     government of the courts of justice, have been declared by the
+     Company to appertain to the nizamut."
+
+I beg of your Lordships to recollect, when you take into your
+consideration the charges of the House of Commons, that the person they
+accuse, and persons suborned by him, have never scrupled to be guilty,
+without sense of shame, of the most notorious falsehoods, the most
+glaring inconsistencies, and even of perjury itself; and that it is thus
+they make the power of the Company dead or alive, as best suits their
+own wicked, clandestine, and fraudulent purposes, and the great end of
+all their actions and all their politics plunder and peculation.
+
+I must here refer your Lordships to a minute of Mr. Francis's, which I
+recommend to your reading at large, and to your very serious
+recollection, in page 1086; because it contains a complete history of
+Mr. Hastings's conduct, and of its effects upon this occasion.
+
+And now to proceed.--The Nabob, in a subsequent application to the
+Company's government at Calcutta, desires that Munny Begum may be
+allowed to take on herself the whole administration of the affairs of
+the nizamut, (not the superiority in the administration of the affairs
+of the seraglio only, though this would have been a tyrannical
+usurpation of the power belonging to the legitimate mother of the
+Nabob,) without the interference of any person whatever; and he adds,
+that by this the Governor will give him complete satisfaction. In all
+fraudulent correspondence you are sure to find the true secret of it at
+last. It has been said by somebody, that the true sense of a letter is
+to be learnt from its postscript. But this matter is so clumsily
+managed, that, in contempt of all decency, the first thing the Nabob
+does is to desire he may be put into the hands of Munny Begum, and that
+without the interference of anybody whatever.
+
+The next letter, immediately following on the heels of the former, was
+received by the Council on the 12th of February, 1778. In this letter he
+desires that Mahomed Reza Kh�n may be removed from his office in the
+government; and he expresses his hopes, that, as he himself is now come
+to years of maturity, and by the blessing of God is not so devoid of
+understanding as to be incapable of conducting his affairs, he says, "I
+am therefore hopeful, from your favor and regard to justice, that you
+will deliver me from the authority of the aforesaid Mahomed Reza Kh�n,
+and give your permission that I take on myself the management of the
+adawlut and foujdarry." There is no doubt of this latter application, in
+contradiction to the former, having arisen from a suspicion that the
+appointment of Munny Begum would be too gross, and would shock the
+Council; and Mr. Hastings therefore orders the second letter to be
+written from the Nabob, in which he claims the powers of government for
+himself. Then follows a letter from the Governor-General, informing the
+Nabob that it had been agreed, that, his Excellency being now arrived at
+years of maturity, the control of his own household, and the courts
+dependent on the nizamut and foujdarry, should be placed in his hands;
+and Mahomed Reza Kh�n was directed at the same time to resign his
+authority to the Nabob.
+
+Here your Lordships see Munny Begum in effect completely invested with,
+and you will see how she has used her power: for I suppose your
+Lordships are sick of the name of Nabob, as a real actor in the
+government. You now see the true parties in the transaction,--namely,
+the lover, Warren Hastings, Esquire, and Munny Begum, the object of his
+passion and flame, to which he sacrifices as much as Antony ever did to
+Cleopatra. You see the object of his love and affection placed in the
+administration of the viceroyalty; you see placed at her disposal the
+administration of the civil judicature, and of the executory
+justice,--together with the salary which was intended for Mahomed Reza
+Kh�n.
+
+Your Lordships will be pleased to remember that this distribution of the
+Nabob's government was made in direct defiance of the orders of the
+Company. And as a further proof of this defiance, it will not escape
+your Lordships, that, before this measure was carried into execution,
+Mr. Barwell being one day absent from the Council, Mr. Hastings fell
+into a minority; and it was agreed, upon that occasion, that the whole
+affair should be referred home to the Court of Directors, and that no
+arrangement should be made till the Directors had given their opinion.
+Mr. Hastings, the very moment after Mr. Barwell's return to his seat in
+the Council, rescinds this resolution, which subjected the orders of the
+Court of Directors to their own reconsideration; and he hurries headlong
+and precipitately into the execution of his first determination. Your
+Lordships will also see in this act what sort of use Mr. Hastings made
+of the Council; and I have therefore insisted upon all these practices
+of the prisoner at your bar, because there is not one of them in which
+some principle of government is not wounded, if not mortally wounded.
+
+My Lords, we have laid before you the consequences of this proceeding.
+We have shown what passed within the walls of the seraglio, and what
+tyranny was exercised by this woman over the multitude of women there. I
+shall now show your Lordships in what manner she made use of her power
+over the _supreme judicature_, to peculate, and to destroy the country;
+and I shall adduce, as proofs of this abuse of her authority, the facts
+I am about to relate, and of which there is evidence before your
+Lordships.
+
+There was an ostensible man, named Sudder ul Huk Kh�n, placed there at
+the head of the administration of justice, with a salary of seven
+thousand pounds a year of the Company's money. This man, in a letter to
+the Governor-General and Council, received the 1st of September, 1778,
+says,--"His Highness himself [the Nabob] is not deficient in regard for
+me, but certain bad men have gained an ascendency over his temper, by
+whose instigation he acts." You will see, my Lords, how this poor man
+was crippled in the execution of his duty, and dishonored by the
+corruption of this woman and her eunuchs, to whom Mr. Hastings had given
+the supreme government, and with it an uncontrolled influence over all
+the dependent parts. After thus complaining of the slights he receives
+from the Nabob, he adds,--"Thus they cause the Nabob to treat me,
+sometimes with indignity, at others with kindness, just as they think
+proper to advise him: their view is, that, by compelling me to
+displeasure at such unworthy treatment, they may force me either to
+relinquish my station, or to join with them and act with their advice,
+and appoint creatures of their recommendation to the different offices,
+from which they might draw profit to themselves." In a subsequent letter
+to the Governor, Sudder ul Huk Kh�n says,--"The Begum's ministers,
+before my arrival, with the advice of their counsellors, caused the
+Nabob to sign a receipt, in consequence of which they received, at two
+different times, near fifty thousand rupees, in the name of the officers
+of the adawlut, foujdarry, &c., from the Company's sircar; and having
+drawn up an account current in the manner they wished, they got the
+Nabob to sign it, and then sent it to me." In the same letter he asserts
+that these people have the Nabob entirely in their power.
+
+Now I have only to remark to your Lordships, that the first and
+immediate operation of Mr. Hastings's regulation, which put everything
+into the hands of this wicked woman for her corrupt purposes, was, that
+the office of chief-justice was trampled upon and depraved, and made use
+of to plunder the Company of money, which was appropriated to their own
+uses,--and that the person ostensibly holding this office was forced to
+become the instrument in the hands of this wicked woman and her two
+wicked eunuchs. This, then, was the representation which the
+chief-justice made to Mr. Hastings, as one of the very first fruits of
+his new arrangement. I am now to tell you what his next step was. This
+same Mr. Hastings, who had made the Nabob master of everything and
+placed everything at his disposal, who had maintained that the Nabob was
+not to act a secondary part and to be a mere instrument in the hands of
+the Company, who had, as you have seen, revived the Nabob, now puts him
+to death again. He pretends to be shocked at these proceedings of the
+Nabob, and, not being able to prevent their coming before the Council of
+the Directors at home, he immediately took Sudder ul Huk Kh�n under his
+protection.
+
+Now your Lordships see Mr. Hastings appearing in his own character
+again,--exercising the power he had pretended to abdicate, whilst the
+Nabob sinks and subsides under him. He becomes the supporter of Sudder
+ul Huk Kh�n, now that the infamy of the treatment he received could no
+longer be concealed from the Council. On the 1st of September, 1778, the
+Governor informs the Nabob, "that it is highly expedient that Sudder ul
+Huk Kh�n should have full control in all matters relative to his office,
+and the sole appointment and dismission of the sudder and mofussil
+officers; and that his seal and signature should be authentic to all
+papers having relation to the business intrusted to him: I therefore
+intimate to you, that he should appoint and dismiss all the officers
+under him, and that your Excellency should not interfere in any one
+[way?]."
+
+The Nabob, in a letter to the Governor, received the 3d of September,
+1778, says,--"Agreeably to your pleasure, I have relinquished all
+concern with the affairs of the foujdarry and adawlut, leaving the
+entire management in Sudder ul Huk Kh�n's hands." Here you see the Nabob
+again reduced to his former state of subordination. This
+chief-justiceship, which was declared to be his inherent right, he is
+obliged to submit to the control of Mr. Hastings, and to declare that he
+will not interfere at all in a matter which Mr. Hastings had declared to
+be his incommunicable attribute. I do not say that Mr. Hastings
+interfered improperly. Certainly it was not fit that the highest court
+of justice in all Bengal should be made the instrument of the rapacity
+of a set of villains with a prostitute at their head: just as if a gang
+of thieves in England, with their prostitutes at their head, should
+seize the judge which ought to punish them, and endeavor to make use of
+his name in their iniquitous transactions. But your Lordships will find
+that Mr. Hastings is here acting a merely ostensible part, and that he
+has always a means of defeating privately what he declares publicly to
+be his intention. Your Lordships will see soon how this ended. Mr.
+Hastings gets the Nabob to give up all his authority over the
+chief-justice; but he says not one word of Munny Begum, the person who
+had the real authority in her hands, and who was not forbidden to
+interfere with him. Mr. Hastings's order is dated the 1st September,
+1778. On the 3d of September, the Nabob is said to have relinquished all
+concern with Sudder ul Huk Kh�n. In a letter received the 30th of
+September, (that is, about twenty-seven days after the date of Mr.
+Hastings's order,) you will see how this pretended order was managed.
+Sudder ul Huk Kh�n thus writes, in a letter received the 30th of
+September.
+
+     "Yatibar Ali Kh�n," (Munny Begum's chief eunuch,) "from the amount
+     of salaries of the officers of the adawlut and foujdarry, which
+     before my arrival he had received for two months from the sircar,
+     made disbursements according to his own pleasure. He had before
+     caused the sum of 7,400 rupees, on account of the price of mine and
+     my peshcar's khelauts, to be carried to account, and now
+     continually sends a man to demand from me 4,300 and odd rupees, as
+     a balance of the price of khelauts, and constantly presses me to
+     take it from the amount of the salaries of the officers of the
+     adawlut and foujdarry and send it to him; and I shall be under the
+     necessity of complying. I mention this for your information."
+
+My Lords, you see again how Mr. Hastings's pretended orders were obeyed.
+They were orders addressed to the Nabob, whom he knew to be nothing, and
+who could neither control or take the least share in the execution of
+them; but he leaves the thing loose as to Manny Begum and her eunuchs,
+who he knew could alone carry them into effect. Your Lordships see that
+the first use made of the restored authority of the Nabob was, under
+various pretences, to leave the salaries of the officers of government
+unprovided for, to rob the public treasury, and to give the Company's
+money to the eunuchs, who were acting in the manner I have stated to
+you.
+
+Information of these proceedings reaches Calcutta; a regular complaint
+from a person in the highest situation in the government is made, and
+the Governor-General is obliged again to take up the matter; and I
+shall now read to your Lordships a letter of the 10th of October, 1778,
+which contains a representation so pointed and so very just of the fatal
+effects which his interference in the administration of justice had
+produced as not to stand in need of any comment from me. It speaks too
+plainly to require any.
+
+
+     _The Governor-General's Letter to the Nabob_.
+
+     "At your Excellency's request I sent Sudder ul Huk Kh�n to take on
+     him the administration of the affairs of the adawlut and foujdarry,
+     and hoped by that means not only to have given satisfaction to your
+     Excellency, but that, through his abilities and experience, these
+     affairs would have been conducted in such manner as to have secured
+     the peace of the country and the happiness of the people; and it is
+     with the greatest concern I learn that this measure is so far from
+     being attended with the expected advantages, that the affairs both
+     of the foujdarry and adawlut are in the greatest confusion
+     imaginable, and daily robberies and murders are perpetrated
+     throughout the country. This is evidently owing to the want of a
+     proper authority in the person appointed to superintend them. I
+     therefore addressed your Excellency on the importance and delicacy
+     of the affairs in question, and of the necessity of lodging full
+     power in the hands of the person chosen to administer them, in
+     reply to which your Excellency expressed sentiments coincident with
+     mine; notwithstanding which, your dependants and people, actuated
+     by selfish and avaricious views, have by their interference so
+     impeded the business as to throw the whole country into a state of
+     confusion, from which nothing can retrieve it but an unlimited
+     power lodged in the hands of the superintendent. I therefore
+     request that your Excellency will give the strictest injunctions to
+     all your dependants not to interfere in any manner with any matter
+     relative to the affairs of the adawlut and foujdarry, and that you
+     will yourself relinquish all interference therein, and leave them
+     entirely to the management of Sudder ul Huk Kh�n. This is
+     absolutely necessary to restore the country to a state of
+     tranquillity; and if your Excellency has any plan to propose for
+     the management of the affairs in future, be pleased to communicate
+     it to me, and every attention shall be paid to give your Excellency
+     satisfaction."
+
+My Lords, I think I have read enough to you for our present
+purpose,--referring your Lordships for fuller information to your
+Minutes, page 1086, which I beg you to read with the greatest attention.
+
+I must again beg your Lordships to remark, that, though Mr. Hastings has
+the impudence still to pretend that he wishes for the restoration of
+order and justice in the country, yet, instead of writing to Munny Begum
+upon the business, whom he knew to be the very object complained of, and
+whose eunuchs are expressly mentioned in the complaint, he writes to the
+Nabob, whom he knew to be a pageant in his own court and government, and
+whose name was not even mentioned in this last complaint. Not one word
+is said, even in this letter to the Nabob, of Munny Begum or of her
+eunuchs. My Lords, when you consider his tacit support of the authors of
+the grievance, and his ostensible application for redress to the man
+who he knew never authorized and could not redress the grievance, you
+must conclude that he meant to keep the country in the same state for
+his own corrupt purposes. In this state the country in fact continued;
+Munny Begum and her eunuchs continued to administer and squander the
+Company's money, as well as the Nabob's; robberies and murders continued
+to prevail throughout the country. No appearance was left of order, law,
+or justice, from one end of Bengal to the other.
+
+The account of this state of things was received by the Court of
+Directors with horror and indignation. On the 27th of May, 1779, they
+write, as you will find in page 1063 of your printed Minutes, a letter
+to their government at Calcutta, condemning their proceedings and the
+removal of Mahomed Reza Kh�n, and they order that Munny Begum shall be
+displaced, and Mahomed Reza Kh�n restored again to the seat of justice.
+
+Mr. Francis, upon the arrival of these reiterated orders, moved in
+Council for an obedience to them. Mr. Hastings, notwithstanding he had
+before his eyes all the horrible consequences that attended his new
+arrangement, still resists that proposition. By his casting voice in the
+Council he counter-orders the orders of the Court of Directors, and
+sanctions a direct disobedience to their authority, by a resolution that
+Mahomed Reza Kh�n should not be restored to his employment, but that
+this Sudder ul Huk Kh�n, who still continued in the condition already
+described, should remain in the possession of his office. I say nothing
+of Sudder ul Huk Kh�n; he seems to be very well disposed to do his duty,
+if Mr. Hastings's arrangements had suffered him to do it; and indeed,
+if Mahomed Reza Kh�n had been reinstated, and no better supported by Mr.
+Hastings than Sudder ul Huk Kh�n, he could probably have kept the
+country in no better order, though, perhaps, his name, and the authority
+and weight which still adhered to him in some degree, might have had
+some influence.
+
+My Lords, you have seen his defiance of the Company; you have seen his
+defiance of all decency; you see his open protection of prostitutes and
+robbers of every kind ravaging Bengal; you have seen this defiance of
+the authority of the Court of Directors flatly, directly, and
+peremptorily persisted in to the last. Order after order was reiterated,
+but his disobedience arose with an elastic spring in proportion to the
+pressure that was upon it.
+
+My Lords, here there was a pause. The Directors had been disobeyed; and
+you might suppose that he would have been satisfied with this act of
+disobedience. My Lords, he was resolved to let the native governments of
+the country know that he despised the orders of the Court of Directors,
+and that, whenever he pretended to obey them, in reality he was resolved
+upon the most actual disobedience. An event now happened, the
+particulars of which we are not to repeat here. Disputes, conducted, on
+Mr. Francis's side, upon no other principle, that we can discover, but a
+desire to obey the Company's orders, and to execute his duty with
+fidelity and disinterestedness, had arisen between him and Mr. Hastings.
+Mr. Francis, about the time we have been speaking of, finding resistance
+was vain, reconciles himself to him,--but on the most honorable terms as
+a public man, namely, that he should continue to follow and obey the
+laws, and to respect the authority of the Court of Directors. Upon this
+reconciliation, it was agreed that Mahomed Reza Kh�n should be restored
+to his office. For this purpose Mr. Hastings enters a minute, and writes
+to the Nabob an ostensible letter. But your Lordships will here see an
+instance of what I said respecting a double current in all Mr.
+Hastings's proceedings. Even when he obeys or pretends to obey the
+Company's orders, there is always a private channel through which he
+defeats them all.
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Hastings to the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah, written
+     the 10th of February, 1780._
+
+     "The Company, whose orders are peremptory, have directed that
+     Mahomed Reza Kh�n shall be restored to the offices he held in
+     January, 1778. It is my duty to represent this to your Excellency,
+     and to recommend your compliance with their request, that Mahomed
+     Reza Kh�n may be invested with the offices assigned to him under
+     the nizamut by the Company."
+
+Your Lordships see here that Mr. Hastings informs the Nabob, that,
+having received peremptory orders from the Company, he restores and
+replaces Mahomed Reza Kh�n. Mahomed Reza Kh�n, then, is in
+possession,--and in possession by the best of all titles, the orders of
+the Company. But you will also see the manner in which he evades his
+duty, and vilifies in the eyes of these miserable country powers the
+authority of the Directors. He is prepared, as usual, with a defeasance
+of his own act; and the manner in which that defeasance came to our
+knowledge is this. We knew nothing of this private affair, till Mr.
+Hastings, in his answer before the House of Commons, finding it
+necessary to destroy the validity of some of his own acts, brought
+forward Sir John D'Oyly. He was brought forward before us, not as a
+witness in his own person for the defence of Mr. Hastings, but as a
+narrator who had been employed by Mr. Hastings as a member of that
+Council which, as you have heard, drew up his defence. My Lords, you
+have already seen the public agency of this business, you have heard
+read the public letter sent to the Nabob: there you see the ostensible
+part of the transaction. Now hear the banian, Sir John D'Oyly, give an
+account of his part in it, extracted from Mr. Hastings's defence before
+the House of Commons.
+
+     "I was appointed Resident [at the Court of the Nabob] on the
+     resignation of Mr. Byam Martin, in the month of January, 1780, and
+     took charge about the beginning of February of the same year. The
+     substance of the instructions I received was, to endeavor, by every
+     means in my power, to conciliate the good opinion and regard of the
+     Nabob and his family, that I might be able to persuade him to adopt
+     effectual measures for the better regulation of his expenses, which
+     were understood to have greatly exceeded his income; that I might
+     prevent his forming improper connections, or taking any steps
+     derogatory to his rank, and by every means in my power support his
+     credit and dignify in the eyes of the world; and with respect to
+     the various branches of his family, I was instructed to endeavor to
+     put a stop to the dissensions which had too frequently prevailed
+     amongst them. The Nabob, on his part, was recommended to pay the
+     same attention to my advice as he would have done to that of the
+     Governor-General in person. Some time, I think, in the month of
+     February of the same year, I received a letter from Mr. Hastings,
+     purporting that the critical situation of affairs requiring the
+     union and utmost exertion of every member of the government to give
+     vigor to the acts necessary for its relief, he had agreed to an
+     accommodation with Mr. Francis; but to effect this point he had
+     been under the necessity of making some painful sacrifices, and
+     particularly that of the restoration of Mahomed Reza Kh�n to the
+     office of Naib Subah, a measure which he knew must be highly
+     disagreeable to the Nabob, and which nothing but the urgent
+     necessity of the case should have led him to acquiesce in; that he
+     relied on me to state all these circumstances in the most forcible
+     manner to the Nabob, and to urge his compliance, assuring him that
+     it should not continue longer than until the next advices were
+     received from the Court of Directors."
+
+Here Mr. Hastings himself lets us into the secrets of his government. He
+writes an ostensible letter to the Nabob, declaring that what he does is
+in conformity to the orders of the Company. He writes a private letter,
+in which he directs his agent to assure the Nabob that what he had done
+was not in compliance with the orders of the Company, but in consequence
+of the arrangement he had made with Mr. Francis, which arrangement he
+thought necessary for the support of his own personal power. His design,
+in thus explaining the transaction to the Nabob, was in order to
+prevent the native powers from looking to any other authority than his,
+and from having the least hopes of redress of their complaints from the
+justice of this country or from any legal power in it. He therefore
+tells him that Mahomed Reza Kh�n was replaced, not in obedience to the
+orders of the Company, but to gratify Mr. Francis. If he quarrels with
+Mr. Francis, he makes that a reason for disobeying the orders of his
+masters; if he agrees with him, he informs the people concerned in the
+transaction, privately, that he acts, not in consequence of the orders
+that he has received, but from other motives. But that is not all. He
+promises that he will take the first opportunity to remove Mahomed Reza
+Kh�n from his office again. Thus the country is to be re-plunged into
+the same distracted and ruined state in which it was before. And all
+this is laid open fully and distinctly before you. You have it on the
+authority of Sir John D'Oyly. Sir John D'Oyly is a person in the secret;
+and one man who is in the secret is worth a thousand ostensible persons.
+
+Mahomed Reza Kh�n, I must now tell you, was accordingly reinstated in
+all his offices, and the Nabob was reduced to the situation, as Mr.
+Hastings upon another occasion describes it, of a mere cipher. But mark
+what followed,--mark what this Sir John D'Oyly is made to tell you, or
+what Mr. Hastings tells you for him: for whether Sir John D'Oyly has
+written this for Mr. Hastings, or Mr. Hastings for Sir John D'Oyly, I do
+not know; because they seem, as somebody said of two great friends, that
+they had but one will, one bed, and one hat between them. These
+gentlemen who compose Mr. Hastings's Council have but one style of
+writing among them; so that it is impossible for you to determine by
+which of the masters of this Roman school any paper was
+written,--whether by D'Oyly, by Shore, or by Hastings, or any other of
+them. They have a style in common, a kind of bank upon which they have a
+general credit; and you cannot tell to whose account anything is to be
+placed.
+
+But to proceed.--Sir John D'Oyly says there, that the Nabob is reduced
+again to a cipher. Now hear what he afterwards says. "About the month of
+June, 1781, Mr. Hastings, being then at Moorshedabad, communicated to me
+his intention of performing his promise to the Nabob, by restoring him
+to the management of his own affairs,"--that is to say, by restoring
+Munny Begum again, and by turning out Mahomed Reza Kh�n. Your Lordships
+see that he communicated privately his intentions to Sir John D'Oyly,
+without communicating one word of them to his colleagues in the Supreme
+Council, and without entering any minute in the records of the Council,
+by which it could be known to the Directors.
+
+Lastly, in order to show you in what manner the Nabob was to be restored
+to his power, I refer your Lordships to the order he gave to Sir John
+D'Oyly for investigating the Nabob's accounts, and for drawing up
+articles of instructions for the Nabob's conduct in the management of
+his affairs. You will there see clearly how he was restored: that is to
+say, that he was taken out of the hands of the first Mussulman in that
+country, the man most capable of administering justice, and whom the
+Company had expressly ordered to be invested with that authority, and to
+put him into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly. Is Sir John D'Oyly a
+Mussulman? Is Sir John D'Oyly fit to be at the head of such a
+government? What was there that any person could see about him, that
+entitled him to or made him a fit person to be intrusted with this
+power, in defiance of the Company's orders? And yet Mahomed Reza Kh�n,
+who was to have the management of the Nabob's affairs, was himself put
+under the most complete and perfect subjection to this Sir John D'Oyly.
+But, in fact, Munny Begum had the real influence in everything. Sir John
+D'Oyly himself was only Mr. Hastings's instrument there to preserve it,
+and between them they pillaged the Nabob in the most shocking manner,
+and must have done so to the knowledge of Mr. Hastings. A letter written
+at this time by Mr. Hastings to the Nabob discovers the secret beyond
+all power of evasion.
+
+
+     _Instructions from the Governor-General to the Nabob Mobarek ul
+     Dowlah, respecting his Conduct in the Management of his Affairs._
+
+     "9th. These I make the conditions of the compliance which the
+     Governor-General and Council have yielded to your late requisition.
+     It is but just that you should possess what is your acknowledged
+     right; but their intention would be defeated, and you would be in a
+     worse situation, if you were to be left a prey, without a guide,
+     until you have acquired experience, (which, to the strength and
+     goodness of your understanding, will be the work but of a short
+     period,) to the rapacity, frauds, and artifices of mankind. You
+     have offered to give up the sum of four lacs of rupees to be
+     allowed the free use of the remainder of your stipend. This we have
+     refused, because it would be contrary to justice. You should
+     consider this as a proof of the sincerity of the above
+     arrangements which have been recommended to you, and of their
+     expediency to your real interests; and your attention to them will
+     be a means of reconciling the Company to the resolution which we
+     have taken, and which will be reported to them in a light very
+     hurtful both to you and to us, if an improper effect should attend
+     it. These I have ordered Sir John D'Oyly to read in your presence,
+     and to explain them to you, that no part of them may escape your
+     notice; and he has my positive orders to remonstrate to you against
+     every departure from them. Upon all these occasions, I hope and
+     expect that you will give him a particular and cordial attention,
+     and regard what he shall say as if said by myself; for I know him
+     to be a person of the strictest honor and integrity. I have a
+     perfect reliance on him; and you cannot have a more attached or
+     more disinterested counsellor. Although I desire to receive your
+     letters frequently, yet, as many matters will occur which cannot so
+     easily be explained by letter as by conversation, I desire that you
+     will on such occasions give your orders to him respecting such
+     points as you may desire to have imparted to me; and I, postponing
+     every other concern, will give you an immediate and the most
+     satisfactory reply concerning them."
+
+My Lords, here is a man who is to administer his own affairs, who has
+arrived at sufficient age to supersede the counsel and advice of the
+great Mahometan doctors and the great nobility of the country, and he is
+put under the most absolute guardianship of Sir John D'Oyly. But Mr.
+Hastings has given Sir John D'Oyly a great character. I cannot confirm
+it, because I can confirm the character of none of Mr. Hastings's
+instruments. They must stand forth here, and defend their own character
+before you.
+
+Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to another circumstance in
+this transaction. You see here 40,000_l._ a year offered by this man for
+his redemption. "I will give you," he says, "40,000_l._ a year to have
+the management of my own affairs." Good heavens! Here is a man, who,
+according to Mr. Hastings's assertion, had an indisputable right to the
+management of his own affairs, but at the same time was notoriously so
+little fit to have the management of them as to be always under some
+corrupt tyranny or other, offers 40,000_l._ a year out of his own
+revenues to be left his own master, and to be permitted to have the
+disposal of the remainder. Judge you of the bribery, rapine, and
+peculation which here stare you in the face. Judge of the nature and
+character of that government for the management of which 40,000_l._, out
+of 160,000_l._ a year of its revenue, is offered by a subordinate to the
+supreme authority of the country. This offer shows that at this time the
+Nabob had it not himself. Who had it? Sir John D'Oyly; he is brought
+forward as the person to whom is given the management of the whole.
+Munny Begum had the management before. But, whether it be an Englishman,
+a Mussulman, a white man or a black man, a white woman or a black woman,
+it is all Warren Hastings.
+
+With respect to the four lacs of rupees, he gets Sir John D'Oyly, in the
+narrative that he makes before the House of Commons, positively to deny
+in the strongest manner, and he says the Nabob would give oath of it,
+that the Nabob never gave a commission to any one to make such an
+offer. That such an offer was made had been long published and long in
+print, with the remarks such as I have made upon it in the Ninth Report
+of the Select Committee; that the Committee had so done was well known
+to Mr. Hastings and Sir John D'Oyly; not one word on the part of Mr.
+Hastings, not one word on the part of Sir John D'Oyly was said to
+contradict it, until the appearance of the latter before the House of
+Commons. But, my Lords, there is something much more serious in this
+transaction. It is this,--that the evidence produced by Mr. Hastings is
+the evidence of witnesses who are mere phantoms; they are persons who
+could not, under Mr. Hastings's government, eat a bit of bread but upon
+his own terms, and they are brought forward to give such evidence as may
+answer his purposes.
+
+You would naturally have imagined, that, in the House of Commons, where
+clouds of witnesses had been before produced by the friends and agents
+of Mr. Hastings, he would then have brought forward Sir John to
+contradict this reported offer; but not a word from Sir John D'Oyly. At
+last he is examined before the Committee of Managers. He refuses to
+answer. Why? Because his answers might criminate himself. My Lords,
+every answer that most of them have been required to make they are
+sensible they cannot make without danger of criminating themselves,
+being all involved in the crimes of the prisoner. He has corrupted and
+ruined the whole service; there is not one of them that dares appear and
+give a fair and full answer in any case, as you have seen in Mr.
+Middleton, and many others at your bar. "I will not answer this
+question," they say, "because it tends to criminate myself." How comes
+it that the Company's servants are not able to give evidence in the
+affairs of Mr. Hastings, without its tending to criminate themselves?
+
+Well,--Sir John D'Oyly is in England,--why is he not called now? I have
+not the honor of being intimately acquainted with him, but he is a man
+of a reputable and honorable family. Why is he not called by Mr.
+Hastings to verify the assertion, and why do they suffer this black
+record to stand before your Lordships to be urged by us, and to press it
+as we do against him? If he knows that Sir John D'Oyly can acquit him of
+this part of our accusation, he would certainly bring him as a witness
+to your bar; but he knows he cannot. When, therefore, I see upon your
+records that Sir John D'Oyly and Mr. Hastings received such an offer for
+the redemption of the Nabob's affairs out of their hands, I conclude,
+first, that at the time of this offer the Nabob had not the disposal of
+his own affairs,--and, secondly, that those who had the disposal of them
+disposed of them so corruptly and prodigally that he thought they could
+hardly be redeemed at too high a price. What explanation of this matter
+has been attempted? There is no explanation given of it at all. It
+stands clear, full, bare in all its nakedness before you. They have not
+attempted to produce the least evidence against it. Therefore in that
+state I leave it with you; and I shall only add, that Mr. Hastings
+continued to make Munny Begum the first object of his attention, and
+that, though he could not entirely remove Mahomed Reza Kh�n from the
+seat of justice, he was made a cipher in it. All his other offices were
+taken out of his hands and put into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly,
+directly contrary to the orders of the Company, which certainly implied
+the restitution of Mahomed Reza Kh�n to all the offices which he had
+before held. He was stripped of everything but a feeble administration
+of justice, which, I take for granted, could not, under the
+circumstances, have been much better in his hands than it had been in
+Sudder ul Huk Kh�n's.
+
+Mr. Hastings's protection of this woman continued to the last; and when
+he was going away, on the 3d of November, 1783, he wrote a sentimental
+letter to the Court of Directors in her praise. This letter was
+transmitted without having been communicated to the Council. You have
+heard of delicate affidavits; here you have a sentimental official
+despatch: your Lordships will find it in page 1092 and 1093 of your
+printed Minutes. He writes in such a delicate, sentimental strain of
+this woman, that I will venture to say you will not find in all the
+"Arcadia," in all the novels and romances that ever were published, an
+instance of a greater, a more constant, and more ardent affection,
+defying time, ugliness, and old age, did ever exist, than existed in Mr.
+Hastings towards this old woman, Munny Begum. As cases of this kind,
+cases of gallantry abounding in sentimental expressions, are rare in the
+Company's records, I recommend it as a curiosity to your Lordships'
+reading, as well as a proof of what is the great spring and movement of
+all the prisoner's actions. On this occasion he thus speaks of Munny
+Begum.
+
+     "She, too, became the victim of your policy, and of the resentments
+     which succeeded. Something, too, she owed of the source of her
+     misfortunes to the belief of the personal gratitude which she
+     might entertain for the public attention which I had shown to her.
+     Yet, exposed as she was to a treatment which a ruffian would have
+     shuddered at committing, and which no recollection of past enmities
+     shall compel me to believe, even for a moment, proceeded from any
+     commission of authority, she still maintained the decorum of her
+     character; nor even then, nor before, nor since that period, has
+     the malice of calumny ever dared to breathe on her
+     reputation."--Delicate! sentimental!--"Pardon, honorable Sirs, this
+     freedom of expostulation. I must in honest truth repeat, that your
+     commands laid the first foundation of her misfortunes; to your
+     equity she has now recourse through me for their alleviation, that
+     she may pass the remainder of her life in a state which may at
+     least efface the remembrance of the years of her affliction; and to
+     your humanity she and an unseen multitude of the most helpless of
+     her sex cry for subsistence."
+
+Moving and pathetic!--I wish to recommend every word of this letter to
+your Lordships' consideration, as a model and pattern of perfection.
+Observe his pity for a woman who had suffered such treatment from the
+servants of the Company (a parcel of ruffians!)--treatment that a
+ruffian would be ashamed of! Your Lordships have seen, in the evidence,
+what this ruffianism was. It was neither more nor less than what was
+necessary in order to get at the accounts, which she concealed, as his
+own corrupt transactions. She was told, indeed, that she must privately
+remove to another house whilst her papers were examining. Mr. Hastings
+can never forget this. He cannot believe that anybody dare send such an
+order; and he calls upon you to consider the helplessness of their sex,
+and the affronts offered to women.
+
+For Heaven's sake, my Lords, recollect the manner in which Mr. Hastings
+and his creatures treated the Begums of Oude, and consider that this
+woman was only threatened (for the threat was never attempted to be
+executed) that she must, if she did not deliver up the accounts,
+probably be removed to another house, and leave the accounts behind her.
+This blot can never be effaced; and for this he desires the Court of
+Directors to make her a large allowance to comfort her in her old age.
+In this situation Mr. Hastings leaves her. He leaves in the situation I
+have described the justice of the country. The only concern he has at
+parting is, that this woman may have a large allowance.
+
+But I have yet to tell your Lordships, and it appears upon your printed
+Minutes, that this woman had a way of comforting herself:--for old
+ladies of that description, who have passed their youth in amusements,
+in dancing, and in gallantries, in their old age are apt to take comfort
+in brandy. This lady was a smuggler, and had influence enough to avoid
+payment of the duty on spirits, in which article she is the largest
+dealer in the district,--as, indeed, she is in almost every species of
+trade. Thus your Lordships see that this sentimental lady, whom Mr.
+Hastings recommends to the Directors, had ways of comforting herself.
+She carried on, notwithstanding her dignity, a trade in spirits. Now a
+Mahometan of distinction never carries on any trade at all,--it is an
+unknown thing,--very few Mahometans of any rank carry on any trade at
+all; but that a Mahometan should carry on a trade in spirits is a
+prodigy never heard of before; for a woman of quality, for a woman of
+sentiment, to become a dealer in spirits is, my Lords, a thing reserved
+for the sentimental age of Mr. Hastings; and I will venture to say that
+no man or woman could attempt any such a trade in India, without being
+dishonored, ruined in character, and disgraced by it. But she appears
+not only to have been a dealer in it, but, through the influence which
+Mr. Hastings gave her, to have monopolized the trade in brandy, and to
+have evaded the duties. This, then, is the state in which we leave the
+two sentimental lovers,--the one consoling herself with brandy, the
+other wheedling and whining; and, as Swift describes the progress of an
+intrigue in some respects similar, which he calls "The Progress of
+Love," whereas this is the Progress of Sentiment,
+
+    "They keep at Staines the Old Blue Boar,
+    Are cat and dog, and rogue and whore."
+
+Here they set up the sign of the Old Blue Boar. Munny Begum monopolizes
+the trade in spirits; and hence she and Mr. Hastings commence their
+sentimental correspondence.--And now, having done with this progress of
+love, we return to the progress of justice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have seen how Sudder ul Huk Kh�n, the chief-justice of Mr. Hastings's
+own nomination, was treated. Now you shall see how justice was left to
+shift for herself under Mahomed Reza Kh�n. In page 1280 of your
+Lordships' Minutes you will see the progress of all these
+enormities,--of Munny Begum's dealing in spirits, of her engrossing the
+trade, of her evading duties,--and, lastly, the extinction of all order
+in that country, and the funeral of justice itself. Mr. Shore's evidence
+respecting this state of the country will admit of no doubt.
+
+
+     _Mr. Shore's Remarks accompanying the Governor-General's Minutes of
+     the 18th May, 1785._
+
+     "Foujdarry jurisdiction.--Of the foujdarry jurisdiction nothing has
+     yet been said. In this department criminal justice is administered,
+     and it is the only office left to the Nabob. I do not see any
+     particular reason for changing the system itself, and perhaps it
+     would on many accounts be improper; but some regulations are highly
+     necessary. Mahomed Reza is at the head of this department, and is
+     the only person I know in the country qualified for it. If he were
+     left to himself, I have not a doubt but he would conduct it well;
+     but he is so circumscribed by recommendations of particular
+     persons, and by the protection held out to his officers by
+     Europeans, that to my knowledge he has not been able to punish
+     them, even when they have been convicted of the greatest
+     enormities; and he has often on this account been blamed, where his
+     hands were tied up."
+
+My Lords, you now see in this minute of Sir John Shore, now
+Governor-General of Bengal, one of Mr. Hastings's own committee for
+drawing up his defence, the review which he had just then taken of the
+ruins of the government which had been left to him by Mr. Hastings. You
+see here not the little paltry things which might deserve in their
+causes the animadversion of a rough satirist like Doctor Swift, whom I
+have just quoted, but you see things ten thousand times more serious,
+things that deserve the thunderbolt of vindictive justice upon the head
+of the prisoner at your bar. For you see, that, after he had ostensibly
+restored Mahomed Reza Kh�n, the man who could and would have executed
+his office with fidelity and effect, the man who was fit for and
+disposed to do his duty, there was still neither law, order, nor justice
+in the country. Why? Because of the interposition of Europeans, and men
+who must have been patronized and supported by Europeans. All this
+happened before Mr. Hastings's departure: so that the whole effect of
+the new arrangement of government was known to him before he left
+Calcutta. The same pretended remedy was applied. But in fact he left
+this woman in the full possession of her power. His last thoughts were
+for her; for the justice of the country, for the peace and security of
+the people of Bengal, he took no kind of care; these great interests
+were left to the mercy of the woman and her European associates.
+
+My Lords, I have taken some pains in giving you this history. I have
+shown you his open acts and secret stratagems, in direct rebellion to
+the Court of Directors,--his double government, his false pretences of
+restoring the Nabob's independence, leading in effect to a most servile
+dependence, even to the prohibition of the approach of any one, native
+or European, near him, but through the intervention of Sir John D'Oyly.
+I therefore again repeat it, that Sir John D'Oyly, and the English
+gentlemen who were patronized and countenanced by Mr. Hastings, had
+wrought all that havoc in the country before Mr. Hastings left it.
+
+I have particularly dwelt upon the administration of justice, because I
+consider it as the source of all good, and the maladministration of it
+as the source of all evil in the country. Your Lordships have heard how
+it was totally destroyed by Mr. Hastings through Sir John D'Oyly, who
+was sent there by him for the purpose of forming a clandestine
+government of corruption and peculation. This part of our charge speaks
+for itself, and I shall dismiss it with a single observation,--that not
+the least trace of an account of all these vast sums of money delivered
+into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly for the use of the Nabob appears in
+any part of the Company's records. The undeniable inferences to be drawn
+from this fact are, first, that, wherever we find concealment of money,
+and the ceasing of an account, there has been fraud,--and, secondly,
+that, if we find this concealment accompanied with the devastation of a
+country, and the extinction of justice in it, that devastation of the
+country and that extinction of justice have been the result of that
+fraudulent peculation.
+
+I am sure your Lordships will not think that a charge of the
+annihilation of administrative justice, in which the happiness and
+prosperity of a great body of nobility, of numerous ancient and
+respectable families, and of the inhabitants in general of extensive and
+populous provinces are concerned, can, if it stood single and alone, be
+a matter of trifling moment. And in favor of whom do all these
+sacrifices appear to have been made? In favor of an old prostitute, who,
+if shown to your Lordships here, like Helen to the counsellors of Troy,
+would not, I think, be admitted to have charms that could palliate this
+man's abominable conduct; you would not cry out with them,--
+
+    [Greek: Ou nemesis, ...
+            Toi�d' amphi gunaiki polun chronon algea paschein.]
+
+For I will fairly say that there are some passions that have their
+excuses; but the passion towards this woman was the passion of avarice
+and rapacity only,--a passion, indeed, which lasted to the end of his
+government, and for which he defied the orders of the Court of
+Directors, rebelled against his masters, and finally subverted the
+justice of a great country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, I have done with this business. I come next to the third
+division of the natives, those who form the landed interest of the
+country. A few words only will be necessary upon this part of the
+subject. The fact is, that Mr. Hastings, at one stroke, put up the
+property of all the nobility and gentry, and of all the freeholders, in
+short, the whole landed interest of Bengal, to a public auction, and let
+it to the highest bidder. I will make no observations upon the nature of
+this measure to your Lordships, who represent so large a part of the
+dignity, together with so large a part of the landed interest of this
+kingdom: though I think, that, even under your Lordships' restrictive
+order, I am entitled so to do; because we have examined some witnesses
+upon this point, in the revenue charge. Suffice it to say, that it is in
+evidence before your Lordships that this sale was ordered. Mr. Hastings
+does not deny it. He says, indeed, he did it not with an ill intention.
+My answer is, that it could have been done with no other than a bad
+intention. The owners of the land had no way left to save themselves but
+to become farmers of their own estates; and from the competition which
+naturally took place, (and he himself declared, that the persons,
+whether owners or strangers, to whom he let the lands, had agreed to
+rents which surpassed their abilities to pay,) I need not tell you what
+must have been the consequence, when it got into such rapacious hands,
+and was taken out of the hands of its natural proprietors: that the
+public revenue had sunk and lost by it, and that the country was wasted
+and destroyed. I leave it to your Lordships' own meditation and
+reflection; and I shall not press it one step further than just to
+remind you of what has been so well opened and pressed by my fellow
+Managers. He, Mr. Hastings, confesses that he let the lands to his own
+banians; he took his own domestic servants and put them in the houses of
+the nobility of the country; and this he did in direct violation of an
+express order made by himself, that no banian of a collector (the spirit
+of which order implied ten thousand times more strongly the exclusion of
+any banians of a Governor-General) should have any one of those farms.
+We also find that he made a regulation that no farmers should rent more
+than a lac of rupees; but at the same time we find his banians holding
+several farms to more than that amount. In short, we find that in every
+instance, where, under some plausible pretence or other, the fixed
+regulations are violated, it touches him so closely as to make it
+absolutely impossible not to suppose that he himself had the advantage
+of it.
+
+For, in the first place, you have proof that he does take bribes, and
+that he has corrupt dealings. This is what he admits; but he says that
+he has done it from public-spirited motives. Now there is a rule,
+formed upon a just, solid presumption of law, that, if you find a man
+guilty of one offence contrary to known law, whenever there is a
+suspicious case against him of the same nature, the _onus probandi_ that
+he is not guilty is turned upon him. Therefore, when I find the
+regulations broken,--when I find farms given of more than a lac of
+rupees,--when I find them given to the Governor-General's own banian,
+contrary to the principle of the regulation, contrary, I say, in the
+strongest way to it,--when I find that he accumulates farms beyond the
+regulated number,--when I find all these things done, and besides that
+the banian has great balances of account against him,--then, by the
+presumption of law, I am bound to believe that all this was done, not
+for the servants, but for the master.
+
+It is possible Mr. Hastings might really be in love with Munny Begum; be
+it so,--many great men have played the fool for prostitutes, from Mark
+Antony's days downwards; but no man ever fell in love with his own
+banian. The persons for whom Mr. Hastings was guilty of all this rapine
+and oppression have neither relations nor kindred whom they own, nor
+does any trace of friendship exist among them; they do not live in
+habits of intimacy with any one; they are good fellows and
+bottle-companions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I must now proceed to observe upon another matter which has been stated
+to your Lordships,--namely, that, as soon as he obtained the majority in
+the Council, (that beginning of all evils, that opening of Pandora's
+box,) by the death of General Clavering and Colonel Monson, the first
+thing he did was to appoint a commission, called an _aumeeny_, to go
+through the whole country, to enter every man's house, to examine his
+title-deeds, and to demand his papers of accounts of every kind, for the
+purpose of enabling himself to take advantage of the hopes and fears of
+all the parties concerned, and thus to ravage and destroy all their
+property.
+
+And whom does he place at the head of this commission, to be the manager
+of the whole affair? Gunga Govind Sing, another banian of his, and one
+of his own domestic servants. This we have discovered lately, and not
+without some surprise; for though I knew he kept a rogue in his house,
+yet I did not think that it was a common receptacle of thieves and
+robbers. I did not know till lately that this Gunga Govind Sing was his
+domestic servant; but Mr. Hastings, in a letter to the Court of
+Directors, calls him his faithful domestic servant, and as such calls
+upon the Company to reward him. To this banian all the Company's
+servants are made subject; they are bound to obey all his orders, and
+those of his committee. I hope I need not tell your Lordships what sort
+of stuff this committee was made of, by which Gunga Govind Sing was
+enabled to ravage the whole country.
+
+But, say his counsel, Mr. Hastings thought that the value of the lands
+was thoroughly known; they had been investigated three times over, and
+they were all let by public auction to the highest bidder.--This may or
+may not be a true test of their value; but it is a test which, as it led
+to the almost entire confiscation of the landed interest of Bengal,
+Bahar, and Orissa, three great kingdoms, by a dash of that man's pen,
+into the hands of his banians and creatures, I can never think of it,
+or of its author, without horror.
+
+Some people say, you ought to hate the crime and love the criminal. No,
+that is the language of false morality; you ought to hate the crime and
+the criminal, if the crime is of magnitude. If the crime is a small one,
+then you ought to be angry with the crime and reluctant to punish the
+criminal; but when there are great crimes, then you may hate them
+together. What! am I to love Nero? to fall in love with Heliogabalus? is
+Domitian to be the subject of my affection? No, we hate the crime, and
+we hate the criminal ten times more; and if I use indignant language, if
+I use the language of scorn and horror with respect to the criminal, I
+use the language that becomes me.
+
+But, says one of the counsel, the Company might possess a knowledge of
+the country in general, but they could not know every _bega_, of it,
+(about the third part of an acre of land,) without such a commission.
+That is to say, you could not squeeze everything out of the people,
+without ordering such a villain as Gunga Govind Sing, (I call things, by
+their names,) that most atrocious and wicked instrument of the most
+atrocious and wicked tyranny, to examine every man's papers, to oblige
+every man to produce his titles and accounts upon pain of criminal
+punishment, to be inflicted at the discretion of this commissioner, this
+Gunga Govind Sing. For an account of these acts, and for a description
+of an aumeeny, I refer your Lordships to the evidence in your Minutes,
+from page 1287 to 1301; and I pass on, expressing only my horror and
+detestation at it, and wishing to kindle in your Lordships' minds the
+same horror and detestation of it.
+
+Thus you see that Mr. Hastings was not satisfied with confiscation only.
+He comes just afterwards with a blister upon the sore. He lets loose
+another set of ravagers and inquisitors upon them, under Gunga Govind
+Sing, and these poor people are ravaged by the whole tribe of Calcutta
+banians.
+
+Mr. Hastings has himself defined an aumeen in page 1022, where he states
+that Nundcomar desired him to make his son an aumeen. "The promise which
+he [Nundcomar] says I made him, that he should be constituted aumeen,
+that is, inquisitor-general over the whole country, and that I would
+delegate to him my whole power and influence, is something more than a
+negative falsehood." He justly and naturally reprobates the proposition
+of appointing an inquisitor-general over the whole country; and yet we
+see him afterwards appointing Gunga Govind Sing such an
+inquisitor-general over the whole country, in order that a bega of land
+should not escape him.
+
+Let us see how all this ended, and what it is that leads me directly to
+the presumption of corruption against him in this wicked _aumeeny_
+scheme. Now I will admit the whole scheme to have been well intended, I
+will forgive the letting all the lands of Bengal by public auction, I
+will forgive all he has done with regard to his banians, I shall forgive
+him even this commission itself, if he will show your Lordships that
+there was the smallest use made of it with regard to the settlement of
+the revenues of the Company. If there was not, then there is obviously
+one use only that could be made of it, namely, to put all the people of
+the whole country under obedience to Gunga Govind Sing. What, then, was
+done? Titles and accounts were exacted; the estimate was made, acre by
+acre; but we have not been able to find one word on their records of any
+return that was made to the Company of this investigation, or of any
+settlement or assessment of the country founded upon it, or of any
+regulation that was established upon it. Therefore, as an honest man,
+and as a man who is standing here for the Commons of Great Britain, I
+must not give way to any idle doubts and ridiculous suppositions. I
+cannot, I say, entertain any doubts that the only purpose it was
+designed to answer was to subject the whole landed interest of the
+country to the cruel inquisition of Gunga Govind Sing, and to the cruel
+purposes of Mr. Hastings. Show me another purpose and I will give up the
+argument: for if there are two ways of accounting for the same act, it
+is possible it may be attributed to the better motive; but when we see
+that a bad thing was done under pretence of some good, we must attach a
+bad motive to it, if the pretence be never fulfilled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have now done with the landed interest of Bengal. I have omitted much
+which might have been pressed upon your Lordships, not from any
+indisposition to remark upon the matter more fully, but because it has
+been done already by abler persons; I only wished to make some practical
+inferences, which, perhaps, in the hurry of my brother Managers, might
+possibly have escaped them; I wished to show you that one system of
+known or justly presumed corruption pervades the whole of this business,
+from one end to the other. Having thus disposed of the native landed
+interest, and the native zemindars or landholders of the country, I pass
+to the English government.
+
+My Lords, when we have shown plainly the utter extinction of the native
+Mahometan government, when we have shown the extinction of the native
+landed interest, what hope can there be for that afflicted country but
+in the servants of the Company? When we have shown the corrupt state of
+that service, what hope but from the Court of Directors, what hope but
+in the superintending control of British tribunals? I think as well of
+the body of my countrymen as any man can do. I do not think that any man
+sent out to India is sent with an ill purpose, or goes out with bad
+dispositions. No: I think the young men who go there are fair and
+faithful representatives of the people of the same age,--uncorrupted,
+but corruptible from their age, as we all are. They are sent there
+young. There is but one thing held out to them,--"You are going to make
+your fortune." The Company's service is to be the restoration of decayed
+noble families; it is to be the renovation of old, and the making of new
+ones. Now, when such a set of young men are sent out with these hopes
+and views, and with little education, or a very imperfect one,--when
+these people, from whatever rank of life selected, many from the best,
+most from the middling, very few from the lowest, but, high, middling,
+or low, they are sent out to make two things coincide which the wit of
+man was never able to unite, to make their fortune and form their
+education at once. What is the education of the generality of the world?
+Reading a parcel of books? No. Restraint of discipline, emulation,
+examples of virtues and of justice, form the education of the world. If
+the Company's servants have not that education, and are left to give
+loose to their natural passions, some would be corrupt of course, and
+some would be uncorrupt; but probably the majority of them would be
+inclined to pursue moderate courses between these two. Now I am to show
+you that Mr. Hastings left these servants but this alternative: "Be
+starved, be depressed, be ruined, disappoint the hopes of your families,
+or be my slaves, be ready to be subservient to me in every iniquity I
+shall order you to commit, and to conceal everything I shall wish you to
+conceal." This was the state of the service. Therefore the Commons did
+well and wisely, when they sent us here, not to attack this or that
+servant who may have peculated, but to punish the man who was sent to
+reform abuses, and to make Bengal furnish to the world a brilliant
+example of British justice.
+
+I shall now proceed to state briefly the abuses of the Company's
+government,--to show you what Mr. Hastings was expected to do for their
+reformation, and what he actually did do; I shall then show your
+Lordships the effects of the whole.
+
+I shall begin by reading to your Lordships an extract from the
+Directors' letter to Bengal, of the 10th April, 1773.
+
+     "We wish we could refute the observation, that almost every attempt
+     made by us and our administrations at your Presidency for the
+     reforming of abuses has rather increased them, and added to the
+     miseries of the country we are so anxious to protect and cherish.
+     The truth of this observation appears fully in the late appointment
+     of supervisors and chiefs. Instituted as they were, to give relief
+     to the industrious tenants, to improve and enlarge our investments,
+     to destroy monopolies and retrench expenses, the end has by no
+     means been answerable to the institution. Are not the tenants more
+     than ever oppressed and wretched? Are our investments improved?
+     Have not the raw silk and cocoons been raised upon us fifty per
+     cent in price? We can hardly say what has not been made a monopoly.
+     And as to the expenses of your Presidency, they are at length
+     swelled to a degree we are no longer able to support. These facts
+     (for such they are) should have been stated to us as capital
+     reasons why neither our orders of 1771, nor indeed any regulations
+     whatever, could be carried into execution. But, perhaps, as this
+     would have proved too much, it was not suggested to us; for nothing
+     could more plainly indicate a state of anarchy, and that there was
+     no government existing in our servants in Bengal."
+
+     "And therefore, when oppression pervades the whole country, when
+     youths have been suffered with impunity to exercise sovereign
+     jurisdiction over the natives, and to acquire rapid fortunes by
+     monopolizing of commerce, it cannot be a wonder to us or
+     yourselves, that dadney merchants do not come forward to contract
+     with the Company, that the manufactures find their way through
+     foreign channels, or that our investments are at once enormously
+     dear and of a debased quality.
+
+     "It is evident that the evils which have been so destructive to us
+     lie too deep for any partial plans to reach or correct; it is
+     therefore our resolution to aim at the root of these evils: and we
+     are happy in having reason to believe that in every just and
+     necessary regulation we shall meet with the approbation and support
+     of the legislature, who consider the public as materially
+     interested in the Company's prosperity.
+
+     "In order to effectuate this great end, the first step must be to
+     restore perfect obedience and due subordination to your
+     administration. Our Governor and Council must reassume and exercise
+     their delegated powers upon every just occasion,--punish
+     delinquents, cherish the meritorious, discountenance that luxury
+     and dissipation which, to the reproach of government, prevailed in
+     Bengal. Our President, Mr. Hastings, we trust, will set the example
+     of temperance, economy, and application; and upon this, we are
+     sensible, much will depend. And here we take occasion, to indulge
+     the pleasure we have in acknowledging Mr. Hastings's services upon
+     the coast of Coromandel, in constructing, with equal labor and
+     ability, the plan which has so much improved our investments there;
+     and as we are persuaded he will persevere in the same laudable
+     pursuit through every branch of our affairs in Bengal, he, in
+     return, may depend on the steady support and favor of his
+     employers.
+
+     "Your settlement being thus put into a train of reform, (without
+     which, indeed, all regulations will prove ineffectual,) you are
+     next to revert to the old system, when the business of your
+     Presidency was principally performed by our own servants, who then
+     had knowledge of our investments, and every other department of our
+     concerns: you will therefore fill the several offices with the
+     factors and writers upon your establishment, (for, with our present
+     appointments, we are assured there will be sufficient for this
+     purpose,) and thus you will banish idleness, and its attendants,
+     extravagance and dissipation. And here we enjoin you to transmit to
+     us a faithful and minute state of the pay and every known
+     emolument of all below Council: for, as it is notorious that even
+     youths in our service expend in equipage, servants, dress, and
+     living infinitely more than our stated allowances can afford, we
+     cannot but be anxious to discover the means by which they are
+     enabled to proceed in this manner; and, indeed, so obnoxious is
+     this conduct to us, and so injurious in its consequences, that we
+     expect and require you to show your displeasure to all such as
+     shall transgress in this respect, contrasting it at the same time
+     with instances of kindness towards the sober, frugal, and
+     industrious."
+
+My Lords, you see the state in which the Directors conceived the country
+to be. That it was in this state is not denied by Mr. Hastings, who was
+sent out for the purpose of reforming it. The Directors had swept away
+almost the whole body of their Bengal servants for supposed corruption;
+and they appointed a set of new ones, to regenerate, as it were, the
+government of that country.
+
+Mr. Hastings says, "I was brought to India like other people." This,
+indeed, is true; and I hope it will prove an example and instruction to
+all mankind never to employ a man who has been bred in base and corrupt
+practices, from any hope that his local knowledge may make him the
+fittest person to correct such practices. Mr. Hastings goes on to say,
+that you could not expect more from him than could be done by a man bred
+up, as he was, in the common habits of the country. This is also true.
+My Lords, you might as well expect a man to be fit for a perfumer's
+shop, who has lain a month in a pig's stye, as to expect that a man who
+has been a contractor with the Company for a length of time is a fit
+person for reforming abuses. Mr. Hastings has stated in general his
+history, his merits, and his services. We have looked over with care the
+records relative to his proceedings, and we find that in 1760 and 1761
+he was in possession of a contract for bullocks and a contract for
+provisions. It is no way wrong for any man to take a contract, provided
+he does not do what Mr. Hastings has condemned in his
+regulations,--become a contractor with his masters. But though I do not
+bear upon Mr. Hastings for having spent his time in being a
+bullock-contractor, yet I say that he ought to have laid aside all the
+habits of a bullock-contractor when he was made a great minister for the
+reformation of a great service full of abuses. I will show your
+Lordships that he never did so; that, on the contrary, being bred in
+those bad habits, and having had the education that I speak of, he
+persevered in the habits which had been formed in him to the very last.
+
+I understand it has been imputed as a sort of a crime in me, that I
+stated something of the obscurity of Mr. Hastings's birth. The
+imputation has no foundation. Can it be believed that any man could be
+so absurd as to attack a man's birth, when he is accusing his actions?
+No, I have always spoken of the low, sordid, and mercenary habits in
+which he was bred; I said nothing of his birth. But, my Lords, I was a
+good deal surprised when a friend of his and mine yesterday morning put
+into my hands, who had been attacking Mr. Hastings's life and conduct, a
+pedigree. I was appealing to the records of the Company; they answer by
+sending me to the Herald's Office. Many of your Lordships' pedigrees
+are obscure in comparison with that of Mr. Hastings; and I only wonder
+how he came to derogate from such a line of nobles by becoming a
+contractor for bullocks.
+
+A man may be an honest bullock-contractor, (God forbid that many of them
+in this country should not be very honest!) but I find his terms were
+nearly four times as high as those which the House of Commons had
+condemned as exorbitant. They were not only unusually high, but the
+bullocks were badly supplied, and the contract had not been fairly
+advertised. It was therefore agreed to declare the same void at the
+expiration of twelve months, on the 1st December, 1763. I say again,
+that I do not condemn him for being a bullock-contractor; but I am
+suspicious of his honesty, because he has been nursed in bad and vicious
+habits. That of contracting with his masters is a bad habit, as he
+himself has stated in a record which is printed by the House of Commons.
+I condemn him for being a fraudulent bullock-contractor: for he was
+turned out of that contract for fraudulent practices; it was declared
+void, and given to another at a lower price. After it was so disposed
+of, Mr. Hastings himself, condemning his own original contract, which
+was at twelve rupees for a certain species of bullocks, took the
+contract again at seven; and on these terms it continued. What I
+therefore contend for is this, that he carried with him the spirit of a
+fraudulent bullock-contractor through the whole of the Company's
+service, in its greatest and most important parts.
+
+My Lords, the wading through all these corruptions is an unpleasant
+employment for me; but what am I to think of a man who holds up his
+head so high, that, when a matter of account is in discussion, such as
+appears in this very defence that I have in my hand, he declares he does
+not know anything about it? He cannot keep accounts: that is beneath
+him. We trace him throughout the whole of his career engaged in a great
+variety of mercantile employments; and yet, when he comes before you,
+you would imagine that he had been bred in the study of the sublimest
+sciences, and had no concern in anything else,--that he had been engaged
+in writing a poem, an Iliad, or some work that might revive fallen
+literature. There is but one exception to his abhorrence of accounts: he
+always contrives to make up a good account for himself.
+
+My Lords, we have read to you a letter in which the Court of Directors
+have described the disorders of their service, the utter ruin of it, the
+corruption that prevailed in it, and the destruction of the country by
+it. When we are said to exaggerate, we use no stronger words than they
+do. We cannot mince the matter; your Lordships should not mince it; no
+little paltry delicacies should hinder you, when there is a country
+expiring under all these things, from calling the authors to a strict
+account. The Court of Directors sent him that statement; they
+recommended to him a radical reformation. What does he do? We will read
+his letter of 1773, in which you will find seeds sown for the
+propagation of all those future abuses which terminated in the utter and
+irremediable destruction of the whole service. After he has praised the
+Directors for the trust that they had placed in him, after expressing
+his highest gratitude, and so on, he says,--
+
+     "While I indulge the pleasure which I receive from the past
+     successes of my endeavors, I own I cannot refrain from looking back
+     with a mixture of anxiety on the omissions by which I am sensible I
+     may since have hazarded the diminution of your esteem. All my
+     letters addressed to your Honorable Court, and to the Secret
+     Committee, repeat the strongest promises of prosecuting the
+     inquiries into the conduct of your servants, which you have been
+     pleased to commit particularly to my charge. You will readily
+     perceive that I must have been sincere in those declarations; since
+     it would have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I
+     foreseen my inability to perform them. I find myself now under the
+     disagreeable necessity of avowing that inability; at the same time
+     I will boldly take upon me to affirm, that, on whomsoever you might
+     have delegated that charge, and by whatever powers it might have
+     been accompanied, it would have been sufficient to occupy the
+     entire attention of those who were intrusted with it, and, even
+     with all the aids of leisure and authority, would have proved
+     ineffectual. I dare appeal to the public records, to the testimony
+     of those who have opportunities of knowing me, and even to the
+     detail which the public voice can report of the past acts of this
+     government, that my time has been neither idly nor uselessly
+     employed; yet such are the cares and embarrassments of this various
+     state, that, although much may be done, much more, even in matters
+     of moment, must necessarily remain neglected. To select from the
+     miscellaneous heap which each day's exigencies present to our
+     choice those points on which the general welfare of your affairs
+     most essentially depends, to provide expedients for future
+     advantages, and guard against probable evils, are all that your
+     administration can faithfully promise to perform for your service,
+     with their united labors most diligently exerted. They cannot look
+     back without sacrificing the objects of their immediate duty, which
+     are those of your interest, to endless researches, which can
+     produce no real good, and may expose your affairs to all the
+     ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both here and at
+     home."
+
+My Lords, you see here, that, after admitting that he has promised to
+the Court of Directors to do what they ordered him to do, (and he had
+promised to make a radical reform in their whole service, and to cure
+those abuses which they have stated,) he declares that he will not
+execute them; he pleads a variety of other occupations; but as to that
+great fundamental grievance he was appointed to eradicate, he declares
+he will not even attempt it. "Why did you promise?"--it naturally occurs
+to ask him that question. "Why," says he, "you will readily perceive
+that I must have been sincere in those declarations; since it would
+have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I known my
+inability to perform them." This is a kind of argument that belongs to
+Mr. Hastings exclusively. Most other people would say, "You may judge of
+the sincerity of my promises by my zeal in the performance"; but he
+says, "You may judge of the sincerity of my promises, because I would
+not promise, if I had not thought I should be able to perform." It runs
+in this ridiculous circle: "I promised to obey the Court of Directors;
+therefore I knew that I could obey them: but I could not obey them;
+therefore I was absolved from my promise, and did not attempt to obey
+them." In fact, there is not so much as one grievance or abuse in the
+country, that he reformed. And this was systematical in Mr. Hastings's
+conduct,--that he was resolved to connive at the whole of the iniquities
+of the service, because he was resolved that every one of those existing
+iniquities should be practised by himself. "But," says he, "the
+reformation required can produce no real good, and may expose your
+affairs to all the ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both
+here and at home." This he gives you as a reason why he will not
+prosecute the inquiry into abuses abroad,--because he is afraid that you
+should punish him at home for doing his duty abroad,--that it will
+expose him to malevolence at home; and therefore, to avoid being subject
+to malevolence at home, he would not do his duty abroad.
+
+He follows this with something that is perfectly extraordinary: he
+desires, instead of doing his duty, which he declares it is impossible
+to do, that he may be invested with an arbitrary power. I refer your
+Lordships to pages 2827, 2828, and 2829 of the printed Minutes, where
+you will find the system of his government to be formed upon a
+resolution not to use any one legal means of punishing corruption, or
+for the prevention of corruption; all that he desires is, to have an
+absolute arbitrary power over the servants of the Company. There you
+will see that arbitrary power for corrupt purposes over the servants of
+the Company is the foundation of every part of his whole conduct. Remark
+what he says here, and then judge whether these inferences are to be
+eluded by any chicane.
+
+     "In the charge of oppression, although supported by the cries of
+     the people and the most authentic representations, it is yet
+     impossible, in most cases, to obtain legal proofs of it; and unless
+     the discretionary power which I have recommended be somewhere
+     lodged, the assurance of impunity from any formal inquiry will
+     baffle every order of the board; as, on the other hand, the fear of
+     the consequences will restrain every man within the bounds of his
+     duty, if he knows himself liable to suffer by the effects of a
+     single control."
+
+My Lords, you see two things most material for you to consider in the
+judgment of this great cause, which is the cause of nations. The first
+thing for you to consider is the declaration of the culprit at your bar,
+that a person may be pursued by the cries of a whole people,--that
+documents the most authentic and satisfactory, but deficient in
+technical form, may be produced against him,--in short, that he may be
+guilty of the most enormous crimes,--and yet that legal proofs may be
+wanting. This shows you how seriously you ought to consider, before you
+reject any proof upon the idea that it is not technical legal proof. To
+this assertion of Mr. Hastings I oppose, however, the opinion of a
+gentleman who sits near his side, Mr. Sumner, which is much more
+probable.
+
+Mr. Hastings says, that the power of the Council is not effectual
+against the inferior servants, that [it?] is too weak to coerce them.
+With much more truth Mr. Sumner has said, in his minute, you might
+easily coerce the inferior servants, but that the dread of falling upon
+persons in high stations discourages and puts an end to complaint. I
+quote the recorded authority of the gentleman near him, as being of
+great weight in the affairs of the Company, to prove what is infinitely
+more probable, the falsehood of Mr. Hastings's assertion, that an
+inferior servant cannot be coerced, and that they must riot with
+impunity in the spoils of the people.
+
+But we will go to a much more serious part of the business. After
+desiring arbitrary power in this letter, he desires a perpetuation of
+it. And here he has given you a description of a bad Governor, to which
+I must call your attention, as your Lordships will find it, in every
+part of his proceeding, to be exactly applicable to himself and to his
+own government.
+
+     "The first command of a state so extensive as that of Bengal is not
+     without opportunities of private emoluments; and although the
+     allowance which your bounty has liberally provided for your
+     servants may be reasonably expected to fix the bounds of their
+     desires, yet you will find it extremely difficult to restrain men
+     from profiting by other means, who look upon their appointment as
+     the measure of a day, and who, from the uncertainty of their
+     condition, see no room for any acquisition but of wealth, since
+     reputation and the consequences which follow the successful conduct
+     of great affairs are only to be attained in a course of years.
+     Under such circumstances, however rigid your orders may be, or
+     however supported, I am afraid that in most instances they will
+     produce no other fruits than either avowed disobedience or the
+     worst extreme of falsehood and hypocrisy. These are not the
+     principles which should rule the conduct of men whom you have
+     constituted the guardians of your property, and checks on the
+     morals and fidelity of others. The care of self-preservation will
+     naturally suggest the necessity of seizing the opportunity of
+     present power, when the duration of it is considered as limited to
+     the usual term of three years, and of applying it to the provision
+     of a future independency; therefore every renewal of this term is
+     liable to prove a reiterated oppression. It is perhaps owing to the
+     causes which I have described, and a proof of their existence, that
+     this appointment has been for some years past so eagerly solicited
+     and so easily resigned. There are yet other inconveniences
+     attendant on this habit, and perhaps an investigation of them all
+     would lead to endless discoveries. Every man whom your choice has
+     honored with so distinguished a trust seeks to merit approbation
+     and acquire an _�clat_ by innovations, for which the wild scene
+     before him affords ample and justifiable occasion."
+
+You see, my Lords, he has stated, that, if a Governor is appointed to
+hold his office only for a short time, the consequence would be either
+an avowed disobedience, or, what is worse, extreme falsehood and
+hypocrisy. Your Lordships know that this man has held his office for a
+long time, and yet his disobedience has been avowed, and his hypocrisy
+and his falsehood have been discovered, and have been proved to your
+Lordships in the course of this trial. You see this man has declared
+what are the principles which should rule the conduct of men whom you
+have constituted the guardians of your property, and checks upon the
+morals and fidelity of others. Mr. Hastings tells you himself directly
+what his duty was; he tells you himself, and he pronounces his own
+condemnation, what was expected from him, namely, that he should give a
+great example himself, and be a check and guardian of the fidelity of
+all that are under him. He declares, at the end of this letter, that a
+very short continuance in their service would enable him to make a
+fortune up to the height of his desire. He has since thought proper to
+declare to you that he is a beggar and undone, notwithstanding all his
+irregular resources in that very service.
+
+I have read this letter to your Lordships, that you may contrast it with
+the conduct of the prisoner, as stated by us, and proved by the evidence
+we have adduced. We have stated and proved that Mr. Hastings did enter
+upon a systematic connivance at the peculation of the Company's
+servants, that he refused to institute any check whatever for the
+purpose of preventing corruption, and that he carried into execution no
+one measure of government agreeably to the positive and solemn
+engagements into which he had entered with the Directors. We therefore
+charge him, not only with his own corruptions, but with a systematic,
+premeditated corruption of the whole service, from the time when he was
+appointed, in the beginning of the year 1772, down to the year 1785,
+when he left it. He never attempted to detect any one single abuse
+whatever; he never endeavored once to put a stop to any corruption in
+any man, black or white, in any way whatever. And thus he has acted in a
+government of which he himself declares the nature to be such that it is
+almost impossible so to detect misconduct as to give legal evidence of
+it, though a man should be declared by the cries of the whole people to
+be guilty.
+
+My Lords, he desires an arbitrary power over the Company's servants to
+be given to him. God forbid arbitrary power should be given into the
+hands of any man! At the same time, God forbid, if by power be meant the
+ability to discover, to reach, to check, and to punish subordinate
+corruption, that he should not be enabled so to do, and to get at, to
+prosecute, and punish delinquency by law! But honesty only, and not
+arbitrary power, is necessary for that purpose. We well know, indeed,
+that a government requiring arbitrary power has been the situation in
+which this man has attempted to place us.
+
+We know, also, my Lords, that there are cases in which the act of the
+delinquent may be of consequence, while the example of the criminal,
+from the obscurity of his situation, is of little importance: in other
+cases, the act of the delinquent may be of no great importance, but the
+consequences of the example dreadful. We know that crimes of great
+magnitude, that acts of great tyranny, can but seldom be exercised, and
+only by a few persons. They are privileged crimes. They are the dreadful
+prerogatives of greatness, and of the highest situations only. But when
+a Governor-General descends into the muck and filth of peculation and
+corruption, when he receives bribes and extorts money, he does acts that
+are imitable by everybody. There is not a single man, black or white,
+from the highest to the lowest, that is possessed in the smallest degree
+of momentary authority, that cannot imitate the acts of such a
+Governor-General. Consider, then, what the consequences will be, when it
+is laid down as a principle of the service, that no man is to be called
+to account according to the existing laws, and that you must either
+give, as he says, arbitrary power, or suffer your government to be
+destroyed.
+
+We asked Mr. Anderson, whether the covenant of every farmer of the
+revenue did not forbid him from giving any presents to any persons, or
+taking any. He answered, he did not exactly remember, (for the memory of
+this gentleman is very indifferent, though the matter was in his own
+particular province,) but he thought it did; and he referred us to the
+record of it. I cannot get at the record; and therefore you must take it
+as it stands from Mr. Anderson, without a reference to the record,--that
+the farmers were forbidden to take or give any money to any person
+whatever, beyond their engagements. Now, if a Governor-General comes to
+that farmer, and says, "You must give a certain sum beyond your
+engagements," he lets him loose to prey upon the landholders and
+cultivators; and thus a way is prepared for the final desolation of the
+whole country, by the malversation of the Governor, and by the
+consequent oppressive conduct of the farmers.
+
+Mr. Hastings being now put over the whole country to regulate it, let us
+see what he has done. He says, "Let me have an arbitrary power, and I
+will regulate it." He assumed arbitrary power, and turned in and out
+every servant at his pleasure. But did he by that arbitrary power
+correct any one corruption? Indeed, how could he? He does not say he
+did. For when a man gives ill examples in himself, when he cannot set on
+foot an inquiry that does not terminate in his own corruption, of course
+he cannot institute any inquiry into the corruption of the other
+servants.
+
+But again, my Lords, the subordinate servant will say, "I cannot rise"
+(properly here, as Mr. Hastings has well observed) "to the height of
+greatness, power, distinction, rank, or honor in the government; but I
+can make my fortune, according to my degree, my measure, and my place."
+His views will be then directed so to make it. And when he sees that the
+Governor-General is actuated by no other views,--when he himself, as a
+farmer, is confidently assured of the corruptions of his superior,--when
+he knows it to be laid down as a principle by the Governor-General, that
+no corruption is to be inquired into, and that, if it be not expressly
+laid down, yet that his conduct is such as to make it the same as if he
+had actually so laid it down,--then, I say, every part of the service is
+instantly and totally corrupted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall next refer your Lordships to the article of contracts. Five
+contracts have been laid before you, the extravagant and corrupt profits
+of which have been proved to amount to 500,000_l._ We have shown you, by
+the strongest presumptive evidence, that these contracts were given for
+the purpose of corrupting the Company's servants in India, and of
+corrupting the Company itself in England. You will recollect that
+40,000_l._ was given in one morning for a contract which the contractor
+was never to execute: I speak of Mr. Sulivan's contract. You will also
+recollect that he was the son of the principal person in the Indian
+direction, and who, in or out of office, was known to govern it, and to
+be supported by the whole Indian interest of Mr. Hastings. You have seen
+the corruption of Sir Eyre Coote, in giving to Mr. Croftes the bullock
+contract. You have seen the bullock contracts stated to Mr. Hastings's
+face, and not denied, to have been made for concealing a number of
+corrupt interests. You have seen Mr. Auriol's contract, given to the
+secretary of the Company by Mr. Hastings in order that he might have the
+whole records and registers of the Company under his control. You have
+seen that the contract and commission for the purchase of stores and
+provisions, an enormous job, was given to Mr. Belli, an obscure man, for
+whom Mr. Hastings offers himself as security, under circumstances that
+went to prove that Mr. Belli held this commission for Mr. Hastings.
+These, my Lords, are things that cannot be slurred over. The
+Governor-General is corrupt; he corrupts all about him; he does it upon
+system; he will make no inquiry.
+
+My Lords, I have stated the amount of the sums which he has squandered
+away in these contracts; but you will observe that we have brought
+forward but five of them. Good God! when you consider the magnitude and
+multiplicity of the Company's dealings, judge you what must be the
+enormous mass of that corruption of which he has been the cause, and in
+the profits of which he has partaken. When your Lordships shall have
+considered this document, his defence, which I have read in part to you,
+see whether you are not bound, when he imputes to us and throws upon us
+the cause of all his corruption, to throw back the charge by your
+decision, and hurl it with indignation upon himself.
+
+But there is another shameless and most iniquitous circumstance, which I
+have forgotten to mention, respecting these contracts. He not only
+considered them as means of present power, and therefore protected his
+favorites without the least inquiry into their conduct, and with
+flagrant suspicion of a corrupt participation in their delinquency, but
+he goes still farther: he declares, that, if he should be removed from
+his government, he will give them a lease in these exorbitant profits,
+for the purpose of securing a corrupt party to support and bear him out
+by their evidence, upon the event of any inquiry into his conduct,--to
+give him a _razinama_, to give him a flourishing character, whenever he
+should come upon his trial. Hear what his principles are; hear what the
+man himself avows.
+
+        "_Fort William, October 4, 1779._
+
+     "In answer to Mr. Francis's insinuation, that it is natural enough
+     for the agent to wish to secure himself before the expiration of
+     the present government, I avow the fact as to myself as well as the
+     agent. When I see a systematic opposition to every measure proposed
+     by me for the service of the public, by which an individual may
+     eventually benefit, I cannot hesitate a moment to declare it to be
+     my firm belief, that, should the government of this country be
+     placed in the hands of the present minority, they would seek the
+     ruin of every man connected with me; it is therefore only an act
+     of common justice in me to wish to secure them, as far as I legally
+     can, from the apprehension of future oppression."
+
+Here is the principle avowed. He takes for granted, and he gives it the
+name of oppression, that the person who should succeed him would take
+away those unlawful and wicked emoluments, and give them to some other.
+"But," says he, "I will put out of the Company's power the very means
+of redress."
+
+The document which I am now going to read to your Lordships contains a
+declaration by Mr. Hastings of another mean which he used of corrupting
+the whole Company's service.
+
+
+     _Minute of the Governor-General.--Extract from that Minute._
+
+     "Called upon continually by persons of high rank and station, both
+     in national and in the Company's councils, to protect and prefer
+     their friends in the army, and by the merits and services which
+     have come under my personal knowledge and observation, I suffer
+     both pain and humiliation at the want of power to reward the
+     meritorious, or to show a proper attention to the wishes of my
+     superiors, without having recourse to means which must be
+     considered as incompatible with the dignity of my station. The
+     slender relief which I entreat of the board from this state of
+     mortification is the authority to augment the number of my staff,
+     which will enable me to show a marked and particular attention in
+     circumstances such as above stated, and will be no considerable
+     burden to the Company."
+
+My Lords, you here see what he has been endeavoring to effect, for the
+express purpose of enabling him to secure himself a corrupt influence in
+England. But there is another point much more material, which brings the
+matter directly home to this court, and puts it to you either to punish
+him or to declare yourselves to be accomplices in the corruption of the
+whole service. Hear what the man himself says. I am first to mention to
+your Lordships the occasion upon which the passage which I shall read to
+you was written. It was when he was making his enormous and shameful
+establishment of a Revenue Board, in the year 1781,--of which I shall
+say a few words hereafter, as being a gross abuse in itself: he then
+felt that the world would be so much shocked at the enormous prodigality
+and corrupt profusion of what he was doing, that he at last spoke out
+plainly.
+
+
+     _A Minute of Mr. Hastings, transmitted in a Letter by Mr. Wheler._
+
+     "In this, as it must be the case in every reformation, the interest
+     of individuals has been our principal, if not our only impediment.
+     We could not at once deprive so large a body of our fellow-servants
+     of their bread, without feeling that reluctance which humanity must
+     dictate,--not unaccompanied, perhaps, with some concern for the
+     consequence which our own credit might suffer by an act which
+     involved the fortunes of many, and extended its influence to all
+     their connections. This, added to the justice which was due to your
+     servants, who were removed for no fault of theirs, but for the
+     public convenience, induced us to continue their allowances until
+     other offices could be provided for them, and the more cheerfully
+     to submit to the expediency of leaving others in a temporary or
+     partial charge of the internal collections. In effect, the civil
+     officers [offices?] of this government might be reduced to a very
+     scanty number, were their exigency alone to determine the list of
+     your covenanted servants, which at this time consist of no less a
+     number than two hundred and fifty-two,--many of them the sons of
+     the first families in the kingdom of Great Britain, and every one
+     aspiring to the rapid acquisition of lacs, and to return to pass
+     the prime of their lives at home, as multitudes have done before
+     them. Neither will the revenues of this country suffice for such
+     boundless pretensions, nor are they compatible with yours and the
+     national interests, which may eventually suffer as certain a ruin
+     from the effects of private competition and the claims of patronage
+     as from the more dreaded calamities of war, or the other ordinary
+     causes which lead to the decline of dominion."
+
+My Lords, you have here his declaration, that patronage, which he avows
+to be one of the principles of his government, and to be the principle
+of the last of his acts, is worse than war, pestilence, and famine,--and
+that all these calamities together might not be so effectual as this
+patronage in wasting and destroying the country. And at what time does
+he tell you this? He tells it you when he himself had just wantonly
+destroyed an old regular establishment for the purpose of creating a new
+one, in which he says he was under the necessity of pensioning the
+members of the old establishment from motives of mere humanity. He here
+confesses himself to be the author of the whole mischief. "I could,"
+says he, "have acted better; I might have avoided desolating the country
+by peculation; but," says he, "I had sons of the first families in the
+kingdom of Great Britain, every one aspiring to the rapid acquisition of
+lacs, and this would not suffer me to do my duty." I hope your Lordships
+will stigmatize the falsehood of this assertion. Consider, my Lords,
+what he has said,--two hundred and fifty men at once, and in
+succession, aspiring to come home in the prime of their youth with
+_lacs_. You cannot take _lacs_ to be less than two; we cannot make a
+plural less than two. Two lacs make 20,000_l._ Then multiply that, by
+252, and you will find more than 2,500,000_l._ to be provided for that
+set of gentlemen, and for the claims of patronage. Undoubtedly such a
+patronage is worse than the most dreadful calamities of war, and all the
+other causes which lead to decline of dominion.
+
+My Lords, I beseech you to consider this plan of corrupting the
+Company's servants, beginning with systematical corruption, and ending
+with an avowed declaration that he will persist in this iniquitous
+proceeding, and to the utmost of his power entail it upon the Company,
+for the purpose of securing his accomplices against all the consequences
+of any change in the Company's government. "I dare not," says he, "be
+honest: if I make their fortunes, you will judge favorably of me; if I
+do not make their fortunes, I shall find myself crushed with a load of
+reproach and obloquy, from which I cannot escape in any other way than
+by bribing the House of Peers." What a shameful avowal this to be made
+in the face of the world! Your Lordships' judgment upon this great cause
+will obliterate it from the memory of man.
+
+But his apprehension of some change in the Company's government is not
+his only pretext for some of these corrupt proceedings; he adverts also
+to the opposition which he had to encounter with his colleagues, as
+another circumstance which drove him to adopt others of these scandalous
+expediences. Now there was a period when he had no longer to contend
+with, or to fear, that opposition.
+
+When he had got rid of the majority in the Council, which thwarted him,
+what did he do? Did he himself correct any of the evils and disorders
+which had prevailed in the service, and which his hostile majority had
+purposed to reform? No, not one,--notwithstanding the Court of Directors
+had supported the majority in all their declarations, and had accused
+him of corruption and rebellion in every part of his opposition to them.
+Now that he was free from the yoke of all the mischief of that cursed
+majority which he deprecates, and which I have heard certain persons
+consider as a great calamity, (a calamity indeed it was to
+patronage,)--as soon, I say, as he was free from this, you would imagine
+he had undertaken some great and capital reformation; for all the power
+which the Company could give was in his hands,--total, absolute, and
+unconfined.
+
+I must here remind your Lordships, that the Provincial Councils was an
+establishment made by Mr. Hastings. So confident was he in his own
+opinion of the expediency of them, that he transmitted to the Court of
+Directors a draught of an act of Parliament to confirm them. By this act
+it was his intention to place them beyond the possibility of mutation.
+Whatever opinion others might entertain of their weakness, inefficacy,
+or other defects, Mr. Hastings found no such things in them. He had
+declared in the beginning that he considered them as a sort of
+experiment, but that in the progress he found them answer so perfectly
+well that he proposed even an act of Parliament to support them. The
+Court of Directors, knowing the mischiefs that innovation had produced
+in their service, and the desolations which it had brought on the
+country, commanded him not to take any step for changing them, without
+their orders. Contrary, however, to his own declarations, contrary to
+the sketch of an act of Parliament, which, for aught he knew, the
+legislature might then have passed, (I know that it was in contemplation
+to pass, about that time, several acts for regulating the Company's
+affairs, and, for one, I should have been, as I always have been, a good
+deal concerned in whatever tended to fix some kind of permanent and
+settled government in Bengal,)--in violation, I say, of his duty, and in
+contradiction to his own opinion, he at that time, without giving the
+parties notice, turns out of their employments, situations, and bread,
+the Provincial Councils.
+
+And who were the members of those Provincial Councils? They were of high
+rank in the Company's service; they were not junior servants, boys of a
+day, but persons who had gone through some probation, who knew something
+of the country, who were conversant in its revenues and in the course of
+its business; they were, in short, men of considerable rank in the
+Company's service. What did he do with these people? Without any regard
+to their rank in the service,--no more than he had regarded the rank of
+the nobility of the country,--he sweeps them all, in one day, from their
+independent situations, without reference to the Directors, and turns
+them all into pensioners upon the Company. And for what purpose was this
+done? It was done in order to reduce the Company's servants, who, in
+their independent situations, were too great a mass and volume for him
+to corrupt, to an abject dependence upon his absolute power. It was,
+that he might tell them, "You have lost your situations; you have
+nothing but small alimentary pensions, nothing more than a maintenance;
+and you must depend upon me whether you are to have anything more or
+not." Thus at one stroke a large division of the Company's servants, and
+one of the highest orders of them, were reduced, for their next bread,
+to an absolute, submissive dependence upon his will; and the Company was
+loaded with the pensions of all these discarded servants. Thus were
+persons in an honorable, independent situation, earned by long service
+in that country, and who were subject to punishment for their crimes, if
+proved against them, all deprived, unheard, of their employments. You
+would imagine that Mr. Hastings had at least charged them with
+corruption. No, you will see upon your minutes, that, when he abolished
+the Provincial Councils, he declared at the same time that he found no
+fault with the persons concerned in them.
+
+Thus, then, he has got rid, as your Lordships see, of one whole body of
+the Company's servants; he has systematically corrupted the rest, and
+provided, as far as lay in his power, for the perpetuation of their
+corruption; he has connived at all their delinquencies, and has
+destroyed the independence of all the superior orders of them.
+
+Now hear what he does with regard to the Council-General itself. They
+had, by the act that made Mr. Hastings Governor, the management of the
+revenues vested in them. You have been shown by an honorable and able
+fellow Manager of mine, that he took the business of this department
+wholly out of the hand of the Council; that he named a committee for
+the management of it, at an enormous expense,--committee made up of his
+own creatures and dependants; and that, after destroying the Provincial
+Councils, he brought down the whole management of the revenue to
+Calcutta. This committee took this important business entirely out of
+the hands of the Council, in which the act had vested it, and this
+committee he formed without the orders of the Court of Directors, and
+directly contrary to the act, which put the superintendence in the hands
+of the Council.
+
+Oh, but he reserved a superintendence over them.--You shall hear what
+the superintendence was; you shall see, feel, smell, touch; it shall
+enter into every avenue and pore of your soul. It will show you what was
+the real principle of Mr. Hastings's government. We will read to you
+what Sir John Shore says of that institution, and of the only ends and
+purposes which it could answer; your Lordships will then see how far he
+was justifiable in violating an act of Parliament, and giving out of the
+Council's hands the great trust which the laws of his country had vested
+in them. It is part of a paper written in 1785 by Mr. Shore, who was
+sole acting president of this committee to which all Bengal was
+delivered. He was an old servant of the Company, and he is now at the
+head of the government of that country. He was Mr. Hastings's particular
+friend, and therefore you cannot doubt either of his being a competent
+evidence, or that he is a favorable evidence for Mr. Hastings, and that
+he would not say one word against the establishment of which he himself
+was at the head, that was not perfectly true, and forced out of him by
+the truth of the case. There is not a single part of it that does not
+point out some abuse.
+
+     "In the actual collection of the revenues, nothing is more
+     necessary than to give immediate attention to all complaints, which
+     are preferred daily without number, and to dispatch them in a
+     summary manner. This cannot be done where the control is remote. In
+     every purgunnah throughout Bengal there are some distinct usages,
+     which cannot be clearly known at a distance; yet in all complaints
+     of oppression or extortion, these must be known before a decision
+     can be pronounced. But to learn at Calcutta the particular customs
+     of a district of Rajeshahye or Dacca is almost impossible; and
+     considering the channel through which an explanation must pass, and
+     through which the complaint is made, any coloring may be given to
+     it, and oppression and extortion, to the ruin of a district, may be
+     practised with impunity. This is a continual source of
+     embarrassment to the Committee of Revenue in Calcutta.
+
+     "One object of their institution was to bring the revenues without
+     the expenses of agency to the Presidency, and to remove all local
+     control over the farmers, who were to pay their rents at Calcutta.
+     When complaints are made against farmers by the occupiers of the
+     lands, it is almost impossible to discriminate truth from
+     falsehood; but to prevent a failure in the revenue, it is found
+     necessary, in all doubtful cases, to support the farmer,--a
+     circumstance which may give rise to and confirm the most cruel acts
+     of oppression. The real state of any district cannot be known by
+     the Committee. An occupier or zemindar may plead, that an
+     inundation has ruined him, or that his country is a desert through
+     want of rain. An aumeen is sent to examine the complaint. He
+     returns with an exaggerated account of losses, proved in volumes of
+     intricate accounts, which the Committee have no time to read, and
+     for which the aumeen is well paid. Possibly, however, the whole
+     account is false. Suppose no aumeen is employed, and the renter is
+     held to the tenor of his engagement, the loss, if real, must
+     occasion his ruin, unless his assessment is very moderate indeed.
+
+     "I may venture to pronounce that the real state of the districts is
+     now less known, and the revenue less understood, than in the year
+     1774. Since the natives have had the disposal of accounts, since
+     they have been introduced as agents and trusted with authority,
+     intricacy and confusion have taken place. The records and accounts
+     which have been compiled are numerous, yet, when any particular
+     account is wanted, it cannot be found. It is the business of all,
+     from the ryots to the dewan, to conceal and deceive. The simplest
+     matters of fact are designedly covered with a veil through which no
+     human understanding can penetrate.
+
+     "With respect to the present Committee of Revenue, it is morally
+     impossible for them to execute the business they are intrusted
+     with. They are invested with a general control, and they have an
+     executive authority larger than ever was before given to any board
+     or body of men. They may and must get through the business; but to
+     pretend to assert that they really execute it would be folly and
+     falsehood.
+
+     "The grand object of the native dewannies was to acquire
+     independent control, and for many years they have pursued this
+     with wonderful art. The farmers and zemindars under the Committee
+     prosecute the same plan, and have already objections to anything
+     that has the least appearance of restriction. All control removed,
+     they can plunder as they please.
+
+     "The Committee must have a dewan, or executive officer, call him by
+     what name you please. This man, in fact, has all the revenues paid
+     at the Presidency at his disposal, and can, if he has any
+     abilities, bring all the renters under contribution. It is of
+     little advantage to restrain the Committee themselves from bribery
+     or corruption, when their executive officer has the power of
+     protecting [practising?] both undetected.
+
+     "To display the arts employed by a native on such an occasion would
+     fill a volume. He discovers the secret resources of the zemindars
+     and renters, their enemies and competitors, and by the engines of
+     hope and fear raised upon these foundations he can work them to his
+     purpose. The Committee, with the best intentions, best abilities,
+     and steadiest application, must, after all, be a tool in the hand
+     of their dewan."
+
+Here is the account of Mr. Hastings's new Committee of Revenue,
+substituted in the place of an establishment made by act of Parliament.
+Here is what he has substituted for Provincial Councils. Here is what he
+has substituted in the room of the whole regular order of the service,
+which he totally subverted. Can we add anything to this picture? Can we
+heighten it? Can we do anything more than to recommend it to your
+Lordships' serious consideration?
+
+But before I finally dismiss this part of our charge, I must request
+your Lordships' most earnest attention to the true character of these
+atrocious proceedings, as they now stand proved before you, by direct or
+the strongest presumptive evidence, upon the Company's records, and by
+his own confessions and declarations, and those of his most intimate
+friends and avowed agents.
+
+Your Lordships will recollect, that, previously to the appointment of
+Mr. Hastings to be the Governor-General, in 1772, the collection of the
+revenues was committed to a naib dewan, or native collector, under the
+control of the Supreme Council,--and that Mr. Hastings did at that time,
+and upon various occasions afterwards, declare it to be his decided and
+fixed opinion, that nothing would be so detrimental to the interests of
+the Company, and to the happiness and welfare of the inhabitants of
+their provinces, as changes, and more especially sudden changes, in the
+collection of their revenues. His opinion was also most strongly and
+reiteratedly pressed upon him by his masters, the Court of Directors.
+The first step taken after his appointment was to abolish the office of
+naib dewan, and to send a committee through the provinces, at the
+expense of 50,000_l._ a year, to make a settlement of rents to be paid
+by the natives for five years. At the same time he appointed one of the
+Company's servants to be the collector in each province, and he
+abolished the General Board of Revenue, which had been established at
+Moorshedabad, chiefly for the following reasons: that, by its exercising
+a separate control, the members of the Supreme Council at Calcutta were
+prevented from acquiring that intimate acquaintance with the revenues
+which was necessary to persons in their station; and because many of the
+powers necessary for the collection of the revenues could not be
+delegated to a subordinate council. In consideration of these opinions,
+orders, and declarations, he, in 1773, abolished the office of
+collector, and transferred the management of the revenues to several
+councils of revenue, called Provincial Councils, and recommended their
+perpetual establishment by act of Parliament. In the year 1774, in
+contradiction of his former opinion respecting the necessity of the
+Supreme Council possessing all possible means of becoming acquainted
+with the details of the revenue, he again recommended the continuance of
+the Provincial Councils in all their parts. This he again declared to be
+his deliberate opinion in 1775 and in 1776.
+
+In the mean time a majority of the Supreme Council, consisting of
+members who had generally differed in opinion from Mr. Hastings, had
+transmitted their advice to the Court of Directors, recommending some
+changes in the system of Provincial Councils. The Directors, in their
+reply to this recommendation, did in 1777 order the Supreme Council to
+form a new plan for the collection of the revenues, and to transmit it
+to them for their consideration.
+
+No such plan was transmitted; but in the year 1781, Mr. Hastings having
+obtained a majority in the Council, he again changed the whole system,
+both of collection of the revenue and of the executive administration of
+civil and criminal justice. And who were the persons substituted in the
+place of those whom he removed? Names, my Lords, with which you are
+already but too well acquainted. At their head stands Munny Begum; then
+comes his own domestic, and private bribe-agent, Gunga Govind Sing; then
+his banian, Cantoo Baboo; then that instrument of all evil, Debi Sing;
+then the whole tribe of his dependants, white and black, whom he made
+farmers of the revenue, with Colonel Hannay at their head; and, lastly,
+his confidential Residents, secret agents, and private secretaries, Mr.
+Middleton, Major Palmer, &c., &c. Can your Lordships doubt, for a single
+instant, of the real spirit of these proceedings? Can you doubt of the
+whole design having originated and ended in corruption and peculation?
+
+We have fully stated to you, from the authority of these parties
+themselves, the effects and consequences of these proceedings,--namely,
+the dilapidation of the revenues, and the ruin and desolation of the
+provinces. And, my Lords, what else could have been expected or designed
+by this sweeping subversion of the control of the Company's servants
+over the collections of the revenue, and the vesting of it in a black
+dewan, but fraud and peculation? What else, I say, was to be expected,
+in the inextricable turnings and windings of that black mystery of
+iniquity, but the concealment of every species of wrong, violence,
+outrage, and oppression?
+
+Your Lordships, then, have seen that the whole country was put into the
+hands of Gunga Govind Sing; and when you remember who this Gunga Govind
+Sing was, and how effectually Mr. Hastings had secured him against
+detection, in every part of his malpractices and atrocities, can you for
+a moment hesitate to believe that the whole project was planned and
+executed for the purpose of putting all Bengal under contribution to Mr.
+Hastings? But if you are resolved, after all this, to entertain a good
+opinion of Mr. Hastings,--if you have taken it into your heads, for
+reasons best known to yourselves, to imagine that he has some hidden
+virtues, which in the government of Bengal he has not displayed, and
+which, to us of the House of Commons, have not been discernible in any
+one single instance,--these virtues may be fit subjects for paragraphs
+in newspapers, they may be pleaded for him by the partisans of his
+Indian _faction_, but your Lordships will do well to remember that it is
+not to Mr. Hastings himself that you are trusting, but to Gunga Govind
+Sing. If the Committee were tools in his hands, must not Mr. Hastings
+have also been a tool in his hands? If they with whom he daily and
+hourly had to transact business, and whose office it was to control and
+restrain him, were unable so to do, is this control and restraint to be
+expected from Mr. Hastings, who was his confidant, and whose corrupt
+transactions he could at any time discover to the world? My worthy
+colleague has traced the whole of Mr. Hastings's bribe account, in the
+most clear and satisfactory manner, to Gunga Govind Sing,--him first,
+him last, him midst, and without end. If we fail of the conviction of
+the prisoner at your bar, your Lordships will not have acquitted Mr.
+Hastings merely, but you will confirm all the robberies and rapines of
+Gunga Govind Sing. You will recognize him as a faithful governor of
+India. Yes, my Lords, let us rejoice in this man! Let us adopt him as
+our own! Let our country, let this House, be proud of him! If Mr.
+Hastings can be acquitted, we must admit Gunga Govind Sing's government
+to be the greatest blessing that ever happened to mankind. But if Gunga
+Govind Sing's government be the greatest curse that ever befell
+suffering humanity, as we assert it to have been, there is the man that
+placed him in it; there is his father, his godfather, the first author
+and origin of all these evils and, calamities. My Lords, remember
+Dinagepore; remember the bribe of 40,000_l._ which Gunga Govind Sing
+procured for Mr. Hastings in that province, and the subsequent horror of
+that scene.
+
+But, my Lords, do you extend your confidence to Gunga Govind Sing? Not
+even the face of this man, to whom the revenues of the Company, together
+with the estates, fortunes, reputations, and lives of the inhabitants of
+that country were delivered over, is known in those provinces. He
+resides at Calcutta, and is represented by a variety of under-agents. Do
+you know Govind Ghose? Do you know Nundulol? Do you know the whole tribe
+of peculators, whom Mr. Hastings calls his faithful domestic servants?
+Do you know all the persons that Gunga Govind Sing must employ in the
+various ramifications of the revenues throughout all the provinces? Are
+you prepared to trust all these? The Board of Revenue has confessed that
+it could not control them. Mr. Hastings himself could not control them.
+The establishment of this system was like Sin's opening the gates of
+Hell: like her, he could open the gate,--but to shut, as Milton says,
+exceeded his power. The former establishments, if defective, or if
+abuses were found in them, might have been corrected. There was at least
+the means of detecting and punishing abuse. But Mr. Hastings destroyed
+the means of doing either, by putting the whole country into the hands
+of Gunga Govind Sing.
+
+Now, having seen all these things done, look to the account. Your
+Lordships will now be pleased to look at this business as a mere account
+of revenue. You will find, on comparing the three years in which Mr.
+Hastings was in the minority with the three years after the appointment
+of this Committee, that the assessment upon the country increased, but
+that the revenue was diminished; and you will also find, which is a
+matter that ought to astonish you, that the expenses of the collections
+were increased by no less a sum than 500,000_l._ You may judge from this
+what riot there was in rapacity and ravage, both amongst the European
+and native agents, but chiefly amongst the natives: for Mr. Hastings did
+not divide the greatest part of this spoil among the Company's servants,
+but among this gang of black dependants. These accounts are in pages
+1273 and 1274 of your Minutes.
+
+My Lords, weighty indeed would have been the charge brought before your
+Lordships by the Commons of Great Britain against the prisoner at your
+bar, if they had fixed upon no other crime or misdemeanor than that
+which I am now pressing upon you,--his throwing off the allegiance of
+the Company, his putting a black master over himself, and his subjecting
+the whole of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, the whole of the Company's
+servants, the Company's revenues, the Company's farms, to Gunga Govind
+Sing. But, my Lords, it is a very curious and remarkable thing, that we
+have traced this man as Mr. Hastings's bribe-broker up to the time of
+the nomination of this Committee; we have traced him through a regular
+series of bribery; he is Mr. Hastings's bribe-broker at Patna; he is Mr.
+Hastings's bribe-broker at Nuddea; he is his bribe-broker at Dinagepore;
+we find him his bribe-broker in all these places; but from the moment
+that this Committee was constituted, it became a gulf in which the
+prevention, the detection, and the correction of all kind of abuses
+were sunk and lost forever. From the time when this Committee and Gunga
+Govind Sing were appointed, you do not find one word more of Mr.
+Hastings's bribes. Had he then ceased to receive any? or where are you
+to look for them? You are to look for them in that 500,000_l._ excess of
+expense in the revenue department, and in the rest of all that corrupt
+traffic of Gunga Govind Sing of which we gave you specimens at the time
+we proved his known bribes to you. These are nothing but index-hands to
+point out to you the immense mass of corruption which had its origin,
+and was daily accumulating in these provinces, under the protection of
+Mr. Hastings. And can you think, and can we talk of such transactions,
+without feeling emotions of indignation and horror not to be described?
+Can we contemplate such scenes as these,--can we look upon those
+desolated provinces, upon a country so ravaged, a people so
+subdued,--Mahometans, Gentoos, our own countrymen, all trampled under
+foot by this tyrant,--can we do this; without giving expression to those
+feelings which, after animating us in this life, will comfort us when we
+die, and will form our best part in another?
+
+My Lords, I am now at the last day of my endeavors to inspire your
+Lordships with a just sense of these unexampled atrocities. I have had a
+great encyclopedia of crimes to deal with; I will get through them as
+soon as I can; and I pray your Lordships to believe, that, if I omit
+anything, it is to time I sacrifice it,--that it is to want of strength
+I sacrifice it,--that it is to necessity, and not from any despair of
+making, from the records and from the evidence, matter so omitted as
+black as anything that I have yet brought before you.
+
+The next thing of which I have to remind your Lordships respecting these
+black agents of the prisoner is, that we find him, just before his
+departure from India, recommending three of them, Gunga Govind Sing,
+Gunga Ghose, and Nundulol, as persons fit and necessary to be rewarded
+for their services by the Company. Now your Lordships will find, that,
+of these faithful domestic servants, there is not one of them who was
+not concerned in these enormous briberies, and in betraying their own
+native and natural master. If I had time for it, I believe I could trace
+every person to be, in proportion to Mr. Hastings's confidence in him,
+the author of some great villany. These persons he thinks had not been
+sufficiently rewarded, and accordingly he recommends to the board, as
+his dying legacy, provision for these faithful attached servants of his,
+and particularly for Gunga Govind Sing. The manner in which this man was
+to be rewarded makes a part of the history of these transactions, as
+curious, perhaps, as was ever exhibited to the world. Your Lordships
+will find it in page 2841 of your Minutes.
+
+The Rajah of Dinagepore was a child at that time about eleven years old,
+and had succeeded to the Rajahship (by what means I shall say nothing)
+when he was about five years old. He is made to apply to Mr. Hastings
+for leave to grant a very considerable part of his estate to Gunga
+Govind Sing, as a reward for his services. These services could only be
+known to the Rajah's family by having robbed it of at least 40,000_l._,
+the bribe given to Mr. Hastings. But the Rajah's family is so little
+satisfied with this bountiful and liberal donation to Gunga Govind
+Sing, that they desire that several purgunnahs, or farms, that are
+mentioned in the application made to the Council, should be separated
+from the family estate and given to this man. Such was this
+extraordinary gratitude: gratitude, not for money received, but for
+money taken away,--a species of gratitude unknown in any part of the
+world but in India; gratitude pervading every branch of the family; his
+mother coming forward and petitioning likewise that her son should be
+disinherited; his uncle, the natural protector and guardian of his
+minority, coming forward and petitioning most earnestly that his nephew
+should be disinherited: all the family join in one voice of supplication
+to Mr. Hastings, that Gunga Govind Sing may have a very large and
+considerable part of their family estate given to him. Mr. Hastings,
+after declaring that certain circumstances respecting this property,
+which are mentioned in his minutes, were to his knowledge true, but
+which your Lordships, upon examination, will find to be false, and
+falsified in every particular, recommends, in the strongest manner, to
+the board, a compliance with this application. He was at this time on
+the eve of his departure from India, in haste to provide for his
+faithful servants; and he well knew that this his last act would be held
+binding upon his successors, who were devoted to him.
+
+Here, indeed, is genuine and heroic gratitude,--gratitude for money
+received, not for money taken away; and yet this gratitude was towards a
+person who had paid himself out of the benefit which had been conferred,
+at the expense of a third party. For Gunga Govind Sing had kept for
+himself 20,000_l._ out of 40,000_l._ taken from the Rajah. For this
+cheat, stated by Mr. Larkins to be such, and allowed by Mr. Hastings
+himself to be such, he, with a perfect knowledge of that fraud and cheat
+committed upon the public, (for he pretends that the money was meant for
+the Company,) makes this supplication to his colleagues, and departs.
+
+After his departure, Gunga Govind Sing, relying upon the continuance of
+the corrupt influence which he had gained, had the impudence to come
+forward and demand the confirmation of this grant by the
+Council-General. The Council, though willing to accede to Mr. Hastings's
+proposition, were stopped in a moment by petitions much more natural,
+but of a direct contrary tenor. The poor infant Rajah raises his cries
+not to be deprived of his inheritance; his mother comes forward and
+conjures the Council not to oppress her son and wrong her family; the
+uncle comes and supplicates the board to save from ruin these devoted
+victims which were under his protection. All these counter-petitions
+come before the Council while the ink is hardly dry upon the petitions
+which Mr. Hastings had left behind him, as proofs of the desire of this
+family to be disinherited in favor of Gunga Govind Sing. Upon the
+receipt of these remonstrances, the board could not proceed in the
+business, and accordingly Gunga Govind Sing was defeated.
+
+But Gunga Govind Sing was unwilling to quit his prey. And what does he
+do? I desire your Lordships to consider seriously the reply of Gunga
+Govind Sing, as it appears upon your minutes. It is a bold answer. He
+denies the right of the Rajah to these estates. "Why," says he, "all
+property in this country depends upon the will of your government. How
+came this Rajah's family into possession of this great zemindary? Why,
+they got it at first by the mere favor of government. The whole was an
+iniquitous transaction. This is a family that in some former age has
+robbed others; and now let me rob them." In support of this claim, he
+adds the existence of other precedents, namely, "that many clerks or
+mutsuddies and banians at Calcutta had," as he says, "got possession of
+the lands of other people without any pretence of right;--why should not
+I?" Good God! what precedents are these!
+
+Your Lordships shall now hear the razinama, or testimonial, which, since
+Mr. Hastings's arrival in England, this Rajah has been induced to send
+to the Company from India, and you will judge then of the state in which
+Mr. Hastings has left that country. Hearken, my Lords, I pray you, to
+the razinama of this man, from whom 40,000_l._ was taken by Mr. Hastings
+and Gunga Govind Sing, and against whom an attempt was made by the same
+persons to deprive him of his inheritance. Listen to this razinama, and
+then judge of all the other testimonials which have been produced on the
+part of the prisoner at your bar. His counsel rest upon them, they glory
+in them, and we shall not abate them one of these precious testimonials.
+They put the voice of grateful India against the voice of ungrateful
+England. Now hear what grateful India says, after our having told you
+for what it was so grateful.
+
+     "I, Radanaut, Zemindar of Purgunnah Havelly Punjera, commonly
+     called Dinagepore:--As it has been learnt by me, the mutsuddies and
+     respectable officers of my zemindary, that the ministers of
+     England are displeased with the late Governor, Warren Hastings,
+     Esquire, upon the suspicion that he oppressed us, took money from
+     us by deceit and force, and ruined the country, therefore we, upon
+     the strength of our religion, which we think it incumbent on and
+     necessary for us to abide by, following the rules laid down in
+     giving evidence, declare the particulars of the acts and deeds of
+     Warren Hastings, Esquire, full of circumspection and caution,
+     civility and justice, superior to the conduct of the most learned,
+     and by representing what is fact wipe away the doubts that have
+     possessed the minds of the ministers of England; that Mr. Hastings
+     is possessed of fidelity and confidence, and yielding protection to
+     us; that he is clear from the contamination of mistrust and wrong,
+     and his mind is free of covetousness and avarice. During the time
+     of his administration, no one saw other conduct than that of
+     protection to the husbandmen, and justice; no inhabitant ever
+     experienced affliction, no one ever felt oppression from him. Our
+     reputations have always been guarded from attacks by his prudence,
+     and our families have always been protected by his justice."
+
+Good God! my Lords, "_our families protected by his justice_"! What!
+after Gunga Govind Sing, in concert with Mr. Hastings, had first robbed
+him of 40,000_l._, and then had attempted to snatch, as it were, out of
+the mouths of babes and sucklings the inheritance of their fathers, and
+to deprive this infant of a great part of his family estate? Here is a
+child, eleven years old, who never could have seen Mr. Hastings, who
+could know nothing of him but from the heavy hand of oppression,
+affliction, wrong, and robbery, brought to bear testimony to the virtues
+of Mr. Hastings before a British Parliament! Such is the confidence they
+repose in their hope of having bribed the English nation by the millions
+and millions of money, the countless lacs of rupees, poured into it from
+India, that they had dared to bring this poor robbed infant to bear
+testimony to the character of Mr. Hastings! These are the things which
+are to be opposed to the mass of evidence which the House of Commons
+bring against this man,--evidence which they bring from his own acts,
+his own writing, and his own records,--a cloud of testimony furnished by
+himself in support of charges brought forward and urged by us agreeably
+to the magnitude of his crimes, with the horror which is inspired by
+them, and with the contempt due to this paltry attempt towards his
+defence, which they had dared to produce from the hands of an infant but
+eleven years old when Mr. Hastings quitted that country!
+
+But to proceed with the razinama.
+
+     "He never omitted the smallest instance of kindness towards us, but
+     healed the wounds of despair with the salve of consolation, by
+     means of his benevolent and kind behavior, never permitting one of
+     us to sink in the pit of despondence. He supported every one by his
+     goodness, overset the designs of evil-minded men by his authority,
+     tied the hand of oppression with the strong bandage of justice, and
+     by these means expanded the pleasing appearance of happiness and
+     joy over us. He re�stablished justice and impartiality. We were
+     during his government in the enjoyment of perfect happiness and
+     ease, and many of us are thankful and satisfied. As Mr. Hastings
+     was well acquainted with our manners and customs, he was always
+     desirous in every respect of doing whatever would preserve our
+     religious rites, and guard them against every kind of accident and
+     injury, and at all times protected us. Whatever we have experienced
+     from him, and whatever happened from him, we have written without
+     deceit or exaggeration."
+
+My Lords, before I take leave of this affair of bribes and of the great
+bribe-broker, let me just offer a remark to your Lordships upon one
+curious transaction. My Lords, we have charged a bribe taken from the
+Nabob of Oude, and we have stated the corrupt and scandalous proceeding
+which attended it. I thought I had done with Oude; but as there is a
+golden chain between all the virtues, so there is a golden chain which
+links together all the vices. Mr. Hastings, as you have seen, and as my
+honorable colleague has fully opened it to you, received a bribe or
+corrupt present from the Nabob of Oude in September, 1781. We heard no
+more of this bribe than what we had stated, (no other trace of it ever
+appearing in the Company's records, except in a private letter written
+by Mr. Hastings to the Court of Directors, and afterwards in a
+communication such as you have heard through Mr. Larkins,) till October,
+1783.
+
+But, my Lords, we have since discovered, through and in consequence of
+the violent disputes which took place between Mr. Hastings and the clan
+of Residents that were in Oude,--the Resident of the Company, Mr.
+Bristow, the two Residents of Mr. Hastings, Mr. Middleton and Mr.
+Johnson, and the two Residents sent by him to watch over all the rest,
+Major Palmer and Major Davy,--upon quarrels, I say, between them, we
+discovered that Mr. Middleton had received the offer of a present of
+100,000_l._ in February, 1782. This circumstance is mentioned in a
+letter of Mr. Middleton's, in which he informs Mr. Hastings that the
+Nabob had destined such a sum for him.
+
+Now the first thing that will occur to your Lordships upon such an
+affair will be a desire to know what it was that induced the Nabob to
+make this offer. It was but in the September preceding that Mr. Hastings
+had received, for his private use, as the Nabob conceived, so bountiful
+a present as 100,000_l._; what motive, then, could he have had in
+February to offer him another 100,000_l._? This man, at the time, was
+piercing heaven itself with the cries of despondency, despair, beggary,
+and ruin. You have seen that he was forced to rob his own family, in
+order to satisfy the Company's demands upon him; and yet this is
+precisely the time when he thinks proper to offer 100,000_l._ to Mr.
+Hastings. Does not the mind of every man revolt, whilst he exclaims, and
+say, "What! another 100,000_l._ to Mr. Hastings?" What reason had the
+Nabob to think Mr. Hastings so monstrously insatiable, that, having but
+the September before received 100,000_l._, he must give him another in
+February? My Lords, he must, in the interval, have threatened the Nabob
+with some horrible catastrophe, from which he was to redeem himself by
+this second present. You can assign no other motive for his giving it.
+We know not what answer Mr. Hastings made to Mr. Middleton upon that
+occasion, but we find that in the year 1783 Mr. Hastings asserts that he
+sent up Major Palmer and Major Davy to persuade the Nabob to transfer
+this present, which the Nabob intended for him, to the Company's
+service. Remark, my Lords, the progress of this affair. In a formal
+accusation preferred against Mr. Middleton, he charges him with
+obstructing this design of his. In this accusation, my Lords, you find
+him at once in the curious character of prosecutor, witness, and judge.
+
+Let us see how he comports himself. I shall only state to you one of the
+articles of his impeachment; it is the third charge; it is in page 1267
+of your Lordships' Minutes.
+
+     "For sending repeatedly to the Vizier, and to his minister, Hyder
+     Beg Kh�n, to advise them against transferring the ten lacs of
+     rupees intended as a present to the Governor-General to the
+     Company's account; as it would be a precedent for further demands,
+     which if the Vizier did not refuse in the first instance, the
+     government would never cease to harass him for money."
+
+The first thing that will occur to your Lordships is an assertion of the
+accuser's:--"I am morally certain, that jaidads or assets for ten lacs,
+either in assignment of land or in bills, had been prepared, and were in
+the charge or possession of Mr. Middleton, before Major Palmer's
+arrival, and left with Mr. Johnson on Mr. Middleton's departure."
+
+My Lords, here is an accusation that Mr. Middleton had actually received
+money, either in bills or assets of some kind or other,--and that, upon
+quitting his Residency, he had handed it over to his successor, Mr.
+Johnson. Here are, then, facts asserted, and we must suppose
+substantiated. Here is a sum of money to be accounted for, in which
+there is a gross malversation directly charged as to these particulars,
+in Mr. Hastings's opinion. Mr. Macpherson, another member of the
+Council, has declared, that he understood at the time that the ten lacs
+were actually deposited in bills, and that it was not a mere offer made
+by the Nabob to pay such a sum from the future revenue of the country.
+Mr. Hastings has these facts disclosed to him. He declares that he was
+"_morally_ certain" of it,--that is, as certain as a man can be of
+anything; because physical certitude does not belong to such matters.
+The first thing you will naturally ask is, "Why does he not ask Mr.
+Johnson how he had disposed of that money which Mr. Middleton had put in
+his hands?" He does no such thing; he passes over it totally, as if it
+were no part of the matter in question, and the accusation against Mr.
+Middleton terminates in the manner you will there find stated. When Mr.
+Johnson is asked, "Why was not that money applied to the Company's
+service?" he boldly steps forward, and says, "I prevented it from being
+so applied. It never was, it never ought to have been, so applied; such
+an appropriation of money to be taken from the Nabob would have been
+enormous upon that occasion."
+
+What, then, does Mr. Hastings do? Does he examine Mr. Middleton upon the
+subject, who charges himself with having received the money? Mr.
+Middleton was at that very time in Calcutta, called down thither by Mr.
+Hastings himself. One would naturally expect that he would call upon him
+to explain for what purpose he left the money with Mr. Johnson. He did
+no such thing. Did he examine Mr. Johnson himself, who was charged with
+having received the money from Mr. Middleton? Did he ask him what he had
+done with that money? Not one word. Did he send for Major Palmer and
+Major Davy to account for it? No. Did he call any shroff, any banker,
+any one person concerned in the payment of the money, or any one person
+in the management of the revenue? No, not one. Directly in the face of
+his own assertions, directly contrary to his moral conviction of the
+fact that the money had been actually deposited, he tries Mr. Johnson
+collusively and obliquely, not upon the account of what was done with
+the money, but why it was prevented from being applied to the Company's
+service; and he acquits him in a manner that (taking the whole of it
+together) will give your Lordships the finest idea possible of a Bengal
+judicature, as exercised by Mr. Hastings.
+
+"I am not sorry," says he, "that Mr. Johnson chose to defeat my
+intentions; since it would have added to the Nabob's distresses, but
+with no immediate relief to the Company. If, in his own breast, he can
+view the secret motives of this transaction, and on their testimony
+approve it, I also acquit him."
+
+Merciful God! Here is a man accused by regular articles of impeachment.
+The accuser declares he is morally certain that the money had been
+received, but was prevented from being applied to its destination by the
+person accused; and he acquits him. Does he acquit him from his own
+knowledge, or from any evidence? No: but he applies to the man's
+conscience, and says, "If you in your conscience can acquit yourself, I
+acquit you."
+
+Here, then, is a proceeding the most astonishing and shameless that
+perhaps was ever witnessed: a court trying a man for a delinquency and
+misapplication of money, destined, in the first instance, for the use of
+the judge, but which he declares ought, in his own opinion, to be set
+apart for the public use, and which he was desirous of applying to the
+Company's service, without regard to his own interest, and then the
+judge declaring he is not sorry that his purpose had been defeated by
+the party accused. Instead, however, of censuring the accused, he
+applies to the man's own conscience. "Does your conscience," says he,
+"acquit you of having acted wrong?" The accused makes no reply; and then
+Mr. Hastings, by an hypothetical conclusion, acquits him.
+
+Mr. Hastings is accused by the Commons for that, having a moral
+certainty of the money's being intended for his use, he would not have
+ceased to inquire into the actual application of it but from some
+corrupt motive and intention. With this he is charged. He comes before
+you to make his defence. Mr. Middleton is in England. Does he call Mr.
+Middleton to explain it here? Does he call upon Mr. Johnson, who was the
+other day in this court, to account for it? Why did he not, when he sent
+for these curious papers and testimonials to Major Palmer, (the person
+authorized, as he pretends, by him, to resign all his pretensions to the
+money procured,) send for Major Palmer, who is the person that accused
+him in this business,--why not send for him to bear some testimony
+respecting it? No: he had time enough, but at no one time and in no
+place did he do this; therefore the imputation of the foulest corruption
+attaches upon him, joined with the infamy of a collusive prosecution,
+instituted for the sake of a collusive acquittal.
+
+Having explained to your Lordships the nature, and detailed the
+circumstances, as far as we are acquainted with them, of this fraudulent
+transaction, we have only further to remind you, that, though Mr.
+Middleton was declared guilty of five of the six charges brought against
+him by Mr. Hastings, yet the next thing you hear is, that Mr. Hastings,
+after declaring that this conduct of Mr. Middleton had been very bad,
+and that the conduct of the other servants of the Company concerned with
+him had been ten times worse, he directly appoints him to one of the
+most honorable and confidential offices the Company had to dispose of:
+he sends him ambassador to the Nizam,--to give to all the courts of
+India a specimen of the justice, honor, and decency of the British
+government.
+
+My Lords, with regard to the bribe for the _entertainment_, I only beg
+leave to make one observation to you upon that article. I could say, if
+the time would admit it, a great deal upon that subject; but I wish to
+compress it, and I shall therefore only recommend it in general to your
+Lordships' deliberate consideration. The covenant subsisting between the
+Company and its servants was made for the express purpose of putting an
+end to all such entertainments. By this convention it is ordered that no
+presents exceeding 200_l._ [400_l._?] shall be accepted upon any
+pretence for an entertainment. The covenant was intended to put an end
+to the custom of receiving money for entertainments, even when visiting
+an independent Oriental prince. But your Lordships know that the Nabob
+was no prince, but a poor, miserable, undone dependant upon, the
+Company. The present was also taken by Mr. Hastings at a time when he
+went upon the cruel commission of cutting down the Nabob's allowance
+from 400,000_l._ to 260,000_l._ [160,000_l._?], and when he was reducing
+to beggary thousands of persons who were dependent for bread upon the
+Nabob, and ruining, perhaps, forty thousand others. I shall say no more
+upon that subject, though, in truth, it is a thing upon which much
+observation might be made.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall now pass on to another article connected with, though not making
+a direct part of, that of corrupt bribery: I mean the swindling
+subterfuges by which he has attempted to justify his corrupt practices.
+At one time, he defends them by pleading the necessities of his own
+affairs,--as when he takes presents and entertainments avowedly for his
+own profits. At another time he defends them by pleading the goodness of
+his intentions: he intended, he says, to give the money to the Company.
+His last plea has something in it (which shall I say?) of a more awful
+or of a more abandoned character, or of both. In the settlement of his
+public account, before he left India, he takes credit for a bond which
+he had received from Nobkissin upon some account or other. He then,
+returns to England, and what does he do? Pay off? No. Give up the bond
+to the Company? No. He says, "I will account to the Company for this
+money." And when he comes to give this account of the expenditure of
+this money, your Lordships will not be a little astonished at the items
+of it. One is for founding a Mahometan college. It is a very strange
+thing that Rajah Nobkissin, who is a Gentoo, should be employed by Mr.
+Hastings to found a Mahometan college. We will allow Mr. Hastings, who
+is a Christian, or would be thought a Christian, to grow pious at last,
+and, as many others have done, who have spent their lives in fraud,
+rapacity, and peculation, to seek amends and to expiate his crimes by
+charitable foundations. Nay, we will suppose Mr. Hastings to have taken
+it into his head to turn Mahometan, (Gentoo he could not,) and to have
+designed by a Mahometan foundation to expiate his offences. Be it so;
+but why should Nobkissin pay for it? We will pass over this also. But
+when your Lordships shall hear of what nature that foundation was, I
+believe you will allow that a more extraordinary history never did
+appear in the world.
+
+In the first place, he stated to the Council, on the 18th of April,
+1781, that in the month of November, 1780, a petition was presented to
+him by a considerable number of Mussulmen, in compliance with which this
+Mahometan college appears to have been founded. It next appears from his
+statement, that in the April following, (that is, within about six
+months after the foundation,) many students had finished their
+education. You see what a hot-bed bribery and corruption is. Our
+universities cannot furnish an education in six years: in India they
+have completed it within six months, and have taken their degrees.
+
+Mr. Hastings says, "I have supported this establishment to this time at
+my own expense; I desire the Company will now defray the charge of it."
+He then calculates what the expenses were; he calculates that the
+building would cost about 6,000_l._, and he gets from the Company a bond
+to raise money for paying this 6,000_l._ You apparently have the
+building now at the public expense, and Mr. Hastings still stands
+charged with the expense of the college for six months. He then proposes
+that a tract of land should be given for the college, to the value of
+about three thousand odd pounds a year,--and that in the mean time there
+should be a certain sum allotted for its expenses. After this Mr.
+Hastings writes a letter from the Ganges to the Company, in which he
+says not a word about the expense of the building, but says that the
+college was founded and maintained at his own expense, though it was
+thought to be maintained by the Company; and he fixes the commencement
+of the expense in September, 1779. But, after all, we find that the very
+professor who was to be settled there never so much as arrived in
+Calcutta, or showed his face there, till some time afterwards. And look
+at Mr. Larkins's private accounts, and you will find that he charges the
+expense to have commenced not until October, 1781. It is no error,
+because it runs through and is so accounted in the whole: and it thus
+appears that he has charged, falsely and fraudulently, a year more for
+that establishment than it cost him.
+
+At last, then, when he was coming away, (for I hasten to the conclusion
+of an affair ludicrous indeed in some respects, but not unworthy of your
+Lordships' consideration,) "after remarking that he had experienced for
+three years the utility of this institution, he recommends that they
+will establish a fund for 3,000_l._ a year for it, and give it to the
+master." He had left Gunga Govind Sing as a Gentoo legacy, and he now
+leaves the Mussulman as a Mahometan legacy to the Company.
+
+Your Lordships shall now hear what was the upshot of the whole. The
+Company soon afterwards hearing that this college was become the
+greatest nuisance in Calcutta, and that it had raised the cries of all
+the inhabitants against it, one of their servants, a Mr. Chapman, was
+deputed by the Governor, Sir John Shore, to examine into it, and your
+Lordships will find the account he gives of it in your minutes. In
+short, my Lords, we find that this was a seminary of robbers,
+housebreakers, and every nuisance to society; so that the Company was
+obliged to turn out the master, and to remodel the whole. Your Lordships
+will now judge of the merits and value of this, one of the sets-off
+brought forward by the prisoner against the charges which we have
+brought forward against him: it began in injustice and peculation, and
+ended in a seminary for robbers and housebreakers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nothing now remains to be pressed by me upon your Lordships'
+consideration, but the account given by the late Governor-General, Earl
+Cornwallis, of the state in which he found the country left by his
+predecessor, Mr. Hastings, the prisoner at your bar. But, patient as I
+know your Lordships to be, I also know that your strength is not
+inexhaustible; and though what I have farther to add will not consume
+much of your Lordships' time, yet I conceive that there is a necessity
+for deferring it to another day.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+NINTH DAY: MONDAY, JUNE 16, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--I should think it necessary to make an apology to your
+Lordships for appearing before you one day more, if I were inclined to
+measure this business either by the standard of my own ability, or by my
+own impatience, or by any supposed impatience of yours. I know no
+measure, in such a case, but the nature of the subject, and the duty
+which we owe to it. You will therefore, my Lords, permit me, in a few
+words, to lead you back to what we did yesterday, that you may the
+better comprehend the manner in which I mean to conclude the business
+to-day.
+
+My Lords, we took the liberty of stating to you the condition of Bengal
+before our taking possession of it, and of the several classes of its
+inhabitants. We first brought before you the Mahometan inhabitants, who
+had the judicial authority of the country in their hands; and we proved
+to you the utter ruin of that body of people, and with them of the
+justice of the country, by their being, both one and the other, sold to
+an infamous woman called Munny Begum. We next showed you, that the whole
+landed interest, the zemindars, or Hindoo gentry of the country, was
+likewise ruined by its being given over, by letting it on a five years'
+lease, to infamous farmers, and giving it up to their merciless
+exactions,--and afterwards by subjecting the rank of those zemindars,
+their title-deeds, and all their pecuniary affairs, to the minutest
+scrutiny, under pain of criminal punishment, by a commission granted to
+a nefarious villain called Gunga Govind Sing. We lastly showed you that
+the remaining third class, that of the English, was partly corrupted, or
+had its authority dissolved, and that the whole superintending English
+control was subverted or subdued,--that the products of the country were
+diminished, and that the revenues of the Company were dilapidated, by an
+overcharge of expenses, in four years, to the amount of 500,000_l._, in
+consequence of these corrupt, dangerous, and mischievous projects.
+
+We have farther stated, that the Company's servants were corrupted by
+contracts and jobs; we proved that those that were not so corrupted were
+removed from their stations or reduced to a state of abject dependence;
+we showed you the destruction of the Provincial Councils, the
+destruction of the Council-General, and the formation of a committee for
+no other ends whatever but for the purposes of bribery, concealment, and
+corruption. We next stated some of the most monstrous instances of that
+bribery; and though we were of opinion that in none of them any
+satisfactory defence worth mentioning had been made, yet we have thought
+that this should not hinder us from recalling to your Lordships'
+recollection the peculiar nature and circumstances of one of those
+proceedings.
+
+The proceedings to which we wish to call your attention are those
+belonging to the second bribe given by the Nabob of Oude to Mr.
+Hastings. Mr. Hastings's own knowledge and opinion that that money was
+set apart for his use, either in bills or assets, I have before stated;
+and I now wish to call your Lordships' minute recollection to the manner
+in which the fraudulent impeachment of Mr. Middleton, for the purpose of
+stifling an inquiry into that business, was carried on. Your Lordships
+will remember that I proved to you, upon the face of that proceeding,
+the collusive nature of the accusation, and that the real state of the
+case was not charged,--and that Mr. Hastings acquitted the party accused
+of one article of the charge, not upon the evidence of the case,
+contrary to his own avowed, declared, moral certainty of his guilt, but
+upon a pretended appeal to the conscience of the man accused. He did
+not, however, give him a complete, formal, official acquittal, but
+referred the matter to the Court of Directors, who could not possibly
+know anything of the matter, without one article of evidence whatever
+produced at the time or transmitted. We lastly proved to you, that,
+after finding him guilty of five charges, and leaving the other to the
+Court of Directors, Mr. Hastings, without any reason assigned, appointed
+him to a great office in the Company's service.
+
+These proceedings were brought before you for two purposes: first, to
+show the corrupt principle of the whole proceeding; next, to show the
+manner in which the Company's servants are treated. They are accused and
+persecuted, until they are brought to submit to whatever terms it may be
+thought proper to impose upon them; they are then formally, indeed,
+acquitted of the most atrocious crimes charged against them, but
+virtually condemned upon some articles, with the scourge hung over
+them,--and in some instances rewarded by the greatest, most honorable,
+and most lucrative situations in the Company's service. My Lords, it is
+on the same ground of the wicked, pernicious, and ruinous principles of
+Mr. Hastings's government, that I have charged this with everything that
+is chargeable against him, namely, that, if your Lordships should ratify
+those principles by your acquittal of him, they become principles of
+government,--rejected, indeed, by the Commons, but adopted by the
+Peerage of Great Britain.
+
+There is another article which I have just touched, but which I must do
+more than barely notice, upon account of the evil example of it: I mean
+the taking great sums of money, under pretence of an entertainment. Your
+Lordships will recollect, that, when this business was charged against
+him in India, Mr. Hastings neither affirmed nor denied the fact.
+Confession could not be there extorted from him. He next appeared before
+the House of Commons, and he still evaded a denial or a confession of
+it. He lastly appeared before your Lordships, and in his answer to our
+charge he in the same manner evaded either a confession or a denial. He
+forced us to employ a great part of a session in endeavoring to
+establish what we have at last established, the receipt of the sums
+first charged, and of seven lacs more, by him. At length the proof could
+not be evaded; and after we had fought through all the difficulties
+which the law could interpose in his defence, and of which he availed
+himself with a degree of effrontery that has, I believe, no example in
+the world, he confesses, avows, and justifies his conduct. If the custom
+alleged be well founded, and be an honorable and a proper and just
+practice, why did he not avow it in every part and progress of our
+proceedings here? Why should he have put us to the necessity of wasting
+so many months in the proof of the fact? And why, after we have proved
+it, and not before, did he confess it, avow it, and even glory in it?
+
+I must remind your Lordships that the sum charged to be so taken by way
+of entertainment made only a part, a single article, of the bribes
+charged by Nundcomar to have been received by Mr. Hastings; and when we
+find him confessing, what he could not deny, that single article, and
+evading all explanation respecting the others, and not giving any reason
+whatever why one was received and the others rejected, your Lordships
+will judge of the strong presumption of his having taken them all, even
+if we had given no other proofs of it. We think, however, that we have
+proved the whole very satisfactorily. But whether we have or not, the
+proof of a single present received is sufficient; because the principle
+to be established respecting these bribes is this,--whether or not a
+Governor-General, paying a visit to any of the poor, miserable,
+dependent creatures called sovereign princes in that country, (men whom
+Mr. Hastings has himself declared to be nothing but phantoms, and that
+they had no one attribute of sovereignty about them,) whether, I say, he
+can consider them to be such sovereign princes as to justify his taking
+from them great sums of money by way of a present. The Nabob, in fact,
+was not a sovereign prince, nor a country power, in any sense but that
+which the Company meant to exempt from the custom of making presents. It
+was their design to prevent their servants from availing themselves of
+the real dependence of the nominal native powers to extort money from
+them under the pretence of their sovereignty. Such presents, so far from
+being voluntary, were in reality obtained from their weakness, their
+hopeless and unprotected condition; and you are to decide whether or not
+this custom, which is insisted upon by the prisoner's counsel, with
+great triumph, to be a thing which he could not evade, without breaking
+through all the usages of the country, and violating principles
+established by the most clear law of India, is to be admitted as his
+justification.
+
+It was on this very account, namely, the extortion suffered by these
+people, under the name or pretence of presents, that the Company first
+bound their servants by a covenant, which your Lordships shall now hear
+read.
+
+     "That they shall not take any grant of lands, or rents or revenues
+     issuing out of lands, or any territorial possession, jurisdiction,
+     dominion, power, or authority whatsoever, from any of the Indian
+     princes, sovereigns, subahs, or nabobs, or any of their ministers,
+     servants, or agents, for any service or services, or upon any
+     account or pretence whatsoever, without the license or consent of
+     the Court of Directors."
+
+This clause in the covenant had doubtless a regard to Lord Clive, and to
+Sir Hector Munro, and to some others, who had received gifts, and grants
+of jaghires, and other territorial revenues, that were confirmed by the
+Company. But though this confirmation might be justifiable at a time
+when we had no real sovereignty in the country, yet the Company very
+wisely provided afterwards, that under no pretence whatever should their
+servants have the means of extorting from the sovereigns or pretended
+sovereigns of the country any of their lands or possessions. Afterwards
+it appeared that there existed abuses of a similar nature, and
+particularly (as was proved before us in the year 1773, and reported to
+our House, upon the evidence of Mahomed Reza Kh�n) the practice of
+frequently visiting the princes, and of extorting, under pretence of
+such visits, great sums of money. All their servants, and the
+Governor-General particularly, were therefore obliged to enter into the
+following covenant:--
+
+     "That they shall not, directly or indirectly, accept, take, or
+     receive, or agree to accept, take, or receive, any gift, reward,
+     gratuity, allowance, donation, or compensation, in money, effects,
+     jewels, or otherwise howsoever, from any of the Indian princes,
+     sovereigns, subahs, or nabobs, or any of their ministers, servants,
+     or agents, exceeding the value of four thousand rupees, for any
+     service or services performed or to be performed by them in India,
+     or upon any other account or pretence whatsoever."
+
+By this covenant, my Lords, Mr. Hastings is forbidden to accept, upon
+any pretence and under any name whatsoever, any sum above four thousand
+rupees,--that is to say, any sum above four hundred pounds. Now the sum
+that was here received is eighteen thousand pounds sterling, by way of a
+present, under the name of an allowance for an entertainment, which is
+the precise thing which his covenant was made to prevent. The covenant
+suffered him to receive four hundred pounds: if he received more than
+that money, he became a criminal, he had broken his covenant, and
+forfeited the obligation he had made with his masters. Think with
+yourselves, my Lords, what you will do, if you acquit the prisoner of
+this charge. You will avow the validity, you will sanction the principle
+of his defence: for, as the fact is avowed, there is an end of that.
+
+Good God! my Lords, where are we? If they conceal their gifts and
+presents, they are safe by their concealment; if they avow them, they
+are still safer. They plead the customs of the country, or rather, the
+customs which we have introduced into the country,--customs which have
+been declared to have their foundation in a system of the most
+abominable corruption, the most flagitious extortion, the most dreadful
+oppression,--those very customs which their covenant is made to abolish.
+Think where your Lordships are. You have before you a covenant declaring
+that he should take under no name whatever (I do not know how words
+could be selected in the English language more expressive) any sum more
+than four hundred pounds. He says, "I have taken eighteen thousand
+pounds." He makes his counsel declare, and he desires your Lordships to
+confirm their declaration, that he is not only justifiable in so doing,
+but that he ought to do so,--that he ought to break his covenant, and
+act in direct contradiction to it. He does not even pretend to say that
+this money was intended, either inwardly or outwardly, avowedly or
+covertly, for the Company's service. He put absolutely into his own
+pocket eighteen thousand pounds, besides his salary.
+
+Consider, my Lords, the consequences of this species of iniquity. If any
+servant of the Company, high in station, chooses to make a visit from
+Calcutta to Moorshedabad, which Moorshedabad was then the residence of
+our principal revenue government,--if he should choose to take an
+airing for his health, if he has a fancy to make a little voyage for
+pleasure as far as Moorshedabad, in one of those handsome barges or
+budgeros of which you have heard so much in his charge against
+Nundcomar, he can put twenty thousand pounds into his pocket any day he
+pleases, in defiance of all our acts of Parliament, covenants, and
+regulations.
+
+Do you make your laws, do you make your covenants, for the very purpose
+of their being evaded? Is this the purpose for which a British tribunal
+sits here, to furnish a subject for an epigram, or a tale for the
+laughter of the world? Believe me, my Lords, the world is not to be thus
+trifled with. But, my Lords, you will never trifle with your duty. You
+have a gross, horrid piece of corruption before you,--impudently
+confessed, and more impudently defended. But you will not suffer Mr.
+Hastings to say, "I have only to go to Moorshedabad, or to order the
+Nabob to meet me half way, and I can set aside and laugh at all your
+covenants and acts of Parliament." Is this all the force and power of
+the covenant by which you would prevent the servants of the Company from
+committing acts of fraud and oppression, that they have nothing to do
+but to amuse themselves with a tour of pleasure to Moorshedabad in order
+to put any sum of money in their pocket that they please?
+
+But they justify themselves by saying, such things have been practised
+before. No doubt they have; and these covenants were made that they
+should not be practised any more. But your Lordships are desired to say,
+that the very custom which the covenant is made to destroy, the very
+grievance itself, may be pleaded; the abuse shall be admitted to
+destroy the law made to prevent it. It is impossible, I venture to say,
+that your Lordships should act thus. The conduct of the criminal is not
+half so abhorrent as the justification is affronting to justice, whilst
+it tends to vilify and degrade the dignity of the Peerage and the
+character of the Commons of Great Britain, before the former and against
+the latter of which such a justification is produced in the face of the
+world.
+
+At the same time that we call for your justice upon this man, we beseech
+you to remember the severest justice upon him is the tenderest pity
+towards the innocent victims of his crimes. Consider what was at that
+time the state of the people from whom, in direct defiance of his
+covenant, he took this sum of money. Were they at this time richer, were
+they more opulent, was the state of the country more flourishing than
+when Mr. Sumner, when Mr. Vansittart, in short, than when the long line
+of Mr. Hastings's predecessors visited that country? No, they were not.
+Mr. Hastings at this very time had reduced the Nabob's income from
+450,000_l._ [400,000_l._?] sterling a year, exclusive of other
+considerable domains and revenues, to 160,000_l._ He was, indeed, an
+object of compassion. His revenues had not only been reduced during his
+state of minority, but they were reduced when he afterwards continued in
+a state in which he could do no one valid act; and yet, in this state,
+he was made competent to give away, under the name of compensation for
+entertainments, the sum of 18,000_l._,--perhaps at that time nearly all
+he had in the world.
+
+Look at your minutes, and you will find Mr. Hastings had just before
+this time said that the bread of ten thousand persons, many of them of
+high rank, depended upon the means possessed by the Nabob for their
+support,--that his heart was cut and afflicted to see himself obliged to
+ruin and starve so many of the Mahometan nobility, the greatest part of
+whose yet remaining miserable allowances were now taken away. You know,
+and you will forgive me again remarking, that it is the nature of the
+eagles and more generous birds of prey to fall upon living, healthy
+victims, but that vultures and carrion crows, and birds of that base and
+degenerate kind, always prey upon dead or dying carcases. It is upon
+ruined houses, it is upon decayed families, it is upon extinguished
+nobility, that Mr. Hastings chooses to prey, and to justify his making
+them his prey.
+
+But again we hear, my Lords, that it is a custom, upon ceremonial and
+complimentary visits, to receive these presents. Do not let us deceive
+ourselves. Mr. Hastings was there upon no visit either of ceremony or
+politics. He was a member, at that time, of the Committee of Circuit,
+which went to Moorshedabad for the purpose of establishing a system of
+revenue in the country. He went up upon that business only, as a member
+of the Committee of Circuit, for which business he was, like other
+members of the Committee of Circuit, amply paid, in addition to his
+emoluments as Governor, which amounted to about 30,000_l._ a year. Not
+satisfied with those emoluments, and without incurring new known expense
+of any kind or sort, he was paid for the extra expenses of his journey,
+as appears in your minutes, like other members of the Committee of
+Circuit. In fact, he was on no visit there at all. He was merely
+executing his duty in the settlement of the revenue, as a member of the
+Committee of Circuit. I do not mean to praise the Committee of Circuit
+in anyway: God forbid I should!--for we know that it was a committee of
+robbers. He was there as one of that committee, which I am pretty well
+justified in describing as I have done, because the Court of Directors,
+together with the Board of Control, did, in the year 1786, declare that
+the five years' settlement (which originated in that committee) was a
+thing bought and sold: your Lordships may read it whenever you please,
+in the 80th paragraph of their letter.
+
+Your Lordships are now fully in possession of all the facts upon which
+we charge the prisoner with peculation, by extorting or receiving large
+sums of money, upon pretence of visits, or in compensation of
+entertainments. I appeal to your Lordships' consciences for a serious
+and impartial consideration of our charge. This is a business not to be
+hurried over in the mass, as amongst the acts of a great man, who may
+have his little errors among his great services; no, you cannot, as a
+judicial body, huddle all this into a hotchpotch, and decide upon it in
+a heap. You will have to ask yourselves,--Is this justifiable by his
+covenant? Is this justifiable by law? Is this justifiable, under the
+circumstances of the case, by an enlarged discretion? Is it to be
+justified under any principles of humanity? Would it be justifiable by
+local customs, if such were applicable to the case in question? and even
+if it were, is it a practice fit for an English Governor-General to
+follow?
+
+I dwell the longer upon this, because the fact is avowed; the whole is
+an issue of law between us,--whether a Governor-General, in such a case,
+ought to take such money; and therefore, before I finally dismiss it, I
+beg leave to restate it briefly once more for your Lordships'
+consideration.
+
+First I wish to leave fixed in your Lordships' minds, what is distinctly
+fixed, and shall never go out of ours, that his covenant did not allow
+him to take above four hundred pounds as a present, upon any pretence
+whatsoever.
+
+Your Lordships will observe we contend, that, if there was a custom,
+this covenant puts an end to that custom. It was declared and intended
+so to do. The fact is, that, if such custom existed at all, it was a
+custom applicable only to an ambassador or public minister sent on a
+necessary complimentary visit to a sovereign prince. We deny,
+positively, that there is any such general custom. We say, that he never
+was any such minister or that he ever went upon any such complimentary
+visit. We affirm, that, when he took this money, he was doing an act of
+quite another nature, and came upon that business only to Moorshedabad,
+the residence of the prince of the country. Now do you call a man who is
+going to execute a commission, a commission more severe than those
+issued against bankrupts, a commission to take away half a man's income,
+and to starve a whole body of people dependent upon that income,--do you
+call this a complimentary visit? Is this a visit for which a man is to
+have great entertainments given him? No, the pretence for taking this
+money is worse than the act itself. When a man is going to execute upon
+another such harsh cruelty, when he is going upon a service at which he
+himself says his mind must revolt, is that precisely the time when he is
+to take from his undone host a present, as if he was upon a visit of
+compliment, or about to confer some honor or benefit upon him,--to
+augment his revenues, to add to his territories, or to conclude some
+valuable treaty with him? Was this a proper time to take at all from an
+helpless minor so large a sum of money?
+
+And here I shall leave this matter for your Lordships' consideration,
+after reminding you that this poor Nabob is still at Moorshedabad, and
+at the mercy of any English gentleman who may choose to take 18,000_l._,
+or any other given sum of money from him, after the example of the
+prisoner at your bar, if it should be sanctioned by your connivance. Far
+different was the example set him by General Clavering. In page 1269
+your Lordships will find the most honorable testimony to the uprightness
+and fidelity of this meritorious servant of the Company. It runs thus:
+"Conceiving it to be the intention of the legislature that the
+Governor-General and members of the Council should receive no presents,
+either from the Indian powers or any persons whatever, he [General
+Clavering] has strictly complied, since his arrival here, both with the
+spirit and the letter of the act of Parliament, and has accordingly
+returned all the presents which have been made to him." I have dwelt
+thus long upon this subject, not merely upon account of its own corrupt
+character, which has been sufficiently stigmatized by my honorable
+colleague, but upon account of the principle that is laid down by the
+prisoner, in his defence of his conduct,--a principle directly leading
+to a continuance of the same iniquitous practice, and subversive of
+every attempt to check or control it.
+
+I must beg leave to recall your Lordships' attention to another, but
+similar instance of his peculation, another and new mode of taking
+presents: I mean, the present which Mr. Hastings took, through Gunga
+Govind Sing, from those farmers of the revenues amongst whom he had
+distributed the pillage of the whole country. This scandalous breach of
+his covenant he attempts to justify by the inward intention of his own
+mind to apply the money so taken to the public service. Upon this, my
+Lords, I shall only observe, that this plea of an inward intention in
+his own mind may, if admitted, justify any evil act whatever of this
+kind. You have seen how presents from the Nabob are justified; you have
+seen how the taking a sum of money or allowance for entertainment,
+directly contrary to the covenant, how that is attempted to be
+justified; you see in what manner he justifies this last-mentioned act
+of peculation; and your Lordships will now have to decide upon the
+validity of these pleas.
+
+There still remains, unobserved upon, an instance of his malversation,
+wholly new in its kind, to which I will venture to desire your Lordships
+very seriously to turn your attention. In all the causes of peculation
+or malversation in office that ever have been tried before this high
+court, or before any lower court of judicature, in all the judicial
+records of modern crimes, or of antiquity, you will not find anything in
+any degree like it. We have all, in our early education, read the
+Verrine Orations. We read them not merely to instruct us, as they will
+do, in the principles of eloquence, and to acquaint us with the manners,
+customs, and laws of the ancient Romans, of which they are an abundant
+repository, but we may read them from a much higher motive. We may read
+them from a motive which the great author had doubtless in his view,
+when by publishing them he left to the world and to the latest posterity
+a monument by which it might be seen what course a great public accuser
+in a great public cause ought to pursue, and, as connected with it, what
+course judges ought to pursue in deciding upon such a cause. In these
+orations you will find almost every instance of rapacity and peculation
+which we charge upon Mr. Hastings. Undoubtedly, many Roman and English
+governors have received corrupt gifts and bribes, under various
+pretences. But in the cause before your Lordships there is one species
+of disgrace, in the conduct of the party accused, which I defy you to
+find in Verres, or in the whole tribe of Roman peculators, in any
+governor-general, proconsul, or viceroy. I desire you to consider it not
+included in any other class of crimes, but as a species apart by itself.
+It is an individual, a single case; but it is like the phoenix,--it
+makes a class or species by itself: I mean the business of Nobkissin.
+The money taken from him was not money pretended to be received in lieu
+of entertainment; it was not money taken from a farmer-general of
+revenue, out of an idea that his profits were unreasonable, and greater
+than government ought to allow; it was not a donation from a great man,
+as an act of his bounty. No, it was a sum of money taken from a private
+individual,--or rather, as has been proved to you by Mr. Larkins, his
+own book-keeper, money borrowed, for which he had engaged to give his
+bond. That he had actually deposited his bond for this money Mr. Larkins
+has proved to you,--and that the bond was carried to Nobkissin's credit,
+in his account with the government. But Mr. Hastings, when he was
+called upon for the money, withdraws the bond; he will not pay the
+money; he refused to pay it upon the applications made to him both in
+India and here at home; and he now comes to your Lordships and says, "I
+borrowed this money, I intended to give my bond for it, as has been
+proved before you; but I must have it for my own use." We have heard of
+governors being everything that is bad and wicked; but a governor
+putting himself in the situation of a common cheat, of a common
+swindler, never was, I believe, heard of since the creation of the world
+to this day. This does not taste of the common oppressions of power;
+this does not taste of the common abuses of office; but it in no way
+differs from one of those base swindling cases that come to be tried and
+heavily punished in the King's Bench every day. This is neither more nor
+less than a plain, barefaced cheat.
+
+Now, my Lords, let us see how it is justified. To justify openly and
+directly a cheat, to justify a fraud upon an individual, is reserved for
+our times. But, good Heavens, what a justification have we here! Oh, my
+Lords, consider into what a state Indian corruption has brought us in
+this country, when any person can be found to come to the bar of the
+House of Lords and say, "I did cheat, I did defraud; I did promise, and
+gave my bond; I have now withdrawn it, but I will account for it to you
+as to a gang of robbers concerned with me in the transaction. I confess
+I robbed this man; but I have acted as trustee for the gang. Observe
+what I have done for the gang. Come forward, Mr. Auriol, and prove what
+handsome budgeros I gave the company: were not they elegantly painted,
+beautifully gilt, charming and commodious? I made use of them as long
+as I had occasion; and though they are little worse for wear, and would
+hardly suffer the least percentage deduction from prime cost upon them,
+I gave them to the company. Oh, I did not put the money into my own
+pocket. I provided for myself and wore a suit of lace clothes, when I
+was Jew bail for some of this company: it will turn, for it is hardly
+the worse for wear, though I appeared two or three times, in different
+characters, as bail for you on such and such an occasion. I therefore
+set off these items against this money which I gained by swindling on
+your account. It is true I also picked such a one's pocket of a watch;
+here it is; I have worn it as long as it was convenient; now I give the
+watch to the company, and let them send it to the pawnbroker for what it
+will bring. Besides all this, I maintained aide-de-camps for you, and
+gave them house-rent." (By the way, my Lords, what sort of aide-de-camps
+were these? Who made him a military man, and to have such a legion of
+aide-de-camps?) "But," says he, "I paid house-rent for them; that is, in
+other words, I paid, at night-cellars and houses in Saint Giles's,
+sixpence a week for some of the gang." (This, my Lords, is the real
+spirit of the whole proceeding, and more especially of the last item in
+it.) "Then," says he, "I was the gang's schoolmaster, and taught lessons
+on their account. I founded a Mahometan school." (Your Lordships have
+already heard something of this shameful affair, of this scene of
+iniquity,--I think of such iniquity as the world never yet had to blush
+at.) "I founded a Mahometan college for your use; and I bore the expense
+of it from September, 1780, when I placed a professor there, called
+Mudjed-o-Din."--This Mudjed-o-Din was to perfect men, by contract, in
+all the arts and sciences, in about six months; and the chief purpose of
+the school was, as Mr. Hastings himself tells you, to breed theologians,
+magistrates, and moulavies, that is to say, judges and doctors of law,
+who were to be something like our masters in chancery, the assessors of
+judges, to assist them in their judgments. Such was the college founded
+by Mr. Hastings, and he soon afterwards appropriated one of the
+Company's estates, (I am speaking of matters of public notoriety,) worth
+3,000_l._ a year, for its support. Heaven be praised, that Mr. Hastings,
+when he was resolved to be pious and munificent, and to be a great
+founder, chose a Mahometan rather than a Christian foundation, so that
+our religion was not disgraced by such a foundation!
+
+Observe how he charges the expense of the foundation to the Company
+twice over. He first makes them set aside an estate of 3,000_l._ a year
+for its support. In what manner this income was applied during Mr.
+Hastings's stay in India no man living knows; but we know, that, at his
+departure, one of the last acts he did was to desire it should be put
+into the hands of Mudjed-o-Din. He afterwards, as you have seen, takes
+credit to himself with the Company for the expenses relative to this
+college.
+
+I must now introduce your Lordships to the last visitation that was made
+of this college. It was visited by order of Lord Cornwallis in the year
+1788, upon the complaints made against it which I have already mentioned
+to your Lordships,--that it was a sink of filth, vermin, and misery. Mr.
+Chapman, who was the visitor, and the friend of Mr. Hastings, declares
+that he could not sit in it even for a few minutes; his words are,--"The
+wretched, squalid figures that from every part ran out upon me appeared
+to be more like anything else than students." In fact, a universal
+outcry was raised by the whole city against it, not only as a receptacle
+of every kind of abuse, not only of filth and excrements which made it
+stink in the natural nostrils, but of worse filth, which made it
+insufferably offensive to the moral nostrils of every inhabitant. Such
+is the account given of a college supported at an expense of 3,000_l._ a
+year, (a handsome foundation for a college,) and for building which the
+Company was charged 5,000_l._: though no vouchers of its expenditure
+were ever given by Mr. Hastings. But this is not all. When Lord
+Cornwallis came to inquire into it, he found that Mudjed-o-Din had sunk
+the income of the estate from 3,000_l._ to 2,000_l._ a year,--in short,
+that it had been a scene of peculation, both by the masters and
+scholars, as well as of abandonment to every kind of vicious and
+licentious courses; and all this without the shadow of any benefit
+having been derived from it. The visitors expressly inquired whether
+there was any good mixed with all this evil; and they found it was all
+bad and mischievous, from one end to the other. Your Lordships will
+remark, that the greatest part of this disgusting business must have
+been known to Mr. Hastings when he gave to Mudjed-o-Din the disposal of
+3,000_l._ a year. And now, my Lords, can you vote this money, expended
+in the manner which I have stated to you, to be a set-off in his favor,
+in an account for money which was itself swindled from a private
+individual?
+
+But there still remains behind another more serious matter belonging to
+this affair; and I hope you will not think that I am laying too much
+stress upon it, when I declare, that, if I were to select from the whole
+of his conduct one thing more dishonorable than another to the British
+nation, it would be that which I am now about to mention. I will leave
+your Lordships to judge of the sincerity of this declaration, when you
+shall have heard read a paper produced by the prisoner in justification
+of conduct such as I have stated his to have been. It is the _razinama_,
+or attestation, of Munny Begum (the woman whom Mr. Hastings placed in
+the seat of justice in that country) concerning this college, made
+precisely at the time of this inquisition by Lord Cornwallis into the
+management of it. Your Lordships will see what sort of things
+attestations are from that country: that they are attestations procured
+in diametrical contradiction to the certain knowledge of the party
+attesting. It is in page 2350 of your Minutes. Indeed, my Lords, these
+are pages which, unless they are effaced by your judgment, will rise up
+in judgment against us, some day or other.
+
+     "He [Mr. Hastings] respected the learned and wise men, and, in
+     order for the propagation of learning, he built a college, and
+     endowed it with a provision for the maintenance of the students,
+     insomuch that thousands reaping the benefits thereof offer up their
+     prayers for the prosperity of the King of England, and for the
+     success of the Company."
+
+I must here remind your Lordships of another attestation of the same
+character, and to the same effect. It comes from Mahomed Reza Kh�n, who,
+as your Lordships will remember, had been reduced by Mr. Hastings from
+a situation of the highest rank and authority, with an income of
+suitable magnitude, to one of comparative insignificance, with a small
+salary annexed. This man is made to disgrace himself, and to abet the
+disgrace and injury done to his country, by bearing his testimony to the
+merits of this very college.
+
+I hope your Lordships will never lose sight of this aggravating
+circumstance of the prisoner's criminality,--namely, that you never find
+any wicked, fraudulent, and criminal act, in which you do not find the
+persons who suffered by it, and must have been well acquainted with it,
+to be the very persons who are brought to attest in its favor. O Heaven!
+but let shame for one moment veil its face, let indignation suppress its
+feelings, whilst I again call upon you to view all this as a mere
+swindling transaction, in which the prisoner was attempting to defraud
+the Company.
+
+Mr. Hastings has declared, and you will find it upon the Company's
+records, that this institution (which cost the Company not less than
+40,000_l._ in one way or other) did not commence before October in the
+year 1780; and he brings it before the board in April, 1781,--that is,
+about six months after its foundation. Now look at his other account, in
+which he makes it to begin in the year 1779, and in which he has
+therefore overcharged the expenses of it a whole year.--But Mr. Larkins,
+who kept this latter account for him, may have been inaccurate.--Good
+Heavens! where are we? Mr. Hastings, who was bred an accountant, who was
+bred in all sorts of trade and business, declares that he keeps no
+accounts. Then comes Mr. Larkins, who keeps an account for him; but he
+keeps a false account. Indeed, all the accounts from India, from one
+end to another, are nothing but a series of fraud, while Mr. Hastings
+was concerned in them. Mr. Larkins, who keeps his private account just
+as his master kept the public accounts, has swindled from the Company a
+whole year's expenses of this college. I should not thus repeatedly
+dwell upon this transaction, but because I wish your Lordships to be
+cautious how you admit such accounts at all to be given in evidence,
+into the truth of which you cannot penetrate in any regular way. Upon
+the face of the two accounts there is a gross fraud. It is no matter
+which is true or false, as it is an account which you are in no
+situation to decide upon. I lay down this as a fixed judicial rule, that
+no judge ought to receive an account (which, is as serious a part of a
+judicial proceeding as can be) the correctness of which he has no means
+of ascertaining, but must depend upon the sole word of the accountant.
+
+Having stated, therefore, the nature of the offence, which differs
+nothing from a common dog-trot fraud, such as we see amongst the meanest
+of mankind, your Lordships will be cautious how you admit these, or any
+other of his pretended services, to be set off against his crimes. These
+stand on record confessed before you; the former, of which you can form
+no just estimate, and into which you cannot enter, rest for their truth
+upon his own assertions, and they all are found, upon the very face of
+them, to carry marks of fraud as well as of wickedness.
+
+I have only further to observe to your Lordships, that this
+Mudjed-o-Din, who, under the patronage of Mr. Hastings, was to do all
+these wonders, Lord Cornwallis turned out of his office with every mark
+of disgrace, when he attempted to put into some more respectable state
+that establishment which Mr. Hastings had made a sink of abuse.
+
+I here conclude all that I have to say upon this business, trusting that
+your Lordships will feel yourselves more offended, and justice more
+insulted, by the defence than by the criminal acts of the prisoner at
+your bar; and that your Lordships will concur with us in thinking, that
+to make this unhappy people make these attestations, knowing the direct
+contrary of every word which they say to be the truth, is a shocking
+aggravation of his guilt. I say they must know it; for Lord Cornwallis
+tells you it is notorious; and if you think fit to inquire into it, you
+will find that it was unusually notorious.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, we have now brought to a conclusion our observations upon the
+effects produced by that mass of oppression which we have stated and
+proved before your Lordships,--namely, its effects upon the revenues,
+and upon the public servants of the Company. We have shown you how
+greatly the former were diminished, and in what manner the latter were
+reduced to the worst of all bad states, a state of subserviency to the
+will of the Governor-General. I have shown your Lordships that in this
+state they were not only rendered incapable of performing their own
+duty, but were fitted for the worst of all purposes, co�peration with
+him in the perpetration of his criminal acts, and collusion with him in
+the concealment of them. I have lastly to speak of these effects as they
+regard the general state and welfare of the country. And here your
+Lordships will permit me to read the evidence given by Lord Cornwallis,
+a witness called by the prisoner at your bar, Mr. Hastings himself.
+
+
+     _The Evidence of Lord Cornwallis. Page 2721._
+
+     "_Q._ Whether your Lordship recollects an account that you have
+     given to the Court of Directors, in your letter of the 2d of
+     August, 1789, concerning the state of those provinces?--_A._ I
+     really could not venture to be particular as to any letter I may
+     have written so long since, as I have brought no copies of my
+     letters with me from India, having left them at Bengal when I went
+     to the coast.--_Q._ Whether your Lordship recollects, in any letter
+     that you wrote about the 2d of August, 1789, paragraph 18, any
+     expressions to this effect, namely: 'I am sorry to be obliged to
+     say, that agriculture and internal commerce have for many years
+     been gradually declining, and that at present, excepting the class
+     of shroffs and banians, who reside almost entirely in great towns,
+     the inhabitants of these provinces are advancing hastily to a
+     general state of poverty and wretchedness':--whether your Lordship
+     recollects that you have written a letter to that effect?--_A._ I
+     cannot take upon me to recollect the words of a letter that I have
+     written five years ago, but I conclude I must have written to that
+     effect.--_Q._ Whether your Lordship recollects that in the
+     immediately following paragraph, the 19th, you wrote to this
+     effect: 'In this description' (namely, the foregone description) 'I
+     must even include almost every zemindar in the Company's
+     territories, which, though it may have been partly occasioned by
+     their own indolence and extravagance, I am afraid must also be in a
+     great measure attributed to the defects of our former system of
+     management.' (Paragraph 20.) 'The settlement, in conformity to
+     your orders, will only be made for ten years certain, with the
+     notification of its being your intention to declare it a perpetual,
+     an unalterable assessment of these provinces, if the amount and the
+     principles upon which it has been made should meet with your
+     approbation':--whether your Lordship recollects to have written
+     something to the effect of these two last paragraphs, as well as of
+     the first?--_A._ I do recollect that I did write it; but in that
+     letter I alluded to the former system of annual assessments.--_Q._
+     Whether your Lordship recollects that you wrote, on or about the
+     18th of September, 1789, in one of your minutes, thus: 'I may
+     safely assert that one third of the Company's territory in
+     Hindostan is now a jungle, inhabited only by wild beasts: will a
+     ten years' lease induce any proprietor to clear away that jungle,
+     and encourage the ryot to come and cultivate his lands, when at the
+     end of that lease he must either submit to be taxed _ad libitum_
+     for the newly cultivated lands, or lose all hopes of deriving any
+     benefit from his labor, for which perhaps by that time he will
+     hardly be repaid?'--whether your Lordship recollects a minute to
+     that effect?--_A._ I perfectly recollect to have written that
+     minute.--_Q._ Now with respect to a letter, dated November the 3d,
+     1788, paragraph 38, containing the following sentiments: 'I shall
+     therefore only remark in general, that, from frequent changes of
+     system or other reasons, much is wanting to establish good order
+     and regulations in the internal business of the country, and that,
+     from various causes, by far the greatest part of the zemindars, and
+     other landholders and renters, are fallen into a state much below
+     that of wealth and affluence. This country, however, when the
+     fertility of its soil, and the industry and ingenuity of its
+     numerous inhabitants are taken into consideration, must
+     unquestionably be admitted to be one of the finest in the world;
+     and, with the uniform attention of government to moderation in
+     exaction, and to a due administration of justice, may long prove a
+     source of great riches both to the Company and to Britain.'
+     (Paragraph 39.) 'I am persuaded, that, by a train of judicious
+     measures, the land revenue of these provinces is capable in time of
+     being increased; but, consistent with the principles of humanity,
+     and even those of your own interest, it is only by adopting
+     measures for the gradual cultivation and improvement of these waste
+     lands, and by a gentle and cautious plan for the resumption of
+     lands that have been fraudulently alienated, that it ought ever to
+     be attempted to be accomplished. Men of speculative and sanguine
+     dispositions, and others, either from ignorance of the subject, or
+     with views of recommending themselves to your favor, may
+     confidently hold forth specious grounds to encourage you to hope
+     that a great and immediate accession to that branch of your revenue
+     might be practicable. My public duty obliges me to caution you, in
+     the most serious manner, against listening to propositions which
+     recommend this attempt; because I am clearly convinced, that, if
+     carried into execution, they would be attended with the most
+     baneful consequences.' (Paragraph 40.) 'Desperate adventurers,
+     without fortune or character, would undoubtedly be found, as has
+     already been too often experienced, to rent the different districts
+     of the country at the highest rates that could be put upon them;
+     that [but?] the delusion would be of a short duration, and the
+     impolicy and inhumanity of the plan would, when perhaps too late
+     for effectual remedy, become apparent by the complaints of the
+     people and the disappointments at the treasury in the payments of
+     the revenue, and would probably terminate in the ruin and
+     depopulation of the unfortunate country':--whether your Lordship
+     recollects to have written anything to that effect about that
+     time?--_A._ I perfectly recollect having written the extracts that
+     have been read."
+
+My Lords, Lord Cornwallis has been called, he has been examined before
+you. We stopped our proceedings ten days for the purpose of taking his
+evidence. We do not regret this delay. And he has borne the testimony
+which you have heard to the effects of Mr. Hastings's government of a
+country once the most fertile and cultivated, of a people the most
+industrious, flourishing, and happy,--that the one was wasted and
+desolated, the other reduced to a condition of want and misery, and that
+the zemindars, that is, the nobility and gentry of the country, were so
+beggared as not to be able to give even a common decent education to
+their children, notwithstanding the foundation of Mr. Hastings's
+colleges. You have heard this noble person, who had been an eye-witness
+of what he relates, supplicating for their relief, and expressly stating
+that most of the complicated miseries, and perhaps the cruelest of the
+afflictions they endured, arose from the management of the country
+having been taken out of the hands of its natural rulers, and given up
+to Mr. Hastings's farmers, namely, the banians of Calcutta. These are
+the things that ought to go to your Lordships' hearts. You see a country
+wasted and desolated. You see a third of it become a jungle for wild
+beasts. You see the other parts oppressed by persons in the form and
+shape of men, but with all the character and disposition of beasts of
+prey. This state of the country is brought before you, and by the most
+unexceptionable evidence,--being brought forward through Mr. Hastings
+himself. This evidence, whatever opinion you may entertain of the
+effrontery or of the impudence of the criminal who has produced it, is
+of double and treble force. And yet at the very time when Lord
+Cornwallis is giving this statement of the country and its inhabitants,
+at the very time when he is calling for pity upon their condition, are
+these people brought forward to bear testimony to the benign and
+auspicious government of Mr. Hastings, directed, as your Lordships know
+it was, by the merciful and upright Gunga Govind Sing.
+
+My Lords, you have now the evidence of Lord Cornwallis on the one hand,
+and the razinamas of India on the other. But before I dismiss this part
+of my subject, I must call your Lordships' attention to another
+authority,--to a declaration, strictly speaking, _legal_, of the state
+to which our Indian provinces were reduced, and of the oppressions which
+they have suffered, during the government of Mr. Hastings: I speak of
+the act 24 Geo. III. cap. 25, intituled, "An act for the better
+regulation and management of the affairs of the East India Company, and
+of the British possessions in India, and for establishing a court of
+judicature for the more speedy and effectual trial of persons accused of
+offences committed in the East Indies," � 39.
+
+My Lords, here is an act of Parliament; here are regulations enacted in
+consequence of an inquiry which had been directed to be made into the
+grievances of India, for the redress of them. This act of Parliament
+declares the existence of oppressions in the country. What oppressions
+were they? The oppressions which it suffered by being let out to the
+farmers of the Company's revenues. Who was the person that sold these
+revenues to the farmers? Warren Hastings. By whom were these oppressions
+notified to the Court of Directors? By Lord Cornwallis. Upon what
+occasion were these letters written by my Lord Cornwallis? They were
+answers to inquiries made by the Court of Directors, and ordered by an
+act of Parliament to be made. The existence, then, of the grievances,
+and the cause of them, are expressly declared in an act of Parliament.
+It orders an inquiry; and Lord Cornwallis, in consequence of that
+inquiry, transmits to the Court of Directors this very information; he
+gives you this identical state of the country: so that it is
+consolidated, mixed, and embodied with an act of Parliament itself,
+which no power on earth, I trust, but the power that made it, can shake.
+I trust, I say, that neither we, the Commons, nor you, the Lords, nor
+his Majesty, the sovereign of this country, can shake one word of this
+act of Parliament,--can invalidate the truth of its declaration, or the
+authority of the persons, men of high honor and character, that made
+that inquiry and this report. Your Lordships must repeal this act in
+order to acquit Mr. Hastings.
+
+But Mr. Hastings and his counsel have produced evidence against this act
+of Parliament, against the order of the Court of Directors by which an
+inquiry and report were made under that act, against Lord Cornwallis's
+return to that inquiry; and now, once for all, hear what the miserable
+wretches are themselves made to say, to invalidate the act of
+Parliament, to invalidate the authority of the Court of Directors, to
+invalidate the evidence of an official return of Lord Cornwallis under
+the act. Pray hear what these miserable creatures describe as an
+elysium, speaking with rapture of their satisfaction, under the
+government of Mr. Hastings.
+
+     "All we zemindars, chowdries, and talookdars of the district of
+     Akbarnagur, commonly called Rajamahal, in the kingdom of Bengal,
+     have heard that the gentlemen in England are displeased with Mr.
+     Hastings, on suspicion that he oppressed us inhabitants of this
+     place, took our money by deceit and force, and ruined the country;
+     therefore we, upon the strength of our religion and religious
+     tenets, which we hold as a duty upon us, and in order to act
+     conformable to the duties of God in delivering evidence, relate the
+     praiseworthy actions, full of prudence and rectitude, friendship
+     and politeness, of Mr. Hastings, possessed of great abilities and
+     understanding, and, by representing facts, remove the doubts that
+     have possessed the minds of the gentlemen in England;--that Mr.
+     Hastings distributed protection and security to religion, and
+     kindness and peace to all; he is free from the charge of
+     embezzlement and fraud, and that his heart is void of covetousness
+     and avidity; during the period of his government, no one
+     experienced from him other than protection and justice, never
+     having felt hardships from him, nor did the poor ever know the
+     weight of an oppressive hand from him; our characters and
+     reputations have always been guarded in quiet from attack by the
+     vigilance of his power and foresight, and preserved by the terror
+     of his justice; he never omitted the smallest instance of kindness
+     and goodness towards us and those entitled to it, but always
+     applied by soothings and mildness the salve of comfort to the
+     wounds of affliction, not allowing a single person to be
+     overwhelmed by despair; he displayed his friendship and kindness to
+     all; he destroyed the power of the enemies and wicked men by the
+     strength of his terror; he tied the hands of tyrants and oppressors
+     by his justice, and by this conduct he secured happiness and joy to
+     us; he re�stablished the foundation of justice, and we at all
+     times, during his government, lived in comfort and passed our days
+     in peace; we are many, many of us satisfied and pleased with him.
+     As Mr. Hastings was perfectly well acquainted with the manners and
+     customs of these countries, he was always desirous of performing
+     that which would tend to the preservation of our religion, and of
+     the duties of our sects, and guard the religious customs of each
+     from the effects of misfortune and accidents; in every sense he
+     treated us with attention and respect. We have represented without
+     deceit what we have ourselves seen, and the facts that happened
+     from him."
+
+This, my Lords, is in page 2374 of the printed Minutes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, we spare you the reading of a great number of these
+attestations; they are all written in the same style; and it must appear
+to your Lordships a little extraordinary, that, as they are said to be
+totally voluntary, as the people are represented to be crowding to make
+these testimonials, there should be such an unison in the heart to
+produce a language that is so uniform as not to vary so much as in a
+single tittle,--that every part of the country, every province, every
+district, men of every caste and of every religion, should all unite in
+expressing their sentiments in the very same words and in the very same
+phrases. I must fairly say it is a kind of miraculous concurrence, a
+miraculous gratitude. Mr. Hastings says that gratitude is lost in this
+part of the world. There it blooms and flourishes in a way not to be
+described. In proportion as you hear of the miseries and distresses of
+these very people, in the same proportion do they express their comfort
+and satisfaction, and that they never knew what a grievance was of any
+sort. Lord Cornwallis finds them aggrieved, the Court of Directors find
+them aggrieved, the Parliament of Great Britain find them aggrieved, and
+the court here find them aggrieved; but they never found themselves
+aggrieved. Their being turned out of house and home, and having all
+their land given to farmers of revenue for five years to riot in and
+despoil them of all they had, is what fills them with rapture. They are
+the only people, I believe, upon the face of the earth, that have no
+complaints to make of their government, in any instance whatever. Theirs
+must be something superior to the government of angels; for I verily
+believe, that, if one out of the choir of the heavenly angels were sent
+to govern the earth, such is the nature of man, that many would be found
+discontented with it. But these people have no complaint, they feel no
+hardships, no sorrow; Mr. Hastings has realized more than the golden
+age. I am ashamed for human nature, I am ashamed for our government, I
+am ashamed for this court of justice, that these things are brought
+before us; but here they are, and we must observe upon them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, we have done, on our part; we have made out our case; and it
+only remains for me to make a few observations upon what Mr. Hastings
+has thought proper to put forward in his defence. Does he meet our case
+with anything but these general attestations, upon which I must first
+remark, that there is not one single matter of fact touched upon in
+them? Your Lordships will observe, and you may hunt them out through the
+whole body of your minutes, that you do not find a single fact mentioned
+in any of them. But there is an abundance of panegyric; and if we were
+doing nothing but making satires, as the newspapers charge us with
+doing, against Mr. Hastings, panegyric would be a good answer.
+
+But Mr. Hastings sets up pleas of merit upon this occasion. Now,
+undoubtedly, no plea of merit can be admitted to extinguish, as your
+Lordships know very well, a direct charge of crime. Merit cannot
+extinguish crime. For instance, if Lord Howe, to whom this country owes
+so much as it owes this day for the great and glorious victory which
+makes our hearts glad, and I hope will insure the security of this
+country,--yet if Lord Howe, I say, was charged with embezzling the
+King's stores, or applying them in any manner unbecoming his situation,
+to any shameful or scandalous purpose,--if he was accused of taking
+advantage of his station, to oppress any of the captains of his
+ships,--if he was stated to have gone into a port of the allies of this
+country, and to have plundered the inhabitants, to have robbed their
+women, and broken into the recesses of their apartments,--if he had
+committed atrocities like these, his glorious victory could not change
+the nature and quality of such acts. My Lord Malmesbury has been lately
+sent to the King of Prussia; we hope and trust that his embassy will be
+successful, and that this country will derive great benefit from his
+negotiations; but if Lord Malmesbury, from any subsidy that was to be
+paid to the King of Prussia, was to put 50,000_l._ in his own pocket, I
+believe that his making a good and advantageous treaty with the King of
+Prussia would never be thought a good defence for him. We admit, that,
+if a man has done great and eminent services, though they cannot be a
+defence against a charge of crimes, and cannot obliterate them, yet,
+when sentence comes to be passed upon such a man, you will consider,
+first, whether his transgressions were common lapses of human frailty,
+and whether the nature and weight of the grievances resulting from them
+were light in comparison with the services performed. I say that you
+cannot acquit him; but your Lordships might think some pity due to him,
+that might mitigate the severity of your sentence. In the second place,
+you would consider whether the evidence of the services alleged to be
+performed was as clear and undoubted as that of the crimes charged. I
+confess, that, if a man has done great services, it may be some
+alleviation of lighter faults; but then they ought to be urged as
+such,--with modesty, with humility, with confession of the faults, and
+not with a proud and insolent defiance. They should not be stated as
+proofs that he stands justified in the eye of mankind for committing
+unexampled and enormous crimes. Indeed, humility, suppliant guilt,
+always makes impression in our bosoms, so that, when we see it before
+us, we always remember that we are all frail men; and nothing but a
+proud defiance of law and justice can make us forget this for one
+moment. I believe the Commons of Great Britain, and I hope the persons
+that speak to you, know very well how to allow for the faults and
+frailties of mankind equitably.
+
+Let us now see what are the merits which Mr. Hastings has set up against
+the just vengeance of his country, and against his proved delinquencies.
+From the language of the prisoner, and of his counsel, you would imagine
+some great, known, acknowledged services had been done by him. Your
+Lordships recollect that most of these presumed services have been
+considered, and we are persuaded justly considered, as in themselves
+crimes. He wishes your Lordships to suppose and believe that these
+services were put aside either because we could not prove the facts
+against him or could not make out that they were criminal, and
+consequently that your Lordships ought to presume them to have been
+meritorious; and this is one of the grounds upon which he demands to be
+acquitted of the charges that have been brought forward and proved
+against him. Finding in our proceedings, and recorded upon our journals,
+an immense mass of criminality with which he is charged, and finding
+that we had selected, as we were bound to select, such parts as might be
+most conveniently brought before your Lordships, (for to have gone
+through the whole would have been nearly impossible,) he takes all the
+rest that we have left behind and have not brought here as charges, and
+converts them, by a strange metamorphosis, into merits.
+
+My Lords, we must insist, on the part of the House of Commons, we must
+conjure your Lordships, for the honor of a co�rdinate branch of the
+legislature, that, whenever you are called upon to admit what we have
+condemned as crimes to be merits, you will at least give us an
+opportunity of being heard upon the matter,--that you will not suffer
+Mr. Hastings, when attempting to defend himself against our charges, in
+an indirect and oblique manner to condemn or censure the House of
+Commons itself, as having misrepresented to be crimes the acts of a
+meritorious servant of the public. Mr. Hastings has pleaded a variety of
+merits, and every one of these merits, without the exception of one of
+them, have been either directly censured by the House of Commons, and
+censured as a ground for legislative provision, or they remain upon the
+records of the House of Commons, with the vouchers for them, and proofs;
+and though we have not actually come to the question upon every one of
+them, we had come, before the year 1782, to forty-five direct
+resolutions upon his conduct. These resolutions were moved by a person
+to whom this country is under many obligations, and whom we must always
+mention with honor, whenever we are speaking of high situations in this
+country, and of great talents to support them, and of long public
+services in the House of Commons: I mean Mr. Dundas, then Lord Advocate
+of Scotland, and now one of the principal Secretaries of State, and at
+the head, and worthily and deservedly at the head, of the East Indian
+department. This distinguished statesman moved forty-five resolutions,
+the major part of them directly condemning these very acts which Mr.
+Hastings has pleaded as his merits, as being delinquencies and crimes.
+All that the House of Commons implore of your Lordships is, that you
+will not take these things, which we call crimes, to be merits, without
+hearing the House of Commons upon the subject-matter of them. I am sure
+you are too noble and too generous, as well as too just and equitable,
+to act in such a manner.
+
+The first thing that Mr. Hastings brings forward in his defence is,
+that, whereas the Company were obliged to pay a certain tribute to the
+Mogul, in consideration of a grant by which the Moguls gave to us the
+legal title under which we hold the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and
+Orissa, he did stop the payment of that tribute, or acknowledgment,
+small as it was,--that, though bound by a treaty recognized by the
+Company and recognized by the nation, though bound by the very sunnud by
+which he held the very office he was exercising, yet he had broken the
+treaty, and refused to pay the stipulated acknowledgment. Where are we,
+my Lords? Is this merit? Good God Almighty! the greatest blockhead, the
+most ignorant, miserable wretch, a person without either virtue or
+talents, has nothing to do but to order a clerk to strike a pen through
+such an account, and then to make a merit of it to you. "Oh!" says he,
+"I have by a mere breach of your faith, by a single dash of my pen,
+saved you all this money which you were bound to pay. I have exonerated
+you from the payment of it. I have gained you 250,000_l._ a year
+forever. Will you not reward a person who did you such a great and
+important service, by conniving a little at his delinquencies?"
+
+But the House of Commons will not allow that this was a great and
+important service; on the contrary, they have declared the act itself to
+be censurable. There is our resolution,--Resolution the 7th:--
+
+"That the conduct of the Company and their servants in India to the
+King," (meaning the Mogul king) "and Nudjif Kh�n, with respect to the
+tribute payable to the one, and the stipend to the other, and with
+respect to the transfer of the provinces of Corah, and Allahabad to the
+Vizier, was contrary to policy and good faith; and that such wise and
+practicable measures should be adopted in future as may tend to redeem
+the national honor, and recover the confidence and attachment of the
+princes of India."
+
+This act of injustice, against which we have fulminated the thunder of
+our resolutions as a heavy crime, as a crime that dishonored the nation,
+and which measures ought to be taken to redress, this man has the
+insolence to bring before your Lordships as a set-off against the crimes
+we charge him with. This outrageous defiance of the House of Commons,
+this outrageous defiance of all the laws of his country, I hope your
+Lordships will not countenance. You will not let it pass for nothing: on
+the contrary, you will consider it as aggravating heavily his crimes.
+And, above all, you will not suffer him to set off this, which we have
+declared to be injurious to our national honor and credit, and which he
+himself does not deny to be a breach of the public faith, against other
+breaches of the public faith with which we charge him,--or to justify
+one class of public crimes by proving that he has committed others.
+
+Your Lordships see that he justifies this crime upon the plea of its
+being profitable to the Company; but he shall not march off even on this
+ground with flying colors. My Lords, pray observe in what manner he
+calculates these profits. Your Lordships will find that he makes up the
+account of them much in the same manner as he made up the account of
+Nobkissin's money. There is, indeed, no account which he has ever
+brought forth that does not carry upon it not only ill faith and
+national dishonor, but direct proofs of corruption. When Mr. Hastings
+values himself upon this shocking and outrageous breach of faith, which
+required nothing but a base and illiberal mind, without either talents,
+courage, or skill, except that courage which defies all consequences,
+which defies shame, which defies the judgment and opinion of his country
+and of mankind, no other talents than may be displayed by the dash of a
+pen, you will at least expect to see a clear and distinct account of
+what was gained by it.
+
+In the year 1775, at a period when Mr. Hastings was under an eclipse,
+when honor and virtue, in the character of General Clavering, Colonel
+Monson, and Mr. Francis, sat for a short period at the
+Council-Board,--during that time, Mr. Hastings's conduct upon this
+occasion was called into question. They called for an account of the
+revenues of the country,--what was received, and what had been paid; and
+in the account returned they found the amount of the tribute due to the
+Mogul, 250,000_l._, entered as paid up to October, 1774. Thus far all
+appeared fair upon the face of it; they took it for granted, as your
+Lordships would take it for granted, at the first view, that the tribute
+in reality had been paid up to the time stated. The books were balanced:
+you find a debtor; you find a creditor; every item posted in as regular
+a manner as possible. Whilst they were examining this account, a Mr.
+Croftes, of whom your Lordships have heard very often, as
+accountant-general, comes forward and declares that there was a little
+error in the account. And what was the error? That he had entered the
+Mogul's tribute for one year more than it had actually been paid. Here
+we have the small error of a payment to the Mogul of 250,000_l._ This
+appeared strange. "Why," says Mr. Croftes, "I never discovered it; nor
+was it ever intimated to me that it had been stopped from October, 1773,
+till the other day, when I was informed that I ought not to have made an
+entry of the last payments." These were his expressions. You will find
+the whole relation in the Bengal Appendix, printed by the orders of the
+Court of Directors. When Mr. Croftes was asked a very natural question,
+"Who first told you of your mistake? who acquainted you with Mr.
+Hastings's orders that the payment should be expunged from the account?"
+what is his answer? It is an answer worthy of Mr. Middleton, an answer
+worthy of Mr. Larkins, or of any of the other white banians of Mr.
+Hastings:--"Oh, I have forgotten." Here you have an accountant-general
+kept in ignorance, or who pretends to be ignorant, of so large a payment
+as 250,000_l._; who enters it falsely in his account; and when asked who
+apprised him of his mistake, says that he has really forgotten.
+
+Oh, my Lords, what resources there are in oblivion! what resources there
+are in bad memory! No genius ever has done so much for mankind as this
+mental defect has done for Mr. Hastings's accountants. It was said by
+one of the ancient philosophers, to a man who proposed to teach people
+memory,--"I wish you could teach me oblivion; I wish you could teach me
+to forget." These people have certainly not been taught the art of
+memory, but they appear perfect masters of the art of forgetting. My
+Lords, this is not all; and I must request your Lordships' attention to
+the whole of the account, as it appears in the account of the arrears
+due to the King, annexed to your minutes. Here is a kind of labyrinth,
+where fraud runs into fraud. On the credit side you find stated there,
+eight lacs paid to the Vizier, and to be taken from the Mogul's tribute,
+for the support of an army, of which he himself had stipulated to bear
+the whole expenses. These eight lacs are thus fraudulently accounted for
+upon the face of the thing; and with respect to eighteen lacs, the
+remainder of the tribute, there is no account given of it at all. This
+sum Mr. Hastings must, therefore, have pocketed for his own use, or that
+of his gang of peculators; and whilst he was pretending to save you
+eight lacs by one fraud, he committed another fraud of eighteen lacs for
+himself: and this is the method by which one act of peculation begets
+another in the economy of fraud.
+
+Thus much of these affairs I think myself bound to state to your
+Lordships upon this occasion; for, although not one word has been
+produced by the counsel to support the allegations of the prisoner at
+your bar, yet, knowing that your Lordships, high as you are, are still
+but men, knowing also that bold assertions and confident declarations
+are apt to make some impression upon all men's minds, we oppose his
+allegations. But how do we oppose them? Not by things of the like
+nature. We oppose them by showing you that the House of Commons, after
+diligent investigation, has condemned them, and by stating the grounds
+upon which the House founded its condemnation. We send you to the
+records of the Company, if you want to pursue this matter further, to
+enlighten your own minds upon the subject. Do not think, my Lords, that
+we are not aware how ridiculous it is for either party, the accuser or
+the accused, to make here any assertions without producing vouchers for
+them: we know it; but we are prepared and ready to take upon us the
+proof; and we should be ashamed to assert anything that we are not able
+directly to substantiate by an immediate reference to uncontradicted
+evidence.
+
+With regard to the merits pleaded by the prisoner, we could efface that
+plea with a single stroke, by saying there is no evidence before your
+Lordships of any such merits. But we have done more: we have shown you
+that the things which he has set up as merits are atrocious crimes, and
+that there is not one of them which does not, in the very nature and
+circumstances of it, carry evidence of base corruption, as well as of
+flagrant injustice and notorious breach of public faith.
+
+The next thing that he takes credit for is precisely an act of this
+description. The Mogul had, by solemn stipulation with the Company, a
+royal domain insured to him, consisting of two provinces, Corah and
+Allahabad. Of both these provinces Mr. Hastings deprived the Mogul, upon
+weak pretences, if proved in point of fact, but which were never proved
+in any sense, against him. I allude particularly to his alleged alliance
+with the Mahrattas,--a people, by the way, with whom we were not then
+at war, and with whom he had as good a right as Nudjif Kh�n to enter
+into alliance at that time. He takes these domains, almost the last
+wrecks of empire left to the descendant of Tamerlane, from the man, I
+say, to whose voluntary grants we owe it that we have put a foot in
+Bengal. Surely, we ought, at least, to have kept our faith in leaving
+this last retreat to that unfortunate prince. The House of Commons was
+of that opinion, and consequently they resolved, "That the transfer of
+Corah and Allahabad to the Vizier was contrary to policy and good
+faith." This is what the Commons think of this business which Mr.
+Hastings pleads as merits.
+
+But I have not yet done with it. These provinces are estimated as worth
+twenty-two lacs, or thereabouts, that is, about 220,000_l._, a year. I
+believe they were improvable to a good deal more. But what does Mr.
+Hastings do? Instead of taking them into the Company's possession for
+the purpose of preserving them for the Mogul, upon the event of our
+being better satisfied with his conduct, or of appropriating them to the
+Company's advantage, he sells them to the Nabob of Oude, who he knew had
+the art, above all men, of destroying a country which he was to keep, or
+which he might fear he was not to keep, permanent possession of. And
+what do you think he sold them for? He sold them at a little more than
+two years' purchase. Will any man believe that Mr. Hastings, when he
+sold these provinces to the Vizier for two years' purchase, and when
+there was no man that would not have given ten years' purchase for them,
+did not put the difference between the real and pretended value into his
+own pocket, and that of his associates?
+
+We charge, therefore, first, that this act for which he assumes merit
+was in itself a breach of faith; next, that the sale of these provinces
+was scandalously conducted; and thirdly, that this sale, at one fifth of
+the real value, was effected for corrupt purposes. Thus an act of
+threefold delinquency is one of the merits stated with great pomp by his
+counsel.
+
+Another of his merits is the stoppage of the pension which the Company
+was under an obligation to pay to Nudjif Kh�n: a matter which, even if
+admitted to be a merit, is certainly not worth, as a set-off, much
+consideration.
+
+But there is another set-off of merit upon which he plumes himself, and
+sets an exceedingly high value: the sale of the Rohilla nation to that
+worthless tyrant, the Vizier, their cruel and bitter enemy,--the
+cruelest tyrant, perhaps, that ever existed, and their most implacable
+enemy, if we except Mr. Hastings, who appears to have had a concealed
+degree of animosity, public, private, or political, against them. To
+this man he sold this whole nation, whose country, cultivated like a
+garden, was soon reduced, as Mr. Hastings, from the character of the
+Vizier, knew would be the consequence, to a mere desert, for 400,000_l._
+He sent a brigade of our troops to assist the Vizier in extirpating
+these people, who were the bravest, the most honorable, and generous
+nation upon earth. Those who were not left slaughtered to rot upon the
+soil of their native country were cruelly expelled from it, and sent to
+publish the merciless and scandalous behavior of Great Britain from one
+end of India to the other. I believe there is not an honest, ingenuous,
+or feeling heart upon the face of the globe, I believe there is no man
+possessing the least degree of regard to honor and justice, humanity
+and good policy, that did not reprobate this act. The Court of
+Directors, when they heard of it, reprobated it in the strongest manner;
+the Court of Proprietors reprobated it in the strongest manner; by the
+House of Commons, after the most diligent investigation, it was, in a
+resolution moved by Mr. Dundas, reprobated in the strongest manner: and
+this is the act which Mr. Hastings brings forward before your Lordships
+as a merit.
+
+But, again, I can prove that in this, perhaps the most atrocious of all
+his demerits, there is a most horrid and nefarious secret corruption
+lurking. I can tell your Lordships that Sir Robert Barker was offered by
+this Vizier, for about one half of this very country, namely, the
+country of the Rohillas, a sum of fifty lacs of rupees,--that is,
+500,000_l._ Mr. Hastings was informed of this offer by Sir Robert
+Barker, in his letter of the 24th March, 1773. Still, in the face of
+this information, Mr. Hastings took for the Company only forty lacs of
+rupees. I leave your Lordships to draw your own conclusion from these
+facts. You will judge what became of the difference between the price
+offered and the price accounted for as taken. Nothing on earth can hide
+from mankind why Mr. Hastings made this wicked, corrupt bargain for the
+extermination of a brave and generous people,--why he took 400,000_l._
+for the whole of that, for half of which he was offered and knew he
+might have had 500,000_l._
+
+Your Lordships will observe, that for all these facts there is no
+evidence, on the one side or on the other, directly before you. Their
+merits have been insisted upon, in long and laborious details and
+discussions, both by Mr. Hastings himself and by his counsel. We have
+answered them for that reason; but we answer them with a direct
+reference to records and papers, from which your Lordships may judge of
+them as set-offs and merits. I believe your Lordships will now hardly
+receive them as merits to set off guilt, since in every one of them
+there is both guilt in the act, and strong ground for presuming that he
+had corruptly taken money for himself.
+
+The last act of merit that has been insisted upon by his counsel is the
+Mahratta peace. They have stated to you the distresses of the Company to
+justify the unhandsome and improper means that he took of making this
+peace. Mr. Hastings himself has laid hold of the same opportunity of
+magnifying the difficulties which, during his government, he had to
+contend with. Here he displays all his tactics. He spreads all his
+sails, and here catches every gale. He says, "I found all India
+confederated against you. I found not the Mahrattas alone; I found war
+through a hundred hostile states fulminated against you; I found the
+Peshwa, the Nizam, Hyder Ali, the Rajah of Berar, all combined together
+for your destruction. I stemmed the torrent: fortitude is my character.
+I faced and overcame all these difficulties, till I landed your affairs
+safe on shore, till I stood the saviour of India."
+
+My Lords, we of the House of Commons have before heard all this; but we
+cannot forget that we examined into every part of it, and that we did
+not find a single fact stated by him that was not a ground of censure
+and reprobation. The House of Commons, in the resolutions to which I
+have alluded, have declared, that Mr. Hastings, the first author of
+these proceedings, took advantage of an ambiguous letter of the Court
+of Directors to break and violate the most solemn, the most
+advantageous, and useful treaty that the Company had ever made in India;
+and that this conduct of his produced the strange and unnatural junction
+which he says he found formed against the Company, and with which he had
+to combat. I should trouble your Lordships with but a brief statement of
+the facts; and if I do not enter more at large in observing upon them,
+it is because I cannot but feel shocked at the indecency and impropriety
+of your being obliged to hear of that as merit which the House of
+Commons has condemned in every part. Your Lordships received obliquely
+evidence from the prisoner at your bar upon this subject; yet, when we
+came and desired your full inquiry into it, your Lordships, for wise and
+just reasons, I have no doubt, refused our request. I must, however,
+again protest on the part of the Commons against your Lordships
+receiving such evidence at all as relevant to your judgment, unless the
+House of Commons is fully heard upon it.
+
+But to proceed.--The government of Bombay had offended the Mahratta
+States by a most violent and scandalous aggression. They afterwards made
+a treaty of peace with them, honorable and advantageous to the Company.
+This treaty was made by Colonel Upton, and is called the Treaty of
+Poorunder. Mr. Hastings broke that treaty, upon his declared principle,
+that you are to look in war for the resources of your government. All
+India was at that time in peace. Hyder Ali did not dare to attack us,
+because he was afraid that his natural enemies, the Mahrattas, would
+fall upon him. The Nizam could not attack us, because he was also afraid
+of the Mahrattas. The Mahratta state itself was divided into such
+discordant branches as to make it impossible for them to unite in any
+one object; that commonwealth, which, certainly at that time was the
+terror of India, was so broken, as to render it either totally
+ineffective or easy to be resisted. There was not one government in
+India that did not look up to Great Britain as holding the balance of
+power, and in a position to control and do justice to every individual
+party in it. At that juncture Mr. Hastings deliberately broke the treaty
+of Poorunder; and afterwards, by breaking faith with and attacking all
+the powers, one after another, he produced that very union which one
+would hardly have expected that the incapacity or ill faith of any
+Governor could have effected. Your Lordships shall hear the best and
+most incontrovertible evidence both of his incapacity and ill faith, and
+of the consequences which they produced. It is the declaration of one of
+the latest of their allies concerning all these proceedings. It is
+contained in a letter from the Rajah of Berar, directly and strongly
+inculpating Mr. Hastings, upon facts which he has never denied and by
+arguments which he has never refuted, as being himself the cause of that
+very junction of all the powers of India against us.
+
+
+     _Letter from Benaram Pundit._
+
+     "As the friendship of the English is, at all events, the first and
+     most necessary consideration, I will therefore exert myself in
+     establishing peace: for the power of making peace with all is the
+     best object; to this all other measures are subservient, and will
+     certainly be done by them, the English. You write, that, after
+     having laid the foundation of peace with the Pundit Purdhaun, it
+     is requisite that some troops should be sent with General Goddard
+     against Hyder Naig, and take possession of his country, when all
+     those engagements and proposals may be assented to. My reason is
+     confounded in discussing this suggestion, at a time when Hyder Naig
+     is in every respect in alliance with the Peshwa, and has assisted
+     with his soul and life to repel the English. For us to unite our
+     troops with those of the enemy and extirpate him, would not this
+     fix the stamp of infamy upon us forever? Would any prince, for
+     generations to come, ever after assist us, or unite with the
+     Peshwa? Be yourself the judge, and say whether such a conduct would
+     become a prince or not. Why, then, do you mention it? why do you
+     write it?
+
+     "The case is as follows.--At first there was the utmost enmity
+     between Hyder Naig and the Pundit Purdhaun, and there was the
+     fullest intention of sending troops into Hyder Naig's country; and
+     after the conclusion of the war with Bombay and the capture of
+     Ragonaut Row, it was firmly resolved to send troops into that
+     quarter; and a reliance was placed in the treaty which was entered
+     into by the gentlemen of Bombay before the war. But when Ragonaut
+     again went to them, and General Goddard was ready to commence
+     hostilities,--when no regard was paid to the friendly proposals
+     made by us and the Pundit Peshwa,--when they desisted from coming
+     to Poonah, agreeable to their promise, and a categorical answer was
+     given to the deputies from Poonah,--the ministers of Poonah then
+     consulted among themselves, and, having advised with the Nabob
+     Nizam ul Dowlah, they considered that as enemies were appearing on
+     both sides, and it would be difficult to cope with both, what was
+     to be done? Peace must be made with one of them, and war must be
+     carried on with the other. They wished above all things, in their
+     hearts, to make peace with the English gentlemen, and to unite with
+     them to punish Hyder Naig; but these gentlemen had plainly refused
+     to enter into any terms of reconciliation. It was therefore
+     advisable to accommodate matters with Hyder Naig, although he had
+     been long an enemy. What else could be done? Having nothing left
+     for it, they were compelled to enter into an union with Hyder."
+
+My Lords, this declaration, made to Mr. Hastings himself, was never
+answered by him. Indeed, answered it could not be; because the thing was
+manifest, that all the desolation of the Carnatic by Hyder Ali, all
+these difficulties upon which he has insisted, the whole of that union
+by which he was pressed, and against which, as he says, he bore up with
+such fortitude, was his own work, the consequences of his bad faith, and
+his not listening to any reasonable terms of peace.
+
+But, my Lords, see what sort of peace he afterwards made. I could prove,
+if I were called upon so to do, from this paper that they have had the
+folly and madness to produce to you for other purposes, that he might at
+any time have made a better treaty, and have concluded a more secure and
+advantageous peace, than that which at last he acceded to; that the
+treaty he made was both disadvantageous and dishonorable, inasmuch as we
+gave up every ally we had, and sacrificed them to the resentment of the
+enemy; that Mahdajee Sindia gained by it an empire of a magnitude
+dangerous to our very existence in India; that this chief was permitted
+to exterminate all the many little gallant nations that stood between us
+and the Mahrattas, and whose policy led them to guard against the
+ambitious designs of that government. Almost all these lesser powers,
+from Central India, quite up to the mountains that divide India from
+Tartary, almost all these, I say, were exterminated by him, or were
+brought under a cruel subjection. The peace he made with Mr. Hastings
+was for the very purpose of doing all this; and Mr. Hastings enabled
+him, and gave him the means of effecting it.
+
+Advert next, my Lords, to what he did with other allies. By the treaty
+of Poorunder, made by Colonel Upton, and which he flagitiously broke, we
+had acquired, what, God knows, we little merited from the Mahrattas,
+twelve lacs, (112,000_l._) for the expenses of the war,--and a country
+of three lacs of annual revenue, the province of Baroach and the isle of
+Salsette, and other small islands convenient for us upon that coast.
+This was a great, useful, and momentous accession of territory and of
+revenue: and we got it with honor; for not one of our allies were
+sacrificed by this treaty. We had even obtained from the Mahrattas for
+Ragonaut Row, our support of whom against that government was a
+principal cause of the war, an establishment of a thousand horse, to be
+maintained at their expense, and a jaghire for his other expenses of
+three lacs of rupees per annum, payable monthly, with leave to reside
+within their territories, with no other condition than that he should
+not remove from the place fixed for his residence for the purpose of
+exciting disturbances against their government. They also stipulated for
+the pardon, of all his adherents except four; and the only condition
+they required from us was, that we should not assist him in case of any
+future disturbance. But Mr. Hastings, by his treaty, surrendered that
+country of three lacs of revenue; he made no stipulation for the
+expenses of the war, nor indemnity for any of the persons whom he had
+seduced into the rebellion in favor of Ragonaut Row; he gave them all up
+to the vengeance of their governments, without a stroke of a pen in
+their favor, to be banished, confiscated, and undone; and as to Ragonaut
+Row, instead of getting him this honorable and secure retreat, as he was
+bound to do, this unfortunate man was ordered to retire to his enemy's
+(Mahdajee Sindia's) country, or otherwise he was not to receive a
+shilling for his maintenance.
+
+I will now ask your Lordships, whether any man but Mr. Hastings would
+claim a merit with his own country for having broken the treaty of
+Poorunder? Your Lordships know the opinion of the House of Commons
+respecting it; his colleagues in Council had remonstrated with him upon
+it, and had stated the mischiefs that would result from it; and Sir Eyre
+Coote, the commander of the Company's forces, writing at the same time
+from Madras, states, that he thought it would infallibly bring down upon
+them Hyder Ali, who, they had reason to think, was bent upon the utter
+destruction of the power of this country in India, and was only waiting
+for some crisis in our affairs favorable to his designs. This, my Lords,
+is to be one of the set-offs against all the crimes, against the
+multiplied frauds, cruelties, and oppressions, all the corrupt
+practices, prevarications, and swindlings, that we have alleged against
+him.
+
+My Lords, it would be an endless undertaking, and such as, at this hour
+of the day, we, as well as your Lordships, are little fitted to engage
+in, if I were to attempt to search into and unveil all the secret
+motives, or to expose as it deserves the shameless audacity of this
+man's conduct. None of your Lordships can have observed without
+astonishment the selection of his merits, as he audaciously calls them,
+which has been brought before you. The last of this selection, in
+particular, looks as if he meant to revile and spit upon the legislature
+of his country, because we and you thought it fit and were resolved to
+publish to all India that we will not countenance offensive wars, and
+that you felt this so strongly as to pass the first act of a kind that
+was ever made, namely, an act to limit the discretionary power of
+government in making war solely,--and because you have done this solely
+and upon no other account and for no other reason under heaven than the
+abuse which that man at your bar has made of it, and for which abuse he
+now presumes to take merit to himself. I will read this part of the act
+to your Lordships.
+
+     [_Mr. Burke here read 24th Geo. III. cap. 25, sect. 34._]
+
+     "And whereas to pursue schemes of conquest and extension of
+     dominion in India are measures repugnant to the wish, the honor,
+     and policy of this nation, be it therefore further enacted by the
+     authority aforesaid, that it shall not be lawful for the
+     Governor-General and Council of Port William aforesaid, without the
+     express command and authority of the said Court of Directors, or of
+     the Secret Committee of the said Court of Directors, in any case,
+     (except where hostilities have actually been commenced, or
+     preparations actually made for the commencement of hostilities,
+     against the British nation in India, or against some of the princes
+     or states dependent thereon, or whose territories the said United
+     Company shall be at such time engaged by any subsisting treaty to
+     defend or guaranty,) either to declare war, or commence
+     hostilities, or enter into any treaty for making war, against any
+     of the country princes or states in India, or any treaty for
+     guarantying the possessions of any country princes or states; and
+     that in such case it shall not be lawful for the said
+     Governor-General and Council to declare war, or commence
+     hostilities, or enter into treaty for making war, against any other
+     prince or state than such as shall be actually committing
+     hostilities or making preparations as aforesaid, or to make such
+     treaty for guarantying the possessions of any prince or state, but
+     upon the consideration of such prince or state actually engaging to
+     assist the Company against such hostilities commenced or
+     preparations made as aforesaid; and in all cases where hostilities
+     shall be commenced or treaty made, the said Governor-General and
+     Council shall, by the most expeditious means they can devise,
+     communicate the same unto the said Court of Directors, together
+     with a full state of the information and intelligence upon which
+     they shall have commenced such hostilities or made such treaties,
+     and their motives and reasons for the same at large."
+
+It is the first act of the kind that ever was made in this kingdom, the
+first statute, I believe, that ever was made by the legislature of any
+nation, upon the subject; and it was made solely upon the resolutions
+to which we had come against the violent, intemperate, unjust, and
+perfidious acts of this man at your Lordships' bar, and which acts are
+now produced before your Lordships as merits.
+
+To show further to your Lordships how necessary this act was, here is a
+part of his own correspondence, the last thing I shall beg to read to
+your Lordships, and upon which I shall make no other comment than that
+you will learn from it how well British faith was kept by this man, and
+that it was the violation of British faith which prevented our having
+the most advantageous peace, and brought on all the calamities of war.
+It is part of a letter from the minister of the Rajah of Berar, a man
+called Benaram Pundit, with whom Mr. Hastings was at the time treating
+for a peace; and he tells him why he might have had peace at that time,
+and why he had it not,--and that the cause of it was his own ridiculous
+and even buffoonish perfidiousness, which exposed him to the ridicule of
+all the princes of India, and with him the whole British nation.
+
+     "But afterwards reflecting that it was not advisable for me to be
+     in such haste before I had fully understood all the contents of the
+     papers, I opened them in the presence of the Maha Rajah, when all
+     the kharetas, letters, copies, and treaties were perused with the
+     greatest attention and care. First, they convinced us of your great
+     truth and sincerity, and that you never, from the beginning to this
+     time, were inclined to the present disputes and hostilities; and
+     next, that you have not included in the articles of the treaty any
+     of your wishes or inclinations; and in short, the garden of the
+     treaty appeared to us, in all its parts, green and flourishing:
+     but though the fruit of it was excellent yet they appeared
+     different from those of Colonel Upton's treaty, (the particulars of
+     which I have frequently written to you,) and, upon tasting them,
+     proved to be bitter and very different, when compared to the former
+     articles. How can any of the old and established obligations be
+     omitted, and new matters agreed to, when it is plain that they will
+     produce losses and damages? Some points which you have mentioned,
+     under the plea of the faith and observance of treaties, are of such
+     a nature that the Poonah ministers can never assent to them. In all
+     engagements and important transactions, in which the words _but_,
+     and _although_, and _besides_, and _whereas_, and _why_, and other
+     such words of doubt, are introduced, it gives an opening to
+     disputes and misunderstandings. A treaty is meant for the entire
+     removal of all differences, not for increase of them. My departure
+     to Poonah has therefore been delayed."
+
+My Lords, consider to what ironies and insults this nation was exposed,
+and how necessary it was for us to originate that bill which your
+Lordships passed into an act of Parliament, with his Majesty's assent.
+The words _but_, _although_, _besides_, _whereas_, and _why_, and such
+like, are introduced to give an opening, and so on. Then he desires him
+to send another treaty, fit for him to sign.
+
+     "I have therefore kept the treaty with the greatest care and
+     caution in my possession, and, having taken a copy of it, I have
+     added to each article another, which appeared to me proper and
+     advisable, and without any loss or disadvantage to the English, or
+     anything more in favor of the Pundit Purdhaun than what was
+     contained in the former treaties. This I have sent to you, and hope
+     that you will prepare and send a treaty conformable to that,
+     without any _besides_, or _if_, or _why_, or _but_, and _whereas_,
+     that, as soon as it arrives, I may depart for Poonah, and, having
+     united with me Row Mahdajee Sindia, and having brought over the
+     Nabob Nizam ul Dowlah to this business, I may settle and adjust all
+     matters which are in this bad situation. As soon as I have received
+     my dismission from thence, I would set off for Calcutta, and
+     represent to you everything which for a long while I have had on my
+     mind, and by this transaction erect to the view of all the world
+     the standard of the greatness and goodness of the English and of my
+     master, and extinguish the flames of war with the waters of
+     friendship. The compassing all these advantages and happy prospects
+     depends entirely upon your will and consent; and the power of
+     bringing them to an issue is in your hands alone."
+
+My Lords, you may here see the necessity there was for passing the act
+of Parliament which I have just read to you, in order to prevent in
+future the recurrence of that want of faith of which Mr. Hastings had
+been so notoriously guilty, and by which he had not only united all
+India against us, and had hindered us from making, for a long time, any
+peace at all, but had exposed the British character to the irony, scorn,
+derision, and insult of the whole people of that vast continent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, in the progress of this impeachment, you have heard our
+charges; you have heard the prisoner's plea of merits; you have heard
+our observations on them. In the progress of this impeachment, you have
+seen the condition in which Mr. Hastings received Benares; you have seen
+the condition in which Mr. Hastings received the country of the
+Rohillas; you have seen the condition in which he received the country
+of Oude; you have seen the condition in which he received the provinces
+of Bengal; you have seen the condition of the country when the native
+government was succeeded by that of Mr. Hastings; you have seen the
+happiness and prosperity of all its inhabitants, from those of the
+highest to those of the lowest rank. My Lords, you have seen the very
+reverse of all this under the government of Mr. Hastings,--the country
+itself, all its beauty and glory, ending in a jungle for wild beasts.
+You have seen flourishing families reduced to implore that pity which
+the poorest man and the meanest situation might very well call for. You
+have seen whole nations in the mass reduced to a condition of the same
+distress. These things in his government at home. Abroad, scorn,
+contempt, and derision cast upon and covering the British name, war
+stirred up, and dishonorable treaties of peace made, by the total
+prostitution of British faith. Now take, my Lords, together, all the
+multiplied delinquencies which we have proved, from the highest degree
+of tyranny to the lowest degree of sharping and cheating, and then
+judge, my Lords, whether the House of Commons could rest for one moment,
+without bringing these matters, which have baffled all legislation at
+various times, before you, to try at last what judgment will do.
+Judgment is what gives force, effect, and vigor to laws; laws without
+judgment are contemptible and ridiculous; we had better have no laws
+than laws not enforced by judgments and suitable penalties upon
+delinquents. Revert, my Lords, to all the sentences which have
+heretofore been passed by this high court; look at the sentence passed
+upon Lord Bacon, look at the sentence passed upon Lord Macclesfield; and
+then compare the sentences which your ancestors have given with the
+delinquencies which were then before them, and you have the measure to
+be taken in your sentence upon the delinquent now before you. Your
+sentence, I say, will be measured according to that rule which ought to
+direct the judgment of all courts in like cases, lessening it for a
+lesser offence, and aggravating it for a greater, until the measure of
+justice is completely full.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, I have done; the part of the Commons is concluded. With a
+trembling solicitude we consign this product of our long, long labors to
+your charge. Take it!--take it! It is a sacred trust. Never before was a
+cause of such magnitude submitted to any human tribunal.
+
+My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and
+surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing
+generations, between which, as a link in the great chain of eternal
+order, we stand. We call this nation, we call the world to witness, that
+the Commons have shrunk from no labor, that we have been guilty of no
+prevarication, that we have made no compromise with crime, that we have
+not feared any odium whatsoever, in the long warfare which we have
+carried on with the crimes, with the vices, with the exorbitant wealth,
+with the enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern corruption. This
+war, my Lords, we have waged for twenty-two years, and the conflict has
+been fought at your Lordships' bar for the last seven years. My Lords,
+twenty-two years is a great space in the scale of the life of man; it is
+no inconsiderable space in the history of a great nation. A business
+which has so long occupied the councils and the tribunals of Great
+Britain cannot possibly be huddled over in the course of vulgar, trite,
+and transitory events. Nothing but some of those great revolutions that
+break the traditionary chain of human memory, and alter the very face of
+Nature itself, can possibly obscure it. My Lords, we are all elevated to
+a degree of importance by it; the meanest of us will, by means of it,
+more or less become the concern of posterity,--if we are yet to hope for
+such a thing, in the present state of the world, as a recording,
+retrospective, civilized posterity: but this is in the hands of the
+great Disposer of events; it is not ours to settle how it shall be.
+
+My Lords, your House yet stands,--it stands as a great edifice; but let
+me say, that it stands in the midst of ruins,--in the midst of the ruins
+that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed
+and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it has pleased Providence to
+place us in such a state that we appear every moment to be upon the
+verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only,
+which defies all mutation,--that which existed before the world, and
+will survive the fabric of the world itself: I mean justice,--that
+justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of
+every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and
+with regard to others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned
+to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He
+comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.
+
+My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your Lordships;
+there is nothing sinister which can happen to you, in which we shall not
+be involved: and if it should so happen that we shall be subjected to
+some of those frightful changes which we have seen,--if it should happen
+that your Lordships, stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human
+society, should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those
+scaffolds and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious
+queens have shed their blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the nobles,
+amidst the magistrates who supported their thrones, may you in those
+moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they felt in the
+critical moments of their dreadful agony!
+
+My Lords, there is a consolation, and a great consolation it is, which
+often happens to oppressed virtue and fallen dignity. It often happens
+that the very oppressors and persecutors themselves are forced to bear
+testimony in its favor. I do not like to go for instances a great way
+back into antiquity. I know very well that length of time operates so as
+to give an air of the fabulous to remote events, which lessens the
+interest and weakens the application of examples. I wish to come nearer
+to the present time. Your Lordships know and have heard (for which of us
+has not known and heard?) of the Parliament of Paris. The Parliament of
+Paris had an origin very, very similar to that of the great court before
+which I stand; the Parliament of Paris continued to have a great
+resemblance to it in its constitution, even to its fall: the Parliament
+of Paris, my Lords, WAS; it is gone! It has passed away; it has
+vanished like a dream! It fell, pierced by the sword of the Comte de
+Mirabeau. And yet I will say, that that man, at the time of his
+inflicting the death-wound of that Parliament, produced at once the
+shortest and the grandest funeral oration that ever was or could be made
+upon the departure of a great court of magistracy. Though he had himself
+smarted under its lash, as every one knows who knows his history, (and
+he was elevated to dreadful notoriety in history,) yet, when he
+pronounced the death sentence upon that Parliament, and inflicted the
+mortal wound, he declared that his motives for doing it were merely
+political, and that their hands were as pure as those of justice itself,
+which they administered. A great and glorious exit, my Lords, of a great
+and glorious body! And never was a eulogy pronounced upon a body more
+deserved. They were persons, in nobility of rank, in amplitude of
+fortune, in weight of authority, in depth of learning, inferior to few
+of those that hear me. My Lords, it was but the other day that they
+submitted their necks to the axe; but their honor was unwounded. Their
+enemies, the persons who sentenced them to death, were lawyers full of
+subtlety, they were enemies full of malice; yet lawyers full of
+subtlety, and enemies full of malice, as they were, they did not dare to
+reproach them with having supported the wealthy, the great, and
+powerful, and of having oppressed the weak and feeble, in any of their
+judgments, or of having perverted justice, in any one instance whatever,
+through favor, through interest, or cabal.
+
+My Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! But if you stand,--and
+stand I trust you will, together with the fortune of this ancient
+monarchy, together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and
+illustrious kingdom,--may you stand as unimpeached in honor as in power!
+May you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of
+virtue, as a security for virtue! May you stand long, and long stand the
+terror of tyrants! May you stand the refuge of afflicted nations! May
+you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual residence of an inviolable
+justice!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS,
+
+AND
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+
+
+GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+Advertisement to the Reader, Prefixed to the First Octavo Edition      v
+
+Advertisement to the Second Octavo Edition                          xvii
+
+A Vindication of Natural Society: or, A View of the Miseries and
+  Evils arising to Mankind from every Species of Artificial Society    1
+
+A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
+  and Beautiful; with an Introductory Discourse concerning Taste      67
+
+A Short Account of a late Short Administration                       263
+
+Observations on a late Publication, intituled,
+  "The Present State of the Nation"                                  269
+
+Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents                     433
+
+
+VOL. II.
+
+Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774                            1
+
+Speeches on Arrival at Bristol and at the Conclusion of the Poll,
+  October 13 and November 3, 1774                                     81
+
+Speech on moving Resolutions for Conciliation with America,
+  March 22, 1775                                                      99
+
+Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the Affairs of America,
+  April 3, 1777                                                      187
+
+Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol, on the Bills depending in
+  Parliament relative to the Trade of Ireland, April 23 and
+  May 2, 1778                                                        247
+
+Speech on presenting to the House of Commons a Plan for the Better
+  Security of the Independence of Parliament, and the Economical
+  Reformation of the Civil and other Establishments,
+  February 11, 1780                                                  265
+
+Speech at Bristol previous to the Election, September 6, 1780        365
+
+Speech at Bristol on declining the Poll, September 9, 1780           425
+
+Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill, December 1, 1783                431
+
+A Representation to his Majesty, moved in the House of Commons,
+  June 14, 1784                                                      537
+
+
+VOL. III.
+
+Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, February 28, 1785;               1
+  with an Appendix
+
+Substance of Speech on the Army Estimates, February 9, 1790          211
+
+Reflections on the Revolution in France                              231
+
+
+VOL. IV.
+
+Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, in Answer to some
+  Objections to his Book on French Affairs                             1
+
+Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs                                  57
+
+Letter to a Peer of Ireland on the Penal Laws against Irish
+  Catholics                                                          217
+
+Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Subject of the Roman
+  Catholics of Ireland                                               241
+
+Hints for a Memorial to be delivered to Monsieur de M.M.             307
+
+Thoughts on French Affairs                                           313
+
+Heads for Consideration on the Present State of Affairs              379
+
+Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with respect to France: with
+  an Appendix                                                        403
+
+
+VOL. V.
+
+Observations on the Conduct of the Minority, particularly in the
+  last Session of Parliament, 1793                                     1
+
+Preface to the Address of M. Brissot to his Constituents:
+  with an Appendix                                                    65
+
+Letter to William Elliot, Esq., occasioned by a Speech made in
+  the House of Lords by the **** of *******, in the Debate concerning
+  Lord Fitzwilliam, 1795                                             107
+
+Thoughts and Details on Scarcity                                     131
+
+Letter to a Noble Lord on the Attacks made upon Mr. Burke and his
+  Pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the
+  Earl of Lauderdale, 1796                                           171
+
+Three Letters to a Member of Parliament on the Proposals for
+  Peace with the Regicide Directory of France.
+
+    Letter I. On the Overtures of Peace                              233
+
+    Letter II. On the Genius and Character of the French
+      Revolution as it regards other Nations                         342
+
+    Letter III. On the Rupture of the Negotiation; the Terms
+       of Peace proposed; and the Resources of the Country for
+       the Continuance of the War                                    384
+
+
+VOL. VI.
+
+Preface to the Second Posthumous Volume, in a Letter to the Right
+  Hon. William Elliot                                                  v
+
+Fourth Letter on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory
+   of France: with the Preliminary Correspondence                      1
+
+Letter to the Empress of Russia, November 1, 1791                    113
+
+Letter to Sir Charles Bingham, Bart., on the Irish Absentee Tax,
+  October 30, 1773                                                   121
+
+Letter to the Hon. Charles James Fox, on the American War,
+  October 8, 1777                                                    135
+
+Letter to the Marquis of Rockingham, with Addresses to the King,
+  and the British Colonists in North America, in Relation to the
+  Measures of Government in the American Contest, and a Proposed
+  Secession of the Opposition from Parliament, January, 1777         149
+
+Letter to the Right Hon. Edmund S. Pery, in relation to a Bill
+  for the Relief of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, July 18, 1778    197
+
+Two Letters to Thomas Burgh, Esq., and John Merlott, Esq., in
+  Vindication of his Parliamentary Conduct relative to the Affairs
+  of Ireland, 1780                                                   207
+
+Letters and Reflections on the Executions of the Rioters in 1780     239
+
+Letter to the Right Hon. Henry Dundas: with the Sketch of a Negro
+  Code, 1792                                                         255
+
+Letter to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting, held at
+  Aylesbury, April 13, 1780, on the Subject of Parliamentary
+  Reform                                                             291
+
+Fragments of a Tract relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland  299
+
+Letter to William Smith, Esq., on the Subject of Catholic
+  Emancipation, January 29, 1795                                     361
+
+Second Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Catholic Question,
+  May 26, 1795                                                       375
+
+Letter to Richard Burke, Esq., on Protestant Ascendency in Ireland,
+  1793                                                               385
+
+Letter on the Affairs of Ireland, 1797                               413
+
+
+VOL. VII.
+
+Fragments and Notes of Speeches In Parliament.
+
+  Speech on the Acts of Uniformity, February 8, 1772                   3
+
+  Speech on a Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters,
+    March 17, 1773                                                    21
+
+  Speech on a Motion, for Leave to bring in a Bill to repeal and
+    alter certain Acts respecting Religious Opinions, upon the
+    Occasion of a Petition of the Unitarian Society, May 11, 1792     39
+
+  Speech relative to the Middlesex Election, February 7, 1771         59
+
+  Speech on a Bill for shortening the Duration of Parliaments,
+    May 8, 1780                                                       69
+
+  Speech on a Motion for a Committee to inquire into the State of
+    the Representation of the Commons in Parliament, May 7, 1782      89
+
+  Speech on a Motion for Leave to bring in a Bill for explaining
+    the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels, March 7, 1771.
+    Together with a Letter in Vindication of that Measure, and a
+    Copy of the proposed Bill                                        105
+
+  Speech on a Bill for the Repeal of the Marriage Act,
+    June 15, 1781                                                    129
+
+  Speech on a Motion for Leave to bring in a Bill to quiet the
+    Possessions of the Subject against Dormant Claims of the Church,
+    February 17, 1772                                                137
+
+Hints for an Essay on the Drama                                      143
+
+An Essay towards an Abridgment of the English History. In Three Books.
+
+  Book I. To the Fall of the Roman Power In Britain                  159
+
+  Book II. To the Norman Invasion                                    227
+
+  Book III. Through the Reign of John                                327
+
+    Fragment.--An Essay towards an History of the Laws of England    475
+
+
+VOL. VIII.
+
+Ninth Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons
+  on the Affairs of India, June 25, 1783.
+
+  Observations on the State of the Company's Affairs in India          3
+
+  Connection of Great Britain with India                              41
+
+  Effect of the Revenue Investment on the Company                     56
+
+  Internal Trade of Bengal                                            76
+    Silk                                                              83
+    Raw Silk                                                          88
+    Cloths, or Piece-Goods                                            99
+    Opium                                                            116
+    Salt                                                             142
+    Saltpetre                                                        170
+
+  British Government in India                                        173
+
+Eleventh Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on
+  the Affairs of India. With Extracts from the Appendix.
+  November 18, 1783                                                  217
+
+Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against Warren
+  Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General of Bengal: presented to
+  the House of Commons in April and May, 1788.--Articles I.-VI.
+
+  Art. I. Rohilla War                                                307
+      II. Shah Allum                                                 319
+     III. Benares.
+       Part I. Rights and Titles of the Rajah of Benares             327
+       Part II. Designs of Mr. Hastings to ruin the Rajah of Benares 339
+       Part III. Expulsion of the Rajah of Benares                   354
+       Part IV. Second Revolution in Benares                         380
+       Part V. Third Revolution in Benares                           386
+      IV. Princesses of Oude                                         397
+       V. Revolutions in Furruckabad                                 467
+      VI. Destruction of the Rajah of Sahlone                        484
+
+
+VOL. IX.
+
+Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against
+  Warren Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General of Bengal: presented
+  to the House of Commons in April and May, 1786.--Articles VII.-XXII.
+
+Art. VII. Contracts                                                    3
+    VIII. Presents                                                    22
+      IX. Resignation of the Office of Governor-General               42
+       X. Surgeon-General's Contract                                  60
+      XI. Contracts for Poolbundy Repairs                             60
+     XII. Contracts for Opium                                         63
+    XIII. Appointment of R.J. Sulivan                                 70
+     XIV. Ranna of Gohud                                              72
+      XV. Revenues. Part I.                                           79
+                    Part II.                                          87
+     XVI. Misdemeanors in Oude                                        95
+    XVII. Mahomed Reza Kh�n                                          179
+   XVIII. The Mogul delivered up to the Mahrattas                    202
+     XIX. Libel on the Court of Directors                            228
+      XX. Mahratta War and Peace                                     238
+     XXI. Correspondence                                             266
+    XXII. Fyzoola Kh�n
+            Part I. Rights of Fyzoola Kh�n, etc., before the
+              Treaty of Lall-Dang                                    268
+            Part II. Rights of Fyzoola Kh�n under the Treaty
+              of Lall-Dang                                           275
+            Part III. Guaranty of the Treaty of Lall-Dang            278
+            Part IV. Thanks of the Board to Fyzoola Kh�n             286
+            Part V. Demand of Five Thousand Horse                    287
+            Part VI. Treaty of Chunar                                296
+            Part VII. Consequences of the Treaty of Chunar           302
+            Part VIII. Pecuniary Commutation of the Stipulated Aid   306
+            Part IX. Full Vindication of Fyzoola Kh�n by Major
+              Palmer and Mr. Hastings                                313
+
+Appendix to the Eighth and Sixteenth Charges                         319
+
+Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal.
+
+  Speech in Opening the Impeachment.
+    First Day: Friday, February 15, 1788                             329
+    Second Day: Saturday, February 16                                396
+
+
+VOL. X.
+
+Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal.
+
+  Speech in Opening the Impeachment.
+    Third Day: Monday, February 18, 1788                               3
+    Fourth Day: Tuesday, February 19                                  99
+
+  Speech on the Sixth Article of Charge.
+    First Day: Tuesday, April 21, 1789                               149
+    Second Day: Saturday, April 25                                   240
+    Third Day: Tuesday, May 5                                        306
+    Fourth Day: Thursday, May 7                                      396
+
+
+VOL. XI.
+
+Report from the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to
+  inspect the Lords' Journals in Relation to their Proceedings on
+  the Trial of Warren Hastings, Esq. With an Appendix. Also,
+   Remarks in Vindication of the Same from the Animadversions of
+   Lord Thurlow. 1794                                                  1
+
+Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal. (Continued.)
+
+  Speech in General Reply.
+    First Day: Wednesday, May 28, 1794                               157
+    Second Day: Friday, May 30                                       227
+    Third Day. Tuesday, June 3                                       300
+    Fourth Day: Thursday, June 5                                     372
+
+
+VOL. XII.
+
+Speeches In the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal. (Continued.)
+
+  Speech in General Reply.
+    Fifth Day: Saturday, June 7, 1794                                  3
+    Sixth Day: Wednesday, June 11                                     75
+    Seventh Day: Thursday, June 12                                   143
+    Eighth Day: Saturday, June 14                                    235
+    Ninth Day: Monday, June 16                                       335
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Accidental things ought to be carefully distinguished from
+    permanent causes and effects, v. 234.
+
+Account, capital use of an, what, i. 511.
+
+Act of navigation, i. 378; ii. 30, 33.
+
+Acts of grace, impolicy of, ii. 386.
+
+Acts of indemnity and oblivion, probable effects of, as a
+    means of reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.
+
+Addison, Mr., the correctness of his opinion of the cause of
+    the grand effect of the rotund questioned, i. 150.
+  his fine lines on honorable political connections, i. 529.
+
+Administration, Short Account of a Late Short, (Marquis of
+    Rockingham's,) i. 263.
+  censures on that administration, i. 379.
+  state of public affairs at the time of its formation, i. 381.
+  character and conduct of it, i. 388.
+  idea of it respecting America, i. 397.
+  remarks on its foreign negotiations, i. 412.
+  character of a united administration, i. 419.
+  of a disunited one, i. 425.
+  the administration should be correspondent to the legislature, i. 471.
+
+Admiration, the first source of obedience, iv. 251.
+  one of the principles which interest us in the characters
+    of others, vii. 148.
+
+Adrian, first contracts the hounds of the Roman Empire, vii. 214.
+
+Advice, compulsive, from constituents, its authority first
+    resisted by Mr. Burke, iv. 95.
+
+Adviser, duty of an, iv. 42.
+
+Agricola, Julius, character and conduct of, vii. 199.
+
+Aix, the Archbishop of, his offer of contribution, why refused
+    by the French National Assembly, iii. 390.
+
+Aix-la-Chapelle, the treaty of, remarks on, v. 441.
+
+Akbar, the Emperor, obtains possession of Bengal, ix. 392
+
+Alfred the Great, character and conduct of, vii. 261.
+  his care and sagacity in improving the laws and institutions
+    of England, vii. 482.
+
+Allegiance, oath of, remarkable one taken by the nobility to
+    King Stephen, vii. 388.
+
+Alliance, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.
+  the famous Triple Alliance negotiated by Temple and De Witt, v. 438.
+  alliance between Church and State in a Christian commonwealth,
+    a fanciful speculation, vii. 43.
+
+Ambition, one of the passions belonging to society, i. 124.
+  nature and end of, i. 124.
+  misery of disappointed, i. 335.
+  ought to be influenced by popular motives, i. 474.
+  influence of, iii. 107.
+  one of the natural distempers of a democracy, iv. 164.
+  legislative restraints on it in democracies always violent
+    and ineffectual, iv. 164.
+  not an exact calculator, vii. 82.
+  virtue of a generous ambition for applause for public services, x. 176.
+
+America, advantage of, to England, i. 297.
+  nature of various taxes there, i. 355.
+  project of a representation of in Parliament, its difficulties, i. 372.
+  its rapidly increasing commerce, ii. 112.
+  eloquent description of rising glories of, in vision, ii. 115.
+  temper and character of its inhabitants, ii. 120.
+  their spirit of liberty, whence, ii. 120, 133
+  proposed taxation of, by grant instead of imposition, ii. 154.
+  danger in establishing a military government there, vi. 176.
+
+American Stamp Act, its origin, i. 385.
+  repeal of the, i. 265, 389.
+  reasons of the repeal, ii. 48.
+  good effects of the repeal, i. 401; ii. 59.
+
+Ancestors, our, reverence due to them, iii. 562; iv. 213.
+
+Angles, in buildings, prejudicial to their grandeur, i. 151.
+
+Animals, their cries capable of conveying great ideas, i. 161.
+
+Anniversaries, festive, advantages of, iv. 369.
+
+Anselm, appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, vii. 373.
+  supports Henry I. against his brother Robert, vii. 377.
+
+Apparitions, singular inconsistency in the ideas of the vulgar
+    concerning them, vii. 181.
+
+Arbitrary power, steals upon a people by lying dormant for a
+    time, or by being rarely exercised, ii. 201.
+  cannot be exercised or delegated by the legislature, ix. 455.
+  not recognized in the Gentoo code, xi. 208.
+
+Arbitrary system, must always be a corrupt one, x. 5.
+  danger in adopting it as a principle of action, xi. 322.
+
+Areopagus, court and senate of, remarks on the, iii. 507.
+
+Ariosto, a criticism of Boileau on, vii. 154.
+
+Aristocracy, affected terror at the growth of the power of the,
+    in the reign of George II., i. 457.
+  influence of the, i. 457.
+  too much spirit not a fault of the, i. 458.
+  general observations on the, iii. 415.
+  character of a true natural one, iv. 174.
+  regulations in some states with respect to, iv. 250.
+  must submit to the dominion of prudence and virtue, v. 127.
+  character of the aristocracy of France before the Revolution,
+    iii. 412; vi. 39.
+
+Aristotle, his caution against delusive geometrical accuracy
+    in moral arguments, ii. 170.
+  his observations on the resemblance between a democracy and
+    a tyranny, iii. 397.
+  his distinction between tragedy and comedy, vii. 153.
+  his natural philosophy alone unworthy of him, vii. 252.
+  his system entirely followed by Bede, vii. 252.
+
+Armies yield a precarious and uncertain obedience to a senate, iii. 524.
+  remarks on the standing armies of France and England, iii. 224.
+
+Army commanded by General Monk, character of it, iv. 36.
+
+Art, every work of, great only as it deceives, i. 152.
+
+Artist, a true one effects the noblest designs by easy methods, i. 152.
+
+Artois, Comte d', character of, iv. 430.
+
+Ascendency, Protestant, observations on it, vi. 393.
+
+Asers, their origin and conquests, vii. 228.
+
+Assassination, recommended and employed by the National Assembly
+    of France, iv. 34.
+  the dreadful consequences of this policy, in case of war, iv. 34.
+
+Astonishment, cause and nature of, i. 160, 217.
+
+Atheism by establishment, what, v. 310.
+  ought to be repressed by law, vii. 35.
+  schools of, set up by the French regicides at the public charge, vi. 106.
+
+Atheists, modern, contrasted with those of antiquity, iv. 355.
+
+Athenians, at the head of the democratic interests of Greece, iv. 321.
+
+Athens, the plague of, remarkable prevalence of wickedness
+    during its continuance, vii. 84.
+
+Augustin, state of religion in Britain when he arrived there, vii. 233.
+  introduced Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons, vii. 235.
+
+Aulic Council, remarks on the, v. 119.
+
+Austria began in the reign of Maria Theresa to support great
+    armies, v. 368.
+  her treaty of 1756 with France, deplored by the French in 1773, v. 370.
+
+Authority, its only firm seat in public opinion, ii. 224; vi. 165.
+  the people the natural control on it, iv. 164.
+  the exercise and control of it together contradictory, iv. 164.
+  the monopoly of it an evil, v. 151.
+
+Avarice, an instrument and source of oppression in India,
+    iii. 107; ix. 491.
+
+
+Bacon, Lord, a remark of his applied to the revolution in France, v. 175.
+  his demeanor at his impeachment, xi. 173.
+
+Bacon, N., his work on the laws of England not entitled to
+    authority, vii. 479.
+
+Bail, method of giving it introduced by Alfred, vii. 265.
+  advantage of it, vii. 265.
+
+Ball, John, abstract of a discourse of, iv. 178.
+
+Ballot, all contrivances by it vain to prevent a discovery of
+    the inclinations, iii. 507.
+
+Balmerino, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 34.
+
+Banian, functions and character of the, ix. 363.
+
+Bank paper in England, owing to the flourishing condition of
+    commerce, iii. 541.
+
+Bards, the, character of their verses, vii. 178.
+
+Bartholomew, St., massacre of, iii. 420.
+
+Bathurst, Lord, his imagined vision of the rising glories of
+    America, ii. 114.
+
+Bayle, Mr., an observation of his on religious persecution, vi. 333.
+
+Beauchamp, Lord, his bill concerning imprisonment; Mr. Burke's
+    course with respect to it, ii. 382.
+
+Beauty, a cause of love, i. 114, 165.
+  proportion not the cause of it in vegetables, i. 166.
+  nor in animals, i. 170.
+  nor in the human species, i. 172.
+  beauty and proportion not ideas of the same nature, i. 181.
+  the opposite to beauty not disproportion or deformity, but
+    ugliness, i. 181.
+  fitness not the cause of beauty, i. 181.
+  nor perfection, i. 187.
+  how far the idea of beauty applicable to the qualities of the
+    mind, i. 188.
+  how far applicable to virtue, i. 190.
+  the real cause of beauty, i. 191.
+  beautiful objects, small, i. 191.
+  and smooth, i. 193.
+  and of softly varied contour, i. 194.
+  and delicate, i. 195.
+  and of clear, mild, or diversified, colors, i. 196.
+  beauty of the physiognomy, i. 198.
+  beauty of the eye, i. 198.
+  the beautiful in feeling, i. 201.
+  the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.
+  physical effects of beauty, i. 232.
+
+Bede, the Venerable, brief account of him and his works, vii. 250.
+
+Bedford, the first earl of, who, v. 201.
+
+Begums of Oude, accused by the East India Company of rebellion, ii. 475.
+  pretence for seizing their treasures, xii. 33.
+
+Benares, city of, the capital of the Indian religion, ii. 477, 484.
+  province of, its projected sale to the Nabob of Oude, xi. 259.
+  devastation of, during Mr. Hastings's government, xi. 302, 347.
+  the Rajah of, nature of his authority, xi. 240.
+  imprisoned by Mr. Hastings's order, xi. 277.
+  the Ranny of, the soldiery incited by Mr. Hastings to plunder her,
+    ii. 486.
+
+Benfield, Paul, his character and conduct, iii. 97.
+
+Bengal, extent and condition, of, ii. 498.
+  conquest of, by the Emperor Akbar, ix. 392.
+  era of the independent subahs of, ix. 392.
+  era of the British empire in, ix. 393.
+  nature of the government exercised there by Mr. Hastings, xii. 211.
+
+Bengal Club, observations on the, iv. 324.
+
+Bidjegur, fortress of, taken by order of Mr. Hastings, xi. 291.
+
+Biron, Duchess of, murdered by the French regicides, vi. 41.
+
+Bitterness, in description, a source of the sublime, i. 162.
+
+Blackness, effects of, i. 229.
+
+Boadicea, Roman outrages against, vii. 197.
+
+Boileau, his criticism on a tale in Ariosto, vii. 154.
+
+Bolingbroke, Lord, animadversions on his philosophical works, i. 3.
+  some characteristics of his style, i. 7.
+  a presumptuous and superficial writer, iii. 398.
+  a remark of his on the superiority of a monarchy over other
+    forms of government, iii. 398.
+
+Boncompagni, Cardinal, character of him, iv. 338.
+
+Borrower, the public, and the private lender, not adverse
+    parties with contending interests, v. 455.
+
+Bouillon, Godfrey of, engages in the Crusade, vii. 372.
+
+Boulogne, fortress of, surrendered to France, v. 204.
+  importance of it to England, v. 204.
+
+Bouvines, victory of, important advantages of it to France, vii. 458.
+
+Braban�ons, mercenary troops in the time of Henry II., their
+    character, vii. 420.
+
+Bribing, by means of it, rather than by being bribed, wicked
+    politicians bring ruin on mankind, iii. 107.
+
+Brissot, his character and conduct, iv. 371.
+  Preface to his Address to his Constituents, v. 65.
+
+Britain, invasion of, by C�sar, vii. 165.
+  account of its ancient inhabitants, vii. 170.
+  invaded by Claudius, vii. 191.
+  reduced by Ostorius Scapula, vii. 191.
+  finally subdued by Agricola, vii. 199.
+  why not sooner conquered, vii. 202.
+  nature of the government settled there by the Romans, vii. 205.
+  first introduction of Christianity into, vii. 221.
+  deserted by the Romans, vii. 223.
+  entry and settlement of the Saxons there, and their conversion
+    to Christianity, vii. 227.
+
+Britons, more reduced than any other nation that fell under the
+    German power, vii. 232.
+
+Brown, Dr., effect of his writings on the people of England, v. 239.
+
+Buch, Captal de, his severe treatment of the Jacquerie in France, iv. 177.
+
+Buildings, too great length in them, prejudicial to grandeur
+    of effect, i. 152.
+  should be gloomy to produce an idea of the sublime, i. 158.
+
+Burke, Mr., his sentiments respecting several leading members
+    of the Whig party, iv. 66.
+  and respecting a union of Ireland with Great Britain, iv. 297.
+  respecting acts of indemnity and oblivion as a means of
+    reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.
+  his animadversions on the conduct of Mr. Fox, v. 7.
+  his pathetic allusion to his deceased son, v. 207.
+
+Burnet, Bishop, his statement of the methods which carried men
+    of parts to Popery in France, iii. 430.
+
+Bute, Earl of, his resignation, i. 381.
+  his successors recommended by him, i. 381.
+  supposed head of the court party called "King's Men," i. 467.
+
+
+C�sar, Julius, his policy with respect to the Gauls, vii. 163.
+  his invasion of Germany, vii. 164.
+  and of Britain, vii. 165.
+
+Calais, lost by the surrender of Boulogne, v. 204.
+
+Calamity, its deliberations rarely wise, iii. 540.
+  public calamity often arrested by the seasonable energy of a
+    single man, v. 124.
+
+Caligula undertakes an expedition against Britain, vii. 190.
+
+Calonne, M. de, remarks on his work, "L'�tat de la France," iii. 479.
+  extract from it, iii. 549.
+
+Campanella, curious story concerning him, i. 212.
+
+Canada Bills, convention for their liquidation, i. 409.
+
+Canterbury, dispute between the suffragan bishops of the province
+    and the monks of the Abbey of St. Austin, vii. 446.
+
+Cantons, French, their origin, nature, and function, iii. 462, 464, 471.
+
+Cantoo Baboo, Mr. Hastings's banian, x. 19.
+
+Canute, his character and conduct, vii. 276.
+  remarks on his code of laws, vii. 483.
+
+Capital, monopoly of, not an evil, v. 151.
+
+Care, appearance of, highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence, i. 154.
+
+Carnatic, the extent, nature, and condition of the country,
+    ii. 492; iii. 65.
+  dreadful devastation of it by Hyder Ali Kh�n, iii. 62.
+
+Caste, consequences of losing it in India, x. 89.
+
+Castile, different from Catalonia and Aragon, iv. 340.
+
+Castles, great numbers of them built in the reign of Stephen, vii. 389.
+
+Casuistry, origin and requisites of, iv. 168.
+  danger of pursuing it too far, iv. 168.
+
+Catholics, Letter to an Irish Peer on the Penal Laws against, iv. 217.
+
+Celsus, his opinion that internal remedies were not of early
+    use proved to be erroneous, vii. 184.
+
+Cerealis, extract from his fine speech to the Gauls, iv. 272.
+
+Change and reformation, distinction between, v. 186.
+
+Characters of others, principles which interest us in them, vii. 148.
+
+Charity, observations on, v. 146.
+  not to be interfered with by the magistrate, v. 146.
+
+Charles I. defended himself on the practice of his predecessors, ii. 279.
+  his ill-judged attempt to establish the rites of the Church
+    of England in Scotland, vii. 8.
+
+Charles II. obliged by the sense of the nation to abandon
+    the Dutch war, ii. 219.
+  brief character of him, iv. 37.
+  his government compared with that of Cromwell, iv. 467.
+
+Charles XII. of Sweden, parallel between him and Richard I.
+    of England, vii. 436.
+
+Charters are kept when their purposes are maintained, ii. 565.
+
+Chatham, Lord, his character, ii. 61.
+
+Cheselden, Mr., his story of a boy who was couched for a cataract, i. 226.
+
+Chester, the County Palatine of, admitted to representation
+    in Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII., ii. 150.
+
+Chesterfield, Lord, his conduct (when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland)
+    with respect to the Roman Catholics, iv. 235.
+
+Cheyt Sing, Rajah of Benares, nature of his authority, ii. 479; xi. 240.
+  imprisoned by order of Mr. Hastings, xi. 277.
+
+Christendom, the several states of, have all been formed slowly
+    and without any unity of design, v. 373.
+
+Christianity, original introduction of, into Britain, vii. 221.
+
+Church, the, has power to reform her doctrine, discipline,
+    and rites, vii. 7.
+
+Church establishment in England, observations on it, iii. 352.
+  the provision made for its clergy by the state, iii. 364.
+  education of its clergy contrasted with that of the Roman
+    Catholic clergy, iv. 231.
+  eulogy on it, vi. 401; vii. 36, 56.
+
+Cicero, remarks on his orations against Verres, xii. 349.
+
+Circumstances, importance of them in all political principles,
+    iii. 240; vii. 55.
+
+Citizens, not to be listened to, in matters relating to agriculture,
+    v. 146.
+
+Civil list, debts due on it, request for a supply for discharging
+    them, how made, i. 508.
+  plan of economy relative to it, ii. 350.
+
+Civil society, great purpose of, vi. 333.
+
+Civil vicinity, law of, what, v. 322.
+
+Civil wars corrupt the morals of the people, ii. 203.
+
+Clamor, justifiable when it is caused by abuse, vii. 121.
+
+Clarendon, Constitutions of, vii. 403.
+
+Claudius, the Emperor invades Britain, vii. 191.
+
+Clavering, Sir John, eulogy on him, x. 246; xii. 348.
+
+Clear expression, different from a strong one, i. 260.
+
+Clearness not necessary for affecting the passions, i. 133.
+
+Clergy, convocation of, a part of the constitution, ii. 226.
+  observations on the provision made by the state for them, iii. 364, 448.
+  Roman Catholic, in France, character of them before the
+    Revolution, iii. 424.
+  laws of William and Anne respecting the Popish clergy, vi. 317.
+  review of the state of the clergy in England down to the reign
+    of Henry II., vii. 398.
+
+Clive, Lord, sent to India, ix. 438.
+  his conduct there, ix. 439.
+
+Clootz, Anacharsis, his masquerade embassy to the Constituent
+    Assembly of France, vi. 49.
+
+Coke, Lord, ingenious quotation in his Reports, i. 5.
+  his observation on discretion in judicature, iv. 292.
+
+Colonies, commercial, mode of levying taxes in them, an important
+    and difficult consideration, i. 354.
+  American, import ten times more from Great Britain, than they
+    spend in return, i. 393.
+
+Colonists, the British, in America, character of, i. 395.
+  Address to, vi. 183.
+
+Colors, soft and cheerful ones unfit to produce grand images, i. 158.
+
+Comedy, observations on, vii. 150.
+  Aristotle's distinction between it and tragedy, vii. 153.
+
+Comines, Philip de, his remarks on the English civil wars, vi. 252.
+
+Commerce and liberty, the two main sources of power to Great
+    Britain, ii. 87.
+  great increase of, in America, ii. 112.
+
+Common law, nature of the, vii. 462.
+
+Common Pleas, court of, its origin, vii. 466.
+
+Commons, the House of, observations on its nature and character, i. 491.
+  what qualities recommend a man to a seat in it, in popular
+    elections, i. 497.
+  can never control other parts of the government, unless the
+    members themselves are controlled by their constituents, i. 503.
+  ought to be connected with and dependent on the people, i. 508.
+  has a collective character, distinct from that of its members, ii. 66.
+  duty of the members to their constituents, ii. 95.
+  general observations on its privileges and duties, ii. 544.
+  the collective sense of the people to be received from it, ii. 545.
+  its powers and capacities, ii. 552.
+  cannot renounce its share of authority, iii. 258.
+  its composition, iii. 289.
+  the most powerful and most corruptible part of the constitution, vii. 62.
+  a superintendence over the doctrines and proceedings of the
+    courts of justice, one of its principal objects, vii. 107.
+  concise view of its proceedings on the East India question, ii. 559.
+
+Commonwealths, not subject to laws analogous to those of
+    physical life, v. 124, 234.
+
+Communes, in France, their origin, nature, and function,
+    iii. 462, 464, 472.
+
+Compurgators, in Saxon law, what, vii. 318.
+
+Condorcet, brief character of him, iv. 356, 372.
+  extract from a publication of his, iv. 356.
+
+Confidence, unsuspecting, in government, importance of it, ii. 234.
+  of mankind, how to be secured, v. 414.
+
+Connections, party, political, observations on them, i. 527, 530.
+  commended by patriots in the commonwealths of antiquity, i. 527.
+  the Whig connection in Queen Anne's reign, i. 529.
+
+Conquest cannot give a right to arbitrary power, ix. 456.
+
+Conscience, a tender one ought to be tenderly handled, vii. 54.
+
+Constantine the Great, changes made by him in the internal
+    policy of the Roman Empire, vii. 220.
+
+Constantinople, anecdote of the visit of an English country
+    squire to, v. 387.
+  anecdote of the Greeks at the taking of, vi. 96.
+
+Constituents, in England, more in the spirit of the constitution
+    to lessen than to enlarge their number, i. 370.
+  their duty to their representatives, ii. 370.
+  compulsive instruction from them first rejected by Mr. Burke, iv. 95.
+  points in which they are incompetent to instruct their
+    representatives, vii. 74, 75.
+
+Constitution, a, cannot defend itself, vi. 100.
+  consequences of disgracing the frame and constitution of
+    the state, vii. 103.
+  the English, a change in it, an immense and difficult operation,
+    i. 371, 520.
+  English, changes in it to be attempted only in times of general
+    confusion, i. 371.
+  eulogy on it, iii. 561; v. 210; vii. 100.
+  the whole scheme of it to prevent any one of its principles
+    from being carried to an extreme, iv. 207.
+  not struck out at a heat, iv. 209.
+  commendation of it by Montesquieu, iv. 212.
+  the only means of its subversion, what, v. 49, 52.
+
+Constitutional Society, The, its nature and design, iii. 236.
+
+Conti, Prince de, his character and conduct, iv. 436.
+
+Contract, an implied, one, always, between the laborer and
+    his employer, v. 137.
+
+Contracting parties, not necessary that they should have
+    different interests, v. 139.
+
+Control and exercise of authority together contradictory, iv. 164.
+
+Convocation of the clergy, though a part of the constitution,
+    now called for form only, ii. 226.
+
+Conway, General, moves the repeal of the American Stamp Act, ii. 52.
+
+Cornwallis, Lord, (Baron,) proceedings in his trial, xi. 30.
+
+Cornwallis, Lord, (Marquis,) his evidence at the trial of
+    Warren Hastings, xii. 359.
+
+Coronation oath, its obligations with respect to Roman Catholics, iv. 259.
+
+Corporate bodies, their usefulness as instruments, iii. 441.
+  more under the direction of the state than private citizens, iii. 447.
+
+Corruption, of nature and example, what the only security against, ii. 238.
+  in pecuniary matters, the suspicion of it how to be avoided, iii. 95.
+
+Cossim, Ali Kh�n, his character and conduct, ix. 405.
+
+Country, lore of, remarks on, xi. 422.
+
+Credit and power incompatible, i. 368.
+
+Crimes, the acts of individuals, not of denominations, ii. 418.
+  according to the criminal law, what, vi. 340.
+
+Cromwell, brief character of him, iii. 294.
+  his principle in the appointment of judges, iv. 13.
+  his conduct in government, iv. 37.
+  his government compared with that of Charles II., iv. 467.
+
+Cross, the effect of it not so grand in architecture as that of
+    the parallelogram, i. 150.
+
+Crown, the influence of it, what, i. 444.
+  inheritable nature of it, iii. 258.
+  this principle maintained at the Revolution, iii. 254.
+  the only legitimate channel of communication with other nations, v. 10.
+
+Crusade, origin and progress of the, vii. 369.
+
+Curfew, origin and policy of the, vii. 354.
+
+Curiosity, the first and simplest emotion of the human mind, i. 101.
+  general observations on it, i. 101.
+
+Custom, considered in relation to deformity and beauty, i. 179.
+  not the cause of pleasure, i. 180.
+
+Cyprus, account of the conquest of it by Richard I., vii. 428.
+
+
+Danger and pain, the idea of them a source of the sublime, i. 110, 130.
+  with certain modifications, delightful, i. 111.
+  the danger of anything very dear to us removes for the time
+    all other affections from the mind, iv. 95.
+
+Darkness more productive of sublime ideas than light, i. 156.
+  necessary to the highest degree of the sublime in building, i. 158.
+  Locke's opinion concerning, i. 225.
+  terrible in its own nature, i. 226.
+  why, i. 227.
+
+Davies, Sir John, his statement of the benefits of the extension
+    of English constitutional law to Ireland, ii. 147; iv. 273.
+
+Day, not so sublime as night, i. 158.
+
+Debi Sing, his character and conduct, x. 69.
+
+Debt, the interest of, not the principal, that which distresses
+    a nation, i. 329.
+
+Debts, civil, faults of the law with regard to, ii. 384.
+  public, excessive, their tendency to subvert government, iii. 437.
+
+Deceivers and cheats never can repent, iv. 9.
+
+Declaration of Right, contains the principles of the Revolution
+    of 1688, iii. 252.
+  drawn by Lord Somers, iii. 254.
+  proceeds upon the principle of reference to antiquity, iii. 273.
+
+Defensive measures, though vigorous at first, relax by degrees, iv. 355.
+  necessary considerations with regard to them, vi. 100.
+
+Definitions, frequently fallacious, i. 81.
+
+Deformity not opposed to beauty, but to the complete common form, i. 178.
+
+Deity, power the most striking of his attributes, i. 143.
+
+Delamere, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 31.
+
+Delight, what, i. 107.
+  distinguished from pleasure, i. 108.
+  the misfortunes of others sometimes a source of, i. 118.
+  the attendant of every passion which animates us to any active
+    purpose, i. 119.
+  how pain can be a cause of, i. 215.
+
+Democracy, no example in modern times of a considerable one, iii. 396.
+  an absolute one, not to be reckoned among the legitimate forms
+    of government, iii. 396.
+  Aristotle's observation on the resemblance between a democracy
+    and a tyranny; iii. 397.
+  the vice of the ancient democracies, what, iii. 508.
+  the foodful nurse of ambition, iv. 104.
+
+Departments in France, their origin, nature, and function, iii. 461, 465.
+
+Depth thought to have a grander effect than height, i. 147.
+
+Description, verbal, a means of raising a stronger emotion
+    than painting, i. 133.
+
+Desirable things always practicable, ii. 357.
+
+Despotism, nature of, i. 446; ix. 458.
+
+D'Espr�m�nil, the illustrious French magistrate, murdered by
+    the Revolutionists, vi. 40.
+
+Dialogue, advantages and disadvantages of it as a mode of
+    argumentation, vi. 9.
+
+Difference in taste, commonly so called, whence, i. 89.
+
+Difficulty, a source of greatness in idea, i. 153.
+  its disciplinary uses, iii. 453.
+  political difficulties, ill consequences of attempting to
+    elude them, iii. 454.
+
+Dignity, national, no standard for rating the conditions of peace, v. 257.
+
+Dimension, greatness of, a powerful cause of the sublime, i. 147.
+  necessary to the sublime in building, i. 152.
+  but incompatible with beauty, i. 242.
+
+Dinagepore, Rajah of, account of him, xii. 318.
+
+Diogenes, anecdote of him, iv. 61.
+
+Directory, the, by whom settled, vii. 13.
+  rejected at the Restoration, vii. 13.
+
+Disappointment, what, i. 108.
+
+Discontents, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present, i. 433.
+  produced by a system of favoritism, i. 469.
+
+Discretion, Lord Coke's remark on, iv. 292.
+
+Discretionary powers of the monarch, should be exercised upon
+    public principles, i. 469.
+
+Discrimination, a coarse, the greatest enemy to accuracy of
+    judgment, v. 143.
+
+Dissenters, observations on the Test Act, in reference to them, iv. 264.
+
+Distress, great, never teaches wise lessons to mankind, iv. 10.
+
+Distrust, advantages of, iv. 443.
+
+Disunion in government, mischief of, i. 425.
+
+Divorce, observations on, v. 313.
+
+Domesday Book, origin, and nature of it, vii. 354.
+
+Double cabinet, project of a, in the English court, i. 447.
+  nature and design of it, i. 454.
+  mischievous influence of it, i. 478.
+  how recommended at court, i. 485.
+  its operation upon Parliament, i. 490.
+  singular doctrine propagated by it, i. 525.
+
+Drama, Hints for an Essay on the, vii. 143.
+
+Dramatic writing, difficulty of, vii. 145.
+  origin of, vii. 149.
+
+Druids, some account of their origin, character, and functions, vii. 176.
+  the opinion that their religion was founded on the unity of
+    the Godhead, confuted, vii. 185.
+
+Dryden, his translation of a passage in Virgil, v. 391.
+
+Du Bos, his theory of the greater effect of painting than of
+    poetry on the passions, controverted, i. 134.
+
+Dunkirk, demolition of, i. 412.
+
+Dunning, Mr., brief character of, ii. 398.
+
+Du Pin, M. de la Tour, his account of the state of the army
+    in France, iii. 512.
+
+Durham, County Palatine of, admitted to representation in
+    Parliament, in the reign of Charles II., ii. 152.
+
+Duty, effectual execution of it, how to be secured, ii. 353.
+  determined by situation, ii. 465; iv. 167.
+  people do not like to be told of it, iv. 163.
+  not dependent on the will, iv. 165.
+
+
+Easter, whence the name derived, vii. 237.
+  disputes about the time of celebrating it promote the study
+    of astronomy and chronology, vii. 252.
+
+East India Company, origin of the, ix. 348.
+  system of its service, ix. 350.
+  a fundamental part of its constitution, that its government
+    shall be a written one, ix. 369.
+  two sources of its power, ix. 345.
+  its negotiations with government, i. 362.
+  observations on its charter, ii. 438.
+  extent and population of its possessions, ii. 443, 444.
+  observations on its conduct, ii. 446.
+  its treatment of the nations indirectly subject to its
+    authority, ii. 466.
+  its administration in the countries immediately under its
+    government, ii. 497.
+  concise view of the proceedings of the House of Commons
+    relative to it, ii. 559.
+
+East Indies, origin of the extensive British possessions there, ii. 560.
+
+Ecclesiastical investiture, origin and nature of, vii. 382.
+
+Economy and war not easily reconciled, i. 310.
+  admirable system of, in France, under Necker, ii. 273.
+  difficulty of attempting a plan of public economy, ii. 268.
+  rules for a proper plan of, ii. 286.
+  things prescribed by the principles of radical economy, ii. 310.
+  distinction between economy and parsimony, v. 195.
+  political economy, had its origin in England, v. 192.
+
+Education, effect of it on the colonists in America, ii. 124.
+  description of a good one, iv. 24; xii. 280.
+
+Edward the Confessor, his character and conduct, vii. 278.
+
+Election, popular, of magistrates, importance of it to a state, i. 472.
+  right of, what, i. 505.
+  mischief of frequent elections, i. 517; vii. 75.
+  the expense of them an important consideration, vii. 78.
+
+Elizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., murdered by the French regicides, vi. 41.
+
+Emphyteusis of the Romans, nature of it, vi. 354.
+
+Empires do not fall by their own weight, vi. 27.
+
+England, nature of its monarchy, ii. 288.
+  eulogy on its constitution, v. 210;
+  natural representation of its people, what it is, v. 284.
+  its constant policy with regard to France, iv. 397.
+  always necessarily the soul and head of any confederacy
+    against France, iv. 397; v. 245.
+
+English History, An Abridgment of the, vii. 157.
+
+Enmity, when avowed, is always felt, vi. 57.
+
+Enthusiasm, excited by other causes besides religion, v. 361.
+
+Eostre, the name of a Saxon goddess,--whence the term Easter, vii. 237.
+
+Epicureans, the, why tolerated in their atheism by the supporters
+    of the ancient heathen religions, vii. 31.
+  their physics the most rational of the ancient systems, vii. 251.
+  why discredited, vii. 251.
+
+Equity, criminal, a monster in jurisprudence, i. 500.
+
+Established Church, the, should be powerful, but comprehensive
+    and tolerant, vii. 36.
+
+Established religion of a state, has often torn to pieces the
+    civil establishment, vi. 357.
+
+Establishment, legal, ground of a legislative alteration of it, vii. 10.
+  ground of the constitutional provision for the exclusive
+    application of tithes to its support, vii. 12.
+
+Etiquette, its signification and uses, v. 434.
+
+Europe, general division of, before the universal prevalence
+    of the Roman power, vii. 159.
+  the original inhabitants of Greece and Italy of the same race
+    with the people of Northern Europe, vii. 161.
+  view of the state of Europe at the time of the Norman invasion, vii. 327.
+
+Evidence, circumstantial, remarks on it, xi. 93.
+
+Example, of men of principle, never without use, i. 426.
+  the only argument of effect in civil life, i. 499.
+  what the only security against a corrupt one, ii. 238.
+  the school of mankind, v. 331.
+
+Executions of criminals, observations on them, vi. 245.
+
+Exercise necessary to the finer organs, i. 216.
+
+Expression, difference between a clear and a strong one, i. 260.
+
+Eye, the, in what its beauty consists, i. 198.
+
+Eyre, Sir Robert, (Solicitor-General,) extracts from his
+    speech at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 138.
+
+
+Factions, formed upon and generate opinions, vii. 44.
+
+Fame, a passion for it, the instinct of all great souls, ii. 65.
+  the separation of it from virtue, a harsh divorce, ii. 243.
+
+Fanaticism, epidemical, formidable nature of it, iii. 435.
+  may be caused by a theory concerning government as much as by
+    a dogma in religion, iv. 192.
+
+Farmer, dangerous to try experiments on him, v. 147.
+  amount of his usual profits, what, v. 148.
+  difficulties of his business, v. 152.
+
+Favoritism, a system of, in the executory government of England,
+    at variance with the plan of the legislature, i. 469.
+
+Fear, cause of it, i. 210.
+  early and provident fear the mother of safety, vii. 50.
+
+Feeling, the beautiful in, i. 201.
+
+Female sex, the moral sensibility more acute in them then in men, xii. 164.
+
+Finances, three standards to judge of the condition of a nation
+    with regard to them, i. 330.
+  importance of them to a state, iii. 534.
+  admirable management of the French finances under Necker, ii. 273.
+
+Financier, duty of a judicious one in respect to his calculations, i. 348.
+  his objects, what, iii. 538, 558.
+
+Fire, a chief object of worship to the Druids, why, vii. 182.
+
+Firmness, a virtue only when it accompanies the most perfect
+    wisdom, i. 440.
+
+Fitness, not the cause of beauty, i. 181.
+  the real effects of it, i. 184.
+
+Flattery, why so prevalent, i. 124.
+
+Florence, republic of, its origin, vii. 331.
+
+Force, not impaired, either in effect or opinion, by an
+    unwillingness to exert itself, ii. 108.
+  objections to its employment against the American colonies, ii. 118.
+
+Forest lands, plan of economical reform concerning them, ii. 300.
+
+Foster, Justice, extracts from his Crown Cases and Discourses on
+    the Crown Law, xi. 28, 123.
+
+Fox, (C.J.) panegyrics on him, ii. 533; iii. 219.
+  reluctant dissent from his opinion concerning the assumption
+    of citizenship by the French army, iii. 218.
+  animadversions on his commendation of the French Revolution,
+    iv. 77; v. 7.
+  policy of a treaty with France maintained by him, v. 26.
+  his conduct contrasted with that of Mr. Pitt, v. 60.
+
+France, from its vicinity, always an object of English vigilance
+    with regard to its power or example, iii. 216.
+  Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with respect to, iv. 403.
+  the liberties of Europe dependent on its being a great and
+    preponderating power, iv. 455.
+  character of its government before the Revolution, as shown
+    by a review of the condition of the kingdom, iii. 400.
+  its exterior splendor just before the Revolution, v. 236.
+  state of things there during the Revolution, iv. 70.
+  barbarous treatment of the king and queen at the outbreak of
+    the Revolution, iii. 325.
+  eloquent description of the queen as Dauphiness, and of the
+    revolution in her fortunes, iii. 331.
+  observations on her execution, vi. 40.
+  degraded office to which the king was appointed by the Revolutionists,
+    iii. 496; iv. 20.
+  with his own hand pulled down the pillars of his throne, iv. 362.
+  character of the king's brothers, iv. 429.
+  character of the aristocracy before the Revolution, iii. 412; vi. 39.
+
+Franchise and office, difference between them, iv. 252.
+  effect of separating property from franchise, iv. 256.
+
+Franklin, Dr., conjectures on his visit to Paris, vi. 152.
+
+Freedom, the great contests for it in England chiefly on the
+    question of taxation, ii. 120.
+  but in the ancient commonwealths chiefly on the right of
+    election of magistrates, or on the balance among the
+    several orders of the state, ii. 120.
+  character of civil freedom, ii. 229.
+  our best securities for it obtained from princes who were
+    either war-like or prodigal, vi. 35.
+
+French Affairs, Thoughts on, iv. 313.
+
+French Directory, the character of its members, v. 448.
+  their conduct towards the foreign ministers, vi. 48.
+
+French emigrants, capable of being serviceable in restoring
+    order to France, iv. 427.
+
+French literary cabal, their plan for the destruction of
+    Christianity, iii. 378.
+
+French moneyed interest, at variance with the landed interest, iii. 376.
+
+French Revolution, characterized as one of doctrine and theoretic
+    dogma, iv. 319.
+  its fundamental principle, iv. 322.
+
+Frenchmen naturally more intense in their application than
+    Englishmen, iv. 54.
+  mischievous consequences of this, iv. 55.
+
+Friends of the Liberty of the Press, a club formed under the
+    auspices of Mr. Fox, v. 20.
+  origin and character of it, v. 20.
+
+Friends of the People, origin, composition, and proceedings of
+    the club so called, v. 12.
+  a libellous petition of theirs, v. 47.
+
+Frugality, founded on the principle that all riches have limits, ii. 308.
+
+
+Gaming, a principle inherent in human nature, ii. 293.
+  a general spirit of it encouraged by the Revolutionists
+    in France, iii. 488.
+  they who are under its influence treat their fortunes lightly, iv. 204.
+
+Garrick, David, anecdote of him, vi. 47.
+
+Gauls, their early incursions into Greece and Italy, vii. 161.
+  reduced at last by the Romans under C�sar, vii. 162.
+  policy of C�sar with regard to them, vii. 163.
+
+Geneva, possible benefits to it from state granaries, v. 155.
+
+Genghis Kh�n, observations on his code, xi. 212.
+
+Genoa, republic of, its origin, vii. 831.
+
+Gentoo law, the primeval law of India, xi. 207.
+
+Gentoos, the original inhabitants of Hindostan, ix. 377.
+  distribution of the people into orders or castes, ix. 380.
+  origin and character of their laws, ix. 482.
+  extracts from Halhed's translation of them, xi. 209.
+
+George II., character of his reign, i. 456.
+
+George III., advantages under which he came to the throne, i. 450.
+
+Germanic Custumary, the source of the polity of every country
+    in Europe, v. 319.
+
+Germans, of Scythian original, vii. 322.
+  brief account of their manners and institutions, vii. 291.
+  in certain of their institutions the outlines of the
+    constitution of England delineated, vii. 293.
+
+Germany, how likely to be affected by the Revolution in France, iv. 328.
+
+Gibraltar, the object of England in retaining it, iv. 383.
+
+Glastonbury Abbey, its extraordinary wealth and splendor, vii. 245.
+
+Go-betweens, the world governed by, iv. 189.
+  their mode of influence, iv. 190.
+
+Good fame of every man, ought to be protected by the laws, vii. 112.
+
+Gothic Custumary, the source of the polity of every country
+    in Europe, v. 319.
+
+Government, the forms of a free one not altogether incompatible
+    with the ends of an arbitrary one, i. 444.
+  project of government devised in the court of Frederick,
+    Prince of Wales, i. 447.
+  considered, i. 450.
+  nature and design of it, i. 460.
+  name of it, i. 466.
+  important ends of a mixed government, i. 469.
+  folly of hazarding plans of government except from a seat
+    of authority, ii. 104.
+  government a practical thing, ii. 227; iii. 310.
+  character of a free one, ii. 227.
+  an eminent criterion of a wise one, what, ii. 278.
+  reform in it should be early and temperate, ii. 280.
+  without means of some change, is without the means of its
+    conservation, iii. 259.
+  difficulty of forming a free one, iii. 560.
+  the particular form of it to be determined by the circumstances
+    and habits of a country, iv. 109.
+  a theory concerning it may be as much a cause of fanaticism as
+    a dogma in religion, iv. 192.
+  the establishment of one a difficult undertaking for foreign
+    powers to act in as principals, iv. 410.
+  not subject to laws analogous to those or physical life, v. 124, 234.
+  restraint the great purpose of, v. 133, 189.
+  policy of, in times of scarcity, v. 156.
+  important problem concerning, v. 166.
+  perishes only through its own weakness, v. 169.
+  impossible where property does not rule, v. 377.
+  the great objects of, v. 466; vii. 72.
+  its duty and right to attend much to opinions, vii. 44.
+  stands on opinion, vii. 91.
+
+Grace, acts of, impolicy of them, ii. 386.
+
+Gracefulness, an idea belonging to posture and motion, i. 200.
+
+Granaries, public, danger in erecting them, v. 153.
+  fit only for a state too small for agriculture, v. 155.
+
+Grand Seignior, the, not an arbitrary monarch, ix. 464.
+
+Great personages, wisely provided that we should interest
+    ourselves in their fate, xi. 308.
+  everywhere made the objects of tragedy, xi. 308.
+
+Greece, its original inhabitants of the same race as the
+    people of Northern Europe, vii. 161.
+  situation of it from a remote period, vii. 161.
+
+Greek Church, character of its secular clergy, iv. 230.
+
+Green Cloth, Court of, its origin and composition, ii. 304.
+
+Grenville, Mr., character of him, ii. 37.
+
+Grenville, Lord, eulogy of him, v. 174.
+
+Grief, cause of, i. 108.
+
+Guienne, William, Duke of, engages in the Crusade, vii. 374.
+
+Guilt, gigantic, overpowers our ideas of justice, iv. 466.
+  expedients for concealing it, frequently the cause of its
+    detection, x. 49.
+  is never wise, x. 49; xi. 261.
+
+
+Habeas Corpus, remarks upon the suspension of it in respect
+    to Americans, ii. 190.
+
+Habit and use, not causes of pleasure, i. 180.
+
+Hale, Sir Matthew, Cromwell's declaration to him when he
+    appointed him judge, iv. 13.
+  defect in his History of the Common Law, vii. 476.
+  causes of it, vii. 476.
+
+Halhed's translation of the Gentoo code, remarks on it, xi. 207.
+
+Hallmote, or Court Baron, what, vii. 301.
+
+Hannay, Colonel, his character and conduct, xi. 418.
+
+Happiness, civil, what, x. 135.
+
+Hardwicke, Lord, his declaration as to the general rule of
+    evidence, xi. 77.
+
+Harrington, his opinion as to a commonwealth not governed
+    by its property, v. 377.
+
+Hastings, Mr., articles of charge against him presented to
+    the House of Commons, 1786, viii. 305-ix. 318.
+  appendix to the eighth and sixteenth charges, ix. 319.
+  speeches of Mr. Burke in his impeachment, ix. 327-x. 451;
+    xi. 155-xii. 398.
+  Report from the Committee appointed to inspect the Lords'
+    Journals, in relation to their proceedings on his trial, xi. 1.
+  his conduct in the treaty with the Mahrattas, ii. 454.
+  brief account of his treatment of the Nabob of Oude, ii. 467.
+  of the Begums of Oude, ii. 476.
+  of the Ranny of Benares, ii. 485.
+  his venal agreement for the extirpation of the Rohillas, viii. 308.
+  his fraudulent sale of the territories of the Mogul, viii. 322.
+  his designs against the Rajah of Benares, viii. 339.
+  orders the arrest of the Rajah, viii. 361.
+  instigates the plunder of his family by the soldiery, viii. 368.
+  usurps the government of Benares, viii. 380.
+  his oppressive impositions and exactions, viii. 381.
+  enforces the confiscation of the landed estates of the
+    Begums of Oude, viii. 403.
+  orders the seizure of their treasures, viii. 409.
+  severities practised upon their ministers in the execution of
+    those orders, viii. 414.
+  endeavors to stifle an inquiry into his proceedings, viii. 448.
+  corruptly abandons the Nabob of Furruckabad and his country
+    to the oppressions of the Nabob of Oude, viii. 472.
+  causes the destruction of the Rajah of Sahlone, viii. 486.
+  sets at defiance the orders of the Company with respect to
+    contracts, ix. 4.
+  and with respect to salaries, ix. 11.
+  his illegal and extravagant allowances to Sir Eyre Coote, ix. 12.
+  and to Brigadier-General Stibbert, ix. 13.
+  and to Sir John Day, ix. 15.
+  and for the civil establishment of Fort William, ix. 17.
+  his appointment of the Secretary of the Council as agent for
+    the supply of rice, with enormous commissions, ix. 19.
+  his corrupt receipt of presents in numerous instances, ix. 23.
+  tender and subsequent disavowal of his resignation, and
+    refusal to vacate office, ix. 42.
+  his illegal contract with the Surgeon-General, ix. 60.
+  his contracts for Poolbundy repairs, ix. 60.
+  his opium contracts, ix. 63.
+  his appointment of R.J. Sulivan to office, ix. 70.
+  his conduct with regard to the Ranna of Gohud, ix. 72.
+  his frequent, violent, and unauthorized changes in the
+    revenue and judicial systems of Bengal, ix. 79, 87.
+  permits his own banian to hold farms to a large amount in
+    different districts, in violation of his own regulations, ix. 83.
+  refuses relief to the distresses of the Nabob of Oude, ix. 98.
+  seeks to enforce unjust demands against the Nabob, ix. 98.
+  illegally assumes the delegation of the whole functions of the
+    Council, for the purpose of making a treaty with the Nabob, ix. 104.
+  in contravention of treaty stipulations, burdens the Nabob
+    with the continued maintenance of British troops, ix. 109, 112.
+  makes unjustifiable demands on, and receives unlawful presents
+    from the Nabob, ix. 110, 114.
+  on his own simple allegation of indefinite offences, urges the
+    Nabob to put to death Almas Ali Kh�n, ix. 154.
+  establishes a system of disreputable and ruinous interference
+    in the government of the Nabob, ix. 162.
+  attempts to abandon the British army to the sole discretion of
+    the Nabob, ix. 168.
+  arrests and continues in long imprisonment Mahomed Reza Kh�n,
+    without any proofs of guilt, ix. 185.
+  appoints Munny Begum to be guardian to the Nabob of Bengal,
+    and administratrix of the government, ix. 187.
+  seeks the aggrandizement of the Mahrattas, ix. 220, 228.
+  the Mogul delivered up to them through his instrumentality, ix. 221.
+  he libels and asperses the Court of Directors, ix. 228.
+  forces the Mahrattas into a war, by repeatedly invading
+    their country, ix. 253.
+  concludes a dishonorable treaty of peace and alliance with them, ix. 254.
+  withholds and conceals his official correspondence and
+    proceedings from the Directors and Council, ix. 267.
+  his conduct with regard to Fyzoola Kh�n, ix. 268.
+  his arbitrary principles of government, ix. 446; xi. 194.
+  his corrupt system of government, x. 5.
+  general farming of the lands at auction, in derogation of
+    the rights of proprietors, x. 15.
+  sale of offices, x. 21.
+  conduct in reference to the accusations of Nundcomar, x. 24, 205.
+  in the case of Munny Begum and the Nabob of Bengal,
+    x. 26, 193, 278; xii. 218, 245.
+  the receipt of bribes justified by an intention to apply
+    them to the Company's service, x. 43, 324.
+  account given of some of these transactions to the Directors, x. 44, 338.
+  delegation of the management of the revenues to a nominal
+    council, with Gunga Govind Sing as agent, x. 53.
+  appointment of Debi Sing to the charge of the province
+    of Dinagepore, x. 65.
+  the enormities of this man, mock inquiries into them, and
+    Mr. Hastings's responsibility in the premises, x. 77, 92, 186.
+  Mr. Hastings's measures justified by himself, as producing
+    an increase of revenue, x. 136.
+  remarks on the testimonials of the natives in his favor,
+    x. 154; xii. 356.
+  proofs of personal corruption, x. 161-295.
+  charged with peculation by General Clavering, x. 244.
+  opinions of counsel concerning his proposed prosecution
+    by the Directors, x. 257.
+  his connivance in the general corruption of the Service,
+    x. 296; xii. 294.
+  recriminatory charges against the House of Commons, xi. 166.
+  powers claimed by him, and the manner and results of their
+    exercise, xi. 195, 236, 238.
+  in the case of Cheyt Sing and the province of Benares, xi. 236.
+  of the Nabob of Oude, his kindred and country, xi. 372; xii. 3.
+  of the province of Bengal, xii. 208.
+  his extravagant and corrupt contracts, xii. 297.
+  his conduct in reference to various presents, xii. 324, 338, 350.
+  observations on the Mahometan college founded by him, xii. 352.
+  Lord Cornwallis's testimony to the disastrous effects of
+    his revenue system, xii. 359.
+  examination of the merits set up by him, xii. 370.
+
+Hawles, Sir John, extracts from his speech at the trial of
+    Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 126, 135.
+
+Height, less grand than depth, i. 147.
+
+Helvetii, remarkable emigration of them related by C�sar, vii. 172.
+
+Henry I. of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 375.
+
+Henry II. of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 394.
+
+Henry IV. of England, severs the Duchy and County Palatine of
+    Lancaster from the crown, ii. 296.
+
+Henry IV. of France, brief character of him, iii. 411.
+
+Hii, or Columbkill, brief account of it, vii. 249.
+
+Hindoo institutions, characteristics of, ix. 382.
+
+Hindoo polity, destroyed by Mr. Hastings, ix. 394.
+
+Hindostan, eras in its history, ix. 386.
+
+History, moral lessons to be drawn from it, iii. 418, 421.
+  caution with regard to the study of it, iv. 468.
+
+Hobbes, his view of war as the state of Nature, i. 15.
+
+Holland, Sir John, extracts from his speech at the trial of
+    Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 146.
+
+Holy Land, view of its condition at the commencement of the
+    third Crusade, vii. 426.
+
+Homer, his similitudes seldom exact, i. 88.
+  a simile from the Iliad, i. 105.
+  his representation of Discord, obscure and magnificent, i. 138.
+  no instance in the Iliad of the fall of any man remarkable
+    for stature and strength that touches us with pity, i. 243.
+  has given to the Trojans more of the amiable and social virtues
+    than to the Greeks, i. 243.
+  would excite pity for the Trojans, admiration for the Greeks, i. 243.
+  his masterly representation of the grief of Priam over the
+    body of Hector, iv. 95.
+  observation on his representation of the ghosts of heroes at
+    the sacrifices of Ulysses, vii. 181.
+  his works introduced into England by Theodorus, Archbishop of
+    Canterbury, vii. 249.
+
+Honest men, no safety for them but by believing all possible
+    evil of evil men, iv. 7.
+
+Horace, the truth of an observation in his Art of Poetry,
+    discussed, i. 134.
+  a passage from him of similar import to one from David, i. 143.
+
+Household, the royal, has strong traces of feudality, ii. 303.
+
+Howard, the philanthropist, his labors, ii. 387.
+
+Hudibras, humorous lines from, applicable to the modern Whigs, iv. 150.
+
+Hume, Mr., his account of the secret of Rousseau's principles
+    of composition, iii. 459.
+  his remark on the doctrines of John Ball, iv. 355.
+
+Humility, the basis of the Christian system, iv. 26.
+  humanity cannot be degraded by it, v. 253.
+
+Husbandry, classification of laborers in, v. 144.
+
+Hyder Ali Kh�n, scheme of the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot
+    to extirpate him, iii. 61.
+  dreadful devastation of the Carnatic by him, iii. 83.
+
+Hyp�thra of the Greeks, what, vii. 187.
+
+
+Imagination, what, i. 86.
+  no bounds to men's passions when they are under its influence, iv. 192.
+
+Imitation, one of the passions belonging to society, i. 122.
+  its source and use, i. 122.
+
+Impeachment, the great guardian of the purity of the constitution, i. 495.
+
+Impey, Sir Elijah, (Chief Justice of Bengal,) accused of the
+    official murder of Nundcomar, x. 218.
+  resolution of the House of Commons concerning this accusation, x. 311.
+  serves as bearer of Mr. Hastings's order to seize the
+    treasures of the Begums of Oude, xii. 32.
+  acts as commissioner to seek affidavits against the Begums, xii. 82.
+
+Indecision, the natural accomplice of violence, iv. 190.
+
+Indemnification, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.
+
+Indemnity and oblivion, acts of, their probable effects as
+    means of reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.
+
+Independence of mind, always more or less influenced by
+    independence of fortune, vii. 78.
+
+India, the people of, classification of them, ix. 376; xi. 207.
+
+Indians, British alliances with them in the American war denounced,
+    vi. 171.
+
+Indifference, pleasure, and pain, viewed in relation to each
+    other, as states of the mind, i. 103.
+
+Indolence, the prevailing characteristic of the class of
+    elegant, weak-minded people, vii. 147.
+
+Industry, effect of the Irish Popery laws in discouraging it,
+    vi. 351.
+
+Infinite, the artificial, consists in succession and uniformity
+    of parts, i. 149, 220.
+
+Infinity, a source of the sublime, i. 148.
+  in agreeable images, a cause of pleasure, i. 153.
+
+Influence of the crown, operation of it, i. 444.
+
+Inheritance, value of this principle in the British constitution, iii. 274.
+
+Injury is quick and rapid, justice slow, x. 151; xi. 181.
+
+Innocence, contrasted with guilt, ix. 371.
+
+Insolvency, who ought to suffer in a case of, iii. 381.
+
+Institutions, ancient juridical ones in England, intended to
+    retard the headlong course of violence and oppression, ii. 193.
+  in political institutions, soundness of the materials of
+    more importance than the fashion of the work, v. 120.
+  how, when revolutionized, to be re�stablished, v. 126.
+  benefits of institution, properly conditional, vii. 15.
+
+Interest of a debt, not the principal, distresses a nation, i. 329.
+
+Intolerance, mischief of it, vii. 34.
+
+Ireland, danger of a proposed tax upon, i. 352.
+  early transmission thither of English liberties and institutions,
+    ii. 146.
+  Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol relative to the Trade of Ireland,
+    ii. 247.
+  Mr. Burke's defence of his Parliamentary conduct with regard to it,
+    ii. 377.
+  the plan for the government of Ireland until 1782, what, iv. 233.
+  the true revolution there, that of 1782, iv. 276.
+  state of religion there before the grant of Pope Adrian IV., vi. 342.
+  object of the grant, vi. 342.
+  mutual importance of Ireland and Great Britain to one another, vi. 420.
+  reduction of Ireland by Henry II., vii. 410.
+  nature and previous condition of the country, vii. 410.
+  motives which led Adrian to commission Henry to reduce it, vii. 410, 413.
+  the English laws said to have been established there at its
+    subjugation by John, vii. 449.
+
+Irish language, names of the letters of it taken from the names
+    of several species of trees, vii. 412.
+
+Isocrates, observation of his in one of his orations against
+    the Sophists, i. 5.
+
+Italy, its original inhabitants of the same race as the people
+    of Northern Europe, vii. 161.
+  its situation from a remote period, vii. 161.
+
+
+Jacobinism by establishment, what, v. 309.
+
+Jacobins, their character, iv. 437, v. 285, vi. 367.
+  their great object, v. 39.
+
+Jacquerie, brief notice of the, iv. 177.
+
+Jaffier Ali Kh�n, made Nabob of Bengal by the English, ix. 401.
+
+Jaghires, Indian, nature of them, xii. 9.
+
+Jekyl, Sir Joseph, his character, iv. 130.
+  extracts from his speech at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell,
+    iv. 130, 131, 132, 136, 137, 142, 143.
+
+Jews, a source of great revenue to William the Conqueror, vii. 351.
+
+Job, observations on its sublime representation of a vision
+    in the night, i. 137.
+  its sublime descriptions of the war-horse, the wild ass,
+    and the unicorn and leviathan, i. 140.
+
+John, King of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 437.
+
+Judge, duty of one, xi. 104.
+
+Judges, ought to be the very last to feel the necessities
+    of the state, ii. 351.
+
+Judgment and wit, difference between them, i. 87.
+  the senses should be put under the tuition of the judgment, iii. 15.
+  a coarse discrimination the greatest enemy to accuracy of
+    judgment, v. 143.
+
+Juridical and legislative acts, difference between them, vii. 63.
+
+Juries, an institution of gradual formation, vii. 115.
+  not attributable to Alfred, vii. 264.
+  never prevalent amongst the Saxons, vii. 264.
+
+Jurisprudence, nature and importance of the science, iii. 357.
+  abrogation of it in France at the Revolution, v. 307.
+  state of the study of it in England, vii. 476.
+  whole frame of it altered since the Conquest, vii. 478.
+
+Justice is slow, injury quick and rapid, x. 151; xi. 181.
+  general observations on it, xii. 393, 395.
+
+
+Keppel, Lord, character of him, v. 222.
+
+Kilkenny, Statutes of, prove the ancient existence in Ireland
+    of the spirit of the Popery laws, iv. 273.
+
+King, the things in which he has an individual interest, i. 485.
+  nature of his office, iii. 497.
+  just powers of the king of France, iv. 49.
+  power of the king of England, iv. 50.
+  Address to the, in relation to the Measures of Government in
+    the American Contest, vi. 161.
+
+Kings, naturally lovers of low company, ii. 337.
+  in what sense the servants of the people, iii. 269.
+
+King's Men, or King's Friends, character of the court corporation
+    so called, i. 466.
+
+Knight-errantry, origin of it, vii. 390.
+
+
+Labor, necessary, why, i. 215.
+  human labor called by the ancients _instrumentum vocale_, v. 140.
+  that on which the farmer is most to rely for the repayment
+    of his capital, v. 140.
+
+Laborer and employer, always an implied contract between them, v. 137.
+  the first and fundamental interest of the laborer, what, v. 140.
+
+Laboring poor, impropriety of the expression, v. 135, 466.
+
+Lacedemonians, at the head of the aristocratic interests of Greece,
+    iv. 321.
+
+La Fontaine, has not one original story, vii. 145.
+
+Lancaster, Duchy and County Palatine of, severed from the crown
+    by Henry IV., ii. 296.
+
+Landed estate of the crown, remarks on it, ii. 299.
+
+Landed Interest, policy of the French Republic with regard to it, iv. 323.
+
+Landed property, the firm basis of every stable government, v. 491.
+
+Lanfranc, character of him, vii. 363.
+
+Langton, Stephen, his appointment to the see of Canterbury
+    through the influence of the Pope, vii. 447, 451.
+  oath administered by him to King John on his absolution, vii. 455.
+
+Law's Mississippi scheme, character of it, iii. 554.
+
+Law of neighborhood, what, v. 321.
+
+Law, remarks on the study of it, ii. 125.
+
+Laws, reach but a very little way, i. 470.
+  their severity tempered by trial by jury, i. 499.
+  superseded by occasions of public necessity, ii. 329.
+  bad ones the worst sort of tyranny, ii. 395.
+  laws and manners, a knowledge of what belongs to each the duty
+    of a statesman, v. 167.
+  civil laws not all merely positive, v. 321.
+  two things requisite to the solid establishment of them, vi. 321.
+  equity and utility, the two foundations of them, vi. 323.
+  ought to be in unison with manners, vii. 27.
+  of England, Essay towards an History of the, vii. 475.
+  of England, written in the native language until the Norman
+    Conquest, vii. 481.
+  of other Northern nations, written in Latin, vii. 481.
+  cause of this difference, vii. 481.
+  of Canute the Great, remarks on them, vii. 483.
+  of Edward the Confessor, so called, vii. 484.
+  ancient Saxon, review of their sanctions, vii. 484.
+  sources of them, vii. 487.
+  Gentoo, sources of them, ix. 482.
+  Mahometan, sources of them, ix. 480; xi. 216.
+
+Lawful enjoyment, the surest method to prevent unlawful
+    gratification, iv. 256.
+
+Lawsuit, observations on that comedy, vii. 152.
+
+Learning, an attention to it necessary to Christianity, vii. 246.
+  contributed, in the early ages, to the temporal power of the
+    clergy, vii. 399.
+
+Lechmere, Mr., extracts from his speeches at the trial of
+    Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 122, 124, 142.
+
+Legislation, important problem in, v. 166.
+
+Legislative and juridical acts, the difference between them, vii. 63.
+
+Legislative right, not to be exercised without regard to the
+    general opinion of those who are to be governed, ii. 224.
+
+Legislators, bound only by the great principles of reason and
+    equity, and the general sense of mankind, ii. 196.
+  character of a true legislator, ii. 456.
+  duties of legislators, v. 166; vi. 319.
+  the mode of proceeding of the ancient legislators, iii. 476.
+
+Legislature, the true end of it, what, ii. 225; iii. 457.
+  its power of regulating the succession to the crown, iv. 134.
+
+Leland, Dr., his book (View of Deistical Writers) the best on
+    the subject, vii. 34.
+
+Length, too great, in buildings, prejudicial to grandeur of effect, i. 152.
+
+Letter of Mr. Burke to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on American
+    Affairs, ii. 187.
+  to Gentlemen of Bristol, on the Trade of Ireland, ii. 249, 258.
+  to a Member of the National Assembly, on French Affairs, iv. 1.
+  to a Peer of Ireland, on the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics, iv. 217.
+  to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Roman Catholics of Ireland,
+    iv. 241; vi. 375.
+  to William Elliot, Esq., on a Speech in the House of Lords,
+    in the Debate concerning Lord Fitzwilliam, v. 107.
+  to a Noble Lord, on the Attacks upon himself and his Pension, v. 171.
+  on a Regicide Peace, v. 233, 342, 384; vi. 1.
+  to the Empress of Russia, vi. 113.
+  to Sir Charles Bingham, on the Irish Absentee Tax, vi. 121.
+  to Hon. Charles James Fox, on the American War, vi. 135.
+  to the Marquis of Rockingham, on the Plans of the Opposition
+    in reference to the American War, vi. 151.
+  to Rt. Hon. Edmund S. Pery, on the Relief of the Roman
+    Catholics of Ireland, vi. 197.
+  to Thomas Burgh, Esq., in Vindication of his Parliamentary
+    Conduct relative to Ireland, vi. 209.
+  to John Merlott, Esq., on the same subject, vi. 235.
+  to the Lord Chancellor and others, with Thoughts on the
+    Executions of the Rioters in 1780, vi. 239.
+  to Rt. Hon. Henry Dundas, with the Sketch of a Negro Code, vi. 255.
+  to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting, on
+    Parliamentary Reform, vi. 291.
+  to William Smith, Esq., on Catholic Emancipation, vi. 361.
+  to Richard Burke, Esq., on Protestant Ascendency in Ireland, vi. 385.
+  on the Affairs of Ireland in 1797, vi. 413.
+  on Mr. Dowdeswell's Bill for explaining the Powers of Juries
+    in Prosecutions for Libels, vii. 123.
+
+Libel, the elements of a, vii. 113.
+
+Libelling, not the crime of an illiterate people, vii. 111.
+
+Liberty and commerce, the two main sources of power to Great Britain,
+    ii. 87.
+  mistakes about liberty, ii. 228.
+  cannot long exist among a people generally corrupt, ii. 242.
+  necessity of regulating it, iii. 240, 559,
+  how far men are qualified for it, iv. 51.
+  the distinguishing part of the British constitution, iv. 97.
+  its preservation the peculiar duty of the House of Commons, iv. 97.
+  order and virtue necessary to its existence, iv. 97.
+  a constitution uniting public and private liberty with the elements of
+    a beneficent and stable government, an elaborate contrivance, iv. 211.
+  partial freedom and true liberty contrasted, vi. 389.
+  review of the causes of the revolution in favor of liberty in
+    the reign of King John, vii. 472.
+
+Light, how a cause of the sublime, i. 156.
+  when excessive, resembles darkness in its effects, i. 157.
+  light and riant colors opposed to the sublime, i. 159.
+
+Limerick, treaty of, observations on two of its articles, vi. 345.
+
+Lindisfarne, brief account of, vii. 250.
+
+Liturgy of the Established Church, alteration of it ineffectual
+    for the quieting of discontent, vii. 13.
+
+Locke, Mr., his opinion concerning pleasure and pain, i. 105.
+  his opinion concerning darkness, i. 225.
+
+Longinus, an observation of his on the effect of sublime
+    passages in poets and orators, i. 124.
+
+Lords, House of, affected alarm at a supposed intrenchment by it on
+    the balance of the constitution, in the reign of George II., i. 457.
+  the feeblest part of the constitution, v. 49.
+
+Loudness, a source of the sublime, i. 159.
+
+Louis XIII., his hatred of Richelieu, iii. 499.
+
+Louis XIV., his dislike to Mazarin and Louvois, iii. 499.
+  his conduct at the peace of Ryswick, vi. 58.
+  reason given by him for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, vi. 328.
+
+Louis XVI., barbarous treatment experienced by him at the Revolution,
+    iii. 325; iv. 19.
+  unjustly called an arbitrary monarch, iii. 339.
+  degraded office to which he was appointed by the Revolutionists,
+    iii. 496; iv. 20.
+  not the first cause of the evil by which he suffered, v. 366.
+  his character, v. 378.
+  character of his brothers, iv. 429.
+
+Love, its origin, nature, and objects, i. 125.
+  the physical cause of it, i. 232.
+  nature of that taught by Rousseau, iv. 30.
+  observations on the love of parents to their children, xi. 422.
+  and on the love of country, xi. 422; iii. 292, 494.
+
+Lucretius, passages from him, illustrative of the sublime, i. 144, 257.
+
+Luxury, some good consequences of it, i. 424.
+  a tax on it, the only contribution that can be termed voluntary, v. 461.
+
+
+Machiavel, an observation of his on war and peace, i. 15.
+  his maxim concerning wickedness by halves, vi. 43.
+
+Madmen, a frequent appearance in them accounted for, i. 149.
+
+Magna Charta, observations on it, iii. 272; iv. 266.
+  origin and nature of it, vii. 460.
+
+Magnanimity, in politics, often the truest wisdom, ii. 181.
+
+Magnificence, a source of the sublime, i. 154.
+
+Magnitude, in building, necessary to the sublime, i. 152.
+
+Mahomed Reza Kh�n, arrested by Mr. Hastings, x. 184.
+
+Mahometanism, its conquests in Hindostan, ix. 387.
+
+Mahometan government, character of it, ix. 463.
+  laws, sources of them, ix. 480; xi. 216.
+
+Mahrattas, their territories invaded by the East India Company, ii. 453.
+  treaties with them, ii. 453, 454.
+
+Majority, in a commonwealth, question as to the proper power of,
+    iii. 299; iv. 170.
+  not true that in all contests the decision will be in their favor,
+    vii. 53.
+
+Malesherbes, murdered by the French Revolutionists, vi. 40.
+
+Malvoisins, what, vii. 389.
+
+Man, a creature of habit and opinions, ii. 234; xii. 164.
+
+Manifestoes, implying superiority over an enemy, when commonly made,
+    iv. 405.
+  matters usually contained in them, iv. 405.
+
+Manilla ransom, remarks on it, i. 407.
+
+Manners, while they remain entire, correct the vices of law, ii. 202.
+  corrupted by civil wars, ii. 203.
+  maintained in Europe for ages by the spirit of nobility and of
+    religion, iii. 335.
+  in England, derived from France, iii. 336.
+  have done alone in England what institutions and manners
+    together have done in France, iv. 327.
+  statesmen ought to know what appertains respectively to manners
+    and laws, v. 167.
+  of more importance than laws, v. 310.
+  laws ought to be in unison with them, vii. 27.
+
+Mansfield, Lord, his declarations concerning rules of evidence, xi. 84.
+
+Mara, the name of a Saxon goddess,--whence the term Night-Mare, vii. 237.
+
+Marriage, beneficial results of the Christian doctrine concerning it,
+    v. 312.
+  endeavors of the French Constituent Assembly to desecrate it, v. 312.
+  ends for which it was instituted, vii. 131.
+  restraints upon it in the reign of King John, vii. 464.
+
+Marriage Act, principles upon which it is grounded, vii. 131.
+
+Mathematical and metaphysical reasoning, compared with moral, vii. 73.
+
+Mazarin, Cardinal, not loved by Louis XIV., iii. 499.
+  bon-mot of a flatterer of his, on the match between Louis XIV.
+    and a daughter of Spain, vi. 20.
+
+Mediterranean Sea, importance to England of keeping a strong
+    naval force there, v. 421.
+
+Memorial to be delivered to Monsieur de M.M., Hints for a, iv. 307.
+
+Merchants, English, their evidence, petitions, and consultations
+    respecting America, i. 399, 405, 406.
+  principles and qualities of, ii. 506.
+
+Mercy, not opposed to justice, iv. 465; vi. 252.
+  consists not in the weakness of the means, but in the benignity
+    of the ends, vi. 168.
+
+Metaphysician, nothing harder than the heart of a thorough-bred one,
+    v. 216.
+
+Migration, in early times, caused by pasturage and hunting, vii. 171.
+  and by wars, vii. 171.
+
+Military life, its attractions to those who have had experience of it,
+    v. 464.
+
+Military and naval officers, the fortitude required of them, v. 468.
+
+Militia, probable origin of it, vii. 422.
+
+Milton, his admirable description of Death, i. 132.
+  his celebrated portrait of Satan, i. 135.
+  his description of the appearance of the Deity, i. 156.
+  example from him of the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.
+  of the power of words, i. 259.
+
+Ministers, Prussian, infected with the principles of the
+    French Revolution, iv. 359.
+  British, to be controlled by the House of Commons, v. 57.
+  observations on their duty in giving information to the public, vi. 14.
+
+Minority, Observations on the Conduct of the, in Parliament,
+    in the Session of 1792, v. 1.
+  power of a restless one, v. 285.
+
+Mistletoe, veneration of the Druids for it, vii. 183.
+
+Modes of life, injustice of sudden legislative violence to suc
+     as the laws had previously encouraged, iii. 439.
+
+Modesty, heightens all other virtues, i. 188; v. 128.
+  but sometimes their worst enemy, v. 129.
+
+Mogul, the Great, his grants to the East India Company, ii. 560; ix. 345.
+  sold by the Company, ii. 448.
+  the Company's treaties with him broken by them, ii. 452.
+  conspiracy to murder his son, ix. 412.
+
+Mohun, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 32.
+
+Mona, the principal residence of the Druids in the beginning of
+    Nero's reign, vii. 195.
+  reduced by Suetonius Paulinus, vii. 196.
+
+Monarchy, preferred by Bolingbroke to other governments, iii. 398.
+  one of its advantages, to have no local seat, iv. 431.
+
+Monastic institutions, their important uses, iii. 440; vii. 244, 245.
+
+Money, the value of it how to be judged, v. 454.
+
+Moneyed companies, dangerous to tax great ones, i. 368.
+
+Moneyed interest, when dangerous to a government, iii. 437.
+
+Moneyed men, ought to be allowed to set a value on their money, v. 455.
+
+Monk, General, character of the army commanded by him, iv. 36.
+
+Monopoly of authority, an evil; of capital, a benefit, v. 151.
+
+Montesquieu, his remark on the legislators of antiquity, iii. 477.
+  character of him, iv. 211.
+  his false view of the people of India, xi. 207.
+
+Moral duties, not necessary that the reasons of them should be made
+    clear to all, i. 7.
+
+Moral order of things, great disasters in it affect the mind like
+    miracles in the physical, iii. 337.
+
+Moral questions never abstract ones, vii. 55.
+
+Moral reasoning, compared with mathematical and metaphysical, vii. 73.
+
+Mortality, a general one always a time of remarkable wickedness, vii. 84.
+
+Multitudes, the shouting of, a source of the sublime, i. 159.
+  a multitude told by the head, not the people, iv. 183.
+
+Munny Begum, (of Bengal,) her history, x. 195; xii. 226.
+  appointed by Mr. Hastings regent of Bengal, and guardian of the
+    Nabob, x. 196; xii. 218.
+  (of Oude,) her noble birth, rank, and connections, xii. 46.
+
+Music, remark concerning the beautiful in it, i. 204.
+
+Mystery, in any matter of policy, affords presumption of fraud, xii. 79.
+
+
+Nabob of Arcot, the Subah of the Deccan sold to him by the
+    East India Company, ii. 450.
+  nature of his debts, iii. 25, 28, 29, 35, 39, 47.
+
+Nabob of Oude, conduct of the East India Company towards him, ii. 466.
+
+Nantes, Edict of, reason assigned by Louis XIV. for the revocation
+    of it, vi. 328.
+  observations thereon, vi. 328.
+
+Naples, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France, iv. 337.
+
+Nation, Present State of the, Observations on a late Publication
+    so intituled, i. 269.
+  character of this publication, i. 274.
+  state of the nation in 1770, i. 437.
+  speculation of the ministry on the cause of it, i. 438.
+  animadversions on their views, i. 439.
+
+National Assembly of France, corresponds with the Revolution
+    Society of London, iii. 237.
+  its composition and character, iii. 283, 450.
+  studies recommended by it to the youth of France, iv. 25.
+  its worship of Rousseau, iv. 25.
+
+Natural powers in man, the senses, the imagination, and the judgment,
+    i. 82.
+
+Nature, state of, inconveniences of it, i. 10.
+  the social, impels a man to propagate his principles, v. 361.
+
+Navigation, Act of, its policy, i. 378; ii. 30, 38.
+
+Navy, the great danger of economical experiments upon it, i. 345.
+
+Necessity, the plea of, remarks on it, v. 450.
+
+Negro Code, Sketch of a, vi. 262.
+
+Negro slaves, denunciation of attempts to excite insurrections among them
+    in the colonies by proclamations of the English governors, vi. 171.
+
+Neighborhood, the law of, what, v. 321.
+
+Newfoundland, view of the trade with it, i. 320.
+
+Newspapers, powerful influence of them in the diffusion of French
+    principles, iv. 327.
+
+Night, a cause of the sublime, i. 132, 158.
+
+Norman conquest, extraordinary facility of it, vii. 287.
+  attempt to account for it, vii. 288.
+  the great era of the English laws, vii. 487.
+
+Normandy, reunion of it to the crown of France, vii. 445.
+
+North, Lord, observations on his character, v. 182; vi. 216, 223.
+
+Novelty, the first and simplest source of pleasure to the mind, i. 101.
+  the danger of indulging a desire for it in practical cases, iv. 76.
+
+Nundcomar, accuses Mr. Hastings of corruption, x. 24.
+
+Nuzzer, or Nuzzerana, what, x. 171.
+
+
+Oak, the, why venerated by the Druids, vii. 183.
+
+Oath, the Coronation, observations upon it in reference to the
+    Roman Catholics, iv. 260.
+
+Obscurity, generally necessary to the terrible, i. 132.
+  why more affecting than clearness, i. 135.
+
+Obstinacy, though a great and very mischievous vice, closely
+    allied to the masculine virtues, ii. 66.
+
+Office, men too much conversant in it rarely have enlarged minds, ii. 38.
+  in feudal times, the lowest offices often held by considerable persons,
+    ii. 303.
+  the reason of this, ii. 304.
+
+Officers, military and naval, nature of the fortitude required
+    of them, v. 468.
+
+Opinion, popular, the support of government, ii. 224; vi. 165; vii. 91.
+  an equivocal test of merit, v. 183.
+  the generality of it not always to be judged of by the noise of the
+    acclamation, v. 286.
+
+Opinions, men impelled to propagate their own by their social nature,
+    v. 361.
+  their influence on the affections and passions, v. 403; vii. 44.
+  the most decided often stated in the form of questions, vi. 28.
+  the interest and duty of government to attend much to them, vii. 44.
+
+Oppression, the poorest and most illiterate are judges of it, iv. 281.
+
+Orange, Prince of, (afterwards William III.,) extracts from his
+    Declaration, iv. 147.
+
+Ordeal, purgation by, vii. 314.
+
+Oude, extent and government of, under Sujah ul Dowlah, xi. 373.
+
+
+Pain, pleasure, and indifference, their mutual relation as states
+    of the mind, i. 103.
+  nature and cause of pain, i. 210.
+  how a cause of delight, i. 215.
+
+Paine, Thomas, remarks on his character, v. iii; vi. 60.
+
+Painting and poetry, their power, when due to imitation, and when
+    to sympathy, i. 123.
+
+Pandulph, the Pope's legate, his politic dealing with King John, vii. 451.
+  parallel between his conduct to King John and that of the
+    Roman consuls to the Carthaginians in the last Punic war, vii. 453.
+
+Papal power, uniform steadiness of it in the pursuit of its
+    ambitious projects, vii. 449.
+
+Papal pretensions, sources of their growth and support, vii. 384.
+
+Papal States, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France,
+    iv. 337.
+
+Parliament, remarks on it, i. 491.
+  the power of dissolving it, the most critical and delicate
+    of all the trusts vested in the crown, ii. 553.
+  disadvantages of triennial parliaments, vii. 79.
+
+Parliaments of France, character of them, iii. 505.
+
+Parliament of Paris, observations on its subversion, xii. 396.
+
+Parliamentary disorders, ideas for the cure of them, i. 516.
+
+Parsimony, a leaning towards it in war may be the worst management, i. 310.
+
+Party divisions, inseparable from free government, i. 271.
+  definition of the term, party, i. 530.
+  evils of party domination, vi. 390.
+
+Passions, all concern either self-preservation or society, i. 110.
+  final cause of the difference between those belonging to
+    self-preservation and those which regard the society of the sexes,
+    i. 113.
+  those which belong to self-preservation turn upon pain and danger,
+    i. 125.
+  nature and objects of those belonging to society, i. 125.
+  a control over them necessary to the existence of society, iv. 52.
+  strong ones awaken the faculties, v. 287.
+  vehement passion not always indicative of an infirm judgment, v. 407.
+  mere general truths interfere very little with them, vi. 326.
+  passions which interest men in the characters of others, vii. 148.
+
+Pasturage and hunting, weaken men's ties to any particular
+    habitation, vii. 171.
+
+Paulus, observation of his on law, vi. 324.
+
+Peace, requisites of a good one, i. 295.
+  the steps taken to bring one about always an augury of what
+    it is likely to be, v. 251.
+  a ground of peace never laid until it is as good as concluded, v. 260.
+  an arrangement of peace in its nature a permanent settlement, v. 349.
+
+Penal statute of William III. against the Papists, repeal of it, ii. 391.
+
+People, accurate idea of the term, iv. 169.
+  evils of an abuse of it, iv. 411.
+  the temper of the people the first study of a statesman, i. 436.
+  in seasons of popular discontent, something generally amiss
+    in the government, i. 440.
+  the people have no interest in disorder, i. 441.
+  generally fifty years behindhand in their politics, i. 442.
+  a connection with their interests a necessary qualification
+    of a minister, i. 474.
+  sense of the people, how to be ascertained by the king, i. 475.
+  should show themselves able to protect every representative
+    in the performance of his duty, i. 503.
+  liberty cannot long exist where they are generally corrupt, ii. 242.
+  the people of England love a mitigated monarchy more than
+    even the best republic, iv. 149.
+  danger of teaching them to think lightly of their engagements
+    to their governors, iv. 162.
+  the natural control on authority, iv. 164.
+  dangerous nature of a power capable of resisting even their
+    erroneous choice of an object, vi. 296.
+  points on which they are incompetent to give advice to their
+    representatives, vii. 74, 75.
+
+Perfection not the cause of beauty, i. 187.
+
+Persecution, religious, an observation of Mr. Bayle concerning it, vi. 333.
+  general observations on it, vi. 394.
+
+Persecutor, a violent one, frequently an unbeliever in his own creed,
+    vi. 86.
+
+Peshcush, what, x. 171.
+
+Peters, Hugh, remarks on a passage in a sermon of his, iii. 318.
+
+Petition of Right, rests the franchises of the subject not on
+    abstract right, but on inheritance, iii. 273.
+
+Philosophical inquiries, how to be conducted, i. 70.
+  use of them, i. 72.
+
+Philosophy, Lord Bolingbroke's, animadversions on it, i. 4.
+
+Physic, the profession of it, in ancient times, annexed to
+    the priesthood, vii. 183.
+
+Physiognomy, has a considerable share in the beauty of the
+    human species, i. 198.
+
+Pilgrimages of the Middle Ages, benefits of them, vii. 247.
+
+Pitt, Mr., remarks on his conduct in 1784, v. 57.
+  his Declaration on the war with the French Republic, v. 278; vi. 21.
+  eulogy of it, v. 279, 390; vi. 22.
+  and of his speech on that war, v. 390.
+
+Place Bill, proposed remedy for parliamentary disorders, i. 518.
+
+Plagues, in Athens and in London, wickedness remarkably prevalent
+    during their continuance, vii. 84.
+
+Pleasure and pain, observations on them, i. 102.
+  pleasure, pain, and indifference, their mutual relation,
+    as states of the mind, i. 103.
+
+Poetry, more powerful than painting in moving the passions, i. 134.
+  does not depend for its effect on raising ideas or sensible
+    images of things, i. 246, 255.
+  this exemplified, i. 252.
+  affects rather by sympathy than imitation, i. 257.
+  dramatic poetry strictly imitation, i. 257.
+  descriptive poetry operates chiefly by substitution, i. 257.
+
+Poland, character of the revolution there, iv. 195.
+  contrasted with the revolution in France, iv. 198.
+
+Policy, a refined one, the parent of confusion, ii. 106.
+  inseparable from justice, iii. 438.
+
+Political connection, how regarded by the ancient Romans, i. 528.
+  England governed by one in the reign of Queen Anne, i. 529.
+  general observations on, i. 530.
+
+Political economy, had its origin in England, v. 192.
+
+Political system, an unwise or mischievous one not necessarily
+    of short duration, iv. 353.
+
+Politician, duties of one, iii. 557, 559.
+
+Politics, ought to be adjusted to, human nature, i. 398.
+  different in different ages, i. 442.
+  unsuitable to the pulpit, iii. 246.
+
+Polybius, anecdote concerning him, iv. 285.
+
+Poor, the laboring, their poverty owing to their numbers, v. 134.
+  proper compassion for them, v. 135, 466.
+
+Poorunder, treaty of, broken by Mr. Hastings, xii. 382.
+
+Pope, the, his dispute with Henry I., vii. 384.
+  his pretext for giving Henry II. a commission to conquer
+    Ireland, vii. 413.
+  his excommunication of King John, vii. 449.
+  treatment of him by the French Revolutionists, v. 418.
+
+Popery Laws, Tract on the, vi. 299.
+
+Popular election, a mighty evil, vii. 72.
+
+Popular opinion, an equivocal test of merit, v. 183.
+
+Population, rapid increase of it in America, ii. 110.
+  state of it, a standard by which, to estimate the effects
+    of a government on any country, iii. 400.
+  view of that of France, at different periods, iii. 400.
+  comparative effects of peace and war on it, as regards the
+    higher classes, v. 472.
+
+Power, all sublimity some modification of it, i. 138.
+  incompatible with credit, i. 368.
+  the civil power, when it calls in the aid of the military,
+    perishes by the assistance it receives, i. 484.
+  arbitrary power steals upon a people by being rarely exercised, ii. 201.
+  persons possessed of power ought to have a strong sense of
+    religion, iii. 354.
+  the ability to use it for the great and lasting benefit of
+    a country a test of statesmanship, iii. 441.
+  not willingly abandoned by its possessors, iv. 11.
+  dissensions in the commonwealth mostly concerning the hands
+    in which it is to be placed, iv. 163.
+  necessity of teaching men to restrain the immoderate exercise
+    and inordinate desire of it, iv. 163.
+  active power never willingly placed by legislators in the hands
+    of the multitude, iv. 164.
+  danger of a resumption of delegated power by the people, iv. 168.
+  does not always accompany property, iv. 349.
+  the possession of it discovers a man's true character, v. 362.
+  men will incur the greatest risks for the sake of it, vii. 82.
+  originates from God alone, ix. 456.
+  the supreme power in every constitution must be absolute, ix. 460.
+  ends to which a superintending, controlling power ought to
+    be directed, xi. 417.
+
+Prejudice, cannot be created, vi. 368.
+
+Prerogative, remarks on the exercise of it, ii. 225.
+
+Presbyterianism, remarks on it, iv. 452.
+
+Prescription, part of the law of Nature, iii. 433.
+  the most solid of all titles, and the most recognized in
+    jurisprudence, vi. 412; vii. 94.
+
+Present State of Affairs, Heads for Consideration on the, iv. 379.
+
+Price, Dr. Richard, observations on his sermon on the Love of
+    our Country, iii. 244, 301, 304, 316.
+
+Price of commodities, how raised, v. 142.
+  danger of attempting to raise it by authority, v. 143.
+
+Primogeniture, right of, operation of the Popery Laws in taking
+    it away, vi. 302.
+
+Principal of a debt, cannot distress a nation, i. 329.
+
+Principalities, the, proposal to unite them to the crown, ii. 298.
+
+Privations, all general ones great, i. 146.
+
+Profit, an honorable and fair one, the best security against
+    avarice and rapacity, ii. 335.
+
+Projects, new, requirements of men of sense with respect to them, i. 367.
+
+Property, ought greatly to predominate over ability in the
+    representation, iii. 298.
+  importance of the power of perpetuating it in families, iii. 298.
+  not always accompanied with power, iv. 349.
+
+Proportion, what, i. 166.
+  not the cause of beauty in vegetables, i. 166.
+  nor in animals, i. 170.
+  nor in the human species, i. 172.
+  whence the idea of proportion, as the principal component
+    of beauty, arose, i. 178.
+
+Prosperity, discovers the real character of a man, iv. 22.
+  a prejudice in favor of it, however obtained, iv. 425.
+
+Protestant, the state so declared at the Revolution, with a
+    qualification, iv. 257.
+
+Protestant ascendency, observations on, vi. 391.
+
+Protestant Association, the, animadversions on it, ii. 389, 415.
+
+Protestantism, at no period established, undefined, in England, iv. 258.
+
+Protestants, errors of the early, ii. 390.
+  misconduct of those in the South of France at the Revolution, iv. 452.
+
+Provisions, trade of, danger of tampering with it, v. 133.
+
+Prudence, the first in rank of the political and moral virtues, iv. 81.
+  its decisions differ from those of judicature, iv. 251.
+  its rules and definitions rarely exact, never universal, v. 241.
+
+Psalms, and Prophets, crowded with instances of the introduction of the
+    terrible in Nature to heighten the awe of the Divine presence, i. 144.
+
+Public affairs, state of them previous to the formation of the
+    Rockingham administration, i. 381.
+
+Public men, not all equally corrupt, ii. 240.
+
+Public service, means of rewarding it necessary in every state, ii. 330.
+
+Punishment, considerations necessary to be observed in inflicting
+    it, iv. 466; vi. 245.
+  under the Saxon laws, extremely moderate, vii. 321.
+
+Purveyance and receipt in kind, what, ii. 306.
+  taken away by the 12th Charles II., ii. 306.
+  revived the next year, ii. 306.
+
+Pythagoras, his discipline contrasted with that of Socrates, vii. 179.
+  why silence enjoined by him, vii. 179.
+
+
+Raimond, Count of Toulouse, engages in the Crusade, vii. 372.
+
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, abusive epithet applied to him by Lord Coke, xi. 175.
+
+Reason, sound, no real virtue without it, iv. 24.
+  never inconvenient but when it comes to be applied, vi. 326.
+
+Reasoners, men generally the worse reasoners for having been
+    ministers, i. 338.
+
+Reformation, in government, should be early and temperate, ii. 280.
+  and slow, iii. 456.
+  different from change, v. 186.
+  general observations on it, iii. 455; iv. 111; vi. 294; vii. 71.
+  in England, has always proceeded upon the principle of
+    reference to antiquity, iii. 272.
+
+Reformation, the, observations on it, ii. 389.
+  effects of it, iv. 319.
+
+Reformers, English, character of them, iii. 430.
+
+Regicide by establishment, what, v. 309.
+
+Regicide Peace, Letters on, v. 233, 342, 384; vi. 9.
+
+Religion, writers against it never set up any of their own, i. 7.
+  effects of it on the colonists of America, ii. 122.
+  the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and
+    of all comfort, iii. 350.
+  the respect entertained for it in England, iii. 352.
+  a strong sense of it necessary to those in power, iii. 354.
+  mischievous consequences of changing it, except under
+    strong conviction, iv. 453.
+  the magistrate has a right to direct the exterior ceremonies
+    of it, vii. 30.
+  the Christian, in its rise overcame all opposition, vii. 25.
+
+Religious opinions, not the only cause of enthusiasm, v. 361.
+
+Repetition, of the same story, effect of it, iv. 328.
+
+Report on the Affairs of India, Ninth, viii. 1.
+  Eleventh, viii. 217.
+  on the Lords' Journals, xi. 1.
+  Vindication of, this Report from the Animadversions of
+    Lord Thurlow, xi. 149.
+
+Representation, ought to include both the ability and the
+    property of a state, iii. 297.
+  virtual, what, iv. 293.
+  natural, what, v. 284.
+  of America in the British Parliament, project of, i. 372.
+  consideration of its difficulties, i. 373.
+  of England, and that of France in the National Assembly,
+    compared, iii. 481.
+
+Representation to his Majesty on the Speech from the Throne, ii. 537.
+
+Representative, his duty to his constituents, ii. 95, 281, 357.
+
+Republican government, remarks on, iv. 109.
+
+Reputation, public, how to be secured, ix. 341.
+
+Resemblance, pleasing to the imagination, i. 87.
+
+Responsibility of ministers of state, nature of it, iii. 501; v. 507.
+
+Revenge, observations on, xi. 179.
+
+Revenue, great importance of it to a state, iii. 534.
+  its administration the sphere of every active virtue, iii. 535.
+
+Revolution of 1688, diminished influence of the crown at that
+    time how compensated, i. 445.
+  principles of it contained in the Declaration of Right, iii. 252.
+  the subversion of the old, and the settlement of the new
+    government, inseparably combined in it, iv. 80.
+  grounds of it, iv. 121.
+  contrasted with the French Revolution, iii. 225.
+
+Revolution in France, Reflections on the, iii. 231.
+  general observations on it, iii. 220.
+  characterized as a revolution of doctrine and theoretic dogma, iv. 319.
+  contrasted with the English Revolution of 1688, iii. 225.
+
+Revolution Society, correspond with the National Assembly of France,
+    iii. 238.
+  remarks on its principles and proceedings, iii. 238.
+
+Reynolds, Sir Joshua, on idiosyncrasy in taste and judgment, iv. 212.
+
+Rich, need the consolations of religion, iii. 366.
+  trustees for those who labor, v. 134.
+
+Richard I., brief account of his reign, vii. 425.
+  parallel between him and Charles XII. of Sweden, vii. 436.
+
+Richelieu, Cardinal, hated by Louis XIII., iii. 499.
+
+Rights, assumed, their consequences of great moment in deciding
+    on their validity, iv. 183.
+
+Rights of Men, Jacobinical theory of, animadversions on it, iii. 307.
+  sophistically confounded with their power, iii. 313.
+
+Robespierre, his character, vi. 62.
+
+Rochford, Lord, his remonstrance with regard to Corsica, i. 480.
+
+Rockingham, Marquis of, Short Account of his Administration, i. 263.
+  formation of his administration, i. 379.
+  state of public affairs at the time, i. 381.
+  character and conduct of it, i. 388.
+  ideas of it with regard to America, i. 403.
+  his Lordship's conduct in American affairs, ii. 40.
+
+Rohilla nation, sale of it by the East India Company, ii. 449.
+
+Roland, character of him, v. 70.
+
+Roman Catholics, Mr. Burke's defence of his Parliamentary
+    conduct with regard to them, ii. 388.
+  Letter on the Penal Laws against, iv. 217.
+  mode of education necessary for their clergy, iv. 229, 231.
+  condition of their clergy before the restraint on marriage, iv. 230.
+  mischievous consequences of placing the appointment of the Irish
+    Roman Catholic clergy in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant, iv. 234.
+
+Roman politics, under the Empire, different from those which
+    actuated the Republic, vii. 203.
+  dominion over the Britons and other conquered nations, methods
+    by which it was preserved, vii. 205.
+  procurators under the Emperors, why invested with greater
+    powers than the legates, vii. 208.
+  military ways, character and purpose of them, vii. 211.
+  number and extent of the principal ones in Britain, vii. 211.
+  revenues, nature of them, vii. 211.
+  three great changes in the government after the dissolution of
+    the Commonwealth, vii. 220.
+
+Rome, ancient, destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, vii. 80.
+  and by its heavy taxes, vii. 213.
+  bounds of the empire first contracted by Adrian, vii. 214.
+
+Rome, modern, its example a caution not to attempt to feed the
+    people by the hands of the magistrates, v. 155.
+
+Rota, in the French National Assembly, effect of it, iv. 350.
+
+Rotund, noble effect of it, i. 150.
+  accounted for, i. 150.
+
+Rousseau, the secret of his principles of composition, iii. 459.
+  a resemblance to him an object of rivalry to the leaders of
+    the National Assembly, iv. 25.
+  vanity his ruling passion, iv. 26.
+  brief character of him, iv. 27.
+  totally destitute of taste, iv. 30.
+  morality of the passions in his Nouvelle �loise, iv. 31.
+  character of his style, iv. 32.
+
+Russell, Baron, the first, his character, v. 201.
+
+Russia, the Emperor of, the true policy of his government, v. 422.
+
+Russian treaty of commerce, i. 410.
+
+
+Sacheverell, Dr., his impeachment carried on for the purpose of
+    stating the grounds and principles of the Revolution, iv. 119.
+  extracts from speeches of Managers at his trial, iv. 122-146.
+  proceedings in his trial, xi. 16.
+
+Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, reduces Palestine, vii. 427.
+  defeated by Richard I., vii. 429.
+
+Salaries, objections to a tax upon them, ii. 283.
+
+Sallust, remarks on his finely contrasted characters of C�sar and Cato,
+    i. 189.
+
+Salt, monopoly of, by the French government, i. 332.
+
+Santerre, his brutal conduct to Louis XVI., vi. 101.
+
+Saracens, their fierce irruptions and conquests, vii. 328.
+
+Savile, Sir George, his bill for the repeal of the statute of
+    William III. against Papists, ii. 396.
+  his character, ii. 397.
+
+Saxons, a brief account of their laws and institutions, vii. 291.
+  under their rule, the succession to the crown in England
+    partly hereditary and partly elective, vii. 297.
+  their laws wholly abolished in England since the Conquest, vii. 478.
+  sources of them, vii. 487.
+
+Scarcity, Thoughts and Details on, v. 131.
+  proper policy in respect to the poor, in times of, v. 156.
+
+Scotland, beneficial effects on trade of its union with England, ii. 254.
+  its Church establishment under the Union, iv. 258.
+
+Scripture, indefinite nature of subscription to it, vii. 18.
+
+Scythians, all Northern Europe originally inhabited by them, vii. 160.
+
+Selden, his statement of the Parliamentary practice in the
+    examination of witnesses, xi. 108.
+
+Self-preservation, the passions which concern it the strongest
+    ones, i. 110.
+  the sublime an idea belonging to it, i. 164.
+
+Senses, general remarks on them, i. 82.
+  ought to be put under the tuition of the judgment, iii. 15.
+
+Serpent, why an object of idolatry, vii. 184.
+
+Shakspeare, his description of the king's army in Henry IV. an
+    example of the sublime, i. 155.
+
+Shelburne, Lord, animadversions on a passage in a speech of his, ii. 544.
+
+Silence, why enjoined by Pythagoras and the Druids, vii. 178.
+
+Sirach, Son of, fine example of the sublime from his Book of Wisdom,
+    i. 155.
+
+Slaves, never so beneficial to their masters as freemen, v. 147.
+
+Smells, a source of the sublime, i. 162.
+
+Smith, Sir Sydney, Captain, observations on his case, v. 400.
+
+Smoothness, why beautiful, i. 234.
+
+Social nature, the, impels a man to propagate his principles, v. 361.
+
+Society, Natural, A Vindication of, i. 1.
+  definition of the term, i. 11.
+  notion of, how first introduced, i. 11.
+  political society, its nature and origin, i. 11; iii. 359; iv. 165.
+  its continuance under a permanent covenant, iii. 359; iv. 165.
+  the great purpose of it, what, vi. 333.
+  society and solitude compared, as sources of pleasure or pain, i. 115.
+
+Socrates, his discipline contrasted with that of Pythagoras, vii. 179.
+
+Solitude, something may be done in it for society, v. 125.
+
+Somers, Lord, the Declaration of Right drawn by him, iii. 254.
+
+Sophia, the Princess, why named in the Act of Settlement as
+    the root of inheritance to the kings of England, iii. 262.
+
+Sophia, St., Church of, anecdote of the Greeks assembled there,
+    at the taking of Constantinople, vi. 96.
+
+Sound, a source of the sublime, i. 159.
+  grand effect of a single one of some strength repeated after
+    intervals, i. 160.
+  a low, tremulous, intermitting one productive of the sublime, i. 160.
+  the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.
+
+Spain, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France, iv. 339.
+  not a substantive power, iv. 385.
+
+Speech of Mr. Burke on American Taxation, ii. 1.
+  at his Arrival at Bristol, ii. 85.
+  at the Conclusion of the Poll, ii. 89.
+  on Conciliation with America, ii. 99.
+  on Economical Reform, ii. 265.
+  previous to the Election in 1780, ii. 365.
+  on Declining the Poll, ii. 425.
+  on Mr. Fox's East India Bill, ii. 431.
+  on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, iii. 1.
+  on the Army Estimates, iii. 211.
+  on the Acts of Uniformity, vii. 3.
+  on the Relief of Protestant Dissenters, vii. 21.
+  on the Petition of the Unitarians, vii. 39.
+  on the Middlesex Election, vii. 59.
+  on Shortening the Duration of Parliaments, vii. 69.
+  on Reform of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament, vii. 89.
+  on the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels, vii. 105.
+  on the Repeal of the Marriage Act, vii. 129.
+  on Dormant Claims of the Church, vii. 137.
+  in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, ix. 327-x. 145;
+    x. 147-451; xi. 155-xii. 393.
+
+Spelman, Sir Henry, his difficulties in the study of the law, vii. 477.
+
+Spirituous liquors, beneficial effects of them, v. 164.
+
+Spon, M., his curious story of Campanella, i. 212.
+
+Spring, why the pleasantest of the seasons, i. 153.
+
+Stability, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.
+
+Stafford, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 31.
+  remarks on the prosecution, xi. 112.
+
+Stamp Act, American, its origin, i. 385.
+  repeal of it, i. 389; ii. 47.
+  motives for the repeal, i. 391, 399.
+  good effects of the repeal, i. 401; ii. 59.
+
+Stanhope, General, extracts from his speech at the trial
+    of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 127.
+
+Starry heaven, why productive of the idea of grandeur, i. 154.
+
+State, the, meaning of the term, iv, 248.
+  consideration of its fitness for an oligarchical form, connected with the
+    question of vesting it solely in some one description of citizens,
+    iv. 251.
+  not subject to laws analogous to those of physical life, v. 124, 234.
+  the internal causes affecting the fortunes of states uncertain
+    and obscure, v. 235.
+  great irregularities in their rise, culmination, and decline, v. 235.
+  in a conflict between equally powerful states, an infinite advantage
+    afforded by unyielding determination, v. 243.
+
+Statesmen, duties of, i. 436; v. 167.
+  standard of one, iii. 440.
+  difference between them and professors in universities, vii. 41.
+
+Stephen, brief account of his reign, vii. 386.
+
+Stonehenge, wherein an object of admiration, i. 153; vii. 179.
+
+Stones, rude ones, why objects of veneration, vii. 185.
+
+Strafford, Earl of, proceedings in his trial, xi. 14. 113.
+
+Sublime, sources of it, i. 110.
+  the strongest emotion of the mind, i. 110.
+  in all things abhors mediocrity, i. 157.
+
+Sublime and Beautiful, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin
+    of our Ideas of the, i. 67.
+  stand on very different foundations, i. 192.
+  comparison between them, i. 205.
+  on the efficient cause of them, i. 208.
+
+Succession, hereditary, the principle of it recognized at
+    the Revolution, iii. 252.
+
+Succession, in visual objects, effects of it explained, i. 222.
+
+Suddenness, a source of the sublime, i. 160.
+
+Suffering, the force to endure, needful to those who aspire to
+    act greatly, v. 250.
+
+Sujah ul Dowlah, his character, xi. 373.
+
+Sully, M. de, an observation of his on revolutions in great
+    states, i. 441.
+
+Superstition, nature of it, iii. 442.
+
+Surplus produce, nature and application of it, iii. 444.
+
+Sweetness, its nature, i. 235.
+  relaxing, i. 237.
+
+Swift, Dr., a saying of his concerning public benefactors, ii. 472.
+
+Sympathy, observations on it, i. 177; v. 398.
+
+
+Taille, nature of, i. 330, 333.
+
+Talents, eminent, obscure and vulgar vices sometimes blended with, iv. 26.
+
+Tallien, the regicide, his sanguinary brutality, vi. 102.
+
+Tamerlane, his conquests in Hindostan, ix. 388.
+  remarks on his Institutes, ix. 467; xi. 214.
+
+Tanistry, what, vii. 297.
+
+Taste, discourse concerning it, i. 79.
+  definition of it, i. 81.
+  want of it, whence, i. 95.
+  a wrong or bad one, what, i. 95.
+  a good one, i. 96.
+  of no mean importance in the regulation of life, iv. 30.
+
+Taxes, mode of levying them in commercial colonies an
+    important and difficult consideration, i. 354.
+  nature of several in America, i. 355.
+  colonial, Lord North's project of a ransom of them by auction, ii. 171.
+  the great contests for freedom in England chiefly upon the
+    question of taxing, ii. 120.
+  taxes on different establishments, remarks concerning them, i. 368.
+  upon salaries, ii. 283.
+  details of English taxes, v. 476.
+
+Terror, sometimes a source of delight, i. 119.
+  how, i. 214.
+  an effect of the sublime, i. 130.
+  its physical effects, i. 211.
+
+Test Act, observations on it, iv. 264.
+
+Thanes, brief account of them, vii. 300.
+
+Theatre, general observations on the, iii. 338.
+  prosperous condition of it in England, v. 485.
+  made an affair of state in the French Republic, vi. 104.
+
+Theodorus, Archbishop of Canterbury, brief account of him, vii. 249.
+  his services to the cause of letters in England, vii. 249.
+
+Three Seals, the history of the affair so called, ix. 408.
+
+Time blends the conquered with the conquerors, iv. 272.
+
+Toleration, true, exemplified, iii. 431.
+  ought to be tender and large, iv. 258.
+  favorable to, and a part of Christianity, vii. 25.
+  not a virtue of the ancient heathens, vii. 31.
+
+Toulon, fleet of, injudicious measures of the English government
+    with regard to it, iv. 445.
+
+Townshend, Charles, character of him, ii. 64.
+
+Trade, sometimes seems to perish when it only assumes a
+    different form, i. 313.
+  quickly and deeply affected by taxes, i. 391.
+  tests of the state of it, what, v. 493.
+  Board of, its character and history, ii. 340.
+
+Tragedy, observations on the effects of, i. 120.
+  its subjects and passions, vii. 150.
+  great personages everywhere made the objects of it, xi. 308.
+
+Transmigration of souls, origin of the doctrine, vii. 181.
+
+Treasurer's staff, Lord Coke's account of the purpose of it, ii. 354.
+
+Trent, Council of, its wise introduction of the discipline of
+    seminaries for priests, iv. 231.
+
+Triangle, the poorest of all figures in its effect, i. 152.
+
+Triennial Parliaments, evils of them, vii. 79.
+
+Trinoda necessitas, in Saxon law, what, vii. 325.
+
+Turkey, power sought there with avidity, notwithstanding the
+    danger and insecurity of its tenure, vii. 82.
+
+Tyranny, aggravated by contumely, ii. 484.
+  the desire and design of it often lurk in the claim of an
+    extravagant liberty, iv. 115.
+  never learns moderation from the ill success of first oppressions, x. 83.
+
+
+Ugliness, the opposite to beauty, but not to proportion and fitness,
+    i. 199.
+  consistent with the sublime, i. 199.
+
+Uniformity and succession of parts constitute the artificial infinite,
+    i. 149.
+
+Universal, nothing of this nature can be rationally affirmed or any
+    moral or political subject, iv. 80.
+
+Use, to be carefully attended to in most works of art, i. 154.
+  use and habit not causes of pleasure, i. 180.
+
+
+Vanity, nature and tendency of, iv. 26.
+
+Variation, beautiful, why, i. 239.
+
+Vastness, a cause of the sublime, i. 147.
+  unity why necessary to it, i. 219.
+
+Vattel, extracts from his Law of Nations, iv. 471.
+
+Venice, its restrictions with respect to offices of state, iv. 249.
+  origin of the republic, vii. 331.
+  acquires the island of Cyprus, vii. 428.
+  the only state in Europe which benefited by the Crusades, vii. 428.
+
+Verbal description, a means of raising a stronger emotion
+    than painting, i. 133.
+
+Vice, the instances rare of an immediate transition to it
+    from virtue, i. 421.
+
+Vices, obscure and vulgar ones sometimes blended with eminent
+    talents, iv. 26.
+  in common society receive palliating names, xi. 177.
+
+Vicinity, civil, law of, what, v. 322.
+
+Virgil, his figure of Fame obscure, yet magnificent, i. 138.
+  remarks on his combination of images at the mouth of hell, i. 146.
+  an example from him of the sublime effect of an uncertain light, i. 161.
+  and of the cries of animals, i. 162.
+  and of powerful smells, i. 163.
+  his picture of the murder of Priam, i. 259.
+  of the Harpies, v. 187
+
+Virtue, how far the idea of beauty may be applied to it, i. 190.
+  description of the gradual extinguishment of it in public men, i. 421.
+  will catch, as well as vice by contact, ii. 242.
+  virtues which cause admiration, i. 188.
+  virtues which engage the heart, i. 188.
+
+Visual objects of great dimensions, why sublime, i. 217.
+  effects of succession in them explained, i. 222.
+
+Voters, more in the spirit of the English constitution to lessen
+    than to enlarge their number, i. 370.
+
+
+Wages, the rate of them has no direct relation, to the price
+    of provisions, v. 136.
+
+Wales, misgovernment of, by England, for two hundred years, ii. 148.
+  alteration of the system in the reign of Henry VIII., ii. 150.
+
+Wales, Frederick, Prince of, project of government devised
+    in his court, i. 447.
+  means adopted for its introduction and recommendation to
+    popular favor, i. 451, 453.
+  nature of the party formed for its support, i. 459.
+  name of this party, i. 466.
+  and of the new system, i. 466.
+
+Walpole, Mr., (afterwards Sir Robert,) his character, iv. 128.
+  extract from his speech in the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 129.
+  forced into the war with Spain by popular clamor, v. 288.
+  fault in his general proceeding, v. 289.
+
+War, its original may be very far from being its principal purpose, i. 298.
+  not easily reconciled with economy, i. 310.
+  the ground of a political war, laborers and manufacturers
+    not capable of conceiving, v. 38.
+  of England with the French Republic, a war with an armed doctrine,
+    v. 250.
+  can never be carried on long against the will of the people, v. 283.
+  general observations on, v. 318.
+  the power of making it, why put under the discretion of the crown,
+    v. 335.
+  principle of the law of nations with regard to it, vi. 349.
+
+Warwick, Earl of, proceedings in his trial, xi. 32.
+
+Water, why venerated by the Druids, vii. 182.
+
+Weakness, human, in adversity, never pitied by those who applaud
+    prosperous folly and guilt, iv. 183.
+
+Wealth, internal, consists in useful commodities as much as in
+    gold and silver, i. 321.
+  of a country, a standard by which to estimate the character
+    of the government, iii. 402.
+  can never rank first in England, iv. 327.
+  ought always to be the servant of virtue and public honor, v. 242.
+  remark of a foreigner on the display of it in the shops in London,
+    v. 496.
+
+Whigs, the great connection of, in the reign of Queen Anne, i. 529.
+  the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell, for what purpose carried
+    on by them, iv. 119.
+  statement of the principles of the new Whigs, iv. 120, 151.
+  opinion of the new, with respect to the power of the people
+    over the commonwealth, iv. 161.
+  Appeal from the New to the Old, iv. 57.
+
+Wilkes, Mr., his contest with the court party, i. 497.
+  pretence for punishing him, i. 500.
+
+Will and duty contradictory terms, iv. 165.
+  duty not subject to will, iv. 165.
+
+William of Normandy, the extraordinary facility of his conquest
+    of England explained, vii. 288.
+  his numerous followers accounted for, vii. 333.
+  brief account of his reign, vii. 335.
+  view of his revenue, vii. 346.
+  his character, vii. 362.
+
+William Rufus, brief account of his reign, vii. 364.
+
+William III., his elevation to the throne an act not of choice,
+    but of necessity, iii. 254.
+  his judicious appointments to the vacant bishoprics, iv. 14.
+  the spirited address of the Commons to him respecting the war
+    with France, v. 296.
+  the Grand Alliance against France his masterpiece, v. 297.
+  his indomitable perseverance in pressing this measure, v. 299.
+  address of the House of Lords respecting it, v. 300.
+
+Wintoun, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 22.
+
+Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, example of the sublime from that
+    book, i. 155.
+
+Wishes, vehement, the discovery of them generally frustrates
+    their attainment, v. 252.
+
+Wit and judgement, difference between them, i. 87.
+
+Words, the proper medium for conveying the affections of the mind, i. 133.
+  affect us in a manner very different from natural objects,
+    painting, or architecture, i. 246.
+  three sorts of them, i. 247.
+  general words before ideas, i. 249.
+  effect of them, i. 250.
+  may affect without raising images, i. 252.
+  this exemplified in the case of the poet Blacklock, i. 252.
+  and of Saunderson, the mathematician, i. 253.
+  how words influence the passions, i. 258.
+  the only means by which many ideas have ever been at all
+    presented to the senses, i. 259.
+  the source of a great part of the mischiefs that vex the world, vi. 397.
+  the world much influenced by them, xi. 172.
+
+Writers, when they act in a body and with one direction, have
+    great influence on the public mind, iii. 380
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable
+Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.), by Edmund Burke
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF EDMUND BURKE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 18315-8.txt or 18315-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/3/1/18315/
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Susan Skinner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Biblioth�que nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at
+http://gallica.bnf.fr)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/18315-8.zip b/18315-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cba2eca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/18315-8.zip
diff --git a/18315-h.zip b/18315-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c83380
--- /dev/null
+++ b/18315-h.zip
diff --git a/18315-h/18315-h.htm b/18315-h/18315-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13a6647
--- /dev/null
+++ b/18315-h/18315-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,18284 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Burke's Writings and Speeches, Volume the Twelfth, by Edmund Burke.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    <!-- /* old browser blockout*/
+    /* <![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+
+
+
+/*
+ * set the global font family
+ */
+    /* { font-family: serif; } */
+
+/*
+ * set the body margins
+ */
+    body {margin-left: 8%; margin-right: 25%;
+
+              }
+
+/*
+ * set the body text indention, and spacing, and leading
+ */
+    p { /* all paragraphs unless overridden */
+        margin-top: 1em;
+        margin-bottom: 0;
+        line-height: 1.4em;
+    }
+
+    body > p { /* paras at <body> level - not in <div> or <table>  */
+        text-align: justify;
+        text-indent: 1em;
+    }
+
+    p.break { margin-top: 2em; } /* use for some thought-breaks */
+
+    dd, li {/* loosen spacing in list items */
+        margin-top: 0.33em;
+        line-height: 1.2em; }
+
+/*
+ * style h2 for chapter heads
+ */
+
+    h2 {    text-align: center; /* left-aligned by default, left/right margins set globally */
+        margin-top:2em;  /* clear space above top border */
+        /* border-left: 3px solid gray;  REMOVED BY MP */
+        /* border-top: 4px solid gray; */
+        /* padding-left:2em; /* space in from left border */
+        padding-top:0.5em; /* space down from top border */
+        padding-bottom: 1em; /* push left border below text */
+        clear: both; /* don't let sidebars overlap */
+        }
+
+/*
+ * style h3 for topic heads
+ */
+    h3 {
+            text-align: center; /* uncomment for centered heading */
+            margin-top: 2em;
+            font-family: sans-serif;
+            font-weight: normal; /* override default of bold */
+            font-size: 95%;
+                        clear: both; /* don't let sidebars overlap */
+        }
+
+/*
+ * suppress indentation on paragraphs following heads
+ */
+    h1+p, h2+p, h3+p { text-indent: 0; }
+
+/*
+ * Style the blockquote tag and related:
+ *  - inset left and right
+ *  - one-point smaller font (questionable?)
+ *  - <p class="citation"> right-just and italicized
+ *  - <p class="signature"> deeply indented
+ */
+    .blockquote {
+        margin-left: 5%;
+        margin-right: 5%;
+        }
+    p.citation { /* author citation at end of blockquote or poem */
+                margin-left:20%;
+        text-align: left;
+        /* text-align: right;    MP, I DON'T LIKE THIS */
+        /* font-style: italic;   MP, I DON'T LIKE THIS */
+        }
+    p.quotdate { /* date of a letter aligned right */
+        text-align: right;
+        }
+    p.quotsig { /* author signature at end of letter */
+        margin-left: 35%;
+        text-indent: -4em; /* gimmick to move 2nd line right */
+        }
+        p.noindent { /* For paras continuing after quote, table, etc. (where no indent in original) MP */
+                text-indent: 0;
+                }
+/*
+ * Provide a selection of special list enumeration styles
+ */
+    ol.AL { list-style-type: lower-alpha; }
+    ol.AU { list-style-type: upper-alpha; }
+    ol.RU { list-style-type: upper-roman; }
+    ol.RL { list-style-type: lower-roman; }
+    dt { margin-top: 0.5em; }
+    /* turn off list decoration in a single item  to form the
+     * second para of a 2-para item: < li class="off" >
+     * or make an unmarked list: < ul class="off" >
+     */
+    .off { list-style-type: none; } /* 2nd para of a 2-para list item */
+/*
+ * In all browsers **except MSIE 5** the items of an "inside" list are
+ * indented as if they still had their symbol.
+ */
+    ol.inside, ul.inside {
+        list-style-position: inside;
+        margin-left: -2.5em; /* For everybody but MSIE 5, boo */}
+/*
+ * The TOC, LOI, and Index are unordered lists with no prefix symbols.
+ * The tocright class is used to right-align page numbers in a TOC
+ * (not to be confused with linenum, used for poetry line#s).
+ */
+
+/* MP... In konqueror, the numbers all pile up together at the first item */
+
+    ul.TOC { /* styling the Table of Contents */
+        list-style-type: none; /* a list with no symbol */
+        position: relative; /* makes a "container" for span.tocright */
+        margin-right: 5%; /* pulls the page#s in a skosh */
+                padding-right: 3em; /* MP stops text hitting numbers */
+                margin-left: 1em;  /* MP for long titles,indent all lines */
+                text-indent: -1em; /* MP for long titles, unindent 1st line */
+        }
+    ul.TOCSub { /* sub-entries in the TOC */
+        list-style-type: none;
+        position: relative; /* makes a "container" for span.tocright */
+        margin-right: 10%; /* pulls these page#s in even more */
+                padding-right: 3em; /* MP stops text hitting numbers */
+                margin-left: 1em;  /* MP for long titles,indent all lines */
+                text-indent: -1em; /* MP for long titles, unindent 1st line */
+        }
+    span.tocright { /* use absolute positioning to move page# right */
+        position: absolute; right: 0; text-indent: 0;/* valign: bottom; */
+        }
+    ul.LOI { /* styling the List of Illustrations */
+        list-style-type: none;
+        position: relative; /* makes a "container" for span.tocright */
+        margin-right: 5%; /* pulls the page#s in a skosh */
+        }
+
+    ul.IX { /* styling the IndeX */
+        list-style-type: none;
+        font-size: 80%;
+        }
+    ul.IXSub { /* sub-terms in the index */
+        list-style-type: none;
+        }
+    ul.IX li { /* list items in an index list: compressed */
+        margin-top: 0;
+        }
+
+/*
+ * style the default horizontal-rule and some special ones
+ */
+    hr {
+        width:45%;
+        margin-top: 1em;
+        margin-left: auto;  /* these two ensure a.. */
+        margin-right: auto; /* ..centered rule */
+        clear: both; /* don't let sidebars & floats overlap rule */
+    }
+    hr.major { width:75%; margin-top:2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} /* eg, above chapter head */
+    hr.minor { width:30%; } /* eg, above/below epigraph */
+/*
+ * a div with centering, use for images and tables
+ * to center a table or image in all browsers:
+ *  <div class="ctr">    <table/img ... >  ... < / div>
+ */
+    div.ctr { text-align: center; }
+    div.ctr table { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;  text-align: left; }
+    div.ctr img { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; }
+
+/*
+ * Use of <ins> ... < /ins> for marking corrected typos:
+ * Surround the corrected text with:
+ *   <ins class="correction"
+ *      title="Transcriber's Note: original read 'txet'">text< /ins>
+ * Very fine underline is not intrusive. Explanation pops up on hover.
+ */
+    ins.correction {
+        text-decoration:none;
+        border-bottom: thin dotted gray;}
+
+/*
+ * Styling for images and captions
+ */
+    img { /* the default image has */
+            border: 1px solid black; /* a thin black line border */
+            padding: 6px; /* ..spaced a bit out from the graphic */
+        }
+
+    img.plain { /* image with no border or padding, see float */
+            border: none; padding: 0;
+        }
+    p.caption { margin-top: 0; font-size: smaller; }
+
+/*
+ * style sidenotes as class="sn", use in div or p
+ * guiguts expects a class "sidenote"
+ */
+    .sn, .sidenote {
+        /* sidenote box appearance controls: */
+            width: 15em;        /* ..fixed width, */
+            float: right;       /* ..float to the right, */
+            margin-right: -16em;    /* ..exdent into body margin */
+            margin-top: 0; /* top even with following <p>'s top */
+            border: 1px dotted black; /* ..optional border */
+            background-color: rgb(90%,90%,90%); /* ..optional tint */
+        /* sidenote content control: */
+            font-size: smaller; /* ..small text; could be x-small */
+            text-indent: 0;     /* ..no para indent */
+            text-align: left;   /* ..right align text in box */
+            margin-left: 0.2em; /* ensure space from text */
+        }
+
+/*
+ * style sidebars as div class="sb"
+ */
+    .sb {
+            width: 40%;     /* make 100% to force in-line */
+            float: right;
+            border: 1px solid black; /* need border to separate from body */
+            padding: 0 0 0 0.5em; /* get text away from border */
+            margin: 0 0 1em 0.5em; /* get border clear of body text */
+            background-color: rgb(90%,90%,90%); /* ..optional tint */
+        }
+/*
+ * style floating images just like sidebars but no border
+ * Use image class="plain", as div border encloses all.
+ * Use div when caption accompanies image, span for image-only
+ * Note: guiguts expects class names figleft, figright
+ */
+    .floatr, .figright {
+            float: right;
+            clear: right; /* don't allow overlaps */
+            text-align: center; /* img, caption centered in box */
+            border: 1px solid black; /* thin border */
+            margin-left: 4px; /* keep body text away from border */
+            padding: 3px; /* keep caption text away border */
+        }
+
+    .floatl, .figleft {
+            float: left;
+            clear: left; /* don't allow overlaps */
+            text-align: center; /* img, caption centered in box */
+            border: 1px solid black; /* thin border */
+            margin-right: 4px; /* keep body text away from border */
+            padding: 3px; /* keep caption text from touching border */
+        }
+/*
+ *   Styling tables and their content
+ */
+
+    table { /* style all < table> elements */
+        margin-top: 1em; /* space above the table */
+        caption-side: /* top; or */ bottom ;
+        empty-cells: show; /* usual default is hide */
+    }
+
+    thead td, tfoot td { /* center & bold */
+        text-align: center;
+        font-weight: bold;
+        background-color: #ddd; /* dubious: gray background */
+    }
+    table .shade { /* tr or td class="shade" */
+        background-color: #ddd;
+    }
+    td, td > p {
+        margin-top: 0.25em;
+        /* line-height: 1.1em; OLD */
+        /* font-size: 90%; OLD */
+        /* text-align: left; OLD*/
+    }
+        td.wrap { /* MP's magic table: For cells in 1st col with lots of text,
+                     allows rewrap with indent.
+                     set padding-left: to 1 on main table...
+                     Numbers following should be "valign: bottom"*/
+                text-indent: -1em;
+                padding-right: 2em;
+        }
+                  /* use to add borders to table cells */
+        .bb       {border-bottom: solid 1px;}
+        .bl       {border-left: solid 1px;}
+        .bt       {border-top: solid 1px;}
+        .br       {border-right: solid 1px;}
+        .bbox     {border: solid 1px;}
+        .center   {text-align: center;}
+/*
+ * Styling Poetry the method generated by Guiguts:
+ *  div class=poem encloses poem
+ *  h4 within the poem div for poem title
+ *  div class=stanza encloses stanza
+ *  p [class=iN] encloses line
+ *  span class=linenum encloses line number
+ */
+    .poem {
+        text-align: left;
+        margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;
+        position: relative;  /* basis of .linenum positions */
+        /* background-color: #fdc; /* Demonstration only: DELETE */
+        }
+    .poem h4 {
+        margin-left: 5em;
+        text-decoration: underline;
+        }
+    .poem .stanza {
+        margin-top: 1em; /* vertical break between stanzas */
+        }
+    .stanza div { /* default line */
+        line-height: 1.2em;
+        margin-top: 0em;
+        margin-left: 2em;
+        text-indent: -2em;
+        }
+    .poem .i05 {margin-left: 0.5em;} /* p or span indents */
+    .poem .i1 {margin-left: 2em;} /* p or span indents */
+    .poem .i2 {margin-left: 4em;} /* indents */
+    .poem .i3 {margin-left: 5em;} /* indents */
+    .poem .i4 {margin-left: 6em;} /* indents */
+    .poem .i5 {margin-left: 7em;} /* indents */
+    .poem .i6 {margin-left: 8em;} /* indents */
+    .poem .i7 {margin-left: 9em;} /* indents */
+    .poem .i8 {margin-left: 10em;} /* indents */
+    .poem .i9 {margin-left: 11em;} /* indents */
+    .poem .caesura  {   /* vertical break in mid-line */
+        vertical-align: -200%;
+        }
+
+    .poem .linenum {
+        margin: 0; text-indent:0;
+        font-size: 90%;         /* they are smaller */
+        text-align: center;     /* centered in a space... */
+        width: 1.75em;              /* ...about 3+ digits wide */
+        position: absolute;     /* positioned out of text flow */
+        /*left: -4em;         ...positioned in LEFT margin */
+        right: -4em;    /*       ...positioned in RIGHT margin */
+        color: #777; background-color: #ddd; /* medium gray on light gray */
+        /* color: #fff; background-color: #888;  white on medium gray */
+        }
+
+/*
+ * Making page numbers visible: Change the display: value of this class
+ *      for visible page numbers: "inline"
+ *      for hidden page numbers: "none"
+ */
+
+/* THESE LINES ADDED BY MP */
+    /*.pagenum  {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right; color: #778899;} /* page numbers */
+    /*.pagenum  {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: smaller; text-align: left; color: #778899;} /* page numbers */
+    .pagenum {
+      font-size: smaller;
+      text-align: right;
+      padding: 0 0 0 0 ;
+      margin: 0 0 0 0;
+      position: absolute; right: 1%;
+      color: #778899;
+    }
+    /* Uncomment to get page numbers displayed with text */
+    a.pagenum:after            {display: inline; color: #778899; /* background-color: yellow;*/ content: "{" attr(title) "}";}
+
+    /* Change cursor over Greek text (the transliteration will appear in a popup) */
+    :lang(el)                  {cursor: help;}
+
+
+/*
+ * This code uses the :after selector to display the title string
+ * from the anchor inline in the text. It presumes every page anchor is:
+ *   <a class="page1" id="Page_NN" title="NN" > < /a>
+ *
+ * Advantage: non-CSS browsers display nothing.
+ * Problem: display is within the text between words. (you can't do
+ * absolute positioning of generated content.)
+ */
+    .page1:after {
+                display: inline; /* none or inline */
+                content: "[" attr(title) "]";
+                font-size: 50%;
+                background-color: rgb(95%,95%,95%);
+                vertical-align: 0.25em; /* raise its baseline */
+                }
+/*
+ * This code uses absolute positioning to display page numbers in the
+ * right margin. It presumes that every page-number anchor is augmented
+ * with a text span:
+ *  <a id="Page_NN">< /a> <span class="page2">NN< /span>
+ *
+ * Advantage: absolute positioning lets you put #s in the margin.
+ * Drawback: non-CSS browsers display the number inline instead.
+ * Drawback: multiple pagenumbers in the same text line overlap in the margin
+ */
+
+    .page2 {    display: inline; /* none or inline  */
+                font-size:50%;
+                text-align: right;
+                padding: 0 0 0 0 ;
+                margin: 0 0 0 0;
+                position: absolute; right: 1%;}
+
+/*
+ * Styling footnotes and their references. See text for discussion.
+ * NOTE: Guiguts keeps changing the classnames it uses for the
+ * footnote div and p's. Be prepared to change these to match.
+ */
+
+    .fnanchor {   /* MODIFIED FROM fnref BY MP FOR GUIGUTS NOMENCLATURE */
+            font-size: smaller; /* discreet [X] */
+            vertical-align: 2px; /* bumped up a trace from baseline */
+        }
+
+    .note {
+            font-size: 90%;  /* somewhat smaller */
+            margin: 0 2em 2em 1em;
+                        text-align: justify;
+        }
+
+    .footnotes {  /* ADDED BY MP */
+                      border: dashed 1px;  /* Added by MP */
+                /*but note that knoqueror messes it up (though readable)*/
+        }
+/*
+ * Stylings for drama:
+ *    h4.scn is the scene-header, centered, italic
+ *    span.cnm is for all character-names
+ *    p.sdn is the stage-direction paragraph
+ *    span.sdr is the end-of-line right-aligned direction
+ *    span.sdm is the mid-line embedded direction
+ */
+
+    h4.scn {
+        text-align: center; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic;
+    }
+    p.sdn {
+        text-align: center; font-style: italic;
+    }
+    p.dlg {
+        margin:0.25em;
+        line-height: 1.2em;
+        position: relative; /* establish "container" for span.sdn */
+    }
+    .dlg .in5em { position:relative; left: 5em; }
+    .dlg .in10em { position: relative; left: 10em; }
+    span.sdm { font-style: italic;  }
+    span.sdm:before {  font-style:normal; content: "[" }
+    span.sdm:after { font-style:normal; content: "]" }
+    span.sdr {
+        font-style: italic;
+        position: absolute;
+        text-align: right;
+        right: 0; top:auto;
+    }
+    span.sdr:before { font-style:normal; content: "[" }
+    .cnm { /* Character NaMe default (dialog) */
+        font-style: italic;
+    }
+    .sdn .cnm, sdm .cnm, .sdr .cnm { /* Character NaMe inside Stage DirectioN */
+        font-style: normal;
+    }
+    .dlg .linenum {
+        margin: 0; text-indent:0;
+        font-size: 90%;         /* they are smaller */
+        text-align: center;     /* centered in a space... */
+        width: 1.75em;          /* ...about 3+ digits wide */
+        position: absolute;     /* positioned out of text flow */
+        /*  left: -5em;           ...positioned in LEFT margin */
+        right: 0;           /* ...positioned in RIGHT margin */
+        color: #000; background-color: #ccc; /* black on light gray */
+        }
+
+    /* XML end  ]]> */ /*old browser end */ -->
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund
+Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.), by Edmund Burke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.)
+
+Author: Edmund Burke
+
+Release Date: May 5, 2006 [EBook #18315]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF EDMUND BURKE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Susan Skinner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at
+http://gallica.bnf.fr)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>THE WORKS
+<br /><br />
+<span style="font-size: 71%">OF</span>
+<br /><br />
+THE RIGHT HONOURABLE<br />
+
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 200%">EDMUND BURKE</span></h2>
+
+<h3>IN TWELVE VOLUMES<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: smaller">VOLUME THE TWELFTH</span></h3>
+<p />
+<div style="text-align: center">
+<img src="images/001.png" alt="BURKE COAT OF ARMS." title="BURKE COAT OF ARMS" />
+</div>
+<p />
+<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0"><b>London</b><br />
+
+<br />
+
+JOHN C. NIMMO<br />
+<br />
+14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.<br />
+
+MDCCCLXXXVII<br /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS_OF_VOL_XII" id="CONTENTS_OF_VOL_XII"></a>CONTENTS OF VOL. XII.</h2>
+
+
+<ul class="TOC"><li><a href="#SPEECHES">SPEECHES IN THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS,
+ESQUIRE, LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL. (CONTINUED.)</a></li>
+
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>  <a href="#SPEECHES">SPEECH IN GENERAL REPLY.</a></li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub">    <li><a href="#FIFTH_DAY_SATURDAY_JUNE_7_1794">FIFTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1794</a>                        <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></span></li>
+<li>    <a href="#SIXTH_DAY_WEDNESDAY_JUNE_11_1794">SIXTH DAY: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11</a>                            <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></span></li>
+<li>    <a href="#SEVENTH_DAY_THURSDAY_JUNE_12_1794">SEVENTH DAY: THURSDAY, JUNE 12</a>                          <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></span></li>
+<li>    <a href="#EIGHTH_DAY_SATURDAY_JUNE_14_1794">EIGHTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 14</a>                           <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></span></li>
+<li>    <a href="#NINTH_DAY_MONDAY_JUNE_16_1794">NINTH DAY: MONDAY, JUNE 16</a>                              <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_335">335</a></span></li></ul></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li><a href="#GENERAL_TABLE_OF_CONTENTS">GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>                                   <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_401">401</a></span></li>
+
+<li><a href="#INDEX">INDEX</a>                                                       <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_407">407</a></span></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">{1}</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SPEECHES" id="SPEECHES"></a>SPEECHES<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">IN</span><br />
+<br />
+THE IMPEACHMENT<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">OF</span><br />
+<br />
+WARREN HASTINGS, ESQUIRE,<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL.</span></h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+<h2>SPEECH IN GENERAL REPLY.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">(CONTINUED.)</span>
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">June, 1794.</span></h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">{2}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">{3}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="FIFTH_DAY_SATURDAY_JUNE_7_1794" id="FIFTH_DAY_SATURDAY_JUNE_7_1794"></a>SPEECH<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">IN</span><br />
+<br />
+GENERAL REPLY.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">FIFTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1794.</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>My Lords,&mdash;We will now resume the consideration
+of the remaining part of our charge, and
+of the prisoner's attempts to defend himself against it.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings, well knowing (what your Lordships
+must also by this time be perfectly satisfied was the
+case) that this unfortunate Nabob had no will of his
+own, draws down his poor victim to Chunar by an
+order to attend the Governor-General. If the Nabob
+ever wrote to Mr. Hastings, expressing a request or
+desire for this meeting, his letter was unquestionably
+dictated to him by the prisoner. We have laid
+a ground of direct proof before you, that the Nabob's
+being at Chunar, that his proceedings there, and that
+all his acts were so dictated, and consequently must
+be so construed.</p>
+
+<p>I shall now proceed to lay before your Lordships
+the acts of oppression committed by Mr. Hastings
+through his two miserable instruments: the one, his
+passive instrument, the Nabob; the other, Mr. Middleton,
+his active instrument, in his subsequent plans
+for the entire destruction of that country. In page
+513 of the printed Minutes you have Mr. Middleton's
+declaration of his promptitude to represent everything
+agreeably to Mr. Hastings's wishes.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">{4}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"My dear Sir,&mdash;I have this day answered your
+public letter in the form you seemed to expect. I
+hope there is nothing in it that may to you appear too
+pointed. If you wish the matter to be otherwise understood
+than I have taken up and stated it, I need
+not say I shall be ready to conform to whatever you
+may prescribe, and to take upon myself any share of
+the blame of the hitherto non-performance of the stipulations
+made on behalf of the Nabob; though I do
+assure you I myself represented to his Excellency and
+the ministers, conceiving it to be your desire, that the
+apparent assumption of the reins of his government,
+(for in that light he undoubtedly considered it at
+the first view,) as specified in the agreement executed
+by him, was not meant to be fully and literally
+enforced, but that it was necessary you should have
+something to show on your side, as the Company
+were deprived of a benefit without a requital; and
+upon the faith of this assurance alone, I believe I
+may safely affirm, his Excellency's objections to signing
+the treaty were given up. If I have understood
+the matter wrong, or misconceived your design, I am
+truly sorry for it. However, it is not too late to correct
+the error; and I am ready to undertake, and,
+God willing, to carry through, whatever you may, on
+the receipt of my public letter, tell me is your final
+resolve.</p>
+
+<p>"If you determine, at all events, that the measures
+of reducing the Nabob's army, &amp;c., shall be immediately
+undertaken, I shall take it as a particular favor,
+if you will indulge me with a line at Fyzabad, that I
+may make the necessary previous arrangements with
+respect to the disposal of my family, which I would
+not wish to retain here, in the event either of a rupture
+with the Nabob, or the necessity of employing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">{5}</a></span>
+our forces on the reduction of his aumils and troops.
+This done, I can begin the work in three days after
+my return from Fyzabad."</p></div>
+
+<p>Besides this letter, which I think is sufficiently
+clear upon the subject, there is also another much
+more clear upon your Lordships' minutes, much
+more distinct and much more pointed, expressive of
+his being resolved to make such representations of
+every matter as the Governor-General may wish.
+Now a man who is master of the manner in which
+facts are represented, and whose subsequent conduct
+is to be justified by such representations, is not simply
+accountable for his conduct; he is accountable
+for culpably attempting to form, on false premises,
+the judgment of others upon that conduct. This
+species of delinquency must therefore be added to
+the rest; and I wish your Lordships to carry generally
+in your minds, that there is not one single syllable
+of representation made by any of those parties,
+except where truth may happen to break out in spite
+of all the means of concealment, which is not to be
+considered as the representation of Mr. Hastings himself
+in justification of his own conduct.</p>
+
+<p>The letter which I have just now read was written
+preparatory to the transaction which I am now going
+to state, called <i>the treaty of Chunar</i>. Having brought
+his miserable victim thither, he forced him to sign a
+paper called a treaty: but such was the fraud in
+every part of this treaty, that Mr. Middleton himself,
+who was the instrument and the chief agent in
+it, acknowledges that the Nabob was persuaded to
+sign it by the assurance given to him that it never
+was to be executed. Here, then, your Lordships<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">{6}</a></span>
+have a prince first compelled to enter into a negotiation,
+and then induced to accede to a treaty by false
+assurances that it should not be executed, which
+he declares nothing but force should otherwise have
+compelled him to accede to.</p>
+
+<p>The first circumstance in this transaction that I
+shall lay before your Lordships is that the treaty is
+declared to have for its objects two modes of relieving
+the Nabob from his distresses,&mdash;from distresses
+which we have stated, and which Mr. Hastings
+has not only fully admitted, but has himself proved
+in the clearest manner to your Lordships. The
+first was by taking away that <i>wicked rabble</i>, the British
+troops, represented by Mr. Hastings as totally
+ruinous to the Nabob's affairs, and particularly by
+removing that part of them which was called the
+new brigade. Another remedial part of the treaty
+regarded the British pensioners. It is in proof before
+your Lordships that Mr. Hastings agreed to recall
+from Oude that body of pensioners, whose conduct
+there is described in such strong terms as being
+ruinous to the Vizier and to all his affairs. These
+pensioners Mr. Hastings engaged to recall; but he
+never did recall them. We refer your Lordships to
+the evidence before you, in proof that these odious
+pensioners, so distressing to the Nabob, so ruinous
+to his affairs, and so disgraceful to our government,
+were not only <i>not</i> recalled by Mr. Hastings, but that,
+both afterwards, and upon the very day of signing
+the treaty, (as Mr. Middleton himself tells you,) upon
+that very day, I say, he recommended to the Nabob
+that these pensioners might remain upon that
+very establishment which, by a solemn treaty of his
+own making and his own dictating, he had agreed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">{7}</a></span>
+to relieve from this intolerable burden.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings, your Lordships will remember, had
+departed from Benares, frustrated in his designs
+of extorting 500,000<i>l.</i> from the Rajah for the Company's
+use. He had ravaged the country, without
+obtaining any benefit for his masters: the British
+soldiers having divided the only spoil, and nothing
+remaining for the share of his employers but disgrace.
+He was therefore afraid to return without
+having something of a lucrative pecuniary nature
+to exhibit to the Company. Having this object in
+view, Oude appears to have first presented itself to
+his notice, as a country from which some advantage
+of a pecuniary kind might be derived; and accordingly
+he turned in his head a vast variety of
+stratagems for effecting his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The first article that occurs in the treaty of Chunar
+is a power given to the Nabob to resume all
+the jaghires not guarantied by the Company, and to
+give pensions to all those persons who should be
+removed from their jaghires.</p>
+
+<p>Now the first thing which would naturally occur
+to a man, who was going to raise a revenue through
+the intervention of the prince of the country, would
+be to recommend to that prince a better economy
+in his affairs, and a rational and equal assessment
+upon his subjects, in order to furnish the amount
+of the demand which he was about to make upon
+him. I need not tell your Lordships, trained and
+formed as your minds are to the rules and orders
+of good government, that there is no way by which
+a prince can justly assess his subjects but by assessing
+them all in proportion to their respective abilities,
+and that, if a prince should make such a body<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">{8}</a></span>
+as the House of Lords in this kingdom (which comes
+near the case I am going to state) separately the
+subject of assessment, such a thing would be contrary
+to all the principles of regular and just taxation
+in any country in the universe. Some men may
+possibly, by locality or privileges, be excepted from
+certain taxes, but no taxation ever can be just that
+is thrown upon some particular class only; and if
+that class happen to be small and the demand great,
+the injustice done is directly proportionable to the
+greatness of the exaction, and inversely to the number
+of the persons who are the objects of it: these
+are clear, irrefragable, and eternal principles. But
+if, instead of exacting a part by a proportionable rate,
+the prince should go further and attempt to shake
+the whole mass of property itself, a mass perhaps not
+much less than that which is possessed by the whole
+peers of Great Britain, by confiscating the whole of
+the estates at once, as a government resource, without
+the charge or pretence of any crime, I say that
+such an act would be oppressive, cruel, and wicked
+in the highest degree. Yet this is what Mr. Hastings
+projected, and actually did accomplish.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, at the treaty of Chunar, as it is called,
+Mr. Hastings (for he always artfully feels his way
+as he proceeds) first says, that the Nabob shall be
+permitted to do this act, if he pleases. He does not
+assume the government. He does not compel the
+Nabob to do anything. He does not force upon him
+this abandoned and wicked confiscation of the property
+of the whole nobility of a great country. All that
+he says is this,&mdash;"The Nabob <i>may be permitted</i> to
+resume these jaghires." Why permitted? If the act
+had been legal, proper, and justifiable, he did n<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">{9}</a></span>ot
+want our permission; he was a sovereign in his own
+dominions. But Mr. Hastings recollected that some
+of these jaghires (as they are called, and on which
+I shall say a very few words to your Lordships) were
+guarantied by the Company. The jaghires of his
+own house, of his mother and grandmother, were
+guarantied by us. I must inform your Lordships,
+that, upon some of our other exactions at an earlier
+period, the Nabob had endeavored to levy a forced
+loan upon the jaghiredars. This forced loan was
+made and submitted to by those people upon a direct
+assurance of their rights in the jaghires, which right
+was guarantied by the British Resident, not only to
+the Begums, and to the whole family of the Nabob,
+but also to all the other objects of the tax.</p>
+
+<p>Before I proceed, I will beg leave to state to you
+briefly the nature of these jaghires. The jaghiredars,
+the holders of jaghires, form the body of the principal
+Mahometan nobility. The great nobility of that
+country are divided into two parts. One part consists
+of the zemindars, who are the ancient proprietors
+of land, and the hereditary nobility of the country:
+these are mostly Gentoos. The Mahometans form
+the other part, whose whole interest in the land consists
+in the jaghires: for very few indeed of them are
+zemindars anywhere, in some of the provinces none
+of them are so; the whole of them are jaghiredars.</p>
+
+<p>We have heard, my Lords, much discussion about
+jaghires. It is in proof before your Lordships that
+they are of two sorts: that a jaghire signifies exactly
+what the word <i>fee</i> does in the English language, or
+<i>feodum</i> in the barbarous Latin of the Feudists; that
+it is a word which signifies a salary or a maintenance,
+as did originally the English word <i>fee</i>, derived <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">{10}</a></span>from
+the word <i>feod</i> and <i>feodum</i>. These jaghires, like other
+fees and like other feods, were given in land, as
+a maintenance: some with the condition of service,
+some without any condition; some were annexed to
+an office, some were granted as the support of a dignity,
+and none were granted for a less term than life,
+except those that were immediately annexed to a
+lease. We have shown your Lordships (and in this
+we have followed the example of Mr. Hastings) that
+some of them are fees granted actually in perpetuity;
+and in fact many of them are so granted. We
+are farther to tell your Lordships, that by the custom
+of the empire they are almost all grown, as the feods
+in Europe are grown, by use, into something which
+is at least virtually an inheritance. This is the state
+of the jaghires and jaghiredars.</p>
+
+<p>Among these jaghires we find, what your Lordships
+would expect to find, an ample provision for
+all the nobility of that illustrious family of which the
+Nabob is the head: a prince whose family, both by
+father and mother, notwithstanding the slander of
+the prisoner against his benefactor, was undoubtedly
+of the first and most distinguished nobility of the
+Mahometan empire. Accordingly, his uncles, all his
+near relations, his mother, grandmother, all possessed
+jaghires, some of very long standing, and most of
+them not given by the Nabob.</p>
+
+<p>I take some pains in explaining this business, because
+I trust your Lordships will have a strong feeling
+against any confiscation for the purpose of revenue.
+Believe me, my Lords, if there is anything
+which will root the present order of things out of
+Europe, it will begin, as we see it has already begun
+in a neighboring country, by confiscating, for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">{11}</a></span>
+purposes of the state, grants made to classes of
+men, let them be held by what names or be supposed
+susceptible of what abuses soever. I will venture to
+say that Jacobinism never can strike a more deadly
+blow against property, rank, and dignity than your
+Lordships, if you were to acquit this man, would
+strike against your own dignity, and the very being
+of the society in which we live.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships will find in your printed Minutes
+who the jaghiredars were, and what was the amount
+of their estates. The jaghires of which Mr. Hastings
+authorized the confiscation, or what he calls a <i>resumption</i>,
+appear from Mr. Purling's account, when
+first the forced loan was levied upon them under his
+Residentship, to amount to 285,000<i>l.</i> sterling per annum;
+which 285,000<i>l.</i>, if rated and valued according
+to the different value of provisions and other necessaries
+of life in that country and in England, will
+amount, as near as may be, to about 600,000<i>l.</i> a year.
+I am within compass. Everybody conversant with
+India will say it is equivalent at least to 600,000<i>l.</i>
+a year in England; and what a blow such a confiscation
+as this would be on the fortunes of the peers of
+Great Britain your Lordships will judge. I like to
+see your estates as great as they are; I wish they
+were greater than they are; but whatever they are,
+I wish, above all that they should be perpetual. For
+dignity and property in this country, <i>Esto perpetua</i>
+shall be my prayer this day, and the last prayer of
+my life. The Commons, therefore, of Great Britain,
+those guardians of property, who will not suffer the
+monarch they love, the government which they
+adore, to levy one shilling upon the subject in any
+other way than the law and statutes of this kingdom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">{12}</a></span>
+prescribe, will not suffer, nor can they bear the idea,
+that any single class of people should be chosen to be
+the objects of a contrary conduct, nor that even the
+Nabob of Oude should be permitted to act upon such
+a flagitious principle. When an English governor
+has substituted a power of his own instead of the legal
+government of the country, as I have proved this
+man to have done, if he found the prince going to do
+an act which would shake the property of all the nobility
+of the country, he surely ought to raise his
+hand and say, "You shall not make my name your
+sanction for such an atrocious and abominable act as
+this confiscation would be."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings, however, whilst he gives, with an urbanity
+for which he is so much praised, his consent
+to this confiscation, adds, there must be pensions
+secured for all persons losing their estates, who had
+the security of our guaranty. Your Lordships know
+that Mr. Hastings, by his guaranty, had secured their
+jaghires to the Nabob's own relations and family.
+One would have imagined, that, if the estates of
+those who were without any security were to be confiscated
+at his pleasure, those at least who were guarantied
+by the Company, such as the Begums of Oude
+and several of the principal nobility of the Nabob's
+family, would have been secure. He, indeed, says
+that pensions shall be given them; for at this time he
+had not got the length of violating, without shame or
+remorse, all the guaranties of the Company. "There
+shall," says he, "be pensions given." If pensions were
+to be given to the value of the estate, I ask, What
+has this violent act done? You shake the security
+of property, and, instead of suffering a man to gather
+his own profits with his own hands, you turn him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">{13}</a></span>
+into a pensioner upon the public treasury. I can
+conceive that such a measure will render these persons
+miserable dependants instead of independent
+nobility; but I cannot conceive what financial object
+can be answered by paying that in pension which you
+are to receive in revenue. This is directly contrary
+to financial economy. For when you stipulate to
+pay out of the treasury of government a certain pension,
+and take upon you the receipts of an estate, you
+adopt a measure by which government is almost sure
+of being a loser. You charge it with a certain fixed
+sum, and, even upon a supposition that under the
+management of the public the estate will be as productive
+as it was under the management of its private
+owner, (a thing highly improbable,) you take your
+chance of a reimbursement subject to all the extra
+expense, and to all the accidents that may happen to
+a public revenue. This confiscation could not, therefore,
+be justified as a measure of economy; it must
+have been designed merely for the sake of shaking
+and destroying the property of the country.</p>
+
+<p>The whole transaction, my Lords, was an act of
+gross violence, ushered in by a gross fraud. It appears
+that no pensions were ever intended to be paid;
+and this you will naturally guess would be the event,
+when such a strange metamorphosis was to be made
+as that of turning a great landed interest into a pensionary
+payment. As it could answer no other purpose,
+so it could be intended for no other, than that
+of getting possession of these jaghires by fraud. This
+man, my Lords, cannot commit a robbery without
+indulging himself at the same time in the practice of
+his favorite arts of fraud and falsehood.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">{14}</a></span></p>
+<p>And here I must again remind your Lordships,
+that at the time of the treaty of Chunar the jaghires
+were held in the following manner. Of the 285,000<i>l.</i>
+a year which was to be confiscated, the old grants of
+Sujah Dowlah, [and?] the grandfather of the Nabob,
+amounted to near two thirds of the whole, as you will
+find in the paper to which we refer you. By this confiscation,
+therefore, the Nabob was authorized to <i>resume</i>
+grants of which he had not been the grantor.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+[<i>Mr. Burke here read the list of the jaghires.</i>]<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Now, my Lords, you see that all these estates, except
+25,782<i>l.</i> a year, were either jaghires for the Nabob's
+own immediate family, settled by his father upon
+his mother, and by his father's father upon his grandmother,
+and upon Salar Jung, his uncle, or were the
+property of the most considerable nobility, to the
+gross amount of 285,000<i>l.</i> Mr. Hastings confesses
+that the Nabob reluctantly made the confiscation to
+the extent proposed. Why? "Because," says he,
+"the orderlies, namely, certain persons so called, subservient
+to his debaucheries, were persons whom he
+wished to spare." Now I am to show you that this
+man, whatever faults he may have in his private morals,
+(with which we have nothing at all to do,) has
+been slandered throughout by Mr. Hastings. Take
+his own account of the matter. "The Nabob," says
+he, "would have confiscated all the rest, except his
+orderlies, whom he would have spared; but I, finding
+where his partiality lay, compelled him to sacrifice
+the whole; for otherwise he would have sacrificed
+the good to save the bad: whereas," says Mr.
+Hastings, "in effect my principle was to sacrifice
+the good, and at the same time to punish the bad."
+Now compare the account he gives of the proceeding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">{15}</a></span>s
+of Asoph ul Dowlah with his own. Asoph ul
+Dowlah, to save some unworthy persons who had
+jaghires, would, if left to his own discretion, have
+confiscated those only of the deserving; while Mr.
+Hastings, to effect the inclusion of the worthless in
+the confiscation, confiscates the jaghires of the innocent
+and the virtuous men of high rank, and of those
+who had all the ties of Nature to plead for the Nabob's
+forbearance, and reduced them to a state of
+dependency and degradation.</p>
+
+<p>Now, supposing these two villanous plans, neither
+of which your Lordships can bear to hear the sound
+of, to stand equal in point of morality, let us see
+how they stand in point of calculation. The unexceptionable
+part of the 285,000<i>l.</i> amounted to
+260,000<i>l.</i> a year; whereas, supposing every part of
+the new grants had been made to the most unworthy
+persons, it only amounted to 25,000<i>l.</i> a year. Therefore,
+by his own account, given to you and to the
+Company, upon this occasion he has confiscated
+260,000<i>l.</i> a year, the property of innocent, if not of
+meritorious individuals, in order to punish by confiscation
+those who had 25,000<i>l.</i> a year only. This
+is the account he gives you himself of his honor, his
+justice, and his policy in these proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>But, my Lords, he shall not escape so. It is in
+your minutes, that so far was the Nabob from wishing
+to save the new exceptionable grants, that, at the
+time of the forced loan I have mentioned, and also
+when the resumption was proposed, he was perfectly
+willing to give up every one of them, and desired
+only that his mother, his uncles, and his relations,
+with other individuals, the prime of the Mahometan
+nobility of that country, should be spared. Is it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">{16}</a></span>not
+enough that this poor Nabob, this wretched prince, is
+made a slave to the man now standing at your bar,
+that he is made by him a shame and a scandal to his
+family, his race, and his country, but he must be
+cruelly aspersed, and have faults and crimes attributed
+to him that do not belong to him? I know
+nothing of his private character and conduct: Mr.
+Hastings, who deals in scandalous anecdotes, knows
+them: but I take it upon the face of Mr. Purling's
+assertion, and I say, that the Nabob would have consented
+to an arbitrary taxation of the jaghires, and
+would have given up to absolute confiscation every
+man except those honorable persons I have mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner himself has called Mr. Wombwell to
+prove the names of those infamous persons with a
+partiality for whom Mr. Hastings has aspersed the
+Nabob, in order to lay the ground for the destruction
+of his family. They amount to only six in number;
+and when we come to examine these six, we find that
+their jaghires were perfectly contemptible. The list
+of the other jaghiredars, your Lordships see, fills up
+pages; and the amount of their incomes I have already
+stated. Your Lordships now see how inconsiderable,
+both in number and amount, were the
+culpable jaghires, in the destruction of which he has
+involved the greater number and the meritorious.
+You see that the Nabob never did propose any
+exemption of the former at any time; that this was
+a slander and a calumny on that unhappy man, in
+order to defend the violent acts of the prisoner, who
+has recourse to slander and calumny as a proper way
+to defend violence, outrage, and wrongs.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">{17}</a></span></p>
+<p>We have now gone through the first stage of Mr.
+Hastings's confiscation of the estates of these unhappy
+people. When it came to be put in execution, Mr.
+Middleton finds the Nabob reluctant in the greatest
+degree to make this sacrifice of his family and of all
+his nobility. It touched him in every way in which
+shame and sympathy can affect a man. He falls at
+the feet of Mr. Middleton; he says, "I signed the
+treaty of Chunar upon an assurance that it was never
+meant to be put in force." Mr. Middleton nevertheless
+proceeds; he sends the family of the Nabob out
+of the country; but he entertains fears of a general
+revolt as the consequence of this tyrannical act, and
+refers the case back to Mr. Hastings, who insists
+upon its being executed in its utmost extent. The
+Nabob again remonstrates in the strongest manner;
+he begs, he prays, he dissembles, he delays. One
+day he pretends to be willing to submit, the next he
+hangs back, just as the violence of Mr. Hastings or
+his own natural feelings and principles of justice
+dragged him one way or dragged him another. Mr.
+Middleton, trembling, and under the awe of that
+<i>dreadful responsibility</i> under which your Lordships
+may remember Mr. Hastings had expressly laid him
+upon that occasion, ventures at once to usurp the
+Nabob's government. He usurped it openly and
+avowedly. He declared that he himself would issue
+his purwannahs as governor of the country, for the
+purpose of executing this abominable confiscation.
+He assumed, I say, to himself the government of
+the country, and Mr. Hastings had armed him
+with a strong military force for that purpose; he
+declared he would order those troops to march for
+his support; he at last got this reluctant, struggling
+Nabob to consent in the manner we have described.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">{18}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I shall now read to your Lordships Mr. Middleton's
+letters, that you may hear these men with their own
+mouths describing their own acts, and that your Lordships
+may then judge whether the highest tone and
+language of crimination comes up to their own description
+of their own proceedings.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="quotdate">
+"<i>Lucknow, the 6th of Dec., 1781.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>"Finding the Nabob wavering in his determination
+about the resumption of the jaghires, I this day, in
+presence of, and with the minister's concurrence,
+ordered the necessary purwannahs to be written to
+the several aumils for that purpose, and it was my
+firm resolution to have dispatched them this evening,
+with proper people to see them punctually and
+implicitly carried into execution; but before they
+were all transcribed, I received a message from the
+Nabob, who had been informed by the minister of
+the resolution I had taken, entreating that I would
+withhold the purwannahs till to-morrow morning,
+when he would attend me, and afford me satisfaction
+on this point. As the loss of a few hours in the
+dispatch of the purwannahs appeared of little moment,
+and as it is possible the Nabob, seeing that the
+business will at all events be done, may make it an
+act of his own, I have consented to indulge him in
+his request; but, be the result of our interview
+whatever it may, nothing shall prevent the orders
+being issued to-morrow, either by him or myself, with
+the concurrence of the ministers. Your pleasure respecting
+the Begums I have learnt from Sir Elijah,
+and the measure heretofore proposed will soon follow
+the resumption of the jaghires; from both, or, indee<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">{19}</a></span>d,
+from the former alone, I have no doubt of the
+complete liquidation of the Company's balance."</p>
+
+
+<p class="quotdate">
+"<i>Lucknow, the 7th Dec., 1781.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Sir,&mdash;I had the honor to address you
+yesterday, informing you of the steps I had taken
+in regard to the resumption of the jaghires. This
+morning the Vizier came to me, according to his
+agreement, but seemingly without any intention or
+desire to yield me satisfaction on the subject under
+discussion; for, after a great deal of conversation,
+consisting on his part of trifling evasion and puerile
+excuses for withholding his assent to the measure,
+though at the same time professing the most implicit
+submission to your wishes, I found myself without
+any other resource than the one of employing that
+exclusive authority with which I consider your instructions
+to vest me. I therefore declared to the
+Nabob, in presence of the minister and Mr. Johnson,
+who I desired might bear witness of the conversation,
+that I construed his rejection of the measure proposed
+as a breach of his solemn promise to you, and
+an unwillingness to yield that assistance which was
+evidently in his power towards liquidating his heavy
+accumulated debt to the Company, and that I must
+in consequence determine, in my own justification,
+to issue immediately the purwannahs, which had
+only been withheld in the sanguine hope that he
+would be prevailed upon to make that his own act,
+which nothing but the most urgent necessity could
+force me to make mine. He left me without any
+reply, but afterwards sent for his minister, and authorized
+him to give me hopes that my requisition
+would be complied with; on which I expre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">{20}</a></span>ssed my
+satisfaction, but declared that I could admit of no
+further delays, and, unless I received his Excellency's
+formal acquiescence before the evening, I should
+then most assuredly issue my purwannahs: which I
+have accordingly done, not having had any assurances
+from his Excellency that could justify a further
+suspension. I shall as soon as possible inform
+you of the effect of the purwannahs, which in many
+parts I am apprehensive it will be found necessary to
+enforce with military aid; I am not, however, entirely
+without hopes that the Nabob, when he sees the
+inefficacy of further opposition, may alter his conduct,
+and prevent the confusion and disagreeable
+consequences which would be too likely to result
+from the prosecution of a measure of such importance
+without his concurrence. His Excellency talks
+of going to Fyzabad, for the purpose heretofore mentioned,
+in three or four days; I wish he may be serious
+in this intention, and you may rest assured I
+shall spare no pains to keep him to it."</p>
+
+
+<p class="quotdate">
+"<i>Lucknow, 28th December, 1781.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"If your new demand is to be insisted upon,
+which your letter seems to portend, I must beg your
+precise orders upon it; as, from the difficulties I have
+within these few days experienced in carrying the
+points you had enjoined with the Nabob, I have the
+best grounds for believing that he would consider it
+a direct breach of the late agreement, and totally reject
+the proposal as such; and I must own to you, that, in
+his present fermented state of mind, I could expect
+nothing less than despair and a declared rupture.</p>
+
+<p>"He has by no means been yet able to furnish me
+with means of paying off the arrears due to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">{21}</a></span> temporary
+brigade, to the stipulated term of its continuance
+in his service. The funds necessary for paying
+off and discharging his own military establishment
+under British officers, and his pension list, have been
+raised, on the private credit of Mr. Johnson and myself,
+from the shroffs of this place, to whom we are
+at this moment pledged for many lacs of rupees; and
+without such aid, which I freely and at all hazards
+yielded, because I conceived it was your anxious desire
+to relieve the Nabob as soon as possible of this
+heavy burden, the establishment must have been at
+his charge to this time, and probably for months to
+come, while his resources were strained to the utmost
+to furnish jaidads for its maintenance to this
+period. I therefore hesitate not to declare it utterly
+impossible for him, under any circumstances whatever,
+to provide funds for the payment of the troops
+you now propose to send him.</p>
+
+<p>"The wresting Furruckabad, Kyraghur, and Fyzoola
+Kh&acirc;n's country from his government, (for in
+that light, my dear Sir, I can faithfully assure you, he
+views the measures adopted in respect to those countries,)
+together with the resumption of all the jaghires,
+so much against his inclination, have already
+brought the Nabob to a persuasion that nothing less
+than his destruction, or the annihilation of every
+shadow of his power, is meant; and all my labors to
+convince him to the contrary have proved abortive.
+A settled melancholy has seized him, and his health
+is reduced beyond conception; and I do most humbly
+believe that the march of four regiments of
+sepoys towards Lucknow, under whatever circumstances
+it might be represented, would be considered
+by him as a force ultimately to be used in s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">{22}</a></span>ecuring
+his person. In short, my dear Sir, it is a matter of
+such immediate moment, and involving, apparently,
+such very serious and important consequences, that I
+have not only taken upon me to suspend the communication
+of it to the Nabob until I should be honored
+with your further commands, but have also ventured
+to write the inclosed letter to Colonel Morgan: liberties
+which I confidently trust you will excuse, when
+you consider that I can be actuated by no other motive
+than a zeal for the public service, and that, if,
+after all, you determine that the measure shall be
+insisted on, it will be only the loss of six or at most
+eight days in proposing it. But in the last event, I
+earnestly entreat your orders may be explicit and
+positive, that I may clearly know what lengths you
+would wish me to proceed in carrying them into execution.
+I again declare it is my firm belief, and
+assure yourself, my dear Mr. Hastings, I am not
+influenced in this declaration by any considerations
+but my public duty and my personal attachment to
+you, that the enforcing the measure you have proposed
+would be productive of an open rupture between
+us and the Nabob; nay, that the first necessary
+step towards carrying it into effect must be, on
+our part, a declaration of hostility."</p></div>
+
+<p>Your Lordships have now before your eyes proofs,
+furnished by Mr. Hastings himself from his correspondence
+with Mr. Middleton, irrefragable proofs,
+that this Nabob, who is stated to have made the proposition
+himself, was dragged to the signature of it;
+and that the troops which are supposed, and fraudulently
+stated, (and I wish your Lordships particularly
+to observe this,) to have been sent to assist h<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">{23}</a></span>im in
+this measure, were considered by him as a body of
+troops sent to imprison him, and to free him from
+all the troubles and pains of government.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Hastings sent the troops for the purpose,
+as he pretended, of assisting the Nabob in the
+execution of a measure which was really adopted in
+direct opposition to the wishes of that prince, what
+other conclusion could be drawn, but that they were
+sent to overawe, not to assist him? The march of
+alien troops into a country upon that occasion could
+have no object but hostility; they could have been
+sent with no other design but that of bringing disgrace
+upon the Nabob, by making him the instrument
+of his family's ruin, and of the destruction of
+his nobility. Your Lordships, therefore, will not
+wonder that this miserable man should have sunk
+into despair, and that he should have felt the weight
+of his oppression doubly aggravated by its coming
+from such a man as Mr. Hastings, and by its being
+enforced by such a man as Mr. Middleton.</p>
+
+<p>And here I must press one observation upon your
+Lordships: I do not know a greater insult that can
+be offered to a man born to command than to find
+himself made the tool of a set of obscure men, come
+from an unknown country, without anything to distinguish
+them but an usurped power. Never shall
+I, out of compliment to any persons, because they
+happen to be my own countrymen, disguise my feelings,
+or renounce the dictates of Nature and of humanity.
+If we send out obscure people, unknowing
+and unknown, to exercise such acts as these, I must
+say it is a bitter aggravation of the victim's suffering.
+Oppression and robbery are at all times evils;
+but they are more bearable, when exercised by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">{24}</a></span>persons
+whom we have been habituated to regard with
+awe, and to whom mankind for ages have been accustomed
+to bow.</p>
+
+<p>Now does the history of tyranny furnish, does the
+history of popular violence deposing kings furnish,
+anything like the dreadful deposition of this prince,
+and the cruel and abominable tyranny that has been
+exercised over him? Consider, too, my Lords, for
+what object all this was done. Was Mr. Hastings
+endeavoring, by his arbitrary interference and the
+use of his superior power, to screen a people from
+the usurpation and power of a tyrant,&mdash;from any
+strong and violent acts against property, against dignity,
+against nobility, against the freedom of his people?
+No: you see here a monarch deposed, in effect,
+by persons pretending to be his allies, and assigning
+what are pretended to be his wishes as the
+motive for using his usurped authority in the execution
+of these acts of violence against his own family
+and his subjects. You see him struggling against
+this violent prostitution of his authority. He refuses
+the sanction of his name, which before he had given
+up to Mr. Hastings to be used as he pleased, and
+only begs not to be made an instrument of wrong
+which his soul abhors, and which would make him
+infamous throughout the world. Mr. Middleton,
+however, assumes the sovereignty of the country.
+"I," he says, "am Nabob of Oude: the jaghires shall
+be confiscated: I have given my orders, and they
+shall be supported by a military force."</p>
+
+<p>I am ashamed to have so far distrusted your Lordships'
+honorable and generous feelings as to have
+offered you, upon this occasion, any remarks which
+you must have run before me in making. Those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">{25}</a></span>
+feelings which you have, and ought to have, feelings
+born in the breasts of all men, and much more in
+men of your Lordships' elevated rank, render my remarks
+unnecessary. I need not, therefore, ask what
+you feel, when a foreign resident at a prince's court
+takes upon himself to force that prince to act the
+part of a tyrant, and, upon his resistance, openly and
+avowedly assumes the sovereignty of the country.
+You have it in proof that Mr. Middleton did this.
+He not only put his own name to the orders for this
+horrible confiscation, but he actually proceeded to
+dispossess the jaghiredars of their lands, and to send
+them out of the country. And whom does he send,
+in the place of this plundered body of nobility, to
+take possession of the country? Why, the usurers
+of Benares. Yes, my Lords, he immediately mortgages
+the whole country to the usurers of Benares,
+for the purpose of raising money upon it: giving
+it up to those bloodsuckers, dispossessed of that nobility,
+whose interest, whose duty, whose feelings,
+and whose habits made them the natural protectors
+of the people.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, we here see a body of usurers put into
+possession of all the estates of the nobility: let us
+now see if this act was necessary, even for the avowed
+purposes of its agents,&mdash;the relief of the Nabob's
+financial difficulties, and the payment of his debts to
+the Company. Mr. Middleton has told your Lordships
+that these jaghires would pay the Company's
+debt completely in two years. Then would it not
+have been better to have left these estates in the
+hands of their owners, and to have oppressed them
+in some moderate, decent way? Might they not have
+left the jaghiredars to raise the sums required b<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">{26}</a></span>y some
+settlement with the bankers of Benares, in which the
+repayment of the money within five or six years might
+have been secured, and the jaghiredars have had in
+the mean time something to subsist upon? Oh, no!
+these victims must have nothing to live upon. They
+must be turned out. And why? Mr. Hastings
+commands it.</p>
+
+<p>Here I must come in aid of Mr. Middleton a
+little; for one cannot but pity the miserable instruments
+that have to act under Mr. Hastings. I do
+not mean to apologize for Mr. Middleton, but to pity
+the situation of persons who, being servants of the
+Company, were converted, by the usurpation of this
+man, into his subjects and his slaves. The mind
+of Mr. Middleton revolts. You see him reluctant
+to proceed. The Nabob begs a respite. You find
+in the Resident a willingness to comply. Even Mr.
+Middleton is placable. Mr. Hastings alone is obdurate.
+His resolution to rob and to destroy was not to
+be moved, and the estates of the whole Mahometan
+nobility of a great kingdom were confiscated in a
+moment. Your Lordships will observe that his orders
+to Mr. Middleton allow no forbearance. He
+writes thus to him.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Sir,&mdash;My mind has been for some days suspended
+between two opposite impulses: one arising from
+the necessity of my return to Calcutta; the other,
+from the apprehension of my presence being more
+necessary and more urgently wanted at Lucknow.
+Your answer to this shall decide my choice.</p>
+
+<p>"I have waited thus long in the hopes of hearing
+that some progress had been made in the execution
+of the plan which I concluded with the Nabob in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">{27}</a></span>
+September last. I do not find that any step towards
+it has been yet taken, though three months are
+elapsed, and little more than that period did appear
+to me requisite to have accomplished the most essential
+parts of it, and to have brought the whole into
+train. This tardiness, and the opposition prepared
+to the only decided act yet undertaken, have a bad
+appearance. I approve the Nabob's resolutions to
+deprive the Begums of their ill-employed treasures.
+In both services, it must be your care to prevent an
+abuse of the powers given to those that are employed
+in them. You yourself ought to be personally present.
+You must not allow any negotiation or forbearance,
+but must prosecute both services, until the
+Begums are at the entire mercy of the Nabob, their
+jaghires in the quiet possession of his aumils, and
+their wealth in such charge as may secure it against
+private embezzlement. You will have a force more
+than sufficient to effect both these purposes.</p>
+
+<p>"The reformation of his army and the new settlement
+of his revenues are also points of immediate
+concern, and ought to be immediately concluded.
+Has anything been done in either?</p>
+
+<p>"I now demand and require you most solemnly to
+answer me. Are you confident in your own ability
+to accomplish all these purposes, and the other
+points of my instructions? If you reply that you
+are, I will depart with a quiet and assured mind to
+the Presidency, but leave you a dreadful responsibility,
+if you disappoint me. If you tell me that you
+cannot rely upon your power, and the other means
+which you possess for performing these services, I will
+free you from the charge. I will proceed myself to
+Lucknow, and I will myself undertake them; and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">{28}</a></span>
+that case, I desire that you will immediately order
+bearers to be stationed, for myself and two other gentlemen,
+between Lucknow and Allahabad, and I will
+set out from hence in three days after the receipt
+of your letter.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry that I am under the necessity of
+writing in this pressing manner. I trust implicitly
+to your integrity, I am certain of your attachment
+to myself, and I know that your capacity is equal to
+any service; but I must express my doubts of your
+firmness and activity, and above all of your recollection
+of my instructions, and of their importance.
+My conduct in the late arrangements will be arraigned
+with all the rancor of disappointed rapacity,
+and my reputation and influence will suffer a mortal
+wound from the failure of them. They have already
+failed in a degree, since no part of them has yet
+taken place, but the removal of our forces from the
+Dooab and Rohilcund, and of the British officers and
+pensioners from the service of the Nabob, and the expenses
+of the former thrown without any compensation
+on the Company.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect a supply of money equal to the discharge
+of all the Nabob's arrears, and am much disappointed
+and mortified that I am not now able to
+return with it.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me an immediate answer to the question
+which I have herein proposed, that I may lose no
+more time in fruitless inaction."</p></div>
+
+<p>About this time Mr. Hastings had received information
+of our inquiries in the House of Commons into
+his conduct; and this is the manner in which he prepares
+to meet them. "I must get money. I must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">{29}</a></span>
+carry with me that great excuse for everything, that
+salve for every sore, that expiation for every crime:
+let me provide that, all is well. You, Mr. Middleton,
+try your nerves: are you equal to these services?
+Examine yourself; see what is in you: are you man
+enough to come up to it?" says the great robber
+to the little robber, says Roland the Great to his
+puny accomplice. "Are you equal to it? Do you
+feel yourself a man? If not, send messengers and
+dawks to me, and I, the great master tyrant, will
+come myself, and put to shame all the paltry delegate
+tools of despotism, that have not edge enough to cut
+their way through and do the services I have ordained
+for them."</p>
+
+<p>I have already stated to your Lordships his reason
+and motives for this violence, and they are such as
+aggravated his crime by attempting to implicate his
+country in it. He says he was afraid to go home
+without having provided for the payment of the Nabob's
+debt. Afraid of what? Was he afraid of coming
+before a British tribunal, and saying, "Through
+justice, through a regard for the rights of an allied
+sovereign, through a regard to the rights of his people,
+I have not got so much as I expected"? Of
+this no man could be afraid. The prisoner's fear had
+another origin. "I have failed," says he to himself,
+"in my first project. I went to Benares to rob;
+I have lost by my violence the fruits of that robbery.
+I must get the money somewhere, or I dare not appear
+before a British House of Commons, a British
+House of Lords, or any other tribunal in the kingdom;
+but let me get money enough, and they won't
+care how I get it. The estates of whole bodies of
+nobility may be confiscated; a people who had liv<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">{30}</a></span>ed
+under their protection may be given up into the
+hands of foreign usurers: they will care for none of
+these things; they will suffer me to do all this, and
+to employ in it the force of British troops, whom I
+have described as a set of robbers, provided I can
+get money." These were Mr. Hastings's views; and,
+in accordance with them, the jaghires were all confiscated,
+the jaghiredars with their families were all
+turned out, the possessions delivered up to the usurer,
+in order that Mr. Hastings might have the excuse
+of money to plead at the bar of the House of
+Commons, and afterwards at the bar of the House
+of Lords. If your Lordships, in your sacred character
+of the first tribunal in the world, should by your
+judgment justify those proceedings, you will sanction
+the greatest wrongs that have been ever known
+in history.</p>
+
+<p>But to proceed. The next thing to be asked is,
+Were the promised pensions given to the jaghiredars?
+I suppose your Lordships are not idle enough to put
+that question to us. No compensation, no consideration,
+was given or stipulated for them. If there had
+been any such thing, the prisoner could have proved
+it,&mdash;he would have proved it. The means were easy
+to him. But we have saved him the trouble of the
+attempt. We have proved the contrary, and, if called
+upon, we will show you the place where this is proved.</p>
+
+<p>I have now shown your Lordships how Mr. Hastings,
+having with such violent and atrocious circumstances
+usurped the government of Oude, (I hope I
+need not use any farther proof that the Nabob was
+in effect non-existent in the country,) treated all the
+landed property. The next question will be, How
+has he treated whatever moneyed property was le<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">{31}</a></span>ft
+in the country? My Lords, he looked over that immense
+waste of his own creating, not as Satan viewed
+the kingdoms of the world and saw the power and
+glory of them,&mdash;but he looked over the waste of
+Oude with a diabolical malice which one could hardly
+suppose existed in the prototype himself. He saw
+nowhere above-ground one single shilling that he
+could attach,&mdash;no, not one; every place had been
+ravaged; no money remained in sight. But possibly
+some might be buried in vaults, hid from the gripe
+of tyranny and rapacity. "It must be so," says
+he. "Where can I find it? how can I get at it?
+There is one illustrious family that is thought to
+have accumulated a vast body of treasures, through
+a course of three or four successive reigns. It does
+not appear openly; but we have good information
+that very great sums of money are bricked up and
+kept in vaults under ground, and secured under the
+guard and within the walls of a fortress": the residence
+of the females of the family, a guard, as your
+Lordships know, rendered doubly and trebly secure
+by the manners of the country, which make everything
+that is in the hands of women sacred. It is
+said that nothing is proof against gold,&mdash;that the
+strongest tower will not be impregnable, if Jupiter
+makes love in a golden shower. This Jupiter commences
+making love; but he does not come to the
+ladies with gold for their persons, he comes to their
+persons for their gold. This impetuous lover, Mr.
+Hastings, who is not to be stayed from the objects of
+his passion, would annihilate space and time between
+him and his beloved object, the jaghires of these ladies,
+had now, first, their treasure's affection.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">{32}</a></span></p>
+<p>Your Lordships have already had a peep behind
+the curtain, in the first orders sent to Mr. Middleton.
+In the treaty of Chunar you see a desire, obliquely
+expressed, to get the landed estates of all these great
+families. But even while he was meeting with such
+reluctance in the Nabob upon this point, and though
+he also met with some resistance upon the part even
+of Mr. Middleton, Mr. Hastings appears to have given
+him in charge some other still more obnoxious and
+dreadful acts. "While I was meditating," says Mr.
+Middleton, in one of his letters, "upon this [the
+resumption of the jaghires], your orders came to me
+through Sir Elijah Impey." What these orders were
+is left obscure in the letter: it is yet but as in a
+mist or cloud. But it is evident that Sir Elijah Impey
+did convey to him some project for getting at
+more wealth by some other service, which was not
+to supersede the first, but to be concurrent with that
+upon which Mr. Hastings had before given him such
+dreadful charges and had loaded him with such horrible
+responsibility. It could not have been anything
+but the seizure of the Begum's treasures. He
+thus goaded on two reluctant victims,&mdash;first the reluctant
+Nabob, then the reluctant Mr. Middleton,&mdash;forcing
+them with the bayonet behind them, and
+urging on the former, as at last appears, to violate
+the sanctity of his mother's house.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships have been already told by one
+of my able fellow Managers, that Sir Elijah Impey
+is the person who carried up the message alluded
+to in Mr. Middleton's letter. We have charged it,
+as an aggravation of the offences of the prisoner at
+your bar, that the Chief-Justice, who, by the sacred
+nature of his office, and by the express provisions
+of the act of Parliament under which he was sent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">{33}</a></span>
+out to India to redress the wrongs of the natives,
+should be made an instrument for destroying the
+property, real and personal, of this people. When
+it first came to our knowledge that all this private
+intrigue for the destruction of these high women
+was carried on through the intrigue of a Chief-Justice,
+we felt such shame and such horror, both
+for the instrument and the principal, as I think it
+impossible to describe, or for anything but complete
+and perfect silence to express.</p>
+
+<p>But by Sir Elijah Impey was that order carried
+up to seize and confiscate the treasures of the Begums.
+We know that neither the Company nor the
+Nabob had any claim whatever upon these treasures.
+On the contrary, we know that two treaties had been
+made for the protection of them. We know that
+the Nabob, while he was contesting about some elephants
+and carriages, and some other things that
+he said were in the hands of their steward, did allow
+that the treasures in the custody of his grandmother
+and of his mother's principal servants were their
+property. This is the Nabob who is now represented
+by Mr. Hastings and his counsel to have become
+the instrument of destroying his mother and grandmother,
+and everything else that ought to be dear to
+mankind, throughout the whole train of his family.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings, having resolved to seize upon the
+treasures of the Begums, is at a loss for some pretence
+of justifying the act. His first justification
+of it is on grounds which all tyrants have ready at
+their hands. He begins to discover a legal title to
+that of which he wished to be the possessor, and on
+this title sets up a claim to these treasures. I say
+Mr. Hastings set up this claim, because by this time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">{34}</a></span>
+I suppose your Lordships will not bear to hear the
+Nabob's name on such an occasion. The prisoner
+pretended, that, by the Mahometan law, these goods
+did belong to the Nabob; but whether they did or
+did not, he had himself been an active instrument
+in the treaty for securing their possession to the Begums,&mdash;a
+security which he attempts to unlock by
+his constructions of the Mahometan law. Having set
+up this title, the guaranty still remained; and how
+is he to get rid of that? In his usual way. "You
+have rebelled, you have taken up arms against your
+own son," (for that is the pretext,) "and therefore
+my guaranty is gone, and your goods, whether you
+have a title to them or not, are to be confiscated
+for your rebellion." This is his second expedient
+by way of justification.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships will observe the strange situation
+in which we are here placed. If the fact of the
+rebellion can be proved, the discussion of the title
+to the property in question will be totally useless;
+for, if the ladies had actually taken up arms to cut
+the Nabob's throat, it would require no person to
+come from the dead to prove to us that the Nabob,
+but not Mr. Hastings, had a right, for his own security
+and for his own indemnification, to take those
+treasures, which, whether they belonged to him or
+not, were employed in hostilities against him. The
+law of self-defence is above every other law; and if
+any persons draw the sword against you, violence on
+your part is justified, and you may use your sword
+to take from them that property by which they have
+been enabled to draw their sword against you.</p>
+
+<p>But the prisoner's counsel do not trust to this
+justification; they set up a title of right to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">{35}</a></span>these
+treasures: but how entirely they have failed in their
+attempts to substantiate either the one or the other
+of these his alleged justifications your Lordships will
+now judge. And first with regard to the title. The
+treasure, they say, belonged to the state. The grandmother
+and mother have robbed the son, and kept
+him out of his rightful inheritance. They then produce
+the Hedaya to show you what proportion of
+the goods of a Mussulman, when he dies, goes to his
+family; and here, certainly, there is a question of
+law to be tried. But Mr. Hastings is a great eccentric
+genius, and has a course of proceeding of
+his own: he first seizes upon the property, and then
+produces some Mahometan writers to prove that it
+did not belong to the persons who were in possession
+of it. You would naturally expect, that, when he
+was going to seize upon those goods, he would have
+consulted his Chief-Justice, (for, as Sir Elijah Impey
+went with him, he might have consulted him,) and
+have thus learnt what was the Mahometan law: for,
+though Sir Elijah had not taken his degree at a
+Mahometan college, though he was not a mufti or a
+moulavy, yet he had always muftis and moulavies
+near him, and he might have consulted them. But
+Mr. Hastings does not even pretend that such consultations
+or conferences were ever had. If he ever
+consulted Sir Elijah Impey, where is the report of the
+case? When were the parties before him? Where
+are the opinions of the moulavies? Where is the
+judgment of the Chief-Justice? Was he fit for nothing
+but to be employed as a messenger, as a common
+tipstaff? Was he not fit to try these rights, or to
+decide upon them? He has told you here, indeed,
+negatively, that he did not know any title Mr. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">{36}</a></span>Hastings
+had to seize upon the property of the Begums,
+except upon his hypothesis of the rebellion. He was
+asked if he knew any other. He answered, No. It
+consequently appears that Mr. Hastings, though he
+had before him his doctors of all laws, who could
+unravel for him all the enigmas of all the laws in the
+world, and who had himself shone upon questions of
+Mahometan law, in the case of the Nuddea Begum,
+did not dare to put this case to Sir Elijah Impey,
+and ask what was his opinion concerning the rights
+of these people. He was tender, I suppose, of the
+reputation of the Chief-Justice. For Sir Elijah Impey,
+though a very good man to write a letter, or
+take an affidavit in a corner, or run on a message, to
+do the business of an under-sheriff, tipstaff, or bum-bailiff,
+was not fit to give an opinion on a question of
+Mahometan law.</p>
+
+<p>You have heard Ali Ibrahim Kh&acirc;n referred to.
+This Mahometan lawyer was carried by Mr. Hastings
+up to Benares, to be a witness of the vast good he had
+done in that province, and was made Chief-Justice
+there. All, indeed, that we know of him, except the
+high character given of him by Mr. Hastings, is, I
+believe, that he is the Ali Ibrahim Kh&acirc;n whom in
+the Company's records I find mentioned as a person
+giving bribes upon some former occasion to Mr. Hastings;
+but whatever he was besides, he was a doctor
+of the Mahometan law, he was a mufti, and was
+made by Mr. Hastings the principal judge in a criminal
+court, exercising, as I believe, likewise a considerable
+civil jurisdiction, and therefore he was qualified
+as a lawyer; and Mr. Hastings cannot object
+to his qualifications either of integrity or of knowledge.
+This man was with him. Why did not he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">{37}</a></span>
+consult him upon this law? Why did he not make
+him out a case of John Doe and Richard Roe, of
+John Stokes and John &agrave; Nokes? Why not say,
+"Sinub possesses such things, under such and such
+circumstances: give me your opinion upon the legality
+of the possession"? No, he did no such thing.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships, I am sure, will think it a little
+extraordinary, that neither this chief-justice made
+by himself, nor that other chief-justice whom he led
+about with him in a string,&mdash;the one an English
+chief-justice, with a Mahometan suit in his court,
+the other a Mahometan chief-justice of the country,&mdash;that
+neither of them was consulted as lawyers by
+the prisoner. Both of them were, indeed, otherwise
+employed by him. For we find Ali Ibrahim Kh&acirc;n
+employed in the same subservient capacity in which
+Sir Elijah Impey was,&mdash;in order, I suppose, to keep
+the law of England and the law of Mahomet upon a
+just par: for upon this equality Mr. Hastings always
+values himself. Neither of these two chief-justices,
+I say, was ever consulted, nor one opinion taken; but
+they were both employed in the correspondence and
+private execution of this abominable project, when
+the prisoner himself had not either leisure or perhaps
+courage to give his public order in it till things got
+to greater ripeness.</p>
+
+<p>To Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, he did put a question;
+and, upon my word, it did not require an &OElig;dipus or
+a Sphinx to answer it. Says he, "I asked Sir Elijah
+Impey." What? a question on the title between the
+Nabob and his mother? No such thing. He puts
+an hypothetical question. "Supposing," says he, "a
+rebellion to exist in that country; will the Nabob be
+justified in seizing the goods of the rebels?" That<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">{38}</a></span>
+is a question decided in a moment; and I must have
+a malice to Sir Elijah Impey of which I am incapable,
+to deny the propriety of his answer. But observe, I
+pray you, my Lords, there is something peculiarly
+good and correct in it. He does not take upon him
+to say one word of the actual existence of a rebellion,
+though he was at the time in the country, and, if
+there had been any, he must have been a witness to
+it; but, so chaste was his character as a judge, that
+he would not touch upon the juries' office. "I am
+chief-justice here," says he, "though a little wandering
+out of my orbit; yet still the sacred office of
+justice is in me. Do you take upon you the fact; I
+find the law." Were it not for this sacred attention
+to separate jurisdictions, he might have been a tolerable
+judge of the fact,&mdash;just as good a judge as Mr.
+Hastings: for neither of them knew it any other way,
+as it appears afterwards, but by rumor and reports,&mdash;reports,
+I believe, of Mr. Hastings's own raising;
+for I do not know that Sir Elijah Impey had anything
+to do with them.</p>
+
+<p>But to proceed. With regard to the title of these
+ladies, according to the Mahometan law, you have
+nothing laid before you by the prisoner's counsel but
+a quotation cut out with the scissors from a Mahometan
+law-book, (which I suspect very much the learned
+gentlemen have never read through,) declaring how
+a Mahometan's effects are to be distributed. But
+Mr. Hastings could not at the time have consulted
+that learned counsel who now defends him upon the
+principles of the Hedaya, the Hedaya not having
+been then published in English; and I will venture
+to say, that neither Sir Elijah Impey nor Ali Ibrahim
+Kh&acirc;n, nor any other person, high or low, in India,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">{39}</a></span>
+ever suggested this defence, and that it was never
+thought of till lately found by the learned counsel in
+the English translation of the Hedaya. "God bless
+me!" now says Mr. Hastings, "what ignorance have
+I been in all this time! I thought I was seizing this
+unjustly, and that the pretence of rebellion was necessary;
+but my counsel have found out a book, since
+published, and from it they produce the law upon
+that subject, and show that the Nabob had a right
+to seize upon the treasures of his mother." But are
+your Lordships so ignorant&mdash;(your Lordships are not
+ignorant of anything)&mdash;are any men so ignorant
+as not to know that in every country the common
+law of distribution of the estate of an intestate
+amongst private individuals is no rule with regard
+to the family arrangements of great princes? Is
+any one ignorant, that, from the days of the first origin
+of the Persian monarchy, the laws of which have
+become rules ever since for almost all the monarchs
+of the East, the wives of great men have had, independent
+of the common distribution of their goods,
+great sums of money and great estates in land, one
+for their girdle, one for their veil, and so on, going
+through the rest of their ornaments and attire,&mdash;and
+that they held great estates and other effects
+over which the reigning monarch or his successor
+had no control whatever? Indeed, my Lords, a more
+curious and extraordinary species of trial than this
+of a question of right never was heard of since the
+world began. Mr. Hastings begins with seizing the
+goods of the Begums at Fyzabad, nine thousand
+miles from you, and fourteen years after tries the
+title in an English court, without having one person
+to appear for these miserable ladies. I trust you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">{40}</a></span>
+will not suffer this mockery; I hope this last and
+ultimate shame will be spared us: for I declare to
+God, that the defence, and the principles of it, appear
+to me ten thousand times worse than the act
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Now, my Lords, this criminal, through his counsel,
+chooses, with their usual flippancy, to say that
+the Commons have been <i>cautious</i> in stating this part
+of the charge, knowing that they were on tender
+ground, and therefore did not venture to say <i>entitled</i>,
+but <i>possessed of</i> only. A notable discovery indeed!
+We are as far from being taken in by such miserable
+distinctions as we are incapable of making them.
+We certainly have not said that the Begums were
+entitled to, but only that they were possessed of,
+certain property. And we have so said because
+we were not competent to decide upon their title,
+because your Lordships are not competent to decide
+upon their title, because no part of this tribunal is
+competent to decide upon their title. You have
+not the parties before you; you have not the cause
+before you,&mdash;but are getting it by oblique, improper,
+and indecent means. You are not a court of justice
+to try that question. The parties are at a distance
+from you; they are neither present themselves,
+nor represented by any counsel, advocate, or attorney:
+and I hope no House of Lords will ever judge
+and decide upon the title of any human being, much
+less upon the title of the first women in Asia, sequestered,
+shut up from you, at nine thousand miles'
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>I believe, my Lords, that the Emperor of Hindostan
+little thought, while Delhi stood, that an English
+subject of Mr. Hastings's description should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">{41}</a></span>
+domineer over the Vizier of his empire, and give the
+law to the first persons in his dominions. He as
+little dreamed of it as any of your Lordships now
+dream that you shall have your property seized by
+a delegate from Lucknow, and have it tried by what
+tenure a peer or peeress of Great Britain hold, the
+one his estate, and the other her jointure, dower,
+or her share of goods, her paraphernalia, in any
+court of Adawlut in Hindostan. If any such thing
+should happen, (for we know not what may happen;
+we live in an age of strange revolutions, and I doubt
+whether any more strange than this,) the Commons
+of Great Britain would shed their best blood sooner
+than suffer that a tribunal at Lucknow should decide
+upon any of your titles, for the purpose of justifying
+a robber that has taken your property. We should
+do the best we could, if such a strange circumstance
+occurred.</p>
+
+<p>The House of Commons, who are virtually the
+representatives of Lucknow, and who lately took
+500,000<i>l.</i> of their money, will not suffer the natives
+first to be robbed of their property, and then the
+titles, which by the laws of their own country they
+have to the goods they possess, to be tried by any
+tribunal in Great Britain. Why was it not tried in
+India before Mr. Hastings? One would suppose that
+an English governor, if called to decide upon such a
+claim of the Nabob's, would doubtless be attended
+by judges, muftis, lawyers, and all the apparatus of
+legal justice. No such thing. This man marches
+into the country, not with moulavies, not with muftis,
+not with the solemn apparatus of Oriental justice,&mdash;no:
+he goes with colonels, and captains, and
+majors,&mdash;these are his lawyers: and when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">{42}</a></span> he gets
+there, he demands from the parties, not their title,&mdash;no:
+"Give me your money!" is his cry. It is a
+shame (and I will venture to say, that these gentlemen,
+upon recollection, will feel ashamed) to see the
+bar justify what the sword is ashamed of. In reading
+this correspondence, I have found these great
+muftis and lawyers, these great chief-justices, attorneys-general,
+and solicitors-general, called colonels
+and captains, ashamed of these proceedings, and endeavoring
+to mitigate their cruelty; yet we see British
+lawyers in a British tribunal supporting and justifying
+these acts, on the plea of defective titles.</p>
+
+<p>The learned counsel asks, with an air of triumph,
+whether these ladies possessed these treasures by jointure,
+dower, will, or settlement. What was the title?
+Was it a deed of gift?&mdash;was it a devise?&mdash;was it
+<i>donatio caus&acirc; mortis?</i>&mdash;was it dower?&mdash;was it jointure?&mdash;what
+was it? To all which senseless and
+absurd questions we answer, You asked none of
+these questions of the parties, when you guarantied
+to them, by a solemn treaty, the possession of their
+goods. Then was the time to have asked these questions:
+but you asked none of them. You supposed
+their right, and you guarantied it, though you might
+then have asked what was their right. But besides
+the force and virtue of the guaranty, these unhappy
+princesses had ransomed themselves from any claim
+upon their property. They paid a sum of money,
+applied to your use, for that guaranty. They had
+a treble title,&mdash;by possession, by guaranty, by purchase.</p>
+
+<p>Again, did you ask these questions, when you went
+to rob them of their landed estates, their money,
+their ornaments, and even their wearing-apparel?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">{43}</a></span>
+When you sent those great lawyers, Major &mdash;&mdash;,
+Major &mdash;&mdash;, and the other majors, and colonels,
+and captains, did you call on them to exhibit their
+title-deeds? No: with a pistol at their breast, you
+demanded their money. Instead of forging a charge
+of rebellion against these unhappy persons, why did
+you not then call on them for their vouchers?
+No rebellion was necessary to give validity to a civil
+claim. What you could get by an ordinary judgment
+did not want confiscation called to its aid.
+When you had their eunuchs, their ministers, their
+treasurers, their agents and attorneys in irons, did
+you then ask any of these questions? No. "Discover
+the money you have in trust, or <i>you</i> go to
+corporal punishment,&mdash;<i>you</i> go to the castle of Chunar,&mdash;here
+is another pair of irons!"&mdash;this was
+the only language used.</p>
+
+<p>When the Court of Directors, alarmed at the proceedings
+against these ancient ladies, ordered their
+Indian government to make an inquiry into their
+conduct, the prisoner had then an opportunity and a
+duty imposed upon him of entering into a complete
+justification of his conduct: he might have justified
+it by every civil, and by every criminal mode of process.
+Did he do this? No. Your Lordships have
+in evidence the manner, equally despotic, <i>rebellious</i>,
+insolent, fraudulent, tricking, and evasive, by which
+he positively refused all inquiry into the matter.
+How stands it now, more than twelve years after
+the seizure of their goods, at ten thousand miles'
+distance? You ask of these women, buried in the
+depths of Asia, secluded from human commerce,
+what is their title to their estate. Have you the
+parties before you? Have you summoned them?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">{44}</a></span>
+Where is their attorney? Where is their agent?
+Where is their counsel? Is this law? Is this a legal
+process? Is this a tribunal,&mdash;the highest tribunal
+of all,&mdash;that which is to furnish the example for,
+and to be a control on all the rest? But what is
+worse, you do not come <i>directly</i> to the trial of this
+right to property. You are desired to surround and
+circumvent it; you are desired obliquely to steal an
+iniquitous judgment, which you dare not boldly ravish.
+At this judgment you can only arrive by a side
+wind. You have before you a criminal process
+against an offender. One of the charges against him
+is, that he has robbed matrons of high and reverend
+place. His defence is, that they had not the apt
+deeds to entitle them in law to this property. <i>In</i>
+this cause, with only the delinquent party before you,
+you are called upon to try their title on his allegations
+of its invalidity, and by acquitting him to divest
+them not only of their goods, but of their honor,&mdash;to
+call them disseizors, wrong-doers, cheats, defrauders
+of their own son. No hearing for them,&mdash;no
+pleading,&mdash;all appeal cut off. Was ever a man indicted
+for a robbery, that is, for the forcible taking of
+the goods possessed by another, suffered to desire the
+prosecutor to show the deeds or other instruments
+by which he acquired those goods? The idea is contemptible
+and ridiculous. Do these men dream?
+Do they conceive, in their confused imaginations,
+that you can be here trying such a question, and
+venturing to decide upon it? Your Lordships will
+never do that, which if you did do, you would be
+unfit to subsist as a tribunal for a single hour; and
+if we, on our part, did not bring before you this attempt,
+as the heaviest aggravation of the prisoner's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">{45}</a></span>
+crimes, we should betray our trust as representatives
+of the Commons of Great Britain. Having made
+this protest in favor of law, of justice, and good policy,
+permit me to take a single step more.</p>
+
+<p>I will now show your Lordships that it is very
+possible, nay, very probable, and almost certain, that
+a great part of what these ladies possessed was a
+saving of their own, and independent of any grant.
+It appears in the papers before you, that these unfortunate
+ladies had about 70,000<i>l.</i> a year, landed property.
+Mr. Bristow states in evidence before your
+Lordships, that their annual expenses did not exceed
+a lac and a half, and that their income was about
+seven lacs; that they had possessed this for twenty
+years before the death of Sujah Dowlah, and from
+the death of that prince to the day of the robbery.
+Now, if your Lordships will calculate what the savings
+from an income of 70,000<i>l.</i> a year will amount
+to, when the party spends about 15,000<i>l.</i> a year, you
+will see that by a regular and strict economy these
+people may have saved considerable property of their
+own, independent of their titles to any other property:
+and this is a rational way of accounting for their
+being extremely rich. It may be supposed, likewise,
+that they had all those advantages which ladies of
+high rank usually have in that country,&mdash;gifts at
+marriage, &amp;c. We know that there are deeds of
+gift by husbands to their wives during their lifetime,
+and many other legal means, by which women in
+Asia become possessed of very great property. But
+Mr. Hastings has taught them the danger of much
+wealth, and the danger of economy. He has shown
+them that they are saving, not for their families, for
+those who may possibly stand in the utmost need of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">{46}</a></span>
+it, but for tyrants, robbers, and oppressors.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, I am really ashamed to have said so
+much upon the subject of their titles. And yet there
+is one observation more to be made, and then I shall
+have done with this part of the prisoner's defence.
+It is, that the Nabob himself never has made a claim
+on this ground; even Mr. Hastings, his despotic
+master, could never get him regularly and systematically
+to make such a claim; the very reverse of this
+is the truth. When urged on to the commission of
+these acts of violence by Mr. Middleton, you have
+seen with what horror and how reluctantly he lends
+his name; and when he does so, he is dragged like a
+victim to the stake. At the beginning of this affair,
+where do we find that he entered this claim, as the
+foundation of it? Upon one occasion only, when
+dragged to join in this wicked act, something dropped
+from his lips which seemed rather to have been
+forced into his mouth, and which he was obliged to
+spit out again, about the possibility that he might
+have had some right to the effects of the Begums.</p>
+
+<p>We next come to consider the manner in which
+these acts of violence were executed. They forced
+the Nabob himself to accompany their troops, and
+their Resident, Mr. Middleton, to attack the city and
+to storm the fort in which these ladies lived, and
+consequently to outrage their persons, to insult their
+character, and to degrade their dignity, as well as to
+rob them of all they had.</p>
+
+<p>That your Lordships may learn something of one
+of these ladies, called the Munny Begum, I will refer
+you to Major Browne's evidence,&mdash;a man who
+was at Delhi, the fountain-head of all the nobility
+of India, and must have known who this lady was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">{47}</a></span>
+that has been treated with such indignity by the
+prisoner at your bar. Major Browne was asked,
+"What was the opinion at Delhi respecting the rank,
+quality, and character of the Princesses of Oude, or
+of either of them?"&mdash;"The elder, or Munny Begum,
+was," says he, "a woman of high rank: she
+was, I believe, the daughter of Saadut Ali Kh&acirc;n, a
+person of high rank in the time of Mahommed Shah."&mdash;"Do
+you know whether any woman in all Hindostan
+was considered of superior rank or birth?"&mdash;He
+answers, "I believe not, except those of the royal
+family. She was a near relation to Mirza Shaffee
+Kh&acirc;n, who was a noble of nobles, the first person at
+that day in the empire." In answer to another question
+put by a noble Lord, in the same examination,
+respecting the conversation which he had with Mirza
+Shaffee Kh&acirc;n, and of which he had given an account,
+he says, "He [Mirza Shaffee Kh&acirc;n] spoke of the
+attempt to seize the treasures of the Begums, which
+was then suspected, in terms of resentment, and as
+a disgrace in which he participated, as being related
+by blood to the house of Sufdar Jung, who was the
+husband of the old Begum." He says afterwards,
+in the same examination, that he, the Begum's husband,
+was the second man, and that her father was
+the first man, in the Mogul empire. Now the Mogul
+empire, when this woman came into the world, was
+an empire of that dignity that kings were its subjects;
+and this very Mirza Shaffee Kh&acirc;n, that we
+speak of, her near relation, was then a prince with a
+million a year revenue, and a man of the first rank,
+after the Great Mogul, in the whole empire.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, these were people that ought to have
+been treated with a little decorum. When we co<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">{48}</a></span>nsider
+the high rank of their husbands, their fathers,
+and their children, a rank so high that we have nothing
+in Great Britain to compare with theirs, we cannot
+be surprised that they were left in possession of
+great revenues, great landed estates, and great moneyed
+property. All the female parts of these families,
+whose alliance was, doubtless, much courted,
+could not be proffered in marriage, and endowed in
+a manner agreeably to the dignity of such persons,
+but with great sums of money; and your Lordships
+must also consider the multitude of children of which
+these families frequently consisted. The consequences
+of this robbery were such as might naturally be
+expected. It is said that not one of the females of
+this family has since been given in marriage.</p>
+
+<p>But all this has nothing to do with the rebellion.
+If they had, indeed, rebelled to cut their own son's
+throat, there is an end of the business. But what
+evidence have you of this fact? and if none can be
+produced, does not the prisoner's defence aggravate
+infinitely his crime and that of his agents? Did
+they ever once state to these unfortunate women that
+any such rebellion existed? Did they ever charge
+them with it? Did they ever set the charge down in
+writing, or make it verbally, that they had conspired
+to destroy their son, a son whom Mr. Hastings had
+brought there to rob them? No, this was what neither
+Mr. Hastings nor his agent ever did: for as they
+never made a civil demand upon them, so they never
+made a criminal charge against them, or against any
+person belonging to them.</p>
+
+<p>I save your Lordships the trouble of listening to
+the manner in which they seized upon these people,
+and dispersed their guard. Mr. Middleton states,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">{49}</a></span>
+that they found great difficulties in getting at their
+treasures,&mdash;that they stormed their forts successively,
+but found great reluctance in the sepoys to make
+their way into the inner inclosures of the women's
+apartments. Being at a loss what to do, their only
+resource, he says, was to threaten that they would
+seize their eunuchs. These are generally persons
+who have been bought slaves, and who, not having
+any connections in the country where they are settled,
+are supposed to guard both the honor of the women,
+and their treasures, with more fidelity than other persons
+would do. We know that in Constantinople,
+and in many other places, these persons enjoy offices
+of the highest trust, and are of great rank and dignity;
+and this dignity and rank they possess for the
+purpose of enabling them to fulfil their great trusts
+more effectually. The two principal eunuchs of the
+Begums were Jewar and Behar Ali Kh&acirc;n, persons
+of as high rank and estimation as any people in the
+country. These persons, however, were seized, not,
+says Mr. Hastings, for the purpose of extorting money,
+as assumed in the charge, but as agents and principal
+instruments of exciting the insurrection before
+alluded to, &amp;c. Mr. Hastings declares that they were
+not seized for the purpose of extorting money, but
+that they were seized in order to be punished for
+their crimes, and, <i>eo nomine</i>, for this crime of rebellion.
+Now this crime could not have been committed
+immediately by [the?] women themselves; for no
+woman can come forward and head her own troops.
+We have not heard that any woman has done so
+since the time of Zenobia, in another part of the
+East; and we know that in Persia no person can behold
+the face of a woman of rank, or speak to females<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">{50}</a></span>
+of condition, but through a curtain: therefore they
+could not go out themselves, and be active in a rebellion.
+But, I own, it would be some sort of presumption
+against them, if Jewar Ali Kh&acirc;n and Behar Ali
+Kh&acirc;n had headed troops, and been concerned in
+acts of rebellion; and the prisoner's counsel have
+taken abundance of pains to show that such persons
+do sometimes head armies and command legions in
+the East. This we acknowledge that they sometimes
+do. If these eunuchs had behaved in this way, if
+they had headed armies and commanded legions for
+the purposes of rebellion, it would have been a fair
+presumption that their mistresses were concerned in it.
+But instead of any proof of such facts, Mr. Hastings
+simply says, "We do not arrest them for the purpose
+of extorting money, but as a punishment for their
+crimes." By Mr. Middleton's account you will see
+the utter falsity of this assertion. God knows what
+he has said that is true. It would, indeed, be singular
+not to detect him in a falsity, but in a truth. I
+will now show your Lordships the utter falsity of this
+wicked allegation.</p>
+
+<p>There is a letter from Mr. Middleton to Sir Elijah
+Impey, dated Fyzabad, the 25th of January, 1782, to
+which I will call your Lordships' attention.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Dear Sir Elijah,&mdash;I have the satisfaction to
+inform you that we have at length so far obtained
+the great object of our expedition to this place as to
+commence on the receipt of money, of which, in the
+course of this day, we have got about six lacs. I
+know not yet what amount we shall actually realize,
+but I think I may safely venture to pronounce it will
+be equal to the liquidation of the Company's balance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">{51}</a></span>
+It has been at once the most important and the most
+difficult point of duty which has ever occurred in my
+office; and the anxiety, the hopes and fears, which
+have alternately agitated my mind, cannot be described
+or conceived but by those who have been witness
+to what has passed in the course of this long
+contest. The [Nabob's] ministers have supported
+me nobly, and deserve much commendation. Without
+the shrewd discernment and knowledge of the
+finesse and tricks of the country which Hyder Beg
+Kh&acirc;n possesses, I believe we should have succeeded
+but indifferently; for I soon found that no real advantage
+was to be obtained by proceeding at once to
+violent extremities with the Begum, and that she was
+only to be attacked through the medium of her confidential
+servants, who it required considerable address
+to get hold of. However, we at last effected it; and
+by using some few severities with them, we at length
+came at the secret hoards of this old lady. I will
+write you more particulars hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to inform you my little boy still continues
+in a very precarious way, though somewhat
+better than when I had last the honor to address you.
+My respects to Lady Impey. And believe me, with
+great regard, my dear Sir Elijah, your faithful,
+obliged, and most affectionate humble servant,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">
+"NATHANIEL MIDDLETON."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, we produce this letter to your Lordships,
+because it is a letter which begins with "<i>Dear Sir
+Elijah</i>," and alludes to some family matters, and is
+therefore more likely to discover the real truth, the
+true genius of a proceeding, than all the formal and
+official stuff that ever was produced. You see the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">{52}</a></span>
+tenderness and affection in which they proceed. You
+see it is his <i>dear Sir Elijah</i>. You see that he does
+not tell the dear Sir Elijah, the Chief-Justice of India,
+the pillar of the law, the great conservator of personal
+liberty and private property,&mdash;he does not tell him
+that he has been able to convict these eunuchs of any
+crime; he does not tell him he has the pleasure of
+informing him what matter he has got upon which a
+decision at law may be grounded; he does not tell
+him that he has got the least proof of the want of title
+in those ladies: not a word of the kind. You cannot
+help observing the soft language used in this tender
+billet-doux between Mr. Middleton and Sir Elijah
+Impey. You would imagine that they were making
+love, and that you heard the voice of the turtle
+in the land. You hear the soft cooing, the gentle
+addresses,&mdash;"Oh, my hopes!" to-day, "My fears!"
+to-morrow,&mdash;all the language of friendship, almost
+heightened into love; and it comes at last to "<i>I have
+got at the secret hoards of these ladies</i>.&mdash;Let us rejoice,
+my dear Sir Elijah; this is a day of rejoicing, a
+day of triumph; and this triumph we have obtained
+by seizing upon the old lady's eunuchs,&mdash;in doing
+which, however, we found a great deal of difficulty."
+You would imagine, from this last expression, that it
+was not two eunuchs, with a few miserable women
+clinging about them, that they had to seize, but that
+they had to break through all the guards which we
+see lovers sometimes breaking through, when they
+want to get at their ladies. Hardly ever did the
+beauty of a young lady excite such rapture; I defy
+all the charms this country can furnish to produce
+a more wonderful effect than was produced by the
+hoards of these two old women, in the bosoms of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">{53}</a></span>Sir
+Elijah Impey and Mr. Middleton. "We have got,"
+he exultingly says, "we have got to the secret hoards
+of this old lady!" And I verily believe there never
+was a passion less dissembled; there Nature spoke;
+there was truth triumphant, honest truth. Others
+may feign a passion; but nobody can doubt the raptures
+of Mr. Hastings, Sir Elijah Impey, and Mr.
+Middleton.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, one would have expected to have found
+here something of their crimes, something of their
+rebellion, for he talks of a few "necessary severities."
+But no: you find the real criminal, the real object,
+was the secret hoards of the old ladies. It is true,
+<i>a few severities</i> were necessary to obtain that object:
+however, they did obtain it. How then did they
+proceed? First, they themselves took and received,
+in weight and tale, all the money that was in the
+place. I say <i>all</i>; for whether there was any more
+they never have discovered, with all their search,
+from that day to this. Therefore we fairly presume
+that they had discovered all that there was to discover
+with regard to money. They next took from these
+unfortunate people an engagement for the amount of
+treasure at a definite sum, without knowing whether
+they had it or not, whether they could procure it or
+not. The Bhow Begum has told us, as your Lordships
+have it in evidence, that they demanded from
+her a million of money; that she, of course, denied
+having any such sums; but Mr. Middleton forced her
+unfortunate eunuchs or treasurers, by some <i>few severities</i>,
+to give their bond for 600,000<i>l.</i></p>
+
+<p>You would imagine, that, when these eunuchs had
+given up all that was in their power, when they had
+given a bond for what they had not, (for they were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">{54}</a></span>
+only the treasurers of other people,) that the bond
+would not have been rigidly exacted. But what do
+Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton, as soon as they get
+their plunder? They went to their own assay-table,
+by which they measured the rate of exchange between
+the coins in currency at Oude and those at Calcutta,
+and add the difference to the sum for which the bond
+was given. Thus they seize the secret hoards, they
+examine it as if they were receiving a debt, and they
+determine what this money would and ought to
+produce at Calcutta: not considering it as coming
+from people who gave all they had to give, but as
+what it would produce at the mint at Calcutta,
+according to a custom made for the profit of the
+Residents; even though Mr. Hastings, upon another
+occasion, charged upon Mr. Bristow as a crime that
+he had made that profit. This money, my Lords,
+was taken to that assay-table, which they had invented
+for their own profit, and they made their victims
+pay a rupee and a half batta, or exchange of money,
+upon each gold mohur; by which and other charges
+they brought them 60,000<i>l.</i> more in debt, and forced
+them to give a bond for that 60,000<i>l.</i></p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships have seen in what manner these
+debts were contracted,&mdash;and that they were contracted
+by persons engaging, not for themselves, for they
+had nothing; all their property was apparently their
+mistresses'. You will now see in what manner the
+payment of them was exacted; and we shall beg
+leave to read to you their own accounts of their own
+proceedings. Your Lordships will then judge whether
+they were proceeding against rebels as rebels,
+or against wealthy people as wealthy people, punishing
+them, under pretence of crimes, for their own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">{55}</a></span>
+profit.</p>
+
+<p>In a letter from Mr. Middleton to Mr. Hastings,
+after two other paragraphs, he goes on thus.</p>
+
+<p>"It remained only to get possession of her wealth;
+and to effect this, it was then and is still my firm and
+unalterable opinion that it was indispensably necessary
+to employ temporizing expedients, and to work
+upon the hopes and fears of the Begum herself, and
+more especially upon those of her principal agents,
+through whose means alone there appeared any probable
+chance of our getting access to the hidden treasures
+of the late Vizier; and when I acquaint you that
+by far the greatest part of the treasure which has been
+delivered to the Nabob was taken from the most secret
+recesses in the houses of the two eunuchs, whence, of
+course, it could not have been extracted without the
+adoption of those means which could induce the discovery,
+I shall hope for your approbation of what I did.
+I must also observe, that no further rigor than that
+which I exerted could have been used against females
+in this country, to whom there can be no access. The
+Nabob and Salar Jung were the only two that could
+enter the zenanah: the first was a son, who was to
+address a parent, and, of course, could use no language
+or action but that of earnest and reiterated
+solicitation; and the other was, in all appearance, a
+traitor to our cause. Where force could be employed,
+it was not spared: the troops of the Begum
+were driven away and dispersed; their guns taken;
+her fort, and the outward walls of her house seized
+and occupied by our troops, at the Nabob's requisition;
+and her chief agents imprisoned and put in
+irons. No further step was left. And in this situation
+they still remain, and are to continue (excepting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">{56}</a></span>
+only a remission of the irons) until the final liquidation
+of the payment; and if then you deem it proper,
+no possible means of offence being left in her hands
+or those of her agents, all her lands and property
+having been taken, I mean, with your sanction, to restore
+her house and servants to her, and hope to be
+favored with your early reply, as I expect that a few
+days will complete the final surrender of all that is
+further expected from the Begum."</p>
+
+<p>There are some things in this letter which I shall
+beg your Lordships to remark. There is mention
+made of a few preliminary severities used by Mr.
+Middleton, in order to get at their money. Well,
+he did get at the money, and he got a bond for the
+payment of an additional sum, which they thought
+proper to fix at about six hundred thousand pounds,
+to which was added another usurious bond for sixty
+thousand; and in order to extort these forced bonds,
+and to make up their aggravated crimes of usury,
+violence, and oppression, they put these eunuchs into
+prison, without food and water, and loaded their
+limbs with fetters. This was their second imprisonment;
+and what followed these few severities your
+Lordships will remark,&mdash;still more severities. They
+continued to persecute, to oppress, to work upon
+these men by torture and by the fear of torture, till
+at last, having found that all their proceedings were
+totally ineffectual, they desire the women to surrender
+their house; though it is in evidence before you,
+that to remove a woman from her own house to another
+house without her consent is an outrage of the
+greatest atrocity, on account of which many women
+have not only threatened, but have actually put themselves
+to death. Mr. Hastings himself, in the case of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">{57}</a></span>
+Munny Begum, had considered such a proposition as
+the last degree of outrage that could be offered. These
+women offered to go from house to house while their
+residence was searched; but "No," say their tormentors,
+"the treasure may be bricked up, in so large
+a house, in such a manner that we cannot find it."</p>
+
+<p>But to proceed with the treatment of these unfortunate
+men. I will read to your Lordships a letter of
+Mr. Middleton to Captain Leonard Jaques, commanding
+at Fyzabad, 18th March, 1782.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Sir,&mdash;I have received your letter of the 13th
+instant. The two prisoners, Behar and Jewar Ali
+Kh&acirc;n, having violated their written solemn engagement
+with me for the payment of the balance due to
+the Honorable Company on the Nabob's assignments
+accepted by them, and declining giving me any satisfactory
+assurances on that head, I am under the disagreeable
+necessity of recurring to severities to enforce
+the said payment. This is, therefore, to desire
+that you immediately cause them to be put in irons,
+and kept so until I shall arrive at Fyzabad, to take
+further measures, as may be necessary."</p></div>
+
+<p>Here is the answer of Captain Jaques to Mr. Middleton.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="quotdate">
+"<i>April 23d, 1782.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;Allow me the honor of informing you that
+the place the prisoners Behar Ali Kh&acirc;n and Jewar
+Ali Kh&acirc;n are confined in is become so very unhealthy,
+by the number obliged to be on duty in so
+confined a place at this hot season of the year, and
+so situated, that no reduction can with propriety be
+made from their guard, it being at such a distance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">{58}</a></span>
+from the battalion."</p></div>
+
+<p>You see, my Lords, what a condition these unfortunate
+persons were in at that period; you see they
+were put in irons, in a place highly unhealthy; and
+from this you will judge of the treatment which
+followed the <i>few severities</i>. The first yielded a bond
+for 600,000<i>l.</i>; the second, a bond for 60,000<i>l.</i>; the
+third was intended to extort the payment of these
+bonds, and completed their series.</p>
+
+<p>I will now read a letter from Captain Jaques to Mr.
+Middleton, from the printed Minutes, dated <i>Palace,
+Fyzabad, May 18th, 1782</i>, consequently written nearly
+a month after the former.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Sir,&mdash;The prisoners Behar and Jewar Ali Kh&acirc;n,
+who seem to be very sickly, have requested their
+irons might be taken off for a few days, that they
+might take medicine, and walk about the garden of
+the place where they are confined, to assist the medicine
+in its operation. Now, as I am sure they
+would be equally as secure without their irons as
+with them, I think it my duty to inform you of this
+request, and desire to know your pleasure concerning
+it.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">
+(Signed) "LEONARD JAQUES."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>On the 22d May, 1782, Captain Jaques's humane
+proposal is thus replied to by Mr. Middleton.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"I am sorry it is not in my power to comply with
+your proposal of easing the prisoners for a few days
+of their fetters. Much as my humanity may be
+touched by their sufferings, I should think it inexpedient
+to afford them any alleviation while they persist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">{59}</a></span>
+in a breach of their contract with me; and, indeed,
+no indulgence could be shown them without
+the authority of the Nabob, who, instead of consenting
+to moderate the rigors of their situation, would
+be most willing to multiply them.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">
+(Signed) "NATHANIEL MIDDLETON."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>I will now call your Lordships' attention to other
+letters connected with this transaction.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Letter from Major Gilpin to Mr. Middleton, June 5th,
+1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;Agreeably to your instructions, I went to
+the prisoners, Behar and Jewar Ali Kh&acirc;n, accompanied
+by Hoolas Roy, who read the papers respecting
+the balance now due, &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"In general terms they expressed concern at not
+being able to discharge the same without the assistance
+of the Begum, and requested indulgence to send
+a message to her on that subject, and in the evening
+they would give an answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I went at the time appointed for the answer, but
+did not receive a satisfactory one; in consequence of
+which I desired them to be ready, at the shortest notice,
+to proceed to Lucknow, and explained to them
+every particular contained in your letter of the 1st
+instant respecting them.</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday morning I sent for Letafit Ali Kh&acirc;n,
+and desired him to go to the Bhow Begum, and deliver
+the substance of my instructions to her, which
+he did, and returned with the inclosed letter from
+her. From some circumstances which I have heard
+to-day, I am hopeful the prisoners will soon think
+seriously of their removal, and pay the balance ra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">{60}</a></span>ther
+than submit themselves to an inconvenient journey
+to Lucknow."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>To Major Gilpin, commanding at Fyzabad, from Mr.
+Middleton.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;I have been favored with your letter of
+the 5th instant, informing me of the steps you had
+taken in consequence of my instructions of the 1st,
+and covering a letter from the Bhow Begum, which
+is so unsatisfactory that I cannot think of returning
+an answer to it. Indeed, as all correspondence between
+the Begum and me has long been stopped, I
+request you will be pleased to inform her that I by
+no means wish to resume it, or maintain any friendly
+intercourse with her, until she has made good my
+claim upon her for the balance due.</p>
+
+<p>"I have now, in conformity to my former instructions,
+to desire that the two prisoners, Behar
+and Jewar Ali Kh&acirc;n, may be immediately sent,
+under a sufficient guard, to Lucknow, unless, upon
+your imparting to them this intimation, either they
+or the Begum should actually pay the balance, or
+give you such assurances or security for the assets to
+be immediately forthcoming as you think can be relied
+upon; in which case you will of course suspend
+the execution of this order."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Mr. Richard Johnson to Major Gilpin. Lucknow,
+24th June, 1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;I have received the honor of your letter of
+the 20th. The prisoners arrived here this morning.
+Lieutenant Crow has delivered them over to Captain
+Waugh, and returns to you in a day or two.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">{61}</a></span></p>
+<p>"I think their hint to you a very good one, and
+worth improving upon. Was the Bhow Begum to
+think that she must go to Allahabad, or any other
+place, while her palace is searched for the hidden
+treasure of the late Vizier, it might go further than
+any other step that can be immediately taken towards
+procuring payment of the balance outstanding.</p>
+
+<p>"The prisoners are to be threatened with severities
+to-morrow, to make them discover where the balance
+may be procurable, the fear of which may possibly
+have a good effect; and the apprehensions of
+the Begum lest they should discover the hidden
+treasure may induce her to make you tenders of
+payment, which you may give any reasonable encouragement
+to promote that may occur to you.</p>
+
+<p>"The jaghire cannot be released to her on any
+other terms, nor even to the Nabob, until the five
+lacs for which it was granted be paid up; and the
+prisoners must also be detained until the full fifty
+lacs be liquidated: consequently nothing but the
+fear of an increase of demand, upon breach of the
+first engagement on her part, will induce her to
+prompt payment."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Letter from Mr. Richard Johnson to the Commanding
+Officer of the Guard. Lucknow, 23d July, 1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;Some violent demands having been made
+for the release of the prisoners, it is necessary that
+every possible precaution be taken for their security.
+You will therefore be pleased to be very strict in
+guarding them; and I herewith send another pair
+of fetters, to be added to those now upon the prisoners."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">{62}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Letter from Robert Steere Allen to Richard Johnson,
+Esq., Acting Resident. Lucknow, 23d July, 1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;I have received your instructions, and
+ordered the fetters to be added; but they are by
+much too small for their feet. The utmost regard
+shall be paid to the security of the prisoners. I have
+sent back the fetters, that you may have them altered,
+if you think proper."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Letter from Mr. Johnson to the Officer commanding the
+Guard. Lucknow, 28th June, 1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;The Nabob having determined to inflict
+corporal punishment upon the prisoners under your
+guard, this is to desire that his officers, when they
+shall come, may have free access to the prisoners,
+and be permitted to do with them as they shall see
+proper, only taking care that they leave them always
+under your charge."</p></div>
+
+<p>I will now trouble your Lordships with the following
+passages from Mr. Holt's evidence.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"<i>Q.</i> Did you ever see the two ministers of the Begum?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+I saw them brought into Lucknow.&mdash;<i>Q.</i>
+In what situation were they, when you saw them
+brought into Lucknow?&mdash;<i>A.</i> They were brought in
+their palanquins, attended by a guard of sepoys.&mdash;<i>Q.</i>
+Under whose command were the sepoys?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+That they were brought in by?&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Yes.&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+I do not recollect.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Were those sepoys that
+brought in the prisoners part of the Nabob's army,
+or were they any British troops?&mdash;<i>A.</i> To the
+best of my recollection, they were detached from
+a regiment then stationed at Fyzabad.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> In
+whose service was that regiment?&mdash;<i>A.</i> In the
+Company's.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Were they imprisoned in any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">{63}</a></span>house
+near that in which you resided?&mdash;<i>A.</i> They were
+imprisoned immediately under the window of the
+house in which I resided, close to it.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Did
+you or did you not ever see any preparations made
+for any corporal punishment?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I saw something
+of a scaffolding.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> For what purpose?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+I heard it was for the purpose of tying them
+up.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Whose prisoners did you consider these
+men to be?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I considered them as prisoners of
+the Resident; they were close to his house, and under
+an European officer."</p></div>
+
+<p>Your Lordships have now seen the whole process,
+except one dreadful part of it, which was the threatening
+to send the Begum to the castle at Chunar.
+After all these cruelties, after all these menaces of
+further cruelties, after erecting a scaffold for actually
+exercising the last degree of criminal punishment,
+namely, by whipping these miserable persons in public,&mdash;after
+everything has been done but execution,
+our inability to prove by evidence this part of their
+proceedings has secured to your Lordships a circumstance
+of decorum observed on the stage where murders,
+executions, whippings, and cruelties are performed
+behind the scenes. I know as certainly as a
+man can know such a thing, from a document which
+I cannot produce in evidence here, but I have it
+in the handwriting of the Resident, Mr. Bristow, that
+Behar Ali Kh&acirc;n was actually scourged in the manner
+that we speak of. I had it in writing in the
+man's hand; I put the question to him, but he
+refused to answer it, because he thought it might
+criminate himself, and criminate us all; but if your
+Lordships saw the scaffold erected for the purpose,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">{64}</a></span>
+(and of this we have evidence,) would you not necessarily
+believe that the scourging did follow? All
+this was done in the name of the Nabob; but if
+the Nabob is the person claiming his father's effects,
+if the Nabob is the person vindicating a rebellion
+against himself upon his nearest relations, why did
+he not in person take a single step in this matter?
+why do we see nothing but his abused name in it?
+We see no order under his own hand. We see all
+the orders given by the cool Mr. Middleton, by the
+outrageous Mr. Johnson, by all that gang of persons
+that the prisoner used to disgrace the British name.
+Who are the officers that stormed their fort? who
+put on the irons? who sent them? who supplied
+them? They are all, all, English officers. There is
+not an appearance, even, of a minister of the Nabob's
+in the whole transaction. The actors are all Englishmen;
+and we, as Englishmen, call for punishment
+upon those who have thus degraded and dishonored
+the English name.</p>
+
+<p>We do not use torture or cruelties, even for the
+greatest crimes, but have banished them from our
+courts of justice; we never suffer them in any case.
+Yet those men, in order to force others to break their
+most sacred trust, inflict tortures upon them. They
+drag their poor victims from dungeon to dungeon,
+from one place of punishment to another, and wholly
+on account of an extorted bond,&mdash;for they owed no
+money, they could not owe any,&mdash;but to got this
+miserable balance of 60,000<i>l.</i>, founded upon their
+tables of exchange: after they had plundered these
+ladies of 500,000<i>l.</i> in money, and 70,000<i>l.</i> a year
+in land, they could not be satisfied without putting
+usury and extortion upon tyranny and oppression.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">{65}</a></span>
+To enforce this unjust demand, the miserable victims
+were imprisoned, ironed, scourged, and at last threatened
+to be sent prisoners to Chunar. This menace
+succeeded. The persons who had resisted irons, who
+had been, as the Begums say, refused food and water,
+stowed in an unwholesome, stinking, pestilential prison,
+these persons withstood everything till the fort of
+Chunar was mentioned to them; and then their fortitude
+gave way: and why? The fort of Chunar was
+not in the dominions of the Nabob, whose rights they
+pretended to be vindicating: to name a British fort,
+in their circumstances, was to name everything that
+is most horrible in tyranny; so, at least, it appeared
+to them. They gave way; and thus were committed
+acts of oppression and cruelty unknown, I will venture
+to say, in the history of India. The women,
+indeed, could not be brought forward and scourged,
+but their ministers were tortured, till, for their redemption,
+these princesses gave up all their clothes,
+all the ornaments of their persons, all their jewels,
+all the memorials of their husbands and fathers,&mdash;all
+were delivered up, and valued by merchants at
+50,000<i>l.</i>; and they also gave up 5,000<i>l.</i> in money, or
+thereabouts: so that, in reality, only about 5,000<i>l.</i>,
+a mere nothing, a sum not worth mentioning, even
+in the calculations of extortion and usury, remained
+unpaid.</p>
+
+<p>But, my Lords, what became of all this money?
+When you examine these witnesses here, they tell
+you it was paid to Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n. Now they had
+themselves received the money in tale at their own
+assay-table. And when an account is demanded of
+the produce of the goods, they shrink from it, and say
+it was Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n who received the things and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">{66}</a></span>
+sold them. Where is Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n's receipt?
+The Begums say (and the thing speaks for itself) that
+even gold and jewels coming from them lost their
+value; that part of the goods were spoilt, being kept
+long unsold in damp and bad warehouses; and that
+the rest of the goods were sold, as thieves sell their
+spoil, for little or nothing. In all this business Mr.
+Hastings and Mr. Middleton were themselves the
+actors, chief actors; but now, when they are called
+to account, they substitute Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n in their
+place, a man that is dead and gone, and you hear
+nothing more of this part of the business.</p>
+
+<p>But the sufferings of these eunuchs did not end
+here; they were, on account of this odd 5,000<i>l.</i>,
+confined for twelve months,&mdash;not prisoners at large,
+like this prisoner who thrusts his sore leg into your
+Lordships' faces every day, but in harsh and cruel
+confinement. These are the persons that I feel for.
+It is their dungeon, it is their unrevenged wrongs
+that move me. It is for these innocent, miserable,
+unhappy men, who were guilty of no offence but
+fidelity to their mistresses, in order to vex and torture
+whom (the first women in Asia) in the persons
+of their ministers these cruelties were exercised,&mdash;these
+are they for whom I feel, and not for the miserable
+sore leg or whining cant of this prisoner.
+He has been the author of all these wrongs; and
+if you transfer to him any of the sympathy you
+owe to these sufferers, you do wrong, you violate
+compassion. Think of their irons. Has not this
+criminal, who put on these irons, been without one
+iron? Has he been threatened with torture? Has
+he been locked up without food and water? Have his
+sufferings been aggravated as the sufferings of th<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">{67}</a></span>ese
+poor men were aggravated? What punishment has
+been inflicted, and what can be inflicted upon him, in
+any manner commensurate with the atrocity of his
+crimes?</p>
+
+<p>At last, my Lords, these unhappy men were
+released. Mr. Bristow, who had been sent to Lucknow,
+writes to Mr. Hastings, and informs him that
+severities could do no more, that imprisonments and
+menaces could get no more money. I believe not, for
+I doubt much whether any more was to be got. But
+whether there was or not, all the arts of extortion,
+fortified by all the arts of tyranny, of every name and
+species, had failed, and therefore Mr. Bristow released
+the prisoners,&mdash;but without any warrant for
+so doing from Mr. Hastings, who, after having received
+this letter from Mr. Bristow, gets the Supreme
+Council to order these very severities to be continued
+till the last farthing was paid. In order to induce the
+Council to sanction this measure, he suppressed Mr.
+Bristow's declaration, that severities could do nothing
+more in exacting further payments; and the Resident,
+I find, was afterwards obliquely punished for
+his humanity by Mr. Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bristow's letter is dated the 12th of December,
+and he thus writes.</p>
+
+<p>"The battalion at Fyzabad" (where the Begums
+and their ministers had been confined) "is recalled,
+and my letter to the board of the 1st instant has
+explained my conduct to the Begum. The letter I
+addressed her, a translation of which I beg leave to
+inclose, (No. 2,) was with a view of convincing her
+that you readily assented to her being freed from the
+restraints which had been imposed upon her, and that
+your acquiescence in her sufferings was a measure of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">{68}</a></span>
+necessity, to which you were forced by her extraordinary
+conduct. I wished to make it appear this was
+a matter on which you directed me to consult the
+Vizier's pleasure, that it might be known you were
+the spring from whence she was restored to her
+dignity and consequence."</p>
+
+<p>On the 3d of March following, the Council agree
+to send the following order to Mr. Bristow.</p>
+
+<p>"We desire you will inform us if any and what
+means have been taken for recovering the balance
+due from the Begum at Fyzabad, and, if necessary,
+that you recommend it to the Vizier to enforce the
+most effectual means for that purpose."</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, you see the fraud he has put upon the
+Council. You will find that Mr. Bristow's letters,
+up to the 3d of March, had been suppressed; and
+though then communicated, yet he instigated his
+cat's-paw, that blind and ignorant Council, to demand
+from the Vizier the renewal of these very severities
+and cruelties, the continuance of which the
+letters in his pocket had shown him were of no effect.
+Here you have an instance of his implacable cruelty;
+you see that it never relaxes, never remits, and
+that, finding all the resources of tyranny useless
+and ineffective, he is still willing to use them, and
+for that purpose he makes a fraudulent concealment
+of the utter inefficacy of all the means that had been
+used.</p>
+
+<p>But, you will ask, what could make him persevere
+in these acts of cruelty, after his avarice had been
+more than satiated? You will find it is this. He
+had had some quarrel with these women. He believed
+that they had done him some personal injury
+or other, of which he nowhere informs you. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">{69}</a></span>But,
+as you find that in the case of Cheyt Sing he considered
+his visit to General Clavering as an horrid
+outrage against himself, which he never forgave, and
+revenged to the ruin of that miserable person, so you
+find that he has avowed the same malicious disposition
+towards the Begums, arising from some similar
+cause. In page 367 of your printed Minutes, he
+says,&mdash;"I am sorry that I must in truth add, that a
+part of the resentment of the Begums was, as I had
+too much reason to suspect, directed to myself personally.
+The incidents which gave rise to it are too
+light to be mixed with the professed subject and occasion
+of this detail; and as they want the authenticity
+of recorded evidence, I could lay no claim to
+credit in my relation of them. At some period I
+may be induced to offer them to the world, my ultimate
+and unerring judges, both of that and of every
+other trait in my political character."</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, you have an anecdote here handed to
+you which is the key of a great part of this transaction.
+He had determined upon some deep and desperate
+revenge for some injury or affront of some
+kind or other that he thought he had received from
+these people. He accuses them of a personal quarrel
+with himself; and yet he has not the honor or honesty
+to tell you what it was,&mdash;what it was that could
+induce them to entertain such a personal resentment
+against him as to ruin themselves and their country
+by their supposed rebellion. He says, that some
+time or other he will tell it to the world. Why did
+he not tell his counsel, and authorize them to tell
+a story which could not be unimportant, as it was
+connected with a rebellion which shook the British
+power in India to its foundation? And if it be tru<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">{70}</a></span>e
+that this rebellion had its rise in some wicked act of
+this man, who had offended these women, and made
+them, as he says, his mortal enemies, you will then see
+that you never can go so deep with this prisoner that
+you do not find in every criminal act of his some
+other criminal act. In the lowest deep there is still
+a lower deep. In every act of his cruelty there is
+some hidden, dark motive, worse than the act itself,
+of which he just gives you a hint, without exposing
+it to that open light which truth courts and falsehood
+basely slinks from.</p>
+
+<p>But cruelly as they have suffered, dreadfully as
+they have been robbed, insulted as they have been, in
+every mode of insult that could be offered to women
+of their rank, all this must have been highly aggravated
+by coming from such a man as Mr. Middleton.
+You have heard the audacious and insulting language
+he has held to them, his declining to correspond
+with them, and the mode of his doing it.
+There are, my Lords, things that embitter the bitterness
+of oppression itself: contumelious acts and
+language, coming from persons who the other day
+would have licked the dust under the feet of the
+lowest servants of these ladies, must have embittered
+their wrongs, and poisoned the very cup of malice
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! but they deserved it. They were concerned
+in a wicked, outrageous rebellion: first, for expelling
+their own son from his dominions; and, secondly, for
+expelling and extirpating the English nation out of
+India.&mdash;Good God Almighty! my Lords, do you
+hear this? Do you understand that the English nation
+had made themselves so odious, so particularly
+hateful, even to women the most secluded from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">{71}</a></span>
+the world, that there was no crime, no mischief, no
+family destruction, through which they would not
+wade, for our extermination? Is this a pleasant
+thing to hear of? Rebellion is, in all parts of the
+world, undoubtedly considered as a great misfortune:
+in some countries it must be considered as
+a presumption of some fault in government: <i>nowhere
+is it boasted of as supplying the means of justifying
+acts of cruelty and insult, but with us</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We have, indeed, seen that a rebellion did exist
+in Baraitch and Goruckpore. It was an universal
+insurrection of the people: an insurrection for the
+very extermination of Englishmen,&mdash;for the extermination
+of Colonel Hannay,&mdash;for the extermination
+of Captain Gordon,&mdash;for the extermination of
+Captain Williams, and of all the other captains and
+colonels exercising the office of farmer-general and
+sub-farmer-general in the manner that we have described.
+We know that there did exist in that country
+such a rebellion. But mark, my Lords, against
+whom!&mdash;against these mild and gracious sovereigns,
+Colonel Hannay, Captain Gordon, Captain Williams.
+Oh, unnatural and abominable rebellion!&mdash;But will
+any one pretend to say that the Nabob himself was ever
+attacked by any of these rebels? No: the attacks
+were levelled against the English. The people rose
+in favor of their lawful sovereign, against a rebellion
+headed by Mr. Middleton, who, you see, usurped his
+authority,&mdash;headed by Colonel Hannay,&mdash;headed
+by Captain Gordon,&mdash;headed by all those abominable
+persons exercising, under the Nabob's name, an
+authority destructive to himself and his subjects.
+Against them there was a rebellion. But was this
+an unnatural rebellion,&mdash;a rebellion against usu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">{72}</a></span>rped
+authority, to save the prince, his children, and state,
+from a set of vile usurpers?</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, I shall soon close our proceeding for this
+day, because I wish to leave this part of our charge
+strongly and distinctly impressed upon your Lordships'
+memory, and because nothing can aggravate
+it. I shall next proceed, in the farther examination
+of the prisoner's defence, to dissipate, as I trust we
+have done, and as I hope we shall do, all the miserable
+stuff they have given by way of defence. I shall
+often have occasion to repeat and press upon your
+Lordships that that miserable defence is a heavy
+aggravation of his crime. At present, I shall conclude,
+leaving this part of our charge with the impression
+upon your Lordships' minds that this pretended
+rebellion was merely an insurrection against
+the English, excited by their oppression.</p>
+
+<p>If the rebellion was against the Nabob, or if he was
+the author of the oppression which caused it, why do
+the English only appear to be concerned in both of
+them? How comes it that the Nabob never appears
+to have expressed any resentment against the rebels?
+We shall prove beyond a doubt, that the Begums had
+nothing to do with it. There was, indeed, as I have
+already said, what may be called a rebellion; but it
+was a rebellion against&mdash;not the Nabob, but in favor
+of the lawful prince of the country,&mdash;against the
+usurpers of his authority and the destroyers of his
+country. With this, as a rebellion, Mr. Hastings has
+charged these women; he has charged them with a
+war against their son, for the purpose of exterminating
+the English. Look, I pray you, at the whole
+business, consider all the circumstances of it, and ask
+yourselves whether this is not a charge, not only so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">{73}</a></span>
+grossly improbable, but so perfectly impossible, that
+there is not any evidence which can make it even
+plausible. Consider next, my Lords, on the other
+side, the evidence of their innocence, and then ask
+yourselves whether any additional matter could make
+its probability in the least degree more probable.
+My Lords, the evidence we have produced is neither
+more nor less than that of almost all the persons who
+have had a share in exciting that rebellion, and who,
+to justify their own horrible cruelty, have attempted
+to charge the natural consequences of that cruelty
+upon these unhappy women.</p>
+
+<p>But where, all this time, is the Nabob, against
+whom this rebellion is pretended to be directed?
+Was it ever even insinuated to him that his mother
+had raised a rebellion against him? When were the
+proofs shown to him? Did he ever charge her with
+it? He surely must have been most anxious to
+prevent and suppress a rebellion against himself:
+but not one word on that subject has ever come out
+of his mouth; nor has any one person been produced
+to show that he was informed of the existence of
+such a rebellion. The persons said to be rebels are
+his mother and grandmother; and I again ask, Was
+there the least intimation given to him by Mr. Middleton,
+or by any other person, of their being even
+suspected of rebellion against him? There was, indeed,
+a hint of some rebellion, which the creatures
+of Mr. Hastings got at obliquely; but neither the
+person against whom the rebellion is supposed to
+exist, nor the persons who were said to be guilty of
+it, were ever either informed of or charged with it.
+I defy the prisoner and his whole gang to produce
+one word ever uttered by any one of them, from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">{74}</a></span>
+which the Nabob or Begums could learn that they
+were supposed to be concerned in the rebellion: so
+that none of those who were said to be the principal
+actors in the scene ever heard of the parts they were
+acting from the actual authors and managers of the
+business. Not one word was uttered of a charge made,
+much less of proof given. Nothing was heard but
+"Give me the money!"&mdash;irons,&mdash;new irons,&mdash;new
+imprisonment,&mdash;and at last the castle of Chunar.</p>
+
+<p>And here I beg leave to pause, and to leave upon
+your minds the impression, first, of the wrong that
+was done, the violence, and the robbery,&mdash;and, secondly,
+of the pretences, both civil and criminal, by
+which they have attempted to justify their proceedings.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">{75}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTH_DAY_WEDNESDAY_JUNE_11_1794" id="SIXTH_DAY_WEDNESDAY_JUNE_11_1794"></a>SPEECH<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">IN</span><br />
+<br />
+GENERAL REPLY.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">SIXTH DAY, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1794.</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>My Lords,&mdash;Your Lordships will recollect that
+we closed the last day of your proceeding in
+this trial at a most interesting part of our charge,
+or rather of our observations upon that charge. We
+closed at that awful moment when we found the first
+women of Oude pillaged of all their landed and of
+all their moneyed property, in short, of all they possessed.
+We closed by reciting to you the false pretence
+on which this pillage was defended, namely,
+that it was the work of the Nabob. Now we had
+before proved to you, from evidence adduced by the
+prisoner himself, that this Nabob was a mere tool in
+his hands; and therefore, if this pretence be true,
+it aggravates his guilt: for surely the forcing a son
+to violate the property of his mother must everywhere
+be considered a crime most portentous and
+enormous. At this point we closed; and after the
+detail which has been given you already of these
+horrible and iniquitous proceedings, some apology
+may perhaps be necessary for entering again into
+the refutation of this iniquitous pretence.</p>
+
+<p>My honorable fellow Manager who preceded me
+in this business did, in his remarks upon the inference
+drawn by the prisoner's counsel from the seizure
+of the Begums' treasures by the Nabob, as evi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">{76}</a></span>dence
+of their guilt, as he ought to do,&mdash;he treated
+it with proper contempt. I consider it, indeed, to
+be as little an evidence of their guilt as he does,
+and as little a defence of that seizure as he does.
+But I consider it in another and in a new light,
+namely, as a heavy aggravation of the prisoner's
+crimes, and as a matter that will let you into the
+whole spirit of his government; and I warn your
+Lordships against being imposed on by evasions, of
+which if it were possible for you to be the dupes,
+you would be unfit to be judges of the smallest
+matters in the world, civil or criminal.</p>
+
+<p>The first observation which I shall beg leave to
+make to your Lordships is this, that the whole of
+the proceedings, from beginning to end, has been a
+mystery of iniquity, and that in no part of them have
+the orders of the Company been regarded, but, on
+the contrary, the whole has been carried on in a
+secret and clandestine manner.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary that your Lordships should be acquainted
+with the manner in which the correspondence
+of the Company's servants ought to be carried
+on and their proceedings regulated; your Lordships,
+therefore, will please to hear read the orders given
+concerning correspondence of every kind with the
+country powers. You will remember the period
+when these orders were issued, namely, the period
+at which the act passed for the better direction of
+the servants of the Company. By this act Mr. Hastings
+was appointed to be Governor-General, and the
+Court of Directors was required by that act to prepare
+orders and instructions, which Mr. Hastings
+was required by the same act to comply with. You
+will see what these instructions and orders were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">{77}</a></span>, and
+in what manner he has complied with them.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Extract of General Instructions to the Governor-General
+and Council, 29th of March, 1774.</i></p>
+
+<p>"We direct that you assemble in Council twice
+every week, and that all the members be duly summoned;
+that the correspondence with the princes
+or country powers in India be carried on by the
+Governor-General only, but that all letters sent by
+him be first approved in Council, and that he lay before
+the Council, at their next meeting, all letters received
+by him in the course of such correspondence,
+for their information. We likewise direct that a
+copy of such parts of the country correspondence be
+communicated to our Board of Trade: (to be constituted
+as hereinafter mentioned) as may any ways
+relate to the business of their department."</p></div>
+
+<p>You will observe, my Lords, two important circumstances
+in these instructions: first, that, after
+the board had regularly met, the Persian correspondence,
+kept by the Governor only, was to be
+communicated to the Council; and, secondly, that he
+should write no answer to any part of the business
+until he had previously consulted the Council upon
+it. Here is the law of the land,&mdash;an order given in
+pursuance of an act of Parliament. Your Lordships
+will consider how Mr. Hastings comported himself
+with regard to those orders: for we charge it as a
+substantive crime, independent of the criminal presumptions
+arising from it, that he violated an act
+of Parliament which imposed direct instructions
+upon him as to the manner in which he was to
+conduct all matters of business with the nat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">{78}</a></span>ive
+powers.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, we contend strongly that all the positive
+rules and injunctions of the law, though they
+are merely positive, and do not contain anything but
+mere matters of regulation, shall be strictly observed.
+The reason is this, and a serious reason it is: official
+tyranny and oppression, corruption, peculation, and
+bribery are crimes so secret in their nature that we
+can hardly ever get to the proof of them without the
+assistance of rules, orders, and regulations of a positive
+nature, intended to prevent the perpetration of
+these crimes, and to detect the offender in case the
+crimes should be actually perpetrated. You ought,
+therefore, to presume, that, whenever such rules or
+laws are broken, these crimes are intended to be
+committed; for you have no means of security against
+the commission of secret crimes but by enforcing positive
+laws, the breach of which must be always plain,
+open, and direct. Such, for instance, is the spirit
+of the laws, that, although you cannot directly prove
+bribery or smuggling in a hundred cases where they
+have been committed, you can prove whether the
+proper documents, proper cockets, proper entries in
+regular offices have been observed and performed, or
+not. By these means you lock the door against bribery,
+you lock the door against corruption, against
+smuggling and contraband trade. But how? By
+falling upon and attacking the offence? No, by falling
+upon and attacking the breach of the regulation.
+You prove that the man broke the regulation, and,
+as he could have no other motive or interest in breaking
+it, you presume that he broke it fraudulently,
+and you punish the man not for the crime the regulation
+was meant to prevent, but you punish him for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">{79}</a></span>
+the breach of the regulation itself.</p>
+
+<p>Next to the breach of these positive instructions,
+your Lordships will attend to the consequent concealment
+and mystery by which it was accompanied.
+All government must, to preserve its authority, be
+sincere in its declarations and authentic in its acts.
+Whenever in any matter of policy there is a mystery,
+you must presume a fraud; whenever in any matter
+of money there is concealment, you must presume
+misconduct: you must therefore affix your punishment
+to the breach of the rule; otherwise the conviction
+of public delinquents would be unattainable.</p>
+
+<p>I have therefore put before you that rule which
+he has violated; and we, the Commons, call upon
+your Lordships to enforce that rule, and to avenge
+the breach of it. You have seen the consequences
+of breaking the rule; and we have charged and do
+charge it as a heavy aggravation of those consequences,
+that, instead of consulting the Council, instead
+of laying the whole correspondence before them, instead
+of consulting them upon his answers, he went
+himself up into the country, took his Majesty's chief-justice
+along with him, and made that person the
+instrument of those wrongs, violences, robberies, and
+concealments which we call upon your Lordships to
+punish.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, an extraordinary circumstance occurred
+in the course of our proceedings in another place,
+which I must state, to show you in what a horrible
+manner your laws have been trampled upon and despised.
+None of the proceedings which have been
+last stated to your Lordships respecting the seizure
+of the treasures of the Begums appear upon any
+public record whatever. From the manner in whi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">{80}</a></span>ch
+they came to our knowledge, your Lordships will
+perceive what must have been the prisoner's own
+opinion of the horrible nature of proceedings which
+he thought so necessary to be concealed.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst we were inquiring into the violences committed
+against the Begums, in breach of the treaty
+entered into with them, there came into my hands
+an anonymous letter containing a full account of all
+the matter which has lately been stated to you. It
+came anonymously; and I did not know from what
+quarter it came. I do not even know with certainty
+at this hour: I say, not with certainty, for I can
+only form a conjecture. This anonymous communication
+enabled us to produce all the correspondence
+with Mr. Middleton respecting the cruelties exercised
+towards the Begums and their eunuchs in
+order to extort money. We found the names of
+Major Gilpin and several other persons in these letters.
+We also found in them a strong fox smell of
+a Sir Elijah Impey, that his brush and crime had
+left behind him; we traced him by that scent; and
+as we proceeded, we discovered the footsteps of as
+many of the wolves as Mr. Hastings thought proper
+to leave there. We sent for and examined Mr. Middleton,
+and Major Gilpin produced his correspondence.
+When we applied to Mr. Middleton, we found
+that all this part of his correspondence had been
+torn out of his book; but having come at it by
+means of our anonymous communication, we subsequently
+proved and established it, in the manner we
+have done before your Lordships. Here, then, you
+have important matter which this anonymous letter
+has brought to light; and otherwise the whole of
+this correspondence, so essential to the interests<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">{81}</a></span> and
+justice of Great Britain, would have been concealed
+by this wicked man. Thus, I say, his violation of
+a positive law would have remained undiscovered, if
+mere accident had not enabled us to trace this iniquity
+to its source. Therefore I begin our proceedings
+this day by stating to your Lordships this fact,
+and by calling upon your justice to punish him for
+this violation of the laws of his country.</p>
+
+<p>We have told you who the instruments were by
+which all this wickedness was committed, Mr. Middleton
+and Mr. Johnson, persons who were sent as
+ambassadors to represent the interests of the Company
+at the court of an independent prince. Over this
+prince they usurped an absolute power; they even
+made use of British officers in his own service and
+receiving his pay, to enslave his person, and to force
+him to rob his kindred. These agents were aided
+by an English chief-justice, sent under the authority
+of an act of Parliament to represent the sovereign
+majesty of English justice, and to be a restraint upon
+the misconduct of the Company's servants. These
+are the instruments with which this man works.
+We have shown you his system; we have shown you
+his instruments: we will now proceed with the examination
+of the pretences upon which this horrid
+and nefarious act is attempted to be justified. We
+have not entered into this examination for the sake
+of refuting things that want no refutation, but for
+the purpose of showing you the spirit of the whole
+proceeding, and making it appear to your Lordships,
+as I trust it will appear, that the wicked act done
+there is not half so bad as the wicked defence made
+here.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">{82}</a></span></p>
+<p>The first part of Sir Elijah Impey's commission, as
+your Lordships will remember, was to seize upon the
+Begums' treasures. He had likewise another budget
+of instructions, which has been discovered in the
+trunks of which your Lordships have heard,&mdash;secret
+instructions to be given by him to Mr. Middleton for
+the furtherance of this business. And that his office
+of Chief-Justice should not lie dormant, he was commissioned
+to seek for affidavits or written testimony
+from any persons, for the purpose of convicting these
+women of a design of atrociously revolting against
+their son, and deposing him from the government,
+with a view of getting rid of the English inhabitants.
+This was the accusation; and the evidence to support
+it Sir Elijah Impey was sent to collect.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, I must here observe to your Lordships
+that there is no act of violence which, merely as an
+act of violence, may not in some sort be borne: because
+an act of violence infers no principle; it infers
+nothing but a momentary impulse of a bad mind,
+proceeding, without law or justice, to the execution
+of its object. For at the same time that it pays no
+regard to law, it does not debauch it, it does not
+wrest it to its purposes: the law disregarded still
+exists; and hope still exists in the sufferer, that,
+when law shall be resorted to, violence will cease, and
+wrongs will be redressed. But whenever the law itself
+is debauched, and enters into a corrupt coalition
+with violence, robbery, and wrong, then all hope
+is gone; and then it is not only private persons that
+suffer, but the law itself, when so corrupted, is often
+perverted into the worst instrument of fraud and violence;
+it then becomes most odious to mankind, and
+an infinite aggravation of every injury they suffer.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">{83}</a></span></p>
+<p>We have therefore in our charge strongly reprobated
+Sir Elijah Impey's going to take such affidavits.
+"Oh! but," they say, "a judge may take an affidavit in
+his chamber privately; and he may take an affidavit,
+though not exactly in the place of his jurisdiction, to
+authenticate a bond, or the like."&mdash;We are not to be
+cheated by words. It is not dirty shreds of worn-out
+parchments, the sweepings of Westminster Hall, that
+shall serve us in place of that justice upon, which the
+world stands. Affidavits! We know that in the language
+of our courts affidavits do not signify a body of
+evidence to sustain a criminal charge, but are generally
+relative to matter [matters?] in process collateral
+to the charge, which, not coming before the jury,
+are made known to the judge by way of affidavit.</p>
+
+<p>But was it ever heard, or will it be borne, that a
+person exercising a judicial office under his Majesty
+should walk beyond the sphere of his jurisdiction,&mdash;that
+he should desert the station in which he was
+placed for the protection of the natives, and should
+march to such a place as Lucknow in order to take
+depositions for criminating persons in that country,
+without so much as letting these poor victims know
+one article in the depositions so taken? These depositions,
+my Lords, were made to criminate, they
+were meant to justify a forfeiture, and are not in the
+nature of those voluntary affidavits which, whether
+made within jurisdiction or without, whether made
+publicly or privately, signify comparatively nothing
+to the cause. I do not mean, to say that any process
+of any court has not its weight, when the matter
+is within it in the ordinary course of proceedings:
+it is the extraordinary course, the extrajudicial conduct,
+which divests it of that just weight it otherwise
+would have.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">{84}</a></span></p>
+<p>This chief-justice goes to Lucknow, where he holds
+his court, such as it was. He is ready to authenticate
+any process by the signature of the English
+chief-justice, in a court which he holds by night, in
+a court which he holds in darkness and secrecy. He
+holds his court in Fyzabad; he holds it, unknown to
+the Nabob of Oude, in his own capital, and without
+giving him the least knowledge of or any notice of
+what he was proceeding to do. He holds it at the
+lodgings of Colonel Morgan, a pensioner of the Nabob;
+and the person assisting him is Mr. Middleton,
+who is likewise, as we have proved to you, one of the
+Nabob's pensioners, a monopolizer of trade in the
+country, and a person who received much the major
+part of his emoluments from the Nabob's hands.</p>
+
+<p>In that clandestine manner, in the Nabob's own
+house, in his own capital city, in the lodging of his
+dependant and pensioner, Colonel Morgan, with no
+other witness that we know of than Mr. Middleton,
+was this iniquitous, dark procedure held, to criminate
+the mother of the Nabob. We here see a scene
+of dark, mysterious contrivance: let us now see what
+is brought out in the face of open day. The attestations
+themselves, which you have seen on the record
+before you. They were brought out&mdash;where?
+there? No: they were brought out in another
+place; they were brought out at Calcutta,&mdash;but were
+never communicated to the Nabob. He never knew
+anything of the matter. Let us now see what those
+attestations were. Your Lordships will bear in mind
+that I do not advert to this thing, which they bring
+as evidence, in the way of imputation of its being
+weak, improper, and insufficient evidence, but as an
+incontrovertible proof of crimes, and of a systematic
+design to ruin the accused party, by force there and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">{85}</a></span>
+by chicane here: these are the principles upon which
+I am going to talk to you upon this abominable subject,&mdash;of
+which, I am sorry to say, I have no words
+sufficient to express my horror. No words can express
+it; nor can anything but the severity of your
+Lordships' judgments find an adequate expression of
+it. It is not to be expressed in words, but in punishment.</p>
+
+<p>Having stated before whom the evidence collected
+in this body of affidavits was taken, I shall now state
+who the persons were that gave it. They were those
+very persons who were guilty of robbing and ruining
+the whole country: yes, my Lords, the very persons
+who had been accused of this in the mass by Mr.
+Hastings himself. They were nothing less than the
+whole body of those English officers who were usurping
+the office of farmers-general, and other lucrative
+offices in the Nabob's government, and whose pillage
+and peculations had raised a revolt of the whole kingdom
+against themselves. These persons are here
+brought in a mass to clear themselves of this charge
+by criminating other persons, and clandestinely imputing
+to them the effect of their own iniquity.</p>
+
+<p>But supposing these witnesses to be good for anything,
+supposing it fit that the least attention should
+be paid them, the matter of their testimony may very
+possibly be true without criminating the Begum. It
+criminates Saadut Ali Kh&acirc;n, the brother of the
+Nabob; the word Begum is never mentioned in the
+crimination but in conjunction with his; and much
+the greater part of it criminates the Nabob himself.
+Now, my Lords, I will say, that the matter of these
+affidavits, forgetting who the deponents were, may
+possibly be true, as far as respects Saadut Ali Kh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">{86}</a></span>&acirc;n,
+but that it is utterly as improbable, which is the
+main point and the stress of the thing, with respect
+to the Begums, as it is impossible with respect to the
+Nabob. That Saadut Ali, being a military man, a
+man ambitious and aspiring to greatness, should take
+advantage of the abuses of the English government
+and of the discontent of the country, that he should,
+I say, raise a revolt against his brother is very possible;
+but it is scarcely within possibility that the
+mother of the Nabob should have joined with the
+illegitimate son against her legitimate son. I can
+only say that in human affairs there is the possibility
+of truth in this. It is possible she might wish to
+depose her legitimate son, her only legitimate son,
+and to depose him for the sake of a bastard son of
+her husband's,&mdash;to exalt him at the expense of the
+former, and to exalt, of course, the mother of that
+bastard at her own expense, and to her own wrong.
+But I say, that this, though possible, is grossly improbable.
+The reason why the Begum is implicated
+in this charge with Saadut Ali by the affidavits cannot
+escape your notice. Their own acquittal might
+be the only object of the deponents in their crimination
+of the latter; but the treasures of the former
+were the objects of their employers, and these treasures
+could not be come at but by the destruction of
+the Begums.</p>
+
+<p>But, my Lords, there are other affidavits, or whatever
+your Lordships may call them, that go much
+further. In order to give a color to the accusation,
+and make it less improbable, they say that the Nabob
+himself was at the bottom of it, and that he joined
+with his brother and his mother to extirpate out of
+his dominions that horrible grievance, the English<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">{87}</a></span>
+brigade officers,&mdash;those English officers who were the
+farmers-general, and who, as we have proved by Mr.
+Hastings's own evidence, had ruined the country.
+Nothing is more natural than that a man, sensible
+of his duty to himself and his subjects, should form
+a scheme to get rid of a band of robbers that were
+destroying his country and degrading and ruining
+his family. Thus you see a family compact naturally
+accounted for: the Nabob at the head of it, his
+mother joining her own son, and a natural brother
+joining in the general interests of the family. This
+is a possible case. But is this the case pressed by
+them? No: they pass lightly over the legitimate
+son; they scarcely touch upon Saadut Ali Kh&acirc;n;
+they sink the only two persons that could give probability
+or possibility to this business, and endeavor to
+throw the whole design upon these two unfortunate
+women.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships see the wickedness and baseness
+of the contrivance. They first, in order to keep the
+whole family in terror, accuse the whole family;
+then, having possessed themselves of the treasures of
+the Begums upon another pretence, they endeavor to
+fix upon them that improbable guilt which they had
+with some degree of probability charged upon the
+whole family, as a farther justification of that spoliation.
+Your Lordships will see what an insult is
+offered to the Peers of Great Britain, in producing
+before you, by way of defence, such gross, scandalous,
+and fraudulent proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>Who the first set of witnesses were which they
+produced before their knight-errant chief-justice, Sir
+Elijah Impey, who wandered in search of a law adventure,
+I have laid open to your Lordships. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">{88}</a></span>
+have now had an account of the scandalous manufacture
+of that batch of affidavits which was in the
+budget of Sir Elijah Impey,&mdash;that Pandora's box
+which I have opened, and out of which has issued
+every kind of evil. This chief-justice went up there
+with the death-warrant of the Begums' treasures,
+and, for aught he knew, the death-warrant of their
+persons. At the same time that he took these affidavits
+he became himself a witness in this business; he
+appears as a witness. How? Did he know any one
+circumstance of the rebellion? No, he does not even
+pretend to do so. "But," says he, "in my travels I
+was obliged to avoid Fyzabad, upon account of the
+suspected rebellion there." Another chief-justice
+would have gone fifty miles about to avoid Lucknow,
+for everybody knows that Lucknow was the focus and
+centre of extortion, corruption, and peculation, and
+that a worse air for the lungs of a chief-justice could
+not be found in the world. If his lungs wanted the
+benefit of pure air, he would even have put himself
+in the focus of a rebellion, to have kept at a distance
+from the smell of carrion and putrid corruption of
+every kind that was at Lucknow. A chief-justice may
+go to a place where a rebellion is raging, he may die
+a martyr to his honor; but a chief-justice who puts
+himself into the focus of peculation, into the focus
+of bribery, into the focus of everything that is base
+and corrupt,&mdash;what can we expect from him but
+that he will be engaged in clandestine jobs there?
+The former might kill Sir Elijah Impey, the knight-errant,
+but the chief-justice would remain pure and
+entire; whereas Sir Elijah Impey has escaped from
+Lucknow, and the chief-justice is left by Mr. Hastings
+to shift for himself.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">{89}</a></span></p>
+<p>After mentioning this violation of the laws of hospitality
+by Sir Elijah Impey, I would ask, Was any
+notice given by him, or by any of Mr. Hastings's
+agents, to the Nabob, who was so immediately interested
+in this matter? Was any notice given to the
+Begums that any such charge was entertained against
+them? Not a word. Was it notified to the eunuchs?
+Was it to Saadut Ali Kh&acirc;n? Not a word. They
+were all within their power. The eunuchs were a
+year in irons, and they were subjected to the want
+of food and water for a part of that year. They
+were dragged from Fyzabad to Lucknow, and from
+Lucknow to Fyzabad. During all that time was
+there a word mentioned to them by any one person
+on the part of Mr. Hastings, that they were accused
+of this matter? Not a word.</p>
+
+<p>We now submit to your Lordships' vindictive justice
+and condemnation this recriminatory defence, in
+which every principle of justice has been violated.
+And now I will ask your Lordships whether you
+would have suffered such a procedure in the case of
+the prisoner at your bar. It was asked by a person of
+great authority in this House, when we were going
+to produce certain evidence against Mr. Hastings,
+(we do not say whether we offered to produce it
+properly or improperly,&mdash;that is another matter,)&mdash;we
+were asked, I say, whether our intentions of
+producing that evidence had been communicated to
+Mr. Hastings. Had he had an opportunity of cross-examining
+the witnesses who had given that evidence?
+No, he added, that evidence must be rejected. Now
+I say to your Lordships, upon the same ground, deal
+with the Begums as you dealt with Mr. Hastings.
+Do not keep two weights and measures for different
+persons in the same cause. You would not suffer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">{90}</a></span>
+such evidence to be produced against him; you will
+not assuredly suffer such evidence to be produced to
+you in his favor and against them.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, the cause between this man and these
+unfortunate women is at last come into Westminster
+Hall; the cause is come to a solemn trial; and we
+demand other witnesses and other kinds of proof than
+what these affidavits furnish. My Lords, the persons
+who have been examined here are almost all of them
+the same persons who made these affidavits; but
+there is this material difference in their evidence: at
+your Lordships' bar they sunk all those parts of their
+former evidence which criminated the Nabob and
+Saadut Ali, and confined their testimony wholly to
+what related to the Begums. We were obliged, by a
+cross-examination, to squeeze out of them the disavowal
+of what they had deposed on the former occasion.
+The whole of their evidence we leave to the
+judgment of your Lordships, with these summary
+remarks: first, that they are the persons who were to
+profit by their own wrong; they are the persons who
+had seven months' arrears paid to them out of the
+money of these unfortunate ladies; they are the
+persons who, to justify the revolt which they had
+caused in the country by their robbery, charge their
+own guilt upon others. The credibility of their evidence
+is therefore gone. But if it were not affected
+by these circumstances, Mr. Hastings has put an
+end to it by telling you that there is not one of
+them who is to be credited upon his oath,&mdash;no, not
+in a court-martial; and can it, therefore, be expected
+that in a case of peculation they will do otherwise
+than acquit the party accused? He has himself laid
+before you the horrible state of the whole service<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">{91}</a></span>;
+your Lordships have it fresh in your memories, and
+ringing in your ears. You have also heard from
+witnesses brought by Mr. Hastings himself, that these
+soldiers committed misdemeanors of the very same
+kind with those which we have stated. They ought
+not, therefore, to be listened to for a moment; and
+we aver that it is an aggravation of the prisoner's
+crimes, that he has brought the instruments of his
+guilt, the persons of whom he has complained as
+having ruined and destroyed that country, and whom
+he had engaged, at the Nabob's desire, in the treaty
+of Chunar, to send out of the country, as being a
+nuisance in it,&mdash;to bring, I say, these people here, to
+criminate, at a distance of nine thousand miles, these
+unfortunate women, where they have neither attorney
+or agent who can from local knowledge cross-examine
+them. He has the audacity to bring these people
+here; and in what manner they comport themselves,
+when they come here, your Lordships have seen.</p>
+
+<p>There is one of them whom we cannot pass by:
+that is, Captain Gordon. The other witnesses, who
+appeared here as evidences to criminate the Begums,
+did it by rumors and hearsays. They had heard
+some person say that the Begums had encouraged
+rebellion, always coupling them with Saadut Ali
+Kh&acirc;n, and sometimes with the Nabob, because there
+might have been some probability for their charge
+in the transactions with Saadut Ali Kh&acirc;n, which,
+though impossible with regard to the Begums, they
+thought would implicate him [them?] in his designs.
+But Captain Gordon is to give a different account
+of the proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Gordon was one of Colonel Hannay's
+under-farmers. He was hunted out of the co<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">{92}</a></span>untry
+and, as one of the Begums says, pursued by a thousand
+of the zemindars, for robbing the whole country.
+This woman, through respect to the British name,
+that name which guarantied her possessions to her,
+receives this Captain Gordon and Captain Williams
+with every mark of kindness, hospitality, and protection,
+that could be given them. She conveys them
+from the borders to the city of Fyzabad, and from
+Fyzabad, her capital, supposed to be the nest of her
+rebellion, on to their place of destination. They both
+write her letters full of expressions of gratitude and
+kindness for the services that they had received. They
+then pass on to Lucknow to Sir Elijah Impey, and
+there they sink every word of kindness, of any service
+or protection that they had received, or of any acknowledgment
+that they had ever made of it. They
+sink all this: not one word of it appears in their
+affidavits.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, did we come to the knowledge of it?
+We got it from Major Gilpin, who was examined in
+the course of these proceedings; and we used it in
+our charge, from the papers that we hold in our
+hands. Mr. Hastings has confessed the fact; and
+Mr. Middleton has endeavored to slur it over, but
+could not completely conceal it. We have established
+the fact, and it is in evidence before your Lordships.</p>
+
+<p>You have now, then, in this manner, got these testimonials
+given by English officers in favor of these
+women; and by the same means the letters of the
+latter accusing the former are come to your hands:
+and now these same English officers come here with
+their recriminatory accusation. Now why did they
+not make it at Lucknow? Why did not Mr. Hastings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">{93}</a></span>,
+when Mr. Middleton had such papers for him in
+his hands, why, I ask, did not Mr. Hastings procure
+some explanation of the circumstances whilst he was
+in India? I will read your Lordships the letter, that
+you may not only know, but feel, the iniquity of this
+business.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Letter from the Mother of the Vizier to Mr. Hastings;
+received the 6th of January, 1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Our situation is pretty well, and your good
+health is constantly prayed for. I had sent Behar
+Ali Kh&acirc;n to you. Accordingly people invented a
+falsehood, that Behar Ali Kh&acirc;n was gone to get the
+deputyship of the Subah; and some persons here
+were saying, 'Wherefore has she sent Behar Ali
+Kh&acirc;n to Calcutta to the Nabob Amaud ul Dowlah?
+We will never permit the affair to succeed.' And
+accordingly it has so happened. For they say that
+you also have not put your seal to the treaty: and
+the people here say, 'Why does the noble lady correspond
+with the English gentlemen?' On this account,
+I did not send a letter at the time when you
+came this way. Now the state of affairs here is thus.
+On the 27th Zehedja, Asoph ul Dowlah Banadur,
+without my knowledge, sent his own aumils into my
+jaghires. I accordingly wrote several times to Mr.
+Middleton on this business: that his seal was to the
+treaty and writing of discharge; why did he not negotiate
+in my favor? Mr. Middleton replied, 'The
+Nabob is the master.' I wrote frequently, but without
+effect. Being helpless, I represent to you the
+state of my affairs, that, notwithstanding the existence
+of this treaty, I have been treated in this manner.
+It is useless for me to stay here. Whatever is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">{94}</a></span>
+is a compact; whenever any one deviates from his
+compact, he meets with no credit for the future;
+and the light of mine eyes, Asoph ul Dowlah, wrote
+to me that he had sent his own aumils into my jaghires,
+and would pay ready money from his treasury.
+Reflect on my security for his adhering to his future
+engagements, from the consideration of his conduct
+under his past promises. I do not agree to his ready
+money. Let me have my jaghires as formerly; otherwise,
+leaving this place, I will wait on you at Benares,
+and thence will go towards Shahjehanabad, because
+he has not adhered to his engagement. Send
+letters to Asoph ul Dowlah, and to Mr. Middleton, and
+Hussein Reza Kh&acirc;n, and Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n, not to molest
+the Begum's jaghires, and to let them remain, as
+formerly, with the Begum's aumils. And it is here
+suspected of me that my aumil plundered the property
+of Mr. John Gordon. The case is this. Mr.
+John Gordon arrived at Taunda, a jaghire of mine,
+fighting with the zemindars of Acberpore, which belongs
+to the Khalseh. Accordingly, Mr. John Gordon
+having come to Taunda, my aumil performed
+whatever appertained to his duty. Afterwards Mr.
+John Gordon wrote to me to send my people, that
+he might come with them to Fyzabad. I sent people
+accordingly to bring Mr. John Gordon, and the
+said gentleman arrived here in complete safety; and
+Mr. John Gordon is now present. Ask him yourself
+of these matters. Mr. John Gordon will represent
+matters in detail; the truth will then become known,
+how ill-founded the calumny is. Should you come
+here for a few days, it will be very well, and if not,
+I will wait on you; and your coming here is very
+necessary, that all my affairs may become arrang<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">{95}</a></span>ed.
+And send a speedy answer to my letters, and a letter
+to Asoph ul Dowlah, and Mr. Middleton, and Hussein
+Reza Kh&acirc;n, and Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n, on the subject of
+ceasing to molest my jaghires. And send me constantly
+news of your health, for my peace of mind
+depends thereon."</p></div>
+
+<p>This letter was transmitted to Mr. Hastings. I
+desire your Lordships will remark upon this letter,
+for it is a most important one indeed. It is hardly
+worth observing that all this correspondence came
+out of the various trunks of which your Lordships
+have already heard, and that this letter is out of the
+trunk of Mr. Hastings's private Persian secretary and
+interpreter, Mr. Jonathan Scott. Now, my Lords, in
+this letter there are several things worthy of your
+Lordships' observation. The first is, that this woman
+is not conscious of having ever been accused of any
+rebellion: the only accusation that ever came to her
+ears was, that Captain Gordon said that his baggage
+had been robbed by one of her aumils. She denies
+the truth of this charge; and she produces testimonials
+of their good behavior to him; and, what is the
+essential point of all, she desires Mr. Hastings to apply
+to this Mr. John Gordon, and to know from him
+what truth or falsehood there is in that accusation,
+and what weight there is in the attestation she produces.
+"Mr. Gordon is now present," says she;
+"ask him yourself of these matters." This reasonable
+request was not complied with. Mr. Gordon
+swears before Sir Elijah Impey to the robbery; but
+he never mentions the paper he had written, in which
+he confessed that he owed his life to this very lady.
+No inquiry was made into this matter. Colonel Hannay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">{96}</a></span>
+was then alive. Captain Gordon was alive, and
+she refers to him: yet that very man was sworn
+before Sir Elijah Impey, and accuses his prisoner.
+Did the prisoner at your bar make that attestation
+known to the Begum, whose letter at that very
+time was in his possession, in Mr. Scott's trunk,&mdash;that
+very letter in which he is desired to make the
+inquiry from Captain Gordon?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings is acquainted with the facts stated
+by the Begum, and with Captain Gordon's accusation.
+Did he afterwards inform her of this accusation?
+or did he ask this Captain Gordon one question
+in India, where the matter might be ventilated?
+Not one word, my Lords. Therefore we fix upon
+him fraud, deceit, and the production of false evidence,
+after the woman had desired to have the man
+who was the evidence against her examined upon
+the spot. This he does not do, but with much more
+prudence he brings him here. And for what? To
+discredit his own testimony, and the written evidence.
+And how does he discredit them? There are two
+of these papers, which I beg leave to read to your
+Lordships.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Copy of a Letter to Jewar and Behar Ali Kh&acirc;n,
+from Mr. Gordon.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Sirs, my indulgent friends, remain under, &amp;c.,
+&amp;c., &amp;c. After compliments, I have the pleasure
+to inform you, that yesterday, having taken leave of
+you, I passed the night at Noorgunge, and next
+morning about ten or eleven o'clock, through your
+favor and benevolence, arrived safe at Goondah.
+Mir Aboo Buksh Zemindar and Mir Rustum Ali
+accompanied me.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">{97}</a></span></p>
+<p>"To what extent can I prolong the praises of you,
+my beneficent friends? May the Supreme Being, for
+this benign, compassionate, humane action, have you
+in His keeping, and increase your property, and
+speedily grant me the pleasure of an interview;
+until which time continue to favor me with friendly
+letters, and oblige me by any commands in my power
+to execute. May your wishes be ever crowned with
+success! My compliments," &amp;c., &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Copy of an Address from Mr. Gordon to the Begum.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Begum Saib of exalted dignity and generosity,
+whom God preserve! After presenting the usual
+professions of servitude, &amp;c., in the customary manner,
+my address is presented.</p>
+
+<p>"Your gracious letter, in answer to the petition
+of your servant from Goondah, exalted me. From
+the contents, I became unspeakably impressed with
+the honor it conferred. May the Almighty protect
+that royal purity, and bestow happiness, increase of
+wealth, and prosperity! The welfare of your servant
+is entirely owing to your favor and benevolence; a
+few days have elapsed since I arrived at Goondah,
+with the Colonel Saib.</p>
+
+<p>"This is presented for your Highness's information.
+I cherish hopes from your generosity, that,
+considering me in the light of one of your servants,
+you will always continue to exalt and honor me with
+your gracious letters. May the sun of prosperity continually
+shine!"</p></div>
+
+<p>These acknowledgments of the Begum's friendly
+disposition and services were concealed, when the
+charge was made against this woman at Lucknow
+before Sir Elijah Impey: I wish to impress th<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">{98}</a></span>is upon
+your Lordships' mind; and that before Mr. Hastings
+left Bengal, in the trunk of Major Scott, his private
+Persian interpreter, was this letter. Did he make
+that inquiry of Captain Gordon? No. Did he make
+that inquiry of Colonel Hannay? Did he make any
+inquiry into the matter, after his perusal of these
+letters? Or did he give this poor woman any opportunity
+of obtaining justice against this Captain Gordon,
+who, after acknowledging that he owed his life
+to her favor, calumniates and traduces her to her utter
+destruction? No, he never did; and therefore
+he is chargeable, and I charge him, with everything
+that is wrongful in Captain Gordon's evidence.</p>
+
+<p>These papers, which carry with them a clear refutation
+of all the charges against the Begum, are
+never once produced, though Captain Gordon was
+referred to expressly for inquiry and explanation of
+the whole transaction by the woman herself. You
+hear nothing of them; there is no appearance of
+them in the affidavits; no such papers were laid
+before the Supreme Council; none were transmitted
+to the Court of Directors: but at last the House of
+Commons having come at the truth of this matter,
+Mr. Hastings, not daring to deny the existence of
+these papers, brings Captain Gordon to be examined
+here, in order to prove that papers which he had
+himself written were false. Is this to be tolerated?
+What will your Lordships think of a man that comes
+to attest his own infamy,&mdash;to declare that he has
+written papers containing falsehoods, and to invalidate
+the false testimony which he had before given?
+Is he to be suffered, I say, to come here, and endeavor
+to prove the absolute falsity of his own deeds by
+his own evidence?</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">{99}</a></span></p>
+<p>The next point for your Lordships' consideration
+is the evidence which he produces to prove the falsity
+of a paper written by himself. Why, he himself
+is the sole evidence. And how does he prove it?
+Why, says he, "The reason of my writing that letter
+was this: she had sent a person with me as an escort,
+and this person was desirous of receiving some proof
+that he had done his duty; and therefore I wrote a
+complaisant letter. I meant nothing by it. It was
+written merely to satisfy the mind of the man."
+Now is that the way in which formal and solemn
+letters, written upon great occasions to great people,
+are to be explained away? If he had said nothing
+but "Your servant, such a one, has done his duty,"
+this explanation might pass. But you see it has
+another complexion. It speaks of his owing his life
+to her. But if you admit that it is possible (for
+possibilities have an unknown extent) that he wrote
+such a letter at such a time and for such a purpose,
+and that the letter he wrote was false, and that the
+falsity of the letter is proved by his own testimony
+given in an affidavit which we have also reason to
+believe is false, your Lordships must at the same
+time admit that it is one of the most complex pieces
+of fraud and falsehood that, I believe, ever existed
+in the world. But it is worse than all this. There
+is another letter, written some days after, which I
+will read to you, and which he has not pretended to
+say was written only to testify that a messenger had
+executed his commission properly.</p>
+
+<p>"Your gracious letter," (he thus writes,) "in
+answer to the petition of your servant from Goondah,
+exalted me. From the contents, I became unspeakably
+impressed with the honor it conferred."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">{100}</a></span></p>
+<p>My Lords, this letter was not sent back by a messenger,
+in acknowledgment of his having done his
+duty, but was written in consequence of a correspondence
+in the nature of a petition for something
+or other which he made to the Begum. That petition
+they have suppressed and sunk. It is plain,
+however, that the petition had been sent, and was
+granted; and therefore the apology that is made for
+the former letter does not apply to this letter, which
+was written afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, do they attempt to get rid of this difficulty?
+Why, says Captain Gordon, "<i>The Colonel
+Saib</i> (by whom was meant Colonel Hannay) was
+not at Goondah, as stated in the letter, but at Succara,
+about eighteen miles from it, and therefore you
+ought not to pay much regard to this paper." But
+he does not deny the letter, nor was it possible for
+him to deny it. He says Colonel Hannay was not
+there. But how do we know whether Colonel Hannay
+was there or not? We have only his own word
+for it. But supposing he was not there, and that it
+was clearly proved that he was eighteen miles distant
+from it, Major Naylor was certainly with Captain
+Gordon at the time. Might not his Persian scribe
+(for he does not pretend to say he wrote the letter
+himself) take Major Naylor for a colonel, (for he
+was the superior officer to Captain Gordon,) and
+think him the Colonel Saib? For errors of that kind
+may be committed in our own country. Every day
+we may take a major for a lieutenant-colonel. This
+was an error that might easily have happened in such
+a case. He was in as high rank as Colonel Hannay;
+for Colonel Hannay at that time was only a major.
+I do not believe either of them was properly entitled
+to the name of Colonel Saib. I am ashamed, my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">{101}</a></span>
+Lords, to be obliged to remark upon this prevarication.
+Their own endeavors to get rid of their own
+written acts by contradictory evidence and false constructions
+sufficiently clear these women of the crimes
+of which they were accused; and I may now ask the
+prisoner at your bar how he dares to produce Captain
+Gordon here, how he dares thus to insult the Peers,
+how he dares thus to insult the public justice of his
+country, after not having dared to inquire, upon the
+spot, of this man, to whom he was referred by the
+Begums for an account of this very transaction?</p>
+
+<p>I hope your Lordships have got enough of this
+kind of evidence. All the rest is of the same batch,
+and of the same description,&mdash;made up of nothing
+but hearsays, except in one particular only. This I
+shall now mention to your Lordships. Colonel Popham
+and another gentleman have told you, that, in a
+battle with Cheyt Sing's forces, they took prisoners
+two wounded nudjeeves or swordsmen, and that these
+men told them that they were sent there by the Begums,&mdash;that
+they had got two rupees and two wounds,
+but that they thought two rupees a bad compensation
+for two wounds. These two men, with their
+two wounds and two rupees, had, however, been dismissed.
+It does not appear that this accident was
+considered by these officers to be of consequence
+enough to make them ever tell one word of it to Mr.
+Hastings, though they knew he was collecting evidence
+of the disaffection of the Begums, of all kinds,
+good, bad, and indifferent, from all sorts of persons.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, I must beg leave to say a few words
+upon this matter; because I consider it as one of the
+most outrageous violations of your Lordships' dignity,
+and the greatest insult that was ever offered to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">{102}</a></span>
+court of justice. A nudjeeve is a soldier armed with
+a sword. It appears in evidence that the Nabob had
+several corps of nudjeeves in his service; that the
+Begums had some nudjeeves; and that Colonel Hannay
+had a corps of nudjeeves. It is well known that
+every prince in Hindostan has soldiers of that description,&mdash;in
+like manner, probably, as the princes
+of Europe have their guards. The whole, then,
+amounts to this: that a story told by two men who
+were wounded in an action far from the place from
+which they were supposed to come, who were not
+regularly examined, not cross-examined, not even
+kept for examination, and whose evidence was never
+reported, is to be a reason why you are to believe
+that these Begums were concerned in a rebellion
+against their son, and deserved to forfeit all their
+lands and goods, and to suffer the indignities that
+we have stated.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, I am really ashamed to mention so
+scandalous a thing; but let us put a case: let us
+suppose that we had accused Mr. Hastings of instigating
+the Rajah of Berar to fall upon some of the
+country powers, and that the evidence we produced
+at your bar to prove it was, that an officer had taken
+two nudjeeves, who declared they were instigated by
+Mr. Hastings to go into the service of that Rajah:
+could you bear such a thing? would you suffer
+such evidence to be produced? or do you think that
+we should have so little regard for our own reputation
+as to venture to produce such evidence before
+you? Again, we have charged Mr. Hastings with
+committing several acts of violence against the Begums.
+Let us suppose our proof to be, that two
+persons who never appeared before nor si<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">{103}</a></span>nce, that
+two grenadiers in English uniforms, (which would be
+a great deal stronger than the case of the nudjeeves,
+because they have no particular uniform belonging to
+them,) that two English grenadiers, I say, had been
+taken prisoners in some action and let go again, who
+said that Mr. Hastings had instigated them to make
+war upon the Begums: would your Lordships suffer
+such evidence to be produced before you? No.
+And yet two of the first women in India are to be
+stripped of all they have in the world upon no better
+evidence than that which you would utterly reject.
+You would not disgrace the British peerage, you
+would not disgrace this court of justice, you would
+not disgrace human reason itself, by confiscating, on
+such evidence, the meanest property of the meanest
+wretch. You would not subject to the smallest fine
+for the smallest delinquency, upon such evidence. I
+will venture to say, that, in an action of assault and
+battery, or in an action for the smallest sum, such evidence
+would be scouted as odious and contemptible,
+even supposing that a perfect reliance might be placed
+upon its truth. And yet this is the sort of evidence
+upon which the property, the dignity, and the rank
+of some of the first persons in Asia are to be destroyed,&mdash;by
+which a British guaranty, and the honor
+and dignity of the crown of Great Britain, and of the
+Parliament itself, which sent out this man, are to be
+forfeited.</p>
+
+<p>Observe, besides, my Lords, that the two swordsmen
+said they were sent by the Begums. Now they
+could not be sent by the Begums in their own person.
+This was a thing in India impossible. They
+might, indeed, have been sent by Jewar and Behar
+Ali Kh&acirc;n: and then we ask again, How came these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">{104}</a></span>
+ministers not to be called to an account at the time?
+Why were they not called upon for their muster-rolls
+of these nudjeeves? No, these men and women suffer
+the penalty, but they never hear the accusation
+nor the evidence.</p>
+
+<p>But to proceed with the evidence of this pretended
+rebellion. Captain Williams has told your Lordships
+that he once had a great number of letters and papers
+to prove this rebellion of the Begums. But he
+declares that he has lost all these letters. A search
+was ordered to be made in Mr. Hastings's record-office,
+called a trunk; and accordingly in the trunk
+is found a paper worthy of such a place and such a
+cause. This letter, which has been made use of to
+criminate the Begums, has not their names mentioned,
+nor is there any possibility of their being included
+in it. By this paper which is preserved you
+may judge of the whole of the papers that are lost.
+Such a letter, I believe, was never before brought as
+evidence in a court of justice. It is a letter said to
+have been intercepted, and is as follows.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"To the most noble * * * * *, whose prosperity be
+everlasting!</p>
+
+<p>"It is represented, that the august purwannah
+[command], having completed his honorable arrival
+on the 16th of the month in the evening, highly
+exalted me. It is ordered that I should charge
+Medeporee, and the other enrolled sepoys belonging
+to my district, and take bonds from them that none
+of them go for service to the Rajah; and that, when
+four or five hundred men, nudjeeves and others, are
+collected, I should send them to the presence. According
+to the order, I have written to Brejunekar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">{105}</a></span>
+Shah Rehemet Ullah, who is in Bhooaparah, charging
+him to take bonds from them, and that whatever
+sepoys fit for service are collected he should send to
+the presence. As at this time the wind is contrary,
+the sepoys will not * * * * without travelling charges;
+for I have learnt from a letter previously received
+from Brejunekar Shah Rehemet Ullah, that the people
+there also are badly inclined. By the grace of
+God, the unalterable glory shall be * * * * *. Zehan
+Beg and the nudjeeves who were in the fort of
+Aneelah have gone off to Goruckpore."</p></div>
+
+<p>This is a letter of somebody or other employed
+by somebody or other for the recruiting service,&mdash;it
+should seem, by the word "presence," somebody employed
+in enlisting forces for the Nabob. The charge
+against the Begum was, that she had joined with the
+rebellious Rajahs to exterminate her son's government
+and the English influence in that country. In
+this very paper you see that the soldiers entering into
+that service, and officers who are to contract for
+soldiers, are expressly bound not to join the Rajahs;
+and this they produce as proof that the Begums had
+joined the Rajahs, and had joined them in a rebellion,
+for the purpose of exterminating their son, in
+the first instance, and the English afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>There is another circumstance which makes their
+own acts the refutation of their false pretences. This
+letter says that the country is disaffected, and it
+mentions the ill-disposed parts of the country. Now
+we all know that the country was ill-disposed; and
+we may therefore conclude this paper was written
+by, and addressed to, some person who was employed
+against the persons so ill-disposed,&mdash;namely, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">{106}</a></span>
+very Rajahs so mentioned before. The prisoner's
+counsel, after producing this paper, had the candor
+to declare that they did not see what use could be
+made of it. No, to be sure, they do not see what
+use can be made of it for their cause; but I see the
+use that can be made of it against their cause. I say
+that the lost papers, upon which they do so much
+insist, deserve no consideration, when the only paper
+that they have preserved operates directly against
+them; and that therefore we may safely infer, that,
+if we had the rest of the contents of this trunk, we
+should probably find them make as strongly against
+them as this paper does. You have no reason to
+judge of them otherwise than by the specimen: for
+how can you judge of what is lost but from what
+remains?</p>
+
+<p>The man who hid these papers in his trunk never
+understood one word of the Persian language, and
+consequently was liable to every kind of mistake,
+even though he meant well. But who is this man?
+Why, it is Captain Williams,&mdash;the man who in his
+affidavits never mentioned the Begums without mentioning
+Saadut Ali. It is Captain Williams,&mdash;whom
+we charge to have murdered a principal man of the
+country by his own hand, without law or legal process.
+It is Captain Williams,&mdash;one of those British
+officers whom Mr. Hastings states to be the pests of
+the country. This is the man who comes here as
+evidence against these women, and produces this
+monstrous paper.</p>
+
+<p>All the evidence they had produced to you amounts
+to no more than that such a man <i>believes</i> such a man
+<i>heard of something</i>; and to close the whole of this
+hearsay account, Sir Elijah Impey, who always comes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">{107}</a></span>
+in as a supplement, declares that no man doubted of
+the existence of this rebellion, and of the guilt of the
+Begums, any more than of the rebellion of 1745: a
+comparison which, I must say, is, by way of evidence,
+a little indecorous in a chief-justice of India. Your
+Lordships are sufficiently acquainted with the history
+of that rebellion to know, that, when Lord Lovat was
+tried at this bar, the proceedings against him were
+not founded on second-hand hearsay. The existence
+of the rebellion of 1745 was proved, notwithstanding
+its notoriety; but neither notoriety nor proof would
+have signified anything, if Lord Lovat's participation
+in it had not been brought home to him directly, personally,
+and particularly. Yet a chief-justice, sent to
+India to represent the sacred majesty of the crown of
+England, has gone so far as to say at your bar that
+no more doubt could be entertained of the existence
+either of the rebellion or the guilt of the Begums
+than of the rebellion in 1745. Besides, he forgets
+that he himself carried the order to confiscate these
+people's property without any trial whatever. But
+this is the way of proceeding by an English chief-justice
+in India,&mdash;a chief-justice who had rendered himself
+the instrument, the letter-carrier, the messenger,
+I had almost said the executioner of Mr. Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>From this view of the whole matter your Lordships
+will form an estimate of the spirit of Indian
+government and Indian justice. But to blow away
+and to put an end to all their false pretences, their
+hearsays, and talk of nudjeeves, and wounds, and
+the like, I ask, Who is the first witness that we have
+produced upon this occasion? It is the Nabob himself,
+negativing all these pretences. Did he believe
+them? Not a word from him of any rebellion, ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">{108}</a></span>tual
+or suspected. Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, said that
+he was obliged to wheel round, and to avoid that
+dangerous place, Fyzabad. His friends urged him
+to this. "For God's sake," say they, "have a reverend
+care of your sacred person! What will become
+of the justice of India, what will become of the
+natives, if you, their legitimate protector, should fall
+into the hands of these wicked, rebellious women at
+Fyzabad?" But although the Chief-Justice does this,
+the Nabob, whose deposition is said to be the first object
+of this rebellion, takes leave of Mr. Hastings at
+the very moment when it is raging in the highest
+possible degree, and gallops into its very focus.</p>
+
+<p>And under what circumstances does he do this?
+He had brought some considerable forces with him.
+No man of his rank in that country ever goes without
+them. He left a part of these forces with Mr. Hastings,
+notwithstanding he was going into the centre
+of the rebellion. He then went on with a corps of
+about a thousand horse. He even left a part of
+these with Mr. Middleton, and galloped, attended by
+a few horse, into the very capital, where the Begums,
+we are told, had ten thousand armed men. He put
+himself into their power, and, not satisfied with this,
+the very first thing we hear of him after his arrival
+is, that he paid his mother a friendly visit,&mdash;thus
+rushing into the den of a lioness who was going to
+destroy her own whelp. Is it to be credited, my
+Lords, that a prince would act thus who believed
+that a conspiracy was formed against him by his
+own mother? Is it to be credited that any man
+would trust a mother who, contrary to all the rules
+of Nature and policy, had conspired to destroy her
+own son?</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">{109}</a></span></p>
+<p>Upon this matter your Lordships have the evidence
+of Captain Edwards, who was aide-de-camp to the
+Nabob, who was about his person, his attendant at
+Chunar, and his attendant back again. I am not
+producing this to exculpate the Begums,&mdash;for I say
+you cannot try them here, you have not the parties
+before you, they ought to have been tried on the
+spot,&mdash;but I am going to demonstrate the iniquity
+of this abominable plot beyond all doubt: for it is
+necessary your Lordships should know the length,
+breadth, and depth of this mystery of iniquity.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Edwards being asked,&mdash;"Whether he ever
+heard any native of credit and authority in the Nabob's
+dominions, who appeared to believe the rebellion
+of the Begums?&mdash;<i>A.</i> No, I never did.&mdash;<i>Q.</i>
+Have you any reason to believe that the Nabob gave
+credit to it?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I really cannot rightly presume
+to say whether the Nabob did or did not; but I am
+apt to believe that he did not.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Have you any
+reason, and what, to form a belief about it?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I
+have. I think, if he supposed the rebellion, ever
+existed at Fyzabad, he would have been the first
+person to take and give the alarm to the British
+troops.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> And no such alarm was taken or given
+to the British troops?&mdash;<i>A.</i> No, I think not: as I
+was always about his person, and in the camp, I
+think I certainly must have known it or heard of
+it; but I never did."</p>
+
+<p>We assure your Lordships, you will find upon
+your printed Minutes, that Captain Edwards says
+he was credibly informed that the Nabob left behind
+him a part of his guard of horse; and that, so
+desirous was he to go into the power of this cruel
+lioness, his mother, that he advanced, as he is a
+vigorous man, and a bold and spirited rider, leav<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">{110}</a></span>ing
+all his guards behind him, and rode before them
+into the middle of Fyzabad. There is some more
+evidence to the same purpose in answer to the
+question put next to that which I read before.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> When you did hear of the rebellion, did not
+you understand it to have been alleged that one
+object of it was to dethrone the Nabob himself, as
+well as to extirpate the English?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I understood
+that the intention of the princesses, the Begums, was
+to extirpate the English troops out of the country
+and out of those dominions, and likewise to depose
+her son, and set another son, who seems to have
+been a greater favorite of that family, upon the
+throne, in the room of the present Nabob; and that
+son's name is Saadut Ali. I have only heard this
+from report. I have no other knowledge but mere
+report. I understood from the report, she was to
+extirpate the English, and depose her son who is
+now upon the throne.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Was it after or before
+the seizing of the treasures, that you heard a circumstantial
+account of the supposed object of the
+rebellion?&mdash;<i>A.</i> The report was more general after
+the seizing of the treasures; but yet there were reports
+prevailing in the neighborhood that our troops
+were sent there in consequence of the charge that
+was made by Colonel Hannay and some of his officers
+of rebellion existing then at Fyzabad, or having
+existed, I cannot rightly say which.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Was that
+report after the order for the troops to march to
+Fyzabad?&mdash;<i>A.</i> It was more general, it was very
+general then when the troops did march there, and
+more general after the seizing of the treasures.&mdash;<i>Q.</i>
+When did the troops first march?&mdash;<i>A.</i> It was some
+time in the month of January, I believe, in the year<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">{111}</a></span>
+1782.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> While you was with the Nabob in passing
+from Lucknow to Chunar, and while you was
+with him or the army returning from Chunar, did
+you then, out of the whole army, regular or irregular,
+ever hear of any report of the Begums being in
+rebellion?&mdash;<i>A.</i> No, I do not recollect I ever did.&mdash;<i>Q.
+(Upon cross-examination.)</i> Do you recollect at
+what time in August, 1781, you left Lucknow to proceed
+with the Nabob to Chunar?&mdash;<i>A.</i> No, I cannot
+rightly mention the date: all that I know is this, that
+I accompanied the Nabob, Mr. Middleton, and his attendants,
+all the way from Lucknow to Chunargur.
+I really cannot recollect; I have no notes, and it is
+so distant a time since that I do not recollect the
+particulars of the month or the day; but I recollect
+perfectly I accompanied the Nabob all the way from
+Lucknow to Chunar, and returned again with him
+until he struck off on the road for Fyzabad."</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships see plainly the whole of this matter.
+When they had resolved to seize the Begums'
+treasures, they propagated this report just in proportion
+to their acts. As they proceeded, the report
+grew hotter and hotter. This man tells you when it
+was that the propagation of this report first began,
+when it grew hot, and when it was in its greatest
+heat. He tells you that not one native of credit in
+the country believed it,&mdash;that he did not think the
+Nabob himself believed it; and he gives a reason
+that speaks for itself, namely, that he, the Nabob,
+would have been the first man to give the alarm, if
+he believed in a rebellion, as he was to be the object
+of it. He says the English were the principal spreaders
+of the report. It was, in fact, a wicked report,
+propagated by Mr. Middleton and the English agen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">{112}</a></span>ts
+for the purpose of justifying their iniquitous spoliation
+of the Begums.</p>
+
+<p>This is the manner in which the matter stands
+upon the ground of rebellion, with the exception of
+Major Gilpin's and Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n's testimony.
+This last man we have proved to have been kept in
+his office by Mr. Hastings's influence, and to have
+been entirely under his government. When this dependant
+comes to give his attestation, he gives a long
+account of all the proceedings of Cheyt Sing's rebellion,
+with which the rebellion charged on the Begums
+was supposed to be coincident; and he ends it very
+remarkably,&mdash;that he tells the whole truth, and
+nothing but the truth. But it is also remarkable,
+that even this Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n never mentions by
+name the rebellion of the Begums, nor says that he
+ever heard a word about it: a strong proof that he
+did not dare, in the face of his country, to give countenance
+to such a falsehood.</p>
+
+<p>Major Gilpin's evidence leaves not even the shadow
+of a pretence for this charge. He had the Begums
+and their eunuchs under his custody for a full year;
+he was strictly ordered to watch them and to guard
+them; and during all that time he lived at Fyzabad.
+He was the man who commanded the troops, who
+had all the witnesses in his power, who had daily
+access to all parties at Fyzabad, and who, moreover,
+was a person attached to Mr. Hastings in the strongest
+manner. Your Lordships will now be pleased to
+hear read to you this part of Major Gilpin's evidence.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> Had you any opportunity of knowing the character
+of the Begums, and whether they were disaffected
+to our government?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I had a very good opportunity
+of knowing, from the circumstance of my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">{113}</a></span>
+having commanded so long there. The elder Begum,
+it was generally understood, (and I have reason to
+believe,) was disaffected to our government; and my
+sentiments of her conduct stand recorded in my correspondence
+to the court of Lucknow to that effect;
+but with respect to the Bhow Begum, I acquit her
+entirely of any disaffection to our government, so far
+as comes to my knowledge: appearances were for
+some time against her; but, on cool, deliberate inquiry,
+I found there was no ground for supposing
+her guilty of any rebellious principles, at the time of
+Cheyt Sing's rebellion.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Whether that, according
+to your belief, is not your present opinion?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+I think I have answered that very fully, that it
+was upon those very principles that I did form an
+opinion of her innocence; how far they are justifiable
+or right I will not take upon me to say upon
+oath; there was no one circumstance that came to
+my knowledge, during my residence at Fyzabad or
+my residence in India, that I would wish to withhold
+from your Lordships.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> You state here, 'upon
+cool, deliberate inquiry': what was that cool, deliberate
+inquiry?&mdash;<i>A.</i> That cool, deliberate inquiry was
+the conversations I had with the ministers and the
+people of Fyzabad, and the letters from herself expressing
+her innocence; and it appeared to me from
+those letters that she really was our friend and ally."</p>
+
+<p>The same witness goes on afterwards to say:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> I understood you to say, that originally the
+report prevailed with respect to both the Begums, but
+that you was induced to alter that opinion with respect
+to the younger Begum, in consequence of Mr.
+Gordon's letters, and the intelligence of some of her
+ministers and other persons: were not those other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">{114}</a></span>
+persons in the interest of the younger Begum?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+In general the town of Fyzabad were in her interest.&mdash;<i>Q.</i>
+In what sense do you mean generally
+in her interest? Were the persons you conversed
+with merely those who were in her service and
+household, or the inhabitants of Fyzabad in general?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+Both: I held conversations with both her own
+body-servants and the inhabitants of the city."</p>
+
+<p>A little lower down, in the same page:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> What do you mean by the word rebellion, as
+applied to the Begums? In what sense do you use it?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+In raising troops, and in other acts of rebellion,
+in the common acceptation of the word.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Against
+whom?&mdash;<i>A.</i> Against the Nabob's government and
+the British government jointly: but I beg to know the
+particular time and circumstance the question alludes
+to.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> I understand you to have said you understood
+the elder Begum was in a constant state of
+rebellion. In what sense do you use the word rebellion?
+Did you say the elder Begum was in a constant
+state of rebellion?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I always understood her to
+be disaffected to the English government: it might not
+be a proper expression of mine, the word rebellion.&mdash;<i>Q.</i>
+Do you know of any act by the elder Begum
+against the Vizier?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I cannot state any.&mdash;<i>Q.</i>
+Do you know of any act which you call rebellion,
+committed by the elder Begum against the Company?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+I do not know of any particular circumstance,
+only it was generally supposed that she was disaffected
+to the Company.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> What acts of disaffection or
+hostility towards the English do you allude to, when
+you speak of the conversation of the world at the
+time?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I have answered that question as fully
+as I can,&mdash;that it was nothing but conversation,&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">{115}</a></span>
+I knew of no particular act or deed myself."</p>
+
+<p>This man, then, declares, as your Lordships have
+heard, that, upon cool, deliberate inquiry made at
+Fyzabad from all the inhabitants, he did not believe
+in the existence of any rebellion;&mdash;that as to the
+Bhow Begum, the grandmother, who was a person
+that could only be charged with it in a secondary
+degree, and as conspiring with the other, he says he
+knows no facts against her, except that at the battle
+of Buxar, in the year 1764, she had used some odd
+expressions concerning the English, who were then
+at war with her son Sujah Dowlah. This was long
+before we had any empire or pretence to empire in
+that part of India: therefore the expression of a rebellion,
+which he had used with regard to her, was, he
+acknowledged, improper, and that he only meant he
+had formed some opinion of her disaffection to the
+English.</p>
+
+<p>As to the Begum, he positively acquits her of any
+rebellion. If he, therefore, did not know it, who was
+an active officer in the very centre of the alleged rebellion,
+and who was in possession of all the persons
+from whom information was to be got, who had the
+eunuchs in prison, and might have charged them
+with this rebellion, and might have examined and
+cross-examined them at his pleasure,&mdash;if this man
+knew nothing about it, your Lordships will judge of
+the falsehood of this wicked rumor, spread about
+from hand to hand, and which was circulated by persons
+who at the same time have declared that they
+never heard of it before Sir Elijah Impey went up
+into the country, the messenger of Mr. Hastings's
+orders to seize the treasures of the Begums, and
+commissioned to procure evidence in justificatio<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">{116}</a></span>n of
+that violence and robbery.</p>
+
+<p>I now go to another part of this evidence. There
+is a person they call Hoolas Roy,&mdash;a man in the
+employment of the Resident, Mr. Middleton. The
+gentlemen who are counsel for the prisoner have
+exclaimed, "Oh! he was nothing but a news-writer.
+What! do you take any notice of him?" Your
+Lordships would imagine that the man whom they
+treat in this manner, and whose negative evidence
+they think fit to despise, was no better than the
+writers of those scandalous paragraphs which are
+published in our daily papers, to misrepresent the
+proceedings of this court to the public. But who in
+fact is this Hoolas Roy, whom they represent, for the
+convenience of the day, to be nothing but a news-writer?
+I will read to your Lordships a letter from
+Major Naylor to Colonel Jaques, commanding the
+second battalion, twentieth regiment.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Sir,&mdash;Hoolas Roy, the person appointed by the
+Nabob for transacting the business for which the
+troops are required here, will hold constant communication
+and intercourse with you; and as he is
+instructed and acquainted with the best method to
+accomplish this business, Mr. Middleton requests implicit
+attention to be paid to what he may from time
+to time represent respecting the prisoners or the
+business on which he is employed; in short, as he is
+the person nominated by the Nabob, he wishes Hoolas
+Roy to be considered in the same light as if he himself
+was present."</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Middleton, in a letter to Lieutenant Francis
+Rutledge, writes thus of him:&mdash;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">{117}</a></span></p>
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Sir,&mdash;When, this note is delivered to you by
+Hoolas Roy, I have to desire that you order the two
+prisoners to be put in irons, keeping them from all
+food, &amp;c., agreeable to my instructions of yesterday."</p></div>
+
+<p>You will first see in how confidential a manner
+Hoolas Roy was employed, and in what light he was
+held: that he was employed to carry some instructions
+which do not indeed appear, but were accompanied
+by an order from Mr. Middleton. "When
+these instructions shall come to you, to put these
+prisoners in irons and keep them without food, &amp;c."
+The Begums say, without food and water. <i>Et cetera</i>
+are words of large import; but he was "to keep
+them without food, &amp;c., agreeable to my instructions
+of yesterday." This was a pretty general warrant
+for sufferings. This Hoolas Roy, this mere news-writer,
+was not only intrusted with this warrant, but
+Mr. Middleton declares him to be a person who was
+to be received there, and to represent the Nabob, and
+very justly too; for he, Mr. Middleton, was undoubtedly
+the real nabob of the country. The man, therefore,
+whom they talk of in this contemptuous manner
+in order to make slight of an observation we made,
+and which I shall make again, and whom they affect
+to consider as a mere paragraph-monger in some
+scandalous newspaper, was a man vested by Mr.
+Middleton with authority equal to that of the Nabob
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings not only thought him of consequence
+enough to be a witness to the severities used on the
+ministers of the Begums, but he considered that he
+would afterwards be a fit witness to the rebellion.
+I pray your Lordships to mark this: he sent for this
+Hoolas Roy, (who is now nothing but a mere paragraph<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">{118}</a></span>-monger,)&mdash;he
+sent for him from Fyzabad to
+Benares,&mdash;a pretty long journey; and at last caused
+him to be examined before Sir Elijah Impey. He
+has, however, sunk his evidence: a suppression which
+is strongly in favor of the Begums, and equally
+strong against their accuser. Here we have a man
+who was intrusted with all their orders,&mdash;who represented
+the English government,&mdash;who represented
+the Nabob's government: this man is sent for
+by Mr. Hastings; he gives his deposition before
+Sir Elijah Impey; and the deposition so given is not
+to be found either upon the Company's record, in
+Sir Elijah Impey's trunk, in Jonathan Scott's trunk,
+nor in any other place whatever. The evidence of
+a witness who could speak most clearly, as probably
+he did, and most decisively, upon this subject, is
+sunk. They suppress, and dare not produce, the affidavit
+of the man who was at the bottom of every
+secret of both governments. They had the folly to
+let you know, obliquely, that he had been sent for
+by Mr. Hastings, but they conceal the information
+obtained from him: a silence more damning than
+any positive evidence could be. You have here a
+proof of their practice of producing such evidence
+only as they thought most favorable to their wicked
+purposes, in the destruction of this great and ancient
+family.</p>
+
+<p>But all the English, they say, believed in the existence
+of this rebellion. This we deny. Mr. Purling,
+who was Resident the year before its pretended
+explosion, has told you that he never knew of anything
+like a plot carrying on by these women. We
+were almost ashamed to put the question to him.
+Did Mr. Bristow, the next Resident, know or bel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">{119}</a></span>ieve
+in this plot? He seems, indeed, to have been induced
+to give some oblique hints to Mr. Hastings
+of improper conduct on the part of the Begums, but
+without stating what it was. In a letter to Mr.
+Hastings, he appears to endeavor to soften the cruel
+temper of this inflexible man by going a little way
+with him, by admitting that he thought they had behaved
+improperly. When Mr. Wombwell, another
+Resident, is asked whether any Englishman doubted
+of it, he says Mr. Bristow doubted of it. No one,
+indeed, who reads these papers, can avoid seeing
+that Mr. Bristow did not believe one word of it,&mdash;no
+more, in fact, than did Mr. Hastings, or anybody else.</p>
+
+<p>But, my Lords, let us go from these inferior agents
+and servants of the Company to their higher officers.
+Did Mr. Stables believe it? This gentleman was
+Mr. Hastings's colleague in the Council,&mdash;a man
+of as much honor, I really believe, as ever went to
+India,&mdash;a faithful old servant of the Company, and
+very worthy of credit. I believe there is not a spot
+upon him during all his long service under the Company:
+if any, it is his being a little too obsequious,
+sometimes, to Mr. Hastings. Did he believe it?
+No, he did not: and yet he was one of the persons
+authorized to investigate it coolly, and most able to
+do so.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the whole, then, the persons who best knew
+the state of the country did not believe it; the Nabob
+did not believe it; the Begums were never charged
+with it; no ground of suspicion is suggested, except
+loose rumors and the story of two nudjeeves.
+Under these circumstances the treasures of these ancient
+ladies were seized, their property confiscated,
+and the Nabob dragged most reluctantly to this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">{120}</a></span>act.
+Yes, my Lords, this poor, miserable victim was forced
+to violate all the laws of Nature, all decency, all
+property, to rob his own mother, for the benefit
+of Mr. Hastings. All this he was forced to do: he
+was made the reluctant instrument of punishing his
+mother and grandmother for a plot of which even
+their accusers do not pretend to say that the parties
+accused had ever received any intimation.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, in forming your judgment upon this
+nefarious proceeding, your Lordships will not fail to
+advert to the fundamental principles, the acknowledged
+maxims and established rules, of all judgment
+and justice,&mdash;that conviction ought to precede execution,
+that trial ought to precede conviction, and
+that a prosecutor's information and evidence ought
+to be the preliminary step and substance of the trial.
+Here everything was reversed: Sir Elijah Impey
+goes up with the order for execution; the party
+accused is neither arraigned nor tried; this same
+Sir Elijah then proceeds to seek for witnesses and
+to take affidavits; and in the mean time neither the
+Nabob, the ostensible prosecutor, nor his mother and
+grandmother, the parties accused, knew one word of
+the matter.</p>
+
+<p>But possibly some peculiarity in the circumstances
+of the case rendered such a proceeding necessary,
+and may justify it. No such peculiarity has been
+proved or even alleged; nay, it is in the highest
+degree improbable that it could have existed. Mr.
+Hastings had another opportunity of doing himself
+justice. When an account of this business was
+transmitted to the Court of Directors, they ordered
+him to inquire into it: and your Lordships will see
+what he did in consequence of this order. Your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">{121}</a></span>
+Lordships will then judge of the extreme audacity
+of the defence which he has made of this act at your
+bar, after having refused to institute any inquiry into
+it, although, he had the positive order of the Court
+of Directors, and was in the place where that inquiry
+could be made effectually, and in the place where
+the unfortunate women could have an opportunity
+of clearing themselves.</p>
+
+<p>I will first read to your Lordships an extract from
+the letter of the Court of Directors to the board at
+Calcutta, dated the 14th of February, 1783.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"4. By the second article of the treaty [of Chunar]
+the Nabob is permitted to resume such jaghires
+as he shall think proper, with a reserve, that all such
+jaghiredars, for the amount of whose jaghires the
+Company are guaranties, shall, in case of a resumption
+of their lands, be paid the amount of the net
+collections through the Resident.</p>
+
+<p>"5. We do not see how the Governor-General
+could consent to the resumption of such lands as
+the Company had engaged should remain in the
+hands of those who possessed them previous to the
+execution of the late treaty, without stronger proofs
+of the Begums' defection than have been laid before
+us; neither can we allow it to be good policy to reduce
+the several jaghiredars, and thus uniting the
+territory, and the troops maintained for the protection
+of that territory, under one head, who, by that
+means, at some future period, may become a very
+powerful enemy to the Company.</p>
+
+<p>"6. With respect to the resumption of the jaghires
+possessed by the Begums in particular, and the
+subsequent seizure of the treasure deposited w<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">{122}</a></span>ith the
+Vizier's mother, which the Governor-General, in his
+letter to the board, 23d January, 1782, has declared
+he strenuously encouraged and supported, we hope
+and trust, for the honor of the British nation, that the
+measure appeared to be fully justified in the eyes of
+all Hindostan. The Governor-General has informed
+us that it can be well attested, that the Begums principally
+excited and supported the late commotions,
+and that they carried their inveteracy to the English
+nation so far as to aim at our utter extirpation.</p>
+
+<p>"7. It must have been publicly known that in
+1775 the Resident at the Vizier's court not only
+obtained from the Begum, widow of the late Sujah
+Dowlah, on the Nabob's account, thirty lacs of rupees,
+half of which was to be paid to the Company, but
+also the forbearance of twenty-six lacs, for the repayment
+of which she had security in land, on the Nabob's
+agreeing to renounce all further claims upon
+her, and that to this agreement the Company were
+guaranties.</p>
+
+<p>"8. We find that on the 21st December, 1775,
+the Begum complained of a breach of engagements
+on the part of the Nabob, soliciting your protection
+for herself, her mother, and for all the women belonging
+to the seraglio of the late Nabob, from the distresses
+to which they were reduced; in consequence
+whereof it was agreed in consultation, 3d January,
+1776, to remonstrate with the Vizier,&mdash;the Governor-General
+remarking, that, as the representative of
+our government has become an agent in this business,
+and has pledged the honor and faith of the
+Company for the punctual observance of the conditions
+under which the treaty was concluded, you had
+a right to interfere, and justice demanded it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">{123}</a></span>, if it
+should appear that those engagements have been violated.
+And the board at the same time resolved,
+that, as soon as the Begum's engagements with the
+Nabob, to which Mr. Bristow is a party, shall be fulfilled
+on her part, this government will think themselves
+bound to protect her against any further demand
+or molestation.</p>
+
+<p>"9. If, therefore, the disaffection of the Begums
+was not a matter of public notoriety, we cannot but be
+alarmed for the effects which these subsequent transactions
+must have had on the minds of the natives of
+India. The only consolation we feel upon this occasion
+is, that the amount of those jaghires for which
+the Company were guaranties is to be paid through
+our Resident at the court of the Vizier; and it very
+materially concerns the credit of your government on
+no account to suffer such payments to be evaded.</p>
+
+<p>"10. If it shall hereafter be found that the Begums
+did not take that hostile part against the Company
+which has been represented, as well in the Governor-General's
+Narrative as in several documents
+therein referred to,&mdash;and as it nowhere appears,
+from the papers at present in our possession, that
+they excited any commotion previous to the imprisonment
+of Rajah Cheyt Sing, but only armed themselves
+in consequence of that transaction,&mdash;and as it
+is probable that such a conduct proceeded entirely
+from motives of self-defence, under an apprehension
+that they themselves might likewise be laid under
+unwarrantable contributions,&mdash;we direct that you
+use your influence with the Vizier that their jaghires
+may be restored to them; but if they should be under
+apprehensions respecting the future conduct of
+the Vizier, and wish our further protection, i<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">{124}</a></span>t is our
+pleasure that you afford those ladies an asylum within
+the Company's territories, and there be paid the
+amount of the net collections of their jaghires, agreeably
+to the second article of the late treaty, through
+the medium of our Resident, as may be ascertained
+upon an average estimate of some years back."</p></div>
+
+<p>You see, my Lords, the Directors had received
+every one of his false impressions. They had conceived
+an idea, that, after the rebellion of Cheyt
+Sing, (but not before, upon his own showing,) the
+Begums had shown a disposition to arm. They here
+assume a false fact, which Mr. Hastings stated in
+his representation of the business to them. They
+assume a variety of other false facts: they assume
+that the amount of the jaghires of the Begums were
+to be paid them in regular pensions; whereas they
+were totally confiscated, without any compensation at
+all. And yet, upon Mr. Hastings's own showing,
+they found the transaction to be so dishonorable to
+the British government, that they desire him to make
+inquiry into it, and give redress accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, is another order of the Company, another
+call upon Mr. Hastings to examine to the bottom
+of this affair. The Directors, after giving him
+credit for that enormous mass of falsehoods which
+we have proved him to have stated in his Narrative,
+found themselves so utterly dissatisfied, that they
+gave this conditional order to restore the Begums to
+their jaghires. Your Lordships will find it in evidence
+upon your minutes, that he contumaciously
+disobeyed this order,&mdash;that he would not consent
+to the propositions of the Council for inquiring
+into the conduct of these injured women, but sti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">{125}</a></span>fled
+every attempt that was made by others to do them
+justice. And yet he here has the effrontery to propose
+that your Lordships should inquire into the
+business at your bar,&mdash;that you should investigate
+a matter here which he refused to inquire into on
+the spot, though expressly ordered by his masters so
+to do.</p>
+
+<p>I will now read to your Lordships a short extract
+from his own narrative of his own proceedings. It
+begins with reciting part of a note entered by Mr.
+Macpherson in the Consultations of the Council, at
+the time when the orders of the Court of Directors
+which I have just alluded to were taken into consideration.</p>
+
+<p>"What the Court of Directors seem to have most
+at heart are, first, that the engagement of the second
+article of the Benares treaty should be faithfully fulfilled,&mdash;and,
+secondly, to guard against the future
+misconduct of the Vizier, if he should be disposed
+to oppress the Begums; that we should therefore
+ascertain whether the amount of the jaghires of the
+Begums is regularly paid to them through the Company's
+Resident, and give them notice that no future
+demands shall be made upon them. This the Governor-General
+might, I think, do in a letter that
+would make the Begums sensible of their past misconduct,
+yet inform them of the lenity and gracious
+intentions of the Company, in ordering them an asylum
+in Bengal, in case of future distress."</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of the foregoing opinion from Mr.
+Macpherson, the following minute was delivered by
+the Governor-General.</p>
+
+<p>"I should gladly acquiesce in the motion made
+by Mr. Macpherson, if I thought it possible t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">{126}</a></span>o frame
+a letter to the Begums in any terms which should
+at the same time convey the intimation proposed by
+it and not defeat the purpose of it, or be productive
+of evils greater than any which exist in consequence
+of the proceedings which have already taken place,
+and which time has almost obliterated. The orders
+of the Court of Directors are conditional; they require
+nothing, but in the event of discoveries made
+subsequent to the advices which were before you on
+the 14th February last, in alleviation of the former
+conduct of the Begums. Nothing has since appeared
+in relation to them, but their refusal, or
+rather that of one, to fulfil her engagements for the
+payment of the remainder of the sum exacted from
+her by the Nabob Vizier in the beginning of last
+year. Whatever obedience may be due to the clear
+ascertained spirit of the orders of the Court of
+Directors, this obligation cannot extend to points
+to which neither the letter nor evident spirit of
+their orders apply. If I am rightly informed, the
+Nabob Vizier and the Begums are on terms of mutual
+good-will. It would ill become this government
+to interpose its influence by any act which might
+tend to revive their animosities: and a very slight
+occasion would be sufficient to effect it. It will be
+to little purpose to tell them that their conduct has,
+in our estimation of it, been very wrong, and at the
+same time to announce to them the orders of our
+superiors, which more than indicate the reverse.
+They will instantly take fire on such a declaration,
+proclaim the judgment of the Company in their favor,
+demand a reparation of the acts which they will construe
+wrongs with such a sentence warranting that
+construction,&mdash;and either accept the invita<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">{127}</a></span>tion, to
+the proclaimed scandal of the Vizier, which will not
+add to the credit of our government, or remain in
+his dominions, but not under his authority, to add
+to his vexations and the disorders of the country, by
+continual intrigues and seditions. Enough already
+exists to affect his peace, and the quiet of his people;
+if we cannot heal, let us not inflame the wounds
+which have been inflicted.</p>
+
+<p>"If the Begums think themselves aggrieved to
+such a degree as to justify them in an appeal to a
+foreign jurisdiction,&mdash;to appeal to it against a man
+standing in the relation of son and grandson to them,&mdash;to
+appeal to the justice of those who have been the
+abettors and instruments of their imputed wrongs,&mdash;let
+us at least permit them to be the judges of their
+own feelings, and prefer their complaints before we
+offer to redress them: they will not need to be
+prompted. I hope I shall not depart from the simplicity
+of official language, in saying, that the majesty
+of justice ought to be approached with solicitation, not
+descend to provoke or invite it, much less to debase
+itself by the suggestion of wrongs and the promise of
+redress, with the denunciation of punishment before
+trial, and even before accusation."</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, if, since the beginning of the world,
+such a paper as this was ever before written by a
+person standing in the relation of a servant to his
+master, I shall allow that every word we have said to
+your Lordships upon this occasion to mark his guilt
+ought to be expunged from your minutes and from
+our charges.</p>
+
+<p>Before I proceed to make any observations upon
+this act of open rebellion against his superiors, I
+must beg your Lordships to remark the cruelty of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">{128}</a></span>
+purpose, the hostile feeling, towards these injured
+women, which were displayed in this daring defiance.
+Your Lordships will find that he never is a
+rebel to one party without being a tyrant to some
+others; that <i>rebel</i> and <i>tyrant</i> are correlative terms,
+when applied to him, and that they constantly go
+together.</p>
+
+<p>It is suggested by the Directors, that the Nabob is
+the persecutor, the oppressor, and that Mr. Hastings
+is the person who is to redress the wrong. But here
+they have mistaken the matter totally. For we have
+proved to your Lordships that Mr. Hastings was the
+principal in the persecution, and that the Nabob was
+only an instrument. "If I am rightly informed,"
+he says, "the Nabob and the Begums are on terms
+of mutual good-will. It would ill become this government
+to interpose its influence by any act which
+might tend to revive their animosities: and a very
+slight occasion would be sufficient to effect it." What
+animosities had they towards each other? None that
+we know of. Mr. Hastings gets the Nabob to rob
+his mother; and then he supposes, contrary to truth,
+contrary to fact, contrary to everything your Lordships
+have heard, that the Nabob would fall into a
+fury, if his mother was to obtain any redress,&mdash;and
+that, if the least inquiry into this business was made,
+it would create a flame in the Nabob's mind, on account
+of the active, energetic, spirited part he had
+taken in these transactions. "Therefore," says he,
+"oh, for God's sake, soothe the matter! It is a
+green wound; don't uncover it; do nothing to irritate.
+It will be to little purpose to tell them that
+their conduct has in our estimation of it been very
+wrong, and at the same time announce to them the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">{129}</a></span>
+orders of our superiors, which more than indicate
+the reverse." Now, my Lords, to what does all this
+amount? "First," says he, "I will not do them
+justice,&mdash;I will not enter upon an inquiry into their
+wrongs." Why? "Because they charge us with
+having inflicted them." Then, surely, for that reason,
+you ought to commence an inquiry. "No," says
+he, "that would be telling them that our superiors
+suspect we are in the wrong." But when his superiors
+more than indicated suspicions, was he not bound
+tenfold to make that inquiry, for his honor and for
+their satisfaction, which they direct him to make?
+No, he will not do it, "because," says he, "the Begums
+would either accept the offer of an asylum in
+the Company's territories, to the proclaimed scandal
+of the Vizier, which would not add to the credit of
+our government, or they would remain in his dominions,
+but not under his authority, to add to his vexations,
+and the disorders of the country, by continual
+intrigues and seditions."</p>
+
+<p>You see, my Lords, this man is constantly thrusting
+this peaceable Nabob before him; goading and
+pushing him on, as if with a bayonet behind, to the
+commission of everything that is base and dishonorable.
+You have him here declaring that he will not
+satisfy the Directors, his masters, in their inquiries
+about those acts, for fear of the Nabob's taking umbrage,
+and getting into a flame with his mother,&mdash;and
+for fear the mother, supported by the opinion
+of the Directors, should be induced to resent her
+wrongs. What, I say, does all this amount to? It
+amounts to this:&mdash;"The Begums accuse me of doing
+them injustice; the Directors indicate a suspicion
+that they have been injured; therefore I will not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">{130}</a></span>
+inquire into the matter." Why? "Because it may
+raise disturbances." But what disturbance could it
+raise? The mother is disarmed, and could not hurt
+the Nabob. All her landed estates he knew were
+confiscated; he knew all her money was in his own
+possession; he knew she had not the means, if she
+had been disposed, to create intrigues and cabals;&mdash;what
+disturbance, then, could be created by his sending
+a letter to know what she had to say upon the
+subject of her wrongs?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>If</i>" says he, "<i>the Begums think themselves aggrieved.</i>"
+Observe, my Lords, that the institution of
+an inquiry is no measure of the Begums; it is an
+order of the Court of Directors, made by them upon
+his own representation of his own case, and upon
+nothing else. The Begums did not dare to murmur;
+they did not dare to ask for redress, God knows the
+poor creatures were, at or about the time, his prisoners,&mdash;robbed,&mdash;stripped
+of everything,&mdash;without
+hope and without resource. But the Directors, doing
+their duty upon that occasion, did condemn him upon
+his own false representations contained in that bundle
+of affidavits upon which his counsel now contend
+that your Lordships should acquit him.&mdash;"But,"
+says he, "are they to <i>appeal to a foreign jurisdiction</i>?"
+When these women were to be robbed, we were not
+foreigners to them; on the contrary, we adjudged
+them guilty of rebellion. We sent an English chief-justice
+to collect materials of accusation against
+them. We sent English officers to take their money.
+The whole was an English transaction. When wrong
+is to be done, we have then an interest in the country
+to justify our acting in it; but when the question is
+of redressing wrongs, when the question is of doing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">{131}</a></span>
+justice, when the question is of inquiry, when the
+question is of hearing complaints, then it is a foreign
+jurisdiction. You are to suffer Mr. Hastings&mdash;to
+make it foreign, or to make it domestic, just as it answers
+his purposes.&mdash;But they are "<i>to appeal against
+a man standing in the relation of son and grandson
+to them, and to appeal to the justice of those who have
+been the abettors and instruments of their imputed
+wrongs</i>." Why, my Lords, if he allows that he is the
+abettor of, and the instrument to which the Directors
+impute these wrongs, why, I ask, does he, with those
+charges lying upon him, object to all inquiry in the
+manner you have seen?</p>
+
+<p>But the Company's Governor is, it seems, all at
+once transformed into a great sovereign;&mdash;"<i>the majesty
+of justice ought to be approached with solicitation</i>."
+Here, my Lords, he forgets at once the Court of
+Directors, he forgets the laws of England, he forgets
+the act of Parliament, he forgets that any obedience
+is due to his superiors. The Begums were to approach
+him by the orders of the Court of Directors;
+he sets at nought these orders, and asserts that he
+must be approached with solicitations.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Time</i>," says he, "<i>has obliterated their sufferings.</i>"
+Oh, what a balm of oblivion time spreads over the
+wrongs, wounds, and afflictions of others, in the mind
+of the person who inflicts those wrongs and oppressions!
+The oppressor soon forgets. This robbery
+took place in 17[81]; it was in the year 1783 when
+he asserted that the waters of Lethe had been poured
+over all their wrongs and oppressions. Your Lordships
+will mark this insulting language, when he says
+that both the order of the Directors and the application
+of the Begums for redress must be <i>solicitations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">{132}</a></span>
+to him</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>[Here Mr. Burke was interrupted by Mr. Hastings,
+who said, "My Lords, there was no order. I find a
+man's patience may be exhausted. I hear so many
+falsehoods, that I must declare there was no order of
+the Court of Directors. Forgive me, my Lords. He
+may say what he pleases; I will not again controvert
+it. But there is no order; if there is, read it." Mr.
+Burke then proceeded.]</p></div>
+
+<p>Judge you, my Lords, what the insolence, audacity,
+and cruelty of this man must have been, from his
+want of patience in his present situation, and when
+he dares to hold this language here. Your Lordships
+will reckon with him for it, or the world will reckon
+with you.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>[Mr. Hastings here again interrupted Mr. Burke,
+and said, "There was no order for inquiry."]</p></div>
+
+<p><i>Mr. Burke.</i>&mdash;Your Lordships have heard the
+letter read,&mdash;I mean the letter from the Directors,
+which I read just now. You will judge whether it is
+an order or not. I did hope within these two days
+to put an end to this business; but when your Lordships
+hear us charged with direct falsehood at your
+bar, when you hear this wicked wretch who is before
+you&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>[<i>From a Lord.</i>&mdash;Order! order! order!]</p></div>
+
+<p><i>Mr. Burke.</i>&mdash;Order, my Lords, we call for, in the
+name of the Commons! Your Lordships have heard
+us accused at your bar of falsehood, after we had read
+the order upon which our assertion was founded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">{133}</a></span>
+This man, whom we have described as the scourge
+and terror of India, this man gets up, and charges
+us, not with a mistake, an error, a wrong construction,
+but a direct falsehood,&mdash;and adds, that his
+patience is worn out with the falsehood he hears.
+This is not an English court of justice, if such a thing
+is permitted. We beg leave to retire, and take instructions
+from our constituents. He ought to be
+sent to Bridewell for going on in this manner.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>[<i>Mr. Wyndham here read the letter again.</i>]</p></div>
+
+<p><i>Mr. Burke.</i>&mdash;With regard to the ravings of this
+unhappy man, I am sure, if I were only considering
+what passed from him to the Managers in this box,
+and knowing what allowance is due to a wounded
+conscience, brought before an awful tribunal, and
+smarting under the impressions of its own guilt, I
+would pass them over. But, my Lords, we have the
+honor of the Commons, we have the honor of this
+court to sustain. [Your Lordships, the other day,
+for an offence committed against a constable, who
+was keeping the way under your orders, did, very
+justly, and to the great satisfaction of the public,
+commit the party to Bridewell, for a much slighter
+insult against the honor and dignify of your court.]
+And I leave it, therefore, for the present, till your
+Lordships can seriously consider what the mode of
+proceeding in this matter ought to be.&mdash;I now proceed.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>We have read to your Lordships the orders of the
+Court of Directors: I again say we consider them as
+orders: your Lordships are as good judges of the
+propriety of the term as we are. You have heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">{134}</a></span>
+them read; you have also heard that the Council at
+Calcutta considered them as orders, for resolutions
+were moved upon them; and Mr. Stables, in evidence
+before you here, who was one of the Council,
+so considered them: and yet this man has the frantic
+audacity in this place to assert that they were not
+orders, and to declare that he cannot stand the repetition
+of such abominable falsehoods as are perpetually
+urged against him. We cannot conceive that your
+Lordships will suffer this; and if you do, I promise
+you the Commons will not suffer the justice of the
+country to be trifled with and insulted in this manner:
+because, if such conduct be suffered by your
+Lordships, they must say that very disagreeable consequences
+will ensue, and very disagreeable inferences
+will be drawn by the public concerning it.
+You will forgive, and we know how to forgive, the
+ravings of people smarting under a conscious sense
+of their guilt. But when we are reading documents
+given in evidence, and are commenting upon them, the
+use of this kind of language really deserves your Lordships'
+consideration. As for us, we regard it no
+more than we should other noise and brawlings of
+criminals who in irons may be led through the streets,
+raving at the magistrate that has committed them.
+We consider him as a poor, miserable man, railing
+at his accusers: it is natural he should fall into all
+these frantic ravings, but it is not fit or natural that
+the Court should indulge him in them. Your Lordships
+shall now hear in what sense Mr. Wheler and
+Mr. Stables, two other members of the Council, understood
+this letter.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wheler thus writes.&mdash;"It always has been
+and always will be my wish to conform implicitly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">{135}</a></span> to the
+orders of the Court of Directors, and I trust that the
+opinion which I shall give upon that part of the Court's
+letter which is now before us will not be taken up
+against its meaning, as going to a breach of them.
+The orders at present under the board's consideration
+are entirely provisional. Nothing has passed since
+the conclusion of the agreement made by the Governor-General
+with the Vizier at Chunar which induces
+me to alter the opinion which I before held, as well
+from the Governor-General's reports to this board
+as the opinions which I have heard of many individuals
+totally unconcerned in the subject, that the
+Begums at Fyzabad did take a hostile part against
+the Company during the disturbances in Benares;
+and I am impressed with a conviction that the conduct
+of the Begums did not proceed entirely from
+motives of self-defence. But as the Court of Directors
+appear to be of a different opinion, and conceive
+that there ought to be stronger proofs of the defection
+of the Begums than have been laid before them, I
+think, that, before we decide on their orders, the late
+and present Resident at the Vizier's court, and the
+commanding officers in the Vizier's country, ought
+to be required to collect and lay before the board
+all the information they can obtain with respect
+to the defection of the Begums during the troubles
+in Benares, and their present disposition to the
+Company."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stables, September 9th, 1783, writes thus.&mdash;"The
+Court of Directors, by their letter of the 14th
+February, 1783, seem not to be satisfied that the disaffection
+of the Begums to this government is sufficiently
+proved by the evidence before them. I therefore
+think that the late and present Resident an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">{136}</a></span>d
+commanding officers in the Vizier's country at the
+time should be called upon to collect what further
+information they can on this subject, in which the
+honor and dignity of this government is so materially
+concerned, that such information may be immediately
+transmitted to the Court of Directors."</p>
+
+<p>When questioned upon this subject at your Lordships'
+bar, he gives this evidence.&mdash;"<i>Q.</i> What was
+your motive for proposing that investigation?&mdash;<i>A.</i> A
+letter from the Court of Directors; I conceived it to
+be ordered by them.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Did you conceive the letter
+of the Court of Directors positively to direct that inquiry?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+I did so certainly at the time, and I beg
+to refer to the minutes which expressed it."&mdash;A question
+was put to the same witness by a noble lord.
+"<i>Q.</i> The witness has stated, that at the time he has
+mentioned he conceived the letter from the Court of
+Directors to order an inquiry, and that it was upon
+that opinion that he regulated his conduct, and his
+proposal for such inquiry. I wish to know whether
+the expression, '<i>at the time</i>,' was merely casual, or am
+I to understand from it that the witness has altered
+his opinion of the intention of this letter since that
+time?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I certainly retain that opinion, and I
+wished the inquiry to go on."</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, you see that his colleagues so understood
+it; you see that we so understood it; and still
+you have heard the prisoner, after charging us with
+falsehood, insultingly tell us we may go on as we
+please, we may go on in our own way. If your
+Lordships think that it was not a positive order, which
+Mr. Hastings was bound to obey, you will acquit him
+of the breach of it. But it is a most singular thing,
+among all the astonishing circumstances of this case,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">{137}</a></span>
+that this man, who has heard from the beginning to
+the end of his trial breaches of the Company's orders
+constantly charged upon him,&mdash;(nay, I will venture
+to say, that there is not a single step that we have
+taken in this prosecution, or in observations upon evidence,
+in which we have not charged him with an
+avowed direct breach of the Company's order,&mdash;you
+have heard it ten times this day,&mdash;in his defence before
+the Commons he declares he did intentionally,
+in naming Mr. Markham, break the Company's orders,)&mdash;it
+is singular, I say, that this man should
+now pretend to be so sore upon this point. What is
+it now that makes him break through all the rules
+of common decency and common propriety, and show
+all the burnings of guilt, upon being accused of the
+breach of one of the innumerable orders which he
+has broken, of which he has avowed the breaking,
+and attempted to justify himself a thousand times in
+the Company's books for having broken?</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, one of his own body, one of the Council,
+has sworn at your bar what he repeatedly declared
+to be his sense of it. We consider it as one of the
+strongest orders that can be given, because the reason
+of the order is added to it: the Directors declaring,
+that, if it should not be found upon inquiry, (you
+see, my Lords, it puts the very case,)&mdash;"if you do
+not find such and such things, we shall consider the
+English honor wounded and stained, and we direct
+you to make reparation." There are, in fact, two
+orders contained in this letter, which we take to be
+equally strong and positive,&mdash;and we charge him
+with the breach of both: namely, the order for inquiry,
+and the conditional order of restoring to the
+Begums their jaghires, or making satisfaction<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">{138}</a></span> for
+them; and in case of any apprehension of reluctance
+in the Nabob, to bring them for security into the
+Company's territories. The two last positive orders
+are preceded by the supposition of an inquiry which
+was to justify him either in the acts he had done or
+to justify him in making restitution. He did neither
+the one nor the other. We aver that he disobeyed
+all these orders. And now let his impatience break
+out again.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships have seen, amongst the various
+pretences by which this man has endeavored to justify
+his various delinquencies, that of fearing to offend
+the Nabob by the restoration of their jaghires
+to the Begums is one. Your Lordships will form
+your own judgment of the truth or falsehood of this
+pretence, when you shall have heard the letter which
+I shall now read to you, written to Mr. Hastings by
+the Nabob himself.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Letter from the Nabob Vizier to Mr. Hastings, 25th
+February, 1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"You performed on every occasion towards me
+whatever was becoming of friendship: I, too, have
+done whatever affection required and you commanded;
+and in future also, whatever may be your pleasure,
+there shall be no deviation therefrom, because
+whatever you direct is altogether for my benefit.
+The business for which I came to Fyzabad is become
+settled by your favor: particulars will become known
+to your wisdom from the writings of Mr. Middleton.
+I am grateful for your favors. If in these matters
+you sincerely approve me, communicate it, for it will
+be a comfort to me. Having appointed my own
+aumils to the jaghire of the lady mother, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">{139}</a></span> have engaged
+to pay her cash. She has complied with my
+views. Her pleasure is, that, after receiving an engagement,
+he should deliver up the jaghires. What
+is your pleasure in this matter? If you command,
+it will comfort the lady mother giving her back the
+jaghire after I have obtained my views; or I will
+have it under my aumil. I am obedient to your
+pleasure."</p></div>
+
+<p>Your Lordships here see the Begum a suppliant
+to have her jaghire restored, (after entering into
+some engagement that might have been required of
+her,) and the Nabob, in a tone equally suppliant,
+expressing his consent, at least, that her request
+should be complied with, if the command of Mr.
+Hastings could be procured.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>My Lords, in order to save your Lordships' time,
+and that I might not overload this business, I did not
+intend to have troubled you with any observations
+upon this part of it; but the charge of falsehood
+which the prisoner at your bar has had the audacity
+to bring against us has induced me to lay it more
+particularly before, you. We have now done with it;
+but before we retire, your Lordships will permit me
+to recapitulate briefly the substance of what has now
+been urged respecting his conduct towards these
+miserable women. We accuse him of reiterated
+breaches of the orders of the Court of Directors, both
+in the letter and spirit of them, and of his contempt
+of the opinions which his colleagues in office had
+formed of them. We charge him with the aggravation
+of these delinquencies, by the oppression and
+ruin which they brought upon the family of th<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">{140}</a></span>e
+Nabob, by the infraction of treaties, and by the disrepute
+which in his person was sustained by the
+government he represented, and by the stain left upon
+the justice, honor, and good faith of the English
+nation. We charge him with their farther aggravation
+by sundry false pretences alleged by him in justification
+of this conduct, the pretended reluctance
+of the Nabob, the fear of offending him, the suggestion
+of the Begums having forgotten and forgiven the
+wrongs they had suffered, and of the danger of reviving
+their discontent by any attempt to redress them,
+and by his insolent language, that the majesty of justice
+with which he impudently invests himself was
+only to be approached with solicitation. We have
+farther stated, that the pretence that he was only concerned
+in this business as an accessary is equally false;
+it being, on the contrary, notorious, that the Nabob
+was the accessary, forced into the service, and a mere
+instrument in his hands, and that he and Sir Elijah
+Impey (whose employment in this business we stated
+as a farther aggravation) were the authors and principal
+agents. And we farther contend, that each of
+these aggravations and pretences is itself, in fact and
+in its principle, a substantive crime.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships witnessed the insolence with which
+this man, stung to the quick by the recital of his
+crime, interrupted me; and you heard his recrimination
+of falsehood against us. We again avouch
+the truth of all and every word we have uttered,
+and the validity of every proof with which we have
+supported them. Let his impatience, I say, now
+again burst forth,&mdash;he who feels so sensibly everything
+that touches him, and yet seeks for an act of
+indemnity for his own atrocities, by endeavor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">{141}</a></span>ing to
+make you believe that the wrongs of a desolated
+family are within one year forgotten by them, and
+buried in oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>I trust, my Lords, that both his prosecutors and
+his judges will evince that patience which the criminal
+wants. Justice is not to wait to have its majesty
+approached with solicitation. We see that throne
+in which resides invisibly, but virtually, the majesty
+of England; we see your Lordships representing, in
+succession, the juridical authority in the highest
+court in this kingdom: but we do not approach you
+with solicitation; we make it a petition of right;
+we claim it; we demand it. The right of seeking
+redress is not suppliant, even before the majesty of
+England; it comes boldly forward, and never thinks
+it offends its sovereign by claiming what is the right
+of all his people.</p>
+
+<p>We have now done with this business: a business
+as atrocious as any that is known in the history of
+mankind; a business that has stained, throughout all
+Asia, the British character, and by which our fame
+for honor, integrity, and public faith has been forfeited;
+a business which has introduced us throughout
+that country as breakers of faith, destroyers of
+treaties, plunderers of the weak and unprotected, and
+has dishonored and will forever dishonor the British
+name. Your Lordships have had all this in evidence.
+You have seen in what manner the Nabob, his country,
+his revenues, his subjects, his mother, his family,
+his nobility, and all their fortunes, real and personal,
+have been disposed of by the prisoner at your bar;
+and having seen this, you will by the impatience of
+this criminal estimate the patience of the unfortunate
+women into whose injuries he refused to inquire.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">{142}</a></span>
+What he would not do the Commons have done.
+They know that you have a feeling different from
+that which he manifested on this occasion; they do
+not approach you suppliantly, but demand justice;
+they insist, that, as the Commons have done their
+part, your Lordships will perform yours.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>We shall next proceed to show your Lordships
+how he acted towards another set of women, the
+women of the late Sujah Dowlah, and for whom the
+Directors had ordered a maintenance to be secured
+by an express treaty. You will see that he is cruel
+towards the weak sex, and to all others in proportion
+as they are weak and powerless to resist him. You
+will see, I say, when he had usurped the whole government
+of Oude, and brought it into a servile dependence
+on himself, how these women fared; and
+then your Lordships will judge whether or not, and
+in what degree, he is criminal.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">{143}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTH_DAY_THURSDAY_JUNE_12_1794" id="SEVENTH_DAY_THURSDAY_JUNE_12_1794"></a>SPEECH<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">IN</span><br />
+<br />
+GENERAL REPLY.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">SEVENTH DAY. THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1794.</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>My Lords,&mdash;When I had last the honor of
+addressing your Lordships from this place, my
+observations were principally directed to the unjust
+confiscation and seizure of the jaghires and treasures
+of the Begums, without previous accusation, or trial,
+or subsequent inquiry into their conduct, in violation
+of a treaty made with them and guarantied by
+the East India Company,&mdash;to the long imprisonment
+and cruel treatment of their ministers, and to the
+false pretences and abominable principles by which
+the prisoner at your bar has attempted to justify his
+conduct. The several acts of violence and of oppression
+were, as we have shown your Lordships,
+committed with circumstances of aggravated atrocity
+highly disgraceful to the British name and character,&mdash;and
+particularly by his forcing the Nabob to become
+the means and instrument of reducing his
+mother and grandmother and their families to absolute
+want and distress.</p>
+
+<p>I have now to call your attention to his treatment
+of another branch of this miserable family,&mdash;the
+women and children of the late Nabob Sujah ul
+Dowlah. These persons were dependent upon the
+Begums, and by the confiscation of their property,
+and by the ruin of various persons who would other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">{144}</a></span>wise
+have contributed to their maintenance, were reduced
+to the last extremity of indigence and want.
+Being left without the common necessaries of life,
+they were driven to the necessity of breaking through
+all those local principles of decorum which constitute
+the character of the female sex in that part
+of the world; and after fruitless supplications and
+shrieks of famine, they endeavored to break the inclosure
+of the palace, and to force their way to the
+market-place, in order to beg for bread. When they
+had thus been forced to submit to the extremity
+of disgrace and degradation, by exposing themselves
+to public view with the starving children of their late
+sovereign, the brothers and sisters of the reigning
+prince, they were, in this attempt, attacked by the
+sepoys armed with bludgeons, and driven back by
+blows into the palace.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, we have first laid before you the sufferings
+and disgraces of women of the first distinction
+in Asia, protected by their rank, protected by their
+sex, protected by their near relation to the prince of
+the country, protected by two guaranties of the representative
+of the British government in India. We
+now come to another class of women, who suffered
+by the violent misappropriation of the revenues of
+the Nabob, by which their regular allowance was
+taken from them; and your Lordships will find that
+this man's crimes, at every step we take, ripen in
+guilt, his acts of positive injustice are always aggravated
+by his conduct with regard to the consequences
+of them, and form but a small part in the mass of
+oppression and tyranny which we have brought before
+you.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">{145}</a></span></p>
+<p>My Lords, the unjust seizure of the jaghires and
+treasures of the Begums, out of which those women
+were maintained, reduced them to a state of indigence,
+and exposed them not only to the sufferings
+which belong to the physical nature of man, but also
+to the indignities which particularly affected their
+sex and condition. But before I proceed, I will beg
+leave to restate to your Lordships and recall to your
+memory who these women were.</p>
+
+<p>The Nabob Sujah Dowlah had but one legitimate
+wife. Though the Mahometan law admits of this
+number's being extended in certain cases even to
+four, yet it is for the most part held disreputable,
+especially when a person is married to a woman of
+the first distinction, to have more than one legitimate
+wife. Upon looking into the Hedaya, your
+Lordships will see with what extreme rigor fornication
+is forbidden; but we know that persons of high
+rank, by customs that supersede both religion and
+laws, add to the number of their wives, or substitute
+in their room wives of a subordinate description, and
+indulge themselves in this license to an unlimited
+degree. You will find in Chardin's Travels, where
+he treats of the subject of marriage, that such is the
+custom of all the princes of the East. The wives of
+this subordinate class, though they are in reality no
+better than concubines, and are subject to the power
+and caprices of their lords, are yet allowed, in the
+eye of the severest moralists, to have some excuse
+for their frailty and their weakness; and they accordingly
+always do find a degree of favor in this world,
+and become the object of particular protection.</p>
+
+<p>We know that Sujah ul Dowlah was a man unquestionably
+in his manners very licentious with regard
+to women, that he had a great number o<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">{146}</a></span>f these
+women in his family, and that his women and the
+women attendant upon the persons of his favorites
+had increased to a very great number. We know
+that his sons amounted to twenty,&mdash;or, according
+to Mr. Hastings's own account, to nineteen. Montesquieu
+supposes that there are more females born
+in the East than in the West. But he says this upon
+no good ground. We know by better and more regular
+information concerning this matter, that the
+birth of males and females in that country is in the
+same proportion as it is here; and therefore, if you
+suppose that he had twenty sons, you may suppose
+he had about nineteen daughters. By the customs
+of that country, all these sons and daughters were
+considered as persons of eminent distinction, though
+inferior to the legitimate children,&mdash;assuming the
+rank of their father, without considering the rank
+which their mother held. All these wives with their
+children, and all their female servants and attendants,
+amounting in the whole to about eight hundred
+persons, were shut up in what they call the <i>Khord
+Mohul</i>, or Lesser Palace. This place is described
+by one of the witnesses to be about as large as St.
+James's Square. Your Lordships have been told,
+that, in other circumstances as well as this, these
+women were considered as objects of a great degree
+of respect, and of the greatest degree of protection.
+I refer your Lordships to the treaty by which their
+maintenance was guarantied by the English government.</p>
+
+<p>In order to let your Lordships see that I state
+nothing to you but what is supported not only by
+general history, which is enough to support an account
+of general manners, but by the particular and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">{147}</a></span>
+peculiar opinions of a person best informed of the
+nature of the case, I will refer you to the Nabob
+himself: for, undoubtedly, the Nabob of Oude, the
+Vizier of the Empire, the Subahdar of the country,
+was most likely to be the best judge of what respect
+was due to the women of his father's family. I will
+therefore read to your Lordships, from his own letters,
+what the Nabob's opinion was upon this subject.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Extract of a Letter from the Vizier, received 23d of
+August, 1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"I never found resource equal to the necessary
+expenses. Every year, by taking from the ministers,
+and selling the articles of my harkhanna, I with
+great distress transacted the business. But I could
+not take care of my dependants: so that some of my
+brothers, from their difficulties, arose and departed;
+and the people of the Khord Mohul of the late Nabob,
+who are all my mothers, from their distresses are
+reduced to poverty and involved in difficulties. No
+man of rank is deficient in the care of his dependants,
+in proportion to his ability."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Another Letter from the Vizier, received the 31st July,
+1784.</i></p>
+
+<p>"My brother, dear as life, Saadut Ali Kh&acirc;n, has
+requested that I would permit his mother to go and
+reside with him. My friend, all the mothers of my
+brothers, and the women of the late Nabob, whom I
+respect as my own mothers, are here, and it is incumbent
+upon me to support them: accordingly I
+do it; and it is improper that they should be separated,
+nor do I approve it. By God's blessing and
+your kindness, I hope that all the women o<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">{148}</a></span>f the late
+Nabob may remain here; it is the wish also of my
+grandmother and my mother that they should."</p></div>
+
+<p>Your Lordships now see in what degree of estimation
+the Nabob held these women. He regarded the
+wives of his father as his honorary mothers; he considers
+their children as his brethren; he thinks it
+would be highly dishonorable to his government, if
+one of them was taken out of the sanctuary in which
+they are placed, and in which, he says, the great of
+the country are obliged to maintain their dependants.
+This is the account given by the person best acquainted
+with the usages of the country, best acquainted
+with his own duties, best acquainted with
+his own wishes.</p>
+
+<p>Now, my Lords, you will see in what light another
+person, the agent of a trading company, who designates
+himself under the name of Majesty, and assumes
+other great distinctions, presumes also to consider
+these persons,&mdash;and in what contempt he is
+pleased to hold what is respected and what is held
+sacred in that country. What I am now going to
+quote is from the prisoner's second defence. For I
+must remind your Lordships that Mr. Hastings has
+made three defences,&mdash;one in the House of Commons,
+another in the lobby of the House of Commons,
+and a third at your Lordships' bar. The
+second defence, though delivered without name, to
+the members in the lobby of the House of Commons,
+has been proved at your Lordships' bar to be written
+by himself. This lobby, this out-of-door defence,
+militates in some respects, as your Lordships will
+find, with the in-door defence; but it probably contains
+the real sentiments of Mr. Hastings himself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">{149}</a></span>
+delivered with a little more freeness when he gets
+into the open air,&mdash;like the man who was so vain
+of some silly plot he had hatched, that he told it to
+the hackney-coachman, and every man he met in the
+streets.</p>
+
+<p>He says,&mdash;"Begums are the ladies of an Eastern
+prince; but these women are also styled the ladies
+of the late Vizier, and their sufferings are painted
+in such strong colors that the unsuspecting reader is
+led to mix the subjects together, and to suppose that
+these latter, too, were princesses of Oude, that all
+their sufferings proceeded from some act of mine, or
+had the sanction of my authority or permission. The
+fact is, that the persons of the Khord Mohul (or Little
+Seraglio) were young creatures picked up wherever
+youth and beauty could be found, and mostly
+purchased from amongst the most necessitous and
+meanest ranks of the people, for the Nabob's pleasures."
+In the in-door defence, he says, "The said
+women, who were mostly persons of low condition,
+and the said children, if any such there were, lived
+in the Khord Mohul, on an establishment entirely
+distinct from the said Begums'."</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, you have seen what was the opinion
+of the Nabob, who ought to know the nature and
+circumstances of his father's palace, respecting these
+women; you hear what Mr. Hastings's opinion is:
+and now the question is, whether your Lordships will
+consider these women in the same light in which the
+person does who is most nearly connected with them
+and most likely to know them, or in the way in which
+Mr. Hastings has thought proper, within doors and
+without doors, to describe them. Your Lordships will
+be pleased to observe that he has brought no proof<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">{150}</a></span>
+whatever of facts which are so boldly asserted by him
+in defiance of proof to the contrary, totally at variance
+with the letter of the son of the man to whom these
+women belonged. Your Lordships, I say, will remark
+that he has produced not one word of evidence,
+either within the House of Commons or the House
+of Peers, or in the lobby, or anywhere else, to verify
+any one word he has said. He slanders these women
+in order to lessen that compassion which your Lordships
+might have for the sufferings he inflicted upon
+them. But admitting that some of these women were
+of a meaner condition, and that they derived nothing
+from their connection with the dignity of the person
+by whom they had children, (and we know that in
+the whole they amounted to about fourscore children,
+the Nabob having a race like the patriarchs of old,
+as many great persons in that part of the world still
+have,)&mdash;supposing, I say, all this to be true, yet,
+when persons are reduced from ease and affluence
+to misery and distress, they naturally excite in the
+mind a greater degree of compassion by comparing
+the circumstances in which they once stood with
+those into which they are fallen: for famine, degradation,
+and oppression were famine, degradation, and
+oppression to those persons, even though they were
+as mean as Mr. Hastings chooses to represent them.
+But I hope, as you will sympathize with the great
+on account of their condition, that you will sympathize
+with all mankind on the ground of the common
+condition of humanity which belongs to us all;
+therefore I hope your Lordships will not consider
+the calumny of Mr. Hastings against those women
+as any other than as an aggravation of his offence
+against them. That is the light in which the House<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">{151}</a></span>
+of Commons considered it; for they had heard both
+his in-door and out-door defence, and they still persevered
+in making the charge, and do persevere in
+making it still.</p>
+
+<p>We have first stated what these women were,&mdash;in
+what light they stood with the Nabob,&mdash;in what
+light they stood with the country at large. I have
+now to state in what light they stood with the British
+government, previous to this invasion of their
+rights; and we will prove they were the actual subjects
+of a guaranty by the Company.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Extract from an Agreement made by Mr. Middleton,
+to all the Particulars of which he engages to procure
+a Treaty from the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah,
+after his Arrival, and that he will also sign it, as
+follows.</i></p>
+
+<p>"First, That, whenever the Begum shall choose
+to go to Mecca, she shall be permitted to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Second, That, when the Nabob shall arrive, I
+[Mr. Middleton] will procure suitable allowances to
+be made to the ladies of the zenanah and the children
+of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah, and take
+care that they are paid.</p>
+
+<p>"Third, That the festivals (<i>shadee</i>) and marriages
+of the children of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah
+shall be at the disposal of the Begum: whenever she
+thinks proper, she shall marry them; and whatever
+money shall be necessary for these expenses shall
+be paid by the Nabob.</p>
+
+<p>"Fourth, That the syer of Coda Gunge and Ali
+Gunge shall be retained by the Begum as heretofore.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">{152}</a></span></p>
+<p>"Fifth, That I [Mr. Middleton] will, upon the
+arrival of the Nabob, procure Vizier Gunge and the
+garden of Sepoy Dand Kh&acirc;n, or their equivalent, for
+the Begum.</p>
+
+<p>"Sixth, That I [Mr. Middleton] will endeavor to
+obtain from the Nabob the sum of 1,150,000 rupees on
+account of the purchase of Metchee Bohaun, and the
+house of Sahebjee, and the fort of the Gossim, with
+the land and garden and the barraderry on the banks
+of Goomply [Goomty?], and bazaar and garden of
+the house of Mahnarain and the house of Beng Peofand
+at Lucknow: all of which the Nabob Asoph ul
+Dowlah has assumed possession of.</p>
+
+<p>"Seventh, That I will settle with the Nabob the
+allowances to be made in ready money to the ladies
+of the zenanah and others specified, in the following
+amount: Total, 17 lacs 250 rupees per month.</p>
+
+<p>"Eighth, Upon the arrival of the Nabob Asoph ul
+Dowlah Bahadur, I will endeavor with all my influence
+to settle the monthly allowances of Mohrum
+Ali Kh&acirc;n and Mahmud Eltifant Kh&acirc;n, &amp;c., the attendants
+of the Begums.</p>
+
+<p>"Ninth, That, if the Begum shall go to Mecca, she
+shall leave her mahals and jaghires to the Begum,
+the mother of Asoph ul Dowlah, who shall remit the
+revenues thereof to the Burree Begum: no one shall
+prevent her enjoying her jaghires."</p></div>
+
+<p>Now, my Lords, we will read the copy of an engagement
+under the seal of the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah,
+and under the seal and signature, in English, of
+Mr. Middleton, as follows.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"First, I, who am the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah
+Bahadur, do agree that the jaghires and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">{153}</a></span> gunges
+and monthly allowance of the officers and servants,
+and of the ladies of the zenanah, and of those specified
+in the accounts annexed, shall be at the disposal
+and under the management and authority of the
+Begum, and no one shall oppose or prevent it: this
+I will punctually observe. In this agreement Mr.
+Middleton and the English are engaged.</p>
+
+<p>"Second, Whenever the Begum may choose to go
+to Mecca, I will not oppose it.</p>
+
+<p>"Third, Whenever the Begum should go to Mecca,
+she shall leave her lands, jaghires, &amp;c., either in the
+care of my mother or of me; and I will procure bills
+for the amount of their revenues, and send them to
+her: no one shall oppose this.</p>
+
+<p>"Fourth, The Begum shall have authority over all
+the ladies of her zenanah; she shall let them remain
+with me, and not let them go anywhere without my
+permission, or keep them with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Fifth, The jaghires Coda Gunge and Ali Gunge,
+&amp;c., with the mahal and syer belonging to the Begum
+and made over, shall remain as heretofore in her
+possession: Total, 14,460 rupees per month.</p>
+
+<p>"Eighth, The Begum has authority over the ladies
+and attendants of the zenanah; neither myself nor
+any one else will oppose it.</p>
+
+<p>"Ninth, The Begum, my grandmother, shall have
+the authority in all festivals, and in the marriage
+of the children of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah,
+and, with the consent of my mother and myself,
+shall regulate them: excepting in the festivals (<i>shadee</i>),
+the authority is mine.</p>
+
+<p>"The English are guaranties to the above engagements,
+so long as the Begum shall exist."</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">{154}</a></span></p>
+<p>Your Lordships will observe something here worthy
+of your notice. You will first perceive, that the
+very treaty in which Mr. Hastings, by his representative,
+Mr. Middleton, was a party concerned, supposes
+that the Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah had other children
+besides the reigning prince by his sole legitimate wife;
+and yet Mr. Hastings, in his defence, has thought
+proper, with a full knowledge of that circumstance,
+to doubt whether there were any other children.
+You next see that these women have Mr. Middleton's
+(that is, Mr. Hastings's) guaranty for the allowances
+which are made and settled upon them, and for the
+maintenance of their attendants, for the security and
+enjoyment of their own possessions, for their having
+a law officer of high rank, a moulavy, of their own.
+In short, there is a regular establishment formed for
+all these women: they are not separated as a part
+distinct from the Begums, but they are put by this
+very guaranty entirely under their management; the
+maintenance of the children is secured; the whole
+order and economy of their establishment is delivered
+entirely to the Begum, the grandmother, and
+the Begum, the mother, of the Nabob.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, you see that all these arrangements have
+the solemn guaranty of the Company, and that these
+women form a very considerable part of that guaranty;
+and therefore your Lordships will not treat their
+sufferings, inflicted in violation of the Company's
+own settlement and guaranty, as a matter of no consideration
+for you.</p>
+
+<p>But to proceed.&mdash;We have proved to your Lordships
+that the Nabob was reduced to a state of the
+greatest possible misery and distress; that his whole
+revenue was sequestered into the hands of Mr. Hastings's
+agents; that by the treaty of Chunar he was to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">{155}</a></span>
+be relieved from the expense of a body of troops with
+which he had been burdened without his own voluntary
+consent,&mdash;nay, more, the temporary brigade,
+which Mr. Hastings proposed to take off, but kept on,
+which he considers not only as a great distress to his
+finances, but a dreadful scourge and calamity to his
+country,&mdash;there was a whole pension-list upon it,
+with such enormous pensions as 18,000<i>l.</i> a year to
+Sir Eyre Coote, and other pensions, that Mr. Hastings
+proposed to take off, but did not; that, in proportion
+as the Nabob's distress increased, Mr. Hastings's
+demands increased too; he was not satisfied, with
+taking from him for the Company, but he took from
+him for himself; he demanded six hundred thousand
+pounds as a loan, when he knew he had neither
+money nor credit.</p>
+
+<p>The consequence of these acts of violence was,
+that these people, besieged by the English troops,
+and deprived of every resource, even of the funds of
+charity, by which the protectors of the family, male
+and female, might have relieved them, but which the
+cruel rapacity of Mr. Hastings had either entirely
+taken away or greatly diminished, were reduced to
+the last extremity of distress.</p>
+
+<p>After the length of time which has elapsed since
+we first brought these matters with their proofs, I
+shall beg leave, before you go to judgment, to refresh
+your memory with a recital of a part of that evidence,
+in order that your Lordships may again fully and
+distinctly comprehend the nature and extent of the
+oppression, cruelty, and injustice committed by Mr.
+Hastings, and by which you may estimate the punishment
+you will inflict upon him.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">{156}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Letter from Captain Leonard Jaques to Richard Johnson,
+Esq., Resident at the Vizier's Court; March 6th,
+1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;The women belonging to the Khord Mohul
+complain of their being in want of every necessary
+of life, and are at last drove to that desperation, that
+they at night get on the top of the zenanah, make a
+great disturbance, and last night not only abused the
+sentinels posted in the gardens, but threw dirt at
+them; they threatened to throw themselves from the
+walls of the zenanah, and also to break out of it.
+Humanity obliges me to acquaint you of this matter,
+and to request to know if you have any direction to
+give me concerning it. I also beg leave to acquaint
+you, I sent for Letafit Ali Kh&acirc;n, the cojah who has
+the charge of them, who informs me their complaint
+is well grounded,&mdash;that they have sold everything
+they had, even to the clothes from their backs, and
+now have no means of existing. Inclosed, I transmit
+you a letter from Mandall on the subject."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Letter from Captain Jaques to Richard Johnson, Esq.,
+March 7th, 1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;I beg leave to address you again concerning
+the women in the Khord Mohul. Their behavior
+last night was so furious that there seemed the greatest
+probability of their proceeding to the utmost extremities,
+and that they would either throw themselves
+from the walls or force the doors of the zenanah.
+I have made every inquiry concerning the cause of
+their complaints, and find from Letafit Ali Kh&acirc;n that
+they are in a starving condition, having sold all their
+clothes and necessaries, and now have not wherewithal
+to support nature. And as my instructions are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">{157}</a></span>
+quite silent upon this head, should be glad to know
+how to proceed in case they were to force the doors
+of the zenanah; as I suspect it will happen, should
+no subsistence be very quickly sent to them."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Letter from Major Gilpin to John Bristow, Esq.,
+Resident at the Court of Lucknow; 30th October,
+1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Last night, about eight o'clock, the women in the
+Khord Mohul Zenanah, under the charge of Letafit
+Ali Kh&acirc;n, assembled on the tops of the buildings,
+crying in a most lamentable manner for food,&mdash;that
+for the last four days they had got but a very scanty
+allowance, and that yesterday they had got none.
+The melancholy cries of famine are more easily imagined
+than described; and from their representations,
+I fear that the Nabob's agents for that business
+are very inattentive. I therefore think it requisite
+to make you acquainted with the circumstance, that
+his Excellency the Nabob may cause his agents to
+be more circumspect in their conduct to these poor,
+unhappy women."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Letter from Mr. Bristow to Major Gilpin; Fyzabad,
+4th November, 1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;I have received your letters of the 12th,
+19th, 27th, and 30th ultimo. I communicated the
+contents of that of the 30th to the minister, who
+promised me to issue orders for the payment of a
+sum of money to relieve the distress of the Khord
+Mohul. I shall also forward a bill for 10,000 rupees
+to you in the course of three or four days; and if in
+the mean time you may find means to supply to the
+amount of that sum, I will become personally resp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">{158}</a></span>onsible
+to you for the repayment."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Letter from Major Gilpin to John Bristow, Esq., at the
+Court of Lucknow; Fyzabad, 15th November, 1782.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;The repeated cries of the women in the
+Khord Mohul Zenanah for subsistence have been truly
+melancholy. They beg most piteously for liberty,
+that they may earn their daily bread by laborious servitude,
+or be relieved from their misery by immediate
+death. In consequence of their unhappy situation,
+I have this day taken the liberty of drawing on you
+in favor of Ramnarain at ten days' sight, for twenty
+son Kerah rupees, ten thousand of which I have paid
+to Cojah Letafit Ali Kh&acirc;n, under whose charge that
+zenanah is."</p></div>
+
+<p>These, my Lords, are the state of the distresses in
+the year 1782, and your Lordships will see that they
+continued almost, with only occasional reliefs, during
+the period of that whole year. Now we enter into
+the year 1783, to show you that it continued during
+the whole time; and then I shall make a very few
+remarks upon it.</p>
+
+<p>I will now read to your Lordships a part of Mr.
+Holt's evidence, by which it is proved that Mr. Hastings
+was duly advertised of all these miserable and
+calamitous circumstances.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> Whether you saw a letter of intelligence from
+Fyzabad containing a relation of the treatment of the
+women in the Khord Mohul?&mdash;<i>A.</i> Yes, I did, and
+translated it.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> From whom did it come?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+Hoolas Roy.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Who was he?&mdash;<i>A.</i> An agent of
+the Resident at Fyzabad, employed for the purpose of
+transmitting information to the Resident.&mdash;<i>Q.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">{159}</a></span> Was
+that paper transmitted to Mr. Hastings?&mdash;<i>A.</i> To the
+best of my recollection, it was transmitted to the
+Board, after I had attested it.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Do you remember
+at what distance of time after the receipt of the intelligence
+respecting the distresses of the Khord Mohul
+that paper was transmitted to Calcutta?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I
+cannot say.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Do you believe it was transmitted
+within ten months after the time it was received?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+I understood it to be a letter received just before
+it was transmitted.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Then you understand it was
+transmitted as soon as received?&mdash;<i>A.</i> Yes, in the
+course of three days.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Can you bring to your
+mind the time at which the translation was made?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+To the best of my recollection, it was in January,
+1784.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Whether the distresses that had been
+complained of had ceased for above a twelvemonth before
+the distresses of the Khord Mohul?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I understood
+they were new distresses.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Then you state
+that that account transmitted in 1784 was, as you understand,
+an account of new distresses?&mdash;<i>A.</i> Yes."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>I shall now refer your Lordships to page 899 of
+your printed Minutes.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>[The Managers for the Commons acquainted the
+House, that they would next read the paper of intelligence
+which had been authenticated by Mr. Holt,
+in his evidence at the bar, relative to the miserable
+situation of these women, which they meant to bring
+home to Mr. Hastings.]</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>An Extract of a Consultation of the 17th February, 1784.</i></p>
+
+<p>"At a Council: present, the Honorable Warren
+Hastings, Esq., Governor-General, President, Edward
+Wheler and John Stables, Esqrs.; Mr. Macpherson<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">{160}</a></span>
+absent from the Presidency for the benefit of his
+health: the following letter and its inclosures were
+received from Mr. Bristow on the 8th instant, and
+circulated.</p>
+
+<p>"'Honorable Sir, and Gentlemen,&mdash;I have the
+honor to forward, for your further information, the
+inclosure No. 3; it contains a relation of the hardships
+endured by the ladies of the late Vizier's zenanah.'</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">
+(Signed) 'JOHN BRISTOW.'<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">"<i>Translation of a Paper of Intelligence from Fyzabad.</i></p>
+
+<p>"'The ladies, their attendants, and servants were
+still as clamorous as last night. Letafit, the darogah,
+went to them, and remonstrated with them on
+the impropriety of their conduct, at the same time
+assuring them that in a few days all their allowances
+would be paid, and should that not be the case, he
+would advance them ten days' subsistence, upon condition
+that they returned to their habitations. None
+of them, however, consented to his proposal, but
+were still intent upon making their escape through
+the bazaar, and in consequence formed themselves
+in the following order,&mdash;the children in the front,
+behind them the ladies of the seraglio, and behind
+them again their attendants; but their intentions
+were frustrated by the opposition which they met
+with from Letafit's sepoys. The next day Letafit
+went twice to the women, and used his endeavors to
+make them return into the zenanah, promising to
+advance them ten thousand rupees, which, upon the
+money being paid down, they agreed to comply with;
+but night coming on, nothing transpired.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">{161}</a></span></p>
+<p>"'On the day following, their clamors were more
+violent than usual. Letafit went to confer with them
+on the business of yesterday, offering the same terms.
+Depending upon the fidelity of his promises, they
+consented to return to their apartments, which they
+accordingly did, except two or three of the ladies,
+and most of their attendants. Letafit went then to
+Hossmund Ali Kh&acirc;n, to consult with him about what
+means they should take. They came to a resolution
+of driving them in by force, and gave orders to their
+sepoys to beat any one of the women who should
+attempt to move forward; the sepoys accordingly
+assembled, and each one being provided with a bludgeon,
+they drove them, by dint of beating, into the
+zenanah. The women, seeing the treachery of Letafit,
+proceeded to throw stones and bricks at the sepoys,
+and again attempted to get out; but finding that
+impossible, from the gates being shut, they kept up
+a continual discharge till about twelve o'clock, when,
+finding their situation desperate, they returned into
+the Rung Mohul, and forced their way from thence
+into the palace, and dispersed themselves about the
+house and gardens. After this they were desirous of
+getting into the Begum's apartments; but she, being
+apprised of their intentions, ordered the doors to be
+shut. In the mean time Letafit and Hossmund Ali
+Kh&acirc;n posted sentries to secure the gates of the Lesser
+Mohul. During the whole of this conflict, the ladies
+and women remained exposed to the view of the
+sepoys.</p>
+
+<p>"'The Begum then sent for Letafit and Hossmund
+Ali Kh&acirc;n, whom she severely reprimanded, and insisted
+upon knowing the cause of this infamous behavior.
+They pleaded in their defence the impossibility
+of helping it, as the treatment the women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">{162}</a></span>
+had met with had only been conformable to his Excellency
+the Vizier's orders. The Begum alleged,
+that, even admitting that the Nabob had given these
+orders, they were by no means authorized in this
+manner to disgrace the family of Sujah Dowlah, and
+should they not receive their allowances for a day
+or two, it could be of no great moment; what had
+passed was now at an end, but that the Vizier should
+certainly be acquainted with the whole of the affair,
+and that whatever he directed she should implicitly
+comply with. The Begum then sent for two of the
+children who were wounded in the affray of last
+night, and after endeavoring to soothe them, she
+again sent to Letafit and Hossmund Ali Kh&acirc;n, and
+in the presence of the children again expressed her
+disapprobation of their conduct, and the improbability
+of Asoph ul Dowlah's suffering the ladies and children
+of Sujah Dowlah to be disgraced by being exposed
+to the view of the sepoys. Upon which Letafit
+produced the letter from the Nabob, representing
+that he was amenable only to the order of his Excellency,
+and that whatever he ordered it was his duty
+to obey; and that, had the ladies thought proper to
+have retired quietly to their apartments, he would
+not have used the means he had taken to compel
+them. The Begum again observed, that what had
+passed was now over. She then gave the children
+four hundred rupees and dismissed them, and sent
+word by Sumrud and the other eunuchs, that, if the
+ladies would peaceably retire to their apartments,
+Letafit would supply them with three or four thousand
+rupees for their present expenses, and recommended
+them not to incur any further disgrace, and
+that, if they did not think proper to act a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">{163}</a></span>greeably
+to her directions, they would do wrong. The ladies
+followed her advice, and about ten at night went
+back to the zenanah. The next morning the Begum
+waited upon the mother of Sujah Dowlah, and related
+to her all the circumstances of the disturbance.
+The mother of Sujah Dowlah returned for answer,
+that, after there being no accounts kept by crores
+of revenue, she was not surprised that the family of
+Sujah Dowlah, in their endeavors to procure subsistence,
+should be obliged to expose themselves to the
+meanest of the people. After bewailing their misfortunes
+and shedding many tears, the Begum took her
+leave and returned home.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>As a proof of the extremity of the distress which
+reigned in the Khord Mohul, your Lordships have been
+told that these women must have perished through
+famine, if their gaolers, Captain Jaques and Major
+Gilpin, had not raised money upon their own credit,
+and supplied them with an occasional relief. And
+therefore, when they talk of his peculation, of his taking
+but a bribe here and a bribe there, see the consequences
+of his system of peculation, see the consequences
+of a usurpation which extinguishes the natural
+authority of the country, see the consequences
+of a clandestine correspondence that does not let the
+injuries of the country come regularly before the
+authorities in Oude to relieve it, consider the whole
+mass of crimes, and then consider the sufferings that
+have arisen in consequence of it.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, it was not corporal pain alone that
+these miserable women suffered. The unsatisfied
+cravings of hunger and the blows of the sepoys'
+bludgeons could touch only the physical part of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">{164}</a></span> their
+nature. But, my Lords, men are made of two
+parts,&mdash;the physical part, and the moral. The former
+he has in common with the brute creation. Like
+theirs, our corporeal pains are very limited and temporary.
+But the sufferings which touch our moral
+nature have a wider range, and are infinitely more
+acute, driving the sufferer sometimes to the extremities
+of despair and distraction. Man, in his moral
+nature, becomes, in his progress through life, a creature
+of prejudice, a creature of opinions, a creature
+of habits, and of sentiments growing out of them.
+These form our second nature, as inhabitants of the
+country and members of the society in which Providence
+has placed us. This sensibility of our moral
+nature is far more acute in that sex which, I may
+say without any compliment, forms the better and
+more virtuous part of mankind, and which is at the
+same time the least protected from the insults and
+outrages to which this sensibility exposes them.
+This is a new source of feelings, that often make
+corporal distress doubly felt; and it has a whole
+class of distresses of its own. These are the things
+that have gone to the heart of the Commons.</p>
+
+<p>We have stated, first, the sufferings of the Begum,
+and, secondly, the sufferings of the two thousand
+women (I believe they are not fewer in number) that
+belong to them, and are dependent upon them, and
+dependent upon their well-being. We have stated to
+you that the Court of Directors were shocked and
+astonished, when they received the account of the
+first, before they had heard the second. We have
+proved they desired him to redress the former, if,
+upon inquiry, he found that his original suspicions
+concerning their conduct were ill-founded. He has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">{165}</a></span>
+declared here that he did not consider these as orders.
+Whether they were orders or not, could anything
+have been more pressing upon all the duties
+and all the sentiments of man than at least to do
+what was just,&mdash;that is, to make such an inquiry as
+in the result might justify his acts, or have entitled
+them to redress? Not one trace of inquiry or redress
+do we find, except we suppose, as we hear nothing
+after this of the famine, that Mr. Bristow, who seems
+to be a man of humanity, did so effectually interpose,
+that they should no longer depend for the safety of
+their honor on the bludgeons of the sepoys, by which
+alone it seems they were defended from the profane
+view of the vulgar, and which we must state as a
+matter of great aggravation in this case.</p>
+
+<p>The counsel on the other side say that all this
+intelligence comes in an anonymous paper without
+date, transmitted from a newspaper-writer at Fyzabad.
+This is the contempt with which they treat
+this serious paper, sent to Mr. Hastings himself by
+official authority,&mdash;by Hoolas Roy, who was the
+news-writer at Fyzabad,&mdash;the person appointed to
+convey authentic intelligence concerning the state of
+it to the Resident at Lucknow. The Resident received
+it as such; he transmitted it to Mr. Hastings;
+and it was not till this hour, till the counsel were
+instructed (God forgive them for obeying such instructions!)
+to treat these things with ridicule, that
+we have heard this Hoolas Roy called a common
+news-writer of anonymous information, and the like.
+If the information had come in any way the least
+authentic, instead of coming in a manner the most
+authentic in which it was possible to come to Mr.
+Hastings, he was bound by every feeling of humani<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">{166}</a></span>ty,
+every principle of regard to his own honor and
+his employers', to see whether it was true or false;
+if false, to refute it; if true, to afford redress: he
+has done neither. Therefore we charge him with
+being the cause; we charge upon him the consequences,
+with all the aggravations attending them;
+and we call both upon justice and humanity for
+redress, as far as it can be afforded to these people,
+and for the severest punishments which your Lordships
+can inflict upon the author of these evils. If,
+instead of the mass of crimes that we have brought
+before you, this singly had been charged upon the
+prisoner, I will say that it is a greater crime than
+any man has ever been impeached for before the
+House of Lords, from the first records of Parliament
+to this hour.</p>
+
+<p>I need not remind your Lordships of one particular
+circumstance in this cruel outrage. No excuse
+or pretence whatever is brought forward in its justification.
+With respect to the Begums, they have been
+charged with rebellion; but who has accused the
+miserable inhabitants of the Khord Mohul of rebellion,
+or rebellious designs? What hearsay is there,
+even, against them of it? No: even the persons permitted
+by Mr. Hastings to rob and destroy the country,
+and who are stated by him to have been so employed,&mdash;not
+one of that legion of locusts which
+he had sent into the country to eat up and devour
+the bread of its inhabitants, and who had been the
+cause both of the famine itself and of the inability
+of the Begums to struggle with it,&mdash;none of these
+people, I say, ventured even a hearsay about these
+women.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">{167}</a></span></p>
+<p>Were the sufferers few? There were eight hundred
+of them, besides children. Were they persons
+of any rank and consequence? We are told that
+they were persons of considerable rank and distinction,
+connected with and living under the protection
+of women of the first rank in Asia. Were they persons
+not deserving pity? We know that they were
+innocent women and children, not accused, and unsuspected,
+of any crime. He has taken into his head
+to speak contemptuously of these women of the
+Khord Mohul: but your Lordships will consider both
+descriptions generally with some respect; and where
+they are not objects of the highest respect, they will
+be objects of your compassion. Your Lordships, by
+your avenging justice, will rescue the name of the
+British government from the foulest disgrace which
+this man has brought upon it.</p>
+
+<p>An account of these transactions, as we have proved
+by Mr. Holt's evidence, was regularly transmitted
+and made known to him. But why do I say made
+known to him? Do not your Lordships know that
+Oude was his,&mdash;that he treated it like his private
+estate,&mdash;that he managed it in all its concerns as
+if it were his private demesne,&mdash;that the Nabob
+dared not do a single act without him,&mdash;that he had
+a Resident there, nominated by himself, and forced
+upon the Nabob, in defiance of the Company's orders?
+Yet, notwithstanding all this, we do not find
+a trace of anything done to relieve the aggravated
+distresses of these unfortunate people.</p>
+
+<p>These are some of the consequences of that abominable
+system which, in defiance of the laws of his
+country, Mr. Hastings established in Oude. He knew
+everything there; he had spies upon his regular
+agents, and spies again upon them. We can prove<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">{168}</a></span>,
+(indeed, he has himself proved,) that, besides his correspondence
+with his avowed agents, Major Palmer
+and Major Davy, he had secret correspondence with
+a whole host of agents and pensioners, who did and
+must have informed him of every circumstance of
+these affairs. But if he had never been informed
+of it at all, the Commons contend, and very well
+and justly contend, that he who usurps the government
+of a country, who extinguishes the authority
+of its native sovereign, and places in it instruments
+of his own, and that in defiance of those whose orders
+he was bound to obey, is responsible for everything
+that was done in the country. We do charge
+him with these acts of delinquencies and omissions,
+we declare him responsible for them; and we call
+for your Lordships' judgment upon these outrages
+against humanity, as cruel perhaps as ever were suffered
+in any country.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, if there is a spark of manhood, if there
+is in your breasts the least feeling for our common
+humanity, and especially for the sufferings and distresses
+of that part of human nature which is made
+by its peculiar constitution more quick and sensible,&mdash;if,
+I say, there is a trace of this in your breasts,
+if you are yet alive to such feelings, it is impossible
+that you should not join with the Commons of Great
+Britain in feeling the utmost degree of indignation
+against the man who was the guilty cause of this
+accumulated distress. You see women, whom we
+have proved to be of respectable rank and condition,
+exposed to what is held to be the last of indignities
+in that country,&mdash;the view of a base, insulting, ridiculing,
+or perhaps vainly pitying populace. You
+have before you the first women in Asia<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">{169}</a></span>, who consider
+their honor as joined with that of these people,
+weeping and bewailing the calamities of their house.
+You have seen that in this misery and distress the
+sons of the Nabob were involved, and that two of
+them were wounded in an attempt to escape: and
+yet this man has had the impudence to declare his
+doubts of the Nabob's having had any children in the
+place, though the account of what was going on had
+been regularly transmitted to him. After this, what
+is there in his conduct that we can wonder at?</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, the maintenance of these women had
+been guarantied by the Company; but it was doubly
+guarantied under the great seal of humanity. The
+conscience of every man, and more especially of the
+great and powerful, is the keeper of that great seal,
+and knows what is due to its authority. For the
+violation of both these guaranties, without even the
+vain and frivolous pretence of a rebellion, and for all
+its consequences, Mr. Hastings is answerable; and he
+will not escape your justice by those miserable excuses
+which he has produced to the Court of Directors,
+and which he has produced here in his justification.
+My Lords, that justification we leave with
+your Lordships.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>We now proceed to another part of our charge,
+which Mr. Hastings has not thought proper to deny,
+but upon which we shall beg leave to make a few
+observations. You will first hear read to you, from
+the 17th article of our charge, the subject-matter to
+which we now wish to call your attention.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"That in or about the month of March, 1783,
+three of the said brothers of the Nabob, namely,
+Mirza Hyder Ali, Mirza Imayut Ali, and Mirza Sye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">{170}</a></span>f
+Ali, did represent to the said Bristow that they were
+in distress for dry bread and clothes, and in consequence
+of such representation were relieved by the
+intervention of the said Bristow, but soon after the
+deputation of the said Warren Hastings to Oude, in
+the year 1784, that is to say, some time in or about
+the month of September, in the said year 1784, the
+said Mirza Hyder Ali, one of the three princes aforesaid,
+did fly to the province of Benares, and did remain
+there in great distress; and that, although the
+said Warren Hastings did write to the said Nabob
+an account of the aforesaid circumstances, in certain
+loose, light, and disrespectful expressions concerning
+the said Mirza Hyder Ali, he did not, as he was
+in duty bound to do, in any wise exert that influence
+which he actually and notoriously possessed
+over the mind of the said Nabob, for the relief of the
+said prince, the brother of the said Nabob, but, without
+obtaining any satisfactory and specific assurances,
+either from the said Nabob or the said minister, the
+said Warren Hastings did content himself with advising
+the said prince to return to his brother, the said
+Nabob."</p></div>
+
+<p>The answer of Mr. Hastings to that part of the
+17th article states:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"And the said Warren Hastings says, that in or
+about the month of July, in the year 1783, a paper
+was received, inclosed in a letter to the Governor-General
+and Council, from Mr. Bristow, purporting
+to be a translation of a letter from three brothers of
+the said Vizier, in which they did represent themselves
+to be in distress for dry bread and clothes;
+but whether such distress actually existed, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">{171}</a></span>and was
+relieved by the said Bristow, the said Warren Hastings
+cannot set forth.</p>
+
+<p>"And the said Warren Hastings further says, that
+some time in the month of September, 1784, the said
+Warren Hastings, being then at Benares, did receive
+information that Mirza Hyder Ali was arrived there,
+and the said Warren Hastings, not knowing before
+that time that there was any such person, did write
+to the Nabob Vizier, to the purport or effect following:&mdash;'A
+few days since I learnt that a person
+called Mirza Hyder Ali was arrived at Benares, and
+calls himself a son of the deceased Nabob Sujah ul
+Dowlah, and I was also told that he came from Fyzabad;
+as I did not know whether he left Fyzabad with
+or without your consent, I therefore did not pay him
+much attention, and I now trouble you to give me
+every information on this subject, how he came here,
+and what your intentions are about him; he remains
+here in great distress, and I therefore wish to know
+your sentiments.'</p>
+
+<p>"And the said Warren Hastings further says, that,
+having received an answer from the said Vizier, he
+did, on or about the 13th of October, 1784, inclose
+the same in a letter to the said Mirza, of which letter
+the following is a copy:&mdash;'An answer is arrived to
+what I wrote on your account to the Nabob Vizier,
+which I inclose to you: having read it, you will send
+it back. I conceive you had better go to the Nabob
+Vizier's presence, who will certainly afford you protection
+and assistance. I will write what is proper
+to carry with you to the Nabob, and it will in every
+respect be for your good; whatever may be your intention
+on this head, you will write to me.'</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">{172}</a></span></p>
+<p>"And the said Warren Hastings submits, that it
+was no part of his duty as Governor-General to interfere
+with the said Vizier on behalf of the said Mirza,
+or to obtain from the said Vizier any specific assurances
+on the subject."</p></div>
+
+<p>Continuation of the 17th article of the charge:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"That, in order to avoid famine at home, another
+of the said Nabob's brothers, by name Mirza Jungli,
+was under the necessity of flying from his native country,
+and did seek protection from a certain Mahometan
+lord called Mirza Shuffee Kh&acirc;n, then prime-minister
+of the Mogul, from whom he did go to the camp
+of the Mahratta chief Mahdajee Sindia, where he did
+solicit and obtain a military command, together with
+a grant of lands, or jaghire, for the subsistence of
+himself, his family, and followers; but wishing again
+to be received under the protection of the British government,
+the said Mirza Jungli, in 1783, did apply
+to the said Resident Bristow, through David Anderson,
+Esquire, then on an embassy in the camp of the
+said Sindia; and in consequence of such application,
+the said Bristow, sensible of the disgrace which the
+exile of the said Mirza Jungli reflected both on the
+said Nabob of Oude and the British nation, did negotiate
+with the said Nabob and his ministers for the
+return of the said Mirza Jungli, and for the settlement
+and regular payment of some proper allowance
+for the maintenance of the said Mirza Jungli; but
+the allowance required was ultimately refused; and
+although the whole of the transactions aforesaid were
+duly represented to the said Warren Hastings by the
+said Anderson and by the said Bristow, and although
+he had himself received, so early as the 23d of August,
+1782, a letter from the Vizier, grievously complaining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">{173}</a></span>
+of the cruel and extortious demands made upon
+him by the said Warren Hastings, in which letter he
+did expressly mention the flight of his brothers, and
+the distresses of the women of his late father, who he
+said were all as his mothers, and that his said brothers,
+from the resumption of their jaghires, were reduced
+to great affliction and distress, and he did attribute
+the said flight of some of his brethren, and the distresses
+of the rest, and of the women who stood in a
+species of maternal relation to him, as owing to the
+aforesaid oppressive demands, yet he, the said Warren
+Hastings, did cruelly, inhumanly, and corruptly
+decline to make any order for the better provision of
+any of the said eminent family, or for the return of
+the said prince, who had fled from his brother's court
+to avoid the danger of perishing by famine."</p></div>
+
+<p>Answer of Mr. Hastings to that part of the
+charge:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"And the said Warren Hastings further says, that
+he was informed that Mirza Jungli, in the said article
+also mentioned, did leave his native country in
+distress, and did go to Mirza Shuffee Kh&acirc;n, in the
+said article also mentioned; and the said Warren
+Hastings likewise admits he was informed that the
+said Mirza Jungli did afterwards leave the said Mirza
+Shuffee Kh&acirc;n, and repair to the camp of Mahdajee
+Sindia, with a view of obtaining some establishment
+for himself and followers.</p>
+
+<p>"And the said Warren Hastings further says, that
+in certain letters written by David Anderson, Esquire,
+and John Bristow, Esquire, it was represented that
+the said Mirza Jungli did apply to the said Bristow,
+through the said Anderson, then on an embassy in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">{174}</a></span>
+the camp of the said Sindia, and that in consequence
+thereof the said Bristow did, amongst other things,
+apply to the said Nabob Vizier for a certain allowance
+to be made for the said Mirza, and for the regular
+payment thereof, and that a certain allowance was
+accordingly settled by the said Vizier on the said
+Mirza; and the said Warren Hastings says, that information
+of the above transactions was transmitted
+to the Board of Council, and that a letter from the
+said Vizier was received on the 23d of August, 1782,
+containing certain representations of the distresses of
+himself and his family; and he admits that no order
+was made by him, the said Warren Hastings, for the
+provision of any of the said family, or for the return
+of the said Mirza; but the said Warren Hastings denies
+that he was guilty of any cruelty, inhumanity,
+or corruption, or of any misconduct whatsoever, in
+the matters aforesaid."</p></div>
+
+<p>Continuation of the charge:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"That some time in or about the month of December,
+1783, the Nabob Bahadur, another of the
+brothers of the said Nabob of Oude, did represent to
+the said Bristow, that he, the said Nabob Bahadur,
+had not received a farthing of his allowance for
+the current year, and was without food; and being
+wounded by an assassin, who had also murdered his
+aunt in the very capital of Oude, the said Nabob
+Bahadur had not a daum to pay the surgeon, who
+attended him for the love of God alone. That at or
+about the period of this said representation the said
+Bristow was recalled, and the said Warren Hastings
+proceeded up to Lucknow, but did not inquire into
+the said representations transmitted by the said <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">{175}</a></span>Bristow
+to Calcutta, nor did order any relief."</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings's answer to the part of the charge
+last read:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"And the said Warren Hastings further says, that
+on the 29th of January, 1784, after the recall of the
+said Bristow, he, the said Bristow, did transmit to
+the Governor-General and Council two letters, one
+dated 28th of December, 1783, the other 7th of
+January, 1784, purporting to be written by the said
+Nabob Bahadur, addressed to him, the said Bristow,
+to the effect in the said article stated; and the said
+Warren Hastings admits, that, when at Lucknow, he
+did not institute any inquiry into the supposed transaction
+in the said 17th article stated, or make any
+order concerning the said Bahadur, and he denies
+that it was his duty so to do."</p></div>
+
+<p>Here is the name of this Nabob from a list of the
+jaghiredars stated by Mr. Purling, page 485 printed
+Minutes. Amongst the names of jaghiredars, the
+times when granted, and the amount of the jaghires,
+there occurs that of the Nabob Bahadur, with a grant
+of a jaghire of the amount of 20,000 rupees.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>[The <i>Lord Chancellor</i> here remarked, that what
+had been just read was matter of the 17th article of
+the charge and parts of the answer to it, and that,
+upon looking back to the former proceedings, it has
+escaped his attention, if any matter contained in the
+17th article had been made matter of the charge;
+that it therefore seemed to him that it could not be
+brought in upon a reply, not having been made matter
+of the charge originally.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">{176}</a></span></p>
+<p><i>Mr. Burke.</i> My Lords, I have to say to this, that
+I believe you have heard these facts made matter of
+charge by the House of Commons, that I conceive
+they have been admitted by the prisoner, and that
+the Commons have nothing to do with the proofs of
+anything in their charge which is fully and in terms
+admitted. The proofs which they have produced to
+your Lordships were upon matters which were contested;
+but here the facts are admitted in the fullest
+manner. We neither have abandoned them, intended
+to abandon them, or ever shall abandon them;
+we have made them, as a charge, upon record; the
+answers to them have been recorded, which answers
+are complete admissions of every fact in the charge.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lord Chancellor.</i> I do not make myself understood.
+The objection is not that there has not been
+evidence given upon the 17th article, but at the
+close of the case on the part of the Managers for the
+House of Commons no mention having been made
+of the matter contained in the 17th article, that
+therefore, although it may all have been admitted
+by the answer to be true, yet in justice, if from that
+answer you ground the charge, it is necessary the
+defendant should be heard upon it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mr. Burke.</i> If your Lordships choose that the
+defendant shall be heard upon it, we have no kind
+of objection, nor ever had, or proposed an objection
+to the defendant being heard upon it. Your Lordships
+know that the defendant's counsel value themselves
+upon having abandoned their defence against
+certain parts of the charge; your Lordships know
+that they declared that they broke off thus in the
+middle of their defence in order to expedite this
+business.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">{177}</a></span></p>
+<p><i>Lord Chancellor.</i> Referring to the proceedings, I
+think it a matter perfectly clear, that, in the course
+of the charge, after certain articles had been gone
+through, the Managers for the Commons closed the
+case there, leaving therefore all the other articles,
+excepting those that had been discussed, as matters
+standing with the answers against them, but not insisted
+upon in making out the charge. Of course,
+therefore, if the defendant had gone into any of those
+articles, the defendant must have been stopped upon
+them, because he would then have been making a
+case in defence to that which had not been made
+a case in the prosecution. The objection, therefore,
+is not at all that no evidence has been examined.
+To be sure, it would be an answer to that to say,
+you are now proceeding upon an admission; but even
+upon those facts that are admitted, (if the facts are
+admitted that are insisted upon as matter in charge,)
+that should come in the original state of the cause,
+and the defendant in common justice must be heard
+upon that, and then, and then only, come the observations
+in reply.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mr. Burke.</i> We do not know, not are informed,
+that any charge, information, or indictment, that is
+before the court, and upon record, and is not denied
+by the defendant, does not stand in full force against
+him. We conceive it to be so; we conceive it to
+be agreeable to the analogy of all proceedings; and
+the reason why we did not go into and insist upon
+it was, that, having a very long cause before us,
+and having the most full and complete admission
+upon this subject, we did not proceed further in
+it. The defendant defends himself by averring that
+<i>it was not his duty</i>. It was not our busines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">{178}</a></span>s to prove
+that it was his duty. It was he that admitted the
+facts assumed to be the foundation of his duty; the
+negative he was bound to prove, and he never offered
+to prove it. All that I can say upon this point
+is, that his delinquency in the matter in question
+appeared to us to be a clear, distinct case,&mdash;to be a
+great offence,&mdash;an offence charged upon the record,
+admitted upon the record, and never by us abandoned.
+As to his defence having been abandoned,
+we refer your Lordships to the last petition laid by
+him upon your table, (that libellous petition, which
+we speak of as a libel upon the House of Commons,)
+and which has no validity but as it asserts a matter
+of fact from the petitioner; and there you will find
+that he has declared explicitly, that, for the accommodation
+and ease of this business, and for its expedition,
+he did abandon his defence at a certain period.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lord Chancellor.</i> A charge consisting of a variety
+of articles in their nature (however connected with
+each other in their subject, but in their nature) distinct
+and specific, if only certain articles are pressed
+in the charge, to those articles only can a defence
+be applied; and all the other articles, that are not
+made matter of charge <i>originally</i>, have never, in the
+course of any proceeding whatever, been taken up
+<i>originally</i> in reply.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mr. Burke.</i> With great respect to your Lordship's
+judgment, we conceive that the objection taken
+from our not having at a certain period argued or
+observed upon the prisoner's answer to the articles
+not insisted upon is not conclusive; inasmuch as the
+record still stands, and as our charge still stands.
+It was never abandoned; and the defendant might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">{179}</a></span>
+have made a justification to it, if he had thought
+fit: he never did think fit so to do. If your Lordships
+think that we ought not to argue upon it
+here in our reply, because we did not argue upon
+it before,&mdash;well and good; but we have argued and
+do argue in our reply many things to which he never
+gave any answer at all. I shall beg leave, if your
+Lordships please, to retire with my fellow Managers
+for a moment, to consult whether we shall press this
+point or not. We shall not detain your Lordships
+many minutes.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>The Managers withdrew: in a few minutes the Managers
+returned, again into the Hall.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>Mr. Burke.</i> My Lords, the Managers have consulted
+among themselves upon this business; they
+first referred to your printed proceedings, in order
+to see the particular circumstance on which the observation
+of your Lordship is founded; we find it
+thus stated:&mdash;"Then the Managers for the Commons
+informed the Lords, that, saving to themselves
+their undoubted rights and privileges, the Commons
+were content to rest their charge here." We rested
+our charge there, not because we meant to efface any
+precedent matter of the charge which had been made
+by us, and of which the facts had been admitted by
+the defendant, but, simply saving our rights and privileges,
+that is, to resume, (and to make new matter,
+if we thought fit,) the Commons were content to rest
+the charge there.</p>
+
+<p>I have further to remark to your Lordships, that
+the counsel for the defendant have opened a vast
+variety of matter that is not upon record, either
+on our part or on theirs, in order to illustrate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">{180}</a></span>and
+to support their cause; and they have spoken day
+after day upon the principles on which their defence
+was made. My great object now is an examination
+of those principles, and to illustrate the effects of
+these principles by examples which are not the less
+cogent, the less weighty, and the less known, because
+they are articles in this charge. Most assuredly
+they are not. If your Lordships recollect
+the speeches that were made here, you know that
+great merit was given to Mr. Hastings for matters
+that were not at all in the charge, and which would
+put us under the greatest difficulties, if we were to
+take no notice of them in our reply. For instance,
+his merits in the Mahratta war, and a great mass of
+matter upon that subject, were obliquely, and for
+other purposes, brought before you, upon which they
+argued. That immense mass of matter, containing
+an immense mass of principles, and which was sometimes
+supported by alleged facts, sometimes by none,
+they have opened and argued upon, as matter relative
+to principle. In answer to their argument, we
+propose to show the mischiefs that have happened
+from the mischievous principles laid down by Mr.
+Hastings, and the mischievous consequences of them.</p>
+
+<p>If, however, after this explanation, your Lordships
+are of opinion that we ought not to be allowed to
+take this course, wishing to fall in with your Lordships'
+sentiments, we shall abandon it. But we will
+remind your Lordships that such things stand upon
+your records; that they stand unanswered and admitted
+on your records; and consequently they cannot
+be destroyed by any act of ours, but by a renunciation
+of the charge, which renunciation we cannot
+make, because the defendant has clearly and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">{181}</a></span> fully
+admitted it to be founded in fact. We cannot plead
+error; we cannot retract it. And why? Because
+he has admitted it. We therefore only remind your
+Lordships that the charge stands uncontradicted;
+and that the observation we intended to make upon
+it was to show your Lordships that the principles
+upon which he defends all such conduct are totally
+false and groundless. But though your Lordships
+should be of opinion that we cannot press it, yet we
+cannot abandon it; it is not in your power, it is not
+in our power, it is not in his power to abandon that
+charge. You cannot acquit him of that charge; it
+is impossible. If, however, your Lordships, for the
+accommodation of business, method of proceedings,
+or any circumstance of that kind, wish we should say
+no more upon the subject, we close the subject there.
+Your Lordships are in possession both of the charge
+and the admission; and we wish, and we cannot wish
+better than, to leave it as it is upon the record.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Lord Chancellor</i> here said,&mdash;The opinion of
+the Lords can only be with me matter of conjecture.
+I certainly was not commanded by the House to state
+the observation that had occurred to me; but in the
+position in which it now stands, I feel no difficulty
+in saying, as my own judgment, that nothing can be
+matter in reply that does not relate to those articles
+that were pressed in the original charge; and therefore,
+in this position of the business of reply, you
+cannot go into new matter arising out of other articles
+that were not originally insisted upon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mr. Burke.</i> We were aware of the objection that
+might be made to admitting our observations, if considered
+as observations upon the 17th article, but not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">{182}</a></span>
+when considered with reference to facts on the record
+before you, for the purpose of disproving the principles
+upon which the defendant and his counsel had
+relied: that was the purpose for which we proposed
+chiefly to make them. But your Lordship's [the
+Lord Chancellor's] own personal authority will have
+great weight with us, and, unless we perceive some
+other peer differ from you, we will take it in the
+course we have constantly done. We never have sent
+your Lordships out of the hall to consent [consult?]
+upon a matter upon which that noble lord appeared
+to have formed a decision in his own mind; we take
+for granted that what is delivered from the woolsack,
+to which no peer expresses a dissent, is the sense of
+the House; as such we take it, and as such we submit
+to it in this instance.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, leaving this upon the record as it stands,
+without observing upon it, and submitting to your
+Lordships' decision, that we cannot, according to order,
+observe in reply upon what was not declared
+by us to be a part of the charges we meant to insist
+upon, we proceed to another business.]</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>We have already stated to your Lordships, and we
+beg to remind you of it, the state and condition of
+the country of Oude when Mr. Hastings first came
+to it,&mdash;his subsequent and immediate usurpation of
+all the powers of government, and the use he made
+of them,&mdash;the tyranny he exercised over the Nabob
+himself,&mdash;the tyranny he exercised upon his mother
+and grandmother, and all the other females of his
+family, and their dependants of every description, to
+the number of about eight hundred persons,&mdash;the
+tyranny exercised (though we are not at liberty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">{183}</a></span> to
+press it now) upon his brethren. We have shown
+you how he confiscated the property of all the jaghiredars,
+the nobility of the country. We have proved to
+your Lordships that he was well acquainted with all
+the misery and distress occasioned by these proceedings,
+and that he afforded the sufferers no relief. We
+now proceed to review the effect of this general mass
+of usurpation, tyranny, and oppression upon the revenues
+and the prosperity of the country.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships will first be pleased to advert to
+the state in which Mr. Hastings found the country,&mdash;in
+what state he found its revenues,&mdash;who were the
+executive ministers of the government,&mdash;what their
+conduct was, and by whom they were recommended
+and supported. For the evidence of these facts we
+refer your Lordships to your printed Minutes: there,
+my Lords, they stand recorded: they never can be
+expunged out of your record, and the memory of
+mankind, whether we be permitted to press them at
+this time upon your Lordships or not. Your Lordships
+will there find in what manner the government
+was carried on in Oude in 1775, before the period
+of Mr. Hastings's usurpation. Mr. Hastings, you will
+find, has himself there stated that the minister was
+recommended by the Begums; and you will remark
+this, because Mr. Hastings afterwards makes her interference
+in the government of her son a part of
+his crimination of the Begum.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The Resident at the court of Oude thus writes on
+the 2d of March, 1775.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Notwithstanding the confidence the Nabob reposes
+in Murtezza Kh&acirc;n, the Begums are much dissatisfied
+with his elevation. They recommended to h<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">{184}</a></span>is
+Excellency to encourage the old servants of the government,
+whose influence in the country, and experience,
+might have strengthened his own authority, and
+seated him firmly on the musnud. In some measure
+this, too, may appear consistent with the interests of
+the Company; for, as Elija Kh&acirc;n and the old ministers
+have by frequent instances within their own knowledge
+experienced the power of our government, such
+men, I should conceive, are much more likely to pay
+deference to the Company than a person who at
+present can have but a very imperfect idea of the
+degree of attention which ought to be paid to our
+connection with the Nabob."</p></div>
+
+<p>Your Lordships see that the Begums recommended
+the old servants, contrary to the maxims of Rehoboam,&mdash;those
+who had served his father and had served the
+country, and who were strongly inclined to support
+the English interest there. Your Lordships will remark
+the effects of the Begum's influence upon the
+state of things in 1775, that the Nabob had been
+advised by his mother to employ the confidential
+servants of his father,&mdash;persons conversant in the
+affairs of the country, persons interested in it, and
+persons who were well disposed to support the English
+connection. Your Lordships will now attend to a
+letter from Mr. Bristow, at Lucknow, to the board,
+dated 28th November, 1775.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"I also neglected no part of my duty on the spot,
+but advised the minister, even at Lucknow, according
+to my letter of the 3d instant, to recommend it to
+the Nabob to dismiss his useless and mutinous troops,
+which measure seems by present appearances to have
+succeeded beyond expectation: as the rest of the a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">{185}</a></span>rmy
+do now pay the greatest attention to his Excellency's
+orders; already the complaints of the violences
+the troops used to commit are greatly decreased;
+they profess obedience; and, by the best intelligence
+I can obtain of their disposition, there
+seems to be little doubt that the example made by
+disbanding Bussunt's corps has every good effect
+we could wish, which had crossed the river and voluntarily
+surrendered their arms the day before yesterday
+to the Nabob."</p></div>
+
+<p>His next letter is dated 13th June, 1776.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Honorable Sir and Sirs,&mdash;It is Elija Kh&acirc;n's
+first object to regulate the Vizier's revenue; and I
+must do him the justice to say, that the short time
+he has been in office he has been indefatigable, and
+already settled the greater part of the province of
+Oude, and fixed on the districts for the assignments
+of the army subsidy; Corah and Allahabad he has
+disposed of, and called for the Dooab and Rohilcund
+accounts, in order to adjust them as soon as possible.
+This activity will, I hope, produce the most salutary
+effects,&mdash;as, the present juncture being the commencement
+of the season for the cultivation, the aumils,
+by being thus early placed in their offices, have
+the opportunity of advancing <i>tukavy</i>, encouraging the
+ryots, and making their agreements in their several
+districts, in letting under-farms, or disposing of the
+lands in such a manner as they may judge most
+expedient. If, though similar to the late minister's
+conduct, a delay of two or three months should occur
+in the settlement of the lands, the people throughout
+the country would be disheartened, and inevitably a
+very heavy balance accrue on the revenue. I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">{186}</a></span>
+troubled the honorable board with this detail, in the
+first place, to show the propriety of Elija Kh&acirc;n's
+conduct, and, in the next, the essential service that
+will be rendered to the Vizier by continuing Colonel
+Parker's detachment during the whole rains in Corah,
+if required by the Vizier."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, you have now had a view of the state
+of Oude, previous to the first period of our connection
+with it. Your Lordships have seen and understand
+that part of the middle period, with which we
+do not mean to trouble you again. You will now be
+pleased to attend to a letter from Fyzoola Kh&acirc;n to
+the Governor-General, received the 13th of February,
+1778.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"This country of Cuttah, which formerly depended
+on the Rohilla States, and which I consider as
+now appertaining to the Company, was very populous
+and flourishing; but since the commencement
+of the Nabob Vizier's government, the farmers appointed
+by his ministers have desolated the country.
+Its situation is at present very ruinous; thousands
+of villages, formerly populous, are now utterly deserted,
+and no trace left of them. I have already
+written to Roy Buckstowr Sing a full account of the
+tyranny and oppression exercised by the farmers, to
+be communicated to you: the constant revenue of a
+country depends on the care of its rulers to preserve
+it in a flourishing state. I have been induced to
+make the representation by my attachment to the
+interest of the Company; for otherwise it is no concern
+of mine. Should these oppressions continue
+one or two years longer, and the rulers take no
+measures to put a stop to them, the whole count<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">{187}</a></span>ry
+will be a desert."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, upon these statements I have only to
+make this remark,&mdash;that you have seen the first state
+of this country, and that the period when it had
+fallen into the state last described was about two
+years after Mr. Hastings had obtained the majority
+in the Council and began to govern this country by
+his lieutenants. We know that the country was put
+by him under military collectors: you see the consequences.
+The person who makes this representation
+to Mr. Hastings of the state of the country, of
+its distress and calamity, and of the desolation of a
+thousand of the villages formerly flourishing in it, is
+no less a person than a prince of a neighboring country,
+a person of whom you have often heard, and to
+whom the cause of humanity is much indebted,
+namely, Fyzoola Kh&acirc;n,&mdash;a prince whose country
+the English Resident, travelling through, declares to
+be cultivated like a garden. That this was the state
+of the Rohilla country is owing to its having very
+fortunately been one of those that escaped the dominion
+of Mr. Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>We will now read to your Lordships a letter from
+Sir Eyre Coote to the board at Calcutta, dated the
+11th of September, 1779.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Honorable Sir and Sirs,&mdash;The day before yesterday
+I encamped near Allahabad, where the Vizier
+did me the honor of a visit; and yesterday morning,
+in my way hither, I returned it, and was received by
+his Excellency with every mark of respect and distinction.
+This morning he called here, and we had
+some general conversation, which principally turned
+upon the subject of his attachment to the English,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">{188}</a></span>
+and his readiness to show the sincerity of it upon all
+occasions. It is to be wished we had employed the
+influence which such favorable sentiments must have
+given us more to the benefit of the country and ourselves;
+but I fear the distresses which evidently appear
+on the face of the one, and the failure of the
+revenues to the other, are not to be wholly ascribed
+to the Vizier's mismanagement."</p></div>
+
+<p>This is the testimony of Mr. Hastings's own pensioner,
+Sir Eyre Coote, respecting the known state of
+the country during the time of this horrible usurpation,
+which Sir Eyre Coote mentions under the soft
+name of our <i>influence</i>. But there could be but one
+voice upon the subject, and that your Lordships shall
+now hear from Mr. Hastings himself. We refer
+your Lordships to the Minute of the Governor-General's
+Consultation, Fort William, 21st May, 1781:
+he is here giving his reasons for going into the upper
+provinces.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"The province of Oude having fallen into a state
+of great disorder and confusion, its resources being
+in an extraordinary degree diminished, and the Nabob
+Asoph ul Dowlah having earnestly entreated the
+presence of the Governor-General, and declared, that,
+unless some effectual measures are taken for his
+relief, he must be under the necessity of leaving his
+country, and coming down to Calcutta, to present his
+situation to this government,&mdash;the Governor-General
+therefore proposes, with the concurrence of Mr. Wheler,
+to visit the province of Oude as speedily as the
+affairs of the Presidency will admit, in hopes that,
+from a minute and personal observation of the circumstances
+of that country, the system of management<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">{189}</a></span>
+which has been adopted, and the characters and
+conduct of the persons employed, he may possibly be
+able to concert and establish some plan by which the
+province of Oude may in time be restored to its former
+state of affluence, good order, and prosperity."</p></div>
+
+<p>Your Lordships have now the whole chain of the
+evidence complete, with regard to the state of the
+country, up to the period of Mr. Hastings's journey
+into the country. You see that Mr. Hastings himself
+admits it to have been formerly in a most flourishing,
+orderly, and prosperous state. Its condition
+in 1781 he describes to you in words than which no
+enemy of his can use stronger, in order to paint the
+state in which it then was. In this state he found
+it, when he went up in the year 1781; and he left
+it, with regard to any substantial regulation that was
+executed or could be executed, in the state in which
+he found it,&mdash;after having increased every one of
+those grievances which he pretended to redress, and
+taken from it all the little resources that remained
+in it.</p>
+
+<p>We now come to a subsequent period, at which
+time the state of the country is thus described by Mr.
+Bristow, on the 12th December, 1782.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Despotism is the principle upon which every measure
+is founded, and the people in the interior parts
+of the country are ruled at the discretion of the aumil
+or foujdar for the time being. They exercise, within
+the limits of their jurisdiction, the powers of life and
+death, and decisions in civil and other cases, in the
+same extent as the sovereign at the capital. The
+forms prescribed by the ancient institutions of the
+Mogul empire are unattended to, and the will of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">{190}</a></span>
+provincial magistrate is the sole law of the people.
+The total relaxation of the Vizier's authority, his
+inattention and dislike to business, leave the aumils
+in possession of this dangerous power, unawed, uncontrolled
+by any apprehension of retrospection, or
+the interference of justice. I can hardly quote an
+instance, since the Vizier's accession to the musnud,
+of an aumil having been punished for oppression,
+though the complaints of the people and the state
+of the country are notorious proofs of the violences
+daily committed: it is even become unsafe for travellers
+to pass, except in large bodies; murders, thefts,
+and other enormities shocking to humanity, are committed
+in open day."</p></div>
+
+<p>In another paragraph of the same letter, he says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Such has been the system of this government,
+that the oppressions have generally originated with
+the aumils. They have been rarely selected for their
+abilities or integrity, but from favor, or the means to
+advance a large sum upon being appointed to their
+office. The aumil enters upon his trust ruined in
+reputation and fortune; and unless he accomplishes
+his engagements, which is seldom the case, disgrace
+and punishment follow. Though the balance of revenue
+may be rigorously demanded of him, it has not
+been usual to institute any inquiry for oppression.
+The zemindars, thus left at the mercy of the aumils,
+are often driven to rebellion. The weak are obliged
+to submit to his exactions, or fly the country; and
+the aumil, unable to reduce the more powerful, is
+compelled to enter into a disgraceful compromise.
+Every zemindar looks to his fort for protection, and
+the country is crowded with them: Almas Ali Kh&acirc;n<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">{191}</a></span>
+asserts there are not less than seven hundred in his
+districts. Hence it has become a general custom to
+seize the brother, son, or some near relation or dependant
+of the different zemindars, as hostages for
+the security of the revenue: a great aumil will sometimes
+have three or four hundred of these hostages,
+whom he is obliged to confine in places of security. A
+few men like Almas Ali Kh&acirc;n and Coja Ain ul Din
+have, from their regularity in the performance of pecuniary
+engagements, rendered themselves useful to
+the Vizier. A strict scrutiny into his affairs was at
+all times irksome to his Excellency, and none of the
+ministers or officers about his person possessing the
+active, persevering spirit requisite to conduct the detail
+of engagements for a number of small farms,
+it became convenient to receive a large sum from
+a great farmer without trouble or deficiency. This
+system was followed by the most pernicious consequences;
+these men were above all control, they exacted
+their own terms, and the districts they farmed
+were most cruelly oppressed. The revenue of Rohilcund
+is reduced above a third, and Almas Ali Kh&acirc;n's
+administration is well known to have been extremely
+violent."</p></div>
+
+<p>We will next read to your Lordships an extract
+from Captain Edwards's evidence.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> Had you any opportunity of observing the
+general face of the country in the time of Sujah
+Dowlah?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I had.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Did you remark any
+difference in the general state of the country at
+that time and the period when you made your latter
+observation?&mdash;did you observe any difference
+between the condition of the country at that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">{192}</a></span> time,
+that of Sujah Dowlah in the year 1774, and the
+latter period you have mentioned?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I did,&mdash;a
+very material difference.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> In what respect?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+In the general aspect that the country bore,
+and the cultivation of the country,&mdash;that it was
+infinitely better cultivated in 1774 than it was
+in 1783.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> You said you had no opportunity
+of observing the face of the country till you was
+appointed aide-de-camp to the Nabob?&mdash;<i>A.</i> No,&mdash;except
+by marching and countermarching. I marched
+in the year 1774 through the Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah's
+provinces into Rohilcund.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Had you those
+opportunities from the time of your going there in
+1774?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I had; but not so much as I had after
+being appointed aide-de-camp to the Vizier, because
+I was always before in a subordinate situation: I
+marched in a direct line before, with the troops;
+but afterwards, when I was aide-de-camp to his Excellency,
+I was my own master, and made frequent
+excursions into the different parts of the country.&mdash;<i>Q.</i>
+Had you an opportunity of observing the difference
+in the general happiness and disposition of
+the people?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I had.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Did you observe a
+difference in that respect also between your first
+coming and the year 1783?&mdash;<i>A.</i> Yes, a very sensible
+difference: in Sujah ul Dowlah's time the country
+was in a very flourishing state, in merchandise,
+cultivation, and every article of commerce, and the
+people then seemed to be very happy under his government,
+which latterly was not the case; because
+the country in reality appeared in the year 1774 in
+a flourishing state, and in the year 1783 it appeared
+comparatively forlorn and desolate.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Was the
+court of Asoph ul Dowlah, when you left India, equal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">{193}</a></span>
+in point of splendor to what it was in the time of
+Sujah ul Dowlah?&mdash;<i>A.</i> By no means: it was not
+equally splendid, but far inferior.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Were the
+dependants and officers belonging to the court paid
+in the same punctual manner?&mdash;<i>A.</i> No: I really
+cannot say whether they were paid more regularly
+in Sujah Dowlah's time, only they appeared more
+wealthy and more able to live in a splendid style in
+his time than they ever have done since his death."</p></div>
+
+<p>Here, then, your Lordships see the state of the
+country in 1783. Your Lordships may trace the
+whole progress of these evils, step by step, from the
+death of Sujah ul Dowlah to the time of Mr. Hastings's
+obtaining a majority in the Council, after
+which he possessed the sole and uncontrolled management
+of the country; you have seen also the
+consequences that immediately followed till the year
+1784, when he went up a second time into the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know, my Lords, that it is necessary to
+make any observation upon this state of things. You
+see that the native authority was, as we have proved,
+utterly extinguished by Mr. Hastings, and that there
+was no superintendent power but his. You have
+heard of the oppressions of the farmers of the revenues;
+and we have shown you that these farmers
+generally were English officers. We have shown you
+in what manner Colonel Hannay, one of these farmers
+sent by Mr. Hastings, acted, and particularly the
+accumulation of hostages which were made by him.
+We have shown you, that by their arbitrary and tyrannical
+proceedings all regular government was subverted,
+and that the country experienced the last <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">{194}</a></span>and
+most dreadful effects of anarchy. We have shown
+you that no other security was left to any human being,
+but to intrench themselves in such forts as they
+could make, and that these forts, in one district only
+of the country, had increased in number to the
+amount of seven hundred. Your Lordships also
+know, that, when the prisons and mud forts in which
+Colonel Hannay kept his hostages confined were full,
+he kept them in uncovered cages in the open air.
+You know that all these farmers of revenue were
+either English and military men, or natives under an
+abject submission to them; you know that they had
+the whole country in assignments, that the jaghires
+were all confiscated for their benefits; and you find
+that the whole system had its origin at the time
+when Mr. Hastings alone formed in effect the authority
+of the Supreme Council. The weakness of the
+Nabob, as Sir Eyre Coote tells you, could not have
+been alone the cause of these evils, and that our influence
+over him, if not actually the cause of the utter
+ruin, desolation, and anarchy of that country, might
+have been successfully exerted in preventing.</p>
+
+<p>When your Lordships shall proceed to judgment
+upon these accumulated wrongs, arising out of the
+usurped power of the prisoner at your bar, and redressed
+by him in no one instance whatever, let not
+the usurpation itself of the Nabob's power be considered
+as a trivial matter. When any prince at the
+head of a great country is entirely stripped of everything
+in his government, civil or military, by which
+his rank may be distinguished or his virtues exercised,
+he is in danger of becoming a mere animal,
+and of abandoning himself wholly to sensual gratifications.
+Feeling no personal interest in the institutions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">{195}</a></span>
+or in the general welfare of the country, he
+suffers the former (and many wise and laudable institutions
+existed in the provinces of the Nabob, for
+their good order and government) to fall into disuse,
+and he leaves the country itself to persons in inferior
+situations, to be wasted and destroyed by them. You
+find that in Oude, the very appearance of justice had
+been banished out of it, and that every aumil exercised
+an arbitrary power over the lives and fortunes
+of the people. My Lords, we have the proofs of all
+these facts in our hands; they are in your Lordships'
+minutes; and though we can state nothing stronger
+than is stated in the papers themselves, yet we do not
+so far forget our duty as not to point out to your
+Lordships such observations as arise out of them.</p>
+
+<p>To close the whole, your Lordships shall how hear
+read an extract from a most curious and extraordinary
+letter, sent by him to the Court of Directors, preparatory
+to his return to England.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"My only remaining fear is, that the members of
+the Council, seeing affairs through a different medium
+from that through which I view them, may be
+disposed, if not to counteract the system which I
+have formed, to withhold from it their countenance
+and active support. While I myself remain, it will
+be sufficient if they permit it to operate without interruption;
+and I almost hope, in the event of a new
+administration of your affairs which shall confine itself
+to the same forbearance, and manifest no symptoms
+of intended interference, the objects of my arrangements
+will be effectually attained; for I leave
+them in the charge of agents whose interests, ambition,
+and every prospect of life are interwoven with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">{196}</a></span>
+their success, and the hand of Heaven has visibly
+blest the soil with every elementary source of progressive
+vegetation: but if a different policy shall be
+adopted, if new agents are sent into the country and
+armed with authority for the purpose of vengeance
+or corruption, to no other will they be applied. If
+new demands are raised on the Nabob Vizier, and
+accounts overcharged on one side with a wide latitude
+taken on the other to swell his debt beyond the
+means of payment,&mdash;if political dangers are portended,
+to ground on them the pleas of burdening his
+country with unnecessary defences and enormous subsidies,&mdash;or
+if, even abstaining from direct encroachment
+on the Nabob's rights, your government shall
+show but a degree of personal kindness to the partisans
+of the late usurpation, or by any constructive
+indication of partiality and disaffection furnish ground
+for the expectation of an approaching change of system,
+I am sorry to say that all my labors will prove
+abortive; for the slightest causes will be sufficient to
+deject minds sore with the remembrance of past conflicts,
+and to elevate those whose only dependence is
+placed in the renewal of the confusion which I have
+labored with such zeal to eradicate, and will of course
+debilitate the authority which can alone insure future
+success. I almost fear that this denunciation of
+effects from causes so incompetent, as they will appear
+to those who have not had the experience which
+I have had of the quick sensibility which influences
+the habits of men placed in a state of polity so loose,
+and subject to the continual variations of capricious
+and despotic authority, will be deemed overcharged,
+or perhaps void of foundation; nor, if they
+should come to pass, will it be easy to tra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">{197}</a></span>ce them
+with any positive evidence to their connection: yet
+it is my duty to apprise you of what I apprehend,
+on grounds which I deem of absolute certainty, may
+come to pass; and I rely on your candor for a fair
+interpretation of my intention."</p></div>
+
+<p>Here, my Lords, the prisoner at your bar has done
+exactly what his bitterest accuser would do: he goes
+through, head by head, every one of the measures
+which he had himself pursued in the destruction of
+the country; and he foretells, that, if any one of those
+measures should again be pursued, or even if good
+cause should be given to suspect they would be renewed,
+the country must fall into a state of inevitable
+destruction. This supersedes all observation. This
+paper is a recapitulated, minute condemnation of every
+step which he took in that country, and which steps,
+are every one of them upon your Lordships' minutes.</p>
+
+<p>But, my Lords, we know very well the design of
+these pretended apprehensions, and why he wished to
+have that country left in the state he speaks of. He
+had left a secret agent of his own to control that ostensible
+government, and to enable him, sitting in the
+place where he now sits, to continue to govern those
+provinces in the way in which he now governs them.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>[<i>A murmur having arisen here, Mr. Burke proceeded.</i>]</p></div>
+
+<p>If I am called upon to reword what I have just
+said, I shall repeat my words, and show strong
+grounds and reasons to indicate that he governs Oude
+now as much as he ever did.</p>
+
+<p>You see, my Lords, that the reform which he pretended
+to make in 1781 produced the calamities
+which he states to have existed in 1784<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">{198}</a></span>. We shall
+now show that the reform which he pretended to
+make in 1784 brought on the calamities which Lord
+Cornwallis states in his evidence to have existed in
+1787.</p>
+
+<p>We will now read two letters from Lord Cornwallis:
+the first is dated the 16th November, 1787.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"I was received at Allahabad and attended to
+Lucknow by the Nabob and his ministers with every
+mark of friendship and respect. I cannot, however,
+express how much I was concerned, during my short
+residence at his capital, and my progress through his
+dominions, to be witness of the disordered state of
+his finances and government, and of the desolate appearances
+of his country. The evils were too alarming
+to admit of palliation, and I thought it my duty
+to exhort him, in the most friendly manner, to endeavor
+to apply effectual remedies to them. He began
+with urging as apology, that, whilst he was not
+certain of the expense [extent?] of our demands upon
+him, he had no real interest in being economical
+in his expenses, and that, while we interfered in the
+internal management of his affairs, his own authority
+and that of his ministers were despised by his own
+subjects. It would have been useless to discuss these
+topics with him; but while I repeated my former
+declarations of our being determined to give no
+ground in future for similar complaints, he gave me
+the strongest assurances of his being resolved to apply
+himself earnestly to the encouragement of agriculture,
+and to endeavor to revive the commerce of
+his country."</p></div>
+
+<p>The second is dated the 25th April, 1788.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">{199}</a></span></p>
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Till I saw the Vizier's troops, I was not without
+hope that upon an emergency he would have been
+able to have furnished us with some useful cavalry;
+but I have no reason to believe that he has any in
+his service upon which it would be prudent to place
+any dependence; and I think it right to add, that
+his country appears to be in so ruined a state, and
+his finances in so much disorder, that even in case of
+war we ought not to depend upon any material support
+from him."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, I have only to remark upon these letters,
+that, so far as they go, they prove the effects
+of Mr. Hastings's reformation, from which he was
+pleased to promise the Company such great things.
+But when your Lordships know that he had left his
+dependant and minister, Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n, there,
+whose character, as your Lordships will find by a
+reference to your minutes he has represented as
+black as hell, to be the real governor there, and to
+carry on private correspondence with him here, and
+that he had left Major Palmer, his private agent, for
+a considerable time in that country to carry on his
+affairs, your Lordships will easily see how it has
+come to pass that the Vizier, such a man as you have
+heard him described to be, was not alone able to
+restore prosperity to his country.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, you have now seen what was the situation
+of the country in Sujah Dowlah's time, prior to
+Mr. Hastings's interference with the government of
+it, what it was during his government, and what situation
+it was in when Lord Cornwallis left it. Nothing
+now remains but to call your Lordships' attention
+to perhaps the most extraordinary part of these transactions.
+But before we proceed, we will beg leave
+to go back and read to your Lordships th<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">{200}</a></span>e Nabob's
+letter of the 24th February, 1780.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"I have received your letter, and understand the
+contents. I cannot describe the solidity of your
+friendship and brotherly affection which subsisted between
+you and my late father. From the friendship
+of the Company he received numberless advantages;
+and I, notwithstanding I was left an orphan, from
+your favor and that of the Company was perfectly
+at ease, being satisfied that everything would be
+well, and that I should continue in the same security
+that I was during my father's lifetime, from your
+protection. I accordingly, from the day of his death,
+have never omitted to cultivate your favor, and the
+protection of the Company; and whatever was the
+desire and directions of the Council at that time I
+have ever since conformed to, and obeyed with readiness.
+Thanks be given to God that I have never
+as yet been backward in performing the will of the
+English Company, of the Council, and of you, and
+have always been from my heart ready to obey them,
+and have never given you any trouble from my difficulties
+or wishes. This I have done simply from my
+own knowledge of your favor towards me, and from
+my being certain that you would learn the particulars
+of my distresses and difficulties from other quarters,
+and would then show your friendship and good-will
+in whatever was for my advantage. But when the
+knife had penetrated to the bone, and I was surrounded
+with such heavy distresses that I could no
+longer live in expectations, I then wrote an account
+of my difficulties. The answer which I have received
+to it is such, that it has given me inexpressible grief
+and affliction. I never had the least idea or expectation
+from you and the Council that you would ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">{201}</a></span>
+have given your orders in so afflicting a manner, in
+which you never before wrote, and which I could not
+have imagined. As I am resolved to obey your orders,
+and directions of the Council, without any delay,
+as long as I live, I have, agreeably to those orders,
+delivered up all my private papers to him [the Resident],
+that, when he shall have examined my receipts
+and expenses, he may take whatever remains. As I
+know it to be my duty to satisfy you, the Company,
+and Council, I have not failed to obey in any instance,
+but requested of him that it might be done so as not
+to distress me in my necessary expenses: there being
+no other funds but those for the expenses of my mutsuddies,
+household expenses, and servants, &amp;c. He
+demanded these in such a manner, that, being remediless,
+I was obliged to comply with what he required.
+He has accordingly stopped the pensions of my old
+servants for thirty years, whether sepoys, mutsuddies,
+or household servants, and the expenses of my
+family and kitchen, together with the jaghires of my
+grandmother, mother, and aunts, and of my brothers
+and dependants, which were for their support.
+I had raised fifteen hundred horse and three battalions
+of sepoys to attend upon me; but, as I have
+no resources to support them, I have been obliged
+to remove the people stationed in the mahals, and to
+send his people into the mahals, so that I have not
+now one single servant about me. Should I mention
+what further difficulties I have been reduced to, it
+would lay me open to contempt. Although I have
+willingly assented to this which brings such distress
+on me, and have in a manner altogether ruined
+myself, yet I failed not to do it for this reason, because
+it was for your satisfaction, and that of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">{202}</a></span>
+Council; and I am patient, and even thankful, in
+this condition; but I cannot imagine from what cause
+you have conceived displeasure against me. From
+the commencement of my administration, in every
+circumstance, I received strength and security from
+your favor, and that of the Council; and in every instance
+you and the Council have shown your friendship
+and affection for me; but at present, that you
+have sent these orders, I am greatly perplexed."</p></div>
+
+<p>We will not trouble your Lordships with the remainder
+of the letter, which is all in the same style
+of distress and affliction, and of the abject dependence
+of a man who considers himself as insulted, robbed,
+and ruined in that state of dependence.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to the evidence contained in this letter,
+your Lordships will be pleased to recollect the
+Nabob's letter which we read to your Lordships yesterday,
+the humble and abject style of which you
+will never forget. Oh, consider, my Lords, this instance
+of the fate of human greatness! You must
+remember that there is not a trace anywhere, in any
+of the various trunks of Mr. Hastings, that he ever
+condescended so much as to give an answer to the
+suppliant letters of that unhappy man. There was
+no mode of indignity with which he did not treat his
+family; there was no mode of indignity with which
+he did not treat his person; there was no mode of
+indignity with which he did not treat his minister,
+Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n,&mdash;this man whom he represents to
+be the most infamous and scandalous of mankind, and
+of whom he, nevertheless, at the same time declares,
+that his only support with the Vizier was the support
+which he, Warren Hastings, as representative of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">{203}</a></span>
+English government, gave him.</p>
+
+<p>We will now read a paper which perhaps ought
+not to have been received in evidence, but which we
+were willing to enter in your minutes as evidence, in
+order that everything should come before you. Your
+Lordships have heard the Nabob speak of his misery,
+distress, and oppression; but here he makes a complete
+defeasance, as it were, of the whole charge, a
+direct disavowal of every one of the complaints, and
+particularly that of having never received an answer
+to these complaints. Oh, think, I say, my Lords, of
+the degraded, miserable, and unhappy state to which
+human nature may be reduced, when you hear this
+unhappy man declare that all the charges which we
+have made upon this subject relative to him, and
+which are all either admitted by him or taken from
+his own representation, are now stated by him in a paper
+before you to be all false, and that there is not a
+word of the representation which he had made of Mr.
+Hastings that has the least truth in it! Your Lordships
+will find this in that collection of various papers
+which ought to be preserved and put into every
+museum in Europe, as one of the most extraordinary
+productions that was ever exhibited to the world.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Papers received the 8th of March, 1788, and translated
+pursuant to an Order of the Governor-General
+in Council, dated the 21th of April, 1788, under the
+Seal of His Excellency the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah,
+Asoph Jah Bahadur, Vizier ul Momalik.</i></p>
+
+<p>"I have at this time learnt that the gentlemen in
+power in England, upon the suspicion that Mr. Hastings,
+during his administration, acted contrary to the
+rules of justice and impartiality, and, actuated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">{204}</a></span> by motives
+of avidity, was inimical towards men without
+cause; that he broke such engagements and treaties
+as had been made between the Company and other
+chiefs; that he extended the hand of oppression over
+the properties of men, tore up the roots of security
+and prosperity from the land, and rendered the ryots
+and subjects destitute by force and extortion.&mdash;As
+this accusation, in fact, is destitute of uprightness
+and void of truth, therefore, with a view to show the
+truth in its true colors, I have written upon this
+sheet with truth and sincerity, to serve as an evidence,
+and to represent real facts,&mdash;to serve also as information
+and communication, that Mr. Hastings, from
+the commencement of his administration until his
+departure for England, whether during the lifetime
+of the deceased Nabob, of blessed memory, Vizier
+ul Moolk, Sujah ul Dowlah Bahadur, my father, or
+during my government, did not at any time transact
+contrary to justice any matter which took place from
+the great friendship between me and the Company,
+nor in any business depart from the path of truth
+and uprightness, but cultivated friendship with integrity
+and sincerity, and in every respect engaged
+himself in the duties of friendship with me, my ministers
+and confidants. I am at all times, and in every
+way, pleased with and thankful for his friendly
+manners and qualities; and my ministers and confidants,
+who have always, every one of them, been satisfied
+with his conduct, are forever grateful for his
+friendship and thankful for his virtues. As these
+matters are real facts, and according to truth, I have
+written these lines as an evidence, and transmit this
+paper to England, through the government of Calcutta,
+for the information of the gentlemen of power and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">{205}</a></span>
+rank in England."</p></div>
+
+<p>Observe, my Lords, the candor of the Commons.
+We produce this evidence, which accuses us, as Mr.
+Hastings does, of uttering everything that is false;
+we choose to bring our shame before the world, and
+to admit that this man, on whose behalf and on the
+behalf of whose country we have accused Mr. Hastings,
+has declared that this accusation (namely, this
+impeachment) is destitute of uprightness and without
+truth. But, my Lords, this is not only a direct contradiction
+to all he has ever said, to all that has been
+proved to you by us, but a direct contradiction to all
+the representations of Mr. Hastings himself. Your
+Lordships will hence see what credit is to be given to
+these papers.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships shall now hear what Hyder Beg
+Kh&acirc;n says: that Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n who stands recorded
+in your minutes as the worst of mankind;
+who is represented as writing letters without the Nabob's
+consent, and in defiance of him; the man of
+whom Mr. Hastings says, that the Nabob is nothing
+but a tool in his hands, and that the Nabob is and
+ever must be a tool of somebody or other. Now, as
+we have heard the tool speak, let us hear how the
+workman employed to work with this tool speaks.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Extract from Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n's Letter to the Governor
+and Council.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It is at this time learnt by the Nabob Vizier, and
+us, his ministers, that the gentlemen of power in England
+are displeased with Mr. Hastings, on the suspicion
+that during his administration in this country, from
+motives of avidity, he committed oppressions contrar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">{206}</a></span>y
+to the rules of justice, took the properties of men by
+deceit and force, injured the ryots and subjects, and
+rendered the country destitute and ruined. As the
+true and upright disposition of Mr. Hastings is in every
+respect free of this suspicion, we therefore with
+truth and sincerity declare by these lines, written according
+to fact, that Mr. Hastings, from the first of
+his appointment to the government of this country
+until his departure for Europe, during his authority
+in the management of the affairs of the country,
+whether in the lifetime of the Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah
+Bahadur, deceased, or whether during the present
+reign, did not, in any matters which took place from
+the great friendship between this government and the
+Company, act in any wise upon motives of avidity,
+and, not having, in any respect, other than justice
+and propriety in intention, did not swerve from their
+rules. He kept his Excellency the Vizier always
+pleased and satisfied" (you will remember, my
+Lords, the last expressions of his pleasure and satisfaction)
+"by his friendship and attention in every
+matter. He at all times showed favor and kindness
+towards us, the ministers of this government; and under
+his protection having enjoyed perfect happiness
+and comfort, we are from our hearts satisfied with
+and grateful for his benevolence and goodness."</p></div>
+
+<p>Here, my Lords, you have the character which
+Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n gives of Mr. Hastings,&mdash;of the
+man who he knew had loaded him, as he had done,
+with every kind of indignity, reproach, and outrage
+with which a man can be loaded. Your Lordships
+will see that this testimony repeats, almost word for
+word, the testimony of the Vizier Nabob,&mdash;which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">{207}</a></span>
+shows who the real writer is.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, it is said, that there is no word in the
+Persian language to express gratitude. With these
+signal instances of gratitude before us, I think we
+may venture to put one into their dictionary. Mr.
+Hastings has said he has had the pleasure to find
+from the people of India that gratitude which he has
+not met with from his own countrymen, the House
+of Commons. Certainly, if he has done us services,
+we have been ungrateful indeed; if he has committed
+enormous crimes, we are just. Of the miserable,
+dependent situation to which these people are
+reduced, that they are not ashamed to come forward
+and deny everything they have given under their
+own hand,&mdash;all these things show the portentous
+nature of this government, they show the portentous
+nature of that phalanx with which the House of
+Commons is at present at war, the power of that
+captain-general of every species of Indian iniquity,
+which, under him, is embodied, arrayed, and paid,
+from Leadenhall Street to the furthermost part of
+India.</p>
+
+<p>We have but one observation more to offer upon
+this collection of <i>razinamas</i>, upon these miserable
+testimonials given by these wretched people in contradiction
+to all their own previous representations,&mdash;directly
+in contradiction to those of Mr. Hastings
+himself,&mdash;directly in contradiction to those of Lord
+Cornwallis,&mdash;directly in contradiction to truth itself.
+It is this. Here is Mr. Hastings with his agents
+canvassing the country, with all that minuteness
+with which a county is canvassed at an election;
+and yet in this whole book of razinamas not one
+fact adduced by us is attempted to be disproved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">{208}</a></span>, not
+one fact upon which Mr. Hastings's defence can be
+founded is attempted to be proved. There is nothing
+but bare vile panegyrics, directly belied by the state
+of facts, directly belied by the persons themselves,
+directly belied by Mr. Hastings at your bar, and by
+all the whole course of the correspondence of the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>We here leave to your Lordships' judgment the
+consideration of the elevated rank of the persons aggrieved
+and degraded to the lowest state of dependence
+and actual distress,&mdash;the consideration of the
+condition of the country gentlemen, who were obliged
+to hide their heads, wherever they could, from the
+plunderers and robbers established under his authority
+in every part of the country, and that of the
+miserable common people, who have been obliged
+to sell their children through want of food to feed
+them,&mdash;the consideration, I say, of the manner in
+which this country, in the highest, in the middle,
+and in the lowest classes of its inhabitants, nay, in
+physical works of God, was desolated and destroyed
+by this man.</p>
+
+<p>Having now done with the province of Oude, we
+will proceed to the province of Bengal, and consider
+what was the kind of government which he exercised
+there, and in what manner it affected the people that
+were subjected to it.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Bengal, like every part of India subject to the
+British empire, contains (as I have already had occasion
+to mention) three distinct classes of people,
+forming three distinct social systems. The first is
+the Mahometans, which, about seven hundred years
+ago, obtained a footing in that country, and eve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">{209}</a></span>r
+since has in a great degree retained its authority
+there. For the Mahometans had settled there long
+before the foundation of the Bengal empire, which
+was overturned by Tamerlane: so that this people,
+who are represented sometimes loosely as strangers,
+are people of ancient and considerable settlement in
+that country; and though, like Mahometan settlers
+in many other countries, they have fallen into decay,
+yet, being continually recruited from various parts
+of Tartary under the Mogul empire, and from various
+parts of Persia, they continue to be the leading
+and most powerful people throughout the peninsula;
+and so we found them there. These people, for the
+most part, follow no trades or occupation, their religion
+and laws forbidding them in the strictest manner
+to take usury or profit arising from money that is in
+any way lent; they have, therefore, no other means
+for their support but what arises from their adherence
+to and connection with the Mogul government
+and its viceroys. They enjoy under them various
+offices, civil and military,&mdash;various employments in
+the courts of law, and stations in the army. Accordingly
+a prodigious number of people, almost all of
+them persons of the most ancient and respectable
+families in the country, are dependent upon and
+cling to the subahdars or viceroys of the several
+provinces. They, therefore, who oppress, plunder, and
+destroy the subahdars, oppress, rob, and destroy an
+immense mass of people. It is true that a supervening
+government, established upon another, always
+reduces a certain portion of the dependants upon the
+latter to want. You must distress, by the very nature
+of the circumstances of the case, a great number
+of people; but then it is your business, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">{210}</a></span>, by
+the superiority which you have acquired, however
+you may have acquired it, (for I am not now considering
+whether you have acquired it by fraud or
+force, or whether by a mixture of both,) when, I say,
+you have acquired it, it is your business not to
+oppress those people with new and additional difficulties,
+but rather to console them in the state to
+which they are reduced, and to give them all the
+assistance and protection in your power.</p>
+
+<p>The next system is composed of the descendants
+of the people who were found in the country by the
+Mahometan invaders. The system before mentioned
+comprehends the official interest, the judicial interest,
+the court interest, and the military interest.
+This latter body includes almost the whole landed
+interest, commercial interest, and moneyed interest
+of the country. For the Hindoos not being forbidden
+by their laws or religious tenets, as laid down
+in the Shaster, many of them became the principal
+money-lenders and bankers; and thus the Hindoos
+form the greatest part both of the landed and moneyed
+interest in that country.</p>
+
+<p>The third and last system is formed of the English
+interest; which in reality, whether it appears directly
+or indirectly, is the governing interest of the whole
+country,&mdash;of its civil and military interest, of its
+landed, moneyed, and revenue interest; and what
+to us is the greatest concern of all, it is this system
+which is responsible for the government of that country
+to the government of Great Britain. It is divided
+into two parts: one emanating from the Company,
+and afterwards regulated by act of Parliament;
+the other a judicial body, sent out by and acting under
+the authority of the crown itself. The persons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">{211}</a></span>
+composing that interest are those whom we usually
+call the servants of the Company. They enter into
+that service, as your Lordships know, at an early
+period of life, and they are promoted accordingly as
+their merit or their interest may provide for them.
+This body of men, with respect to its number, is so
+small as scarcely to deserve mentioning; but, from
+certain circumstances, the government of the whole
+country is fallen into their hands. Amongst these
+circumstances, the most important and essential are
+their having the public revenues and the public purse
+entirely in their own hands, and their having an
+army maintained by that purse, and disciplined in
+the European manner.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the state of that country when Mr. Hastings
+was appointed Governor in 1772. Your Lordships
+are now to decide upon the manner in which he
+has comported himself with regard to all these three
+interests: first, whether he has made the ancient
+Mahometan families as easy as he could; secondly,
+whether he has made the Hindoo inhabitants, the
+zemindars and their tenants, as secure in their property
+and as easy in their tenure as he could; and
+lastly, whether he has made the English interest a
+blessing to the country, and, whilst it provided moderate,
+safe, and proper emoluments to the persons that
+were concerned in it, it kept them from oppression
+and rapine, and a general waste and ravage of the
+country: whether, in short, he made all these three
+interests pursue that one object which all interests
+and all governments ought to pursue, the advantage
+and welfare of the people under them.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, in support of our charge against the
+prisoner at your bar, that he acted in a manne<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">{212}</a></span>r directly
+the reverse of this, we have proved to you that
+his first acts of oppression were directed against the
+Mahometan government,&mdash;that government which
+had been before, not only in name, but in effect, to
+the very time of his appointment, the real government
+of the country. After the Company had acquired
+its right over it, some shadow still remained
+of the ancient government. An allowance was settled
+for the Nabob of Bengal, to support the dignity
+of his court, which amounted to between four and
+five hundred thousand pounds a year. In this was
+comprehended the support of the whole mass of
+nobility,&mdash;the soldiers, serving or retired,&mdash;all the
+officers of the court, and all the women that were
+dependent upon them,&mdash;the whole of the criminal
+jurisdiction of the country, and a very considerable
+part of the civil law and the civil government. These
+establishments formed the constitutional basis of their
+political government.</p>
+
+<p>The Company never had (and it is a thing that
+we can never too often repeat to your Lordships)&mdash;the
+Company never had of right despotic power in
+that country, to overturn any of these establishments.
+The Mogul, who gave them their charters, could not
+give them such a power,&mdash;he did not <i>de facto</i> give
+them such a power; the government of this country
+did not by act of Parliament, and the Company did
+not and could not by their delegation, give him such
+a power; the act by which he was appointed Governor
+did not give him such a power. If he exercised
+it, he usurped it; and therefore, every step we take
+in the examination of his conduct in Bengal, as in
+every step we take upon the same subject everywhere
+else, we look for the justification of his conduct <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">{213}</a></span>to
+laws,&mdash;the Law of Nations, the laws of this country,
+and the laws of the country he was sent to govern.</p>
+
+<p>The government of that country, by the ancient
+constitution of the Mogul empire, besides the numberless
+individual checks and counter-checks in the inferior
+officers [offices?], is divided into the viceroyal
+part and the subahdarry part. The viceroyal part
+takes in all criminal justice and political government.
+Mr. Hastings found the country under a viceroy, governing
+according to law, acting by proper judges and
+magistrates under him: he himself not being the judicial,
+but executive power of the country,&mdash;that which
+sets the other in action, and does not supersede it or
+supply its place. The other, the subahdarry power,
+which was by the grant of the dewanny conferred
+upon the Company, had under its care the revenues,
+as much of the civil government as is concerned with
+the revenues, and many other matters growing out
+of it. These two offices are coördinate and dependent
+on each other. The Company, after contracting
+to maintain the army out of it, got the whole revenue
+into their power. The army being thus within their
+power, the subahdar by degrees vanished into an
+empty name.</p>
+
+<p>When we thus undertook the government of the
+country, conscious that we had undertaken a task
+which by any personal exertion of our own we were
+unable to perform in any proper or rational way, the
+Company appointed a native of the country, Mahomed
+Reza Kh&acirc;n, who stands upon the records of the Company,
+I venture to say, with such a character as no
+man perhaps ever did stand, to execute the duties
+of both offices. Upon the expulsion of Cossim Ali
+Kh&acirc;n, the Nabob of Bengal, all his children were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">{214}</a></span>left
+in a young, feeble, and unprotected state; and in that
+state of things, Lord Clive, Mr. Sumner, who sits near
+Mr. Hastings, and the rest of the Council, wisely
+appointed Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n to fulfil the two offices
+of deputy-viceroy and deputy-dewan, for which
+he had immense allowances, and great jaghires and
+revenues, I allow. He was a man of that dignity,
+rank, and consideration, added to his knowledge of
+law and experience in business, that Lord Clive and
+Mr. Sumner, who examined strictly his conduct at
+that time, did not think that 112,000<i>l.</i> a year, the
+amount of the emoluments which had been allowed
+him, was a great deal too much; but at his own desire,
+and in order that these emoluments might be
+brought to stated and fixed sums, they reduced it to
+90,000<i>l.</i>,&mdash;an allowance which they thought was not
+more than sufficient to preserve the state of so great
+a magistrate, and a man of such rank, exercising
+such great employments. The whole revenue of the
+Company depended upon his talents and fidelity; and
+you will find, that, on the day in which he surrendered
+the revenues into our hands, the dewanny,
+under his management, was a million more than it
+produced on the day Mr. Hastings left it. For the
+truth of this I refer your Lordships to a letter of the
+Company sent to the Board of Control. This letter
+is not in evidence before your Lordships, and what I
+am stating is merely historical. But I state the
+facts, and with the power of referring for their proof
+to documents as authentic as if they were absolutely
+in evidence before you. Assuming, therefore, that all
+these facts may be verified by the records of the Company,
+I have now to state that this man, by some
+rumors true or false, was supposed to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">{215}</a></span> misconducted
+himself in a time of great calamity in that
+country. A great famine had about this time grievously
+afflicted the whole province of Bengal.&mdash;I must
+remark by the way, that these countries are liable to
+this calamity; but it is greatly blessed by Nature with
+resources which afford the means of speedy recovery,
+if their government does not counteract them.
+Nature, that inflicts the calamity, soon heals the
+wound; it is in ordinary seasons the most fertile
+country, inhabited by the most industrious people,
+and the most disposed to marriage and settlement,
+probably, that exists in the whole world; so that
+population and fertility are soon restored, and the
+inhabitants quickly resume their former industrious
+occupations.</p>
+
+<p>During the agitation excited in the country by the
+calamity I have just mentioned, Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n,
+through the intrigues of Rajah Nundcomar, one of
+his political rivals, and of some English faction that
+supported him, was accused of being one of the
+causes of the famine. In answer to this charge, he
+alleged, what was certainly a sufficient justification,
+that he had acted under the direction of the English
+board, to which his conduct throughout this business
+was fully known. The Company, however, sent an
+order from England to have him tried; but though
+he frequently supplicated the government at Calcutta
+that his trial should be proceeded in, in order that
+he might be either acquitted and discharged or condemned,
+Mr. Hastings kept him in prison two years,
+under pretence (as he wrote word to the Directors)
+that Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n himself was not very desirous
+to hasten the matter. In the mean time the
+Court of Directors, having removed him fro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">{216}</a></span>m his
+great offices, authorized and commanded Mr. Hastings
+(and here we come within the sphere of your minutes)
+to appoint a successor to Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n,
+fit to fulfil the duties of his station. Now I shall first
+show your Lordships what sort of person the Court
+of Directors described to him as most fit to fill the
+office of Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n, what sort of person
+he did appoint, and then we will trace out to you the
+consequences of that appointment.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Letter from the Court of Directors to the President and
+Council at Fort William, dated 28th August, 1771.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Though we have not a doubt but that, by the exertion
+of your abilities, and the care and assiduity of
+our servants in the superintendency of the revenues,
+the collections will be conducted with more advantage
+to the Company and ease to the natives than by means
+of a naib dewan, we are fully sensible of the expediency
+of supporting some ostensible minister in the
+Company's interest at the Nabob's court, to transact
+the political affairs of the sircar, and interpose between
+the Company and the subjects of any European
+power, in all cases wherein they may thwart
+our interest or encroach on our authority; and as
+Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n can no longer be considered by
+us as one to whom such a power can be safely committed,
+we trust to your local knowledge the selection
+of some person well qualified for the affairs of
+government, and of whose attachment to the Company
+you shall be well assured: such person you will
+recommend to the Nabob to succeed Mahomed Reza
+as minister of the government, and guardian of the
+Nabob's minority; and we persuade ourselves that
+the Nabob will pay such regard to your recommend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">{217}</a></span>ation
+as to invest him with the necessary power and
+authority.</p>
+
+<p>"As the advantages which the Company may
+receive from the appointment of such minister will
+depend on his readiness to promote our views and
+advance our interest, we are willing to allow him
+so liberal a gratification as may excite his zeal and
+secure his attachment to the Company; we therefore
+empower you to grant to the person whom you shall
+think worthy of this trust an annual allowance not
+exceeding three lacs of rupees, (thirty thousand
+pounds,) which we consider not only as a munificent
+reward for any services he shall render the Company,
+but sufficient to enable him to support his station
+with suitable rank and dignity. And here we must
+add, that, in the choice you shall make of a person
+to be the active minister of the Nabob's government,
+we hope and trust that you will show yourselves worthy
+of the confidence we have placed in you, by being
+actuated therein, by no other motives than those of
+the public good and the safety and interest of the
+Company."</p></div>
+
+<p>Here, my Lords, a person was to be named fit to
+fill the office and supply the place of Mahomed Reza
+Kh&acirc;n, who was deputy-viceroy of Bengal, at the head
+of the criminal justice of the country, and, in short,
+at the head of the whole ostensible Mahometan government;
+he was also to supply the place of Mahomed
+Reza Kh&acirc;n as naib dewan, from which Reza
+Kh&acirc;n was to be removed: for you will observe, the
+Directors always speak of a man fit to perform all the
+duties of Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n; and amongst these
+he was to be as the guardian of the Nabob's pe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">{218}</a></span>rson,
+and the representative of his authority and government.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings, having received these orders from the
+Court of Directors, did&mdash;what? He alleges in his
+defence, that no positive commands were given him.
+But a very sufficient description was given of the person
+who ought to succeed Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n, in
+whom the Company had before recognized all the
+necessary qualities; and they therefore desire him to
+name a similar person. But what does Mr. Hastings
+do in consequence of this authority? He names no
+man at all. He searches into the seraglio of the
+Nabob, and names a woman to be the viceroy of the
+province, to be the head of the ostensible government,
+to be the guardian of the Nabob's person, the conservator
+of his authority, and a proper representative of
+the remaining majesty of that government.</p>
+
+<p>Well, my Lords, he searched the seraglio. When
+you have to take into consideration the guardianship
+of a person of great dignity, there are two circumstances
+to be attended to: one, a faithful and affectionate
+guardianship of his person; and the other, a strong
+interest in his authority, and the means of exercising
+that authority in a proper and competent manner.
+Mr. Hastings, when he was looking for a woman in
+the seraglio, (for he could find women only there,)
+must have found actually in authority there the
+Nabob's own mother: certainly a person who by nature
+was most fit to be his guardian; and there is
+no manner of doubt of her being sufficiently competent
+to that duty. Here, then, was a legitimate wife
+of the Nabob Jaffier Ali Kh&acirc;n, a woman of rank and
+distinction, fittest to take care of the person and interests,
+as far as a woman could take care of them, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">{219}</a></span>
+her own son. In this situation she had been placed
+before, during the administration of Mahomed Reza
+Kh&acirc;n, by the direct orders of the Governor, Sir John
+Cartier. She had, I say, been put in possession of
+that trust which it was natural and proper to give
+to such a woman. But what does Mr. Hastings do?
+He deposes this woman. He strips her of her authority
+with which he found her invested under the
+sanction of the English government. He finds out
+a woman in the seraglio, called Munny Begum, who
+was bound to the Nabob by no tie whatever of natural
+affection. He makes this woman the guardian of
+the young Nabob's person. She had a son who had
+been placed upon the musnud after the death of his
+father, Sujah Dowlah, and had been appointed his
+guardian. This young Nabob died soon afterwards,
+and was succeeded by Nujim ul Dowlah, another natural
+son of Sujah Dowlah. This prince being left
+without a mother, this woman was suffered to retain
+the guardianship of the Nabob till his death. When
+Mobarek ul Dowlah, a legitimate son of Sujah Dowlah,
+succeeded him, Sir John Cartier did what his
+duty was: he put the Nabob's own mother into the
+place which she was naturally entitled to hold, the
+guardianship of her own son, and displaced Munny
+Begum. The whole of the arrangement by which
+Munny Begum was appointed guardian of the two
+preceding Nabobs stands in the Company's records
+stigmatized as a transaction base, wicked, and corrupt.
+We will read to your Lordships an extract from a
+letter which has the signature of Mr. Sumner, the
+gentleman who sits here by the side of Mr. Hastings,
+and from which you will learn what the Company
+and the Council thought of the original nomina<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">{220}</a></span>tion
+of Munny Begum and of her son. You will find
+that they considered her as a great agent and instrument
+of all the corruption there; and that this whole
+transaction, by which the bastard son of Munny Begum
+was brought forward to the prejudice of the
+legitimate son of the Nabob, was considered to be,
+what it upon the very face of it speaks itself to be,
+corrupt and scandalous.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Extract of a General Letter from the President and
+Council at Calcutta, Bengal, to the Select Committee
+of the Directors.</i></p>
+
+<p>Paragraph 5.&mdash;"At Fort St. George we received
+the first advices of the demise of Mir Jaffier, and of
+Sujah Dowlah's defeat. It was there firmly imagined
+that no definitive measures would be taken, either
+with respect to a peace or filling the vacancy in the
+nizamut, before our arrival,&mdash;as the 'Lapwing' arrived
+in the month of January with your general
+letter, and the appointment of a committee with
+express powers to that purpose, for the successful
+exertion of which the happiest occasion now offered.
+However, a contrary resolution prevailed in the Council.
+The opportunity of acquiring immense fortunes
+was too inviting to be neglected, and the temptation
+too powerful to be resisted. A treaty was hastily
+drawn up by the board,&mdash;or rather, transcribed,
+with few unimportant additions, from that concluded
+with Mir Jaffier,&mdash;and a deputation, consisting of
+Messrs. Johnstone, senior, Middleton, and Leycester,
+appointed to raise the natural son of the deceased
+Nabob to the subahdarry, in prejudice of the claim
+of the grandson; and for this measure such reasons
+assigned as ought to have dictated a diametrically<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">{221}</a></span> opposite
+resolution. Meeran's son was a minor, which
+circumstance alone would have naturally brought
+the whole administration into our hands at a juncture
+when it became indispensably necessary we
+should realize the shadow of power and influence,
+which, having no solid foundation, was exposed to
+the danger of being annihilated by the first stroke
+of adverse fortune. But this inconsistence was not
+regarded, nor was it material to the views for precipitating
+the treaty, which was pressed on the young
+Nabob at the first interview, in so earnest and indelicate
+a manner as highly disgusted him and chagrined
+his ministers, while not a single rupee was
+stipulated for the Company, whose interests were sacrificed
+that their servants might revel in the spoils of
+a treasury, before impoverished, but now totally exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>"6. This scene of corruption was first disclosed at
+a visit the Nabob paid to Lord Clive and the gentlemen
+of the Committee a few days after our arrival.
+He there delivered to his Lordship a letter filled with
+bitter complaints of the insults and indignity he had
+been exposed to, and the embezzlement of near twenty
+lacs of rupees issued from his treasury for purposes
+unknown during the late negotiations. So public
+a complaint could not be disregarded, and it soon
+produced an inquiry. We referred the letter to the
+board in expectation of obtaining a satisfactory account
+of the application of this money, and were
+answered only by a warm remonstrance entered by
+Mr. Leycester against that very Nabob in whose elevation
+he boasts of having been a principal agent.</p>
+
+<p>"7. Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n, the naib subah, was
+then called upon to account for this large<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">{222}</a></span> disbursement
+from the treasury; and he soon delivered to
+the Committee the very extraordinary narrative entered
+in our Proceedings the 6th of June, wherein
+he specifies the several names and sums, by whom
+paid, and to whom, whether in cash, bills, or obligations.
+So precise, so accurate an account as this of
+money for secret and venal services was never, we
+believe, before this period, exhibited to the Honorable
+Court of Directors, at least never vouched by
+undeniable testimony and authentic documents: by
+Juggut Seet, who himself was obliged to contribute
+largely to the sums demanded; by Muley Ram, who
+was employed by Mr. Johnstone in all these pecuniary
+transactions; by the Nabob and Mahomed Reza
+Kh&acirc;n, who were the heaviest sufferers; and, lastly,
+by the confession of the gentlemen themselves whose
+names are specified in the distribution list.</p>
+
+<p>"8. Juggut Seet expressly declared in his narrative,
+that the sum which he agreed to pay the deputation,
+amounting to 125,000 rupees, was extorted by
+menaces; and since the close of our inquiry, and
+the opinions we delivered in the Proceedings of the
+21st of June, it fully appears that the presents from
+the Nabob and Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n, exceeding the
+immense sum of seventeen lacs, were not the voluntary
+offerings of gratitude, but contributions levied
+on the weakness of the government, and violently
+exacted from the dependent state and timid disposition
+of the minister. The charge, indeed, is denied
+on the one hand, as well as affirmed on the other.
+Your honorable board must therefore determine how
+far the circumstance of extortion may aggravate the
+crime of disobedience to your positive orders,&mdash;the
+exposing the government in a manner to sale, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">{223}</a></span>
+receiving the infamous wages of corruption from opposite
+parties and contending interests. We speak
+with boldness, because we speak from conviction
+founded upon indubitable evidence, that, besides the
+above sums specified in the distribution account, to
+the amount of 228,125<i>l.</i> sterling, there was likewise
+to the value of several lacs of rupees procured from
+Nundcomar and Roy Dullub, each of whom aspired
+at and obtained a promise of that very employment
+it was predetermined to bestow on Mahomed Reza
+Kh&acirc;n.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">
+(Signed at the end,)<br />
+<br />
+"CLIVE.<br />
+W<sup>M</sup> B. SUMNER.<br />
+JOHN CARNAC.<br />
+H. VERELST.<br />
+FRA<sup>S</sup> SYKES."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, the persons who sign this letter are
+mostly the friends, and one of them is the gentleman
+who is bail for and sits near Mr. Hastings. They
+state to you this horrible and venal transaction, by
+which the government was set to sale, by which a
+bastard son was elevated to the wrong of the natural
+and legitimate heir, and in which a prostitute, his
+mother, was put in the place of the honorable and legitimate
+mother of the representative of the family.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if there was one thing more than another
+under heaven, which Mr. Hastings ought to have
+shunned, it was the suspicion of being concerned in
+any such infamous transaction as that which is here
+recorded to be so,&mdash;a transaction in which the country
+government had before been sold to this very
+woman and her offspring, and in which two gr<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">{224}</a></span>eat
+candidates for power in that country fought against
+each other, and perhaps the largest offerer carried it.</p>
+
+<p>When a Governor-General sees the traces of corruption
+in the conduct of his predecessors, the traces of
+injustice following that corruption, the traces of notorious
+irregularity in setting aside the just claimants
+in favor of those that have no claim at all, he has
+that before his eyes which ought to have made him
+the more scrupulously avoid, and to keep at the farthest
+distance possible from, the contagion and even
+the suspicion of being corrupted by it. Moreover,
+my Lords, it was in consequence of these very transactions
+that the new covenants were made, which
+bind the servants of the Company never to take a
+present of above two hundred pounds, or some such
+sum of money, from any native in circumstances
+there described. This covenant I shall reserve for
+consideration in another part of this business. It
+was in pursuance of this idea, and to prevent the
+abuse of the prevailing custom of visiting the governing
+powers of that country with a view of receiving
+presents from them, that the House of Commons
+afterwards, in its inquiries, took up this matter and
+passed the Regulating Act in 1773.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to Munny Begum.&mdash;This very person,
+that had got into power by the means already
+mentioned, did Mr. Hastings resort to, knowing her
+to be well skilled in the trade of bribery,&mdash;knowing
+her skilful practice in business of this sort,&mdash;knowing
+the fitness of her eunuchs, instruments, and
+agents, to be dealers in this kind of traffic. This
+very woman did Mr. Hastings select, stigmatized as
+she was in the Company's record, stigmatized by
+the very gentleman who sits next to him, and wh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">{225}</a></span>ose
+name you have heard read to you as one of those
+members of the Council that reprobated the horrible
+iniquity of the transaction in which this woman was
+a principal agent. For though neither the young Nabob
+nor his mother ought to have been raised to the
+stations in which they were placed, and were placed
+there for the purpose of facilitating the receipt of
+bribes, yet the order of Nature was preserved, and
+the mother was made the guardian of her own son:
+for though she was a prostitute and he a bastard, yet
+still she was a mother and he a son; and both Nature
+and legitimate disposition with regard to the
+guardianship of a son went together.</p>
+
+<p>But what did Mr. Hastings do? Improving upon
+the preceding transaction, improving on it by a kind
+of refinement in corruption, he drives away the lawful
+mother from her lawful guardianship; the mother
+of nature he turns out, and he delivers her son to
+the stepmother to be the guardian of his person.
+That your Lordships may see who this woman was,
+we shall read to you a paper from your Lordships'
+minutes, produced before Mr. Hastings's face, and
+never contradicted by him from that day to this.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>At a Consultation, 24th July, 1775.&mdash;"Shah Chanim,
+deceased, was sister to the Nabob Mahub ul
+Jung by the same father, but different mothers; she
+married Mir Mahomed Jaffier Kh&acirc;n, by whom she
+had a son and a daughter; the name of the former
+was Mir Mahomed Sadduc Ali Kh&acirc;n, and the latter
+was married to Mir Mahomed Cossim Kh&acirc;n Sadduc.
+Ali Kh&acirc;n had two sons and two daughters; the sons'
+names are Mir Sydoc and Mir Sobeem, who are now
+living; the daughters were married to Sultan Mi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">{226}</a></span>rza
+Daood.</p>
+
+<p>"Baboo Begum, the mother of the Nabob Mobarek
+ul Dowlah, was the daughter of Summin Ali Kh&acirc;n,
+and married Mir Mahomed Jaffier Kh&acirc;n. The history
+of Munny Begum is this. At a village called Balkonda,
+near Sekundra, there lived a widow, who,
+from her great poverty, not being able to bring up
+her daughter Munny, gave her to a slave girl belonging
+to Summin Ali Kh&acirc;n, whose name was Bissoo.
+During the space of five years she lived at Shahjehanabad,
+and was educated by Bissoo after the manner
+of a dancing-girl. Afterwards the Nabob Shamut
+Jung, upon the marriage of Ikram ul Dowlah, brother
+to the Nabob Surajah ul Dowlah, sent for Bissoo
+Beg's set of dancing-girls from Shahjehanabad, of
+which Munny Begum was one, and allowed them ten
+thousand rupees for their expenses, to dance at the
+wedding. While this ceremony was celebrating, they
+were kept by the Nabob; but some months afterwards
+he dismissed them, and they took up their residence
+in this city. Mir Mahomed Jaffier Kh&acirc;n then took
+them into keeping, and allowed Munny and her set
+five hundred rupees per month, till at length, finding
+that Munny was pregnant, he took her into his
+own house. She gave birth to the Nabob Nujim ul
+Dowlah, and in this manner she has remained in the
+Nabob's family ever since."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, I do not mean to detain you long upon
+this part of the business, but I have thought it necessary
+to advert to these particulars. As to all the
+rest, the honorable and able Manager who preceded
+me has sufficiently impressed upon your Lordships'
+minds the monstrous nature of the deposing of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">{227}</a></span>
+Nabob's mother from the guardianship of her son, for
+the purpose of placing this woman there at the head
+of all his family and of his domestic concerns in the
+seraglio within doors, and at the head of the state
+without, together with the disposal of the whole of
+the revenue that was allowed him. Mr. Hastings
+pretends, indeed, to have appointed at the same time
+a trusty mutsuddy to keep the accounts of the revenue;
+but he has since declared that no account had
+been kept, and that it was in vain to desire it or to
+call for it. This is the state of the case with respect
+to the appointment of Munny Begum.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the reappointment of Mahomed
+Reza Kh&acirc;n, you have heard from my worthy fellow
+Manager that he was acquitted of the charges that
+had been brought against him by Mr. Hastings, after
+a long and lingering trial. The Company was perfectly
+satisfied with the acquittal, and declared that
+he was not only acquitted, but honorably acquitted;
+and they also declared that he had a fair claim to a
+compensation for his sufferings. They not only declared
+him innocent, but meritorious. They gave
+orders that he should be considered as a person who
+was to be placed in office again upon the first occasion,
+and that he had entitled himself to this favor by
+his conduct in the place which he had before filled.</p>
+
+<p>The Council of the year 1775, (whom I can never
+mention nor shall mention without honor,) who complied
+faithfully with the act of Parliament, who never
+disobeyed the orders of the Company, and to whom
+no man has imputed even the shadow of corruption,
+found that this Munny Begum had acted in the manner
+which my honorable fellow Manager has stated:
+that she had dissipated the revenue, that she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">{228}</a></span> had neglected
+the education of the Nabob, and had thrown
+the whole judicature of the country into confusion.
+They ordered that she should be removed from her
+situation; that the Nabob's own mother should be
+placed at the head of the seraglio, a situation to
+which she was entitled; and with regard to the rest
+of the offices, that Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n should be
+employed to fill them.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings resisted these propositions with all
+his might; but they were by that happy momentary
+majority carried against him, and Mahomed Reza
+Kh&acirc;n was placed in his former situation. But Mr.
+Hastings, though thus defeated, was only waiting for
+what he considered to be the fortunate moment for
+returning again to his corrupt, vicious, tyrannical,
+and disobedient habits. The reappointment of Mahomed
+Reza Kh&acirc;n had met with the fullest approbation
+of the Company; and they directed, that, as long
+as his good behavior entitled him to it, he should
+continue in the office. Mr. Hastings, however, without
+alleging any ill behavior, and for no reason that
+can be assigned, but his corrupt engagement with
+Munny Begum, overturned (upon the pretence of
+restoring the Nabob to his rights) the whole of the
+Company's arrangement, as settled by the late majority,
+and approved by the Court of Directors.</p>
+
+<p>I have now to show you what sort of a man the
+Nabob was, who was thus set up in defiance of the
+Company's authority; what Mr. Hastings himself
+thought of him; what the judges thought of him;
+and what all the world thought of him.</p>
+
+<p>I must first make your Lordships acquainted with
+a little preliminary matter. A man named Roy
+Rada Churn had been appointed vakeel, or age<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">{229}</a></span>nt, to
+manage the Nabob's affairs at Calcutta. One of this
+man's creditors attached him there. Roy Rada
+Churn pleaded his privilege as the vakeel or representative
+of a sovereign prince. The question came
+to be tried in the Supreme Court, and the issue was,
+Whether the Nabob was a sovereign prince or not.
+I think the court did exceedingly wrong in entertaining
+such a question; because, in my opinion,
+whether he was or was not a sovereign prince, any
+person representing him ought to be left free, and to
+have a proper and secure means of concerting his affairs
+with the Council. It was, however, taken otherwise;
+the question was brought to trial, whether the
+Nabob was a sovereign prince sufficient to appoint and
+protect a person to manage his affairs, under the name
+of an ambassador. In that cause did Mr. Hastings
+come forward to prove, by a voluntary affidavit, that
+he had no pretensions, no power, no authority at
+all,&mdash;that he was a mere pageant, a thing of straw,&mdash;and
+that the Company exercised every species of
+authority over him, in every particular, and in every
+respect; and that, therefore, to talk of him as an
+efficient person was an affront to the common sense
+of mankind: and this you will find the judges afterwards
+declared to be their opinion.</p>
+
+<p>I will here press again one remark, which perhaps
+you may recollect that I have made before, that the
+chief and most usual mode in which all the villanies
+perpetrated in India, by Mr. Hastings and his co-partners
+in iniquity, has been through the medium
+and instrumentality of persons whom they pretended
+to have rights of their own, and to be acting for
+themselves; whereas such persons were, in fact, totally
+dependent upon him, Mr. Hastings, and did no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">{230}</a></span>
+one act that was not prescribed by him. In order,
+therefore, to let you see the utter falsehood, fraud,
+prevarication, and deceit of the pretences by which
+the native powers of India are represented to be
+independent, and are held up as the instruments
+of defying the laws of this kingdom, under pretext
+of their being absolute princes, I will read the affidavit
+of Warren Hastings, Esquire, Governor-General
+of Bengal, made the 31st July, 1775.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"This deponent maketh oath, and saith, That the
+late President and Council did, in or about the
+month of August, 1772, by their own authority appoint
+Munny Begum, relict of the late Nabob, Mir
+Jaffier Ali Kh&acirc;n, to be guardian to the present Nabob,
+Mobarek ul Dowlah, and Rajah Gourdas, son
+of Maha Rajah Nundcomar, to be dewan of the said
+Nabob's household, allowing to the said Munny Begum
+a salary of 140,000 rupees per annum, and to
+the said Rajah Gourdas, for himself and officers, a
+salary of 100,000 rupees per annum: That the said
+late President and Council did, in or about the
+month of August, 1772, plan and constitute regular
+and distinct courts of justice, civil and criminal, by
+their own authority, for administration of justice to
+the inhabitants throughout Bengal, without consulting
+the said Nabob or requiring his concurrence, and
+that the said civil courts were made solely dependent
+on the Presidency of Calcutta; and the said criminal
+courts were put under the inspection and control of
+the Company's servants, although ostensibly under
+the name of the Nazim, as appears from the following
+extracts from the plan for the administration of
+justice, constituted by the President and Counci<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">{231}</a></span>l as
+aforesaid."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, we need not go through all the circumstances
+of this affidavit, which is in your minutes,
+and, to save time, I will refer your Lordships to
+them. This affidavit, as I have already said, was
+put into the court to prove that the Nabob had no
+power or authority at all; but what is very singular
+in it, and which I recommend to the particular notice
+of your Lordships, when you are scrutinizing this
+matter, is, that there is not a single point stated,
+to prove the nullity of this Nabob's authority, that
+was not Mr. Hastings's on particular act. Well,
+the Governor-General swears; the judge of the court
+refers to him in his decision; he builds and bottoms it
+upon the Governor-General's affidavit;&mdash;he swears,
+I say, that the Council, by their own authority, appointed
+Munny Begum to be guardian to the Nabob.</p>
+
+<p>"By what authority," the Governor-General asks,
+"did the Council erect courts of law and superintend
+the administration of justice, without any communication
+with the Nabob? Had the Nabob himself any
+idea that he was a sovereign? Does he complain
+of the reduction of his stipend or the infringement
+of treaties? No; he appears to consider himself to
+be, what in fact he really is, absolutely dependent
+on the Company, and to be willing to accept any pittance
+they would allow him for his maintenance:
+he claims no rights. Does he complain that the
+administration of justice is taken into the hands of
+the Company? No: by the treaty, the protection
+of his subjects is delivered up to the Company; and
+he well knew, that, whoever may be held up as the
+ostensible prince, the administration of justice <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">{232}</a></span>must
+be in the hands of those who have power to enforce
+it." He goes on,&mdash;"The Governor-General, who, I
+suppose, had a delicacy to state more than what had
+before been made public, closes his affidavit with saying
+that all he has deposed to he believes to be publicly
+known, as it is particularly set forth in the
+printed book entitled 'Reports of the Committee of
+the House of Commons.' I knew," he adds, "it was
+there, and was therefore surprised at this application;
+it is so notorious, that everybody in the settlement
+must have known it: when I say everybody, I mean
+with an exception to the gentlemen who have applied
+to the court. The only reason I can give for their
+applying is the little time they have been in the
+country." The judge (I think it is Chief-Justice Impey)
+then goes on,&mdash;"Perhaps this question might
+have been determined merely on the dates of the letters
+to the Governor-General; but as the Council have
+made the other a serious question, I should not have
+thought that I had done my duty, if I had not given
+a full and determinate opinion upon it: I should
+have been sorry, if I had left it doubtful whether the
+empty name of a Nabob should be thrust between
+a delinquent and the laws, so as effectually to protect
+him from the hand of justice."</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, the court, as you see, bottoms its determination
+on what we stand upon here, Mr. Hastings's
+evidence, that the empty name of a pretended sovereign
+should not be thrust forth between a delinquent
+and justice.</p>
+
+<p>What does Mr. Le Maistre, the other judge, say
+upon this occasion? "With regard to this phantom,
+that man of straw, Mobarek ul Dowlah, it is an insult
+on the understanding of the court to have made the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">{233}</a></span>
+question of his sovereignty. But as it came from the
+Governor-General and Council, I have too much respect
+for that body to treat it ludicrously, and I confess
+I cannot consider it seriously, and we always shall
+consider a letter of business from the Nabob the same
+as a letter from the Governor-General and Council."</p>
+
+<p>This is the unanimous opinion of all the judges
+concerning the state and condition of the Nabob.
+We have thus established the point we mean to
+establish: that any use which shall be made of the
+Nabob's name for the purpose of justifying any disobedience
+to the orders of the Company, or of bringing
+forward corrupt and unfit persons for the government,
+could be considered as no other than the act
+of the persons who shall make such a use of it; and
+that no letter that the Nabob writes to any one in
+power was or could be considered as any other than
+the letter of that person himself. This we wish to
+impress upon your Lordships, because, as you have
+before seen the use that has been made in this way
+of the Nabob of Oude, you may judge of the use that
+has been made of the name of Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n, and
+of the names of all the eminent persons of the country.</p>
+
+<p>One word more and I have done. If, whilst you
+remark the use that is made of this man's name, your
+Lordships shall find that this use has ever been made
+of his name for his benefit, or for the purpose of giving
+him any useful or substantial authority, or of meliorating
+his condition in any way whatever; forgive
+the fraud, forgive the disobedience. But if we have
+shown your Lordships that it was for no other purpose
+than to disobey the orders of the Company, to trample
+upon the laws of his country, to introduce back again,
+and to force into power, those very corrupt and wicked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">{234}</a></span>
+instruments which had formerly done so much mischief,
+and for which mischief they were removed,
+then we shall not have passed our time in vain, in
+endeavoring to prove that this man, in the opinion of
+a court of justice, and by public notoriety, and by
+Mr. Hastings's own opinion, was held to be fit for
+nothing but to be made a tool in his hands.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Having stated to your Lordships generally the
+effects produced upon the Mahometan interest of
+Bengal by the misconduct of the prisoner at your bar
+with respect to the appointment of the guardian of
+the Nabob or Subahdar of that province, and of the
+ministers of his government, I shall have the honor
+of attending your Lordships another day, and shall
+show you the use that has been made of this government
+and of the authority of the Nabob, who, as your
+Lordships have seen, was the mere phantom of power;
+and I shall show how much a phantom he was for
+every good purpose, and how effectual an instrument
+he was made for every bad one.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">{235}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTH_DAY_SATURDAY_JUNE_14_1794" id="EIGHTH_DAY_SATURDAY_JUNE_14_1794"></a>SPEECH<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">IN</span><br />
+<br />
+GENERAL REPLY.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">EIGHTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 1794.</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>My Lords,&mdash;Your Lordships heard, upon the
+last day of the meeting of this high court, the
+distribution of the several matters which I should
+have occasion to lay before you, and by which I
+resolved to guide myself in the examination of the
+conduct of Mr. Hastings with regard to Bengal. I
+stated that I should first show the manner in which
+he comported himself with regard to the people who
+were found in possession of the government when we
+first entered into Bengal. We have shown to your
+Lordships the progressive steps by which the native
+government was brought into a state of annihilation.
+We have stated the manner in which that government
+was solemnly declared by a court of justice to
+be depraved, and incompetent to act, and dead in law.
+We have shown to your Lordships (and we have
+referred you to the document) that its death was
+declared upon a certificate of the principal attending
+physician of the state, namely, Mr. Warren Hastings
+himself. This was declared in an affidavit made by
+him, wherein he has gone through all the powers of
+government, of which he had regularly despoiled the
+Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah, part by part, exactly according
+to the ancient formula by which a degraded
+knight was despoiled of his knighthood: th<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">{236}</a></span>ey took, I
+say, from him all the powers of government, article
+by article,&mdash;his helmet, his shield, his cuirass; at
+last they hacked off his spurs, and left him nothing.
+Mr. Hastings laid down all the premises, and left the
+judges to draw the conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships will remark (for you will find it
+on your minutes) that the judges have declared this
+affidavit of Mr. Hastings to be a <i>delicate</i> affidavit.
+We have heard of affidavits that were true; we have
+heard of affidavits that were perjured; but this is the
+first instance that has come to our knowledge (and
+we receive it as a proof of Indian refinement) of a
+delicate affidavit. This affidavit of Mr. Hastings we
+shall show to your Lordships is not entitled to the
+description of a good affidavit, however it might be
+entitled, in the opinion of those judges, to the description
+of a delicate affidavit,&mdash;a phrase by which
+they appear to have meant that he had furnished all
+the proofs of the Nabob's deposition, but had delicately
+avoided to declare him expressly deposed.
+The judges drew, however, this indelicate conclusion;
+the conclusion they drew was founded upon the
+premises; it was very just and logical; for they declared
+that he was a mere cipher. They commended
+Mr. Hastings's delicacy, though they did not imitate
+it; but they pronounced sentence of deposition upon
+the said Nabob, and they declared that any letter or
+paper that was produced from him could not be considered
+as an act of government. So effectually was
+he removed by the judges out of the way, that no
+minority, no insanity, no physical circumstances, not
+even death itself, could put a man more completely
+out of sight. They declare that they would consider
+his letters in no other light than as the letters o<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">{237}</a></span>f
+the Company, represented by the Governor-General
+and Council. Thus, then, we find the Nabob legally
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>We find next, that he was politically dead. Mr.
+Hastings, not satisfied with the affidavit he made in
+court, has thought proper upon record to inform the
+Company and the world of what he considered him to
+be civilly and politically.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Minute entered by the Governor-General.</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>The Governor-General.</i>&mdash;I object to this motion,"
+(a motion relative to the trial above alluded to,)
+"because I do not apprehend that the declaration of
+the judges respecting the Nabob's sovereignty will
+involve this government in any difficulties with the
+French or other foreign nations." (Mark, my Lords,
+these political effects.) "How little the screen of
+the Nabob's name has hitherto availed will appear in
+the frequent and inconclusive correspondence which
+has been maintained with the foreign settlements, the
+French especially, since the Company have thought
+proper to stand forth in their real character in the
+exercise of the dewanny. From that period the government
+of these provinces has been wholly theirs;
+nor can all the subtleties and distinctions of political
+sophistry conceal the possession of power, where the
+exercise of it is openly practised and universally
+felt in its operation. In deference to the commands
+of the Company, we have generally endeavored, in all
+our correspondence with foreigners, to evade the direct
+avowal of our possessing the actual rule of the
+country,&mdash;employing the unapplied term government,
+for the power to which we exacted their submission;
+but I do not remember any instance, and I hope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">{238}</a></span>
+none will be found, of our having been so disingenuous
+as to disclaim our own power, or to affirm that the
+Nabob was the real sovereign of these provinces. In
+effect, I do not hesitate to say that I look upon this
+state of indecision to have been productive of all the
+embarrassments which we have experienced with the
+foreign settlements. None of them have ever owned
+any dominion but that of the British government in
+these provinces. Mr. Chevalier has repeatedly declared,
+that he will not acknowledge any other, but
+will look to that only for the support of the privileges
+possessed by his nation, and shall protest against that
+alone as responsible for any act of power by which
+their privileges may be violated or their property disturbed.
+The Dutch, the Danes, have severally applied
+to this government, as to the ruling power, for
+the grant of indulgences and the redress of their
+grievances. In our replies to all, we have constantly
+assumed the prerogatives of that character, but
+eluded the direct avowal of it; under the name of
+influence we have offered them protection, and we
+have granted them the indulgences of government
+under elusive expressions, sometimes applied to our
+treaties with the Nabobs, sometimes to our own
+rights as the dewan; sometimes openly declaring the
+virtual rule which we held of these provinces, we
+have contended with them for the rights of government,
+and threatened to repel with force the encroachments
+on it; we in one or two instances have
+actually put these threats into execution, by orders
+directly issued to the officers of government and enforced
+by detachments from our own military forces;
+the Nabob was never consulted, nor was the pretence
+ever made that his orders or concurrence were neces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">{239}</a></span>sary:
+in a word, we have always allowed ourselves
+to be treated as principals, we have treated as principals,
+but we have contented ourselves with letting
+our actions insinuate the character which we effectually
+possessed, without asserting it.</p>
+
+<p>"For my own part, I have ever considered the reserve
+which has been enjoined us in this respect as a
+consequence of the doubts which have long prevailed,
+and which are still suffered to subsist, respecting the
+rights of the British government and the Company
+to the property and dominion of these provinces, not
+as inferring a doubt with respect to any foreign power.
+It has, however, been productive of great inconveniences;
+it has prevented our acting with vigor
+in our disputes with the Dutch and French. The
+former refuse to this day the payment of the <i>bahor
+peshcush</i>, although the right is incontestably against
+them, and we have threatened to enforce it. Both nations
+refuse to be bound by our decrees, or to submit
+to our regulations; they refuse to submit to the payment
+of the duties on the foreign commerce but in
+their own way, which amounts almost to a total exemption;
+they refuse to submit to the duty of ten
+per cent which is levied upon foreign salt, by which,
+unless a stop can be put to it by a more decisive
+rule, they will draw the whole of that important
+trade into their own colonies; and even in the single
+instance in which they have allowed us to prescribe
+to them, namely, the embargo on grain, on
+the apprehension of a dearth, I am generally persuaded
+that they acquiesced from the secret design
+of taking advantage of the general suspension, by
+exporting grain clandestinely under cover of their
+colors, which they knew would screen them from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">{240}</a></span>
+the rigorous examination of our officers. We are
+precluded from forming many arrangements of general
+utility, because of the want of control over
+the European settlements; and a great part of the
+defects which subsist in the government and commercial
+state of the country are ultimately derived
+from this source. I have not the slightest suspicion
+that a more open and decided conduct would expose
+us to worse consequences from the European
+nations; on the contrary, we have the worst of the
+argument while we contend with them under false
+colors, while they know us under the disguise, and
+we have not the confidence to disown it. What we
+have done and may do under an assumed character
+is full as likely to involve us in a war with France,
+a nation not much influenced by logical weapons,
+(if such can be supposed to be the likely consequence
+of our own trifling disagreements with
+them,) as if we stood forth their avowed opponents.
+To conclude, instead of regretting, with Mr. Francis,
+the occasion which deprives us of so useless
+and hurtful a disguise, I should rather rejoice, were
+it really the case, and consider it as a crisis which
+freed the constitution of our government from one
+of its greatest defects."</p></div>
+
+<p>Now, my Lords, the delicacy of the affidavit is
+no more; the great arcanum of the state is avowed:
+it is avowed that the government is ours,&mdash;that the
+Nabob is nothing. It is avowed to foreign nations;
+and the disguise which we have put on, Mr. Hastings
+states, in his opinion, to be hurtful to the affairs
+of the Company. Here we perceive the exact
+and the perfect agreement between his char<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">{241}</a></span>acter as
+a delicate affidavit-maker in a court of justice and his
+indelicate declarations upon the records of the Company
+for the information of the whole world concerning
+the real arcanum of the Bengal government.</p>
+
+<p>Now I cannot help praising his consistency upon
+this occasion, whether his policy was right or wrong.
+Hitherto we find the whole consistent, we find the
+affidavit perfectly supported. The inferences which
+delicacy at first prevented him from producing better
+recollection and more perfect policy made him here
+avow. In this state things continued. The Nabob,
+your Lordships see, is dead,&mdash;dead in law, dead in
+politics, dead in a court of justice, dead upon the
+records of the Company. Except in mere animal
+existence, it is all over with him.</p>
+
+<p>I have now to state to your Lordships, that Mr.
+Hastings, who has the power of putting even to death
+in this way, possesses likewise the art of restoring to
+life. But what is the medicine that revives them?
+Your Lordships, I am sure, will be glad to know what
+nostrum, not hitherto pretended to by quacks in
+physic, by quacks in politics, nor by quacks in law,
+will serve to revive this man, to cover his dead bones
+with flesh, and to give him life, activity, and vigor.
+My Lords, I am about to tell you an instance of a
+recipe of such infallible efficacy as was never before
+discovered. His cure for all disorders is disobedience
+to the commands of his lawful superiors. When the
+orders of the Court of Directors are contrary to his
+own opinions, he forgets them all. Let the Court of
+Directors but declare in favor of his own system and
+his own positions, and that very moment, merely for
+the purpose of declaring his right of rebellion against
+the laws of his country, he counteracts them. Then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">{242}</a></span>
+these dead bones arise,&mdash;or, to use a language more
+suitable to the dignity of the thing, Bayes's men are
+all revived. "Are these men dead?" asks Mr.
+Bayes's friend. "No," says he, "they shall all get
+up and dance immediately." But in this ludicrous
+view of Mr. Hastings's conduct, your Lordships must
+not lose sight of its great importance. You cannot
+have in an abstract, as it were, any one thing that
+better develops the principles of the man, that more
+fully develops all the sources of his conduct, and of
+all the frauds and iniquities which he has committed,
+in order at one and the same time to evade his duty
+to the Court of Directors, that is to say, to the laws
+of his country, and to oppress, crush, rob, and ill-treat
+the people that are under him.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, you have had an account of the person
+who represented the Nabob's dignity, Mahomed Reza
+Kh&acirc;n; you have heard of the rank he bore, the sufferings
+that he went through, his trial and honorable
+acquittal, and the Company's order that the first
+opportunity should be taken to appoint him Naib
+Subah, or deputy of the Nabob, and more especially
+to represent him in the administering of justice.
+Your Lordships are also acquainted with what was
+done in consequence of those orders by the Council-General,
+in the restoration and reëstablishment of
+the executive power in this person,&mdash;not in the poor
+Nabob, a poor, helpless, ill-bred, ill-educated boy, but
+in the first Mussulman of the country, who had before
+exercised the office of Naib Subah, or deputy viceroy,&mdash;in
+order to give some degree of support to the expiring
+honor and justice of that country. The majority,
+namely, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr.
+Francis, whose names, as I have before said, will,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">{243}</a></span> for
+obedience to the Company, fidelity to the laws, honor
+to themselves, and a purity untouched and unimpeached,
+stand distinguished and honored, in spite of
+all the corrupt and barking virulence of India against
+them,&mdash;these men, I say, obeyed the Company:
+they had no secret or fraudulent connection with
+Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n; but they reinstated him in
+his office.</p>
+
+<p>The moment that real death had carried away two
+of the most virtuous of this community, and that Mr.
+Hastings was thereby re&euml;stablished in his power, he
+returned to his former state of rebellion to the Company,
+and of fraud and oppression upon the people.
+And here we come to the revivificating medicine. I
+forgot to tell your Lordships, that this Nabob, whose
+letters were declared by a court of law, with his own
+approbation, to be in effect letters of the Governor-General
+and Council, concludes a formal application
+transmitted to them, and dated 17th November, 1777,
+with a demand of the restoration of his rights. Mr.
+Hastings upon this enters the following minute:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"The Nabob's demands are grounded upon positive
+rights, which will not admit of a discussion; he
+has an incontestable right to the management of his
+own household; he has an incontestable right to the
+nizamut."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, you have heard his affidavit, you have
+heard his avowed and recorded opinion. In direct
+defiance of both, because he wishes to make doubtful
+the orders of the Company and to evade his duty, he
+here makes without any delicacy a declaration, which
+if it be true, the affidavit is a gross perjury, let it be
+managed with what delicacy he pleases. The word<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">{244}</a></span>
+<i>nizamut</i>, which he uses, may be unfamiliar to your
+Lordships. In India it signifies the whole executive
+government, though the word strictly means viceroyalty:
+all the princes of that country holding their
+dominions as representatives of the Mogul, the great
+nominal sovereign of the empire. To convince you
+that it does so, take his own explanation of it.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"It is his by inheritance: the adawlut and the foujdarry
+having been repeatedly declared by the Company
+and by this government to appertain to the nizamut.
+The adawlut, namely, the distribution of civil
+justice, and the foujdarry, namely, the executive criminal
+justice of that country, that is to say, the whole
+sovereign government of the courts of justice, have
+been declared by the Company to appertain to the
+nizamut."</p></div>
+
+<p>I beg of your Lordships to recollect, when you take
+into your consideration the charges of the House of
+Commons, that the person they accuse, and persons
+suborned by him, have never scrupled to be guilty,
+without sense of shame, of the most notorious falsehoods,
+the most glaring inconsistencies, and even of
+perjury itself; and that it is thus they make the power
+of the Company dead or alive, as best suits their
+own wicked, clandestine, and fraudulent purposes,
+and the great end of all their actions and all their
+politics plunder and peculation.</p>
+
+<p>I must here refer your Lordships to a minute of
+Mr. Francis's, which I recommend to your reading
+at large, and to your very serious recollection, in
+page 1086; because it contains a complete history of
+Mr. Hastings's conduct, and of its effects upon this
+occasion.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">{245}</a></span></p>
+<p>And now to proceed.&mdash;The Nabob, in a subsequent
+application to the Company's government at Calcutta,
+desires that Munny Begum may be allowed to take
+on herself the whole administration of the affairs of
+the nizamut, (not the superiority in the administration
+of the affairs of the seraglio only, though this
+would have been a tyrannical usurpation of the power
+belonging to the legitimate mother of the Nabob,)
+without the interference of any person whatever;
+and he adds, that by this the Governor will give him
+complete satisfaction. In all fraudulent correspondence
+you are sure to find the true secret of it at last.
+It has been said by somebody, that the true sense of
+a letter is to be learnt from its postscript. But this
+matter is so clumsily managed, that, in contempt of
+all decency, the first thing the Nabob does is to desire
+he may be put into the hands of Munny Begum, and
+that without the interference of anybody whatever.</p>
+
+<p>The next letter, immediately following on the
+heels of the former, was received by the Council on
+the 12th of February, 1778. In this letter he desires
+that Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n may be removed from his
+office in the government; and he expresses his hopes,
+that, as he himself is now come to years of maturity,
+and by the blessing of God is not so devoid of understanding
+as to be incapable of conducting his affairs,
+he says, "I am therefore hopeful, from your favor
+and regard to justice, that you will deliver me from
+the authority of the aforesaid Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n,
+and give your permission that I take on myself the
+management of the adawlut and foujdarry." There
+is no doubt of this latter application, in contradiction
+to the former, having arisen from a suspicion that the
+appointment of Munny Begum would be too gross,
+and would shock the Council; and Mr. Hastings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">{246}</a></span>
+therefore orders the second letter to be written from
+the Nabob, in which he claims the powers of government
+for himself. Then follows a letter from the Governor-General,
+informing the Nabob that it had been
+agreed, that, his Excellency being now arrived at
+years of maturity, the control of his own household,
+and the courts dependent on the nizamut and foujdarry,
+should be placed in his hands; and Mahomed
+Reza Kh&acirc;n was directed at the same time to resign
+his authority to the Nabob.</p>
+
+<p>Here your Lordships see Munny Begum in effect
+completely invested with, and you will see how she
+has used her power: for I suppose your Lordships
+are sick of the name of Nabob, as a real actor in the
+government. You now see the true parties in the
+transaction,&mdash;namely, the lover, Warren Hastings,
+Esquire, and Munny Begum, the object of his passion
+and flame, to which he sacrifices as much as Antony
+ever did to Cleopatra. You see the object of his
+love and affection placed in the administration of the
+viceroyalty; you see placed at her disposal the administration
+of the civil judicature, and of the executory
+justice,&mdash;together with the salary which was
+intended for Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships will be pleased to remember that
+this distribution of the Nabob's government was made
+in direct defiance of the orders of the Company.
+And as a further proof of this defiance, it will not
+escape your Lordships, that, before this measure was
+carried into execution, Mr. Barwell being one day
+absent from the Council, Mr. Hastings fell into a
+minority; and it was agreed, upon that occasion,
+that the whole affair should be referred home to the
+Court of Directors, and that no arrangement should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">{247}</a></span>
+be made till the Directors had given their opinion.
+Mr. Hastings, the very moment after Mr. Barwell's
+return to his seat in the Council, rescinds this resolution,
+which subjected the orders of the Court of
+Directors to their own reconsideration; and he hurries
+headlong and precipitately into the execution
+of his first determination. Your Lordships will also
+see in this act what sort of use Mr. Hastings made
+of the Council; and I have therefore insisted upon
+all these practices of the prisoner at your bar, because
+there is not one of them in which some principle
+of government is not wounded, if not mortally
+wounded.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, we have laid before you the consequences
+of this proceeding. We have shown what passed
+within the walls of the seraglio, and what tyranny
+was exercised by this woman over the multitude of
+women there. I shall now show your Lordships in
+what manner she made use of her power over the
+<i>supreme judicature</i>, to peculate, and to destroy the
+country; and I shall adduce, as proofs of this abuse
+of her authority, the facts I am about to relate, and
+of which there is evidence before your Lordships.</p>
+
+<p>There was an ostensible man, named Sudder ul
+Huk Kh&acirc;n, placed there at the head of the administration
+of justice, with a salary of seven thousand
+pounds a year of the Company's money. This man,
+in a letter to the Governor-General and Council, received
+the 1st of September, 1778, says,&mdash;"His Highness
+himself [the Nabob] is not deficient in regard for
+me, but certain bad men have gained an ascendency
+over his temper, by whose instigation he acts." You
+will see, my Lords, how this poor man was crippled
+in the execution of his duty, and dishonored by th<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">{248}</a></span>e
+corruption of this woman and her eunuchs, to whom
+Mr. Hastings had given the supreme government, and
+with it an uncontrolled influence over all the dependent
+parts. After thus complaining of the slights
+he receives from the Nabob, he adds,&mdash;"Thus they
+cause the Nabob to treat me, sometimes with indignity,
+at others with kindness, just as they think proper
+to advise him: their view is, that, by compelling
+me to displeasure at such unworthy treatment, they
+may force me either to relinquish my station, or to
+join with them and act with their advice, and appoint
+creatures of their recommendation to the different
+offices, from which they might draw profit to themselves."
+In a subsequent letter to the Governor, Sudder
+ul Huk Kh&acirc;n says,&mdash;"The Begum's ministers,
+before my arrival, with the advice of their counsellors,
+caused the Nabob to sign a receipt, in consequence
+of which they received, at two different times,
+near fifty thousand rupees, in the name of the officers
+of the adawlut, foujdarry, &amp;c., from the Company's
+sircar; and having drawn up an account current in
+the manner they wished, they got the Nabob to sign
+it, and then sent it to me." In the same letter he
+asserts that these people have the Nabob entirely in
+their power.</p>
+
+<p>Now I have only to remark to your Lordships, that
+the first and immediate operation of Mr. Hastings's
+regulation, which put everything into the hands of
+this wicked woman for her corrupt purposes, was,
+that the office of chief-justice was trampled upon and
+depraved, and made use of to plunder the Company
+of money, which was appropriated to their own
+uses,&mdash;and that the person ostensibly holding this
+office was forced to become the instrument in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">{249}</a></span>
+hands of this wicked woman and her two wicked
+eunuchs. This, then, was the representation which
+the chief-justice made to Mr. Hastings, as one of the
+very first fruits of his new arrangement. I am now to
+tell you what his next step was. This same Mr. Hastings,
+who had made the Nabob master of everything
+and placed everything at his disposal, who had maintained
+that the Nabob was not to act a secondary part
+and to be a mere instrument in the hands of the Company,
+who had, as you have seen, revived the Nabob,
+now puts him to death again. He pretends to be
+shocked at these proceedings of the Nabob, and, not
+being able to prevent their coming before the Council
+of the Directors at home, he immediately took Sudder
+ul Huk Kh&acirc;n under his protection.</p>
+
+<p>Now your Lordships see Mr. Hastings appearing
+in his own character again,&mdash;exercising the power
+he had pretended to abdicate, whilst the Nabob sinks
+and subsides under him. He becomes the supporter
+of Sudder ul Huk Kh&acirc;n, now that the infamy of the
+treatment he received could no longer be concealed
+from the Council. On the 1st of September, 1778,
+the Governor informs the Nabob, "that it is highly
+expedient that Sudder ul Huk Kh&acirc;n should have
+full control in all matters relative to his office, and
+the sole appointment and dismission of the sudder
+and mofussil officers; and that his seal and signature
+should be authentic to all papers having relation to
+the business intrusted to him: I therefore intimate
+to you, that he should appoint and dismiss all the
+officers under him, and that your Excellency should
+not interfere in any one [way?]."</p>
+
+<p>The Nabob, in a letter to the Governor, received the
+3d of September, 1778, says,&mdash;"Agreeably to your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">{250}</a></span>
+pleasure, I have relinquished all concern with the
+affairs of the foujdarry and adawlut, leaving the entire
+management in Sudder ul Huk Kh&acirc;n's hands."
+Here you see the Nabob again reduced to his former
+state of subordination. This chief-justiceship,
+which was declared to be his inherent right, he is
+obliged to submit to the control of Mr. Hastings,
+and to declare that he will not interfere at all in a
+matter which Mr. Hastings had declared to be his incommunicable
+attribute. I do not say that Mr. Hastings
+interfered improperly. Certainly it was not fit
+that the highest court of justice in all Bengal should
+be made the instrument of the rapacity of a set of
+villains with a prostitute at their head: just as if
+a gang of thieves in England, with their prostitutes
+at their head, should seize the judge which ought to
+punish them, and endeavor to make use of his name
+in their iniquitous transactions. But your Lordships
+will find that Mr. Hastings is here acting a merely
+ostensible part, and that he has always a means of
+defeating privately what he declares publicly to be
+his intention. Your Lordships will see soon how
+this ended. Mr. Hastings gets the Nabob to give up
+all his authority over the chief-justice; but he says
+not one word of Munny Begum, the person who had
+the real authority in her hands, and who was not
+forbidden to interfere with him. Mr. Hastings's order
+is dated the 1st September, 1778. On the 3d of
+September, the Nabob is said to have relinquished all
+concern with Sudder ul Huk Kh&acirc;n. In a letter received
+the 30th of September, (that is, about twenty-seven
+days after the date of Mr. Hastings's order,)
+you will see how this pretended order was managed.
+Sudder ul Huk Kh&acirc;n thus writes, in a letter receiv<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">{251}</a></span>ed
+the 30th of September.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"Yatibar Ali Kh&acirc;n," (Munny Begum's chief eunuch,)
+"from the amount of salaries of the officers
+of the adawlut and foujdarry, which before my arrival
+he had received for two months from the sircar,
+made disbursements according to his own pleasure.
+He had before caused the sum of 7,400 rupees,
+on account of the price of mine and my peshcar's
+khelauts, to be carried to account, and now continually
+sends a man to demand from me 4,300 and odd
+rupees, as a balance of the price of khelauts, and constantly
+presses me to take it from the amount of the
+salaries of the officers of the adawlut and foujdarry
+and send it to him; and I shall be under the necessity
+of complying. I mention this for your information."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, you see again how Mr. Hastings's pretended
+orders were obeyed. They were orders addressed
+to the Nabob, whom he knew to be nothing,
+and who could neither control or take the least
+share in the execution of them; but he leaves the
+thing loose as to Manny Begum and her eunuchs,
+who he knew could alone carry them into effect.
+Your Lordships see that the first use made of the
+restored authority of the Nabob was, under various
+pretences, to leave the salaries of the officers of government
+unprovided for, to rob the public treasury,
+and to give the Company's money to the eunuchs,
+who were acting in the manner I have stated to
+you.</p>
+
+<p>Information of these proceedings reaches Calcutta;
+a regular complaint from a person in the highest
+situation in the government is made, and the Gov<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">{252}</a></span>ernor-General
+is obliged again to take up the matter;
+and I shall now read to your Lordships a letter of the
+10th of October, 1778, which contains a representation
+so pointed and so very just of the fatal effects
+which his interference in the administration of justice
+had produced as not to stand in need of any
+comment from me. It speaks too plainly to require
+any.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>The Governor-General's Letter to the Nabob</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"At your Excellency's request I sent Sudder ul
+Huk Kh&acirc;n to take on him the administration of the
+affairs of the adawlut and foujdarry, and hoped by
+that means not only to have given satisfaction to
+your Excellency, but that, through his abilities and
+experience, these affairs would have been conducted
+in such manner as to have secured the peace of the
+country and the happiness of the people; and it is
+with the greatest concern I learn that this measure
+is so far from being attended with the expected advantages,
+that the affairs both of the foujdarry and
+adawlut are in the greatest confusion imaginable, and
+daily robberies and murders are perpetrated throughout
+the country. This is evidently owing to the
+want of a proper authority in the person appointed
+to superintend them. I therefore addressed your
+Excellency on the importance and delicacy of the affairs
+in question, and of the necessity of lodging full
+power in the hands of the person chosen to administer
+them, in reply to which your Excellency expressed
+sentiments coincident with mine; notwithstanding
+which, your dependants and people, actuated
+by selfish and avaricious views, have by their
+interference so impeded the business as to thr<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">{253}</a></span>ow the
+whole country into a state of confusion, from which
+nothing can retrieve it but an unlimited power lodged
+in the hands of the superintendent. I therefore request
+that your Excellency will give the strictest
+injunctions to all your dependants not to interfere
+in any manner with any matter relative to the affairs
+of the adawlut and foujdarry, and that you will yourself
+relinquish all interference therein, and leave
+them entirely to the management of Sudder ul Huk
+Kh&acirc;n. This is absolutely necessary to restore the
+country to a state of tranquillity; and if your Excellency
+has any plan to propose for the management of
+the affairs in future, be pleased to communicate it to
+me, and every attention shall be paid to give your
+Excellency satisfaction."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, I think I have read enough to you for
+our present purpose,&mdash;referring your Lordships for
+fuller information to your Minutes, page 1086, which
+I beg you to read with the greatest attention.</p>
+
+<p>I must again beg your Lordships to remark, that,
+though Mr. Hastings has the impudence still to pretend
+that he wishes for the restoration of order and
+justice in the country, yet, instead of writing to Munny
+Begum upon the business, whom he knew to be
+the very object complained of, and whose eunuchs are
+expressly mentioned in the complaint, he writes to
+the Nabob, whom he knew to be a pageant in his
+own court and government, and whose name was
+not even mentioned in this last complaint. Not one
+word is said, even in this letter to the Nabob, of
+Munny Begum or of her eunuchs. My Lords, when
+you consider his tacit support of the authors of the
+grievance, and his ostensible application for redres<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">{254}</a></span>s
+to the man who he knew never authorized and could
+not redress the grievance, you must conclude that
+he meant to keep the country in the same state for
+his own corrupt purposes. In this state the country
+in fact continued; Munny Begum and her eunuchs
+continued to administer and squander the
+Company's money, as well as the Nabob's; robberies
+and murders continued to prevail throughout the
+country. No appearance was left of order, law, or
+justice, from one end of Bengal to the other.</p>
+
+<p>The account of this state of things was received by
+the Court of Directors with horror and indignation.
+On the 27th of May, 1779, they write, as you will
+find in page 1063 of your printed Minutes, a letter to
+their government at Calcutta, condemning their proceedings
+and the removal of Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n,
+and they order that Munny Begum shall be displaced,
+and Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n restored again to the seat
+of justice.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Francis, upon the arrival of these reiterated
+orders, moved in Council for an obedience to them.
+Mr. Hastings, notwithstanding he had before his eyes
+all the horrible consequences that attended his new
+arrangement, still resists that proposition. By his
+casting voice in the Council he counter-orders the
+orders of the Court of Directors, and sanctions a direct
+disobedience to their authority, by a resolution
+that Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n should not be restored
+to his employment, but that this Sudder ul Huk
+Kh&acirc;n, who still continued in the condition already
+described, should remain in the possession of his
+office. I say nothing of Sudder ul Huk Kh&acirc;n; he
+seems to be very well disposed to do his duty, if
+Mr. Hastings's arrangements had suffered him to d<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">{255}</a></span>o
+it; and indeed, if Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n had been
+reinstated, and no better supported by Mr. Hastings
+than Sudder ul Huk Kh&acirc;n, he could probably have
+kept the country in no better order, though, perhaps,
+his name, and the authority and weight which still
+adhered to him in some degree, might have had some
+influence.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, you have seen his defiance of the Company;
+you have seen his defiance of all decency;
+you see his open protection of prostitutes and robbers
+of every kind ravaging Bengal; you have seen
+this defiance of the authority of the Court of Directors
+flatly, directly, and peremptorily persisted in
+to the last. Order after order was reiterated, but his
+disobedience arose with an elastic spring in proportion
+to the pressure that was upon it.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, here there was a pause. The Directors
+had been disobeyed; and you might suppose that
+he would have been satisfied with this act of disobedience.
+My Lords, he was resolved to let the native
+governments of the country know that he despised
+the orders of the Court of Directors, and that,
+whenever he pretended to obey them, in reality he
+was resolved upon the most actual disobedience. An
+event now happened, the particulars of which we
+are not to repeat here. Disputes, conducted, on Mr.
+Francis's side, upon no other principle, that we can
+discover, but a desire to obey the Company's orders,
+and to execute his duty with fidelity and disinterestedness,
+had arisen between him and Mr. Hastings.
+Mr. Francis, about the time we have been speaking
+of, finding resistance was vain, reconciles himself
+to him,&mdash;but on the most honorable terms as a
+public man, namely, that he should continue t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">{256}</a></span>o follow
+and obey the laws, and to respect the authority
+of the Court of Directors. Upon this reconciliation,
+it was agreed that Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n should be
+restored to his office. For this purpose Mr. Hastings
+enters a minute, and writes to the Nabob an ostensible
+letter. But your Lordships will here see an instance
+of what I said respecting a double current
+in all Mr. Hastings's proceedings. Even when he
+obeys or pretends to obey the Company's orders,
+there is always a private channel through which he
+defeats them all.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Letter from Mr. Hastings to the Nabob Mobarek ul
+Dowlah, written the 10th of February, 1780.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The Company, whose orders are peremptory,
+have directed that Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n shall be
+restored to the offices he held in January, 1778. It
+is my duty to represent this to your Excellency, and
+to recommend your compliance with their request,
+that Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n may be invested with the
+offices assigned to him under the nizamut by the
+Company."</p></div>
+
+<p>Your Lordships see here that Mr. Hastings informs
+the Nabob, that, having received peremptory orders
+from the Company, he restores and replaces Mahomed
+Reza Kh&acirc;n. Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n, then, is in possession,&mdash;and
+in possession by the best of all titles,
+the orders of the Company. But you will also see
+the manner in which he evades his duty, and vilifies
+in the eyes of these miserable country powers
+the authority of the Directors. He is prepared, as
+usual, with a defeasance of his own act; and the
+manner in which that defeasance came to our know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">{257}</a></span>ledge
+is this. We knew nothing of this private affair,
+till Mr. Hastings, in his answer before the House of
+Commons, finding it necessary to destroy the validity
+of some of his own acts, brought forward Sir John
+D'Oyly. He was brought forward before us, not
+as a witness in his own person for the defence of
+Mr. Hastings, but as a narrator who had been employed
+by Mr. Hastings as a member of that Council
+which, as you have heard, drew up his defence.
+My Lords, you have already seen the public agency
+of this business, you have heard read the public letter
+sent to the Nabob: there you see the ostensible
+part of the transaction. Now hear the banian, Sir
+John D'Oyly, give an account of his part in it, extracted
+from Mr. Hastings's defence before the House
+of Commons.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"I was appointed Resident [at the Court of the
+Nabob] on the resignation of Mr. Byam Martin,
+in the month of January, 1780, and took charge
+about the beginning of February of the same year.
+The substance of the instructions I received was, to
+endeavor, by every means in my power, to conciliate
+the good opinion and regard of the Nabob and his
+family, that I might be able to persuade him to
+adopt effectual measures for the better regulation
+of his expenses, which were understood to have
+greatly exceeded his income; that I might prevent
+his forming improper connections, or taking any
+steps derogatory to his rank, and by every means
+in my power support his credit and dignify in the
+eyes of the world; and with respect to the various
+branches of his family, I was instructed to endeavor
+to put a stop to the dissensions which had too frequ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">{258}</a></span>ently
+prevailed amongst them. The Nabob, on
+his part, was recommended to pay the same attention
+to my advice as he would have done to that
+of the Governor-General in person. Some time, I
+think, in the month of February of the same year,
+I received a letter from Mr. Hastings, purporting
+that the critical situation of affairs requiring the
+union and utmost exertion of every member of the
+government to give vigor to the acts necessary for
+its relief, he had agreed to an accommodation with
+Mr. Francis; but to effect this point he had been
+under the necessity of making some painful sacrifices,
+and particularly that of the restoration of
+Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n to the office of Naib Subah,
+a measure which he knew must be highly disagreeable
+to the Nabob, and which nothing but the
+urgent necessity of the case should have led him
+to acquiesce in; that he relied on me to state all
+these circumstances in the most forcible manner to
+the Nabob, and to urge his compliance, assuring him
+that it should not continue longer than until the
+next advices were received from the Court of Directors."</p></div>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Hastings himself lets us into the secrets
+of his government. He writes an ostensible letter to
+the Nabob, declaring that what he does is in conformity
+to the orders of the Company. He writes a private
+letter, in which he directs his agent to assure the
+Nabob that what he had done was not in compliance
+with the orders of the Company, but in consequence
+of the arrangement he had made with Mr. Francis,
+which arrangement he thought necessary for the support
+of his own personal power. His design, in thus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">{259}</a></span>
+explaining the transaction to the Nabob, was in order
+to prevent the native powers from looking to any
+other authority than his, and from having the least
+hopes of redress of their complaints from the justice
+of this country or from any legal power in it. He
+therefore tells him that Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n was
+replaced, not in obedience to the orders of the Company,
+but to gratify Mr. Francis. If he quarrels
+with Mr. Francis, he makes that a reason for disobeying
+the orders of his masters; if he agrees with him,
+he informs the people concerned in the transaction,
+privately, that he acts, not in consequence of the orders
+that he has received, but from other motives.
+But that is not all. He promises that he will take
+the first opportunity to remove Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n
+from his office again. Thus the country is to be re-plunged
+into the same distracted and ruined state in
+which it was before. And all this is laid open fully
+and distinctly before you. You have it on the authority
+of Sir John D'Oyly. Sir John D'Oyly is a
+person in the secret; and one man who is in the
+secret is worth a thousand ostensible persons.</p>
+
+<p>Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n, I must now tell you, was
+accordingly reinstated in all his offices, and the Nabob
+was reduced to the situation, as Mr. Hastings
+upon another occasion describes it, of a mere cipher.
+But mark what followed,&mdash;mark what this Sir John
+D'Oyly is made to tell you, or what Mr. Hastings
+tells you for him: for whether Sir John D'Oyly has
+written this for Mr. Hastings, or Mr. Hastings for
+Sir John D'Oyly, I do not know; because they seem,
+as somebody said of two great friends, that they had but
+one will, one bed, and one hat between them. These
+gentlemen who compose Mr. Hastings's Council have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">{260}</a></span>
+but one style of writing among them; so that it is
+impossible for you to determine by which of the masters
+of this Roman school any paper was written,&mdash;whether
+by D'Oyly, by Shore, or by Hastings, or any
+other of them. They have a style in common, a
+kind of bank upon which they have a general credit;
+and you cannot tell to whose account anything is to
+be placed.</p>
+
+<p>But to proceed.&mdash;Sir John D'Oyly says there, that
+the Nabob is reduced again to a cipher. Now hear
+what he afterwards says. "About the month of
+June, 1781, Mr. Hastings, being then at Moorshedabad,
+communicated to me his intention of performing
+his promise to the Nabob, by restoring him to the
+management of his own affairs,"&mdash;that is to say, by
+restoring Munny Begum again, and by turning out
+Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n. Your Lordships see that he
+communicated privately his intentions to Sir John
+D'Oyly, without communicating one word of them to
+his colleagues in the Supreme Council, and without
+entering any minute in the records of the Council,
+by which it could be known to the Directors.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, in order to show you in what manner the
+Nabob was to be restored to his power, I refer your
+Lordships to the order he gave to Sir John D'Oyly for
+investigating the Nabob's accounts, and for drawing
+up articles of instructions for the Nabob's conduct in
+the management of his affairs. You will there see
+clearly how he was restored: that is to say, that he
+was taken out of the hands of the first Mussulman in
+that country, the man most capable of administering
+justice, and whom the Company had expressly ordered
+to be invested with that authority, and to put
+him into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly. Is Sir <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">{261}</a></span>John
+D'Oyly a Mussulman? Is Sir John D'Oyly fit to be
+at the head of such a government? What was there
+that any person could see about him, that entitled
+him to or made him a fit person to be intrusted
+with this power, in defiance of the Company's orders?
+And yet Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n, who was to have the
+management of the Nabob's affairs, was himself put
+under the most complete and perfect subjection to
+this Sir John D'Oyly. But, in fact, Munny Begum
+had the real influence in everything. Sir John
+D'Oyly himself was only Mr. Hastings's instrument
+there to preserve it, and between them they pillaged
+the Nabob in the most shocking manner, and must
+have done so to the knowledge of Mr. Hastings. A
+letter written at this time by Mr. Hastings to the Nabob
+discovers the secret beyond all power of evasion.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Instructions from the Governor-General to the Nabob
+Mobarek ul Dowlah, respecting his Conduct in the
+Management of his Affairs.</i></p>
+
+<p>"9th. These I make the conditions of the compliance
+which the Governor-General and Council have
+yielded to your late requisition. It is but just that
+you should possess what is your acknowledged right;
+but their intention would be defeated, and you would
+be in a worse situation, if you were to be left a prey,
+without a guide, until you have acquired experience,
+(which, to the strength and goodness of your understanding,
+will be the work but of a short period,) to
+the rapacity, frauds, and artifices of mankind. You
+have offered to give up the sum of four lacs of rupees
+to be allowed the free use of the remainder of your
+stipend. This we have refused, because it would be
+contrary to justice. You should consider this as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">{262}</a></span>
+proof of the sincerity of the above arrangements
+which have been recommended to you, and of their
+expediency to your real interests; and your attention
+to them will be a means of reconciling the Company
+to the resolution which we have taken, and which will
+be reported to them in a light very hurtful both to
+you and to us, if an improper effect should attend it.
+These I have ordered Sir John D'Oyly to read in your
+presence, and to explain them to you, that no part of
+them may escape your notice; and he has my positive
+orders to remonstrate to you against every departure
+from them. Upon all these occasions, I hope and
+expect that you will give him a particular and cordial
+attention, and regard what he shall say as if said by
+myself; for I know him to be a person of the strictest
+honor and integrity. I have a perfect reliance on
+him; and you cannot have a more attached or more
+disinterested counsellor. Although I desire to receive
+your letters frequently, yet, as many matters will occur
+which cannot so easily be explained by letter as
+by conversation, I desire that you will on such occasions
+give your orders to him respecting such points
+as you may desire to have imparted to me; and I,
+postponing every other concern, will give you an immediate
+and the most satisfactory reply concerning
+them."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, here is a man who is to administer his
+own affairs, who has arrived at sufficient age to supersede
+the counsel and advice of the great Mahometan
+doctors and the great nobility of the country,
+and he is put under the most absolute guardianship
+of Sir John D'Oyly. But Mr. Hastings has given
+Sir John D'Oyly a great character. I cannot c<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">{263}</a></span>onfirm
+it, because I can confirm the character of none of Mr.
+Hastings's instruments. They must stand forth here,
+and defend their own character before you.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to
+another circumstance in this transaction. You see
+here 40,000<i>l.</i> a year offered by this man for his
+redemption. "I will give you," he says, "40,000<i>l.</i> a
+year to have the management of my own affairs."
+Good heavens! Here is a man, who, according to Mr.
+Hastings's assertion, had an indisputable right to the
+management of his own affairs, but at the same time
+was notoriously so little fit to have the management
+of them as to be always under some corrupt tyranny
+or other, offers 40,000<i>l.</i> a year out of his own revenues
+to be left his own master, and to be permitted to
+have the disposal of the remainder. Judge you of the
+bribery, rapine, and peculation which here stare you
+in the face. Judge of the nature and character of that
+government for the management of which 40,000<i>l.</i>,
+out of 160,000<i>l.</i> a year of its revenue, is offered by a
+subordinate to the supreme authority of the country.
+This offer shows that at this time the Nabob had it
+not himself. Who had it? Sir John D'Oyly; he is
+brought forward as the person to whom is given the
+management of the whole. Munny Begum had the
+management before. But, whether it be an Englishman,
+a Mussulman, a white man or a black man, a
+white woman or a black woman, it is all Warren
+Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to the four lacs of rupees, he gets
+Sir John D'Oyly, in the narrative that he makes
+before the House of Commons, positively to deny in
+the strongest manner, and he says the Nabob would
+give oath of it, that the Nabob never gave a comm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">{264}</a></span>ission
+to any one to make such an offer. That such
+an offer was made had been long published and long
+in print, with the remarks such as I have made upon
+it in the Ninth Report of the Select Committee; that
+the Committee had so done was well known to Mr.
+Hastings and Sir John D'Oyly; not one word on the
+part of Mr. Hastings, not one word on the part of Sir
+John D'Oyly was said to contradict it, until the appearance
+of the latter before the House of Commons.
+But, my Lords, there is something much more serious
+in this transaction. It is this,&mdash;that the evidence
+produced by Mr. Hastings is the evidence of witnesses
+who are mere phantoms; they are persons who could
+not, under Mr. Hastings's government, eat a bit of
+bread but upon his own terms, and they are brought
+forward to give such evidence as may answer his purposes.</p>
+
+<p>You would naturally have imagined, that, in the
+House of Commons, where clouds of witnesses had
+been before produced by the friends and agents of Mr.
+Hastings, he would then have brought forward Sir
+John to contradict this reported offer; but not a word
+from Sir John D'Oyly. At last he is examined before
+the Committee of Managers. He refuses to answer.
+Why? Because his answers might criminate himself.
+My Lords, every answer that most of them have been
+required to make they are sensible they cannot make
+without danger of criminating themselves, being all
+involved in the crimes of the prisoner. He has corrupted
+and ruined the whole service; there is not one
+of them that dares appear and give a fair and full
+answer in any case, as you have seen in Mr. Middleton,
+and many others at your bar. "I will not
+answer this question," they say, "becaus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">{265}</a></span>e it tends to
+criminate myself." How comes it that the Company's
+servants are not able to give evidence in the affairs of
+Mr. Hastings, without its tending to criminate themselves?</p>
+
+<p>Well,&mdash;Sir John D'Oyly is in England,&mdash;why is
+he not called now? I have not the honor of being
+intimately acquainted with him, but he is a man
+of a reputable and honorable family. Why is he not
+called by Mr. Hastings to verify the assertion, and
+why do they suffer this black record to stand before
+your Lordships to be urged by us, and to press it
+as we do against him? If he knows that Sir John
+D'Oyly can acquit him of this part of our accusation,
+he would certainly bring him as a witness to your
+bar; but he knows he cannot. When, therefore, I
+see upon your records that Sir John D'Oyly and Mr.
+Hastings received such an offer for the redemption
+of the Nabob's affairs out of their hands, I conclude,
+first, that at the time of this offer the Nabob had not
+the disposal of his own affairs,&mdash;and, secondly, that
+those who had the disposal of them disposed of them
+so corruptly and prodigally that he thought they
+could hardly be redeemed at too high a price. What
+explanation of this matter has been attempted?
+There is no explanation given of it at all. It stands
+clear, full, bare in all its nakedness before you.
+They have not attempted to produce the least evidence
+against it. Therefore in that state I leave it
+with you; and I shall only add, that Mr. Hastings
+continued to make Munny Begum the first object of
+his attention, and that, though he could not entirely
+remove Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n from the seat of justice,
+he was made a cipher in it. All his other offices
+were taken out of his hands and put into the hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">{266}</a></span>s
+of Sir John D'Oyly, directly contrary to the orders
+of the Company, which certainly implied the restitution
+of Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n to all the offices which
+he had before held. He was stripped of everything
+but a feeble administration of justice, which, I take
+for granted, could not, under the circumstances,
+have been much better in his hands than it had been
+in Sudder ul Huk Kh&acirc;n's.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings's protection of this woman continued
+to the last; and when he was going away, on the 3d
+of November, 1783, he wrote a sentimental letter to
+the Court of Directors in her praise. This letter was
+transmitted without having been communicated to
+the Council. You have heard of delicate affidavits;
+here you have a sentimental official despatch: your
+Lordships will find it in page 1092 and 1093 of your
+printed Minutes. He writes in such a delicate, sentimental
+strain of this woman, that I will venture to
+say you will not find in all the "Arcadia," in all the
+novels and romances that ever were published, an instance
+of a greater, a more constant, and more ardent
+affection, defying time, ugliness, and old age, did ever
+exist, than existed in Mr. Hastings towards this old
+woman, Munny Begum. As cases of this kind, cases
+of gallantry abounding in sentimental expressions,
+are rare in the Company's records, I recommend it
+as a curiosity to your Lordships' reading, as well as a
+proof of what is the great spring and movement of
+all the prisoner's actions. On this occasion he thus
+speaks of Munny Begum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"She, too, became the victim of your policy,
+and of the resentments which succeeded. Something,
+too, she owed of the source of her misfortun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">{267}</a></span>es
+to the belief of the personal gratitude which she
+might entertain for the public attention which I had
+shown to her. Yet, exposed as she was to a treatment
+which a ruffian would have shuddered at committing,
+and which no recollection of past enmities
+shall compel me to believe, even for a moment, proceeded
+from any commission of authority, she still
+maintained the decorum of her character; nor even
+then, nor before, nor since that period, has the malice
+of calumny ever dared to breathe on her reputation."&mdash;Delicate!
+sentimental!&mdash;"Pardon, honorable Sirs,
+this freedom of expostulation. I must in honest truth
+repeat, that your commands laid the first foundation
+of her misfortunes; to your equity she has now recourse
+through me for their alleviation, that she may
+pass the remainder of her life in a state which may
+at least efface the remembrance of the years of her
+affliction; and to your humanity she and an unseen
+multitude of the most helpless of her sex cry for subsistence."</p></div>
+
+<p>Moving and pathetic!&mdash;I wish to recommend
+every word of this letter to your Lordships' consideration,
+as a model and pattern of perfection. Observe
+his pity for a woman who had suffered such
+treatment from the servants of the Company (a parcel
+of ruffians!)&mdash;treatment that a ruffian would be
+ashamed of! Your Lordships have seen, in the evidence,
+what this ruffianism was. It was neither
+more nor less than what was necessary in order to
+get at the accounts, which she concealed, as his own
+corrupt transactions. She was told, indeed, that she
+must privately remove to another house whilst her
+papers were examining. Mr. Hastings can never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">{268}</a></span>
+forget this. He cannot believe that anybody dare
+send such an order; and he calls upon you to consider
+the helplessness of their sex, and the affronts offered
+to women.</p>
+
+<p>For Heaven's sake, my Lords, recollect the manner
+in which Mr. Hastings and his creatures treated the
+Begums of Oude, and consider that this woman was
+only threatened (for the threat was never attempted
+to be executed) that she must, if she did not deliver
+up the accounts, probably be removed to another
+house, and leave the accounts behind her. This blot
+can never be effaced; and for this he desires the
+Court of Directors to make her a large allowance to
+comfort her in her old age. In this situation Mr.
+Hastings leaves her. He leaves in the situation I
+have described the justice of the country. The only
+concern he has at parting is, that this woman may
+have a large allowance.</p>
+
+<p>But I have yet to tell your Lordships, and it appears
+upon your printed Minutes, that this woman
+had a way of comforting herself:&mdash;for old ladies of
+that description, who have passed their youth in
+amusements, in dancing, and in gallantries, in their
+old age are apt to take comfort in brandy. This
+lady was a smuggler, and had influence enough to
+avoid payment of the duty on spirits, in which article
+she is the largest dealer in the district,&mdash;as, indeed,
+she is in almost every species of trade. Thus
+your Lordships see that this sentimental lady, whom
+Mr. Hastings recommends to the Directors, had ways
+of comforting herself. She carried on, notwithstanding
+her dignity, a trade in spirits. Now a Mahometan
+of distinction never carries on any trade at all,&mdash;it
+is an unknown thing,&mdash;very few Mahometans of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">{269}</a></span>
+any rank carry on any trade at all; but that a Mahometan
+should carry on a trade in spirits is a prodigy
+never heard of before; for a woman of quality,
+for a woman of sentiment, to become a dealer in
+spirits is, my Lords, a thing reserved for the sentimental
+age of Mr. Hastings; and I will venture to
+say that no man or woman could attempt any such a
+trade in India, without being dishonored, ruined in
+character, and disgraced by it. But she appears not
+only to have been a dealer in it, but, through the influence
+which Mr. Hastings gave her, to have monopolized
+the trade in brandy, and to have evaded the
+duties. This, then, is the state in which we leave the
+two sentimental lovers,&mdash;the one consoling herself
+with brandy, the other wheedling and whining; and,
+as Swift describes the progress of an intrigue in some
+respects similar, which he calls "The Progress of
+Love," whereas this is the Progress of Sentiment,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"They keep at Staines the Old Blue Boar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i05">Are cat and dog, and rogue and whore."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Here they set up the sign of the Old Blue Boar.
+Munny Begum monopolizes the trade in spirits; and
+hence she and Mr. Hastings commence their sentimental
+correspondence.&mdash;And now, having done with
+this progress of love, we return to the progress of
+justice.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>We have seen how Sudder ul Huk Kh&acirc;n, the chief-justice
+of Mr. Hastings's own nomination, was treated.
+Now you shall see how justice was left to shift
+for herself under Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n. In page
+1280 of your Lordships' Minutes you will see the
+progress of all these enormities,&mdash;of Munny Begum's
+dealing in spirits, of her engrossing the trad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">{270}</a></span>e,
+of her evading duties,&mdash;and, lastly, the extinction of
+all order in that country, and the funeral of justice
+itself. Mr. Shore's evidence respecting this state
+of the country will admit of no doubt.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Mr. Shore's Remarks accompanying the Governor-General's
+Minutes of the 18th May, 1785.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Foujdarry jurisdiction.&mdash;Of the foujdarry jurisdiction
+nothing has yet been said. In this department
+criminal justice is administered, and it is the only
+office left to the Nabob. I do not see any particular
+reason for changing the system itself, and perhaps
+it would on many accounts be improper; but some
+regulations are highly necessary. Mahomed Reza is
+at the head of this department, and is the only person
+I know in the country qualified for it. If he
+were left to himself, I have not a doubt but he would
+conduct it well; but he is so circumscribed by recommendations
+of particular persons, and by the protection
+held out to his officers by Europeans, that to
+my knowledge he has not been able to punish them,
+even when they have been convicted of the greatest
+enormities; and he has often on this account been
+blamed, where his hands were tied up."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, you now see in this minute of Sir John
+Shore, now Governor-General of Bengal, one of Mr.
+Hastings's own committee for drawing up his defence,
+the review which he had just then taken of the ruins
+of the government which had been left to him by Mr.
+Hastings. You see here not the little paltry things
+which might deserve in their causes the animadversion
+of a rough satirist like Doctor Swift, whom I
+have just quoted, but you see things ten thou<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">{271}</a></span>sand
+times more serious, things that deserve the thunderbolt
+of vindictive justice upon the head of the prisoner
+at your bar. For you see, that, after he had
+ostensibly restored Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n, the man
+who could and would have executed his office with
+fidelity and effect, the man who was fit for and disposed
+to do his duty, there was still neither law,
+order, nor justice in the country. Why? Because
+of the interposition of Europeans, and men who must
+have been patronized and supported by Europeans.
+All this happened before Mr. Hastings's departure:
+so that the whole effect of the new arrangement of
+government was known to him before he left Calcutta.
+The same pretended remedy was applied. But
+in fact he left this woman in the full possession of
+her power. His last thoughts were for her; for the
+justice of the country, for the peace and security of
+the people of Bengal, he took no kind of care; these
+great interests were left to the mercy of the woman
+and her European associates.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, I have taken some pains in giving you
+this history. I have shown you his open acts and
+secret stratagems, in direct rebellion to the Court of
+Directors,&mdash;his double government, his false pretences
+of restoring the Nabob's independence, leading
+in effect to a most servile dependence, even to the
+prohibition of the approach of any one, native or
+European, near him, but through the intervention
+of Sir John D'Oyly. I therefore again repeat it,
+that Sir John D'Oyly, and the English gentlemen
+who were patronized and countenanced by Mr. Hastings,
+had wrought all that havoc in the country before
+Mr. Hastings left it.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">{272}</a></span></p>
+<p>I have particularly dwelt upon the administration
+of justice, because I consider it as the source of all
+good, and the maladministration of it as the source
+of all evil in the country. Your Lordships have
+heard how it was totally destroyed by Mr. Hastings
+through Sir John D'Oyly, who was sent there by
+him for the purpose of forming a clandestine government
+of corruption and peculation. This part of our
+charge speaks for itself, and I shall dismiss it with a
+single observation,&mdash;that not the least trace of an
+account of all these vast sums of money delivered
+into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly for the use of
+the Nabob appears in any part of the Company's
+records. The undeniable inferences to be drawn
+from this fact are, first, that, wherever we find concealment
+of money, and the ceasing of an account,
+there has been fraud,&mdash;and, secondly, that, if we
+find this concealment accompanied with the devastation
+of a country, and the extinction of justice in it,
+that devastation of the country and that extinction
+of justice have been the result of that fraudulent
+peculation.</p>
+
+<p>I am sure your Lordships will not think that a
+charge of the annihilation of administrative justice,
+in which the happiness and prosperity of a great
+body of nobility, of numerous ancient and respectable
+families, and of the inhabitants in general of
+extensive and populous provinces are concerned, can,
+if it stood single and alone, be a matter of trifling
+moment. And in favor of whom do all these sacrifices
+appear to have been made? In favor of an old
+prostitute, who, if shown to your Lordships here,
+like Helen to the counsellors of Troy, would not, I
+think, be admitted to have charms that could palliate
+this man's abominable conduct; you would not cry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">{273}</a></span>
+out with them,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" title="[Greek: Ou nemesis], ...">Οὐ νέμεσις, ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0" title="[Greek: Toi&ecirc;d' amphi gunaiki polun chronon algea paschein].">Τοιῇδ' ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἂλγεα πάσχειν.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">For I will fairly say that there are some passions
+that have their excuses; but the passion towards
+this woman was the passion of avarice and rapacity
+only,&mdash;a passion, indeed, which lasted to the end
+of his government, and for which he defied the orders
+of the Court of Directors, rebelled against his
+masters, and finally subverted the justice of a great
+country.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>My Lords, I have done with this business. I come
+next to the third division of the natives, those who
+form the landed interest of the country. A few
+words only will be necessary upon this part of the
+subject. The fact is, that Mr. Hastings, at one
+stroke, put up the property of all the nobility and
+gentry, and of all the freeholders, in short, the whole
+landed interest of Bengal, to a public auction, and
+let it to the highest bidder. I will make no observations
+upon the nature of this measure to your Lordships,
+who represent so large a part of the dignity,
+together with so large a part of the landed interest
+of this kingdom: though I think, that, even under
+your Lordships' restrictive order, I am entitled so to
+do; because we have examined some witnesses upon
+this point, in the revenue charge. Suffice it to say,
+that it is in evidence before your Lordships that this
+sale was ordered. Mr. Hastings does not deny it.
+He says, indeed, he did it not with an ill intention.
+My answer is, that it could have been done with no
+other than a bad intention. The owners of the land
+had no way left to save themselves but to become<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">{274}</a></span>
+farmers of their own estates; and from the competition
+which naturally took place, (and he himself
+declared, that the persons, whether owners or strangers,
+to whom he let the lands, had agreed to rents
+which surpassed their abilities to pay,) I need not
+tell you what must have been the consequence, when
+it got into such rapacious hands, and was taken out
+of the hands of its natural proprietors: that the
+public revenue had sunk and lost by it, and that the
+country was wasted and destroyed. I leave it to
+your Lordships' own meditation and reflection; and
+I shall not press it one step further than just to
+remind you of what has been so well opened and
+pressed by my fellow Managers. He, Mr. Hastings,
+confesses that he let the lands to his own banians;
+he took his own domestic servants and put them in
+the houses of the nobility of the country; and this
+he did in direct violation of an express order made
+by himself, that no banian of a collector (the spirit
+of which order implied ten thousand times more
+strongly the exclusion of any banians of a Governor-General)
+should have any one of those farms. We
+also find that he made a regulation that no farmers
+should rent more than a lac of rupees; but at the
+same time we find his banians holding several farms
+to more than that amount. In short, we find that
+in every instance, where, under some plausible pretence
+or other, the fixed regulations are violated, it
+touches him so closely as to make it absolutely impossible
+not to suppose that he himself had the advantage
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>For, in the first place, you have proof that he does
+take bribes, and that he has corrupt dealings. This
+is what he admits; but he says that he has done it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">{275}</a></span>
+from public-spirited motives. Now there is a rule,
+formed upon a just, solid presumption of law, that,
+if you find a man guilty of one offence contrary to
+known law, whenever there is a suspicious case
+against him of the same nature, the <i>onus probandi</i>
+that he is not guilty is turned upon him. Therefore,
+when I find the regulations broken,&mdash;when
+I find farms given of more than a lac of rupees,&mdash;when
+I find them given to the Governor-General's
+own banian, contrary to the principle of the regulation,
+contrary, I say, in the strongest way to it,&mdash;when
+I find that he accumulates farms beyond the
+regulated number,&mdash;when I find all these things
+done, and besides that the banian has great balances
+of account against him,&mdash;then, by the presumption
+of law, I am bound to believe that all this was done,
+not for the servants, but for the master.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible Mr. Hastings might really be in love
+with Munny Begum; be it so,&mdash;many great men
+have played the fool for prostitutes, from Mark Antony's
+days downwards; but no man ever fell in love
+with his own banian. The persons for whom Mr.
+Hastings was guilty of all this rapine and oppression
+have neither relations nor kindred whom they own,
+nor does any trace of friendship exist among them;
+they do not live in habits of intimacy with any one;
+they are good fellows and bottle-companions.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I must now proceed to observe upon another
+matter which has been stated to your Lordships,&mdash;namely,
+that, as soon as he obtained the majority
+in the Council, (that beginning of all evils, that
+opening of Pandora's box,) by the death of General
+Clavering and Colonel Monson, the first thing he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">{276}</a></span>
+did was to appoint a commission, called an <i>aumeeny</i>,
+to go through the whole country, to enter every
+man's house, to examine his title-deeds, and to demand
+his papers of accounts of every kind, for the
+purpose of enabling himself to take advantage of
+the hopes and fears of all the parties concerned, and
+thus to ravage and destroy all their property.</p>
+
+<p>And whom does he place at the head of this commission,
+to be the manager of the whole affair?
+Gunga Govind Sing, another banian of his, and one
+of his own domestic servants. This we have discovered
+lately, and not without some surprise; for
+though I knew he kept a rogue in his house, yet
+I did not think that it was a common receptacle of
+thieves and robbers. I did not know till lately that
+this Gunga Govind Sing was his domestic servant;
+but Mr. Hastings, in a letter to the Court of Directors,
+calls him his faithful domestic servant, and
+as such calls upon the Company to reward him. To
+this banian all the Company's servants are made
+subject; they are bound to obey all his orders, and
+those of his committee. I hope I need not tell your
+Lordships what sort of stuff this committee was made
+of, by which Gunga Govind Sing was enabled to ravage
+the whole country.</p>
+
+<p>But, say his counsel, Mr. Hastings thought that the
+value of the lands was thoroughly known; they had
+been investigated three times over, and they were all
+let by public auction to the highest bidder.&mdash;This may
+or may not be a true test of their value; but it is a
+test which, as it led to the almost entire confiscation
+of the landed interest of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa,
+three great kingdoms, by a dash of that man's pen,
+into the hands of his banians and creatures, I can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">{277}</a></span>
+never think of it, or of its author, without horror.</p>
+
+<p>Some people say, you ought to hate the crime and
+love the criminal. No, that is the language of false
+morality; you ought to hate the crime and the criminal,
+if the crime is of magnitude. If the crime is a
+small one, then you ought to be angry with the crime
+and reluctant to punish the criminal; but when there
+are great crimes, then you may hate them together.
+What! am I to love Nero? to fall in love with Heliogabalus?
+is Domitian to be the subject of my affection?
+No, we hate the crime, and we hate the criminal
+ten times more; and if I use indignant language,
+if I use the language of scorn and horror with respect
+to the criminal, I use the language that becomes me.</p>
+
+<p>But, says one of the counsel, the Company might
+possess a knowledge of the country in general, but
+they could not know every <i>bega</i>, of it, (about the
+third part of an acre of land,) without such a commission.
+That is to say, you could not squeeze everything
+out of the people, without ordering such a villain
+as Gunga Govind Sing, (I call things, by their
+names,) that most atrocious and wicked instrument
+of the most atrocious and wicked tyranny, to examine
+every man's papers, to oblige every man to produce
+his titles and accounts upon pain of criminal
+punishment, to be inflicted at the discretion of this
+commissioner, this Gunga Govind Sing. For an account
+of these acts, and for a description of an aumeeny,
+I refer your Lordships to the evidence in
+your Minutes, from page 1287 to 1301; and I pass
+on, expressing only my horror and detestation at it,
+and wishing to kindle in your Lordships' minds the
+same horror and detestation of it.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">{278}</a></span></p>
+<p>Thus you see that Mr. Hastings was not satisfied
+with confiscation only. He comes just afterwards
+with a blister upon the sore. He lets loose another
+set of ravagers and inquisitors upon them, under
+Gunga Govind Sing, and these poor people are ravaged
+by the whole tribe of Calcutta banians.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings has himself defined an aumeen in
+page 1022, where he states that Nundcomar desired
+him to make his son an aumeen. "The promise
+which he [Nundcomar] says I made him, that he
+should be constituted aumeen, that is, inquisitor-general
+over the whole country, and that I would delegate
+to him my whole power and influence, is something
+more than a negative falsehood." He justly
+and naturally reprobates the proposition of appointing
+an inquisitor-general over the whole country;
+and yet we see him afterwards appointing Gunga
+Govind Sing such an inquisitor-general over the
+whole country, in order that a bega of land should
+not escape him.</p>
+
+<p>Let us see how all this ended, and what it is that
+leads me directly to the presumption of corruption
+against him in this wicked <i>aumeeny</i> scheme. Now I
+will admit the whole scheme to have been well intended,
+I will forgive the letting all the lands of Bengal
+by public auction, I will forgive all he has done
+with regard to his banians, I shall forgive him even
+this commission itself, if he will show your Lordships
+that there was the smallest use made of it with regard
+to the settlement of the revenues of the Company.
+If there was not, then there is obviously one
+use only that could be made of it, namely, to put all
+the people of the whole country under obedience to
+Gunga Govind Sing. What, then, was done? Titles
+and accounts were exacted; the estimate was mad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">{279}</a></span>e,
+acre by acre; but we have not been able to find one
+word on their records of any return that was made
+to the Company of this investigation, or of any settlement
+or assessment of the country founded upon it,
+or of any regulation that was established upon it.
+Therefore, as an honest man, and as a man who is
+standing here for the Commons of Great Britain, I
+must not give way to any idle doubts and ridiculous
+suppositions. I cannot, I say, entertain any doubts
+that the only purpose it was designed to answer was
+to subject the whole landed interest of the country to
+the cruel inquisition of Gunga Govind Sing, and to
+the cruel purposes of Mr. Hastings. Show me another
+purpose and I will give up the argument: for
+if there are two ways of accounting for the same
+act, it is possible it may be attributed to the better
+motive; but when we see that a bad thing was done
+under pretence of some good, we must attach a bad
+motive to it, if the pretence be never fulfilled.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I have now done with the landed interest of Bengal.
+I have omitted much which might have been
+pressed upon your Lordships, not from any indisposition
+to remark upon the matter more fully, but because
+it has been done already by abler persons; I
+only wished to make some practical inferences, which,
+perhaps, in the hurry of my brother Managers, might
+possibly have escaped them; I wished to show you that
+one system of known or justly presumed corruption
+pervades the whole of this business, from one end to
+the other. Having thus disposed of the native landed
+interest, and the native zemindars or landholders
+of the country, I pass to the English government.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">{280}</a></span></p>
+<p>My Lords, when we have shown plainly the utter
+extinction of the native Mahometan government,
+when we have shown the extinction of the native
+landed interest, what hope can there be for that afflicted
+country but in the servants of the Company?
+When we have shown the corrupt state of that service,
+what hope but from the Court of Directors,
+what hope but in the superintending control of British
+tribunals? I think as well of the body of my
+countrymen as any man can do. I do not think that
+any man sent out to India is sent with an ill purpose,
+or goes out with bad dispositions. No: I think the
+young men who go there are fair and faithful representatives
+of the people of the same age,&mdash;uncorrupted,
+but corruptible from their age, as we all
+are. They are sent there young. There is but one
+thing held out to them,&mdash;"You are going to make
+your fortune." The Company's service is to be the
+restoration of decayed noble families; it is to be
+the renovation of old, and the making of new ones.
+Now, when such a set of young men are sent out
+with these hopes and views, and with little education,
+or a very imperfect one,&mdash;when these people, from
+whatever rank of life selected, many from the best,
+most from the middling, very few from the lowest,
+but, high, middling, or low, they are sent out to
+make two things coincide which the wit of man was
+never able to unite, to make their fortune and form
+their education at once. What is the education
+of the generality of the world? Reading a parcel
+of books? No. Restraint of discipline, emulation,
+examples of virtues and of justice, form the
+education of the world. If the Company's servants
+have not that education, and are left to give loose
+to their natural passions, some would be corrupt of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">{281}</a></span>
+course, and some would be uncorrupt; but probably
+the majority of them would be inclined to pursue
+moderate courses between these two. Now I am to
+show you that Mr. Hastings left these servants but this
+alternative: "Be starved, be depressed, be ruined, disappoint
+the hopes of your families, or be my slaves,
+be ready to be subservient to me in every iniquity I
+shall order you to commit, and to conceal everything
+I shall wish you to conceal." This was the state of
+the service. Therefore the Commons did well and
+wisely, when they sent us here, not to attack this or
+that servant who may have peculated, but to punish
+the man who was sent to reform abuses, and to make
+Bengal furnish to the world a brilliant example of
+British justice.</p>
+
+<p>I shall now proceed to state briefly the abuses of
+the Company's government,&mdash;to show you what Mr.
+Hastings was expected to do for their reformation,
+and what he actually did do; I shall then show
+your Lordships the effects of the whole.</p>
+
+<p>I shall begin by reading to your Lordships an
+extract from the Directors' letter to Bengal, of the
+10th April, 1773.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"We wish we could refute the observation, that almost
+every attempt made by us and our administrations
+at your Presidency for the reforming of abuses
+has rather increased them, and added to the miseries
+of the country we are so anxious to protect and cherish.
+The truth of this observation appears fully in the
+late appointment of supervisors and chiefs. Instituted
+as they were, to give relief to the industrious tenants,
+to improve and enlarge our investments, to destroy
+monopolies and retrench expenses, the end has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">{282}</a></span> by
+no means been answerable to the institution. Are not
+the tenants more than ever oppressed and wretched?
+Are our investments improved? Have not the raw
+silk and cocoons been raised upon us fifty per cent in
+price? We can hardly say what has not been made
+a monopoly. And as to the expenses of your Presidency,
+they are at length swelled to a degree we are
+no longer able to support. These facts (for such
+they are) should have been stated to us as capital
+reasons why neither our orders of 1771, nor indeed
+any regulations whatever, could be carried into execution.
+But, perhaps, as this would have proved
+too much, it was not suggested to us; for nothing
+could more plainly indicate a state of anarchy, and
+that there was no government existing in our servants
+in Bengal."</p>
+
+<p>"And therefore, when oppression pervades the
+whole country, when youths have been suffered with
+impunity to exercise sovereign jurisdiction over the
+natives, and to acquire rapid fortunes by monopolizing
+of commerce, it cannot be a wonder to us or
+yourselves, that dadney merchants do not come forward
+to contract with the Company, that the manufactures
+find their way through foreign channels, or
+that our investments are at once enormously dear and
+of a debased quality.</p>
+
+<p>"It is evident that the evils which have been so
+destructive to us lie too deep for any partial plans
+to reach or correct; it is therefore our resolution to
+aim at the root of these evils: and we are happy in
+having reason to believe that in every just and necessary
+regulation we shall meet with the approbation
+and support of the legislature, who consider the public
+as materially interested in the Company's prosperity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">{283}</a></span>.</p>
+
+<p>"In order to effectuate this great end, the first step
+must be to restore perfect obedience and due subordination
+to your administration. Our Governor and
+Council must reassume and exercise their delegated
+powers upon every just occasion,&mdash;punish delinquents,
+cherish the meritorious, discountenance that
+luxury and dissipation which, to the reproach of government,
+prevailed in Bengal. Our President, Mr.
+Hastings, we trust, will set the example of temperance,
+economy, and application; and upon this, we
+are sensible, much will depend. And here we take
+occasion, to indulge the pleasure we have in acknowledging
+Mr. Hastings's services upon the coast of
+Coromandel, in constructing, with equal labor and
+ability, the plan which has so much improved our
+investments there; and as we are persuaded he will
+persevere in the same laudable pursuit through every
+branch of our affairs in Bengal, he, in return, may
+depend on the steady support and favor of his employers.</p>
+
+<p>"Your settlement being thus put into a train of
+reform, (without which, indeed, all regulations will
+prove ineffectual,) you are next to revert to the old
+system, when the business of your Presidency was
+principally performed by our own servants, who then
+had knowledge of our investments, and every other
+department of our concerns: you will therefore fill
+the several offices with the factors and writers upon
+your establishment, (for, with our present appointments,
+we are assured there will be sufficient for this
+purpose,) and thus you will banish idleness, and its
+attendants, extravagance and dissipation. And here
+we enjoin you to transmit to us a faithful and min<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">{284}</a></span>ute
+state of the pay and every known emolument of all
+below Council: for, as it is notorious that even youths
+in our service expend in equipage, servants, dress, and
+living infinitely more than our stated allowances can
+afford, we cannot but be anxious to discover the
+means by which they are enabled to proceed in this
+manner; and, indeed, so obnoxious is this conduct
+to us, and so injurious in its consequences, that we
+expect and require you to show your displeasure to
+all such as shall transgress in this respect, contrasting
+it at the same time with instances of kindness towards
+the sober, frugal, and industrious."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, you see the state in which the Directors
+conceived the country to be. That it was in this
+state is not denied by Mr. Hastings, who was sent
+out for the purpose of reforming it. The Directors
+had swept away almost the whole body of their Bengal
+servants for supposed corruption; and they appointed
+a set of new ones, to regenerate, as it were,
+the government of that country.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings says, "I was brought to India like
+other people." This, indeed, is true; and I hope it
+will prove an example and instruction to all mankind
+never to employ a man who has been bred in base and
+corrupt practices, from any hope that his local knowledge
+may make him the fittest person to correct such
+practices. Mr. Hastings goes on to say, that you
+could not expect more from him than could be done
+by a man bred up, as he was, in the common habits of
+the country. This is also true. My Lords, you might
+as well expect a man to be fit for a perfumer's shop,
+who has lain a month in a pig's stye, as to expect
+that a man who has been a contractor with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">{285}</a></span>
+Company for a length of time is a fit person for reforming
+abuses. Mr. Hastings has stated in general
+his history, his merits, and his services. We have
+looked over with care the records relative to his
+proceedings, and we find that in 1760 and 1761 he
+was in possession of a contract for bullocks and a
+contract for provisions. It is no way wrong for
+any man to take a contract, provided he does not do
+what Mr. Hastings has condemned in his regulations,&mdash;become
+a contractor with his masters. But though
+I do not bear upon Mr. Hastings for having spent his
+time in being a bullock-contractor, yet I say that he
+ought to have laid aside all the habits of a bullock-contractor
+when he was made a great minister for
+the reformation of a great service full of abuses. I
+will show your Lordships that he never did so; that,
+on the contrary, being bred in those bad habits, and
+having had the education that I speak of, he persevered
+in the habits which had been formed in him
+to the very last.</p>
+
+<p>I understand it has been imputed as a sort of a
+crime in me, that I stated something of the obscurity
+of Mr. Hastings's birth. The imputation has no
+foundation. Can it be believed that any man could
+be so absurd as to attack a man's birth, when he is
+accusing his actions? No, I have always spoken of
+the low, sordid, and mercenary habits in which he
+was bred; I said nothing of his birth. But, my
+Lords, I was a good deal surprised when a friend of
+his and mine yesterday morning put into my hands,
+who had been attacking Mr. Hastings's life and conduct,
+a pedigree. I was appealing to the records of
+the Company; they answer by sending me to the
+Herald's Office. Many of your Lordships' pedi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">{286}</a></span>grees
+are obscure in comparison with that of Mr. Hastings;
+and I only wonder how he came to derogate from
+such a line of nobles by becoming a contractor for
+bullocks.</p>
+
+<p>A man may be an honest bullock-contractor, (God
+forbid that many of them in this country should not
+be very honest!) but I find his terms were nearly
+four times as high as those which the House of Commons
+had condemned as exorbitant. They were not
+only unusually high, but the bullocks were badly
+supplied, and the contract had not been fairly advertised.
+It was therefore agreed to declare the same
+void at the expiration of twelve months, on the 1st
+December, 1763. I say again, that I do not condemn
+him for being a bullock-contractor; but I am suspicious
+of his honesty, because he has been nursed in
+bad and vicious habits. That of contracting with his
+masters is a bad habit, as he himself has stated in a
+record which is printed by the House of Commons.
+I condemn him for being a fraudulent bullock-contractor:
+for he was turned out of that contract for
+fraudulent practices; it was declared void, and given
+to another at a lower price. After it was so disposed
+of, Mr. Hastings himself, condemning his own original
+contract, which was at twelve rupees for a certain
+species of bullocks, took the contract again at seven;
+and on these terms it continued. What I therefore
+contend for is this, that he carried with him the
+spirit of a fraudulent bullock-contractor through the
+whole of the Company's service, in its greatest and
+most important parts.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, the wading through all these corruptions
+is an unpleasant employment for me; but what
+am I to think of a man who holds up his head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">{287}</a></span> so
+high, that, when a matter of account is in discussion,
+such as appears in this very defence that I have in
+my hand, he declares he does not know anything
+about it? He cannot keep accounts: that is beneath
+him. We trace him throughout the whole of his
+career engaged in a great variety of mercantile employments;
+and yet, when he comes before you, you
+would imagine that he had been bred in the study
+of the sublimest sciences, and had no concern in
+anything else,&mdash;that he had been engaged in writing
+a poem, an Iliad, or some work that might revive
+fallen literature. There is but one exception to his
+abhorrence of accounts: he always contrives to make
+up a good account for himself.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, we have read to you a letter in which
+the Court of Directors have described the disorders
+of their service, the utter ruin of it, the corruption
+that prevailed in it, and the destruction of the country
+by it. When we are said to exaggerate, we use
+no stronger words than they do. We cannot mince
+the matter; your Lordships should not mince it; no
+little paltry delicacies should hinder you, when there
+is a country expiring under all these things, from
+calling the authors to a strict account. The Court
+of Directors sent him that statement; they recommended
+to him a radical reformation. What does
+he do? We will read his letter of 1773, in which
+you will find seeds sown for the propagation of all
+those future abuses which terminated in the utter
+and irremediable destruction of the whole service.
+After he has praised the Directors for the trust that
+they had placed in him, after expressing his highest
+gratitude, and so on, he says,&mdash;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">{288}</a></span></p>
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"While I indulge the pleasure which I receive from
+the past successes of my endeavors, I own I cannot
+refrain from looking back with a mixture of anxiety
+on the omissions by which I am sensible I may since
+have hazarded the diminution of your esteem. All
+my letters addressed to your Honorable Court, and to
+the Secret Committee, repeat the strongest promises
+of prosecuting the inquiries into the conduct of your
+servants, which you have been pleased to commit
+particularly to my charge. You will readily perceive
+that I must have been sincere in those declarations;
+since it would have argued great indiscretion
+to have made them, had I foreseen my inability to perform
+them. I find myself now under the disagreeable
+necessity of avowing that inability; at the same
+time I will boldly take upon me to affirm, that, on
+whomsoever you might have delegated that charge,
+and by whatever powers it might have been accompanied,
+it would have been sufficient to occupy the
+entire attention of those who were intrusted with it,
+and, even with all the aids of leisure and authority,
+would have proved ineffectual. I dare appeal to the
+public records, to the testimony of those who have
+opportunities of knowing me, and even to the detail
+which the public voice can report of the past acts of
+this government, that my time has been neither idly
+nor uselessly employed; yet such are the cares and
+embarrassments of this various state, that, although
+much may be done, much more, even in matters of
+moment, must necessarily remain neglected. To select
+from the miscellaneous heap which each day's
+exigencies present to our choice those points on
+which the general welfare of your affairs most essentially
+depends, to provide expedients for future advantages,
+and guard against probable evils, are all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">{289}</a></span>
+that your administration can faithfully promise to
+perform for your service, with their united labors
+most diligently exerted. They cannot look back
+without sacrificing the objects of their immediate
+duty, which are those of your interest, to endless researches,
+which can produce no real good, and may
+expose your affairs to all the ruinous consequences
+of personal malevolence, both here and at home."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, you see here, that, after admitting that
+he has promised to the Court of Directors to do what
+they ordered him to do, (and he had promised to
+make a radical reform in their whole service, and to
+cure those abuses which they have stated,) he declares
+that he will not execute them; he pleads a
+variety of other occupations; but as to that great
+fundamental grievance he was appointed to eradicate,
+he declares he will not even attempt it. "Why did
+you promise?"&mdash;it naturally occurs to ask him that
+question. "Why," says he, "you will readily perceive
+that I must have been sincere in those declarations;
+since it would have argued great indiscretion to have
+made them, had I known my inability to perform
+them." This is a kind of argument that belongs to
+Mr. Hastings exclusively. Most other people would
+say, "You may judge of the sincerity of my promises
+by my zeal in the performance"; but he says, "You
+may judge of the sincerity of my promises, because I
+would not promise, if I had not thought I should be
+able to perform." It runs in this ridiculous circle:
+"I promised to obey the Court of Directors; therefore
+I knew that I could obey them: but I could
+not obey them; therefore I was absolved from my
+promise, and did not attempt to obey them." In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">{290}</a></span>
+fact, there is not so much as one grievance or abuse
+in the country, that he reformed. And this was systematical
+in Mr. Hastings's conduct,&mdash;that he was
+resolved to connive at the whole of the iniquities of
+the service, because he was resolved that every one
+of those existing iniquities should be practised by
+himself. "But," says he, "the reformation required
+can produce no real good, and may expose your
+affairs to all the ruinous consequences of personal
+malevolence, both here and at home." This he
+gives you as a reason why he will not prosecute the
+inquiry into abuses abroad,&mdash;because he is afraid
+that you should punish him at home for doing his
+duty abroad,&mdash;that it will expose him to malevolence
+at home; and therefore, to avoid being subject
+to malevolence at home, he would not do his duty
+abroad.</p>
+
+<p>He follows this with something that is perfectly
+extraordinary: he desires, instead of doing his duty,
+which he declares it is impossible to do, that he may
+be invested with an arbitrary power. I refer your
+Lordships to pages 2827, 2828, and 2829 of the printed
+Minutes, where you will find the system of his
+government to be formed upon a resolution not to
+use any one legal means of punishing corruption, or
+for the prevention of corruption; all that he desires
+is, to have an absolute arbitrary power over the servants
+of the Company. There you will see that arbitrary
+power for corrupt purposes over the servants of
+the Company is the foundation of every part of his
+whole conduct. Remark what he says here, and then
+judge whether these inferences are to be eluded by
+any chicane.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">{291}</a></span></p>
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"In the charge of oppression, although supported
+by the cries of the people and the most authentic
+representations, it is yet impossible, in most cases,
+to obtain legal proofs of it; and unless the discretionary
+power which I have recommended be somewhere
+lodged, the assurance of impunity from any
+formal inquiry will baffle every order of the board;
+as, on the other hand, the fear of the consequences
+will restrain every man within the bounds of his
+duty, if he knows himself liable to suffer by the
+effects of a single control."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, you see two things most material for
+you to consider in the judgment of this great cause,
+which is the cause of nations. The first thing for
+you to consider is the declaration of the culprit
+at your bar, that a person may be pursued by the
+cries of a whole people,&mdash;that documents the most
+authentic and satisfactory, but deficient in technical
+form, may be produced against him,&mdash;in short, that
+he may be guilty of the most enormous crimes,&mdash;and
+yet that legal proofs may be wanting. This
+shows you how seriously you ought to consider, before
+you reject any proof upon the idea that it is
+not technical legal proof. To this assertion of Mr.
+Hastings I oppose, however, the opinion of a gentleman
+who sits near his side, Mr. Sumner, which
+is much more probable.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings says, that the power of the Council is
+not effectual against the inferior servants, that [it?]
+is too weak to coerce them. With much more truth
+Mr. Sumner has said, in his minute, you might easily
+coerce the inferior servants, but that the dread of
+falling upon persons in high stations discourages and
+puts an end to complaint. I quote the recorded author<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">{292}</a></span>ity
+of the gentleman near him, as being of great
+weight in the affairs of the Company, to prove what
+is infinitely more probable, the falsehood of Mr.
+Hastings's assertion, that an inferior servant cannot
+be coerced, and that they must riot with impunity
+in the spoils of the people.</p>
+
+<p>But we will go to a much more serious part of
+the business. After desiring arbitrary power in this
+letter, he desires a perpetuation of it. And here
+he has given you a description of a bad Governor,
+to which I must call your attention, as your Lordships
+will find it, in every part of his proceeding,
+to be exactly applicable to himself and to his own
+government.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"The first command of a state so extensive as
+that of Bengal is not without opportunities of private
+emoluments; and although the allowance which your
+bounty has liberally provided for your servants may
+be reasonably expected to fix the bounds of their
+desires, yet you will find it extremely difficult to
+restrain men from profiting by other means, who
+look upon their appointment as the measure of a
+day, and who, from the uncertainty of their condition,
+see no room for any acquisition but of wealth,
+since reputation and the consequences which follow
+the successful conduct of great affairs are only to
+be attained in a course of years. Under such circumstances,
+however rigid your orders may be, or
+however supported, I am afraid that in most instances
+they will produce no other fruits than either
+avowed disobedience or the worst extreme of falsehood
+and hypocrisy. These are not the principles
+which should rule the conduct of men whom y<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">{293}</a></span>ou
+have constituted the guardians of your property, and
+checks on the morals and fidelity of others. The
+care of self-preservation will naturally suggest the
+necessity of seizing the opportunity of present power,
+when the duration of it is considered as limited
+to the usual term of three years, and of applying
+it to the provision of a future independency; therefore
+every renewal of this term is liable to prove a
+reiterated oppression. It is perhaps owing to the
+causes which I have described, and a proof of their
+existence, that this appointment has been for some
+years past so eagerly solicited and so easily resigned.
+There are yet other inconveniences attendant on this
+habit, and perhaps an investigation of them all would
+lead to endless discoveries. Every man whom your
+choice has honored with so distinguished a trust seeks
+to merit approbation and acquire an <i>&eacute;clat</i> by innovations,
+for which the wild scene before him affords
+ample and justifiable occasion."</p></div>
+
+<p>You see, my Lords, he has stated, that, if a Governor
+is appointed to hold his office only for a short
+time, the consequence would be either an avowed
+disobedience, or, what is worse, extreme falsehood
+and hypocrisy. Your Lordships know that this man
+has held his office for a long time, and yet his disobedience
+has been avowed, and his hypocrisy and
+his falsehood have been discovered, and have been
+proved to your Lordships in the course of this trial.
+You see this man has declared what are the principles
+which should rule the conduct of men whom
+you have constituted the guardians of your property,
+and checks upon the morals and fidelity of others.
+Mr. Hastings tells you himself directly what his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">{294}</a></span>
+duty was; he tells you himself, and he pronounces
+his own condemnation, what was expected from him,
+namely, that he should give a great example himself,
+and be a check and guardian of the fidelity of all
+that are under him. He declares, at the end of
+this letter, that a very short continuance in their
+service would enable him to make a fortune up to
+the height of his desire. He has since thought
+proper to declare to you that he is a beggar and
+undone, notwithstanding all his irregular resources
+in that very service.</p>
+
+<p>I have read this letter to your Lordships, that you
+may contrast it with the conduct of the prisoner, as
+stated by us, and proved by the evidence we have
+adduced. We have stated and proved that Mr.
+Hastings did enter upon a systematic connivance at
+the peculation of the Company's servants, that he
+refused to institute any check whatever for the purpose
+of preventing corruption, and that he carried
+into execution no one measure of government agreeably
+to the positive and solemn engagements into
+which he had entered with the Directors. We therefore
+charge him, not only with his own corruptions,
+but with a systematic, premeditated corruption of the
+whole service, from the time when he was appointed,
+in the beginning of the year 1772, down to the year
+1785, when he left it. He never attempted to detect
+any one single abuse whatever; he never endeavored
+once to put a stop to any corruption in any man,
+black or white, in any way whatever. And thus he
+has acted in a government of which he himself declares
+the nature to be such that it is almost impossible
+so to detect misconduct as to give legal evidence
+of it, though a man should be declared by the cri<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">{295}</a></span>es
+of the whole people to be guilty.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, he desires an arbitrary power over the
+Company's servants to be given to him. God forbid
+arbitrary power should be given into the hands of any
+man! At the same time, God forbid, if by power be
+meant the ability to discover, to reach, to check, and
+to punish subordinate corruption, that he should not
+be enabled so to do, and to get at, to prosecute, and
+punish delinquency by law! But honesty only, and
+not arbitrary power, is necessary for that purpose.
+We well know, indeed, that a government requiring
+arbitrary power has been the situation in which this
+man has attempted to place us.</p>
+
+<p>We know, also, my Lords, that there are cases in
+which the act of the delinquent may be of consequence,
+while the example of the criminal, from the
+obscurity of his situation, is of little importance: in
+other cases, the act of the delinquent may be of no
+great importance, but the consequences of the example
+dreadful. We know that crimes of great magnitude,
+that acts of great tyranny, can but seldom be
+exercised, and only by a few persons. They are privileged
+crimes. They are the dreadful prerogatives of
+greatness, and of the highest situations only. But
+when a Governor-General descends into the muck
+and filth of peculation and corruption, when he receives
+bribes and extorts money, he does acts that are
+imitable by everybody. There is not a single man,
+black or white, from the highest to the lowest, that is
+possessed in the smallest degree of momentary authority,
+that cannot imitate the acts of such a Governor-General.
+Consider, then, what the consequences
+will be, when it is laid down as a principle of the
+service, that no man is to be called to account acc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">{296}</a></span>ording
+to the existing laws, and that you must either
+give, as he says, arbitrary power, or suffer your government
+to be destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>We asked Mr. Anderson, whether the covenant of
+every farmer of the revenue did not forbid him from
+giving any presents to any persons, or taking any.
+He answered, he did not exactly remember, (for the
+memory of this gentleman is very indifferent, though
+the matter was in his own particular province,) but
+he thought it did; and he referred us to the record
+of it. I cannot get at the record; and therefore you
+must take it as it stands from Mr. Anderson, without
+a reference to the record,&mdash;that the farmers were
+forbidden to take or give any money to any person
+whatever, beyond their engagements. Now, if a
+Governor-General comes to that farmer, and says,
+"You must give a certain sum beyond your engagements,"
+he lets him loose to prey upon the landholders
+and cultivators; and thus a way is prepared for
+the final desolation of the whole country, by the malversation
+of the Governor, and by the consequent oppressive
+conduct of the farmers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings being now put over the whole country
+to regulate it, let us see what he has done. He
+says, "Let me have an arbitrary power, and I will
+regulate it." He assumed arbitrary power, and
+turned in and out every servant at his pleasure.
+But did he by that arbitrary power correct any one
+corruption? Indeed, how could he? He does not
+say he did. For when a man gives ill examples in
+himself, when he cannot set on foot an inquiry that
+does not terminate in his own corruption, of course
+he cannot institute any inquiry into the corruption
+of the other servants.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">{297}</a></span></p>
+<p>But again, my Lords, the subordinate servant will
+say, "I cannot rise" (properly here, as Mr. Hastings
+has well observed) "to the height of greatness,
+power, distinction, rank, or honor in the government;
+but I can make my fortune, according to my degree,
+my measure, and my place." His views will be then
+directed so to make it. And when he sees that the
+Governor-General is actuated by no other views,&mdash;when
+he himself, as a farmer, is confidently assured
+of the corruptions of his superior,&mdash;when he knows
+it to be laid down as a principle by the Governor-General,
+that no corruption is to be inquired into, and
+that, if it be not expressly laid down, yet that his
+conduct is such as to make it the same as if he had
+actually so laid it down,&mdash;then, I say, every part of
+the service is instantly and totally corrupted.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I shall next refer your Lordships to the article
+of contracts. Five contracts have been laid before
+you, the extravagant and corrupt profits of which
+have been proved to amount to 500,000<i>l.</i> We have
+shown you, by the strongest presumptive evidence,
+that these contracts were given for the purpose of
+corrupting the Company's servants in India, and
+of corrupting the Company itself in England. You
+will recollect that 40,000<i>l.</i> was given in one morning
+for a contract which the contractor was never to
+execute: I speak of Mr. Sulivan's contract. You
+will also recollect that he was the son of the principal
+person in the Indian direction, and who, in
+or out of office, was known to govern it, and to
+be supported by the whole Indian interest of Mr.
+Hastings. You have seen the corruption of Sir
+Eyre Coote, in giving to Mr. Croftes the bullock
+contract. You have seen the bullock contracts <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">{298}</a></span>stated
+to Mr. Hastings's face, and not denied, to have been
+made for concealing a number of corrupt interests.
+You have seen Mr. Auriol's contract, given to the
+secretary of the Company by Mr. Hastings in order
+that he might have the whole records and registers
+of the Company under his control. You have seen
+that the contract and commission for the purchase
+of stores and provisions, an enormous job, was given
+to Mr. Belli, an obscure man, for whom Mr. Hastings
+offers himself as security, under circumstances that
+went to prove that Mr. Belli held this commission
+for Mr. Hastings. These, my Lords, are things that
+cannot be slurred over. The Governor-General is
+corrupt; he corrupts all about him; he does it upon
+system; he will make no inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, I have stated the amount of the sums
+which he has squandered away in these contracts;
+but you will observe that we have brought forward
+but five of them. Good God! when you consider
+the magnitude and multiplicity of the Company's
+dealings, judge you what must be the enormous
+mass of that corruption of which he has been the
+cause, and in the profits of which he has partaken.
+When your Lordships shall have considered this
+document, his defence, which I have read in part
+to you, see whether you are not bound, when he
+imputes to us and throws upon us the cause of all
+his corruption, to throw back the charge by your
+decision, and hurl it with indignation upon himself.</p>
+
+<p>But there is another shameless and most iniquitous
+circumstance, which I have forgotten to mention,
+respecting these contracts. He not only considered
+them as means of present power, and therefo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">{299}</a></span>re
+protected his favorites without the least inquiry
+into their conduct, and with flagrant suspicion of
+a corrupt participation in their delinquency, but he
+goes still farther: he declares, that, if he should be
+removed from his government, he will give them a
+lease in these exorbitant profits, for the purpose of
+securing a corrupt party to support and bear him
+out by their evidence, upon the event of any inquiry
+into his conduct,&mdash;to give him a <i>razinama</i>, to give
+him a flourishing character, whenever he should come
+upon his trial. Hear what his principles are; hear
+what the man himself avows.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="quotdate">
+"<i>Fort William, October 4, 1779.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>"In answer to Mr. Francis's insinuation, that it
+is natural enough for the agent to wish to secure
+himself before the expiration of the present government,
+I avow the fact as to myself as well as the
+agent. When I see a systematic opposition to every
+measure proposed by me for the service of the public,
+by which an individual may eventually benefit,
+I cannot hesitate a moment to declare it to be my
+firm belief, that, should the government of this country
+be placed in the hands of the present minority,
+they would seek the ruin of every man connected
+with me; it is therefore only an act of common justice
+in me to wish to secure them, as far as I legally
+can, from the apprehension of future oppression."</p></div>
+
+<p>Here is the principle avowed. He takes for granted,
+and he gives it the name of oppression, that the
+person who should succeed him would take away
+those unlawful and wicked emoluments, and give
+them to some other. "But," says he, "I will pu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">{300}</a></span>t
+out of the Company's power the very means of redress."</p>
+
+<p>The document which I am now going to read to
+your Lordships contains a declaration by Mr. Hastings
+of another mean which he used of corrupting
+the whole Company's service.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Minute of the Governor-General.&mdash;Extract from that
+Minute.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Called upon continually by persons of high rank
+and station, both in national and in the Company's
+councils, to protect and prefer their friends in the
+army, and by the merits and services which have
+come under my personal knowledge and observation,
+I suffer both pain and humiliation at the want of
+power to reward the meritorious, or to show a proper
+attention to the wishes of my superiors, without having
+recourse to means which must be considered as
+incompatible with the dignity of my station. The
+slender relief which I entreat of the board from this
+state of mortification is the authority to augment the
+number of my staff, which will enable me to show
+a marked and particular attention in circumstances
+such as above stated, and will be no considerable
+burden to the Company."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, you here see what he has been endeavoring
+to effect, for the express purpose of enabling
+him to secure himself a corrupt influence in England.
+But there is another point much more material,
+which brings the matter directly home to this court,
+and puts it to you either to punish him or to declare
+yourselves to be accomplices in the corruption of the
+whole service. Hear what the man himself says.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">{301}</a></span>
+I am first to mention to your Lordships the occasion
+upon which the passage which I shall read to you
+was written. It was when he was making his enormous
+and shameful establishment of a Revenue Board,
+in the year 1781,&mdash;of which I shall say a few words
+hereafter, as being a gross abuse in itself: he then
+felt that the world would be so much shocked at the
+enormous prodigality and corrupt profusion of what
+he was doing, that he at last spoke out plainly.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>A Minute of Mr. Hastings, transmitted in a Letter by
+Mr. Wheler.</i></p>
+
+<p>"In this, as it must be the case in every reformation,
+the interest of individuals has been our principal,
+if not our only impediment. We could not at
+once deprive so large a body of our fellow-servants
+of their bread, without feeling that reluctance which
+humanity must dictate,&mdash;not unaccompanied, perhaps,
+with some concern for the consequence which
+our own credit might suffer by an act which involved
+the fortunes of many, and extended its influence to
+all their connections. This, added to the justice
+which was due to your servants, who were removed
+for no fault of theirs, but for the public convenience,
+induced us to continue their allowances until other offices
+could be provided for them, and the more cheerfully
+to submit to the expediency of leaving others
+in a temporary or partial charge of the internal collections.
+In effect, the civil officers [offices?] of this
+government might be reduced to a very scanty number,
+were their exigency alone to determine the list
+of your covenanted servants, which at this time consist
+of no less a number than two hundred and fifty-two,&mdash;many
+of them the sons of the first families in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">{302}</a></span>
+the kingdom of Great Britain, and every one aspiring
+to the rapid acquisition of lacs, and to return to pass
+the prime of their lives at home, as multitudes have
+done before them. Neither will the revenues of this
+country suffice for such boundless pretensions, nor
+are they compatible with yours and the national
+interests, which may eventually suffer as certain a
+ruin from the effects of private competition and the
+claims of patronage as from the more dreaded calamities
+of war, or the other ordinary causes which lead
+to the decline of dominion."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, you have here his declaration, that patronage,
+which he avows to be one of the principles
+of his government, and to be the principle of the last
+of his acts, is worse than war, pestilence, and famine,&mdash;and
+that all these calamities together might not
+be so effectual as this patronage in wasting and destroying
+the country. And at what time does he tell
+you this? He tells it you when he himself had just
+wantonly destroyed an old regular establishment for
+the purpose of creating a new one, in which he says
+he was under the necessity of pensioning the members
+of the old establishment from motives of mere
+humanity. He here confesses himself to be the author
+of the whole mischief. "I could," says he,
+"have acted better; I might have avoided desolating
+the country by peculation; but," says he, "I had
+sons of the first families in the kingdom of Great
+Britain, every one aspiring to the rapid acquisition of
+lacs, and this would not suffer me to do my duty."
+I hope your Lordships will stigmatize the falsehood
+of this assertion. Consider, my Lords, what he has
+said,&mdash;two hundred and fifty men at once, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">{303}</a></span>
+succession, aspiring to come home in the prime of
+their youth with <i>lacs</i>. You cannot take <i>lacs</i> to be
+less than two; we cannot make a plural less than
+two. Two lacs make 20,000<i>l.</i> Then multiply that,
+by 252, and you will find more than 2,500,000<i>l.</i> to
+be provided for that set of gentlemen, and for the
+claims of patronage. Undoubtedly such a patronage
+is worse than the most dreadful calamities of war,
+and all the other causes which lead to decline of
+dominion.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, I beseech you to consider this plan of
+corrupting the Company's servants, beginning with
+systematical corruption, and ending with an avowed
+declaration that he will persist in this iniquitous
+proceeding, and to the utmost of his power entail
+it upon the Company, for the purpose of securing
+his accomplices against all the consequences of any
+change in the Company's government. "I dare not,"
+says he, "be honest: if I make their fortunes, you
+will judge favorably of me; if I do not make their
+fortunes, I shall find myself crushed with a load of
+reproach and obloquy, from which I cannot escape in
+any other way than by bribing the House of Peers."
+What a shameful avowal this to be made in the face
+of the world! Your Lordships' judgment upon this
+great cause will obliterate it from the memory of
+man.</p>
+
+<p>But his apprehension of some change in the Company's
+government is not his only pretext for some
+of these corrupt proceedings; he adverts also to the
+opposition which he had to encounter with his colleagues,
+as another circumstance which drove him
+to adopt others of these scandalous expediences.
+Now there was a period when he had no longer to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">{304}</a></span>
+contend with, or to fear, that opposition.</p>
+
+<p>When he had got rid of the majority in the Council,
+which thwarted him, what did he do? Did he
+himself correct any of the evils and disorders which
+had prevailed in the service, and which his hostile
+majority had purposed to reform? No, not one,&mdash;notwithstanding
+the Court of Directors had supported
+the majority in all their declarations, and had accused
+him of corruption and rebellion in every part
+of his opposition to them. Now that he was free
+from the yoke of all the mischief of that cursed majority
+which he deprecates, and which I have heard
+certain persons consider as a great calamity, (a calamity
+indeed it was to patronage,)&mdash;as soon, I
+say, as he was free from this, you would imagine
+he had undertaken some great and capital reformation;
+for all the power which the Company could
+give was in his hands,&mdash;total, absolute, and unconfined.</p>
+
+<p>I must here remind your Lordships, that the
+Provincial Councils was an establishment made by
+Mr. Hastings. So confident was he in his own
+opinion of the expediency of them, that he transmitted
+to the Court of Directors a draught of an act of
+Parliament to confirm them. By this act it was his
+intention to place them beyond the possibility of mutation.
+Whatever opinion others might entertain
+of their weakness, inefficacy, or other defects, Mr.
+Hastings found no such things in them. He had declared
+in the beginning that he considered them as
+a sort of experiment, but that in the progress he found
+them answer so perfectly well that he proposed even
+an act of Parliament to support them. The Court
+of Directors, knowing the mischiefs that innova<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">{305}</a></span>tion
+had produced in their service, and the desolations
+which it had brought on the country, commanded
+him not to take any step for changing them, without
+their orders. Contrary, however, to his own declarations,
+contrary to the sketch of an act of Parliament,
+which, for aught he knew, the legislature might then
+have passed, (I know that it was in contemplation to
+pass, about that time, several acts for regulating the
+Company's affairs, and, for one, I should have been,
+as I always have been, a good deal concerned in
+whatever tended to fix some kind of permanent and
+settled government in Bengal,)&mdash;in violation, I say,
+of his duty, and in contradiction to his own opinion,
+he at that time, without giving the parties notice,
+turns out of their employments, situations, and bread,
+the Provincial Councils.</p>
+
+<p>And who were the members of those Provincial
+Councils? They were of high rank in the Company's
+service; they were not junior servants, boys of a
+day, but persons who had gone through some probation,
+who knew something of the country, who were
+conversant in its revenues and in the course of its
+business; they were, in short, men of considerable
+rank in the Company's service. What did he do
+with these people? Without any regard to their
+rank in the service,&mdash;no more than he had regarded
+the rank of the nobility of the country,&mdash;he sweeps
+them all, in one day, from their independent situations,
+without reference to the Directors, and turns
+them all into pensioners upon the Company. And
+for what purpose was this done? It was done in order
+to reduce the Company's servants, who, in their
+independent situations, were too great a mass and
+volume for him to corrupt, to an abject dependenc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">{306}</a></span>e
+upon his absolute power. It was, that he might tell
+them, "You have lost your situations; you have
+nothing but small alimentary pensions, nothing more
+than a maintenance; and you must depend upon me
+whether you are to have anything more or not."
+Thus at one stroke a large division of the Company's
+servants, and one of the highest orders of them, were
+reduced, for their next bread, to an absolute, submissive
+dependence upon his will; and the Company was
+loaded with the pensions of all these discarded servants.
+Thus were persons in an honorable, independent
+situation, earned by long service in that country,
+and who were subject to punishment for their crimes,
+if proved against them, all deprived, unheard, of their
+employments. You would imagine that Mr. Hastings
+had at least charged them with corruption. No, you
+will see upon your minutes, that, when he abolished
+the Provincial Councils, he declared at the same time
+that he found no fault with the persons concerned in
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, then, he has got rid, as your Lordships
+see, of one whole body of the Company's servants;
+he has systematically corrupted the rest, and provided,
+as far as lay in his power, for the perpetuation of their
+corruption; he has connived at all their delinquencies,
+and has destroyed the independence of all the
+superior orders of them.</p>
+
+<p>Now hear what he does with regard to the Council-General
+itself. They had, by the act that made Mr.
+Hastings Governor, the management of the revenues
+vested in them. You have been shown by an honorable
+and able fellow Manager of mine, that he took
+the business of this department wholly out of the
+hand of the Council; that he named a committee fo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">{307}</a></span>r
+the management of it, at an enormous expense,&mdash;committee
+made up of his own creatures and dependants;
+and that, after destroying the Provincial
+Councils, he brought down the whole management
+of the revenue to Calcutta. This committee took
+this important business entirely out of the hands
+of the Council, in which the act had vested it, and
+this committee he formed without the orders of the
+Court of Directors, and directly contrary to the act,
+which put the superintendence in the hands of the
+Council.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, but he reserved a superintendence over them.&mdash;You
+shall hear what the superintendence was; you
+shall see, feel, smell, touch; it shall enter into every
+avenue and pore of your soul. It will show you what
+was the real principle of Mr. Hastings's government.
+We will read to you what Sir John Shore says of
+that institution, and of the only ends and purposes
+which it could answer; your Lordships will then see
+how far he was justifiable in violating an act of Parliament,
+and giving out of the Council's hands the
+great trust which the laws of his country had vested
+in them. It is part of a paper written in 1785 by
+Mr. Shore, who was sole acting president of this
+committee to which all Bengal was delivered. He
+was an old servant of the Company, and he is now
+at the head of the government of that country. He
+was Mr. Hastings's particular friend, and therefore
+you cannot doubt either of his being a competent
+evidence, or that he is a favorable evidence for Mr.
+Hastings, and that he would not say one word against
+the establishment of which he himself was at the
+head, that was not perfectly true, and forced out of
+him by the truth of the case. There is not a single<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">{308}</a></span>
+part of it that does not point out some abuse.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"In the actual collection of the revenues, nothing
+is more necessary than to give immediate attention
+to all complaints, which are preferred daily without
+number, and to dispatch them in a summary manner.
+This cannot be done where the control is remote.
+In every purgunnah throughout Bengal there
+are some distinct usages, which cannot be clearly
+known at a distance; yet in all complaints of oppression
+or extortion, these must be known before a
+decision can be pronounced. But to learn at Calcutta
+the particular customs of a district of Rajeshahye
+or Dacca is almost impossible; and considering the
+channel through which an explanation must pass,
+and through which the complaint is made, any coloring
+may be given to it, and oppression and extortion,
+to the ruin of a district, may be practised with
+impunity. This is a continual source of embarrassment
+to the Committee of Revenue in Calcutta.</p>
+
+<p>"One object of their institution was to bring the
+revenues without the expenses of agency to the
+Presidency, and to remove all local control over the
+farmers, who were to pay their rents at Calcutta.
+When complaints are made against farmers by the
+occupiers of the lands, it is almost impossible to discriminate
+truth from falsehood; but to prevent a
+failure in the revenue, it is found necessary, in all
+doubtful cases, to support the farmer,&mdash;a circumstance
+which may give rise to and confirm the most
+cruel acts of oppression. The real state of any
+district cannot be known by the Committee. An
+occupier or zemindar may plead, that an inundation
+has ruined him, or that his country is a deser<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">{309}</a></span>t
+through want of rain. An aumeen is sent to examine
+the complaint. He returns with an exaggerated
+account of losses, proved in volumes of intricate accounts,
+which the Committee have no time to read,
+and for which the aumeen is well paid. Possibly,
+however, the whole account is false. Suppose no
+aumeen is employed, and the renter is held to the
+tenor of his engagement, the loss, if real, must occasion
+his ruin, unless his assessment is very moderate
+indeed.</p>
+
+<p>"I may venture to pronounce that the real state
+of the districts is now less known, and the revenue
+less understood, than in the year 1774. Since the
+natives have had the disposal of accounts, since they
+have been introduced as agents and trusted with authority,
+intricacy and confusion have taken place.
+The records and accounts which have been compiled
+are numerous, yet, when any particular account is
+wanted, it cannot be found. It is the business of
+all, from the ryots to the dewan, to conceal and deceive.
+The simplest matters of fact are designedly
+covered with a veil through which no human understanding
+can penetrate.</p>
+
+<p>"With respect to the present Committee of Revenue,
+it is morally impossible for them to execute
+the business they are intrusted with. They are invested
+with a general control, and they have an executive
+authority larger than ever was before given
+to any board or body of men. They may and must
+get through the business; but to pretend to assert
+that they really execute it would be folly and falsehood.</p>
+
+<p>"The grand object of the native dewannies was
+to acquire independent control, and for many <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">{310}</a></span>years
+they have pursued this with wonderful art. The
+farmers and zemindars under the Committee prosecute
+the same plan, and have already objections to
+anything that has the least appearance of restriction.
+All control removed, they can plunder as they please.</p>
+
+<p>"The Committee must have a dewan, or executive
+officer, call him by what name you please. This
+man, in fact, has all the revenues paid at the Presidency
+at his disposal, and can, if he has any abilities,
+bring all the renters under contribution. It is of
+little advantage to restrain the Committee themselves
+from bribery or corruption, when their executive officer
+has the power of protecting [practising?] both
+undetected.</p>
+
+<p>"To display the arts employed by a native on such
+an occasion would fill a volume. He discovers the
+secret resources of the zemindars and renters, their
+enemies and competitors, and by the engines of hope
+and fear raised upon these foundations he can work
+them to his purpose. The Committee, with the best intentions,
+best abilities, and steadiest application, must,
+after all, be a tool in the hand of their dewan."</p></div>
+
+<p>Here is the account of Mr. Hastings's new Committee
+of Revenue, substituted in the place of an
+establishment made by act of Parliament. Here
+is what he has substituted for Provincial Councils.
+Here is what he has substituted in the room of the
+whole regular order of the service, which he totally
+subverted. Can we add anything to this picture?
+Can we heighten it? Can we do anything more
+than to recommend it to your Lordships' serious consideration?</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">{311}</a></span></p>
+<p>But before I finally dismiss this part of our charge,
+I must request your Lordships' most earnest attention
+to the true character of these atrocious proceedings,
+as they now stand proved before you, by
+direct or the strongest presumptive evidence, upon
+the Company's records, and by his own confessions
+and declarations, and those of his most intimate
+friends and avowed agents.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships will recollect, that, previously to
+the appointment of Mr. Hastings to be the Governor-General,
+in 1772, the collection of the revenues was
+committed to a naib dewan, or native collector, under
+the control of the Supreme Council,&mdash;and that Mr.
+Hastings did at that time, and upon various occasions
+afterwards, declare it to be his decided and fixed opinion,
+that nothing would be so detrimental to the interests
+of the Company, and to the happiness and welfare
+of the inhabitants of their provinces, as changes,
+and more especially sudden changes, in the collection
+of their revenues. His opinion was also most strongly
+and reiteratedly pressed upon him by his masters, the
+Court of Directors. The first step taken after his appointment
+was to abolish the office of naib dewan, and
+to send a committee through the provinces, at the
+expense of 50,000<i>l.</i> a year, to make a settlement of
+rents to be paid by the natives for five years. At the
+same time he appointed one of the Company's servants
+to be the collector in each province, and he abolished
+the General Board of Revenue, which had been
+established at Moorshedabad, chiefly for the following
+reasons: that, by its exercising a separate control, the
+members of the Supreme Council at Calcutta were
+prevented from acquiring that intimate acquaintance
+with the revenues which was necessary to persons
+in their station; and because many of the powers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">{312}</a></span> necessary
+for the collection of the revenues could not
+be delegated to a subordinate council. In consideration
+of these opinions, orders, and declarations, he, in
+1773, abolished the office of collector, and transferred
+the management of the revenues to several councils
+of revenue, called Provincial Councils, and recommended
+their perpetual establishment by act of Parliament.
+In the year 1774, in contradiction of his former
+opinion respecting the necessity of the Supreme
+Council possessing all possible means of becoming
+acquainted with the details of the revenue, he again
+recommended the continuance of the Provincial Councils
+in all their parts. This he again declared to be
+his deliberate opinion in 1775 and in 1776.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time a majority of the Supreme Council,
+consisting of members who had generally differed
+in opinion from Mr. Hastings, had transmitted their
+advice to the Court of Directors, recommending some
+changes in the system of Provincial Councils. The
+Directors, in their reply to this recommendation, did
+in 1777 order the Supreme Council to form a new
+plan for the collection of the revenues, and to transmit
+it to them for their consideration.</p>
+
+<p>No such plan was transmitted; but in the year
+1781, Mr. Hastings having obtained a majority in the
+Council, he again changed the whole system, both
+of collection of the revenue and of the executive administration
+of civil and criminal justice. And who
+were the persons substituted in the place of those
+whom he removed? Names, my Lords, with which
+you are already but too well acquainted. At their
+head stands Munny Begum; then comes his own
+domestic, and private bribe-agent, Gunga Govind
+Sing; then his banian, Cantoo Baboo; then that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">{313}</a></span>instrument
+of all evil, Debi Sing; then the whole tribe
+of his dependants, white and black, whom he made
+farmers of the revenue, with Colonel Hannay at their
+head; and, lastly, his confidential Residents, secret
+agents, and private secretaries, Mr. Middleton, Major
+Palmer, &amp;c., &amp;c. Can your Lordships doubt, for a
+single instant, of the real spirit of these proceedings?
+Can you doubt of the whole design having originated
+and ended in corruption and peculation?</p>
+
+<p>We have fully stated to you, from the authority of
+these parties themselves, the effects and consequences
+of these proceedings,&mdash;namely, the dilapidation
+of the revenues, and the ruin and desolation of the
+provinces. And, my Lords, what else could have
+been expected or designed by this sweeping subversion
+of the control of the Company's servants over
+the collections of the revenue, and the vesting of it
+in a black dewan, but fraud and peculation? What
+else, I say, was to be expected, in the inextricable
+turnings and windings of that black mystery of iniquity,
+but the concealment of every species of wrong,
+violence, outrage, and oppression?</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships, then, have seen that the whole
+country was put into the hands of Gunga Govind
+Sing; and when you remember who this Gunga
+Govind Sing was, and how effectually Mr. Hastings
+had secured him against detection, in every part of
+his malpractices and atrocities, can you for a moment
+hesitate to believe that the whole project was
+planned and executed for the purpose of putting all
+Bengal under contribution to Mr. Hastings? But if
+you are resolved, after all this, to entertain a good
+opinion of Mr. Hastings,&mdash;if you have taken it into
+your heads, for reasons best known to yourselves, t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">{314}</a></span>o
+imagine that he has some hidden virtues, which in
+the government of Bengal he has not displayed, and
+which, to us of the House of Commons, have not
+been discernible in any one single instance,&mdash;these
+virtues may be fit subjects for paragraphs in newspapers,
+they may be pleaded for him by the partisans
+of his Indian <i>faction</i>, but your Lordships will do well
+to remember that it is not to Mr. Hastings himself
+that you are trusting, but to Gunga Govind Sing.
+If the Committee were tools in his hands, must not
+Mr. Hastings have also been a tool in his hands?
+If they with whom he daily and hourly had to transact
+business, and whose office it was to control and
+restrain him, were unable so to do, is this control
+and restraint to be expected from Mr. Hastings,
+who was his confidant, and whose corrupt transactions
+he could at any time discover to the world?
+My worthy colleague has traced the whole of Mr.
+Hastings's bribe account, in the most clear and satisfactory
+manner, to Gunga Govind Sing,&mdash;him first,
+him last, him midst, and without end. If we fail
+of the conviction of the prisoner at your bar, your
+Lordships will not have acquitted Mr. Hastings
+merely, but you will confirm all the robberies and
+rapines of Gunga Govind Sing. You will recognize
+him as a faithful governor of India. Yes, my Lords,
+let us rejoice in this man! Let us adopt him as our
+own! Let our country, let this House, be proud of
+him! If Mr. Hastings can be acquitted, we must admit
+Gunga Govind Sing's government to be the greatest
+blessing that ever happened to mankind. But if
+Gunga Govind Sing's government be the greatest
+curse that ever befell suffering humanity, as we assert
+it to have been, there is the man that placed him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">{315}</a></span>
+in it; there is his father, his godfather, the first author
+and origin of all these evils and, calamities. My
+Lords, remember Dinagepore; remember the bribe of
+40,000<i>l.</i> which Gunga Govind Sing procured for Mr.
+Hastings in that province, and the subsequent horror
+of that scene.</p>
+
+<p>But, my Lords, do you extend your confidence to
+Gunga Govind Sing? Not even the face of this man,
+to whom the revenues of the Company, together with
+the estates, fortunes, reputations, and lives of the
+inhabitants of that country were delivered over, is
+known in those provinces. He resides at Calcutta,
+and is represented by a variety of under-agents. Do
+you know Govind Ghose? Do you know Nundulol?
+Do you know the whole tribe of peculators, whom
+Mr. Hastings calls his faithful domestic servants?
+Do you know all the persons that Gunga Govind Sing
+must employ in the various ramifications of the revenues
+throughout all the provinces? Are you prepared
+to trust all these? The Board of Revenue
+has confessed that it could not control them. Mr.
+Hastings himself could not control them. The establishment
+of this system was like Sin's opening the
+gates of Hell: like her, he could open the gate,&mdash;but
+to shut, as Milton says, exceeded his power. The
+former establishments, if defective, or if abuses were
+found in them, might have been corrected. There
+was at least the means of detecting and punishing
+abuse. But Mr. Hastings destroyed the means of
+doing either, by putting the whole country into the
+hands of Gunga Govind Sing.</p>
+
+<p>Now, having seen all these things done, look to the
+account. Your Lordships will now be pleased to look
+at this business as a mere account of revenue. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">{316}</a></span>
+will find, on comparing the three years in which Mr.
+Hastings was in the minority with the three years
+after the appointment of this Committee, that the
+assessment upon the country increased, but that the
+revenue was diminished; and you will also find,
+which is a matter that ought to astonish you, that
+the expenses of the collections were increased by no
+less a sum than 500,000<i>l.</i> You may judge from this
+what riot there was in rapacity and ravage, both
+amongst the European and native agents, but chiefly
+amongst the natives: for Mr. Hastings did not divide
+the greatest part of this spoil among the Company's
+servants, but among this gang of black dependants.
+These accounts are in pages 1273 and
+1274 of your Minutes.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, weighty indeed would have been the
+charge brought before your Lordships by the Commons
+of Great Britain against the prisoner at your
+bar, if they had fixed upon no other crime or misdemeanor
+than that which I am now pressing upon
+you,&mdash;his throwing off the allegiance of the Company,
+his putting a black master over himself, and his
+subjecting the whole of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa,
+the whole of the Company's servants, the Company's
+revenues, the Company's farms, to Gunga Govind
+Sing. But, my Lords, it is a very curious and
+remarkable thing, that we have traced this man as
+Mr. Hastings's bribe-broker up to the time of the
+nomination of this Committee; we have traced him
+through a regular series of bribery; he is Mr. Hastings's
+bribe-broker at Patna; he is Mr. Hastings's
+bribe-broker at Nuddea; he is his bribe-broker at
+Dinagepore; we find him his bribe-broker in all these
+places; but from the moment that this Committee was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">{317}</a></span>
+constituted, it became a gulf in which the prevention,
+the detection, and the correction of all kind of abuses
+were sunk and lost forever. From the time when this
+Committee and Gunga Govind Sing were appointed,
+you do not find one word more of Mr. Hastings's
+bribes. Had he then ceased to receive any? or where
+are you to look for them? You are to look for them
+in that 500,000<i>l.</i> excess of expense in the revenue
+department, and in the rest of all that corrupt traffic
+of Gunga Govind Sing of which we gave you specimens
+at the time we proved his known bribes to you.
+These are nothing but index-hands to point out to you
+the immense mass of corruption which had its origin,
+and was daily accumulating in these provinces, under
+the protection of Mr. Hastings. And can you think,
+and can we talk of such transactions, without feeling
+emotions of indignation and horror not to be described?
+Can we contemplate such scenes as these,&mdash;can
+we look upon those desolated provinces, upon
+a country so ravaged, a people so subdued,&mdash;Mahometans,
+Gentoos, our own countrymen, all trampled
+under foot by this tyrant,&mdash;can we do this; without
+giving expression to those feelings which, after animating
+us in this life, will comfort us when we die,
+and will form our best part in another?</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, I am now at the last day of my endeavors
+to inspire your Lordships with a just sense of
+these unexampled atrocities. I have had a great
+encyclopedia of crimes to deal with; I will get
+through them as soon as I can; and I pray your
+Lordships to believe, that, if I omit anything, it is to
+time I sacrifice it,&mdash;that it is to want of strength I
+sacrifice it,&mdash;that it is to necessity, and not from any
+despair of making, from the records and from the evidenc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">{318}</a></span>e,
+matter so omitted as black as anything that I
+have yet brought before you.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing of which I have to remind your
+Lordships respecting these black agents of the prisoner
+is, that we find him, just before his departure
+from India, recommending three of them, Gunga Govind
+Sing, Gunga Ghose, and Nundulol, as persons fit
+and necessary to be rewarded for their services by
+the Company. Now your Lordships will find, that, of
+these faithful domestic servants, there is not one of
+them who was not concerned in these enormous briberies,
+and in betraying their own native and natural
+master. If I had time for it, I believe I could
+trace every person to be, in proportion to Mr. Hastings's
+confidence in him, the author of some great
+villany. These persons he thinks had not been sufficiently
+rewarded, and accordingly he recommends
+to the board, as his dying legacy, provision for
+these faithful attached servants of his, and particularly
+for Gunga Govind Sing. The manner in
+which this man was to be rewarded makes a part of
+the history of these transactions, as curious, perhaps,
+as was ever exhibited to the world. Your Lordships
+will find it in page 2841 of your Minutes.</p>
+
+<p>The Rajah of Dinagepore was a child at that time
+about eleven years old, and had succeeded to the
+Rajahship (by what means I shall say nothing) when
+he was about five years old. He is made to apply to
+Mr. Hastings for leave to grant a very considerable
+part of his estate to Gunga Govind Sing, as a reward
+for his services. These services could only be known
+to the Rajah's family by having robbed it of at least
+40,000<i>l.</i>, the bribe given to Mr. Hastings. But the
+Rajah's family is so little satisfied with this bountiful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">{319}</a></span>
+and liberal donation to Gunga Govind Sing, that
+they desire that several purgunnahs, or farms, that
+are mentioned in the application made to the Council,
+should be separated from the family estate and
+given to this man. Such was this extraordinary
+gratitude: gratitude, not for money received, but for
+money taken away,&mdash;a species of gratitude unknown
+in any part of the world but in India; gratitude
+pervading every branch of the family; his mother
+coming forward and petitioning likewise that her son
+should be disinherited; his uncle, the natural protector
+and guardian of his minority, coming forward
+and petitioning most earnestly that his nephew
+should be disinherited: all the family join in one voice
+of supplication to Mr. Hastings, that Gunga Govind
+Sing may have a very large and considerable part of
+their family estate given to him. Mr. Hastings, after
+declaring that certain circumstances respecting this
+property, which are mentioned in his minutes, were
+to his knowledge true, but which your Lordships, upon
+examination, will find to be false, and falsified in
+every particular, recommends, in the strongest manner,
+to the board, a compliance with this application.
+He was at this time on the eve of his departure
+from India, in haste to provide for his faithful
+servants; and he well knew that this his last act
+would be held binding upon his successors, who were
+devoted to him.</p>
+
+<p>Here, indeed, is genuine and heroic gratitude,&mdash;gratitude
+for money received, not for money taken
+away; and yet this gratitude was towards a person
+who had paid himself out of the benefit which had
+been conferred, at the expense of a third party. For
+Gunga Govind Sing had kept for himself 20,000<i>l.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">{320}</a></span>
+out of 40,000<i>l.</i> taken from the Rajah. For this
+cheat, stated by Mr. Larkins to be such, and allowed
+by Mr. Hastings himself to be such, he, with a perfect
+knowledge of that fraud and cheat committed
+upon the public, (for he pretends that the money
+was meant for the Company,) makes this supplication
+to his colleagues, and departs.</p>
+
+<p>After his departure, Gunga Govind Sing, relying
+upon the continuance of the corrupt influence which
+he had gained, had the impudence to come forward
+and demand the confirmation of this grant by the
+Council-General. The Council, though willing to
+accede to Mr. Hastings's proposition, were stopped
+in a moment by petitions much more natural, but of
+a direct contrary tenor. The poor infant Rajah raises
+his cries not to be deprived of his inheritance; his
+mother comes forward and conjures the Council not
+to oppress her son and wrong her family; the uncle
+comes and supplicates the board to save from ruin
+these devoted victims which were under his protection.
+All these counter-petitions come before the
+Council while the ink is hardly dry upon the petitions
+which Mr. Hastings had left behind him, as
+proofs of the desire of this family to be disinherited
+in favor of Gunga Govind Sing. Upon the receipt
+of these remonstrances, the board could not proceed
+in the business, and accordingly Gunga Govind Sing
+was defeated.</p>
+
+<p>But Gunga Govind Sing was unwilling to quit his
+prey. And what does he do? I desire your Lordships
+to consider seriously the reply of Gunga Govind
+Sing, as it appears upon your minutes. It is a bold
+answer. He denies the right of the Rajah to these
+estates. "Why," says he, "all property in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">{321}</a></span>
+country depends upon the will of your government.
+How came this Rajah's family into possession of this
+great zemindary? Why, they got it at first by the
+mere favor of government. The whole was an iniquitous
+transaction. This is a family that in some
+former age has robbed others; and now let me rob
+them." In support of this claim, he adds the existence
+of other precedents, namely, "that many clerks
+or mutsuddies and banians at Calcutta had," as he
+says, "got possession of the lands of other people
+without any pretence of right;&mdash;why should not
+I?" Good God! what precedents are these!</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships shall now hear the razinama, or
+testimonial, which, since Mr. Hastings's arrival in
+England, this Rajah has been induced to send to the
+Company from India, and you will judge then of the
+state in which Mr. Hastings has left that country.
+Hearken, my Lords, I pray you, to the razinama of
+this man, from whom 40,000<i>l.</i> was taken by Mr.
+Hastings and Gunga Govind Sing, and against whom
+an attempt was made by the same persons to deprive
+him of his inheritance. Listen to this razinama, and
+then judge of all the other testimonials which have
+been produced on the part of the prisoner at your bar.
+His counsel rest upon them, they glory in them,
+and we shall not abate them one of these precious
+testimonials. They put the voice of grateful India
+against the voice of ungrateful England. Now hear
+what grateful India says, after our having told you
+for what it was so grateful.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"I, Radanaut, Zemindar of Purgunnah Havelly
+Punjera, commonly called Dinagepore:&mdash;As it has
+been learnt by me, the mutsuddies and respectab<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">{322}</a></span>le
+officers of my zemindary, that the ministers of England
+are displeased with the late Governor, Warren
+Hastings, Esquire, upon the suspicion that he oppressed
+us, took money from us by deceit and force,
+and ruined the country, therefore we, upon the
+strength of our religion, which we think it incumbent
+on and necessary for us to abide by, following
+the rules laid down in giving evidence, declare the
+particulars of the acts and deeds of Warren Hastings,
+Esquire, full of circumspection and caution, civility
+and justice, superior to the conduct of the most
+learned, and by representing what is fact wipe away
+the doubts that have possessed the minds of the ministers
+of England; that Mr. Hastings is possessed of
+fidelity and confidence, and yielding protection to us;
+that he is clear from the contamination of mistrust
+and wrong, and his mind is free of covetousness and
+avarice. During the time of his administration, no
+one saw other conduct than that of protection to the
+husbandmen, and justice; no inhabitant ever experienced
+affliction, no one ever felt oppression from him.
+Our reputations have always been guarded from attacks
+by his prudence, and our families have always
+been protected by his justice."</p></div>
+
+<p>Good God! my Lords, "<i>our families protected by
+his justice</i>"! What! after Gunga Govind Sing, in
+concert with Mr. Hastings, had first robbed him of
+40,000<i>l.</i>, and then had attempted to snatch, as it
+were, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the
+inheritance of their fathers, and to deprive this infant
+of a great part of his family estate? Here is a child,
+eleven years old, who never could have seen Mr.
+Hastings, who could know nothing of him but fro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">{323}</a></span>m
+the heavy hand of oppression, affliction, wrong, and
+robbery, brought to bear testimony to the virtues of
+Mr. Hastings before a British Parliament! Such is
+the confidence they repose in their hope of having
+bribed the English nation by the millions and millions
+of money, the countless lacs of rupees, poured into
+it from India, that they had dared to bring this poor
+robbed infant to bear testimony to the character of
+Mr. Hastings! These are the things which are to be
+opposed to the mass of evidence which the House of
+Commons bring against this man,&mdash;evidence which
+they bring from his own acts, his own writing, and
+his own records,&mdash;a cloud of testimony furnished by
+himself in support of charges brought forward and
+urged by us agreeably to the magnitude of his crimes,
+with the horror which is inspired by them, and with
+the contempt due to this paltry attempt towards his
+defence, which they had dared to produce from the
+hands of an infant but eleven years old when Mr.
+Hastings quitted that country!</p>
+
+<p>But to proceed with the razinama.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"He never omitted the smallest instance of kindness
+towards us, but healed the wounds of despair
+with the salve of consolation, by means of his benevolent
+and kind behavior, never permitting one of
+us to sink in the pit of despondence. He supported
+every one by his goodness, overset the designs of
+evil-minded men by his authority, tied the hand of
+oppression with the strong bandage of justice, and
+by these means expanded the pleasing appearance of
+happiness and joy over us. He re&euml;stablished justice
+and impartiality. We were during his government
+in the enjoyment of perfect happiness and ease,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">{324}</a></span> and
+many of us are thankful and satisfied. As Mr. Hastings
+was well acquainted with our manners and customs,
+he was always desirous in every respect of
+doing whatever would preserve our religious rites,
+and guard them against every kind of accident and
+injury, and at all times protected us. Whatever we
+have experienced from him, and whatever happened
+from him, we have written without deceit or exaggeration."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, before I take leave of this affair of
+bribes and of the great bribe-broker, let me just
+offer a remark to your Lordships upon one curious
+transaction. My Lords, we have charged a bribe
+taken from the Nabob of Oude, and we have stated
+the corrupt and scandalous proceeding which attended
+it. I thought I had done with Oude; but
+as there is a golden chain between all the virtues,
+so there is a golden chain which links together all
+the vices. Mr. Hastings, as you have seen, and as
+my honorable colleague has fully opened it to you,
+received a bribe or corrupt present from the Nabob
+of Oude in September, 1781. We heard no more
+of this bribe than what we had stated, (no other
+trace of it ever appearing in the Company's records,
+except in a private letter written by Mr. Hastings to
+the Court of Directors, and afterwards in a communication
+such as you have heard through Mr. Larkins,)
+till October, 1783.</p>
+
+<p>But, my Lords, we have since discovered, through
+and in consequence of the violent disputes which took
+place between Mr. Hastings and the clan of Residents
+that were in Oude,&mdash;the Resident of the Company,
+Mr. Bristow, the two Residents of Mr. Hasti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">{325}</a></span>ngs,
+Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson, and the two
+Residents sent by him to watch over all the rest,
+Major Palmer and Major Davy,&mdash;upon quarrels, I
+say, between them, we discovered that Mr. Middleton
+had received the offer of a present of 100,000<i>l.</i>
+in February, 1782. This circumstance is mentioned
+in a letter of Mr. Middleton's, in which he informs
+Mr. Hastings that the Nabob had destined such a
+sum for him.</p>
+
+<p>Now the first thing that will occur to your Lordships
+upon such an affair will be a desire to know
+what it was that induced the Nabob to make this
+offer. It was but in the September preceding that
+Mr. Hastings had received, for his private use, as the
+Nabob conceived, so bountiful a present as 100,000<i>l.</i>;
+what motive, then, could he have had in February
+to offer him another 100,000<i>l.</i>? This man, at the
+time, was piercing heaven itself with the cries of
+despondency, despair, beggary, and ruin. You have
+seen that he was forced to rob his own family, in
+order to satisfy the Company's demands upon him;
+and yet this is precisely the time when he thinks
+proper to offer 100,000<i>l.</i> to Mr. Hastings. Does not
+the mind of every man revolt, whilst he exclaims,
+and say, "What! another 100,000<i>l.</i> to Mr. Hastings?"
+What reason had the Nabob to think Mr. Hastings
+so monstrously insatiable, that, having but the September
+before received 100,000<i>l.</i>, he must give him
+another in February? My Lords, he must, in the
+interval, have threatened the Nabob with some horrible
+catastrophe, from which he was to redeem himself
+by this second present. You can assign no other
+motive for his giving it. We know not what
+answer Mr. Hastings made to Mr. Middleton <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">{326}</a></span>upon
+that occasion, but we find that in the year 1783 Mr.
+Hastings asserts that he sent up Major Palmer and
+Major Davy to persuade the Nabob to transfer this
+present, which the Nabob intended for him, to the
+Company's service. Remark, my Lords, the progress
+of this affair. In a formal accusation preferred
+against Mr. Middleton, he charges him with obstructing
+this design of his. In this accusation, my Lords,
+you find him at once in the curious character of
+prosecutor, witness, and judge.</p>
+
+<p>Let us see how he comports himself. I shall only
+state to you one of the articles of his impeachment;
+it is the third charge; it is in page 1267 of your
+Lordships' Minutes.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"For sending repeatedly to the Vizier, and to his
+minister, Hyder Beg Kh&acirc;n, to advise them against
+transferring the ten lacs of rupees intended as a
+present to the Governor-General to the Company's
+account; as it would be a precedent for further
+demands, which if the Vizier did not refuse in the
+first instance, the government would never cease to
+harass him for money."</p></div>
+
+<p>The first thing that will occur to your Lordships
+is an assertion of the accuser's:&mdash;"I am morally
+certain, that jaidads or assets for ten lacs, either
+in assignment of land or in bills, had been prepared,
+and were in the charge or possession of Mr. Middleton,
+before Major Palmer's arrival, and left with Mr.
+Johnson on Mr. Middleton's departure."</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, here is an accusation that Mr. Middleton
+had actually received money, either in bills or
+assets of some kind or other,&mdash;and that, upon quitting
+his Residency, he had handed it over to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">{327}</a></span>
+successor, Mr. Johnson. Here are, then, facts asserted,
+and we must suppose substantiated. Here
+is a sum of money to be accounted for, in which
+there is a gross malversation directly charged as to
+these particulars, in Mr. Hastings's opinion. Mr.
+Macpherson, another member of the Council, has declared,
+that he understood at the time that the ten
+lacs were actually deposited in bills, and that it was
+not a mere offer made by the Nabob to pay such a
+sum from the future revenue of the country. Mr.
+Hastings has these facts disclosed to him. He declares
+that he was "<i>morally</i> certain" of it,&mdash;that is, as certain
+as a man can be of anything; because physical
+certitude does not belong to such matters. The first
+thing you will naturally ask is, "Why does he not
+ask Mr. Johnson how he had disposed of that money
+which Mr. Middleton had put in his hands?" He
+does no such thing; he passes over it totally, as if it
+were no part of the matter in question, and the accusation
+against Mr. Middleton terminates in the manner
+you will there find stated. When Mr. Johnson is
+asked, "Why was not that money applied to the Company's
+service?" he boldly steps forward, and says,
+"I prevented it from being so applied. It never was,
+it never ought to have been, so applied; such an
+appropriation of money to be taken from the Nabob
+would have been enormous upon that occasion."</p>
+
+<p>What, then, does Mr. Hastings do? Does he examine
+Mr. Middleton upon the subject, who charges himself
+with having received the money? Mr. Middleton
+was at that very time in Calcutta, called down
+thither by Mr. Hastings himself. One would naturally
+expect that he would call upon him to explain for
+what purpose he left the money with Mr. Johnson.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">{328}</a></span>
+He did no such thing. Did he examine Mr. Johnson
+himself, who was charged with having received
+the money from Mr. Middleton? Did he ask him
+what he had done with that money? Not one word.
+Did he send for Major Palmer and Major Davy to
+account for it? No. Did he call any shroff, any
+banker, any one person concerned in the payment of
+the money, or any one person in the management of
+the revenue? No, not one. Directly in the face of
+his own assertions, directly contrary to his moral conviction
+of the fact that the money had been actually
+deposited, he tries Mr. Johnson collusively and obliquely,
+not upon the account of what was done with
+the money, but why it was prevented from being applied
+to the Company's service; and he acquits him
+in a manner that (taking the whole of it together)
+will give your Lordships the finest idea possible of a
+Bengal judicature, as exercised by Mr. Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sorry," says he, "that Mr. Johnson
+chose to defeat my intentions; since it would have
+added to the Nabob's distresses, but with no immediate
+relief to the Company. If, in his own breast, he
+can view the secret motives of this transaction, and
+on their testimony approve it, I also acquit him."</p>
+
+<p>Merciful God! Here is a man accused by regular
+articles of impeachment. The accuser declares he
+is morally certain that the money had been received,
+but was prevented from being applied to its destination
+by the person accused; and he acquits him.
+Does he acquit him from his own knowledge, or from
+any evidence? No: but he applies to the man's conscience,
+and says, "If you in your conscience can
+acquit yourself, I acquit you."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">{329}</a></span></p>
+<p>Here, then, is a proceeding the most astonishing
+and shameless that perhaps was ever witnessed: a
+court trying a man for a delinquency and misapplication
+of money, destined, in the first instance, for the
+use of the judge, but which he declares ought, in his
+own opinion, to be set apart for the public use, and
+which he was desirous of applying to the Company's
+service, without regard to his own interest, and then
+the judge declaring he is not sorry that his purpose
+had been defeated by the party accused. Instead,
+however, of censuring the accused, he applies to the
+man's own conscience. "Does your conscience,"
+says he, "acquit you of having acted wrong?" The
+accused makes no reply; and then Mr. Hastings, by
+an hypothetical conclusion, acquits him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings is accused by the Commons for that,
+having a moral certainty of the money's being intended
+for his use, he would not have ceased to inquire
+into the actual application of it but from some corrupt
+motive and intention. With this he is charged.
+He comes before you to make his defence. Mr. Middleton
+is in England. Does he call Mr. Middleton
+to explain it here? Does he call upon Mr. Johnson,
+who was the other day in this court, to account for
+it? Why did he not, when he sent for these curious
+papers and testimonials to Major Palmer, (the person
+authorized, as he pretends, by him, to resign all his
+pretensions to the money procured,) send for Major
+Palmer, who is the person that accused him in this
+business,&mdash;why not send for him to bear some testimony
+respecting it? No: he had time enough, but
+at no one time and in no place did he do this; therefore
+the imputation of the foulest corruption attaches
+upon him, joined with the infamy of a collusive prosecution,
+instituted for the sake of a collusive acquittal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">{330}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Having explained to your Lordships the nature,
+and detailed the circumstances, as far as we are acquainted
+with them, of this fraudulent transaction,
+we have only further to remind you, that, though
+Mr. Middleton was declared guilty of five of the
+six charges brought against him by Mr. Hastings, yet
+the next thing you hear is, that Mr. Hastings, after
+declaring that this conduct of Mr. Middleton had
+been very bad, and that the conduct of the other servants
+of the Company concerned with him had been
+ten times worse, he directly appoints him to one of
+the most honorable and confidential offices the Company
+had to dispose of: he sends him ambassador to
+the Nizam,&mdash;to give to all the courts of India a specimen
+of the justice, honor, and decency of the British
+government.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, with regard to the bribe for the <i>entertainment</i>,
+I only beg leave to make one observation
+to you upon that article. I could say, if the time
+would admit it, a great deal upon that subject; but
+I wish to compress it, and I shall therefore only recommend
+it in general to your Lordships' deliberate
+consideration. The covenant subsisting between the
+Company and its servants was made for the express
+purpose of putting an end to all such entertainments.
+By this convention it is ordered that no presents exceeding
+200<i>l.</i> [400<i>l.</i>?] shall be accepted upon any
+pretence for an entertainment. The covenant was intended
+to put an end to the custom of receiving money
+for entertainments, even when visiting an independent
+Oriental prince. But your Lordships know that
+the Nabob was no prince, but a poor, miserable, undone
+dependant upon, the Company. The present was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">{331}</a></span>
+also taken by Mr. Hastings at a time when he went upon
+the cruel commission of cutting down the Nabob's
+allowance from 400,000<i>l.</i> to 260,000<i>l.</i> [160,000<i>l.</i>?],
+and when he was reducing to beggary thousands
+of persons who were dependent for bread upon the
+Nabob, and ruining, perhaps, forty thousand others.
+I shall say no more upon that subject, though, in
+truth, it is a thing upon which much observation
+might be made.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I shall now pass on to another article connected
+with, though not making a direct part of, that of
+corrupt bribery: I mean the swindling subterfuges
+by which he has attempted to justify his corrupt
+practices. At one time, he defends them by pleading
+the necessities of his own affairs,&mdash;as when he
+takes presents and entertainments avowedly for his
+own profits. At another time he defends them by
+pleading the goodness of his intentions: he intended,
+he says, to give the money to the Company. His
+last plea has something in it (which shall I say?)
+of a more awful or of a more abandoned character,
+or of both. In the settlement of his public account,
+before he left India, he takes credit for a bond which
+he had received from Nobkissin upon some account
+or other. He then, returns to England, and what
+does he do? Pay off? No. Give up the bond to
+the Company? No. He says, "I will account to
+the Company for this money." And when he comes
+to give this account of the expenditure of this money,
+your Lordships will not be a little astonished at
+the items of it. One is for founding a Mahometan
+college. It is a very strange thing that Rajah Nobkissin,
+who is a Gentoo, should be employed by Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">{332}</a></span>
+Hastings to found a Mahometan college. We will
+allow Mr. Hastings, who is a Christian, or would be
+thought a Christian, to grow pious at last, and, as
+many others have done, who have spent their lives
+in fraud, rapacity, and peculation, to seek amends
+and to expiate his crimes by charitable foundations.
+Nay, we will suppose Mr. Hastings to have taken it
+into his head to turn Mahometan, (Gentoo he could
+not,) and to have designed by a Mahometan foundation
+to expiate his offences. Be it so; but why
+should Nobkissin pay for it? We will pass over
+this also. But when your Lordships shall hear of
+what nature that foundation was, I believe you will
+allow that a more extraordinary history never did
+appear in the world.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, he stated to the Council, on the
+18th of April, 1781, that in the month of November,
+1780, a petition was presented to him by a considerable
+number of Mussulmen, in compliance with
+which this Mahometan college appears to have been
+founded. It next appears from his statement, that
+in the April following, (that is, within about six
+months after the foundation,) many students had
+finished their education. You see what a hot-bed
+bribery and corruption is. Our universities cannot
+furnish an education in six years: in India they
+have completed it within six months, and have taken
+their degrees.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings says, "I have supported this establishment
+to this time at my own expense; I desire
+the Company will now defray the charge of it."
+He then calculates what the expenses were; he calculates
+that the building would cost about 6,000<i>l.</i>,
+and he gets from the Company a bond to raise money<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">{333}</a></span>
+for paying this 6,000<i>l.</i> You apparently have the
+building now at the public expense, and Mr. Hastings
+still stands charged with the expense of the
+college for six months. He then proposes that a
+tract of land should be given for the college, to the
+value of about three thousand odd pounds a year,&mdash;and
+that in the mean time there should be a certain
+sum allotted for its expenses. After this Mr. Hastings
+writes a letter from the Ganges to the Company,
+in which he says not a word about the expense of
+the building, but says that the college was founded
+and maintained at his own expense, though it was
+thought to be maintained by the Company; and he
+fixes the commencement of the expense in September,
+1779. But, after all, we find that the very professor
+who was to be settled there never so much
+as arrived in Calcutta, or showed his face there, till
+some time afterwards. And look at Mr. Larkins's
+private accounts, and you will find that he charges
+the expense to have commenced not until October,
+1781. It is no error, because it runs through and
+is so accounted in the whole: and it thus appears
+that he has charged, falsely and fraudulently, a year
+more for that establishment than it cost him.</p>
+
+<p>At last, then, when he was coming away, (for I
+hasten to the conclusion of an affair ludicrous indeed
+in some respects, but not unworthy of your
+Lordships' consideration,) "after remarking that he
+had experienced for three years the utility of this
+institution, he recommends that they will establish
+a fund for 3,000<i>l.</i> a year for it, and give it to the
+master." He had left Gunga Govind Sing as a
+Gentoo legacy, and he now leaves the Mussulman
+as a Mahometan legacy to the Company.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">{334}</a></span></p>
+<p>Your Lordships shall now hear what was the upshot
+of the whole. The Company soon afterwards
+hearing that this college was become the greatest
+nuisance in Calcutta, and that it had raised the cries
+of all the inhabitants against it, one of their servants,
+a Mr. Chapman, was deputed by the Governor, Sir
+John Shore, to examine into it, and your Lordships
+will find the account he gives of it in your minutes.
+In short, my Lords, we find that this was a seminary
+of robbers, housebreakers, and every nuisance to society;
+so that the Company was obliged to turn out
+the master, and to remodel the whole. Your Lordships
+will now judge of the merits and value of this,
+one of the sets-off brought forward by the prisoner
+against the charges which we have brought forward
+against him: it began in injustice and peculation,
+and ended in a seminary for robbers and housebreakers.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Nothing now remains to be pressed by me upon
+your Lordships' consideration, but the account given
+by the late Governor-General, Earl Cornwallis, of the
+state in which he found the country left by his predecessor,
+Mr. Hastings, the prisoner at your bar. But,
+patient as I know your Lordships to be, I also know
+that your strength is not inexhaustible; and though
+what I have farther to add will not consume much
+of your Lordships' time, yet I conceive that there is
+a necessity for deferring it to another day.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">{335}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINTH_DAY_MONDAY_JUNE_16_1794" id="NINTH_DAY_MONDAY_JUNE_16_1794"></a>SPEECH<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">IN</span><br />
+<br />
+GENERAL REPLY.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">NINTH DAY: MONDAY, JUNE 16, 1794.</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>My Lords,&mdash;I should think it necessary to make
+an apology to your Lordships for appearing before
+you one day more, if I were inclined to measure
+this business either by the standard of my own
+ability, or by my own impatience, or by any supposed
+impatience of yours. I know no measure, in such
+a case, but the nature of the subject, and the duty
+which we owe to it. You will therefore, my Lords,
+permit me, in a few words, to lead you back to what
+we did yesterday, that you may the better comprehend
+the manner in which I mean to conclude the
+business to-day.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, we took the liberty of stating to you
+the condition of Bengal before our taking possession
+of it, and of the several classes of its inhabitants.
+We first brought before you the Mahometan inhabitants,
+who had the judicial authority of the country
+in their hands; and we proved to you the utter ruin
+of that body of people, and with them of the justice
+of the country, by their being, both one and the other,
+sold to an infamous woman called Munny Begum.
+We next showed you, that the whole landed interest,
+the zemindars, or Hindoo gentry of the country, was
+likewise ruined by its being given over, by letting it
+on a five years' lease, to infamous farmers, and givin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">{336}</a></span>g
+it up to their merciless exactions,&mdash;and afterwards
+by subjecting the rank of those zemindars,
+their title-deeds, and all their pecuniary affairs, to the
+minutest scrutiny, under pain of criminal punishment,
+by a commission granted to a nefarious villain
+called Gunga Govind Sing. We lastly showed you
+that the remaining third class, that of the English,
+was partly corrupted, or had its authority dissolved,
+and that the whole superintending English control
+was subverted or subdued,&mdash;that the products of
+the country were diminished, and that the revenues
+of the Company were dilapidated, by an overcharge
+of expenses, in four years, to the amount of 500,000<i>l.</i>,
+in consequence of these corrupt, dangerous, and mischievous
+projects.</p>
+
+<p>We have farther stated, that the Company's servants
+were corrupted by contracts and jobs; we
+proved that those that were not so corrupted were
+removed from their stations or reduced to a state of
+abject dependence; we showed you the destruction
+of the Provincial Councils, the destruction of the
+Council-General, and the formation of a committee
+for no other ends whatever but for the purposes of
+bribery, concealment, and corruption. We next stated
+some of the most monstrous instances of that bribery;
+and though we were of opinion that in none
+of them any satisfactory defence worth mentioning
+had been made, yet we have thought that this should
+not hinder us from recalling to your Lordships' recollection
+the peculiar nature and circumstances of one
+of those proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>The proceedings to which we wish to call your
+attention are those belonging to the second bribe
+given by the Nabob of Oude to Mr. Hastings. Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">{337}</a></span>
+Hastings's own knowledge and opinion that that
+money was set apart for his use, either in bills or
+assets, I have before stated; and I now wish to call
+your Lordships' minute recollection to the manner in
+which the fraudulent impeachment of Mr. Middleton,
+for the purpose of stifling an inquiry into that business,
+was carried on. Your Lordships will remember
+that I proved to you, upon the face of that proceeding,
+the collusive nature of the accusation, and that
+the real state of the case was not charged,&mdash;and that
+Mr. Hastings acquitted the party accused of one article
+of the charge, not upon the evidence of the case,
+contrary to his own avowed, declared, moral certainty
+of his guilt, but upon a pretended appeal to the
+conscience of the man accused. He did not, however,
+give him a complete, formal, official acquittal,
+but referred the matter to the Court of Directors,
+who could not possibly know anything of the matter,
+without one article of evidence whatever produced at
+the time or transmitted. We lastly proved to you,
+that, after finding him guilty of five charges, and
+leaving the other to the Court of Directors, Mr. Hastings,
+without any reason assigned, appointed him to a
+great office in the Company's service.</p>
+
+<p>These proceedings were brought before you for two
+purposes: first, to show the corrupt principle of the
+whole proceeding; next, to show the manner in which
+the Company's servants are treated. They are accused
+and persecuted, until they are brought to submit to
+whatever terms it may be thought proper to impose
+upon them; they are then formally, indeed, acquitted
+of the most atrocious crimes charged against
+them, but virtually condemned upon some articles,
+with the scourge hung over them,&mdash;and in some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">{338}</a></span>
+instances rewarded by the greatest, most honorable,
+and most lucrative situations in the Company's service.
+My Lords, it is on the same ground of the
+wicked, pernicious, and ruinous principles of Mr.
+Hastings's government, that I have charged this with
+everything that is chargeable against him, namely,
+that, if your Lordships should ratify those principles
+by your acquittal of him, they become principles of
+government,&mdash;rejected, indeed, by the Commons, but
+adopted by the Peerage of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>There is another article which I have just touched,
+but which I must do more than barely notice, upon
+account of the evil example of it: I mean the taking
+great sums of money, under pretence of an entertainment.
+Your Lordships will recollect, that, when
+this business was charged against him in India, Mr.
+Hastings neither affirmed nor denied the fact. Confession
+could not be there extorted from him. He
+next appeared before the House of Commons, and he
+still evaded a denial or a confession of it. He lastly
+appeared before your Lordships, and in his answer
+to our charge he in the same manner evaded either
+a confession or a denial. He forced us to employ a
+great part of a session in endeavoring to establish
+what we have at last established, the receipt of the
+sums first charged, and of seven lacs more, by him.
+At length the proof could not be evaded; and after
+we had fought through all the difficulties which the
+law could interpose in his defence, and of which he
+availed himself with a degree of effrontery that has,
+I believe, no example in the world, he confesses,
+avows, and justifies his conduct. If the custom alleged
+be well founded, and be an honorable and a
+proper and just practice, why did he not a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">{339}</a></span>vow it in
+every part and progress of our proceedings here?
+Why should he have put us to the necessity of wasting
+so many months in the proof of the fact? And
+why, after we have proved it, and not before, did he
+confess it, avow it, and even glory in it?</p>
+
+<p>I must remind your Lordships that the sum charged
+to be so taken by way of entertainment made only a
+part, a single article, of the bribes charged by Nundcomar
+to have been received by Mr. Hastings; and
+when we find him confessing, what he could not deny,
+that single article, and evading all explanation
+respecting the others, and not giving any reason
+whatever why one was received and the others rejected,
+your Lordships will judge of the strong presumption
+of his having taken them all, even if we had
+given no other proofs of it. We think, however,
+that we have proved the whole very satisfactorily.
+But whether we have or not, the proof of a single
+present received is sufficient; because the principle
+to be established respecting these bribes is this,&mdash;whether
+or not a Governor-General, paying a visit
+to any of the poor, miserable, dependent creatures
+called sovereign princes in that country, (men whom
+Mr. Hastings has himself declared to be nothing but
+phantoms, and that they had no one attribute of sovereignty
+about them,) whether, I say, he can consider
+them to be such sovereign princes as to justify his
+taking from them great sums of money by way of a
+present. The Nabob, in fact, was not a sovereign
+prince, nor a country power, in any sense but that
+which the Company meant to exempt from the custom
+of making presents. It was their design to prevent
+their servants from availing themselves of the
+real dependence of the nominal native powers t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">{340}</a></span>o extort
+money from them under the pretence of their sovereignty.
+Such presents, so far from being voluntary,
+were in reality obtained from their weakness, their
+hopeless and unprotected condition; and you are to
+decide whether or not this custom, which is insisted
+upon by the prisoner's counsel, with great triumph, to
+be a thing which he could not evade, without breaking
+through all the usages of the country, and violating
+principles established by the most clear law of India,
+is to be admitted as his justification.</p>
+
+<p>It was on this very account, namely, the extortion
+suffered by these people, under the name or pretence
+of presents, that the Company first bound their servants
+by a covenant, which your Lordships shall now
+hear read.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"That they shall not take any grant of lands, or
+rents or revenues issuing out of lands, or any territorial
+possession, jurisdiction, dominion, power, or
+authority whatsoever, from any of the Indian princes,
+sovereigns, subahs, or nabobs, or any of their ministers,
+servants, or agents, for any service or services,
+or upon any account or pretence whatsoever, without
+the license or consent of the Court of Directors."</p></div>
+
+<p>This clause in the covenant had doubtless a regard
+to Lord Clive, and to Sir Hector Munro, and to some
+others, who had received gifts, and grants of jaghires,
+and other territorial revenues, that were confirmed by
+the Company. But though this confirmation might
+be justifiable at a time when we had no real sovereignty
+in the country, yet the Company very wisely
+provided afterwards, that under no pretence whatever
+should their servants have the means of extorting
+from the sovereigns or pretended sovereigns of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">{341}</a></span>
+the country any of their lands or possessions. Afterwards
+it appeared that there existed abuses of a similar
+nature, and particularly (as was proved before us
+in the year 1773, and reported to our House, upon
+the evidence of Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n) the practice
+of frequently visiting the princes, and of extorting,
+under pretence of such visits, great sums of money.
+All their servants, and the Governor-General particularly,
+were therefore obliged to enter into the following
+covenant:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"That they shall not, directly or indirectly, accept,
+take, or receive, or agree to accept, take, or receive,
+any gift, reward, gratuity, allowance, donation, or
+compensation, in money, effects, jewels, or otherwise
+howsoever, from any of the Indian princes, sovereigns,
+subahs, or nabobs, or any of their ministers, servants,
+or agents, exceeding the value of four thousand rupees,
+for any service or services performed or to be
+performed by them in India, or upon any other account
+or pretence whatsoever."</p></div>
+
+<p>By this covenant, my Lords, Mr. Hastings is forbidden
+to accept, upon any pretence and under any
+name whatsoever, any sum above four thousand rupees,&mdash;that
+is to say, any sum above four hundred
+pounds. Now the sum that was here received is
+eighteen thousand pounds sterling, by way of a present,
+under the name of an allowance for an entertainment,
+which is the precise thing which his covenant
+was made to prevent. The covenant suffered him to
+receive four hundred pounds: if he received more
+than that money, he became a criminal, he had broken
+his covenant, and forfeited the obligation he had
+made with his masters. Think with yourselves, my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">{342}</a></span>
+Lords, what you will do, if you acquit the prisoner
+of this charge. You will avow the validity, you will
+sanction the principle of his defence: for, as the fact
+is avowed, there is an end of that.</p>
+
+<p>Good God! my Lords, where are we? If they
+conceal their gifts and presents, they are safe by their
+concealment; if they avow them, they are still safer.
+They plead the customs of the country, or rather,
+the customs which we have introduced into the country,&mdash;customs
+which have been declared to have their
+foundation in a system of the most abominable corruption,
+the most flagitious extortion, the most dreadful
+oppression,&mdash;those very customs which their covenant
+is made to abolish. Think where your Lordships
+are. You have before you a covenant declaring that
+he should take under no name whatever (I do not
+know how words could be selected in the English
+language more expressive) any sum more than four
+hundred pounds. He says, "I have taken eighteen
+thousand pounds." He makes his counsel declare,
+and he desires your Lordships to confirm their declaration,
+that he is not only justifiable in so doing, but
+that he ought to do so,&mdash;that he ought to break his
+covenant, and act in direct contradiction to it. He
+does not even pretend to say that this money was
+intended, either inwardly or outwardly, avowedly or
+covertly, for the Company's service. He put absolutely
+into his own pocket eighteen thousand pounds,
+besides his salary.</p>
+
+<p>Consider, my Lords, the consequences of this species
+of iniquity. If any servant of the Company,
+high in station, chooses to make a visit from Calcutta
+to Moorshedabad, which Moorshedabad was then the
+residence of our principal revenue government,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">{343}</a></span>&mdash;if
+he should choose to take an airing for his health, if
+he has a fancy to make a little voyage for pleasure
+as far as Moorshedabad, in one of those handsome
+barges or budgeros of which you have heard so much
+in his charge against Nundcomar, he can put twenty
+thousand pounds into his pocket any day he pleases,
+in defiance of all our acts of Parliament, covenants,
+and regulations.</p>
+
+<p>Do you make your laws, do you make your covenants,
+for the very purpose of their being evaded?
+Is this the purpose for which a British tribunal sits
+here, to furnish a subject for an epigram, or a tale
+for the laughter of the world? Believe me, my
+Lords, the world is not to be thus trifled with. But,
+my Lords, you will never trifle with your duty. You
+have a gross, horrid piece of corruption before you,&mdash;impudently
+confessed, and more impudently defended.
+But you will not suffer Mr. Hastings to
+say, "I have only to go to Moorshedabad, or to order
+the Nabob to meet me half way, and I can set
+aside and laugh at all your covenants and acts of
+Parliament." Is this all the force and power of
+the covenant by which you would prevent the servants
+of the Company from committing acts of fraud
+and oppression, that they have nothing to do but to
+amuse themselves with a tour of pleasure to Moorshedabad
+in order to put any sum of money in their
+pocket that they please?</p>
+
+<p>But they justify themselves by saying, such things
+have been practised before. No doubt they have;
+and these covenants were made that they should not
+be practised any more. But your Lordships are desired
+to say, that the very custom which the covenant
+is made to destroy, the very grievance itse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">{344}</a></span>lf,
+may be pleaded; the abuse shall be admitted to destroy
+the law made to prevent it. It is impossible,
+I venture to say, that your Lordships should act thus.
+The conduct of the criminal is not half so abhorrent
+as the justification is affronting to justice, whilst it
+tends to vilify and degrade the dignity of the Peerage
+and the character of the Commons of Great Britain,
+before the former and against the latter of which such
+a justification is produced in the face of the world.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time that we call for your justice
+upon this man, we beseech you to remember the
+severest justice upon him is the tenderest pity towards
+the innocent victims of his crimes. Consider
+what was at that time the state of the people from
+whom, in direct defiance of his covenant, he took this
+sum of money. Were they at this time richer, were
+they more opulent, was the state of the country more
+flourishing than when Mr. Sumner, when Mr. Vansittart,
+in short, than when the long line of Mr. Hastings's
+predecessors visited that country? No, they
+were not. Mr. Hastings at this very time had reduced
+the Nabob's income from 450,000<i>l.</i> [400,000<i>l.</i>?]
+sterling a year, exclusive of other considerable domains
+and revenues, to 160,000<i>l.</i> He was, indeed, an
+object of compassion. His revenues had not only been
+reduced during his state of minority, but they were
+reduced when he afterwards continued in a state in
+which he could do no one valid act; and yet, in this
+state, he was made competent to give away, under the
+name of compensation for entertainments, the sum of
+18,000<i>l.</i>,&mdash;perhaps at that time nearly all he had in
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>Look at your minutes, and you will find Mr. Hastings
+had just before this time said that the bread of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">{345}</a></span>
+ten thousand persons, many of them of high rank,
+depended upon the means possessed by the Nabob
+for their support,&mdash;that his heart was cut and afflicted
+to see himself obliged to ruin and starve so
+many of the Mahometan nobility, the greatest part
+of whose yet remaining miserable allowances were
+now taken away. You know, and you will forgive
+me again remarking, that it is the nature of the
+eagles and more generous birds of prey to fall upon
+living, healthy victims, but that vultures and carrion
+crows, and birds of that base and degenerate kind,
+always prey upon dead or dying carcases. It is upon
+ruined houses, it is upon decayed families, it is upon
+extinguished nobility, that Mr. Hastings chooses to
+prey, and to justify his making them his prey.</p>
+
+<p>But again we hear, my Lords, that it is a custom,
+upon ceremonial and complimentary visits, to
+receive these presents. Do not let us deceive ourselves.
+Mr. Hastings was there upon no visit either
+of ceremony or politics. He was a member, at that
+time, of the Committee of Circuit, which went to
+Moorshedabad for the purpose of establishing a system
+of revenue in the country. He went up upon
+that business only, as a member of the Committee
+of Circuit, for which business he was, like other
+members of the Committee of Circuit, amply paid,
+in addition to his emoluments as Governor, which
+amounted to about 30,000<i>l.</i> a year. Not satisfied
+with those emoluments, and without incurring new
+known expense of any kind or sort, he was paid for
+the extra expenses of his journey, as appears in your
+minutes, like other members of the Committee of
+Circuit. In fact, he was on no visit there at all.
+He was merely executing his duty in the settlement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">{346}</a></span>
+of the revenue, as a member of the Committee of
+Circuit. I do not mean to praise the Committee
+of Circuit in anyway: God forbid I should!&mdash;for
+we know that it was a committee of robbers. He
+was there as one of that committee, which I am
+pretty well justified in describing as I have done,
+because the Court of Directors, together with the
+Board of Control, did, in the year 1786, declare that
+the five years' settlement (which originated in that
+committee) was a thing bought and sold: your Lordships
+may read it whenever you please, in the 80th
+paragraph of their letter.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships are now fully in possession of all
+the facts upon which we charge the prisoner with
+peculation, by extorting or receiving large sums of
+money, upon pretence of visits, or in compensation
+of entertainments. I appeal to your Lordships' consciences
+for a serious and impartial consideration of
+our charge. This is a business not to be hurried
+over in the mass, as amongst the acts of a great man,
+who may have his little errors among his great services;
+no, you cannot, as a judicial body, huddle all
+this into a hotchpotch, and decide upon it in a heap.
+You will have to ask yourselves,&mdash;Is this justifiable
+by his covenant? Is this justifiable by law? Is this
+justifiable, under the circumstances of the case, by
+an enlarged discretion? Is it to be justified under
+any principles of humanity? Would it be justifiable
+by local customs, if such were applicable to the case
+in question? and even if it were, is it a practice fit
+for an English Governor-General to follow?</p>
+
+<p>I dwell the longer upon this, because the fact is
+avowed; the whole is an issue of law between us,&mdash;whether
+a Governor-General, in such a case, ought to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">{347}</a></span>
+take such money; and therefore, before I finally dismiss
+it, I beg leave to restate it briefly once more for
+your Lordships' consideration.</p>
+
+<p>First I wish to leave fixed in your Lordships'
+minds, what is distinctly fixed, and shall never go out
+of ours, that his covenant did not allow him to take
+above four hundred pounds as a present, upon any
+pretence whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships will observe we contend, that, if
+there was a custom, this covenant puts an end to that
+custom. It was declared and intended so to do.
+The fact is, that, if such custom existed at all, it was
+a custom applicable only to an ambassador or public
+minister sent on a necessary complimentary visit to
+a sovereign prince. We deny, positively, that there
+is any such general custom. We say, that he never
+was any such minister or that he ever went upon
+any such complimentary visit. We affirm, that,
+when he took this money, he was doing an act of
+quite another nature, and came upon that business
+only to Moorshedabad, the residence of the prince of
+the country. Now do you call a man who is going
+to execute a commission, a commission more severe
+than those issued against bankrupts, a commission to
+take away half a man's income, and to starve a whole
+body of people dependent upon that income,&mdash;do
+you call this a complimentary visit? Is this a visit
+for which a man is to have great entertainments given
+him? No, the pretence for taking this money is
+worse than the act itself. When a man is going to
+execute upon another such harsh cruelty, when he
+is going upon a service at which he himself says his
+mind must revolt, is that precisely the time when he
+is to take from his undone host a present, as if he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">{348}</a></span>was
+upon a visit of compliment, or about to confer some
+honor or benefit upon him,&mdash;to augment his revenues,
+to add to his territories, or to conclude some
+valuable treaty with him? Was this a proper time
+to take at all from an helpless minor so large a sum
+of money?</p>
+
+<p>And here I shall leave this matter for your Lordships'
+consideration, after reminding you that this
+poor Nabob is still at Moorshedabad, and at the mercy
+of any English gentleman who may choose to take
+18,000<i>l.</i>, or any other given sum of money from him,
+after the example of the prisoner at your bar, if it
+should be sanctioned by your connivance. Far different
+was the example set him by General Clavering.
+In page 1269 your Lordships will find the most honorable
+testimony to the uprightness and fidelity of this
+meritorious servant of the Company. It runs thus:
+"Conceiving it to be the intention of the legislature
+that the Governor-General and members of the Council
+should receive no presents, either from the Indian
+powers or any persons whatever, he [General Clavering]
+has strictly complied, since his arrival here, both
+with the spirit and the letter of the act of Parliament,
+and has accordingly returned all the presents which
+have been made to him." I have dwelt thus long
+upon this subject, not merely upon account of its own
+corrupt character, which has been sufficiently stigmatized
+by my honorable colleague, but upon account of
+the principle that is laid down by the prisoner, in his
+defence of his conduct,&mdash;a principle directly leading
+to a continuance of the same iniquitous practice, and
+subversive of every attempt to check or control it.</p>
+
+<p>I must beg leave to recall your Lordships' attention
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">{349}</a></span>to another, but similar instance of his peculation,
+another and new mode of taking presents: I mean,
+the present which Mr. Hastings took, through Gunga
+Govind Sing, from those farmers of the revenues
+amongst whom he had distributed the pillage of the
+whole country. This scandalous breach of his covenant
+he attempts to justify by the inward intention
+of his own mind to apply the money so taken to the
+public service. Upon this, my Lords, I shall only
+observe, that this plea of an inward intention in his
+own mind may, if admitted, justify any evil act whatever
+of this kind. You have seen how presents from
+the Nabob are justified; you have seen how the taking
+a sum of money or allowance for entertainment,
+directly contrary to the covenant, how that is attempted
+to be justified; you see in what manner he justifies
+this last-mentioned act of peculation; and your
+Lordships will now have to decide upon the validity
+of these pleas.</p>
+
+<p>There still remains, unobserved upon, an instance
+of his malversation, wholly new in its kind, to which
+I will venture to desire your Lordships very seriously
+to turn your attention. In all the causes of peculation
+or malversation in office that ever have been
+tried before this high court, or before any lower
+court of judicature, in all the judicial records of
+modern crimes, or of antiquity, you will not find
+anything in any degree like it. We have all, in our
+early education, read the Verrine Orations. We
+read them not merely to instruct us, as they will
+do, in the principles of eloquence, and to acquaint us
+with the manners, customs, and laws of the ancient
+Romans, of which they are an abundant repository,
+but we may read them from a much higher motive.
+We may read them from a motive which the great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">{350}</a></span>
+author had doubtless in his view, when by publishing
+them he left to the world and to the latest posterity
+a monument by which it might be seen what course
+a great public accuser in a great public cause ought
+to pursue, and, as connected with it, what course
+judges ought to pursue in deciding upon such a
+cause. In these orations you will find almost every
+instance of rapacity and peculation which we
+charge upon Mr. Hastings. Undoubtedly, many Roman
+and English governors have received corrupt
+gifts and bribes, under various pretences. But in the
+cause before your Lordships there is one species of
+disgrace, in the conduct of the party accused, which
+I defy you to find in Verres, or in the whole tribe
+of Roman peculators, in any governor-general, proconsul,
+or viceroy. I desire you to consider it not
+included in any other class of crimes, but as a species
+apart by itself. It is an individual, a single
+case; but it is like the ph&oelig;nix,&mdash;it makes a class or
+species by itself: I mean the business of Nobkissin.
+The money taken from him was not money pretended
+to be received in lieu of entertainment; it was
+not money taken from a farmer-general of revenue,
+out of an idea that his profits were unreasonable, and
+greater than government ought to allow; it was not
+a donation from a great man, as an act of his bounty.
+No, it was a sum of money taken from a private
+individual,&mdash;or rather, as has been proved to you
+by Mr. Larkins, his own book-keeper, money borrowed,
+for which he had engaged to give his bond.
+That he had actually deposited his bond for this
+money Mr. Larkins has proved to you,&mdash;and that
+the bond was carried to Nobkissin's credit, in his
+account with the government. But Mr. Hastings,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">{351}</a></span>
+when he was called upon for the money, withdraws the
+bond; he will not pay the money; he refused to
+pay it upon the applications made to him both in
+India and here at home; and he now comes to your
+Lordships and says, "I borrowed this money, I intended
+to give my bond for it, as has been proved
+before you; but I must have it for my own use."
+We have heard of governors being everything that is
+bad and wicked; but a governor putting himself in
+the situation of a common cheat, of a common swindler,
+never was, I believe, heard of since the creation
+of the world to this day. This does not taste of the
+common oppressions of power; this does not taste of
+the common abuses of office; but it in no way differs
+from one of those base swindling cases that come
+to be tried and heavily punished in the King's Bench
+every day. This is neither more nor less than a plain,
+barefaced cheat.</p>
+
+<p>Now, my Lords, let us see how it is justified. To
+justify openly and directly a cheat, to justify a fraud
+upon an individual, is reserved for our times. But,
+good Heavens, what a justification have we here!
+Oh, my Lords, consider into what a state Indian
+corruption has brought us in this country, when any
+person can be found to come to the bar of the House
+of Lords and say, "I did cheat, I did defraud; I
+did promise, and gave my bond; I have now withdrawn
+it, but I will account for it to you as to a
+gang of robbers concerned with me in the transaction.
+I confess I robbed this man; but I have acted
+as trustee for the gang. Observe what I have done
+for the gang. Come forward, Mr. Auriol, and prove
+what handsome budgeros I gave the company: were
+not they elegantly painted, beautifully gilt, c<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">{352}</a></span>harming
+and commodious? I made use of them as long as
+I had occasion; and though they are little worse for
+wear, and would hardly suffer the least percentage
+deduction from prime cost upon them, I gave them
+to the company. Oh, I did not put the money into
+my own pocket. I provided for myself and wore a
+suit of lace clothes, when I was Jew bail for some
+of this company: it will turn, for it is hardly the
+worse for wear, though I appeared two or three
+times, in different characters, as bail for you on such
+and such an occasion. I therefore set off these items
+against this money which I gained by swindling on
+your account. It is true I also picked such a one's
+pocket of a watch; here it is; I have worn it as long
+as it was convenient; now I give the watch to the
+company, and let them send it to the pawnbroker
+for what it will bring. Besides all this, I maintained
+aide-de-camps for you, and gave them house-rent."
+(By the way, my Lords, what sort of aide-de-camps
+were these? Who made him a military man, and
+to have such a legion of aide-de-camps?) "But,"
+says he, "I paid house-rent for them; that is, in
+other words, I paid, at night-cellars and houses in
+Saint Giles's, sixpence a week for some of the gang."
+(This, my Lords, is the real spirit of the whole proceeding,
+and more especially of the last item in it.)
+"Then," says he, "I was the gang's schoolmaster,
+and taught lessons on their account. I founded a
+Mahometan school." (Your Lordships have already
+heard something of this shameful affair, of this scene
+of iniquity,&mdash;I think of such iniquity as the world
+never yet had to blush at.) "I founded a Mahometan
+college for your use; and I bore the expense of
+it from September, 1780, when I placed a profes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">{353}</a></span>sor
+there, called Mudjed-o-Din."&mdash;This Mudjed-o-Din was
+to perfect men, by contract, in all the arts and sciences,
+in about six months; and the chief purpose of
+the school was, as Mr. Hastings himself tells you, to
+breed theologians, magistrates, and moulavies, that
+is to say, judges and doctors of law, who were to be
+something like our masters in chancery, the assessors
+of judges, to assist them in their judgments. Such
+was the college founded by Mr. Hastings, and he
+soon afterwards appropriated one of the Company's
+estates, (I am speaking of matters of public notoriety,)
+worth 3,000<i>l.</i> a year, for its support. Heaven
+be praised, that Mr. Hastings, when he was resolved
+to be pious and munificent, and to be a great founder,
+chose a Mahometan rather than a Christian foundation,
+so that our religion was not disgraced by
+such a foundation!</p>
+
+<p>Observe how he charges the expense of the foundation
+to the Company twice over. He first makes them
+set aside an estate of 3,000<i>l.</i> a year for its support.
+In what manner this income was applied during Mr.
+Hastings's stay in India no man living knows; but
+we know, that, at his departure, one of the last acts
+he did was to desire it should be put into the
+hands of Mudjed-o-Din. He afterwards, as you have
+seen, takes credit to himself with the Company for
+the expenses relative to this college.</p>
+
+<p>I must now introduce your Lordships to the last
+visitation that was made of this college. It was
+visited by order of Lord Cornwallis in the year 1788,
+upon the complaints made against it which I have
+already mentioned to your Lordships,&mdash;that it was
+a sink of filth, vermin, and misery. Mr. Chapman,
+who was the visitor, and the friend of Mr. Hastin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">{354}</a></span>gs,
+declares that he could not sit in it even for a few
+minutes; his words are,&mdash;"The wretched, squalid
+figures that from every part ran out upon me appeared
+to be more like anything else than students."
+In fact, a universal outcry was raised by the whole
+city against it, not only as a receptacle of every kind
+of abuse, not only of filth and excrements which
+made it stink in the natural nostrils, but of worse
+filth, which made it insufferably offensive to the
+moral nostrils of every inhabitant. Such is the account
+given of a college supported at an expense
+of 3,000<i>l.</i> a year, (a handsome foundation for a
+college,) and for building which the Company was
+charged 5,000<i>l.</i>: though no vouchers of its expenditure
+were ever given by Mr. Hastings. But this
+is not all. When Lord Cornwallis came to inquire
+into it, he found that Mudjed-o-Din had sunk the income
+of the estate from 3,000<i>l.</i> to 2,000<i>l.</i> a year,&mdash;in
+short, that it had been a scene of peculation, both
+by the masters and scholars, as well as of abandonment
+to every kind of vicious and licentious courses;
+and all this without the shadow of any benefit having
+been derived from it. The visitors expressly inquired
+whether there was any good mixed with all this evil;
+and they found it was all bad and mischievous, from
+one end to the other. Your Lordships will remark,
+that the greatest part of this disgusting business must
+have been known to Mr. Hastings when he gave to
+Mudjed-o-Din the disposal of 3,000<i>l.</i> a year. And
+now, my Lords, can you vote this money, expended
+in the manner which I have stated to you, to be a
+set-off in his favor, in an account for money which
+was itself swindled from a private individual?</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">{355}</a></span></p>
+<p>But there still remains behind another more serious
+matter belonging to this affair; and I hope you
+will not think that I am laying too much stress upon
+it, when I declare, that, if I were to select from the
+whole of his conduct one thing more dishonorable
+than another to the British nation, it would be that
+which I am now about to mention. I will leave your
+Lordships to judge of the sincerity of this declaration,
+when you shall have heard read a paper produced
+by the prisoner in justification of conduct such
+as I have stated his to have been. It is the <i>razinama</i>,
+or attestation, of Munny Begum (the woman
+whom Mr. Hastings placed in the seat of justice in
+that country) concerning this college, made precisely
+at the time of this inquisition by Lord Cornwallis into
+the management of it. Your Lordships will see what
+sort of things attestations are from that country: that
+they are attestations procured in diametrical contradiction
+to the certain knowledge of the party attesting.
+It is in page 2350 of your Minutes. Indeed,
+my Lords, these are pages which, unless they are
+effaced by your judgment, will rise up in judgment
+against us, some day or other.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"He [Mr. Hastings] respected the learned and
+wise men, and, in order for the propagation of learning,
+he built a college, and endowed it with a provision
+for the maintenance of the students, insomuch
+that thousands reaping the benefits thereof offer up
+their prayers for the prosperity of the King of England,
+and for the success of the Company."</p></div>
+
+<p>I must here remind your Lordships of another attestation
+of the same character, and to the same effect.
+It comes from Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n, who, as your
+Lordships will remember, had been reduced by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">{356}</a></span>Mr.
+Hastings from a situation of the highest rank and
+authority, with an income of suitable magnitude, to
+one of comparative insignificance, with a small salary
+annexed. This man is made to disgrace himself,
+and to abet the disgrace and injury done to his country,
+by bearing his testimony to the merits of this very
+college.</p>
+
+<p>I hope your Lordships will never lose sight of this
+aggravating circumstance of the prisoner's criminality,&mdash;namely,
+that you never find any wicked, fraudulent,
+and criminal act, in which you do not find the
+persons who suffered by it, and must have been well
+acquainted with it, to be the very persons who are
+brought to attest in its favor. O Heaven! but let
+shame for one moment veil its face, let indignation
+suppress its feelings, whilst I again call upon you to
+view all this as a mere swindling transaction, in which
+the prisoner was attempting to defraud the Company.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hastings has declared, and you will find it upon
+the Company's records, that this institution (which
+cost the Company not less than 40,000<i>l.</i> in one way
+or other) did not commence before October in the
+year 1780; and he brings it before the board in April,
+1781,&mdash;that is, about six months after its foundation.
+Now look at his other account, in which he makes it
+to begin in the year 1779, and in which he has therefore
+overcharged the expenses of it a whole year.&mdash;But
+Mr. Larkins, who kept this latter account for
+him, may have been inaccurate.&mdash;Good Heavens!
+where are we? Mr. Hastings, who was bred an
+accountant, who was bred in all sorts of trade and
+business, declares that he keeps no accounts. Then
+comes Mr. Larkins, who keeps an account for him;
+but he keeps a false account. Indeed, all the ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">{357}</a></span>counts
+from India, from one end to another, are
+nothing but a series of fraud, while Mr. Hastings
+was concerned in them. Mr. Larkins, who keeps his
+private account just as his master kept the public
+accounts, has swindled from the Company a whole
+year's expenses of this college. I should not thus
+repeatedly dwell upon this transaction, but because I
+wish your Lordships to be cautious how you admit
+such accounts at all to be given in evidence, into the
+truth of which you cannot penetrate in any regular
+way. Upon the face of the two accounts there is a
+gross fraud. It is no matter which is true or false, as
+it is an account which you are in no situation to decide
+upon. I lay down this as a fixed judicial rule,
+that no judge ought to receive an account (which, is
+as serious a part of a judicial proceeding as can be)
+the correctness of which he has no means of ascertaining,
+but must depend upon the sole word of the
+accountant.</p>
+
+<p>Having stated, therefore, the nature of the offence,
+which differs nothing from a common dog-trot fraud,
+such as we see amongst the meanest of mankind, your
+Lordships will be cautious how you admit these, or
+any other of his pretended services, to be set off
+against his crimes. These stand on record confessed
+before you; the former, of which you can form no
+just estimate, and into which you cannot enter, rest
+for their truth upon his own assertions, and they all
+are found, upon the very face of them, to carry marks
+of fraud as well as of wickedness.</p>
+
+<p>I have only further to observe to your Lordships,
+that this Mudjed-o-Din, who, under the patronage
+of Mr. Hastings, was to do all these wonders, Lord
+Cornwallis turned out of his office with every mar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">{358}</a></span>k
+of disgrace, when he attempted to put into some more
+respectable state that establishment which Mr. Hastings
+had made a sink of abuse.</p>
+
+<p>I here conclude all that I have to say upon this
+business, trusting that your Lordships will feel yourselves
+more offended, and justice more insulted, by
+the defence than by the criminal acts of the prisoner
+at your bar; and that your Lordships will concur
+with us in thinking, that to make this unhappy people
+make these attestations, knowing the direct contrary
+of every word which they say to be the truth, is a
+shocking aggravation of his guilt. I say they must
+know it; for Lord Cornwallis tells you it is notorious;
+and if you think fit to inquire into it, you will
+find that it was unusually notorious.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>My Lords, we have now brought to a conclusion
+our observations upon the effects produced by that
+mass of oppression which we have stated and proved
+before your Lordships,&mdash;namely, its effects upon the
+revenues, and upon the public servants of the Company.
+We have shown you how greatly the former
+were diminished, and in what manner the latter were
+reduced to the worst of all bad states, a state of subserviency
+to the will of the Governor-General. I have
+shown your Lordships that in this state they were not
+only rendered incapable of performing their own duty,
+but were fitted for the worst of all purposes, co&ouml;peration
+with him in the perpetration of his criminal acts,
+and collusion with him in the concealment of them.
+I have lastly to speak of these effects as they regard
+the general state and welfare of the country. And
+here your Lordships will permit me to read the evidence
+given by Lord Cornwallis, a witness called by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">{359}</a></span>
+the prisoner at your bar, Mr. Hastings himself.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>The Evidence of Lord Cornwallis. Page 2721.</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Q.</i> Whether your Lordship recollects an account
+that you have given to the Court of Directors, in
+your letter of the 2d of August, 1789, concerning
+the state of those provinces?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I really could not
+venture to be particular as to any letter I may have
+written so long since, as I have brought no copies
+of my letters with me from India, having left them
+at Bengal when I went to the coast.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Whether
+your Lordship recollects, in any letter that you
+wrote about the 2d of August, 1789, paragraph 18,
+any expressions to this effect, namely: 'I am sorry
+to be obliged to say, that agriculture and internal
+commerce have for many years been gradually declining,
+and that at present, excepting the class of
+shroffs and banians, who reside almost entirely in
+great towns, the inhabitants of these provinces are
+advancing hastily to a general state of poverty and
+wretchedness':&mdash;whether your Lordship recollects
+that you have written a letter to that effect?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+I cannot take upon me to recollect the words of a
+letter that I have written five years ago, but I conclude
+I must have written to that effect.&mdash;<i>Q.</i>
+Whether your Lordship recollects that in the immediately
+following paragraph, the 19th, you wrote
+to this effect: 'In this description' (namely, the
+foregone description) 'I must even include almost
+every zemindar in the Company's territories, which,
+though it may have been partly occasioned by their
+own indolence and extravagance, I am afraid must
+also be in a great measure attributed to the defects
+of our former system of management.' (Paragraph<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">{360}</a></span>
+20.) 'The settlement, in conformity to your orders,
+will only be made for ten years certain, with the notification
+of its being your intention to declare it a
+perpetual, an unalterable assessment of these provinces,
+if the amount and the principles upon which it
+has been made should meet with your approbation':&mdash;whether
+your Lordship recollects to have written
+something to the effect of these two last paragraphs,
+as well as of the first?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I do recollect that I
+did write it; but in that letter I alluded to the former
+system of annual assessments.&mdash;<i>Q.</i> Whether
+your Lordship recollects that you wrote, on or
+about the 18th of September, 1789, in one of your
+minutes, thus: 'I may safely assert that one third of
+the Company's territory in Hindostan is now a jungle,
+inhabited only by wild beasts: will a ten years'
+lease induce any proprietor to clear away that jungle,
+and encourage the ryot to come and cultivate
+his lands, when at the end of that lease he must
+either submit to be taxed <i>ad libitum</i> for the newly
+cultivated lands, or lose all hopes of deriving any
+benefit from his labor, for which perhaps by that
+time he will hardly be repaid?'&mdash;whether your
+Lordship recollects a minute to that effect?&mdash;<i>A.</i>
+I perfectly recollect to have written that minute.&mdash;<i>Q.</i>
+Now with respect to a letter, dated November the
+3d, 1788, paragraph 38, containing the following sentiments:
+'I shall therefore only remark in general,
+that, from frequent changes of system or other reasons,
+much is wanting to establish good order and
+regulations in the internal business of the country,
+and that, from various causes, by far the greatest
+part of the zemindars, and other landholders and
+renters, are fallen into a state much below that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">{361}</a></span> of
+wealth and affluence. This country, however, when
+the fertility of its soil, and the industry and ingenuity
+of its numerous inhabitants are taken into consideration,
+must unquestionably be admitted to be
+one of the finest in the world; and, with the uniform
+attention of government to moderation in exaction,
+and to a due administration of justice, may
+long prove a source of great riches both to the Company
+and to Britain.' (Paragraph 39.) 'I am persuaded,
+that, by a train of judicious measures, the
+land revenue of these provinces is capable in time
+of being increased; but, consistent with the principles
+of humanity, and even those of your own interest, it
+is only by adopting measures for the gradual cultivation
+and improvement of these waste lands, and
+by a gentle and cautious plan for the resumption of
+lands that have been fraudulently alienated, that it
+ought ever to be attempted to be accomplished.
+Men of speculative and sanguine dispositions, and
+others, either from ignorance of the subject, or with
+views of recommending themselves to your favor,
+may confidently hold forth specious grounds to encourage
+you to hope that a great and immediate
+accession to that branch of your revenue might be
+practicable. My public duty obliges me to caution
+you, in the most serious manner, against listening to
+propositions which recommend this attempt; because
+I am clearly convinced, that, if carried into execution,
+they would be attended with the most baneful
+consequences.' (Paragraph 40.) 'Desperate adventurers,
+without fortune or character, would undoubtedly
+be found, as has already been too often experienced,
+to rent the different districts of the country
+at the highest rates that could be put upon th<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">{362}</a></span>em;
+that [but?] the delusion would be of a short duration,
+and the impolicy and inhumanity of the plan
+would, when perhaps too late for effectual remedy,
+become apparent by the complaints of the people and
+the disappointments at the treasury in the payments
+of the revenue, and would probably terminate in the
+ruin and depopulation of the unfortunate country':&mdash;whether
+your Lordship recollects to have written
+anything to that effect about that time?&mdash;<i>A.</i> I perfectly
+recollect having written the extracts that have
+been read."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, Lord Cornwallis has been called, he has
+been examined before you. We stopped our proceedings
+ten days for the purpose of taking his evidence.
+We do not regret this delay. And he has
+borne the testimony which you have heard to the
+effects of Mr. Hastings's government of a country
+once the most fertile and cultivated, of a people the
+most industrious, flourishing, and happy,&mdash;that the
+one was wasted and desolated, the other reduced
+to a condition of want and misery, and that the
+zemindars, that is, the nobility and gentry of the
+country, were so beggared as not to be able to give
+even a common decent education to their children,
+notwithstanding the foundation of Mr. Hastings's
+colleges. You have heard this noble person, who
+had been an eye-witness of what he relates, supplicating
+for their relief, and expressly stating that
+most of the complicated miseries, and perhaps the
+cruelest of the afflictions they endured, arose from
+the management of the country having been taken
+out of the hands of its natural rulers, and given
+up to Mr. Hastings's farmers, namely, the banians<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">{363}</a></span> of
+Calcutta. These are the things that ought to go
+to your Lordships' hearts. You see a country wasted
+and desolated. You see a third of it become a
+jungle for wild beasts. You see the other parts oppressed
+by persons in the form and shape of men,
+but with all the character and disposition of beasts
+of prey. This state of the country is brought before
+you, and by the most unexceptionable evidence,&mdash;being
+brought forward through Mr. Hastings himself.
+This evidence, whatever opinion you may entertain
+of the effrontery or of the impudence of the criminal
+who has produced it, is of double and treble force.
+And yet at the very time when Lord Cornwallis is
+giving this statement of the country and its inhabitants,
+at the very time when he is calling for pity
+upon their condition, are these people brought forward
+to bear testimony to the benign and auspicious
+government of Mr. Hastings, directed, as your Lordships
+know it was, by the merciful and upright Gunga
+Govind Sing.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, you have now the evidence of Lord
+Cornwallis on the one hand, and the razinamas of
+India on the other. But before I dismiss this part of
+my subject, I must call your Lordships' attention to
+another authority,&mdash;to a declaration, strictly speaking,
+<i>legal</i>, of the state to which our Indian provinces
+were reduced, and of the oppressions which they have
+suffered, during the government of Mr. Hastings:
+I speak of the act 24 Geo. III. cap. 25, intituled,
+"An act for the better regulation and management
+of the affairs of the East India Company, and of the
+British possessions in India, and for establishing a
+court of judicature for the more speedy and effectual
+trial of persons accused of offences committed in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">{364}</a></span>
+East Indies," &sect; 39.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, here is an act of Parliament; here are
+regulations enacted in consequence of an inquiry
+which had been directed to be made into the grievances
+of India, for the redress of them. This act of
+Parliament declares the existence of oppressions in the
+country. What oppressions were they? The oppressions
+which it suffered by being let out to the farmers
+of the Company's revenues. Who was the person that
+sold these revenues to the farmers? Warren Hastings.
+By whom were these oppressions notified to
+the Court of Directors? By Lord Cornwallis. Upon
+what occasion were these letters written by my Lord
+Cornwallis? They were answers to inquiries made
+by the Court of Directors, and ordered by an act of
+Parliament to be made. The existence, then, of the
+grievances, and the cause of them, are expressly declared
+in an act of Parliament. It orders an inquiry;
+and Lord Cornwallis, in consequence of that inquiry,
+transmits to the Court of Directors this very
+information; he gives you this identical state of the
+country: so that it is consolidated, mixed, and embodied
+with an act of Parliament itself, which no
+power on earth, I trust, but the power that made it,
+can shake. I trust, I say, that neither we, the Commons,
+nor you, the Lords, nor his Majesty, the sovereign
+of this country, can shake one word of this
+act of Parliament,&mdash;can invalidate the truth of its
+declaration, or the authority of the persons, men of
+high honor and character, that made that inquiry
+and this report. Your Lordships must repeal this
+act in order to acquit Mr. Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Hastings and his counsel have produced
+evidence against this act of Parliament, against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">{365}</a></span> the
+order of the Court of Directors by which an inquiry
+and report were made under that act, against Lord
+Cornwallis's return to that inquiry; and now, once
+for all, hear what the miserable wretches are themselves
+made to say, to invalidate the act of Parliament,
+to invalidate the authority of the Court of Directors,
+to invalidate the evidence of an official return of Lord
+Cornwallis under the act. Pray hear what these miserable
+creatures describe as an elysium, speaking with
+rapture of their satisfaction, under the government of
+Mr. Hastings.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"All we zemindars, chowdries, and talookdars of
+the district of Akbarnagur, commonly called Rajamahal,
+in the kingdom of Bengal, have heard that the
+gentlemen in England are displeased with Mr. Hastings,
+on suspicion that he oppressed us inhabitants
+of this place, took our money by deceit and force, and
+ruined the country; therefore we, upon the strength
+of our religion and religious tenets, which we hold
+as a duty upon us, and in order to act conformable
+to the duties of God in delivering evidence, relate
+the praiseworthy actions, full of prudence and rectitude,
+friendship and politeness, of Mr. Hastings,
+possessed of great abilities and understanding, and,
+by representing facts, remove the doubts that have
+possessed the minds of the gentlemen in England;&mdash;that
+Mr. Hastings distributed protection and security
+to religion, and kindness and peace to all; he is free
+from the charge of embezzlement and fraud, and that
+his heart is void of covetousness and avidity; during
+the period of his government, no one experienced
+from him other than protection and justice, never
+having felt hardships from him, nor did the poor <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">{366}</a></span>ever
+know the weight of an oppressive hand from him;
+our characters and reputations have always been
+guarded in quiet from attack by the vigilance of his
+power and foresight, and preserved by the terror of
+his justice; he never omitted the smallest instance
+of kindness and goodness towards us and those entitled
+to it, but always applied by soothings and mildness
+the salve of comfort to the wounds of affliction,
+not allowing a single person to be overwhelmed by
+despair; he displayed his friendship and kindness to
+all; he destroyed the power of the enemies and
+wicked men by the strength of his terror; he tied the
+hands of tyrants and oppressors by his justice, and by
+this conduct he secured happiness and joy to us; he
+re&euml;stablished the foundation of justice, and we at all
+times, during his government, lived in comfort and
+passed our days in peace; we are many, many of us
+satisfied and pleased with him. As Mr. Hastings
+was perfectly well acquainted with the manners and
+customs of these countries, he was always desirous of
+performing that which would tend to the preservation
+of our religion, and of the duties of our sects, and
+guard the religious customs of each from the effects
+of misfortune and accidents; in every sense he treated
+us with attention and respect. We have represented
+without deceit what we have ourselves seen, and
+the facts that happened from him."</p></div>
+
+<p>This, my Lords, is in page 2374 of the printed
+Minutes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>My Lords, we spare you the reading of a great
+number of these attestations; they are all written in
+the same style; and it must appear to your Lordships
+a little extraordinary, that, as they are said <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">{367}</a></span>to
+be totally voluntary, as the people are represented to
+be crowding to make these testimonials, there should
+be such an unison in the heart to produce a language
+that is so uniform as not to vary so much as in a
+single tittle,&mdash;that every part of the country, every
+province, every district, men of every caste and of
+every religion, should all unite in expressing their
+sentiments in the very same words and in the very
+same phrases. I must fairly say it is a kind of miraculous
+concurrence, a miraculous gratitude. Mr.
+Hastings says that gratitude is lost in this part of
+the world. There it blooms and flourishes in a way
+not to be described. In proportion as you hear of
+the miseries and distresses of these very people, in
+the same proportion do they express their comfort
+and satisfaction, and that they never knew what a
+grievance was of any sort. Lord Cornwallis finds
+them aggrieved, the Court of Directors find them
+aggrieved, the Parliament of Great Britain find them
+aggrieved, and the court here find them aggrieved;
+but they never found themselves aggrieved. Their
+being turned out of house and home, and having all
+their land given to farmers of revenue for five years
+to riot in and despoil them of all they had, is what
+fills them with rapture. They are the only people,
+I believe, upon the face of the earth, that have no
+complaints to make of their government, in any instance
+whatever. Theirs must be something superior
+to the government of angels; for I verily believe,
+that, if one out of the choir of the heavenly angels
+were sent to govern the earth, such is the nature of
+man, that many would be found discontented with it.
+But these people have no complaint, they feel no
+hardships, no sorrow; Mr. Hastings has realized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">{368}</a></span>
+more than the golden age. I am ashamed for human
+nature, I am ashamed for our government, I am
+ashamed for this court of justice, that these things
+are brought before us; but here they are, and we
+must observe upon them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>My Lords, we have done, on our part; we have
+made out our case; and it only remains for me to
+make a few observations upon what Mr. Hastings
+has thought proper to put forward in his defence.
+Does he meet our case with anything but these general
+attestations, upon which I must first remark,
+that there is not one single matter of fact touched
+upon in them? Your Lordships will observe, and
+you may hunt them out through the whole body of
+your minutes, that you do not find a single fact mentioned
+in any of them. But there is an abundance of
+panegyric; and if we were doing nothing but making
+satires, as the newspapers charge us with doing,
+against Mr. Hastings, panegyric would be a good
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Hastings sets up pleas of merit upon this
+occasion. Now, undoubtedly, no plea of merit can
+be admitted to extinguish, as your Lordships know
+very well, a direct charge of crime. Merit cannot
+extinguish crime. For instance, if Lord Howe, to
+whom this country owes so much as it owes this day
+for the great and glorious victory which makes our
+hearts glad, and I hope will insure the security of
+this country,&mdash;yet if Lord Howe, I say, was charged
+with embezzling the King's stores, or applying them
+in any manner unbecoming his situation, to any
+shameful or scandalous purpose,&mdash;if he was accused
+of taking advantage of his station, to oppress any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">{369}</a></span> of
+the captains of his ships,&mdash;if he was stated to have
+gone into a port of the allies of this country, and to
+have plundered the inhabitants, to have robbed their
+women, and broken into the recesses of their apartments,&mdash;if
+he had committed atrocities like these,
+his glorious victory could not change the nature and
+quality of such acts. My Lord Malmesbury has been
+lately sent to the King of Prussia; we hope and
+trust that his embassy will be successful, and that
+this country will derive great benefit from his negotiations;
+but if Lord Malmesbury, from any subsidy
+that was to be paid to the King of Prussia, was to put
+50,000<i>l.</i> in his own pocket, I believe that his making
+a good and advantageous treaty with the King of Prussia
+would never be thought a good defence for him.
+We admit, that, if a man has done great and eminent
+services, though they cannot be a defence against
+a charge of crimes, and cannot obliterate them, yet,
+when sentence comes to be passed upon such a man,
+you will consider, first, whether his transgressions were
+common lapses of human frailty, and whether the
+nature and weight of the grievances resulting from
+them were light in comparison with the services performed.
+I say that you cannot acquit him; but your
+Lordships might think some pity due to him, that
+might mitigate the severity of your sentence. In the
+second place, you would consider whether the evidence
+of the services alleged to be performed was as clear
+and undoubted as that of the crimes charged. I confess,
+that, if a man has done great services, it may be
+some alleviation of lighter faults; but then they ought
+to be urged as such,&mdash;with modesty, with humility,
+with confession of the faults, and not with a proud
+and insolent defiance. They should not be stated as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">{370}</a></span>
+proofs that he stands justified in the eye of mankind
+for committing unexampled and enormous crimes.
+Indeed, humility, suppliant guilt, always makes impression
+in our bosoms, so that, when we see it before
+us, we always remember that we are all frail
+men; and nothing but a proud defiance of law and
+justice can make us forget this for one moment. I
+believe the Commons of Great Britain, and I hope
+the persons that speak to you, know very well how
+to allow for the faults and frailties of mankind equitably.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now see what are the merits which Mr.
+Hastings has set up against the just vengeance of his
+country, and against his proved delinquencies. From
+the language of the prisoner, and of his counsel, you
+would imagine some great, known, acknowledged services
+had been done by him. Your Lordships recollect
+that most of these presumed services have been
+considered, and we are persuaded justly considered,
+as in themselves crimes. He wishes your Lordships
+to suppose and believe that these services were put
+aside either because we could not prove the facts
+against him or could not make out that they were
+criminal, and consequently that your Lordships ought
+to presume them to have been meritorious; and this
+is one of the grounds upon which he demands to be
+acquitted of the charges that have been brought
+forward and proved against him. Finding in our
+proceedings, and recorded upon our journals, an immense
+mass of criminality with which he is charged,
+and finding that we had selected, as we were bound
+to select, such parts as might be most conveniently
+brought before your Lordships, (for to have gone
+through the whole would have been nearly impossi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">{371}</a></span>ble,)
+he takes all the rest that we have left behind
+and have not brought here as charges, and converts
+them, by a strange metamorphosis, into merits.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, we must insist, on the part of the House
+of Commons, we must conjure your Lordships, for
+the honor of a coördinate branch of the legislature,
+that, whenever you are called upon to admit what we
+have condemned as crimes to be merits, you will at
+least give us an opportunity of being heard upon the
+matter,&mdash;that you will not suffer Mr. Hastings, when
+attempting to defend himself against our charges, in
+an indirect and oblique manner to condemn or censure
+the House of Commons itself, as having misrepresented
+to be crimes the acts of a meritorious
+servant of the public. Mr. Hastings has pleaded a
+variety of merits, and every one of these merits, without
+the exception of one of them, have been either directly
+censured by the House of Commons, and censured
+as a ground for legislative provision, or they
+remain upon the records of the House of Commons,
+with the vouchers for them, and proofs; and though
+we have not actually come to the question upon every
+one of them, we had come, before the year 1782, to
+forty-five direct resolutions upon his conduct. These
+resolutions were moved by a person to whom this
+country is under many obligations, and whom we
+must always mention with honor, whenever we are
+speaking of high situations in this country, and of
+great talents to support them, and of long public
+services in the House of Commons: I mean Mr.
+Dundas, then Lord Advocate of Scotland, and now
+one of the principal Secretaries of State, and at the
+head, and worthily and deservedly at the head, of
+the East Indian department. This distinguished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">{372}</a></span>
+statesman moved forty-five resolutions, the major part
+of them directly condemning these very acts which
+Mr. Hastings has pleaded as his merits, as being delinquencies
+and crimes. All that the House of Commons
+implore of your Lordships is, that you will not
+take these things, which we call crimes, to be merits,
+without hearing the House of Commons upon the
+subject-matter of them. I am sure you are too noble
+and too generous, as well as too just and equitable,
+to act in such a manner.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing that Mr. Hastings brings forward
+in his defence is, that, whereas the Company were
+obliged to pay a certain tribute to the Mogul, in consideration
+of a grant by which the Moguls gave to
+us the legal title under which we hold the provinces
+of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, he did stop the payment
+of that tribute, or acknowledgment, small as it
+was,&mdash;that, though bound by a treaty recognized by
+the Company and recognized by the nation, though
+bound by the very sunnud by which he held the very
+office he was exercising, yet he had broken the treaty,
+and refused to pay the stipulated acknowledgment.
+Where are we, my Lords? Is this merit? Good
+God Almighty! the greatest blockhead, the most ignorant,
+miserable wretch, a person without either virtue
+or talents, has nothing to do but to order a clerk to
+strike a pen through such an account, and then to
+make a merit of it to you. "Oh!" says he, "I have
+by a mere breach of your faith, by a single dash of
+my pen, saved you all this money which you were
+bound to pay. I have exonerated you from the payment
+of it. I have gained you 250,000<i>l.</i> a year forever.
+Will you not reward a person who did you such
+a great and important service, by conniving a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">{373}</a></span> little
+at his delinquencies?"</p>
+
+<p>But the House of Commons will not allow that
+this was a great and important service; on the contrary,
+they have declared the act itself to be censurable.
+There is our resolution,&mdash;Resolution the 7th:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That the conduct of the Company and their
+servants in India to the King," (meaning the Mogul
+king) "and Nudjif Kh&acirc;n, with respect to the tribute
+payable to the one, and the stipend to the other, and
+with respect to the transfer of the provinces of Corah,
+and Allahabad to the Vizier, was contrary to policy
+and good faith; and that such wise and practicable
+measures should be adopted in future as may tend
+to redeem the national honor, and recover the confidence
+and attachment of the princes of India."</p>
+
+<p>This act of injustice, against which we have fulminated
+the thunder of our resolutions as a heavy
+crime, as a crime that dishonored the nation, and
+which measures ought to be taken to redress, this
+man has the insolence to bring before your Lordships
+as a set-off against the crimes we charge him with.
+This outrageous defiance of the House of Commons,
+this outrageous defiance of all the laws of his country,
+I hope your Lordships will not countenance.
+You will not let it pass for nothing: on the contrary,
+you will consider it as aggravating heavily his crimes.
+And, above all, you will not suffer him to set off this,
+which we have declared to be injurious to our national
+honor and credit, and which he himself does not
+deny to be a breach of the public faith, against other
+breaches of the public faith with which we charge
+him,&mdash;or to justify one class of public crimes by
+proving that he has committed others.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">{374}</a></span></p>
+<p>Your Lordships see that he justifies this crime upon
+the plea of its being profitable to the Company;
+but he shall not march off even on this ground with
+flying colors. My Lords, pray observe in what manner
+he calculates these profits. Your Lordships will
+find that he makes up the account of them much
+in the same manner as he made up the account of
+Nobkissin's money. There is, indeed, no account
+which he has ever brought forth that does not carry
+upon it not only ill faith and national dishonor,
+but direct proofs of corruption. When Mr. Hastings
+values himself upon this shocking and outrageous
+breach of faith, which required nothing but a base
+and illiberal mind, without either talents, courage, or
+skill, except that courage which defies all consequences,
+which defies shame, which defies the judgment
+and opinion of his country and of mankind, no other
+talents than may be displayed by the dash of a pen,
+you will at least expect to see a clear and distinct
+account of what was gained by it.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1775, at a period when Mr. Hastings
+was under an eclipse, when honor and virtue, in the
+character of General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and
+Mr. Francis, sat for a short period at the Council-Board,&mdash;during
+that time, Mr. Hastings's conduct
+upon this occasion was called into question. They
+called for an account of the revenues of the country,&mdash;what
+was received, and what had been paid;
+and in the account returned they found the amount
+of the tribute due to the Mogul, 250,000<i>l.</i>, entered
+as paid up to October, 1774. Thus far all appeared
+fair upon the face of it; they took it for granted, as
+your Lordships would take it for granted, at the first
+view, that the tribute in reality had been paid up to
+the time stated. The books were balanced: you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">{375}</a></span>
+find a debtor; you find a creditor; every item posted
+in as regular a manner as possible. Whilst they
+were examining this account, a Mr. Croftes, of whom
+your Lordships have heard very often, as accountant-general,
+comes forward and declares that there
+was a little error in the account. And what was
+the error? That he had entered the Mogul's tribute
+for one year more than it had actually been paid.
+Here we have the small error of a payment to the
+Mogul of 250,000<i>l.</i> This appeared strange. "Why,"
+says Mr. Croftes, "I never discovered it; nor was
+it ever intimated to me that it had been stopped
+from October, 1773, till the other day, when I was
+informed that I ought not to have made an entry
+of the last payments." These were his expressions.
+You will find the whole relation in the Bengal Appendix,
+printed by the orders of the Court of Directors.
+When Mr. Croftes was asked a very natural question,
+"Who first told you of your mistake? who acquainted
+you with Mr. Hastings's orders that the payment
+should be expunged from the account?" what is his
+answer? It is an answer worthy of Mr. Middleton,
+an answer worthy of Mr. Larkins, or of any of the
+other white banians of Mr. Hastings:&mdash;"Oh, I have
+forgotten." Here you have an accountant-general
+kept in ignorance, or who pretends to be ignorant,
+of so large a payment as 250,000<i>l.</i>; who enters it
+falsely in his account; and when asked who apprised
+him of his mistake, says that he has really forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, my Lords, what resources there are in oblivion!
+what resources there are in bad memory! No genius
+ever has done so much for mankind as this mental
+defect has done for Mr. Hastings's accountants. It
+was said by one of the ancient philosophers, to a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">{376}</a></span>man
+who proposed to teach people memory,&mdash;"I wish
+you could teach me oblivion; I wish you could teach
+me to forget." These people have certainly not been
+taught the art of memory, but they appear perfect
+masters of the art of forgetting. My Lords, this is
+not all; and I must request your Lordships' attention
+to the whole of the account, as it appears in
+the account of the arrears due to the King, annexed
+to your minutes. Here is a kind of labyrinth, where
+fraud runs into fraud. On the credit side you find
+stated there, eight lacs paid to the Vizier, and to be
+taken from the Mogul's tribute, for the support of an
+army, of which he himself had stipulated to bear the
+whole expenses. These eight lacs are thus fraudulently
+accounted for upon the face of the thing; and
+with respect to eighteen lacs, the remainder of the
+tribute, there is no account given of it at all. This
+sum Mr. Hastings must, therefore, have pocketed for
+his own use, or that of his gang of peculators; and
+whilst he was pretending to save you eight lacs by one
+fraud, he committed another fraud of eighteen lacs for
+himself: and this is the method by which one act of
+peculation begets another in the economy of fraud.</p>
+
+<p>Thus much of these affairs I think myself bound
+to state to your Lordships upon this occasion; for,
+although not one word has been produced by the
+counsel to support the allegations of the prisoner at
+your bar, yet, knowing that your Lordships, high as
+you are, are still but men, knowing also that bold
+assertions and confident declarations are apt to make
+some impression upon all men's minds, we oppose
+his allegations. But how do we oppose them? Not
+by things of the like nature. We oppose them by
+showing you that the House of Commons, after di<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">{377}</a></span>ligent
+investigation, has condemned them, and by stating
+the grounds upon which the House founded its
+condemnation. We send you to the records of the
+Company, if you want to pursue this matter further,
+to enlighten your own minds upon the subject. Do
+not think, my Lords, that we are not aware how
+ridiculous it is for either party, the accuser or the
+accused, to make here any assertions without producing
+vouchers for them: we know it; but we are
+prepared and ready to take upon us the proof; and
+we should be ashamed to assert anything that we are
+not able directly to substantiate by an immediate reference
+to uncontradicted evidence.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the merits pleaded by the prisoner,
+we could efface that plea with a single stroke, by
+saying there is no evidence before your Lordships
+of any such merits. But we have done more: we
+have shown you that the things which he has set up
+as merits are atrocious crimes, and that there is not
+one of them which does not, in the very nature and
+circumstances of it, carry evidence of base corruption,
+as well as of flagrant injustice and notorious breach
+of public faith.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing that he takes credit for is precisely
+an act of this description. The Mogul had, by
+solemn stipulation with the Company, a royal domain
+insured to him, consisting of two provinces, Corah
+and Allahabad. Of both these provinces Mr. Hastings
+deprived the Mogul, upon weak pretences, if
+proved in point of fact, but which were never proved
+in any sense, against him. I allude particularly to
+his alleged alliance with the Mahrattas,&mdash;a people,
+by the way, with whom we were not then at war, and
+with whom he had as good a right as Nudjif Kh&acirc;n to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">{378}</a></span>
+enter into alliance at that time. He takes these domains,
+almost the last wrecks of empire left to the
+descendant of Tamerlane, from the man, I say, to
+whose voluntary grants we owe it that we have put a
+foot in Bengal. Surely, we ought, at least, to have
+kept our faith in leaving this last retreat to that
+unfortunate prince. The House of Commons was
+of that opinion, and consequently they resolved,
+"That the transfer of Corah and Allahabad to the
+Vizier was contrary to policy and good faith." This
+is what the Commons think of this business which
+Mr. Hastings pleads as merits.</p>
+
+<p>But I have not yet done with it. These provinces
+are estimated as worth twenty-two lacs, or thereabouts,
+that is, about 220,000<i>l.</i>, a year. I believe they were
+improvable to a good deal more. But what does Mr.
+Hastings do? Instead of taking them into the Company's
+possession for the purpose of preserving them
+for the Mogul, upon the event of our being better
+satisfied with his conduct, or of appropriating them
+to the Company's advantage, he sells them to the
+Nabob of Oude, who he knew had the art, above all
+men, of destroying a country which he was to keep,
+or which he might fear he was not to keep, permanent
+possession of. And what do you think he sold them
+for? He sold them at a little more than two years'
+purchase. Will any man believe that Mr. Hastings,
+when he sold these provinces to the Vizier for two
+years' purchase, and when there was no man that
+would not have given ten years' purchase for them,
+did not put the difference between the real and pretended
+value into his own pocket, and that of his associates?</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">{379}</a></span></p>
+<p>We charge, therefore, first, that this act for which
+he assumes merit was in itself a breach of faith;
+next, that the sale of these provinces was scandalously
+conducted; and thirdly, that this sale, at one
+fifth of the real value, was effected for corrupt purposes.
+Thus an act of threefold delinquency is one
+of the merits stated with great pomp by his counsel.</p>
+
+<p>Another of his merits is the stoppage of the pension
+which the Company was under an obligation to
+pay to Nudjif Kh&acirc;n: a matter which, even if admitted to
+be a merit, is certainly not worth, as a set-off,
+much consideration.</p>
+
+<p>But there is another set-off of merit upon which
+he plumes himself, and sets an exceedingly high
+value: the sale of the Rohilla nation to that worthless
+tyrant, the Vizier, their cruel and bitter enemy,&mdash;the
+cruelest tyrant, perhaps, that ever existed, and
+their most implacable enemy, if we except Mr. Hastings,
+who appears to have had a concealed degree of
+animosity, public, private, or political, against them.
+To this man he sold this whole nation, whose country,
+cultivated like a garden, was soon reduced, as
+Mr. Hastings, from the character of the Vizier, knew
+would be the consequence, to a mere desert, for
+400,000<i>l.</i> He sent a brigade of our troops to assist
+the Vizier in extirpating these people, who were the
+bravest, the most honorable, and generous nation upon
+earth. Those who were not left slaughtered to rot
+upon the soil of their native country were cruelly expelled
+from it, and sent to publish the merciless and
+scandalous behavior of Great Britain from one end
+of India to the other. I believe there is not an honest,
+ingenuous, or feeling heart upon the face of the
+globe, I believe there is no man possessing the least
+degree of regard to honor and justice, humanity and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">{380}</a></span>
+good policy, that did not reprobate this act. The
+Court of Directors, when they heard of it, reprobated
+it in the strongest manner; the Court of Proprietors
+reprobated it in the strongest manner; by the House
+of Commons, after the most diligent investigation, it
+was, in a resolution moved by Mr. Dundas, reprobated
+in the strongest manner: and this is the act
+which Mr. Hastings brings forward before your Lordships
+as a merit.</p>
+
+<p>But, again, I can prove that in this, perhaps the
+most atrocious of all his demerits, there is a most
+horrid and nefarious secret corruption lurking. I
+can tell your Lordships that Sir Robert Barker was
+offered by this Vizier, for about one half of this very
+country, namely, the country of the Rohillas, a sum
+of fifty lacs of rupees,&mdash;that is, 500,000<i>l.</i> Mr. Hastings
+was informed of this offer by Sir Robert Barker,
+in his letter of the 24th March, 1773. Still, in the
+face of this information, Mr. Hastings took for the
+Company only forty lacs of rupees. I leave your
+Lordships to draw your own conclusion from these
+facts. You will judge what became of the difference
+between the price offered and the price accounted
+for as taken. Nothing on earth can hide from mankind
+why Mr. Hastings made this wicked, corrupt
+bargain for the extermination of a brave and generous
+people,&mdash;why he took 400,000<i>l.</i> for the whole
+of that, for half of which he was offered and knew he
+might have had 500,000<i>l.</i></p>
+
+<p>Your Lordships will observe, that for all these
+facts there is no evidence, on the one side or on the
+other, directly before you. Their merits have been
+insisted upon, in long and laborious details and discussions,
+both by Mr. Hastings himself and by his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">{381}</a></span>
+counsel. We have answered them for that reason;
+but we answer them with a direct reference to records
+and papers, from which your Lordships may judge
+of them as set-offs and merits. I believe your Lordships
+will now hardly receive them as merits to set
+off guilt, since in every one of them there is both
+guilt in the act, and strong ground for presuming
+that he had corruptly taken money for himself.</p>
+
+<p>The last act of merit that has been insisted upon
+by his counsel is the Mahratta peace. They have
+stated to you the distresses of the Company to justify
+the unhandsome and improper means that he
+took of making this peace. Mr. Hastings himself
+has laid hold of the same opportunity of magnifying
+the difficulties which, during his government, he had
+to contend with. Here he displays all his tactics.
+He spreads all his sails, and here catches every gale.
+He says, "I found all India confederated against
+you. I found not the Mahrattas alone; I found war
+through a hundred hostile states fulminated against
+you; I found the Peshwa, the Nizam, Hyder Ali, the
+Rajah of Berar, all combined together for your destruction.
+I stemmed the torrent: fortitude is my
+character. I faced and overcame all these difficulties,
+till I landed your affairs safe on shore, till I
+stood the saviour of India."</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, we of the House of Commons have before
+heard all this; but we cannot forget that we
+examined into every part of it, and that we did not
+find a single fact stated by him that was not a ground
+of censure and reprobation. The House of Commons, in
+the resolutions to which I have alluded,
+have declared, that Mr. Hastings, the first author of
+these proceedings, took advantage of an ambiguous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">{382}</a></span>
+letter of the Court of Directors to break and violate
+the most solemn, the most advantageous, and useful
+treaty that the Company had ever made in India;
+and that this conduct of his produced the strange
+and unnatural junction which he says he found
+formed against the Company, and with which he
+had to combat. I should trouble your Lordships
+with but a brief statement of the facts; and if I do
+not enter more at large in observing upon them,
+it is because I cannot but feel shocked at the indecency
+and impropriety of your being obliged to hear
+of that as merit which the House of Commons has
+condemned in every part. Your Lordships received
+obliquely evidence from the prisoner at your bar
+upon this subject; yet, when we came and desired
+your full inquiry into it, your Lordships, for wise
+and just reasons, I have no doubt, refused our request.
+I must, however, again protest on the part
+of the Commons against your Lordships receiving
+such evidence at all as relevant to your judgment,
+unless the House of Commons is fully heard upon it.</p>
+
+<p>But to proceed.&mdash;The government of Bombay
+had offended the Mahratta States by a most violent
+and scandalous aggression. They afterwards made
+a treaty of peace with them, honorable and advantageous
+to the Company. This treaty was made by
+Colonel Upton, and is called the Treaty of Poorunder.
+Mr. Hastings broke that treaty, upon his declared
+principle, that you are to look in war for the resources
+of your government. All India was at that time
+in peace. Hyder Ali did not dare to attack us, because
+he was afraid that his natural enemies, the
+Mahrattas, would fall upon him. The Nizam could
+not attack us, because he was also afraid of th<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">{383}</a></span>e Mahrattas.
+The Mahratta state itself was divided into
+such discordant branches as to make it impossible
+for them to unite in any one object; that commonwealth,
+which, certainly at that time was the terror
+of India, was so broken, as to render it either totally
+ineffective or easy to be resisted. There was not one
+government in India that did not look up to Great
+Britain as holding the balance of power, and in a
+position to control and do justice to every individual
+party in it. At that juncture Mr. Hastings deliberately
+broke the treaty of Poorunder; and afterwards,
+by breaking faith with and attacking all the powers,
+one after another, he produced that very union which
+one would hardly have expected that the incapacity
+or ill faith of any Governor could have effected.
+Your Lordships shall hear the best and most incontrovertible
+evidence both of his incapacity and ill
+faith, and of the consequences which they produced.
+It is the declaration of one of the latest of their allies
+concerning all these proceedings. It is contained in
+a letter from the Rajah of Berar, directly and strongly
+inculpating Mr. Hastings, upon facts which he has
+never denied and by arguments which he has never
+refuted, as being himself the cause of that very
+junction of all the powers of India against us.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p class="center"><i>Letter from Benaram Pundit.</i></p>
+
+<p>"As the friendship of the English is, at all events,
+the first and most necessary consideration, I will
+therefore exert myself in establishing peace: for the
+power of making peace with all is the best object;
+to this all other measures are subservient, and will
+certainly be done by them, the English. You write,
+that, after having laid the foundation of peace wi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">{384}</a></span>th
+the Pundit Purdhaun, it is requisite that some troops
+should be sent with General Goddard against Hyder
+Naig, and take possession of his country, when all
+those engagements and proposals may be assented to.
+My reason is confounded in discussing this suggestion,
+at a time when Hyder Naig is in every respect
+in alliance with the Peshwa, and has assisted with
+his soul and life to repel the English. For us to
+unite our troops with those of the enemy and extirpate
+him, would not this fix the stamp of infamy
+upon us forever? Would any prince, for generations
+to come, ever after assist us, or unite with the
+Peshwa? Be yourself the judge, and say whether
+such a conduct would become a prince or not. Why,
+then, do you mention it? why do you write it?</p>
+
+<p>"The case is as follows.&mdash;At first there was the
+utmost enmity between Hyder Naig and the Pundit
+Purdhaun, and there was the fullest intention of
+sending troops into Hyder Naig's country; and after
+the conclusion of the war with Bombay and the capture
+of Ragonaut Row, it was firmly resolved to send
+troops into that quarter; and a reliance was placed
+in the treaty which was entered into by the gentlemen
+of Bombay before the war. But when Ragonaut
+again went to them, and General Goddard was ready
+to commence hostilities,&mdash;when no regard was paid
+to the friendly proposals made by us and the Pundit
+Peshwa,&mdash;when they desisted from coming to Poonah,
+agreeable to their promise, and a categorical
+answer was given to the deputies from Poonah,&mdash;the
+ministers of Poonah then consulted among themselves,
+and, having advised with the Nabob Nizam
+ul Dowlah, they considered that as enemies were appearing
+on both sides, and it would be difficult to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">{385}</a></span>
+cope with both, what was to be done? Peace must
+be made with one of them, and war must be carried
+on with the other. They wished above all things, in
+their hearts, to make peace with the English gentlemen,
+and to unite with them to punish Hyder Naig;
+but these gentlemen had plainly refused to enter into
+any terms of reconciliation. It was therefore advisable
+to accommodate matters with Hyder Naig,
+although he had been long an enemy. What else
+could be done? Having nothing left for it, they were
+compelled to enter into an union with Hyder."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, this declaration, made to Mr. Hastings
+himself, was never answered by him. Indeed, answered
+it could not be; because the thing was manifest,
+that all the desolation of the Carnatic by Hyder
+Ali, all these difficulties upon which he has insisted,
+the whole of that union by which he was pressed,
+and against which, as he says, he bore up with such
+fortitude, was his own work, the consequences of his
+bad faith, and his not listening to any reasonable
+terms of peace.</p>
+
+<p>But, my Lords, see what sort of peace he afterwards
+made. I could prove, if I were called upon
+so to do, from this paper that they have had the
+folly and madness to produce to you for other purposes,
+that he might at any time have made a better
+treaty, and have concluded a more secure and advantageous
+peace, than that which at last he acceded
+to; that the treaty he made was both disadvantageous
+and dishonorable, inasmuch as we gave up every ally
+we had, and sacrificed them to the resentment of the
+enemy; that Mahdajee Sindia gained by it an empire
+of a magnitude dangerous to our very existence in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">{386}</a></span>
+India; that this chief was permitted to exterminate
+all the many little gallant nations that stood between
+us and the Mahrattas, and whose policy led them to
+guard against the ambitious designs of that government.
+Almost all these lesser powers, from Central
+India, quite up to the mountains that divide India
+from Tartary, almost all these, I say, were exterminated
+by him, or were brought under a cruel subjection.
+The peace he made with Mr. Hastings was for
+the very purpose of doing all this; and Mr. Hastings
+enabled him, and gave him the means of effecting it.</p>
+
+<p>Advert next, my Lords, to what he did with other
+allies. By the treaty of Poorunder, made by Colonel
+Upton, and which he flagitiously broke, we had acquired,
+what, God knows, we little merited from the
+Mahrattas, twelve lacs, (112,000<i>l.</i>) for the expenses
+of the war,&mdash;and a country of three lacs of annual
+revenue, the province of Baroach and the isle of
+Salsette, and other small islands convenient for us
+upon that coast. This was a great, useful, and momentous
+accession of territory and of revenue: and
+we got it with honor; for not one of our allies were
+sacrificed by this treaty. We had even obtained
+from the Mahrattas for Ragonaut Row, our support
+of whom against that government was a principal
+cause of the war, an establishment of a thousand
+horse, to be maintained at their expense, and a jaghire
+for his other expenses of three lacs of rupees
+per annum, payable monthly, with leave to reside
+within their territories, with no other condition than
+that he should not remove from the place fixed for
+his residence for the purpose of exciting disturbances
+against their government. They also stipulated for
+the pardon, of all his adherents except four; and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">{387}</a></span>the
+only condition they required from us was, that we
+should not assist him in case of any future disturbance.
+But Mr. Hastings, by his treaty, surrendered
+that country of three lacs of revenue; he made no
+stipulation for the expenses of the war, nor indemnity
+for any of the persons whom he had seduced into the
+rebellion in favor of Ragonaut Row; he gave them
+all up to the vengeance of their governments, without
+a stroke of a pen in their favor, to be banished, confiscated,
+and undone; and as to Ragonaut Row, instead
+of getting him this honorable and secure retreat,
+as he was bound to do, this unfortunate man
+was ordered to retire to his enemy's (Mahdajee Sindia's)
+country, or otherwise he was not to receive a
+shilling for his maintenance.</p>
+
+<p>I will now ask your Lordships, whether any man
+but Mr. Hastings would claim a merit with his own
+country for having broken the treaty of Poorunder?
+Your Lordships know the opinion of the House of
+Commons respecting it; his colleagues in Council
+had remonstrated with him upon it, and had stated
+the mischiefs that would result from it; and Sir
+Eyre Coote, the commander of the Company's forces,
+writing at the same time from Madras, states, that
+he thought it would infallibly bring down upon them
+Hyder Ali, who, they had reason to think, was bent
+upon the utter destruction of the power of this country
+in India, and was only waiting for some crisis
+in our affairs favorable to his designs. This, my
+Lords, is to be one of the set-offs against all the
+crimes, against the multiplied frauds, cruelties, and
+oppressions, all the corrupt practices, prevarications,
+and swindlings, that we have alleged against him.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">{388}</a></span></p>
+<p>My Lords, it would be an endless undertaking, and
+such as, at this hour of the day, we, as well as your
+Lordships, are little fitted to engage in, if I were to
+attempt to search into and unveil all the secret motives,
+or to expose as it deserves the shameless audacity
+of this man's conduct. None of your Lordships
+can have observed without astonishment the
+selection of his merits, as he audaciously calls them,
+which has been brought before you. The last of this
+selection, in particular, looks as if he meant to revile
+and spit upon the legislature of his country, because
+we and you thought it fit and were resolved
+to publish to all India that we will not countenance
+offensive wars, and that you felt this so strongly as
+to pass the first act of a kind that was ever made,
+namely, an act to limit the discretionary power of
+government in making war solely,&mdash;and because you
+have done this solely and upon no other account and
+for no other reason under heaven than the abuse
+which that man at your bar has made of it, and for
+which abuse he now presumes to take merit to himself.
+I will read this part of the act to your Lordships.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>[<i>Mr. Burke here read 24th Geo. III. cap. 25, sect. 34.</i>]</p>
+
+<p>"And whereas to pursue schemes of conquest and
+extension of dominion in India are measures repugnant
+to the wish, the honor, and policy of this nation,
+be it therefore further enacted by the authority
+aforesaid, that it shall not be lawful for the Governor-General
+and Council of Port William aforesaid,
+without the express command and authority of the
+said Court of Directors, or of the Secret Committee
+of the said Court of Directors, in any case, (except
+where hostilities have actually been commenced, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">{389}</a></span>
+preparations actually made for the commencement
+of hostilities, against the British nation in India, or
+against some of the princes or states dependent
+thereon, or whose territories the said United Company
+shall be at such time engaged by any subsisting
+treaty to defend or guaranty,) either to declare war,
+or commence hostilities, or enter into any treaty for
+making war, against any of the country princes or
+states in India, or any treaty for guarantying the possessions
+of any country princes or states; and that
+in such case it shall not be lawful for the said Governor-General
+and Council to declare war, or commence
+hostilities, or enter into treaty for making war,
+against any other prince or state than such as shall
+be actually committing hostilities or making preparations
+as aforesaid, or to make such treaty for guarantying
+the possessions of any prince or state, but
+upon the consideration of such prince or state actually
+engaging to assist the Company against such
+hostilities commenced or preparations made as aforesaid;
+and in all cases where hostilities shall be commenced
+or treaty made, the said Governor-General
+and Council shall, by the most expeditious means they
+can devise, communicate the same unto the said
+Court of Directors, together with a full state of
+the information and intelligence upon which they
+shall have commenced such hostilities or made such
+treaties, and their motives and reasons for the same
+at large."</p></div>
+
+<p>It is the first act of the kind that ever was made
+in this kingdom, the first statute, I believe, that ever
+was made by the legislature of any nation, upon the
+subject; and it was made solely upon the resolution<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">{390}</a></span>s
+to which we had come against the violent, intemperate,
+unjust, and perfidious acts of this man at your
+Lordships' bar, and which acts are now produced before
+your Lordships as merits.</p>
+
+<p>To show further to your Lordships how necessary
+this act was, here is a part of his own correspondence,
+the last thing I shall beg to read to your Lordships,
+and upon which I shall make no other comment than
+that you will learn from it how well British faith was
+kept by this man, and that it was the violation of
+British faith which prevented our having the most
+advantageous peace, and brought on all the calamities
+of war. It is part of a letter from the minister
+of the Rajah of Berar, a man called Benaram Pundit,
+with whom Mr. Hastings was at the time treating for
+a peace; and he tells him why he might have had
+peace at that time, and why he had it not,&mdash;and
+that the cause of it was his own ridiculous and even
+buffoonish perfidiousness, which exposed him to the
+ridicule of all the princes of India, and with him the
+whole British nation.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"But afterwards reflecting that it was not advisable
+for me to be in such haste before I had fully understood
+all the contents of the papers, I opened them
+in the presence of the Maha Rajah, when all the
+kharetas, letters, copies, and treaties were perused
+with the greatest attention and care. First, they convinced
+us of your great truth and sincerity, and that
+you never, from the beginning to this time, were
+inclined to the present disputes and hostilities; and
+next, that you have not included in the articles of
+the treaty any of your wishes or inclinations; and in
+short, the garden of the treaty appeared to us, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">{391}</a></span>
+all its parts, green and flourishing: but though the
+fruit of it was excellent yet they appeared different
+from those of Colonel Upton's treaty, (the particulars
+of which I have frequently written to you,) and, upon
+tasting them, proved to be bitter and very different,
+when compared to the former articles. How can any
+of the old and established obligations be omitted,
+and new matters agreed to, when it is plain that
+they will produce losses and damages? Some points
+which you have mentioned, under the plea of the faith
+and observance of treaties, are of such a nature that
+the Poonah ministers can never assent to them. In all
+engagements and important transactions, in which the
+words <i>but</i>, and <i>although</i>, and <i>besides</i>, and <i>whereas</i>,
+and <i>why</i>, and other such words of doubt, are introduced,
+it gives an opening to disputes and misunderstandings.
+A treaty is meant for the entire removal
+of all differences, not for increase of them. My departure
+to Poonah has therefore been delayed."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, consider to what ironies and insults
+this nation was exposed, and how necessary it was
+for us to originate that bill which your Lordships
+passed into an act of Parliament, with his Majesty's
+assent. The words <i>but</i>, <i>although</i>, <i>besides</i>, <i>whereas</i>, and
+<i>why</i>, and such like, are introduced to give an opening,
+and so on. Then he desires him to send another
+treaty, fit for him to sign.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote"><p>"I have therefore kept the treaty with the greatest
+care and caution in my possession, and, having
+taken a copy of it, I have added to each article another,
+which appeared to me proper and advisable,
+and without any loss or disadvantage to the English,
+or anything more in favor of the Pundit Purdhaun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">{392}</a></span>
+than what was contained in the former treaties. This
+I have sent to you, and hope that you will prepare
+and send a treaty conformable to that, without any <i>besides</i>,
+or <i>if</i>, or <i>why</i>, or <i>but</i>, and <i>whereas</i>, that, as soon as
+it arrives, I may depart for Poonah, and, having united
+with me Row Mahdajee Sindia, and having brought
+over the Nabob Nizam ul Dowlah to this business, I
+may settle and adjust all matters which are in this
+bad situation. As soon as I have received my dismission
+from thence, I would set off for Calcutta, and
+represent to you everything which for a long while
+I have had on my mind, and by this transaction erect
+to the view of all the world the standard of the greatness
+and goodness of the English and of my master,
+and extinguish the flames of war with the waters of
+friendship. The compassing all these advantages and
+happy prospects depends entirely upon your will and
+consent; and the power of bringing them to an issue
+is in your hands alone."</p></div>
+
+<p>My Lords, you may here see the necessity there
+was for passing the act of Parliament which I have
+just read to you, in order to prevent in future the
+recurrence of that want of faith of which Mr. Hastings
+had been so notoriously guilty, and by which he
+had not only united all India against us, and had
+hindered us from making, for a long time, any peace
+at all, but had exposed the British character to the
+irony, scorn, derision, and insult of the whole people
+of that vast continent.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>My Lords, in the progress of this impeachment,
+you have heard our charges; you have heard the
+prisoner's plea of merits; you have heard our observations
+on them. In the progress of this impeachment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">{393}</a></span>
+you have seen the condition in which Mr.
+Hastings received Benares; you have seen the condition
+in which Mr. Hastings received the country of
+the Rohillas; you have seen the condition in which
+he received the country of Oude; you have seen the
+condition in which he received the provinces of
+Bengal; you have seen the condition of the country
+when the native government was succeeded by that
+of Mr. Hastings; you have seen the happiness and
+prosperity of all its inhabitants, from those of the
+highest to those of the lowest rank. My Lords, you
+have seen the very reverse of all this under the government
+of Mr. Hastings,&mdash;the country itself, all its
+beauty and glory, ending in a jungle for wild beasts.
+You have seen flourishing families reduced to implore
+that pity which the poorest man and the meanest
+situation might very well call for. You have seen
+whole nations in the mass reduced to a condition of
+the same distress. These things in his government
+at home. Abroad, scorn, contempt, and derision cast
+upon and covering the British name, war stirred up,
+and dishonorable treaties of peace made, by the total
+prostitution of British faith. Now take, my Lords,
+together, all the multiplied delinquencies which we
+have proved, from the highest degree of tyranny to
+the lowest degree of sharping and cheating, and then
+judge, my Lords, whether the House of Commons
+could rest for one moment, without bringing these
+matters, which have baffled all legislation at various
+times, before you, to try at last what judgment
+will do. Judgment is what gives force, effect, and
+vigor to laws; laws without judgment are contemptible
+and ridiculous; we had better have no laws than
+laws not enforced by judgments and suitable pen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">{394}</a></span>alties
+upon delinquents. Revert, my Lords, to all the
+sentences which have heretofore been passed by this
+high court; look at the sentence passed upon Lord
+Bacon, look at the sentence passed upon Lord
+Macclesfield; and then compare the sentences which
+your ancestors have given with the delinquencies
+which were then before them, and you have the measure
+to be taken in your sentence upon the delinquent
+now before you. Your sentence, I say, will be measured
+according to that rule which ought to direct the
+judgment of all courts in like cases, lessening it for
+a lesser offence, and aggravating it for a greater, until
+the measure of justice is completely full.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>My Lords, I have done; the part of the Commons
+is concluded. With a trembling solicitude we consign
+this product of our long, long labors to your charge.
+Take it!&mdash;take it! It is a sacred trust. Never before
+was a cause of such magnitude submitted to any
+human tribunal.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the
+Commons, and surrounded by them, I attest the retiring,
+I attest the advancing generations, between
+which, as a link in the great chain of eternal order,
+we stand. We call this nation, we call the world to
+witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no
+labor, that we have been guilty of no prevarication,
+that we have made no compromise with crime, that
+we have not feared any odium whatsoever, in the long
+warfare which we have carried on with the crimes,
+with the vices, with the exorbitant wealth, with the
+enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern
+corruption. This war, my Lords, we have waged for
+twenty-two years, and the conflict has been fough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">{395}</a></span>t
+at your Lordships' bar for the last seven years. My
+Lords, twenty-two years is a great space in the scale
+of the life of man; it is no inconsiderable space in
+the history of a great nation. A business which has
+so long occupied the councils and the tribunals of
+Great Britain cannot possibly be huddled over in the
+course of vulgar, trite, and transitory events. Nothing
+but some of those great revolutions that break the
+traditionary chain of human memory, and alter the
+very face of Nature itself, can possibly obscure it.
+My Lords, we are all elevated to a degree of importance
+by it; the meanest of us will, by means of it,
+more or less become the concern of posterity,&mdash;if we
+are yet to hope for such a thing, in the present state
+of the world, as a recording, retrospective, civilized
+posterity: but this is in the hands of the great
+Disposer of events; it is not ours to settle how it shall
+be.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, your House yet stands,&mdash;it stands as
+a great edifice; but let me say, that it stands in the
+midst of ruins,&mdash;in the midst of the ruins that have
+been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever
+convulsed and shattered this globe of ours. My
+Lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in such
+a state that we appear every moment to be upon the
+verge of some great mutations. There is one thing,
+and one thing only, which defies all mutation,&mdash;that
+which existed before the world, and will survive the
+fabric of the world itself: I mean justice,&mdash;that
+justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a
+place in the breast of every one of us, given us for
+our guide with regard to ourselves and with regard
+to others, and which will stand, after this globe is
+burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">{396}</a></span>
+the great Judge, when He comes to call upon us for
+the tenor of a well-spent life.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate
+with your Lordships; there is nothing sinister which
+can happen to you, in which we shall not be involved:
+and if it should so happen that we shall be subjected
+to some of those frightful changes which we have
+seen,&mdash;if it should happen that your Lordships,
+stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human
+society, should, by hands at once base and cruel, be
+led to those scaffolds and machines of murder upon
+which great kings and glorious queens have shed their
+blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the nobles, amidst
+the magistrates who supported their thrones, may you
+in those moments feel that consolation which I am
+persuaded they felt in the critical moments of their
+dreadful agony!</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, there is a consolation, and a great
+consolation it is, which often happens to oppressed
+virtue and fallen dignity. It often happens that the
+very oppressors and persecutors themselves are forced
+to bear testimony in its favor. I do not like to go for
+instances a great way back into antiquity. I know
+very well that length of time operates so as to give an
+air of the fabulous to remote events, which lessens
+the interest and weakens the application of examples.
+I wish to come nearer to the present time. Your
+Lordships know and have heard (for which of us has
+not known and heard?) of the Parliament of Paris.
+The Parliament of Paris had an origin very, very
+similar to that of the great court before which I
+stand; the Parliament of Paris continued to have a
+great resemblance to it in its constitution, even to its
+fall: the Parliament of Paris, my Lords, WAS; i<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">{397}</a></span>t is
+gone! It has passed away; it has vanished like a
+dream! It fell, pierced by the sword of the Comte
+de Mirabeau. And yet I will say, that that man, at
+the time of his inflicting the death-wound of that
+Parliament, produced at once the shortest and the
+grandest funeral oration that ever was or could be
+made upon the departure of a great court of magistracy.
+Though he had himself smarted under its
+lash, as every one knows who knows his history, (and
+he was elevated to dreadful notoriety in history,) yet,
+when he pronounced the death sentence upon that
+Parliament, and inflicted the mortal wound, he
+declared that his motives for doing it were merely
+political, and that their hands were as pure as those
+of justice itself, which they administered. A great
+and glorious exit, my Lords, of a great and glorious
+body! And never was a eulogy pronounced upon a
+body more deserved. They were persons, in nobility
+of rank, in amplitude of fortune, in weight of authority,
+in depth of learning, inferior to few of those that
+hear me. My Lords, it was but the other day that
+they submitted their necks to the axe; but their
+honor was unwounded. Their enemies, the persons
+who sentenced them to death, were lawyers full of
+subtlety, they were enemies full of malice; yet
+lawyers full of subtlety, and enemies full of malice,
+as they were, they did not dare to reproach them with
+having supported the wealthy, the great, and powerful,
+and of having oppressed the weak and feeble, in
+any of their judgments, or of having perverted justice,
+in any one instance whatever, through favor, through
+interest, or cabal.</p>
+
+<p>My Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! But
+if you stand,&mdash;and stand I trust you will, together<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">{398}</a></span>
+with the fortune of this ancient monarchy, together
+with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and
+illustrious kingdom,&mdash;may you stand as unimpeached
+in honor as in power! May you stand, not as a
+substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, as
+a security for virtue! May you stand long, and long
+stand the terror of tyrants! May you stand the
+refuge of afflicted nations! May you stand a sacred
+temple, for the perpetual residence of an inviolable
+justice!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS,<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">AND</span><br />
+<br />
+INDEX.</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">{401}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="GENERAL_TABLE_OF_CONTENTS" id="GENERAL_TABLE_OF_CONTENTS"></a>GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<h3>VOL. I.</h3>
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li>
+Advertisement to the Reader, Prefixed to the First
+Octavo Edition
+<span class="tocright">v</span></li>
+<li>
+Advertisement to the Second Octavo Edition
+<span class="tocright">xvii</span></li>
+<li>
+A Vindication of Natural Society: or, A View of the Miseries and
+Evils arising to Mankind from every Species of Artificial Society
+<span class="tocright">1</span></li>
+<li>
+A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
+and Beautiful; with an Introductory Discourse concerning Taste
+<span class="tocright">67</span></li>
+<li>
+A Short Account of a late Short Administration
+<span class="tocright">263</span></li>
+<li>
+Observations on a late Publication, intituled,
+"The Present State of the Nation"
+<span class="tocright">269</span></li>
+<li>
+Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
+<span class="tocright">433</span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h3>VOL. II.</h3>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+<li>Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774                   <span class="tocright">1</span></li>
+<li>Speeches on Arrival at Bristol and at the Conclusion of the Poll, October 18 and November 8, 1774                 <span class="tocright">81</span></li>
+
+<li>Speech on moving Resolutions for Conciliation with America, March 22, 1775                                      <span class="tocright">99</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the Affairs of America, April 3, 1777                                   <span class="tocright">187</span></li>
+
+<li>Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol, on this Bills depending in Parliament relative to the Trade of Ireland, April 23 and May 2, 1778                        <span class="tocright">247</span></li>
+
+<li>Speech on presenting to the House of Commons a Plan for the Better Security of the Independence of Parliament, and the Economical Reformation of the Civil and other Establishments, February 11, 1780                                           <span class="tocright">265</span></li>
+
+<li>Speech at Bristol previous to the Election, September 6, 1780                                                     <span class="tocright">365</span></li>
+
+<li>Speech at Bristol on declining the Poll, September 9, 1780                                                     <span class="tocright">426</span></li>
+
+<li>Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill, December 1, 1788       <span class="tocright">431</span></li>
+
+<li>A Representation to his Majesty, moved in the Home of Commons, June 14, 1784                            <span class="tocright">537</span></li>
+</ul>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">{402}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>VOL. III.</h3>
+
+<ul class="TOC"><li>Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, February 28, 1785; with an Appendix                                                     <span class="tocright">1</span></li>
+
+<li>Substance of Speech on the Army Estimates, February 9, 1790          <span class="tocright">211</span></li>
+
+<li>Reflections on the Revolution in France                              <span class="tocright">231</span></li></ul>
+
+<h3>VOL. IV.</h3>
+<ul class="TOC"><li>Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, in Answer to some Objections to his Book on French Affairs                               <span class="tocright">1</span></li>
+
+<li>Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs                                  <span class="tocright">57</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to a Peer of Ireland on the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics                                                            <span class="tocright">217</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Subject of the Roman Catholics of Ireland                                                 <span class="tocright">241</span></li>
+
+<li>Hints for a Memorial to be delivered to Monsieur de M.M.             <span class="tocright">307</span></li>
+
+<li>Thoughts on French Affairs                                           <span class="tocright">313</span></li>
+
+<li>Heads for Consideration on the Present State of Affairs              <span class="tocright">379</span></li>
+
+<li>Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with respect to France: with an Appendix                                                          <span class="tocright">403</span></li></ul>
+
+<h3>VOL. V.</h3>
+
+<ul  class="TOC"><li>Observations on the Conduct of the Minority, particularly in the last Session of Parliament, 1793                                       <span class="tocright">1</span></li>
+
+<li>Preface to the Address of M. Brissot to his Constituents: with an Appendix                                                    <span class="tocright">65</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to William Elliot, Esq., occasioned by a Speech made in the House of Lords by the **** of *******, in the Debate concerning Lord Fitzwilliam, 1795                                               <span class="tocright">107</span></li>
+
+<li>Thoughts and Details on Scarcity                                     <span class="tocright">131</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to a Noble Lord on the Attacks made upon Mr. Burke and his Pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, 1796                                             <span class="tocright">171</span></li>
+
+<li>Three Letters to a Member of Parliament on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France.</li>
+
+    <li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>Letter I. On the Overtures of Peace                              <span class="tocright">233</span></li>
+
+    <li>Letter II. On the Genius and Character of the French Revolution as it regards other Nations                           <span class="tocright">342</span></li>
+
+    <li>  Letter III. On the Rupture of the Negotiation; the Terms of Peace proposed; and the Resources of the Country for the Continuance of the War                                       <span class="tocright">384</span></li></ul></li></ul>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">{403}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>VOL. VI.</h3>
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li>Preface to the Second Posthumous Volume, in a Letter to the Right Hon. William Elliot                                                  <span class="tocright">v</span></li>
+
+<li>Fourth Letter on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France: with the Preliminary Correspondence                       <span class="tocright">1</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to the Empress of Russia, November 1, 1791                    <span class="tocright">113</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to Sir Charles Bingham, Bart., on the Irish Absentee Tax, October 30, 1773                                                   <span class="tocright">121</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to the Hon. Charles James Fox, on the American War, October 8, 1777                                                    <span class="tocright">135</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to the Marquis of Rockingham, with Addresses to the King, and the British Colonists in North America, in Relation to the Measures of Government in the American Contest, and a Proposed Secession of the Opposition from Parliament, January, 1777         <span class="tocright">149</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to the Right Hon. Edmund S. Pery, in relation to a Bill for the Relief of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, July 18, 1778    <span class="tocright">197</span></li>
+
+<li>Two Letters to Thomas Burgh, Esq., and John Merlott, Esq., in Vindication of his Parliamentary Conduct relative to the Affairs of Ireland, 1780                                                  <span class="tocright">207</span></li>
+
+<li>Letters and Reflections on the Executions of the Rioters in 1780     <span class="tocright">239</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to the Right Hon. Henry Dundas: with the Sketch of a Negro Code, 1792                                                         <span class="tocright">255</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting, held at Aylesbury, April 13, 1780, on the Subject of Parliamentary Reform                                                             <span class="tocright">291</span></li>
+
+<li>Fragments of a Tract relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland  <span class="tocright">299</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to William Smith, Esq., on the Subject of Catholic Emancipation, January 29, 1795                                     <span class="tocright">361</span></li>
+
+<li>Second Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Catholic Question, May 26, 1795                                                       <span class="tocright">375</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter to Richard Burke, Esq., on Protestant Ascendency in Ireland, 1793                                                              <span class="tocright">385</span></li>
+
+<li>Letter on the Affairs of Ireland, 1797                               <span class="tocright">413</span></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<h3>VOL. VII.</h3>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">{404}</a></span></p>
+<ul  class="TOC">
+<li>Fragments and Notes of Speeches in Parliament.</li>
+
+<li><ul class="TOCSub">
+  <li>Speech on the Acts of Uniformity, February 8, 1772                   <span class="tocright">3</span></li>
+
+  <li>Speech on a Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters, March 17, 1773                                                     <span class="tocright">21</span></li>
+
+  <li>  Speech on a Motion, for Leave to bring in a Bill to repeal and alter certain Acts respecting Religious Opinions, upon the Occasion of a Petition of the Unitarian Society, May 11, 1792     <span class="tocright">39</span></li>
+
+  <li>Speech relative to the Middlesex Election, February 7, 1771         <span class="tocright">59</span></li>
+
+  <li>Speech on a Bill for shortening the Duration of Parliaments, May 8, 1780                                                       <span class="tocright">69</span></li>
+
+  <li>Speech on a Motion for a Committee to inquire into the State of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament, May 7, 1782      <span class="tocright">89</span></li>
+
+  <li>Speech on a Motion for Leave to bring in a Bill for explaining the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels, March 7, 1771. Together with a Letter in Vindication of that Measure, and a Copy of the proposed Bill                                        <span class="tocright">105</span></li>
+
+  <li>Speech on a Bill for the Repeal of the Marriage Act, June 15, 1781                                                    <span class="tocright">129</span></li>
+
+  <li>Speech on a Motion for Leave to bring in a Bill to quiet the Possessions of the Subject against Dormant Claims of the Church, February 17, 1772                                                <span class="tocright">137</span></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Hints for an Essay on the Drama                                      <span class="tocright">143</span></li>
+
+
+<li>An Essay towards an Abridgment of the English History. In Three Books.</li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>Book I. To the Fall of the Roman Power In Britain      <span class="tocright">159</span></li>
+<li>Book II. To the Norman Invasion     <span class="tocright">227</span></li>
+<li>Book III. Through the Reign of John    <span class="tocright">327</span></li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>Fragment.&mdash;An Essay towards an History of the Laws of England    <span class="tocright">475</span></li></ul></li></ul></li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<h3>VOL. VIII.</h3>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">{405}</a></span></p>
+<ul class="TOC"><li>Ninth Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of India, June 25, 1783.
+
+    <ul class="TOCSub"><li>Observations on the State of the Company's Affairs in India        <span class="tocright">3</span></li>
+
+    <li>Connection of Great Britain with India                            <span class="tocright">41</span></li>
+
+    <li>Effect of the Revenue Investment on the Company                   <span class="tocright">56</span></li>
+
+    <li>Internal Trade of Bengal                                          <span class="tocright">75</span>
+      <ul class="TOCSub"><li>Silk                                                            <span class="tocright">83</span></li>
+      <li>Raw Silk                                                        <span class="tocright">88</span></li>
+      <li>Cloths, or Piece-Goods                                          <span class="tocright">99</span></li>
+      <li>Opium                                                          <span class="tocright">116</span></li>
+      <li>Salt                                                           <span class="tocright">142</span></li>
+      <li>Saltpetre                                                      <span class="tocright">170</span></li></ul></li>
+
+    <li>British Government in India                                      <span class="tocright">173</span></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Eleventh Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of India. With Extracts from the Appendix. November 18, 1783                                                <span class="tocright">217</span></li>
+
+
+<li>Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against Warren Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General of Bengal: presented to the House of Commons in April and May, 1788.&mdash;Articles I.-VI.
+
+    <ul class="TOCSub"><li>Art. I. Rohilla War                                                   <span class="tocright">307</span></li>
+
+   <li>II. Shah Allum                                                    <span class="tocright">319</span></li>
+
+  <li>III. Benares.
+
+         <ul class="TOCSub"><li>Part I. Rights and Titles of the Rajah of Benares           <span class="tocright">327</span></li>
+
+         <li>Part II. Designs of Mr. Hastings to ruin the Rajah of
+Benares                                                  <span class="tocright">339</span></li>
+
+         <li>Part III. Expulsion of the Rajah of Benares                 <span class="tocright">354</span></li>
+
+         <li>Part IV. Second Revolution in Benares                       <span class="tocright">380</span></li>
+
+         <li>Part V. Third Revolution in Benares                         <span class="tocright">386</span></li></ul></li>
+
+   <li>IV. Princesses of Oude                                            <span class="tocright">397</span></li>
+
+    <li>V. Revolutions in Furruckabad                                    <span class="tocright">467</span></li>
+
+   <li>VI. Destruction of the Rajah of Sahlone                           <span class="tocright">484</span></li></ul></li></ul>
+
+<h3>VOL. IX.</h3>
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li>
+Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against Warren
+Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General of Bengal: presented
+to the House of Commons in April and May, 1786.&mdash;Articles
+VII.-XXII.</li>
+
+<li><ul class="TOCSub">
+<li>Art. VII. Contracts<span class="tocright">3</span></li>
+
+<li>VIII. Presents<span class="tocright">22</span></li>
+
+<li>IX. Resignation of the Office of Governor-General <span class="tocright">42</span></li>
+
+<li>X. Surgeon-General's Contract <span class="tocright">60</span></li>
+
+<li>XI. Contracts for Poolbundy Repairs <span class="tocright">60</span></li>
+
+<li>XII. Contracts for Opium <span class="tocright">63</span></li>
+
+<li>XIII. Appointment of R.J. Sulivan <span class="tocright">70</span></li>
+
+<li>XIV. Ranna of Gohud <span class="tocright">72</span></li>
+
+
+<li>XV. Revenues. Part I. <span class="tocright">79</span></li>
+
+<li>
+<ul class="TOCSub">
+<li>Part II.<span class="tocright">87</span></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>XVI. Misdemeanors in Oude <span class="tocright">95</span></li>
+
+<li>XVII. Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n <span class="tocright">79</span></li>
+
+<li>XVIII. The Mogul delivered up to the Mahrattas <span class="tocright">202</span></li>
+
+<li>XIX. Libel on the Court of Directors <span class="tocright">228</span></li>
+
+<li>XX. Mahratta War and Peace <span class="tocright">238</span></li>
+
+<li>XXI. Correspondence <span class="tocright">266</span></li>
+
+<li>XXII. Fyzoola Kh&acirc;n </li>
+
+<li>
+<ul class="TOCSub">
+
+<li>Part I. Rights of Fyzoola Kh&acirc;n, etc., before the
+Treaty of Lall-Dang<span class="tocright">268</span></li>
+
+<li>Part II. Rights of Fyzoola Kh&acirc;n under the Treaty
+of Lall-Dang<span class="tocright">275</span></li>
+
+<li>Part III. Guaranty of the Treaty of Lall-Dang<span class="tocright">278</span></li>
+
+<li>Part IV. Thanks of the Board to Fyzoola Kh&acirc;n<span class="tocright">286</span></li>
+
+<li>Part V. Demand of Five Thousand Horse<span class="tocright">287</span></li>
+
+<li>Part VI. Treaty of Chunar <span class="tocright">296</span></li>
+
+<li>Part VII. Consequences of the Treaty of Chunar<span class="tocright">302</span></li>
+
+<li>Part VIII. Pecuniary Commutation of the Stipulated
+Aid<span class="tocright">306</span></li>
+
+<li>Part IX. Full Vindication of Fyzoola Kh&acirc;n by Major
+Palmer and Mr. Hastings<span class="tocright">318</span></li>
+</ul>
+</li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Appendix to the Eighth and Sixteenth Charges <span class="tocright">319</span></li>
+
+<li>Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General
+of Bengal.</li>
+
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>Speech in Opening the Impeachment.<br /></li>
+
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>First Day: Friday, February 15, 1788 <span class="tocright">329</span></li>
+
+<li>Second Day: Saturday, February 16 <span class="tocright">396</span></li>
+</ul></li></ul></li></ul>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">{406}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>VOL. X.</h3>
+
+<ul class="TOC"><li>Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General
+of Bengal.</li>
+
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>    Speech in Opening the Impeachment.</li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>      Third Day: Monday, February 18, 1788                    <span class="tocright">3</span></li>
+<li>      Fourth Day: Tuesday, February 19                       <span class="tocright">99</span></li></ul></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>Speech on the Sixth Article of Charge.</li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>      First Day: Tuesday, April 21, 1789                    <span class="tocright">149</span></li>
+<li>      Second Day: Saturday, April 25                        <span class="tocright">240</span></li>
+<li>      Third Day: Tuesday, May 5                             <span class="tocright">306</span></li>
+<li>      Fourth Day: Thursday, May 7                           <span class="tocright">396</span></li></ul></li></ul></li></ul>
+
+<h3>VOL. XI.</h3>
+
+<ul class="TOC"><li>Report from the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed
+to inspect the Lords' Journals in Relation to their Proceedings
+on the Trial of Warren Hastings, Esq. With an Appendix.
+Also, Remarks in Vindication of the Same from the Animadversions
+of Lord Thurlow. 1794           <span class="tocright">1</span></li>
+
+<li>Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General
+of Bengal. (Continued.)</li>
+
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>    Speech in General Reply.</li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>      First Day: Wednesday, May 28, 1794                             <span class="tocright">157</span></li>
+<li>      Second Day: Friday, May 30                                     <span class="tocright">227</span></li>
+<li>      Third Day. Tuesday, June 3                                     <span class="tocright">300</span></li>
+<li>      Fourth Day: Thursday, June 5                                <span class="tocright">372</span></li></ul></li></ul></li></ul>
+
+<h3>VOL. XII.</h3>
+
+<ul class="TOC"><li><a href="#SPEECHES">Speeches In the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General
+of Bengal. (Continued.)</a></li>
+
+<li><ul class="TOCSub"><li>  <a href="#SPEECHES">Speech in General Reply.</a></li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub">    <li><a href="#FIFTH_DAY_SATURDAY_JUNE_7_1794">Fifth Day: Saturday, June 7, 1794</a>                        <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></span></li>
+<li>    <a href="#SIXTH_DAY_WEDNESDAY_JUNE_11_1794">Sixth Day: Wednesday, June 11</a>                            <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></span></li>
+<li>    <a href="#SEVENTH_DAY_THURSDAY_JUNE_12_1794">Seventh Day: Thursday, June 12</a>                          <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></span></li>
+<li>    <a href="#EIGHTH_DAY_SATURDAY_JUNE_14_1794">Eighth Day: Saturday, June 14</a>                           <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></span></li>
+<li>    <a href="#NINTH_DAY_MONDAY_JUNE_16_1794">Ninth Day: Monday, June 16</a>                              <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_335">335</a></span></li></ul></li></ul></li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">{407}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.</h2>
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Accidental things ought to be carefully distinguished from permanent causes and effects, v. 234.</li>
+
+<li>Account, capital use of an, what, i. 511.</li>
+
+<li>Act of navigation, i. 378; ii. 30, 33.</li>
+
+<li>Acts of grace, impolicy of, ii. 386.</li>
+
+<li>Acts of indemnity and oblivion, probable effects of, as a means of reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.</li>
+
+<li>Addison, Mr., the correctness of his opinion of the cause of the grand effect of the rotund questioned, i. 150.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his fine lines on honorable political connections, i. 529.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Administration, Short Account of a Late Short, (Marquis of Rockingham's,) i. 263.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  censures on that administration, i. 379.</li>
+<li>  state of public affairs at the time of its formation, i. 381.</li>
+<li>  character and conduct of it, i. 388.</li>
+<li>  idea of it respecting America, i. 397.</li>
+<li>  remarks on its foreign negotiations, i. 412.</li>
+<li>  character of a united administration, i. 419.</li>
+<li>  of a disunited one, i. 425.</li>
+<li>  the administration should be correspondent to the legislature, i. 471.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Admiration, the first source of obedience, iv. 251.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  one of the principles which interest us in the characters of others, vii. 148.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Adrian, first contracts the hounds of the Roman Empire, vii. 214.</li>
+
+<li>Advice, compulsive, from constituents, its authority first resisted by Mr. Burke, iv. 95.</li>
+
+<li>Adviser, duty of an, iv. 42.</li>
+
+<li>Agricola, Julius, character and conduct of, vii. 199.</li>
+
+<li>Aix, the Archbishop of, his offer of contribution, why refused by the French National Assembly, iii. 390.</li>
+
+<li>Aix-la-Chapelle, the treaty of, remarks on, v. 441.</li>
+
+<li>Akbar, the Emperor, obtains possession of Bengal, ix. 392</li>
+
+<li>Alfred the Great, character and conduct of, vii. 261.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his care and sagacity in improving the laws and institutions of England, vii. 482.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Allegiance, oath of, remarkable one taken by the nobility to King Stephen, vii. 388.</li>
+
+<li>Alliance, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the famous Triple Alliance negotiated by Temple and De Witt, v. 438.</li>
+<li>  alliance between Church and State in a Christian commonwealth, a fanciful speculation, vii. 43.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Ambition, one of the passions belonging to society, i. 124.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  nature and end of, i. 124.</li>
+<li>  misery of disappointed, i. 335.</li>
+<li>  ought to be influenced by popular motives, i. 474.</li>
+<li>  influence of, iii. 107.</li>
+<li>  one of the natural distempers of a democracy, iv. 164.</li>
+<li>  legislative restraints on it in democracies always violent and ineffectual, iv. 164.</li>
+<li>  not an exact calculator, vii. 82.</li>
+<li>  virtue of a generous ambition for applause for public services, x. 176.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>America, advantage of, to England, i. 297.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  nature of various taxes there, i. 355.</li>
+<li>  project of a representation of in Parliament, its difficulties, i. 372.</li>
+<li>  its rapidly increasing commerce, ii. 112.</li>
+<li>  eloquent description of rising glories of, in vision, ii. 115.</li>
+<li>  temper and character of its inhabitants, ii. 120.</li>
+<li>  their spirit of liberty, whence, ii. 120, 133</li>
+<li>  proposed taxation of, by grant instead of imposition, ii. 154.</li>
+<li>  danger in establishing a military government there, vi. 176.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>American Stamp Act, its origin, i. 385.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  repeal of the, i. 265, 389.</li>
+<li>  reasons of the repeal, ii. 48.</li>
+  <li>good effects of the repeal, i. 401; ii. 59.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">{408}</a></span></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Ancestors, our, reverence due to them, iii. 562; iv. 213.</li>
+
+<li>Angles, in buildings, prejudicial to their grandeur, i. 151.</li>
+
+<li>Animals, their cries capable of conveying great ideas, i. 161.</li>
+
+<li>Anniversaries, festive, advantages of, iv. 369.</li>
+
+<li>Anselm, appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, vii. 373.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  supports Henry I. against his brother Robert, vii. 377.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Apparitions, singular inconsistency in the ideas of the vulgar concerning them, vii. 181.</li>
+
+<li>Arbitrary power, steals upon a people by lying dormant for a time, or by being rarely exercised, ii. 201.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  cannot be exercised or delegated by the legislature, ix. 455.</li>
+<li>  not recognized in the Gentoo code, xi. 208.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Arbitrary system, must always be a corrupt one, x. 5.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  danger in adopting it as a principle of action, xi. 322.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Areopagus, court and senate of, remarks on the, iii. 507.</li>
+
+<li>Ariosto, a criticism of Boileau on, vii. 154.</li>
+
+<li>Aristocracy, affected terror at the growth of the power of the, in the reign of George II., i. 457.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  influence of the, i. 457.</li>
+<li>  too much spirit not a fault of the, i. 458.</li>
+<li>  general observations on the, iii. 415.</li>
+<li>  character of a true natural one, iv. 174.</li>
+<li>  regulations in some states with respect to, iv. 250.</li>
+<li>  must submit to the dominion of prudence and virtue, v. 127.</li>
+<li>  character of the aristocracy of France before the Revolution, iii. 412; vi. 39.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Aristotle, his caution against delusive geometrical accuracy in moral arguments, ii. 170.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his observations on the resemblance between a democracy and a tyranny, iii. 397.</li>
+<li>  his distinction between tragedy and comedy, vii. 153.</li>
+<li>  his natural philosophy alone unworthy of him, vii. 252.</li>
+<li>  his system entirely followed by Bede, vii. 252.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Armies yield a precarious and uncertain obedience to a senate, iii. 524.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  remarks on the standing armies of France and England, iii. 224.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Army commanded by General Monk, character of it, iv. 36.</li>
+
+<li>Art, every work of, great only as it deceives, i. 152.</li>
+
+<li>Artist, a true one effects the noblest designs by easy methods, i. 152.</li>
+
+<li>Artois, Comte d', character of, iv. 430.</li>
+
+<li>Ascendency, Protestant, observations on it, vi. 393.</li>
+
+<li>Asers, their origin and conquests, vii. 228.</li>
+
+<li>Assassination, recommended and employed by the National Assembly of France, iv. 34.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the dreadful consequences of this policy, in case of war, iv. 34.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Astonishment, cause and nature of, i. 160, 217.</li>
+
+<li>Atheism by establishment, what, v. 310.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  ought to be repressed by law, vii. 35.</li>
+<li>  schools of, set up by the French regicides at the public charge, vi. 106.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Atheists, modern, contrasted with those of antiquity, iv. 355.</li>
+
+<li>Athenians, at the head of the democratic interests of Greece, iv. 321.</li>
+
+<li>Athens, the plague of, remarkable prevalence of wickedness during its continuance, vii. 84.</li>
+
+<li>Augustin, state of religion in Britain when he arrived there, vii. 233.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  introduced Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons, vii. 235.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Aulic Council, remarks on the, v. 119.</li>
+
+<li>Austria began in the reign of Maria Theresa to support great armies, v. 368.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  her treaty of 1756 with France, deplored by the French in 1773, v. 370.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Authority, its only firm seat in public opinion, ii. 224; vi. 165.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the people the natural control on it, iv. 164.</li>
+<li>  the exercise and control of it together contradictory, iv. 164.</li>
+<li>  the monopoly of it an evil, v. 151.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Avarice, an instrument and source of oppression in India, iii. 107; ix. 491.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Bacon, Lord, a remark of his applied to the revolution in France, v. 175.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his demeanor at his impeachment, xi. 173.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Bacon, N., his work on the laws of England not entitled to authority, vii. 479.</li>
+
+<li>Bail, method of giving it introduced by Alfred, vii. 265.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  advantage of it, vii. 265.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Ball, John, abstract of a discourse of, iv. 178.</li>
+
+<li>Ballot, all contrivances by it vain to prevent a discovery of the inclinations, iii. 507.</li>
+
+<li>Balmerino, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 34.</li>
+
+<li>Banian, functions and character of the, ix. 363.</li>
+
+<li>Bank paper in England, owing to the flourishing condition of commerce, iii. 541.</li>
+
+<li>Bards, the, character of their verses, vii. 178.</li>
+
+<li>Bartholomew, St., massacre of, iii. 420.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">{409}</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Bathurst, Lord, his imagined vision of the rising glories of America, ii. 114.</li>
+
+<li>Bayle, Mr., an observation of his on religious persecution, vi. 333.</li>
+
+<li>Beauchamp, Lord, his bill concerning imprisonment; Mr. Burke's course with respect to it, ii. 382.</li>
+
+<li>Beauty, a cause of love, i. 114, 165.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  proportion not the cause of it in vegetables, i. 166.</li>
+<li>  nor in animals, i. 170.</li>
+<li>  nor in the human species, i. 172.</li>
+<li>  beauty and proportion not ideas of the same nature, i. 181.</li>
+<li>  the opposite to beauty not disproportion or deformity, but ugliness, i. 181.</li>
+<li>  fitness not the cause of beauty, i. 181.</li>
+<li>  nor perfection, i. 187.</li>
+<li>  how far the idea of beauty applicable to the qualities of the mind, i. 188.</li>
+<li>  how far applicable to virtue, i. 190.</li>
+<li>  the real cause of beauty, i. 191.</li>
+<li>  beautiful objects, small, i. 191.</li>
+<li>  and smooth, i. 193.</li>
+<li>  and of softly varied contour, i. 194.</li>
+<li>  and delicate, i. 195.</li>
+<li>  and of clear, mild, or diversified, colors, i. 196.</li>
+<li>  beauty of the physiognomy, i. 198.</li>
+<li>  beauty of the eye, i. 198.</li>
+<li>  the beautiful in feeling, i. 201.</li>
+<li>  the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.</li>
+<li>  physical effects of beauty, i. 232.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Bede, the Venerable, brief account of him and his works, vii. 250.</li>
+
+<li>Bedford, the first earl of, who, v. 201.</li>
+
+<li>Begums of Oude, accused by the East India Company of rebellion, ii. 475.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  pretence for seizing their treasures, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Benares, city of, the capital of the Indian religion, ii. 477, 484.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  province of, its projected sale to the Nabob of Oude, xi. 259.</li>
+<li>  devastation of, during Mr. Hastings's government, xi. 302, 347.</li>
+<li>  the Rajah of, nature of his authority, xi. 240.</li>
+<li>  imprisoned by Mr. Hastings's order, xi. 277.</li>
+<li>  the Ranny of, the soldiery incited by Mr. Hastings to plunder her, ii. 486.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Benfield, Paul, his character and conduct, iii. 97.</li>
+
+<li>Bengal, extent and condition, of, ii. 498.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  conquest of, by the Emperor Akbar, ix. 392.</li>
+<li>  era of the independent subahs of, ix. 392.</li>
+<li>  era of the British empire in, ix. 393.</li>
+<li>  nature of the government exercised there by Mr. Hastings, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_211">211</a>.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Bengal Club, observations on the, iv. 324.</li>
+
+<li>Bidjegur, fortress of, taken by order of Mr. Hastings, xi. 291.</li>
+
+<li>Biron, Duchess of, murdered by the French regicides, vi. 41.</li>
+
+<li>Bitterness, in description, a source of the sublime, i. 162.</li>
+
+<li>Blackness, effects of, i. 229.</li>
+
+<li>Boadicea, Roman outrages against, vii. 197.</li>
+
+<li>Boileau, his criticism on a tale in Ariosto, vii. 154.</li>
+
+<li>Bolingbroke, Lord, animadversions on his philosophical works, i. 3.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  some characteristics of his style, i. 7.</li>
+<li>  a presumptuous and superficial writer, iii. 398.</li>
+<li>  a remark of his on the superiority of a monarchy over other forms of government, iii. 398.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Boncompagni, Cardinal, character of him, iv. 338.</li>
+
+<li>Borrower, the public, and the private lender, not adverse parties with contending interests, v. 455.</li>
+
+<li>Bouillon, Godfrey of, engages in the Crusade, vii. 372.</li>
+
+<li>Boulogne, fortress of, surrendered to France, v. 204.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  importance of it to England, v. 204.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Bouvines, victory of, important advantages of it to France, vii. 458.</li>
+
+<li>Braban&ccedil;ons, mercenary troops in the time of Henry II., their character, vii. 420.</li>
+
+<li>Bribing, by means of it, rather than by being bribed, wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind, iii. 107.</li>
+
+<li>Brissot, his character and conduct, iv. 371.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  Preface to his Address to his Constituents, v. 65.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Britain, invasion of, by C&aelig;sar, vii. 165.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  account of its ancient inhabitants, vii. 170.</li>
+<li>  invaded by Claudius, vii. 191.</li>
+<li>  reduced by Ostorius Scapula, vii. 191.</li>
+<li>  finally subdued by Agricola, vii. 199.</li>
+<li>  why not sooner conquered, vii. 202.</li>
+<li>  nature of the government settled there by the Romans, vii. 205.</li>
+<li>  first introduction of Christianity into, vii. 221.</li>
+<li>  deserted by the Romans, vii. 223.</li>
+<li>  entry and settlement of the Saxons there, and their conversion to Christianity, vii. 227.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Britons, more reduced than any other nation that fell under the German power, vii. 232.</li>
+
+<li>Brown, Dr., effect of his writings on the people of England, v. 239.</li>
+
+<li>Buch, Captal de, his severe treatment of the Jacquerie in France, iv. 177.</li>
+
+<li>Buildings, too great length in them, prejudicial to grandeur of effect, i. 152.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  should be gloomy to produce an idea of the sublime, i. 158.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Burke, Mr., his sentiments respecting several leading members of the Whig party, iv. 66.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"> <li> and respecting a union of Ireland with Great Britain, iv. 297.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">{410}</a></span></li>
+<li>  respecting acts of indemnity and oblivion as a means of reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.</li>
+<li>  his animadversions on the conduct of Mr. Fox, v. 7.</li>
+<li>  his pathetic allusion to his deceased son, v. 207.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Burnet, Bishop, his statement of the methods which carried men of parts to Popery in France, iii. 430.</li>
+
+<li>Bute, Earl of, his resignation, i. 381.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his successors recommended by him, i. 381.</li>
+<li>  supposed head of the court party called "King's Men," i. 467.</li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>C&aelig;sar, Julius, his policy with respect to the Gauls, vii. 163.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his invasion of Germany, vii. 164.</li>
+<li>  and of Britain, vii. 165.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Calais, lost by the surrender of Boulogne, v. 204.</li>
+
+<li>Calamity, its deliberations rarely wise, iii. 540.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  public calamity often arrested by the seasonable energy of a single man, v. 124.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Caligula undertakes an expedition against Britain, vii. 190.</li>
+
+<li>Calonne, M. de, remarks on his work, "L'&Eacute;tat de la France," iii. 479.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  extract from it, iii. 549.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Campanella, curious story concerning him, i. 212.</li>
+
+<li>Canada Bills, convention for their liquidation, i. 409.</li>
+
+<li>Canterbury, dispute between the suffragan bishops of the province and the monks of the Abbey of St. Austin, vii. 446.</li>
+
+<li>Cantons, French, their origin, nature, and function, iii. 462, 464, 471.</li>
+
+<li>Cantoo Baboo, Mr. Hastings's banian, x. 19.</li>
+
+<li>Canute, his character and conduct, vii. 276.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  remarks on his code of laws, vii. 483.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Capital, monopoly of, not an evil, v. 151.</li>
+
+<li>Care, appearance of, highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence, i. 154.</li>
+
+<li>Carnatic, the extent, nature, and condition of the country, ii. 492; iii. 65.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  dreadful devastation of it by Hyder Ali Kh&acirc;n, iii. 62.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Caste, consequences of losing it in India, x. 89.</li>
+
+<li>Castile, different from Catalonia and Aragon, iv. 340.</li>
+
+<li>Castles, great numbers of them built in the reign of Stephen, vii. 389.</li>
+
+<li>Casuistry, origin and requisites of, iv. 168.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  danger of pursuing it too far, iv. 168.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Catholics, Letter to an Irish Peer on the Penal Laws against, iv. 217.</li>
+
+<li>Celsus, his opinion that internal remedies were not of early use proved to be erroneous, vii. 184.</li>
+
+<li>Cerealis, extract from his fine speech to the Gauls, iv. 272.</li>
+
+<li>Change and reformation, distinction between, v. 186.</li>
+
+<li>Characters of others, principles which interest us in them, vii. 148.</li>
+
+<li>Charity, observations on, v. 146.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  not to be interfered with by the magistrate, v. 146.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Charles I. defended himself on the practice of his predecessors, ii. 279.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his ill-judged attempt to establish the rites of the Church of England in Scotland, vii. 8.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Charles II. obliged by the sense of the nation to abandon the Dutch war, ii. 219.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  brief character of him, iv. 37.</li>
+<li>  his government compared with that of Cromwell, iv. 467.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Charles XII. of Sweden, parallel between him and Richard I. of England, vii. 436.</li>
+
+<li>Charters are kept when their purposes are maintained, ii. 565.</li>
+
+<li>Chatham, Lord, his character, ii. 61.</li>
+
+<li>Cheselden, Mr., his story of a boy who was couched for a cataract, i. 226.</li>
+
+<li>Chester, the County Palatine of, admitted to representation in Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII., ii. 150.</li>
+
+<li>Chesterfield, Lord, his conduct (when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland) with respect to the Roman Catholics, iv. 235.</li>
+
+<li>Cheyt Sing, Rajah of Benares, nature of his authority, ii. 479; xi. 240.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  imprisoned by order of Mr. Hastings, xi. 277.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Christendom, the several states of, have all been formed slowly and without any unity of design, v. 373.</li>
+
+<li>Christianity, original introduction of, into Britain, vii. 221.</li>
+
+<li>Church, the, has power to reform her doctrine, discipline, and rites, vii. 7.</li>
+
+<li>Church establishment in England, observations on it, iii. 352.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the provision made for its clergy by the state, iii. 364.</li>
+<li>  education of its clergy contrasted with that of the Roman Catholic clergy, iv. 231.</li>
+<li>  eulogy on it, vi. 401; vii. 36, 56.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Cicero, remarks on his orations against Verres, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_349">349</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Circumstances, importance of them in all political principles, iii. 240; vii. 55.</li>
+
+<li>Citizens, not to be listened to, in matters relating to agriculture, v. 146.</li>
+
+<li>Civil list, debts due on it, request for a supply for discharging them, how made, i. 508.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  plan of economy relative to it, ii. 350.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Civil society, great purpose of, vi. 333.</li>
+
+<li>Civil vicinity, law of, what, v. 322.</li>
+
+<li>Civil wars corrupt the morals of the people, ii. 203.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">{411}</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Clamor, justifiable when it is caused by abuse, vii. 121.</li>
+
+<li>Clarendon, Constitutions of, vii. 403.</li>
+
+<li>Claudius, the Emperor invades Britain, vii. 191.</li>
+
+<li>Clavering, Sir John, eulogy on him, x. 246; xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_348">348</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Clear expression, different from a strong one, i. 260.</li>
+
+<li>Clearness not necessary for affecting the passions, i. 133.</li>
+
+<li>Clergy, convocation of, a part of the constitution, ii. 226.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  observations on the provision made by the state for them, iii. 364, 448.</li>
+<li>  Roman Catholic, in France, character of them before the Revolution, iii. 424.</li>
+<li>  laws of William and Anne respecting the Popish clergy, vi. 317.</li>
+<li>  review of the state of the clergy in England down to the reign of Henry II., vii. 398.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Clive, Lord, sent to India, ix. 438.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his conduct there, ix. 439.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Clootz, Anacharsis, his masquerade embassy to the Constituent Assembly of France, vi. 49.</li>
+
+<li>Coke, Lord, ingenious quotation in his Reports, i. 5.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his observation on discretion in judicature, iv. 292.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Colonies, commercial, mode of levying taxes in them, an important and difficult consideration, i. 354.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  American, import ten times more from Great Britain, than they spend in return, i. 393.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Colonists, the British, in America, character of, i. 395.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  Address to, vi. 183.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Colors, soft and cheerful ones unfit to produce grand images, i. 158.</li>
+
+<li>Comedy, observations on, vii. 150.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  Aristotle's distinction between it and tragedy, vii. 153.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Comines, Philip de, his remarks on the English civil wars, vi. 252.</li>
+
+<li>Commerce and liberty, the two main sources of power to Great Britain, ii. 87.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  great increase of, in America, ii. 112.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Common law, nature of the, vii. 462.</li>
+
+<li>Common Pleas, court of, its origin, vii. 466.</li>
+
+<li>Commons, the House of, observations on its nature and character, i. 491.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  what qualities recommend a man to a seat in it, in popular elections, i. 497.</li>
+<li>  can never control other parts of the government, unless the members themselves are controlled by their constituents, i. 503.</li>
+<li>  ought to be connected with and dependent on the people, i. 508.</li>
+<li>  has a collective character, distinct from that of its members, ii. 66.</li>
+<li>  duty of the members to their constituents, ii. 95.</li>
+<li>  general observations on its privileges and duties, ii. 544.</li>
+<li>  the collective sense of the people to be received from it, ii. 545.</li>
+<li>  its powers and capacities, ii. 552.</li>
+<li>  cannot renounce its share of authority, iii. 258.</li>
+<li>  its composition, iii. 289.</li>
+<li>  the most powerful and most corruptible part of the constitution, vii. 62.</li>
+<li>  a superintendence over the doctrines and proceedings of the courts of justice, one of its principal objects, vii. 107.</li>
+<li>  concise view of its proceedings on the East India question, ii. 559.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Commonwealths, not subject to laws analogous to those of physical life, v. 124, 234.</li>
+
+<li>Communes, in France, their origin, nature, and function, iii. 462, 464, 472.</li>
+
+<li>Compurgators, in Saxon law, what, vii. 318.</li>
+
+<li>Condorcet, brief character of him, iv. 356, 372.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  extract from a publication of his, iv. 356.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Confidence, unsuspecting, in government, importance of it, ii. 234.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  of mankind, how to be secured, v. 414.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Connections, party, political, observations on them, i. 527, 530.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  commended by patriots in the commonwealths of antiquity, i. 527.</li>
+<li>  the Whig connection in Queen Anne's reign, i. 529.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Conquest cannot give a right to arbitrary power, ix. 456.</li>
+
+<li>Conscience, a tender one ought to be tenderly handled, vii. 54.</li>
+
+<li>Constantine the Great, changes made by him in the internal policy of the Roman Empire, vii. 220.</li>
+
+<li>Constantinople, anecdote of the visit of an English country squire to, v. 387.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  anecdote of the Greeks at the taking of, vi. 96.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Constituents, in England, more in the spirit of the constitution to lessen than to enlarge their number, i. 370.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  their duty to their representatives, ii. 370.</li>
+<li>  compulsive instruction from them first rejected by Mr. Burke, iv. 95.</li>
+<li>  points in which they are incompetent to instruct their representatives, vii. 74, 75.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Constitution, a, cannot defend itself, vi. 100.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  consequences of disgracing the frame and constitution of the state, vii. 103.</li>
+<li>  the English, a change in it, an immense and difficult operation, i. 371, 520.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">{412}</a></span></li>
+<li>  English, changes in it to be attempted only in times of general confusion, i. 371.</li>
+<li>  eulogy on it, iii. 561; v. 210; vii. 100.</li>
+<li>  the whole scheme of it to prevent any one of its principles from being carried to an extreme, iv. 207.</li>
+<li>  not struck out at a heat, iv. 209.</li>
+<li>  commendation of it by Montesquieu, iv. 212.</li>
+<li>  the only means of its subversion, what, v. 49, 52.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Constitutional Society, The, its nature and design, iii. 236.</li>
+
+<li>Conti, Prince de, his character and conduct, iv. 436.</li>
+
+<li>Contract, an implied, one, always, between the laborer and his employer, v. 137.</li>
+
+<li>Contracting parties, not necessary that they should have different interests, v. 139.</li>
+
+<li>Control and exercise of authority together contradictory, iv. 164.</li>
+
+<li>Convocation of the clergy, though a part of the constitution, now called for form only, ii. 226.</li>
+
+<li>Conway, General, moves the repeal of the American Stamp Act, ii. 52.</li>
+
+<li>Cornwallis, Lord, (Baron,) proceedings in his trial, xi. 30.</li>
+
+<li>Cornwallis, Lord, (Marquis,) his evidence at the trial of Warren Hastings, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_359">359</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Coronation oath, its obligations with respect to Roman Catholics, iv. 259.</li>
+
+<li>Corporate bodies, their usefulness as instruments, iii. 441.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  more under the direction of the state than private citizens, iii. 447.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Corruption, of nature and example, what the only security against, ii. 238.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  in pecuniary matters, the suspicion of it how to be avoided, iii. 95.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Cossim, Ali Kh&acirc;n, his character and conduct, ix. 405.</li>
+
+<li>Country, lore of, remarks on, xi. 422.</li>
+
+<li>Credit and power incompatible, i. 368.</li>
+
+<li>Crimes, the acts of individuals, not of denominations, ii. 418.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  according to the criminal law, what, vi. 340.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Cromwell, brief character of him, iii. 294.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his principle in the appointment of judges, iv. 13.</li>
+<li>  his conduct in government, iv. 37.</li>
+<li>  his government compared with that of Charles II., iv. 467.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Cross, the effect of it not so grand in architecture as that of the parallelogram, i. 150.</li>
+
+<li>Crown, the influence of it, what, i. 444.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  inheritable nature of it, iii. 258.</li>
+<li>  this principle maintained at the Revolution, iii. 254.</li>
+<li>  the only legitimate channel of communication with other nations, v. 10.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Crusade, origin and progress of the, vii. 369.</li>
+
+<li>Curfew, origin and policy of the, vii. 354.</li>
+
+<li>Curiosity, the first and simplest emotion of the human mind, i. 101.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  general observations on it, i. 101.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Custom, considered in relation to deformity and beauty, i. 179.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  not the cause of pleasure, i. 180.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Cyprus, account of the conquest of it by Richard I., vii. 428.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Danger and pain, the idea of them a source of the sublime, i. 110, 130.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  with certain modifications, delightful, i. 111.</li>
+<li>  the danger of anything very dear to us removes for the time all other affections from the mind, iv. 95.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Darkness more productive of sublime ideas than light, i. 156.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  necessary to the highest degree of the sublime in building, i. 158.</li>
+<li>  Locke's opinion concerning, i. 225.</li>
+<li>  terrible in its own nature, i. 226.</li>
+<li>  why, i. 227.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Davies, Sir John, his statement of the benefits of the extension of English constitutional law to Ireland, ii. 147; iv. 273.</li>
+
+<li>Day, not so sublime as night, i. 158.</li>
+
+<li>Debi Sing, his character and conduct, x. 69.</li>
+
+<li>Debt, the interest of, not the principal, that which distresses a nation, i. 329.</li>
+
+<li>Debts, civil, faults of the law with regard to, ii. 384.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  public, excessive, their tendency to subvert government, iii. 437.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Deceivers and cheats never can repent, iv. 9.</li>
+
+<li>Declaration of Right, contains the principles of the Revolution of 1688, iii. 252.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  drawn by Lord Somers, iii. 254.</li>
+<li>  proceeds upon the principle of reference to antiquity, iii. 273.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Defensive measures, though vigorous at first, relax by degrees, iv. 355.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  necessary considerations with regard to them, vi. 100.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Definitions, frequently fallacious, i. 81.</li>
+
+<li>Deformity not opposed to beauty, but to the complete common form, i. 178.</li>
+
+<li>Deity, power the most striking of his attributes, i. 143.</li>
+
+<li>Delamere, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 31.</li>
+
+<li>Delight, what, i. 107.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  distinguished from pleasure, i. 108.</li>
+<li>  the misfortunes of others sometimes a source of, i. 118.</li>
+<li>  the attendant of every passion which animates us to any active purpose, i. 119.</li>
+<li>  how pain can be a cause of, i. 215.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">{413}</a></span></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Democracy, no example in modern times of a considerable one, iii. 396.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  an absolute one, not to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government, iii. 396.</li>
+<li>  Aristotle's observation on the resemblance between a democracy and a tyranny; iii. 397.</li>
+<li>  the vice of the ancient democracies, what, iii. 508.</li>
+<li>  the foodful nurse of ambition, iv. 104.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Departments in France, their origin, nature, and function, iii. 461, 465.</li>
+
+<li>Depth thought to have a grander effect than height, i. 147.</li>
+
+<li>Description, verbal, a means of raising a stronger emotion than painting, i. 133.</li>
+
+<li>Desirable things always practicable, ii. 357.</li>
+
+<li>Despotism, nature of, i. 446; ix. 458.</li>
+
+<li>D'Espr&eacute;m&eacute;nil, the illustrious French magistrate, murdered by the Revolutionists, vi. 40.</li>
+
+<li>Dialogue, advantages and disadvantages of it as a mode of argumentation, vi. 9.</li>
+
+<li>Difference in taste, commonly so called, whence, i. 89.</li>
+
+<li>Difficulty, a source of greatness in idea, i. 153.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  its disciplinary uses, iii. 453.</li>
+<li>  political difficulties, ill consequences of attempting to elude them, iii. 454.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Dignity, national, no standard for rating the conditions of peace, v. 257.</li>
+
+<li>Dimension, greatness of, a powerful cause of the sublime, i. 147.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  necessary to the sublime in building, i. 152.</li>
+<li>  but incompatible with beauty, i. 242.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Dinagepore, Rajah of, account of him, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_318">318</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Diogenes, anecdote of him, iv. 61.</li>
+
+<li>Directory, the, by whom settled, vii. 13.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  rejected at the Restoration, vii. 13.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Disappointment, what, i. 108.</li>
+
+<li>Discontents, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present, i. 433.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  produced by a system of favoritism, i. 469.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Discretion, Lord Coke's remark on, iv. 292.</li>
+
+<li>Discretionary powers of the monarch, should be exercised upon public principles, i. 469.</li>
+
+<li>Discrimination, a coarse, the greatest enemy to accuracy of judgment, v. 143.</li>
+
+<li>Dissenters, observations on the Test Act, in reference to them, iv. 264.</li>
+
+<li>Distress, great, never teaches wise lessons to mankind, iv. 10.</li>
+
+<li>Distrust, advantages of, iv. 443.</li>
+
+<li>Disunion in government, mischief of, i. 425.</li>
+
+<li>Divorce, observations on, v. 313.</li>
+
+<li>Domesday Book, origin, and nature of it, vii. 354.</li>
+
+<li>Double cabinet, project of a, in the English court, i. 447.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  nature and design of it, i. 454.</li>
+<li>  mischievous influence of it, i. 478.</li>
+<li>  how recommended at court, i. 485.</li>
+<li>  its operation upon Parliament, i. 490.</li>
+<li>  singular doctrine propagated by it, i. 525.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Drama, Hints for an Essay on the, vii. 143.</li>
+
+<li>Dramatic writing, difficulty of, vii. 145.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  origin of, vii. 149.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Druids, some account of their origin, character, and functions, vii. 176.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the opinion that their religion was founded on the unity of the Godhead, confuted, vii. 185.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Dryden, his translation of a passage in Virgil, v. 391.</li>
+
+<li>Du Bos, his theory of the greater effect of painting than of poetry on the passions, controverted, i. 134.</li>
+
+<li>Dunkirk, demolition of, i. 412.</li>
+
+<li>Dunning, Mr., brief character of, ii. 398.</li>
+
+<li>Du Pin, M. de la Tour, his account of the state of the army in France, iii. 512.</li>
+
+<li>Durham, County Palatine of, admitted to representation in Parliament, in the reign of Charles II., ii. 152.</li>
+
+<li>Duty, effectual execution of it, how to be secured, ii. 353.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  determined by situation, ii. 465; iv. 167.</li>
+<li>  people do not like to be told of it, iv. 163.</li>
+<li>  not dependent on the will, iv. 165.</li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Easter, whence the name derived, vii. 237.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  disputes about the time of celebrating it promote the study of astronomy and chronology, vii. 252.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>East India Company, origin of the, ix. 348.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  system of its service, ix. 350.</li>
+<li>  a fundamental part of its constitution, that its government shall be a written one, ix. 369.</li>
+<li>  two sources of its power, ix. 345.</li>
+<li>  its negotiations with government, i. 362.</li>
+<li>  observations on its charter, ii. 438.</li>
+<li>  extent and population of its possessions, ii. 443, 444.</li>
+<li>  observations on its conduct, ii. 446.</li>
+<li>  its treatment of the nations indirectly subject to its authority, ii. 466.</li>
+<li>  its administration in the countries immediately under its government, ii. 497.</li>
+<li>  concise view of the proceedings of the House of Commons relative to it, ii. 559.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>East Indies, origin of the extensive British possessions there, ii. 560.</li>
+
+<li>Ecclesiastical investiture, origin and nature of, vii. 382.</li>
+
+<li>Economy and war not easily reconciled, i. 310.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">{414}</a></span></li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  admirable system of, in France, under Necker, ii. 273.</li>
+<li>  difficulty of attempting a plan of public economy, ii. 268.</li>
+<li>  rules for a proper plan of, ii. 286.</li>
+<li>  things prescribed by the principles of radical economy, ii. 310.</li>
+<li>  distinction between economy and parsimony, v. 195.</li>
+<li>  political economy, had its origin in England, v. 192.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Education, effect of it on the colonists in America, ii. 124.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  description of a good one, iv. 24; xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_280">280</a>.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Edward the Confessor, his character and conduct, vii. 278.</li>
+
+<li>Election, popular, of magistrates, importance of it to a state, i. 472.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  right of, what, i. 505.</li>
+<li>  mischief of frequent elections, i. 517; vii. 75.</li>
+<li>  the expense of them an important consideration, vii. 78.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Elizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., murdered by the French regicides, vi. 41.</li>
+
+<li>Emphyteusis of the Romans, nature of it, vi. 354.</li>
+
+<li>Empires do not fall by their own weight, vi. 27.</li>
+
+<li>England, nature of its monarchy, ii. 288.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  eulogy on its constitution, v. 210;</li>
+<li>  natural representation of its people, what it is, v. 284.</li>
+<li>  its constant policy with regard to France, iv. 397.</li>
+<li>  always necessarily the soul and head of any confederacy against France, iv. 397; v. 245.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>English History, An Abridgment of the, vii. 157.</li>
+
+<li>Enmity, when avowed, is always felt, vi. 57.</li>
+
+<li>Enthusiasm, excited by other causes besides religion, v. 361.</li>
+
+<li>Eostre, the name of a Saxon goddess,&mdash;whence the term Easter, vii. 237.</li>
+
+<li>Epicureans, the, why tolerated in their atheism by the supporters of the ancient heathen religions, vii. 31.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  their physics the most rational of the ancient systems, vii. 251.</li>
+<li>  why discredited, vii. 251.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Equity, criminal, a monster in jurisprudence, i. 500.</li>
+
+<li>Established Church, the, should be powerful, but comprehensive and tolerant, vii. 36.</li>
+
+<li>Established religion of a state, has often torn to pieces the civil establishment, vi. 357.</li>
+
+<li>Establishment, legal, ground of a legislative alteration of it, vii. 10.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  ground of the constitutional provision for the exclusive application of tithes to its support, vii. 12.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Etiquette, its signification and uses, v. 434.</li>
+
+<li>Europe, general division of, before the universal prevalence of the Roman power, vii. 159.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the original inhabitants of Greece and Italy of the same race with the people of Northern Europe, vii. 161.</li>
+<li>  view of the state of Europe at the time of the Norman invasion, vii. 327.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Evidence, circumstantial, remarks on it, xi. 93.</li>
+
+<li>Example, of men of principle, never without use, i. 426.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the only argument of effect in civil life, i. 499.</li>
+<li>  what the only security against a corrupt one, ii. 238.</li>
+<li>  the school of mankind, v. 331.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Executions of criminals, observations on them, vi. 245.</li>
+
+<li>Exercise necessary to the finer organs, i. 216.</li>
+
+<li>Expression, difference between a clear and a strong one, i. 260.</li>
+
+<li>Eye, the, in what its beauty consists, i. 198.</li>
+
+<li>Eyre, Sir Robert, (Solicitor-General,) extracts from his speech at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 138.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Factions, formed upon and generate opinions, vii. 44.</li>
+
+<li>Fame, a passion for it, the instinct of all great souls, ii. 65.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the separation of it from virtue, a harsh divorce, ii. 243.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Fanaticism, epidemical, formidable nature of it, iii. 435.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  may be caused by a theory concerning government as much as by a dogma in religion, iv. 192.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Farmer, dangerous to try experiments on him, v. 147.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  amount of his usual profits, what, v. 148.</li>
+<li>  difficulties of his business, v. 152.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Favoritism, a system of, in the executory government of England, at variance with the plan of the legislature, i. 469.</li>
+
+<li>Fear, cause of it, i. 210.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  early and provident fear the mother of safety, vii. 50.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Feeling, the beautiful in, i. 201.</li>
+
+<li>Female sex, the moral sensibility more acute in them then in men, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_164">164</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Finances, three standards to judge of the condition of a nation with regard to them, i. 330.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  importance of them to a state, iii. 534.</li>
+<li>  admirable management of the French finances under Necker, ii. 273.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Financier, duty of a judicious one in respect to his calculations, i. 348.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his objects, what, iii. 538, 558.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">{415}</a></span></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Fire, a chief object of worship to the Druids, why, vii. 182.</li>
+
+<li>Firmness, a virtue only when it accompanies the most perfect wisdom, i. 440.</li>
+
+<li>Fitness, not the cause of beauty, i. 181.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the real effects of it, i. 184.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Flattery, why so prevalent, i. 124.</li>
+
+<li>Florence, republic of, its origin, vii. 331.</li>
+
+<li>Force, not impaired, either in effect or opinion, by an unwillingness to exert itself, ii. 108.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  objections to its employment against the American colonies, ii. 118.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Forest lands, plan of economical reform concerning them, ii. 300.</li>
+
+<li>Foster, Justice, extracts from his Crown Cases and Discourses on the Crown Law, xi. 28, 123.</li>
+
+<li>Fox, (C.J.) panegyrics on him, ii. 533; iii. 219.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  reluctant dissent from his opinion concerning the assumption of citizenship by the French army, iii. 218.</li>
+<li>  animadversions on his commendation of the French Revolution, iv. 77; v. 7.</li>
+<li>  policy of a treaty with France maintained by him, v. 26.</li>
+<li>  his conduct contrasted with that of Mr. Pitt, v. 60.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>France, from its vicinity, always an object of English vigilance with regard to its power or example, iii. 216.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with respect to, iv. 403.</li>
+<li>  the liberties of Europe dependent on its being a great and preponderating power, iv. 455.</li>
+<li>  character of its government before the Revolution, as shown by a review of the condition of the kingdom, iii. 400.</li>
+<li>  its exterior splendor just before the Revolution, v. 236.</li>
+<li>  state of things there during the Revolution, iv. 70.</li>
+<li>  barbarous treatment of the king and queen at the outbreak of the Revolution, iii. 325.</li>
+<li>  eloquent description of the queen as Dauphiness, and of the revolution in her fortunes, iii. 331.</li>
+<li>  observations on her execution, vi. 40.</li>
+<li>  degraded office to which the king was appointed by the Revolutionists, iii. 496; iv. 20.</li>
+<li>  with his own hand pulled down the pillars of his throne, iv. 362.</li>
+<li>  character of the king's brothers, iv. 429.</li>
+<li>  character of the aristocracy before the Revolution, iii. 412; vi. 39.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Franchise and office, difference between them, iv. 252.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  effect of separating property from franchise, iv. 256.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Franklin, Dr., conjectures on his visit to Paris, vi. 152.</li>
+
+<li>Freedom, the great contests for it in England chiefly on the question of taxation, ii. 120.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  but in the ancient commonwealths chiefly on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance among the several orders of the state, ii. 120.</li>
+<li>  character of civil freedom, ii. 229.</li>
+<li>  our best securities for it obtained from princes who were either war-like or prodigal, vi. 35.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>French Affairs, Thoughts on, iv. 313.</li>
+
+<li>French Directory, the character of its members, v. 448.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  their conduct towards the foreign ministers, vi. 48.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>French emigrants, capable of being serviceable in restoring order to France, iv. 427.</li>
+
+<li>French literary cabal, their plan for the destruction of Christianity, iii. 378.</li>
+
+<li>French moneyed interest, at variance with the landed interest, iii. 376.</li>
+
+<li>French Revolution, characterized as one of doctrine and theoretic dogma, iv. 319.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  its fundamental principle, iv. 322.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Frenchmen naturally more intense in their application than Englishmen, iv. 54.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  mischievous consequences of this, iv. 55.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Friends of the Liberty of the Press, a club formed under the auspices of Mr. Fox, v. 20.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  origin and character of it, v. 20.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Friends of the People, origin, composition, and proceedings of the club so called, v. 12.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  a libellous petition of theirs, v. 47.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Frugality, founded on the principle that all riches have limits, ii. 308.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Gaming, a principle inherent in human nature, ii. 293.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  a general spirit of it encouraged by the Revolutionists in France, iii. 488.</li>
+<li>  they who are under its influence treat their fortunes lightly, iv. 204.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Garrick, David, anecdote of him, vi. 47.</li>
+
+<li>Gauls, their early incursions into Greece and Italy, vii. 161.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  reduced at last by the Romans under C&aelig;sar, vii. 162.</li>
+<li>  policy of C&aelig;sar with regard to them, vii. 163.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Geneva, possible benefits to it from state granaries, v. 155.</li>
+
+<li>Genghis Kh&acirc;n, observations on his code, xi. 212.</li>
+
+<li>Genoa, republic of, its origin, vii. 831.</li>
+
+<li>Gentoo law, the primeval law of India, xi. 207.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">{416}</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Gentoos, the original inhabitants of Hindostan, ix. 377.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  distribution of the people into orders or castes, ix. 380.</li>
+<li>  origin and character of their laws, ix. 482.</li>
+<li>  extracts from Halhed's translation of them, xi. 209.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>George II., character of his reign, i. 456.</li>
+
+<li>George III., advantages under which he came to the throne, i. 450.</li>
+
+<li>Germanic Custumary, the source of the polity of every country in Europe, v. 319.</li>
+
+<li>Germans, of Scythian original, vii. 322.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  brief account of their manners and institutions, vii. 291.</li>
+<li>  in certain of their institutions the outlines of the constitution of England delineated, vii. 293.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Germany, how likely to be affected by the Revolution in France, iv. 328.</li>
+
+<li>Gibraltar, the object of England in retaining it, iv. 383.</li>
+
+<li>Glastonbury Abbey, its extraordinary wealth and splendor, vii. 245.</li>
+
+<li>Go-betweens, the world governed by, iv. 189.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  their mode of influence, iv. 190.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Good fame of every man, ought to be protected by the laws, vii. 112.</li>
+
+<li>Gothic Custumary, the source of the polity of every country in Europe, v. 319.</li>
+
+<li>Government, the forms of a free one not altogether incompatible with the ends of an arbitrary one, i. 444.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  project of government devised in the court of Frederick, Prince of Wales, i. 447.</li>
+<li>  considered, i. 450.</li>
+<li>  nature and design of it, i. 460.</li>
+<li>  name of it, i. 466.</li>
+<li>  important ends of a mixed government, i. 469.</li>
+<li>  folly of hazarding plans of government except from a seat of authority, ii. 104.</li>
+<li>  government a practical thing, ii. 227; iii. 310.</li>
+<li>  character of a free one, ii. 227.</li>
+<li>  an eminent criterion of a wise one, what, ii. 278.</li>
+<li>  reform in it should be early and temperate, ii. 280.</li>
+<li>  without means of some change, is without the means of its conservation, iii. 259.</li>
+<li>  difficulty of forming a free one, iii. 560.</li>
+<li>  the particular form of it to be determined by the circumstances and habits of a country, iv. 109.</li>
+<li>  a theory concerning it may be as much a cause of fanaticism as a dogma in religion, iv. 192.</li>
+<li>  the establishment of one a difficult undertaking for foreign powers to act in as principals, iv. 410.</li>
+<li>  not subject to laws analogous to those or physical life, v. 124, 234.</li>
+<li>  restraint the great purpose of, v. 133, 189.</li>
+<li>  policy of, in times of scarcity, v. 156.</li>
+<li>  important problem concerning, v. 166.</li>
+<li>  perishes only through its own weakness, v. 169.</li>
+<li>  impossible where property does not rule, v. 377.</li>
+<li>  the great objects of, v. 466; vii. 72.</li>
+<li>  its duty and right to attend much to opinions, vii. 44.</li>
+<li>  stands on opinion, vii. 91.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Grace, acts of, impolicy of them, ii. 386.</li>
+
+<li>Gracefulness, an idea belonging to posture and motion, i. 200.</li>
+
+<li>Granaries, public, danger in erecting them, v. 153.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  fit only for a state too small for agriculture, v. 155.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Grand Seignior, the, not an arbitrary monarch, ix. 464.</li>
+
+<li>Great personages, wisely provided that we should interest ourselves in their fate, xi. 308.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  everywhere made the objects of tragedy, xi. 308.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Greece, its original inhabitants of the same race as the people of Northern Europe, vii. 161.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  situation of it from a remote period, vii. 161.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Greek Church, character of its secular clergy, iv. 230.</li>
+
+<li>Green Cloth, Court of, its origin and composition, ii. 304.</li>
+
+<li>Grenville, Mr., character of him, ii. 37.</li>
+
+<li>Grenville, Lord, eulogy of him, v. 174.</li>
+
+<li>Grief, cause of, i. 108.</li>
+
+<li>Guienne, William, Duke of, engages in the Crusade, vii. 374.</li>
+
+<li>Guilt, gigantic, overpowers our ideas of justice, iv. 466.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  expedients for concealing it, frequently the cause of its detection, x. 49.</li>
+<li>  is never wise, x. 49; xi. 261.</li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Habeas Corpus, remarks upon the suspension of it in respect to Americans, ii. 190.</li>
+
+<li>Habit and use, not causes of pleasure, i. 180.</li>
+
+<li>Hale, Sir Matthew, Cromwell's declaration to him when he appointed him judge, iv. 13.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  defect in his History of the Common Law, vii. 476.</li>
+<li>  causes of it, vii. 476.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Halhed's translation of the Gentoo code, remarks on it, xi. 207.</li>
+
+<li>Hallmote, or Court Baron, what, vii. 301.</li>
+
+<li>Hannay, Colonel, his character and conduct, xi. 418.</li>
+
+<li>Happiness, civil, what, x. 135.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">{417}</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Hardwicke, Lord, his declaration as to the general rule of evidence, xi. 77.</li>
+
+<li>Harrington, his opinion as to a commonwealth not governed by its property, v. 377.</li>
+
+<li>Hastings, Mr., articles of charge against him presented to the House of Commons, 1786, viii. 305-ix. 318.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  appendix to the eighth and sixteenth charges, ix. 319.</li>
+<li>  speeches of Mr. Burke in his impeachment, ix. 327-x. 451; xi. 155-xii. 398.</li>
+<li>  Report from the Committee appointed to inspect the Lords' Journals, in relation to their proceedings on his trial, xi. 1.</li>
+<li>  his conduct in the treaty with the Mahrattas, ii. 454.</li>
+<li>  brief account of his treatment of the Nabob of Oude, ii. 467.</li>
+<li>  of the Begums of Oude, ii. 476.</li>
+<li>  of the Ranny of Benares, ii. 485.</li>
+<li>  his venal agreement for the extirpation of the Rohillas, viii. 308.</li>
+<li>  his fraudulent sale of the territories of the Mogul, viii. 322.</li>
+<li>  his designs against the Rajah of Benares, viii. 339.</li>
+<li>  orders the arrest of the Rajah, viii. 361.</li>
+<li>  instigates the plunder of his family by the soldiery, viii. 368.</li>
+<li>  usurps the government of Benares, viii. 380.</li>
+<li>  his oppressive impositions and exactions, viii. 381.</li>
+<li>  enforces the confiscation of the landed estates of the Begums of Oude, viii. 403.</li>
+<li>  orders the seizure of their treasures, viii. 409.</li>
+<li>  severities practised upon their ministers in the execution of those orders, viii. 414.</li>
+<li>  endeavors to stifle an inquiry into his proceedings, viii. 448.</li>
+<li>  corruptly abandons the Nabob of Furruckabad and his country to the oppressions of the Nabob of Oude, viii. 472.</li>
+<li>  causes the destruction of the Rajah of Sahlone, viii. 486.</li>
+<li>  sets at defiance the orders of the Company with respect to contracts, ix. 4.</li>
+<li>  and with respect to salaries, ix. 11.</li>
+<li>  his illegal and extravagant allowances to Sir Eyre Coote, ix. 12.</li>
+<li>  and to Brigadier-General Stibbert, ix. 13.</li>
+<li>  and to Sir John Day, ix. 15.</li>
+<li>  and for the civil establishment of Fort William, ix. 17.</li>
+<li>  his appointment of the Secretary of the Council as agent for the supply of rice, with enormous commissions, ix. 19.</li>
+<li>  his corrupt receipt of presents in numerous instances, ix. 23.</li>
+<li>  tender and subsequent disavowal of his resignation, and refusal to vacate office, ix. 42.</li>
+<li>  his illegal contract with the Surgeon-General, ix. 60.</li>
+<li>  his contracts for Poolbundy repairs, ix. 60.</li>
+<li>  his opium contracts, ix. 63.</li>
+<li>  his appointment of R.J. Sulivan to office, ix. 70.</li>
+<li>  his conduct with regard to the Ranna of Gohud, ix. 72.</li>
+<li>  his frequent, violent, and unauthorized changes in the revenue and judicial systems of Bengal, ix. 79, 87.</li>
+<li>  permits his own banian to hold farms to a large amount in different districts, in violation of his own regulations, ix. 83.</li>
+<li>  refuses relief to the distresses of the Nabob of Oude, ix. 98.</li>
+<li>  seeks to enforce unjust demands against the Nabob, ix. 98.</li>
+<li>  illegally assumes the delegation of the whole functions of the Council, for the purpose of making a treaty with the Nabob, ix. 104.</li>
+<li>  in contravention of treaty stipulations, burdens the Nabob with the continued maintenance of British troops, ix. 109, 112.</li>
+<li>  makes unjustifiable demands on, and receives unlawful presents from the Nabob, ix. 110, 114.</li>
+<li>  on his own simple allegation of indefinite offences, urges the Nabob to put to death Almas Ali Kh&acirc;n, ix. 154.</li>
+<li>  establishes a system of disreputable and ruinous interference in the government of the Nabob, ix. 162.</li>
+<li>  attempts to abandon the British army to the sole discretion of the Nabob, ix. 168.</li>
+<li>  arrests and continues in long imprisonment Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n, without any proofs of guilt, ix. 185.</li>
+<li>  appoints Munny Begum to be guardian to the Nabob of Bengal, and administratrix of the government, ix. 187.</li>
+<li>  seeks the aggrandizement of the Mahrattas, ix. 220, 228.</li>
+<li>  the Mogul delivered up to them through his instrumentality, ix. 221.</li>
+<li>  he libels and asperses the Court of Directors, ix. 228.</li>
+<li>  forces the Mahrattas into a war, by repeatedly invading their country, ix. 253.</li>
+<li>  concludes a dishonorable treaty of peace and alliance with them, ix. 254.</li>
+<li>  withholds and conceals his official correspondence and proceedings from the Directors and Council, ix. 267.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">{418}</a></span></li>
+<li>  his conduct with regard to Fyzoola Kh&acirc;n, ix. 268.</li>
+<li>  his arbitrary principles of government, ix. 446; xi. 194.</li>
+<li>  his corrupt system of government, x. 5.</li>
+<li>  general farming of the lands at auction, in derogation of the rights of proprietors, x. 15.</li>
+<li>  sale of offices, x. 21.</li>
+<li>  conduct in reference to the accusations of Nundcomar, x. 24, 205.</li>
+<li>  in the case of Munny Begum and the Nabob of Bengal, x. 26, 193, 278; xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</li>
+<li>  the receipt of bribes justified by an intention to apply them to the Company's service, x. 43, 324.</li>
+<li>  account given of some of these transactions to the Directors, x. 44, 338.</li>
+<li>  delegation of the management of the revenues to a nominal council, with Gunga Govind Sing as agent, x. 53.</li>
+<li>  appointment of Debi Sing to the charge of the province of Dinagepore, x. 65.</li>
+<li>  the enormities of this man, mock inquiries into them, and Mr. Hastings's responsibility in the premises, x. 77, 92, 186.</li>
+<li>  Mr. Hastings's measures justified by himself, as producing an increase of revenue, x. 136.</li>
+<li>  remarks on the testimonials of the natives in his favor, x. 154; xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_358">358</a>.</li>
+<li>  proofs of personal corruption, x. 161-295.</li>
+<li>  charged with peculation by General Clavering, x. 244.</li>
+<li>  opinions of counsel concerning his proposed prosecution by the Directors, x. 257.</li>
+<li>  his connivance in the general corruption of the Service, x. 296; xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li>
+<li>  recriminatory charges against the House of Commons, xi. 166.</li>
+<li>  powers claimed by him, and the manner and results of their exercise, xi. 195, 236, 238.</li>
+<li>  in the case of Cheyt Sing and the province of Benares, xi. 236.</li>
+<li>  of the Nabob of Oude, his kindred and country, xi. 372; xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_3">3</a>.</li>
+<li>  of the province of Bengal, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</li>
+<li>  his extravagant and corrupt contracts, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_297">297</a>.</li>
+<li>  his conduct in reference to various presents, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>.</li>
+<li>  observations on the Mahometan college founded by him, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_352">352</a>.</li>
+<li>  Lord Cornwallis's testimony to the disastrous effects of his revenue system, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_359">359</a>.</li>
+<li>  examination of the merits set up by him, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_370">370</a>.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Hawles, Sir John, extracts from his speech at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 126, 135.</li>
+
+<li>Height, less grand than depth, i. 147.</li>
+
+<li>Helvetii, remarkable emigration of them related by C&aelig;sar, vii. 172.</li>
+
+<li>Henry I. of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 375.</li>
+
+<li>Henry II. of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 394.</li>
+
+<li>Henry IV. of England, severs the Duchy and County Palatine of Lancaster from the crown, ii. 296.</li>
+
+<li>Henry IV. of France, brief character of him, iii. 411.</li>
+
+<li>Hii, or Columbkill, brief account of it, vii. 249.</li>
+
+<li>Hindoo institutions, characteristics of, ix. 382.</li>
+
+<li>Hindoo polity, destroyed by Mr. Hastings, ix. 394.</li>
+
+<li>Hindostan, eras in its history, ix. 386.</li>
+
+<li>History, moral lessons to be drawn from it, iii. 418, 421.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  caution with regard to the study of it, iv. 468.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Hobbes, his view of war as the state of Nature, i. 15.</li>
+
+<li>Holland, Sir John, extracts from his speech at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 146.</li>
+
+<li>Holy Land, view of its condition at the commencement of the third Crusade, vii. 426.</li>
+
+<li>Homer, his similitudes seldom exact, i. 88.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  a simile from the Iliad, i. 105.</li>
+<li>  his representation of Discord, obscure and magnificent, i. 138.</li>
+<li>  no instance in the Iliad of the fall of any man remarkable for stature and strength that touches us with pity, i. 243.</li>
+<li>  has given to the Trojans more of the amiable and social virtues than to the Greeks, i. 243.</li>
+<li>  would excite pity for the Trojans, admiration for the Greeks, i. 243.</li>
+<li>  his masterly representation of the grief of Priam over the body of Hector, iv. 95.</li>
+<li>  observation on his representation of the ghosts of heroes at the sacrifices of Ulysses, vii. 181.</li>
+<li>  his works introduced into England by Theodorus, Archbishop of Canterbury, vii. 249.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Honest men, no safety for them but by believing all possible evil of evil men, iv. 7.</li>
+
+<li>Horace, the truth of an observation in his Art of Poetry, discussed, i. 134.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  a passage from him of similar import to one from David, i. 143.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Household, the royal, has strong traces of feudality, ii. 303.</li>
+
+<li>Howard, the philanthropist, his labors, ii. 387.</li>
+
+<li>Hudibras, humorous lines from, applicable to the modern Whigs, iv. 150.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">{419}</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Hume, Mr., his account of the secret of Rousseau's principles of composition, iii. 459.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his remark on the doctrines of John Ball, iv. 355.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Humility, the basis of the Christian system, iv. 26.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  humanity cannot be degraded by it, v. 253.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Husbandry, classification of laborers in, v. 144.</li>
+
+<li>Hyder Ali Kh&acirc;n, scheme of the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot to extirpate him, iii. 61.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  dreadful devastation of the Carnatic by him, iii. 83.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Hyp&aelig;thra of the Greeks, what, vii. 187.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Imagination, what, i. 86.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  no bounds to men's passions when they are under its influence, iv. 192.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Imitation, one of the passions belonging to society, i. 122.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  its source and use, i. 122.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Impeachment, the great guardian of the purity of the constitution, i. 495.</li>
+
+<li>Impey, Sir Elijah, (Chief Justice of Bengal,) accused of the official murder of Nundcomar, x. 218.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  resolution of the House of Commons concerning this accusation, x. 311.</li>
+<li>  serves as bearer of Mr. Hastings's order to seize the treasures of the Begums of Oude, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li>
+<li>  acts as commissioner to seek affidavits against the Begums, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Indecision, the natural accomplice of violence, iv. 190.</li>
+
+<li>Indemnification, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.</li>
+
+<li>Indemnity and oblivion, acts of, their probable effects as means of reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.</li>
+
+<li>Independence of mind, always more or less influenced by independence of fortune, vii. 78.</li>
+
+<li>India, the people of, classification of them, ix. 376; xi. 207.</li>
+
+<li>Indians, British alliances with them in the American war denounced, vi. 171.</li>
+
+<li>Indifference, pleasure, and pain, viewed in relation to each other, as states of the mind, i. 103.</li>
+
+<li>Indolence, the prevailing characteristic of the class of elegant, weak-minded people, vii. 147.</li>
+
+<li>Industry, effect of the Irish Popery laws in discouraging it, vi. 351.</li>
+
+<li>Infinite, the artificial, consists in succession and uniformity of parts, i. 149, 220.</li>
+
+<li>Infinity, a source of the sublime, i. 148.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  in agreeable images, a cause of pleasure, i. 153.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Influence of the crown, operation of it, i. 444.</li>
+
+<li>Inheritance, value of this principle in the British constitution, iii. 274.</li>
+
+<li>Injury is quick and rapid, justice slow, x. 151; xi. 181.</li>
+
+<li>Innocence, contrasted with guilt, ix. 371.</li>
+
+<li>Insolvency, who ought to suffer in a case of, iii. 381.</li>
+
+<li>Institutions, ancient juridical ones in England, intended to retard the headlong course of violence and oppression, ii. 193.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  in political institutions, soundness of the materials of more importance than the fashion of the work, v. 120.</li>
+<li>  how, when revolutionized, to be re&euml;stablished, v. 126.</li>
+<li>  benefits of institution, properly conditional, vii. 15.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Interest of a debt, not the principal, distresses a nation, i. 329.</li>
+
+<li>Intolerance, mischief of it, vii. 34.</li>
+
+<li>Ireland, danger of a proposed tax upon, i. 352.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  early transmission thither of English liberties and institutions, ii. 146.</li>
+<li>  Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol relative to the Trade of Ireland, ii. 247.</li>
+<li>  Mr. Burke's defence of his Parliamentary conduct with regard to it, ii. 377.</li>
+<li>  the plan for the government of Ireland until 1782, what, iv. 233.</li>
+<li>  the true revolution there, that of 1782, iv. 276.</li>
+<li>  state of religion there before the grant of Pope Adrian IV., vi. 342.</li>
+<li>  object of the grant, vi. 342.</li>
+<li>  mutual importance of Ireland and Great Britain to one another, vi. 420.</li>
+<li>  reduction of Ireland by Henry II., vii. 410.</li>
+<li>  nature and previous condition of the country, vii. 410.</li>
+<li>  motives which led Adrian to commission Henry to reduce it, vii. 410, 413.</li>
+<li>  the English laws said to have been established there at its subjugation by John, vii. 449.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Irish language, names of the letters of it taken from the names of several species of trees, vii. 412.</li>
+
+<li>Isocrates, observation of his in one of his orations against the Sophists, i. 5.</li>
+
+<li>Italy, its original inhabitants of the same race as the people of Northern Europe, vii. 161.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  its situation from a remote period, vii. 161.</li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Jacobinism by establishment, what, v. 309.</li>
+
+<li>Jacobins, their character, iv. 437, v. 285, vi. 367.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  their great object, v. 39.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Jacquerie, brief notice of the, iv. 177.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">{420}</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Jaffier Ali Kh&acirc;n, made Nabob of Bengal by the English, ix. 401.</li>
+
+<li>Jaghires, Indian, nature of them, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Jekyl, Sir Joseph, his character, iv. 130.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  extracts from his speech at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 130, 131, 132, 136, 137, 142, 143.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Jews, a source of great revenue to William the Conqueror, vii. 351.</li>
+
+<li>Job, observations on its sublime representation of a vision in the night, i. 137.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  its sublime descriptions of the war-horse, the wild ass, and the unicorn and leviathan, i. 140.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>John, King of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 437.</li>
+
+<li>Judge, duty of one, xi. 104.</li>
+
+<li>Judges, ought to be the very last to feel the necessities of the state, ii. 351.</li>
+
+<li>Judgment and wit, difference between them, i. 87.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the senses should be put under the tuition of the judgment, iii. 15.</li>
+<li>  a coarse discrimination the greatest enemy to accuracy of judgment, v. 143.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Juridical and legislative acts, difference between them, vii. 63.</li>
+
+<li>Juries, an institution of gradual formation, vii. 115.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  not attributable to Alfred, vii. 264.</li>
+<li>  never prevalent amongst the Saxons, vii. 264.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Jurisprudence, nature and importance of the science, iii. 357.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  abrogation of it in France at the Revolution, v. 307.</li>
+<li>  state of the study of it in England, vii. 476.</li>
+<li>  whole frame of it altered since the Conquest, vii. 478.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Justice is slow, injury quick and rapid, x. 151; xi. 181.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  general observations on it, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_393">393</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>.</li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Keppel, Lord, character of him, v. 222.</li>
+
+<li>Kilkenny, Statutes of, prove the ancient existence in Ireland of the spirit of the Popery laws, iv. 273.</li>
+
+<li>King, the things in which he has an individual interest, i. 485.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  nature of his office, iii. 497.</li>
+<li>  just powers of the king of France, iv. 49.</li>
+<li>  power of the king of England, iv. 50.</li>
+<li>  Address to the, in relation to the Measures of Government in the American Contest, vi. 161.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Kings, naturally lovers of low company, ii. 337.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  in what sense the servants of the people, iii. 269.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>King's Men, or King's Friends, character of the court corporation so called, i. 466.</li>
+
+<li>Knight-errantry, origin of it, vii. 390.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Labor, necessary, why, i. 215.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  human labor called by the ancients <i>instrumentum vocale</i>, v. 140.</li>
+<li>  that on which the farmer is most to rely for the repayment of his capital, v. 140.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Laborer and employer, always an implied contract between them, v. 137.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the first and fundamental interest of the laborer, what, v. 140.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Laboring poor, impropriety of the expression, v. 135, 466.</li>
+
+<li>Lacedemonians, at the head of the aristocratic interests of Greece, iv. 321.</li>
+
+<li>La Fontaine, has not one original story, vii. 145.</li>
+
+<li>Lancaster, Duchy and County Palatine of, severed from the crown by Henry IV., ii. 296.</li>
+
+<li>Landed estate of the crown, remarks on it, ii. 299.</li>
+
+<li>Landed Interest, policy of the French Republic with regard to it, iv. 323.</li>
+
+<li>Landed property, the firm basis of every stable government, v. 491.</li>
+
+<li>Lanfranc, character of him, vii. 363.</li>
+
+<li>Langton, Stephen, his appointment to the see of Canterbury through the influence of the Pope, vii. 447, 451.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  oath administered by him to King John on his absolution, vii. 455.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Law's Mississippi scheme, character of it, iii. 554.</li>
+
+<li>Law of neighborhood, what, v. 321.</li>
+
+<li>Law, remarks on the study of it, ii. 125.</li>
+
+<li>Laws, reach but a very little way, i. 470.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  their severity tempered by trial by jury, i. 499.</li>
+<li>  superseded by occasions of public necessity, ii. 329.</li>
+<li>  bad ones the worst sort of tyranny, ii. 395.</li>
+<li>  laws and manners, a knowledge of what belongs to each the duty of a statesman, v. 167.</li>
+<li>  civil laws not all merely positive, v. 321.</li>
+<li>  two things requisite to the solid establishment of them, vi. 321.</li>
+<li>  equity and utility, the two foundations of them, vi. 323.</li>
+<li>  ought to be in unison with manners, vii. 27.</li>
+<li>  of England, Essay towards an History of the, vii. 475.</li>
+<li>  of England, written in the native language until the Norman Conquest, vii. 481.</li>
+<li>  of other Northern nations, written in Latin, vii. 481.</li>
+<li>  cause of this difference, vii. 481.</li>
+<li>  of Canute the Great, remarks on them, vii. 483.</li>
+<li>  of Edward the Confessor, so called, vii. 484.</li>
+<li>  ancient Saxon, review of their sanctions, vii. 484.</li>
+<li>  sources of them, vii. 487.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">{421}</a></span></li>
+<li>  Gentoo, sources of them, ix. 482.</li>
+<li>  Mahometan, sources of them, ix. 480; xi. 216.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Lawful enjoyment, the surest method to prevent unlawful gratification, iv. 256.</li>
+
+<li>Lawsuit, observations on that comedy, vii. 152.</li>
+
+<li>Learning, an attention to it necessary to Christianity, vii. 246.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  contributed, in the early ages, to the temporal power of the clergy, vii. 399.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Lechmere, Mr., extracts from his speeches at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 122, 124, 142.</li>
+
+<li>Legislation, important problem in, v. 166.</li>
+
+<li>Legislative and juridical acts, the difference between them, vii. 63.</li>
+
+<li>Legislative right, not to be exercised without regard to the general opinion of those who are to be governed, ii. 224.</li>
+
+<li>Legislators, bound only by the great principles of reason and equity, and the general sense of mankind, ii. 196.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  character of a true legislator, ii. 456.</li>
+<li>  duties of legislators, v. 166; vi. 319.</li>
+<li>  the mode of proceeding of the ancient legislators, iii. 476.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Legislature, the true end of it, what, ii. 225; iii. 457.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  its power of regulating the succession to the crown, iv. 134.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Leland, Dr., his book (View of Deistical Writers) the best on the subject, vii. 34.</li>
+
+<li>Length, too great, in buildings, prejudicial to grandeur of effect, i. 152.</li>
+
+<li>Letter of Mr. Burke to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on American Affairs, ii. 187.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  to Gentlemen of Bristol, on the Trade of Ireland, ii. 249, 258.</li>
+<li>  to a Member of the National Assembly, on French Affairs, iv. 1.</li>
+<li>  to a Peer of Ireland, on the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics, iv. 217.</li>
+<li>  to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Roman Catholics of Ireland, iv. 241; vi. 375.</li>
+<li>  to William Elliot, Esq., on a Speech in the House of Lords, in the Debate concerning Lord Fitzwilliam, v. 107.</li>
+<li>  to a Noble Lord, on the Attacks upon himself and his Pension, v. 171.</li>
+<li>  on a Regicide Peace, v. 233, 342, 384; vi. 1.</li>
+<li>  to the Empress of Russia, vi. 113.</li>
+<li>  to Sir Charles Bingham, on the Irish Absentee Tax, vi. 121.</li>
+<li>  to Hon. Charles James Fox, on the American War, vi. 135.</li>
+<li>  to the Marquis of Rockingham, on the Plans of the Opposition in reference to the American War, vi. 151.</li>
+<li>  to Rt. Hon. Edmund S. Pery, on the Relief of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, vi. 197.</li>
+<li>  to Thomas Burgh, Esq., in Vindication of his Parliamentary Conduct relative to Ireland, vi. 209.</li>
+<li>  to John Merlott, Esq., on the same subject, vi. 235.</li>
+<li>  to the Lord Chancellor and others, with Thoughts on the Executions of the Rioters in 1780, vi. 239.</li>
+<li>  to Rt. Hon. Henry Dundas, with the Sketch of a Negro Code, vi. 255.</li>
+<li>  to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting, on Parliamentary Reform, vi. 291.</li>
+<li>  to William Smith, Esq., on Catholic Emancipation, vi. 361.</li>
+<li>  to Richard Burke, Esq., on Protestant Ascendency in Ireland, vi. 385.</li>
+<li>  on the Affairs of Ireland in 1797, vi. 413.</li>
+<li>  on Mr. Dowdeswell's Bill for explaining the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels, vii. 123.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Libel, the elements of a, vii. 113.</li>
+
+<li>Libelling, not the crime of an illiterate people, vii. 111.</li>
+
+<li>Liberty and commerce, the two main sources of power to Great Britain, ii. 87.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  mistakes about liberty, ii. 228.</li>
+<li>  cannot long exist among a people generally corrupt, ii. 242.</li>
+<li>  necessity of regulating it, iii. 240, 559,</li>
+<li>  how far men are qualified for it, iv. 51.</li>
+<li>  the distinguishing part of the British constitution, iv. 97.</li>
+<li>  its preservation the peculiar duty of the House of Commons, iv. 97.</li>
+<li>  order and virtue necessary to its existence, iv. 97.</li>
+<li>  a constitution uniting public and private liberty with the elements of a beneficent and stable government, an elaborate contrivance, iv. 211.</li>
+<li>  partial freedom and true liberty contrasted, vi. 389.</li>
+<li>  review of the causes of the revolution in favor of liberty in the reign of King John, vii. 472.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Light, how a cause of the sublime, i. 156.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  when excessive, resembles darkness in its effects, i. 157.</li>
+<li>  light and riant colors opposed to the sublime, i. 159.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Limerick, treaty of, observations on two of its articles, vi. 345.</li>
+
+<li>Lindisfarne, brief account of, vii. 250.</li>
+
+<li>Liturgy of the Established Church, alteration of it ineffectual for the quieting of discontent, vii. 13.</li>
+
+<li>Locke, Mr., his opinion concerning pleasure and pain, i. 105.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his opinion concerning darkness, i. 225.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Longinus, an observation of his on the effect of sublime passages in poets and orators, i. 124.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">{422}</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Lords, House of, affected alarm at a supposed intrenchment by it on the balance of the constitution, in the reign of George II., i. 457.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the feeblest part of the constitution, v. 49.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Loudness, a source of the sublime, i. 159.</li>
+
+<li>Louis XIII., his hatred of Richelieu, iii. 499.</li>
+
+<li>Louis XIV., his dislike to Mazarin and Louvois, iii. 499.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his conduct at the peace of Ryswick, vi. 58.</li>
+<li>  reason given by him for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, vi. 328.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Louis XVI., barbarous treatment experienced by him at the Revolution, iii. 325; iv. 19.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  unjustly called an arbitrary monarch, iii. 339.</li>
+<li>  degraded office to which he was appointed by the Revolutionists, iii. 496; iv. 20.</li>
+<li>  not the first cause of the evil by which he suffered, v. 366.</li>
+<li>  his character, v. 378.</li>
+<li>  character of his brothers, iv. 429.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Love, its origin, nature, and objects, i. 125.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the physical cause of it, i. 232.</li>
+<li>  nature of that taught by Rousseau, iv. 30.</li>
+<li>  observations on the love of parents to their children, xi. 422.</li>
+<li>  and on the love of country, xi. 422; iii. 292, 494.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Lucretius, passages from him, illustrative of the sublime, i. 144, 257.</li>
+
+<li>Luxury, some good consequences of it, i. 424.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  a tax on it, the only contribution that can be termed voluntary, v. 461.</li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Machiavel, an observation of his on war and peace, i. 15.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his maxim concerning wickedness by halves, vi. 43.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Madmen, a frequent appearance in them accounted for, i. 149.</li>
+
+<li>Magna Charta, observations on it, iii. 272; iv. 266.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  origin and nature of it, vii. 460.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Magnanimity, in politics, often the truest wisdom, ii. 181.</li>
+
+<li>Magnificence, a source of the sublime, i. 154.</li>
+
+<li>Magnitude, in building, necessary to the sublime, i. 152.</li>
+
+<li>Mahomed Reza Kh&acirc;n, arrested by Mr. Hastings, x. 184.</li>
+
+<li>Mahometanism, its conquests in Hindostan, ix. 387.</li>
+
+<li>Mahometan government, character of it, ix. 463.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  laws, sources of them, ix. 480; xi. 216.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Mahrattas, their territories invaded by the East India Company, ii. 453.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  treaties with them, ii. 453, 454.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Majority, in a commonwealth, question as to the proper power of, iii. 299; iv. 170.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  not true that in all contests the decision will be in their favor, vii. 53.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Malesherbes, murdered by the French Revolutionists, vi. 40.</li>
+
+<li>Malvoisins, what, vii. 389.</li>
+
+<li>Man, a creature of habit and opinions, ii. 234; xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_164">164</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Manifestoes, implying superiority over an enemy, when commonly made, iv. 405.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  matters usually contained in them, iv. 405.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Manilla ransom, remarks on it, i. 407.</li>
+
+<li>Manners, while they remain entire, correct the vices of law, ii. 202.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  corrupted by civil wars, ii. 203.</li>
+<li>  maintained in Europe for ages by the spirit of nobility and of religion, iii. 335.</li>
+<li>  in England, derived from France, iii. 336.</li>
+<li>  have done alone in England what institutions and manners together have done in France, iv. 327.</li>
+<li>  statesmen ought to know what appertains respectively to manners and laws, v. 167.</li>
+<li>  of more importance than laws, v. 310.</li>
+<li>  laws ought to be in unison with them, vii. 27.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Mansfield, Lord, his declarations concerning rules of evidence, xi. 84.</li>
+
+<li>Mara, the name of a Saxon goddess,&mdash;whence the term Night-Mare, vii. 237.</li>
+
+<li>Marriage, beneficial results of the Christian doctrine concerning it, v. 312.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  endeavors of the French Constituent Assembly to desecrate it, v. 312.</li>
+<li>  ends for which it was instituted, vii. 131.</li>
+<li>  restraints upon it in the reign of King John, vii. 464.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Marriage Act, principles upon which it is grounded, vii. 131.</li>
+
+<li>Mathematical and metaphysical reasoning, compared with moral, vii. 73.</li>
+
+<li>Mazarin, Cardinal, not loved by Louis XIV., iii. 499.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  bon-mot of a flatterer of his, on the match between Louis XIV. and a daughter of Spain, vi. 20.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Mediterranean Sea, importance to England of keeping a strong naval force there, v. 421.</li>
+
+<li>Memorial to be delivered to Monsieur de M.M., Hints for a, iv. 307.</li>
+
+<li>Merchants, English, their evidence, petitions, and consultations respecting America, i. 399, 405, 406.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  principles and qualities of, ii. 506.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Mercy, not opposed to justice, iv. 465; vi. 252.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  consists not in the weakness of the means, but in the benignity of the ends, vi. 168.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">{423}</a></span></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Metaphysician, nothing harder than the heart of a thorough-bred one, v. 216.</li>
+
+<li>Migration, in early times, caused by pasturage and hunting, vii. 171.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  and by wars, vii. 171.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Military life, its attractions to those who have had experience of it, v. 464.</li>
+
+<li>Military and naval officers, the fortitude required of them, v. 468.</li>
+
+<li>Militia, probable origin of it, vii. 422.</li>
+
+<li>Milton, his admirable description of Death, i. 132.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his celebrated portrait of Satan, i. 135.</li>
+<li>  his description of the appearance of the Deity, i. 156.</li>
+<li>  example from him of the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.</li>
+<li>  of the power of words, i. 259.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Ministers, Prussian, infected with the principles of the French Revolution, iv. 359.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  British, to be controlled by the House of Commons, v. 57.</li>
+<li>  observations on their duty in giving information to the public, vi. 14.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Minority, Observations on the Conduct of the, in Parliament, in the Session of 1792, v. 1.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  power of a restless one, v. 285.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Mistletoe, veneration of the Druids for it, vii. 183.</li>
+
+<li>Modes of life, injustice of sudden legislative violence to such as the laws had previously encouraged, iii. 439.</li>
+
+<li>Modesty, heightens all other virtues, i. 188; v. 128.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  but sometimes their worst enemy, v. 129.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Mogul, the Great, his grants to the East India Company, ii. 560; ix. 345.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  sold by the Company, ii. 448.</li>
+<li>  the Company's treaties with him broken by them, ii. 452.</li>
+<li>  conspiracy to murder his son, ix. 412.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Mohun, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 32.</li>
+
+<li>Mona, the principal residence of the Druids in the beginning of Nero's reign, vii. 195.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  reduced by Suetonius Paulinus, vii. 196.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Monarchy, preferred by Bolingbroke to other governments, iii. 398.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  one of its advantages, to have no local seat, iv. 431.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Monastic institutions, their important uses, iii. 440; vii. 244, 245.</li>
+
+<li>Money, the value of it how to be judged, v. 454.</li>
+
+<li>Moneyed companies, dangerous to tax great ones, i. 368.</li>
+
+<li>Moneyed interest, when dangerous to a government, iii. 437.</li>
+
+<li>Moneyed men, ought to be allowed to set a value on their money, v. 455.</li>
+
+<li>Monk, General, character of the army commanded by him, iv. 36.</li>
+
+<li>Monopoly of authority, an evil; of capital, a benefit, v. 151.</li>
+
+<li>Montesquieu, his remark on the legislators of antiquity, iii. 477.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  character of him, iv. 211.</li>
+<li>  his false view of the people of India, xi. 207.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Moral duties, not necessary that the reasons of them should be made clear to all, i. 7.</li>
+
+<li>Moral order of things, great disasters in it affect the mind like miracles in the physical, iii. 337.</li>
+
+<li>Moral questions never abstract ones, vii. 55.</li>
+
+<li>Moral reasoning, compared with mathematical and metaphysical, vii. 73.</li>
+
+<li>Mortality, a general one always a time of remarkable wickedness, vii. 84.</li>
+
+<li>Multitudes, the shouting of, a source of the sublime, i. 159.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  a multitude told by the head, not the people, iv. 183.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Munny Begum, (of Bengal,) her history, x. 195; xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  appointed by Mr. Hastings regent of Bengal, and guardian of the Nabob, x. 196; xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_218">218</a>.</li>
+<li>  (of Oude,) her noble birth, rank, and connections, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Music, remark concerning the beautiful in it, i. 204.</li>
+
+<li>Mystery, in any matter of policy, affords presumption of fraud, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Nabob of Arcot, the Subah of the Deccan sold to him by the East India Company, ii. 450.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  nature of his debts, iii. 25, 28, 29, 35, 39, 47.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Nabob of Oude, conduct of the East India Company towards him, ii. 466.</li>
+
+<li>Nantes, Edict of, reason assigned by Louis XIV. for the revocation of it, vi. 328.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  observations thereon, vi. 328.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Naples, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France, iv. 337.</li>
+
+<li>Nation, Present State of the, Observations on a late Publication so intituled, i. 269.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  character of this publication, i. 274.</li>
+<li>  state of the nation in 1770, i. 437.</li>
+<li>  speculation of the ministry on the cause of it, i. 438.</li>
+<li>  animadversions on their views, i. 439.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>National Assembly of France, corresponds with the Revolution Society of London, iii. 237.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  its composition and character, iii. 283, 450.</li>
+<li>  studies recommended by it to the youth of France, iv. 25.</li>
+<li>  its worship of Rousseau, iv. 25.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Natural powers in man, the senses, the imagination, and the judgment, i. 82.</li>
+
+<li>Nature, state of, inconveniences of it, i. 10.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the social, impels a man to propagate his principles, v. 361.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">{424}</a></span></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Navigation, Act of, its policy, i. 378; ii. 30, 38.</li>
+
+<li>Navy, the great danger of economical experiments upon it, i. 345.</li>
+
+<li>Necessity, the plea of, remarks on it, v. 450.</li>
+
+<li>Negro Code, Sketch of a, vi. 262.</li>
+
+<li>Negro slaves, denunciation of attempts to excite insurrections among them in the colonies by proclamations of the English governors, vi. 171.</li>
+
+<li>Neighborhood, the law of, what, v. 321.</li>
+
+<li>Newfoundland, view of the trade with it, i. 320.</li>
+
+<li>Newspapers, powerful influence of them in the diffusion of French principles, iv. 327.</li>
+
+<li>Night, a cause of the sublime, i. 132, 158.</li>
+
+<li>Norman conquest, extraordinary facility of it, vii. 287.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  attempt to account for it, vii. 288.</li>
+<li>  the great era of the English laws, vii. 487.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Normandy, reunion of it to the crown of France, vii. 445.</li>
+
+<li>North, Lord, observations on his character, v. 182; vi. 216, 223.</li>
+
+<li>Novelty, the first and simplest source of pleasure to the mind, i. 101.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the danger of indulging a desire for it in practical cases, iv. 76.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Nundcomar, accuses Mr. Hastings of corruption, x. 24.</li>
+
+<li>Nuzzer, or Nuzzerana, what, x. 171.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Oak, the, why venerated by the Druids, vii. 183.</li>
+
+<li>Oath, the Coronation, observations upon it in reference to the Roman Catholics, iv. 260.</li>
+
+<li>Obscurity, generally necessary to the terrible, i. 132.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  why more affecting than clearness, i. 135.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Obstinacy, though a great and very mischievous vice, closely allied to the masculine virtues, ii. 66.</li>
+
+<li>Office, men too much conversant in it rarely have enlarged minds, ii. 38.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  in feudal times, the lowest offices often held by considerable persons, ii. 303.</li>
+<li>  the reason of this, ii. 304.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Officers, military and naval, nature of the fortitude required of them, v. 468.</li>
+
+<li>Opinion, popular, the support of government, ii. 224; vi. 165; vii. 91.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  an equivocal test of merit, v. 183.</li>
+<li>  the generality of it not always to be judged of by the noise of the acclamation, v. 286.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Opinions, men impelled to propagate their own by their social nature, v. 361.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  their influence on the affections and passions, v. 403; vii. 44.</li>
+<li>  the most decided often stated in the form of questions, vi. 28.</li>
+<li>  the interest and duty of government to attend much to them, vii. 44.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Oppression, the poorest and most illiterate are judges of it, iv. 281.</li>
+
+<li>Orange, Prince of, (afterwards William III.,) extracts from his Declaration, iv. 147.</li>
+
+<li>Ordeal, purgation by, vii. 314.</li>
+
+<li>Oude, extent and government of, under Sujah ul Dowlah, xi. 373.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Pain, pleasure, and indifference, their mutual relation as states of the mind, i. 103.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  nature and cause of pain, i. 210.</li>
+<li>  how a cause of delight, i. 215.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Paine, Thomas, remarks on his character, v. iii; vi. 60.</li>
+
+<li>Painting and poetry, their power, when due to imitation, and when to sympathy, i. 123.</li>
+
+<li>Pandulph, the Pope's legate, his politic dealing with King John, vii. 451.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  parallel between his conduct to King John and that of the Roman consuls to the Carthaginians in the last Punic war, vii. 453.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Papal power, uniform steadiness of it in the pursuit of its ambitious projects, vii. 449.</li>
+
+<li>Papal pretensions, sources of their growth and support, vii. 384.</li>
+
+<li>Papal States, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France, iv. 337.</li>
+
+<li>Parliament, remarks on it, i. 491.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the power of dissolving it, the most critical and delicate of all the trusts vested in the crown, ii. 553.</li>
+<li>  disadvantages of triennial parliaments, vii. 79.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Parliaments of France, character of them, iii. 505.</li>
+
+<li>Parliament of Paris, observations on its subversion, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_396">396</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Parliamentary disorders, ideas for the cure of them, i. 516.</li>
+
+<li>Parsimony, a leaning towards it in war may be the worst management, i. 310.</li>
+
+<li>Party divisions, inseparable from free government, i. 271.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  definition of the term, party, i. 530.</li>
+<li>  evils of party domination, vi. 390.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Passions, all concern either self-preservation or society, i. 110.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  final cause of the difference between those belonging to self-preservation and those which regard the society of the sexes, i. 113.</li>
+<li>  those which belong to self-preservation turn upon pain and danger, i. 125.</li>
+<li>  nature and objects of those belonging to society, i. 125.</li>
+<li>  a control over them necessary to the existence of society, iv. 52.</li>
+<li>  strong ones awaken the faculties, v. 287.</li>
+<li>  vehement passion not always indicative of an infirm judgment, v. 407.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">{425}</a></span></li>
+<li>  mere general truths interfere very little with them, vi. 326.</li>
+<li>  passions which interest men in the characters of others, vii. 148.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Pasturage and hunting, weaken men's ties to any particular habitation, vii. 171.</li>
+
+<li>Paulus, observation of his on law, vi. 324.</li>
+
+<li>Peace, requisites of a good one, i. 295.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the steps taken to bring one about always an augury of what it is likely to be, v. 251.</li>
+<li>  a ground of peace never laid until it is as good as concluded, v. 260.</li>
+<li>  an arrangement of peace in its nature a permanent settlement, v. 349.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Penal statute of William III. against the Papists, repeal of it, ii. 391.</li>
+
+<li>People, accurate idea of the term, iv. 169.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  evils of an abuse of it, iv. 411.</li>
+<li>  the temper of the people the first study of a statesman, i. 436.</li>
+<li>  in seasons of popular discontent, something generally amiss in the government, i. 440.</li>
+<li>  the people have no interest in disorder, i. 441.</li>
+<li>  generally fifty years behindhand in their politics, i. 442.</li>
+<li>  a connection with their interests a necessary qualification of a minister, i. 474.</li>
+<li>  sense of the people, how to be ascertained by the king, i. 475.</li>
+<li>  should show themselves able to protect every representative in the performance of his duty, i. 503.</li>
+<li>  liberty cannot long exist where they are generally corrupt, ii. 242.</li>
+<li>  the people of England love a mitigated monarchy more than even the best republic, iv. 149.</li>
+<li>  danger of teaching them to think lightly of their engagements to their governors, iv. 162.</li>
+<li>  the natural control on authority, iv. 164.</li>
+<li>  dangerous nature of a power capable of resisting even their erroneous choice of an object, vi. 296.</li>
+<li>  points on which they are incompetent to give advice to their representatives, vii. 74, 75.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Perfection not the cause of beauty, i. 187.</li>
+
+<li>Persecution, religious, an observation of Mr. Bayle concerning it, vi. 333.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  general observations on it, vi. 394.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Persecutor, a violent one, frequently an unbeliever in his own creed, vi. 86.</li>
+
+<li>Peshcush, what, x. 171.</li>
+
+<li>Peters, Hugh, remarks on a passage in a sermon of his, iii. 318.</li>
+
+<li>Petition of Right, rests the franchises of the subject not on abstract right, but on inheritance, iii. 273.</li>
+
+<li>Philosophical inquiries, how to be conducted, i. 70.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  use of them, i. 72.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Philosophy, Lord Bolingbroke's, animadversions on it, i. 4.</li>
+
+<li>Physic, the profession of it, in ancient times, annexed to the priesthood, vii. 183.</li>
+
+<li>Physiognomy, has a considerable share in the beauty of the human species, i. 198.</li>
+
+<li>Pilgrimages of the Middle Ages, benefits of them, vii. 247.</li>
+
+<li>Pitt, Mr., remarks on his conduct in 1784, v. 57.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his Declaration on the war with the French Republic, v. 278; vi. 21.</li>
+<li>  eulogy of it, v. 279, 390; vi. 22.</li>
+<li>  and of his speech on that war, v. 390.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Place Bill, proposed remedy for parliamentary disorders, i. 518.</li>
+
+<li>Plagues, in Athens and in London, wickedness remarkably prevalent during their continuance, vii. 84.</li>
+
+<li>Pleasure and pain, observations on them, i. 102.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  pleasure, pain, and indifference, their mutual relation, as states of the mind, i. 103.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Poetry, more powerful than painting in moving the passions, i. 134.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  does not depend for its effect on raising ideas or sensible images of things, i. 246, 255.</li>
+<li>  this exemplified, i. 252.</li>
+<li>  affects rather by sympathy than imitation, i. 257.</li>
+<li>  dramatic poetry strictly imitation, i. 257.</li>
+<li>  descriptive poetry operates chiefly by substitution, i. 257.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Poland, character of the revolution there, iv. 195.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  contrasted with the revolution in France, iv. 198.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Policy, a refined one, the parent of confusion, ii. 106.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  inseparable from justice, iii. 438.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Political connection, how regarded by the ancient Romans, i. 528.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  England governed by one in the reign of Queen Anne, i. 529.</li>
+<li>  general observations on, i. 530.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Political economy, had its origin in England, v. 192.</li>
+
+<li>Political system, an unwise or mischievous one not necessarily of short duration, iv. 353.</li>
+
+<li>Politician, duties of one, iii. 557, 559.</li>
+
+<li>Politics, ought to be adjusted to, human nature, i. 398.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  different in different ages, i. 442.</li>
+<li>  unsuitable to the pulpit, iii. 246.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Polybius, anecdote concerning him, iv. 285.</li>
+
+<li>Poor, the laboring, their poverty owing to their numbers, v. 134.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  proper compassion for them, v. 135, 466.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">{426}</a></span></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Poorunder, treaty of, broken by Mr. Hastings, xii.&nbsp;<a href="#Page_382">382</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Pope, the, his dispute with Henry I., vii. 384.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his pretext for giving Henry II. a commission to conquer Ireland, vii. 413.</li>
+<li>  his excommunication of King John, vii. 449.</li>
+<li>  treatment of him by the French Revolutionists, v. 418.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Popery Laws, Tract on the, vi. 299.</li>
+
+<li>Popular election, a mighty evil, vii. 72.</li>
+
+<li>Popular opinion, an equivocal test of merit, v. 183.</li>
+
+<li>Population, rapid increase of it in America, ii. 110.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  state of it, a standard by which, to estimate the effects of a government on any country, iii. 400.</li>
+<li>  view of that of France, at different periods, iii. 400.</li>
+<li>  comparative effects of peace and war on it, as regards the higher classes, v. 472.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Power, all sublimity some modification of it, i. 138.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  incompatible with credit, i. 368.</li>
+<li>  the civil power, when it calls in the aid of the military, perishes by the assistance it receives, i. 484.</li>
+<li>  arbitrary power steals upon a people by being rarely exercised, ii. 201.</li>
+<li>  persons possessed of power ought to have a strong sense of religion, iii. 354.</li>
+<li>  the ability to use it for the great and lasting benefit of a country a test of statesmanship, iii. 441.</li>
+<li>  not willingly abandoned by its possessors, iv. 11.</li>
+<li>  dissensions in the commonwealth mostly concerning the hands in which it is to be placed, iv. 163.</li>
+<li>  necessity of teaching men to restrain the immoderate exercise and inordinate desire of it, iv. 163.</li>
+<li>  active power never willingly placed by legislators in the hands of the multitude, iv. 164.</li>
+<li>  danger of a resumption of delegated power by the people, iv. 168.</li>
+<li>  does not always accompany property, iv. 349.</li>
+<li>  the possession of it discovers a man's true character, v. 362.</li>
+<li>  men will incur the greatest risks for the sake of it, vii. 82.</li>
+<li>  originates from God alone, ix. 456.</li>
+<li>  the supreme power in every constitution must be absolute, ix. 460.</li>
+<li>  ends to which a superintending, controlling power ought to be directed, xi. 417.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Prejudice, cannot be created, vi. 368.</li>
+
+<li>Prerogative, remarks on the exercise of it, ii. 225.</li>
+
+<li>Presbyterianism, remarks on it, iv. 452.</li>
+
+<li>Prescription, part of the law of Nature, iii. 433.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the most solid of all titles, and the most recognized in jurisprudence, vi. 412; vii. 94.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Present State of Affairs, Heads for Consideration on the, iv. 379.</li>
+
+<li>Price, Dr. Richard, observations on his sermon on the Love of our Country, iii. 244, 301, 304, 316.</li>
+
+<li>Price of commodities, how raised, v. 142.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  danger of attempting to raise it by authority, v. 143.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Primogeniture, right of, operation of the Popery Laws in taking it away, vi. 302.</li>
+
+<li>Principal of a debt, cannot distress a nation, i. 329.</li>
+
+<li>Principalities, the, proposal to unite them to the crown, ii. 298.</li>
+
+<li>Privations, all general ones great, i. 146.</li>
+
+<li>Profit, an honorable and fair one, the best security against avarice and rapacity, ii. 335.</li>
+
+<li>Projects, new, requirements of men of sense with respect to them, i. 367.</li>
+
+<li>Property, ought greatly to predominate over ability in the representation, iii. 298.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  importance of the power of perpetuating it in families, iii. 298.</li>
+<li>  not always accompanied with power, iv. 349.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Proportion, what, i. 166.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  not the cause of beauty in vegetables, i. 166.</li>
+<li>  nor in animals, i. 170.</li>
+<li>  nor in the human species, i. 172.</li>
+<li>  whence the idea of proportion, as the principal component of beauty, arose, i. 178.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Prosperity, discovers the real character of a man, iv. 22.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  a prejudice in favor of it, however obtained, iv. 425.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Protestant, the state so declared at the Revolution, with a qualification, iv. 257.</li>
+
+<li>Protestant ascendency, observations on, vi. 391.</li>
+
+<li>Protestant Association, the, animadversions on it, ii. 389, 415.</li>
+
+<li>Protestantism, at no period established, undefined, in England, iv. 258.</li>
+
+<li>Protestants, errors of the early, ii. 390.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  misconduct of those in the South of France at the Revolution, iv. 452.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Provisions, trade of, danger of tampering with it, v. 133.</li>
+
+<li>Prudence, the first in rank of the political and moral virtues, iv. 81.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  its decisions differ from those of judicature, iv. 251.</li>
+<li>  its rules and definitions rarely exact, never universal, v. 241.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Psalms, and Prophets, crowded with instances of the introduction of the terrible in Nature to heighten the awe of the Divine presence, i. 144.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">{427}</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Public affairs, state of them previous to the formation of the Rockingham administration, i. 381.</li>
+
+<li>Public men, not all equally corrupt, ii. 240.</li>
+
+<li>Public service, means of rewarding it necessary in every state, ii. 330.</li>
+
+<li>Punishment, considerations necessary to be observed in inflicting it, iv. 466; vi. 245.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  under the Saxon laws, extremely moderate, vii. 321.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Purveyance and receipt in kind, what, ii. 306.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  taken away by the 12th Charles II., ii. 306.</li>
+<li>  revived the next year, ii. 306.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Pythagoras, his discipline contrasted with that of Socrates, vii. 179.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  why silence enjoined by him, vii. 179.</li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Raimond, Count of Toulouse, engages in the Crusade, vii. 372.</li>
+
+<li>Raleigh, Sir Walter, abusive epithet applied to him by Lord Coke, xi. 175.</li>
+
+<li>Reason, sound, no real virtue without it, iv. 24.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  never inconvenient but when it comes to be applied, vi. 326.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Reasoners, men generally the worse reasoners for having been ministers, i. 338.</li>
+
+<li>Reformation, in government, should be early and temperate, ii. 280.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  and slow, iii. 456.</li>
+<li>  different from change, v. 186.</li>
+<li>  general observations on it, iii. 455; iv. 111; vi. 294; vii. 71.</li>
+<li>  in England, has always proceeded upon the principle of reference to antiquity, iii. 272.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Reformation, the, observations on it, ii. 389.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  effects of it, iv. 319.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Reformers, English, character of them, iii. 430.</li>
+
+<li>Regicide by establishment, what, v. 309.</li>
+
+<li>Regicide Peace, Letters on, v. 233, 342, 384; vi. 9.</li>
+
+<li>Religion, writers against it never set up any of their own, i. 7.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  effects of it on the colonists of America, ii. 122.</li>
+<li>  the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort, iii. 350.</li>
+<li>  the respect entertained for it in England, iii. 352.</li>
+<li>  a strong sense of it necessary to those in power, iii. 354.</li>
+<li>  mischievous consequences of changing it, except under strong conviction, iv. 453.</li>
+<li>  the magistrate has a right to direct the exterior ceremonies of it, vii. 30.</li>
+<li>  the Christian, in its rise overcame all opposition, vii. 25.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Religious opinions, not the only cause of enthusiasm, v. 361.</li>
+
+<li>Repetition, of the same story, effect of it, iv. 328.</li>
+
+<li>Report on the Affairs of India, Ninth, viii. 1.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  Eleventh, viii. 217.</li>
+<li>  on the Lords' Journals, xi. 1.</li>
+<li>  Vindication of, this Report from the Animadversions of Lord Thurlow, xi. 149.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Representation, ought to include both the ability and the property of a state, iii. 297.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  virtual, what, iv. 293.</li>
+<li>  natural, what, v. 284.</li>
+<li>  of America in the British Parliament, project of, i. 372.</li>
+<li>  consideration of its difficulties, i. 373.</li>
+<li>  of England, and that of France in the National Assembly, compared, iii. 481.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Representation to his Majesty on the Speech from the Throne, ii. 537.</li>
+
+<li>Representative, his duty to his constituents, ii. 95, 281, 357.</li>
+
+<li>Republican government, remarks on, iv. 109.</li>
+
+<li>Reputation, public, how to be secured, ix. 341.</li>
+
+<li>Resemblance, pleasing to the imagination, i. 87.</li>
+
+<li>Responsibility of ministers of state, nature of it, iii. 501; v. 507.</li>
+
+<li>Revenge, observations on, xi. 179.</li>
+
+<li>Revenue, great importance of it to a state, iii. 534.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  its administration the sphere of every active virtue, iii. 535.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Revolution of 1688, diminished influence of the crown at that time how compensated, i. 445.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  principles of it contained in the Declaration of Right, iii. 252.</li>
+<li>  the subversion of the old, and the settlement of the new government, inseparably combined in it, iv. 80.</li>
+<li>  grounds of it, iv. 121.</li>
+<li>  contrasted with the French Revolution, iii. 225.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Revolution in France, Reflections on the, iii. 231.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  general observations on it, iii. 220.</li>
+<li>  characterized as a revolution of doctrine and theoretic dogma, iv. 319.</li>
+<li>  contrasted with the English Revolution of 1688, iii. 225.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Revolution Society, correspond with the National Assembly of France, iii. 238.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  remarks on its principles and proceedings, iii. 238.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Reynolds, Sir Joshua, on idiosyncrasy in taste and judgment, iv. 212.</li>
+
+<li>Rich, need the consolations of religion, iii. 366.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  trustees for those who labor, v. 134.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">{428}</a></span></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Richard I., brief account of his reign, vii. 425.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  parallel between him and Charles XII. of Sweden, vii. 436.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Richelieu, Cardinal, hated by Louis XIII., iii. 499.</li>
+
+<li>Rights, assumed, their consequences of great moment in deciding on their validity, iv. 183.</li>
+
+<li>Rights of Men, Jacobinical theory of, animadversions on it, iii. 307.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  sophistically confounded with their power, iii. 313.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Robespierre, his character, vi. 62.</li>
+
+<li>Rochford, Lord, his remonstrance with regard to Corsica, i. 480.</li>
+
+<li>Rockingham, Marquis of, Short Account of his Administration, i. 263.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  formation of his administration, i. 379.</li>
+<li>  state of public affairs at the time, i. 381.</li>
+<li>  character and conduct of it, i. 388.</li>
+<li>  ideas of it with regard to America, i. 403.</li>
+<li>  his Lordship's conduct in American affairs, ii. 40.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Rohilla nation, sale of it by the East India Company, ii. 449.</li>
+
+<li>Roland, character of him, v. 70.</li>
+
+<li>Roman Catholics, Mr. Burke's defence of his Parliamentary conduct with regard to them, ii. 388.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  Letter on the Penal Laws against, iv. 217.</li>
+<li>  mode of education necessary for their clergy, iv. 229, 231.</li>
+<li>  condition of their clergy before the restraint on marriage, iv. 230.</li>
+<li>  mischievous consequences of placing the appointment of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant, iv. 234.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Roman politics, under the Empire, different from those which actuated the Republic, vii. 203.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  dominion over the Britons and other conquered nations, methods by which it was preserved, vii. 205.</li>
+<li>  procurators under the Emperors, why invested with greater powers than the legates, vii. 208.</li>
+<li>  military ways, character and purpose of them, vii. 211.</li>
+<li>  number and extent of the principal ones in Britain, vii. 211.</li>
+<li>  revenues, nature of them, vii. 211.</li>
+<li>  three great changes in the government after the dissolution of the Commonwealth, vii. 220.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Rome, ancient, destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, vii. 80.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  and by its heavy taxes, vii. 213.</li>
+<li>  bounds of the empire first contracted by Adrian, vii. 214.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Rome, modern, its example a caution not to attempt to feed the people by the hands of the magistrates, v. 155.</li>
+
+<li>Rota, in the French National Assembly, effect of it, iv. 350.</li>
+
+<li>Rotund, noble effect of it, i. 150.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  accounted for, i. 150.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Rousseau, the secret of his principles of composition, iii. 459.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  a resemblance to him an object of rivalry to the leaders of the National Assembly, iv. 25.</li>
+<li>  vanity his ruling passion, iv. 26.</li>
+<li>  brief character of him, iv. 27.</li>
+<li>  totally destitute of taste, iv. 30.</li>
+<li>  morality of the passions in his Nouvelle &Eacute;loise, iv. 31.</li>
+<li>  character of his style, iv. 32.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Russell, Baron, the first, his character, v. 201.</li>
+
+<li>Russia, the Emperor of, the true policy of his government, v. 422.</li>
+
+<li>Russian treaty of commerce, i. 410.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Sacheverell, Dr., his impeachment carried on for the purpose of stating the grounds and principles of the Revolution, iv. 119.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  extracts from speeches of Managers at his trial, iv. 122-146.</li>
+<li>  proceedings in his trial, xi. 16.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, reduces Palestine, vii. 427.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  defeated by Richard I., vii. 429.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Salaries, objections to a tax upon them, ii. 283.</li>
+
+<li>Sallust, remarks on his finely contrasted characters of C&aelig;sar and Cato, i. 189.</li>
+
+<li>Salt, monopoly of, by the French government, i. 332.</li>
+
+<li>Santerre, his brutal conduct to Louis XVI., vi. 101.</li>
+
+<li>Saracens, their fierce irruptions and conquests, vii. 328.</li>
+
+<li>Savile, Sir George, his bill for the repeal of the statute of William III. against Papists, ii. 396.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his character, ii. 397.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Saxons, a brief account of their laws and institutions, vii. 291.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  under their rule, the succession to the crown in England partly hereditary and partly elective, vii. 297.</li>
+<li>  their laws wholly abolished in England since the Conquest, vii. 478.</li>
+<li>  sources of them, vii. 487.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Scarcity, Thoughts and Details on, v. 131.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  proper policy in respect to the poor, in times of, v. 156.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Scotland, beneficial effects on trade of its union with England, ii. 254.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  its Church establishment under the Union, iv. 258.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Scripture, indefinite nature of subscription to it, vii. 18.</li>
+
+<li>Scythians, all Northern Europe originally inhabited by them, vii. 160.</li>
+
+<li>Selden, his statement of the Parliamentary practice in the examination of witnesses, xi. 108.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">{429}</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Self-preservation, the passions which concern it the strongest ones, i. 110.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the sublime an idea belonging to it, i. 164.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Senses, general remarks on them, i. 82.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  ought to be put under the tuition of the judgment, iii. 15.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Serpent, why an object of idolatry, vii. 184.</li>
+
+<li>Shakspeare, his description of the king's army in Henry IV. an example of the sublime, i. 155.</li>
+
+<li>Shelburne, Lord, animadversions on a passage in a speech of his, ii. 544.</li>
+
+<li>Silence, why enjoined by Pythagoras and the Druids, vii. 178.</li>
+
+<li>Sirach, Son of, fine example of the sublime from his Book of Wisdom, i. 155.</li>
+
+<li>Slaves, never so beneficial to their masters as freemen, v. 147.</li>
+
+<li>Smells, a source of the sublime, i. 162.</li>
+
+<li>Smith, Sir Sydney, Captain, observations on his case, v. 400.</li>
+
+<li>Smoothness, why beautiful, i. 234.</li>
+
+<li>Social nature, the, impels a man to propagate his principles, v. 361.</li>
+
+<li>Society, Natural, A Vindication of, i. 1.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  definition of the term, i. 11.</li>
+<li>  notion of, how first introduced, i. 11.</li>
+<li>  political society, its nature and origin, i. 11; iii. 359; iv. 165.</li>
+<li>  its continuance under a permanent covenant, iii. 359; iv. 165.</li>
+<li>  the great purpose of it, what, vi. 333.</li>
+<li>  society and solitude compared, as sources of pleasure or pain, i. 115.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Socrates, his discipline contrasted with that of Pythagoras, vii. 179.</li>
+
+<li>Solitude, something may be done in it for society, v. 125.</li>
+
+<li>Somers, Lord, the Declaration of Right drawn by him, iii. 254.</li>
+
+<li>Sophia, the Princess, why named in the Act of Settlement as the root of inheritance to the kings of England, iii. 262.</li>
+
+<li>Sophia, St., Church of, anecdote of the Greeks assembled there, at the taking of Constantinople, vi. 96.</li>
+
+<li>Sound, a source of the sublime, i. 159.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  grand effect of a single one of some strength repeated after intervals, i. 160.</li>
+<li>  a low, tremulous, intermitting one productive of the sublime, i. 160.</li>
+<li>  the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Spain, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France, iv. 339.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  not a substantive power, iv. 385.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Speech of Mr. Burke on American Taxation, ii. 1.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  at his Arrival at Bristol, ii. 85.</li>
+<li>  at the Conclusion of the Poll, ii. 89.</li>
+<li>  on Conciliation with America, ii. 99.</li>
+<li>  on Economical Reform, ii. 265.</li>
+<li>  previous to the Election in 1780, ii. 365.</li>
+<li>  on Declining the Poll, ii. 425.</li>
+<li>  on Mr. Fox's East India Bill, ii. 431.</li>
+<li>  on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, iii. 1.</li>
+<li>  on the Army Estimates, iii. 211.</li>
+<li>  on the Acts of Uniformity, vii. 3.</li>
+<li>  on the Relief of Protestant Dissenters, vii. 21.</li>
+<li>  on the Petition of the Unitarians, vii. 39.</li>
+<li>  on the Middlesex Election, vii. 59.</li>
+<li>  on Shortening the Duration of Parliaments, vii. 69.</li>
+<li>  on Reform of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament, vii. 89.</li>
+<li>  on the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels, vii. 105.</li>
+<li>  on the Repeal of the Marriage Act, vii. 129.</li>
+<li>  on Dormant Claims of the Church, vii. 137.</li>
+<li>  in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, ix. 327-x. 145; x. 147-451; xi. 155-xii. 393.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Spelman, Sir Henry, his difficulties in the study of the law, vii. 477.</li>
+
+<li>Spirituous liquors, beneficial effects of them, v. 164.</li>
+
+<li>Spon, M., his curious story of Campanella, i. 212.</li>
+
+<li>Spring, why the pleasantest of the seasons, i. 153.</li>
+
+<li>Stability, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.</li>
+
+<li>Stafford, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 31.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  remarks on the prosecution, xi. 112.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Stamp Act, American, its origin, i. 385.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  repeal of it, i. 389; ii. 47.</li>
+<li>  motives for the repeal, i. 391, 399.</li>
+<li>  good effects of the repeal, i. 401; ii. 59.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Stanhope, General, extracts from his speech at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 127.</li>
+
+<li>Starry heaven, why productive of the idea of grandeur, i. 154.</li>
+
+<li>State, the, meaning of the term, iv, 248.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  consideration of its fitness for an oligarchical form, connected with the question of vesting it solely in some one description of citizens, iv. 251.</li>
+<li>  not subject to laws analogous to those of physical life, v. 124, 234.</li>
+<li>  the internal causes affecting the fortunes of states uncertain and obscure, v. 235.</li>
+<li>  great irregularities in their rise, culmination, and decline, v. 235.</li>
+<li>  in a conflict between equally powerful states, an infinite advantage afforded by unyielding determination, v. 243.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Statesmen, duties of, i. 436; v. 167.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  standard of one, iii. 440.</li>
+<li>  difference between them and professors in universities, vii. 41.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Stephen, brief account of his reign, vii. 386.</li>
+
+<li>Stonehenge, wherein an object of admiration, i. 153; vii. 179.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">{430}</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Stones, rude ones, why objects of veneration, vii. 185.</li>
+
+<li>Strafford, Earl of, proceedings in his trial, xi. 14. 113.</li>
+
+<li>Sublime, sources of it, i. 110.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the strongest emotion of the mind, i. 110.</li>
+<li>  in all things abhors mediocrity, i. 157.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Sublime and Beautiful, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the, i. 67.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  stand on very different foundations, i. 192.</li>
+<li>  comparison between them, i. 205.</li>
+<li>  on the efficient cause of them, i. 208.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Succession, hereditary, the principle of it recognized at the Revolution, iii. 252.</li>
+
+<li>Succession, in visual objects, effects of it explained, i. 222.</li>
+
+<li>Suddenness, a source of the sublime, i. 160.</li>
+
+<li>Suffering, the force to endure, needful to those who aspire to act greatly, v. 250.</li>
+
+<li>Sujah ul Dowlah, his character, xi. 373.</li>
+
+<li>Sully, M. de, an observation of his on revolutions in great states, i. 441.</li>
+
+<li>Superstition, nature of it, iii. 442.</li>
+
+<li>Surplus produce, nature and application of it, iii. 444.</li>
+
+<li>Sweetness, its nature, i. 235.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  relaxing, i. 237.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Swift, Dr., a saying of his concerning public benefactors, ii. 472.</li>
+
+<li>Sympathy, observations on it, i. 177; v. 398.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Taille, nature of, i. 330, 333.</li>
+
+<li>Talents, eminent, obscure and vulgar vices sometimes blended with, iv. 26.</li>
+
+<li>Tallien, the regicide, his sanguinary brutality, vi. 102.</li>
+
+<li>Tamerlane, his conquests in Hindostan, ix. 388.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  remarks on his Institutes, ix. 467; xi. 214.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Tanistry, what, vii. 297.</li>
+
+<li>Taste, discourse concerning it, i. 79.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  definition of it, i. 81.</li>
+<li>  want of it, whence, i. 95.</li>
+<li>  a wrong or bad one, what, i. 95.</li>
+<li>  a good one, i. 96.</li>
+<li>  of no mean importance in the regulation of life, iv. 30.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Taxes, mode of levying them in commercial colonies an important and difficult consideration, i. 354.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  nature of several in America, i. 355.</li>
+<li>  colonial, Lord North's project of a ransom of them by auction, ii. 171.</li>
+<li>  the great contests for freedom in England chiefly upon the question of taxing, ii. 120.</li>
+<li>  taxes on different establishments, remarks concerning them, i. 368.</li>
+<li>  upon salaries, ii. 283.</li>
+<li>  details of English taxes, v. 476.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Terror, sometimes a source of delight, i. 119.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  how, i. 214.</li>
+<li>  an effect of the sublime, i. 130.</li>
+<li>  its physical effects, i. 211.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Test Act, observations on it, iv. 264.</li>
+
+<li>Thanes, brief account of them, vii. 300.</li>
+
+<li>Theatre, general observations on the, iii. 338.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  prosperous condition of it in England, v. 485.</li>
+<li>  made an affair of state in the French Republic, vi. 104.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Theodorus, Archbishop of Canterbury, brief account of him, vii. 249.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his services to the cause of letters in England, vii. 249.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Three Seals, the history of the affair so called, ix. 408.</li>
+
+<li>Time blends the conquered with the conquerors, iv. 272.</li>
+
+<li>Toleration, true, exemplified, iii. 431.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  ought to be tender and large, iv. 258.</li>
+<li>  favorable to, and a part of Christianity, vii. 25.</li>
+<li>  not a virtue of the ancient heathens, vii. 31.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Toulon, fleet of, injudicious measures of the English government with regard to it, iv. 445.</li>
+
+<li>Townshend, Charles, character of him, ii. 64.</li>
+
+<li>Trade, sometimes seems to perish when it only assumes a different form, i. 313.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  quickly and deeply affected by taxes, i. 391.</li>
+<li>  tests of the state of it, what, v. 493.</li>
+<li>  Board of, its character and history, ii. 340.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Tragedy, observations on the effects of, i. 120.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  its subjects and passions, vii. 150.</li>
+<li>  great personages everywhere made the objects of it, xi. 308.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Transmigration of souls, origin of the doctrine, vii. 181.</li>
+
+<li>Treasurer's staff, Lord Coke's account of the purpose of it, ii. 354.</li>
+
+<li>Trent, Council of, its wise introduction of the discipline of seminaries for priests, iv. 231.</li>
+
+<li>Triangle, the poorest of all figures in its effect, i. 152.</li>
+
+<li>Triennial Parliaments, evils of them, vii. 79.</li>
+
+<li>Trinoda necessitas, in Saxon law, what, vii. 325.</li>
+
+<li>Turkey, power sought there with avidity, notwithstanding the danger and insecurity of its tenure, vii. 82.</li>
+
+<li>Tyranny, aggravated by contumely, ii. 484.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the desire and design of it often lurk in the claim of an extravagant liberty, iv. 115.</li><li>  never learns moderation from the ill success of first oppressions, x. 83.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">{431}</a></span></li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Ugliness, the opposite to beauty, but not to proportion and fitness, i. 199.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  consistent with the sublime, i. 199.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Uniformity and succession of parts constitute the artificial infinite, i. 149.</li>
+
+<li>Universal, nothing of this nature can be rationally affirmed or any moral or political subject, iv. 80.</li>
+
+<li>Use, to be carefully attended to in most works of art, i. 154.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  use and habit not causes of pleasure, i. 180.</li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Vanity, nature and tendency of, iv. 26.</li>
+
+<li>Variation, beautiful, why, i. 239.</li>
+
+<li>Vastness, a cause of the sublime, i. 147.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  unity why necessary to it, i. 219.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Vattel, extracts from his Law of Nations, iv. 471.</li>
+
+<li>Venice, its restrictions with respect to offices of state, iv. 249.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  origin of the republic, vii. 331.</li>
+<li>  acquires the island of Cyprus, vii. 428.</li>
+<li>  the only state in Europe which benefited by the Crusades, vii. 428.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Verbal description, a means of raising a stronger emotion than painting, i. 133.</li>
+
+<li>Vice, the instances rare of an immediate transition to it from virtue, i. 421.</li>
+
+<li>Vices, obscure and vulgar ones sometimes blended with eminent talents, iv. 26.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  in common society receive palliating names, xi. 177.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Vicinity, civil, law of, what, v. 322.</li>
+
+<li>Virgil, his figure of Fame obscure, yet magnificent, i. 138.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  remarks on his combination of images at the mouth of hell, i. 146.</li>
+<li>  an example from him of the sublime effect of an uncertain light, i. 161.</li>
+<li>  and of the cries of animals, i. 162.</li>
+<li>  and of powerful smells, i. 163.</li>
+<li>  his picture of the murder of Priam, i. 259.</li>
+<li>  of the Harpies, v. 187</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Virtue, how far the idea of beauty may be applied to it, i. 190.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  description of the gradual extinguishment of it in public men, i. 421.</li>
+<li>  will catch, as well as vice by contact, ii. 242.</li>
+<li>  virtues which cause admiration, i. 188.</li>
+<li>  virtues which engage the heart, i. 188.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Visual objects of great dimensions, why sublime, i. 217.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  effects of succession in them explained, i. 222.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Voters, more in the spirit of the English constitution to lessen than to enlarge their number, i. 370.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul style="list-style: none;"><li>Wages, the rate of them has no direct relation, to the price of provisions, v. 136.</li>
+
+<li>Wales, misgovernment of, by England, for two hundred years, ii. 148.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  alteration of the system in the reign of Henry VIII., ii. 150.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Wales, Frederick, Prince of, project of government devised in his court, i. 447.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  means adopted for its introduction and recommendation to popular favor, i. 451, 453.</li>
+<li>  nature of the party formed for its support, i. 459.</li>
+<li>  name of this party, i. 466.</li>
+<li>  and of the new system, i. 466.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Walpole, Mr., (afterwards Sir Robert,) his character, iv. 128.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  extract from his speech in the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 129.</li>
+<li>  forced into the war with Spain by popular clamor, v. 288.</li>
+<li>  fault in his general proceeding, v. 289.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>War, its original may be very far from being its principal purpose, i. 298.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  not easily reconciled with economy, i. 310.</li>
+<li>  the ground of a political war, laborers and manufacturers not capable of conceiving, v. 38.</li>
+<li>  of England with the French Republic, a war with an armed doctrine, v. 250.</li>
+<li>  can never be carried on long against the will of the people, v. 283.</li>
+<li>  general observations on, v. 318.</li>
+<li>  the power of making it, why put under the discretion of the crown, v. 335.</li>
+<li>  principle of the law of nations with regard to it, vi. 349.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Warwick, Earl of, proceedings in his trial, xi. 32.</li>
+
+<li>Water, why venerated by the Druids, vii. 182.</li>
+
+<li>Weakness, human, in adversity, never pitied by those who applaud prosperous folly and guilt, iv. 183.</li>
+
+<li>Wealth, internal, consists in useful commodities as much as in gold and silver, i. 321.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  of a country, a standard by which to estimate the character of the government, iii. 402.</li>
+<li>  can never rank first in England, iv. 327.</li>
+<li>  ought always to be the servant of virtue and public honor, v. 242.</li>
+<li>  remark of a foreigner on the display of it in the shops in London, v. 496.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Whigs, the great connection of, in the reign of Queen Anne, i. 529.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell, for what purpose carried on by them, iv. 119.</li>
+<li>  statement of the principles of the new Whigs, iv. 120, 151.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">{432}</a></span></li>
+<li>  opinion of the new, with respect to the power of the people over the commonwealth, iv. 161.</li>
+<li>  Appeal from the New to the Old, iv. 57.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Wilkes, Mr., his contest with the court party, i. 497.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  pretence for punishing him, i. 500.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Will and duty contradictory terms, iv. 165.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  duty not subject to will, iv. 165.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>William of Normandy, the extraordinary facility of his conquest of England explained, vii. 288.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his numerous followers accounted for, vii. 333.</li>
+<li>  brief account of his reign, vii. 335.</li>
+<li>  view of his revenue, vii. 346.</li>
+<li>  his character, vii. 362.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>William Rufus, brief account of his reign, vii. 364.</li>
+
+<li>William III., his elevation to the throne an act not of choice, but of necessity, iii. 254.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  his judicious appointments to the vacant bishoprics, iv. 14.</li>
+<li>  the spirited address of the Commons to him respecting the war with France, v. 296.</li>
+<li>  the Grand Alliance against France his masterpiece, v. 297.</li>
+<li>  his indomitable perseverance in pressing this measure, v. 299.</li>
+<li>  address of the House of Lords respecting it, v. 300.</li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Wintoun, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 22.</li>
+
+<li>Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, example of the sublime from that book, i. 155.</li>
+
+<li>Wishes, vehement, the discovery of them generally frustrates their attainment, v. 252.</li>
+
+<li>Wit and judgement, difference between them, i. 87.</li>
+
+<li>Words, the proper medium for conveying the affections of the mind, i. 133.</li>
+<li><ul style="list-style: none;"><li>  affect us in a manner very different from natural objects, painting, or architecture, i. 246.</li>
+<li>  three sorts of them, i. 247.</li>
+<li>  general words before ideas, i. 249.</li>
+<li>  effect of them, i. 250.</li>
+<li>  may affect without raising images, i. 252.</li>
+<li>  this exemplified in the case of the poet Blacklock, i. 252.</li>
+<li>  and of Saunderson, the mathematician, i. 253.</li>
+<li>  how words influence the passions, i. 258.</li>
+<li>  the only means by which many ideas have ever been at all presented to the senses, i. 259.</li>
+<li>  the source of a great part of the mischiefs that vex the world, vi. 397.</li>
+<li>  the world much influenced by them, xi. 172.</li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Writers, when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind, iii. 380</li></ul>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable
+Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.), by Edmund Burke
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF EDMUND BURKE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 18315-h.htm or 18315-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/3/1/18315/
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Susan Skinner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at
+http://gallica.bnf.fr)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/18315-h/images/001.png b/18315-h/images/001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aac8ab0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/18315-h/images/001.png
diff --git a/18315.txt b/18315.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e7dc79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/18315.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14580 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund
+Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.), by Edmund Burke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.)
+
+Author: Edmund Burke
+
+Release Date: May 5, 2006 [EBook #18315]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF EDMUND BURKE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Susan Skinner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at
+http://gallica.bnf.fr)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS
+
+OF
+
+THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
+
+EDMUND BURKE
+
+
+IN TWELVE VOLUMES
+
+VOLUME THE TWELFTH
+
+
+[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms.]
+
+
+LONDON
+JOHN C. NIMMO
+14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
+MDCCCLXXXVII
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. XII.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+SPEECHES IN THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS,
+ESQUIRE, LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL. (CONTINUED.)
+
+  SPEECH IN GENERAL REPLY.
+
+    FIFTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1794                                  3
+
+    SIXTH DAY: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11                                     75
+
+    SEVENTH DAY: THURSDAY, JUNE 12                                   143
+
+    EIGHTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 14                                    235
+
+    NINTH DAY: MONDAY, JUNE 16                                       335
+
+GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS                                            401
+
+INDEX                                                                407
+
+
+
+
+SPEECHES
+
+IN
+
+THE IMPEACHMENT
+
+OF
+
+WARREN HASTINGS, ESQUIRE,
+
+LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL.
+
+
+SPEECH IN GENERAL REPLY.
+
+(CONTINUED.)
+
+June, 1794.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+FIFTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--We will now resume the consideration of the remaining part of
+our charge, and of the prisoner's attempts to defend himself against it.
+
+Mr. Hastings, well knowing (what your Lordships must also by this time
+be perfectly satisfied was the case) that this unfortunate Nabob had no
+will of his own, draws down his poor victim to Chunar by an order to
+attend the Governor-General. If the Nabob ever wrote to Mr. Hastings,
+expressing a request or desire for this meeting, his letter was
+unquestionably dictated to him by the prisoner. We have laid a ground of
+direct proof before you, that the Nabob's being at Chunar, that his
+proceedings there, and that all his acts were so dictated, and
+consequently must be so construed.
+
+I shall now proceed to lay before your Lordships the acts of oppression
+committed by Mr. Hastings through his two miserable instruments: the
+one, his passive instrument, the Nabob; the other, Mr. Middleton, his
+active instrument, in his subsequent plans for the entire destruction of
+that country. In page 513 of the printed Minutes you have Mr.
+Middleton's declaration of his promptitude to represent everything
+agreeably to Mr. Hastings's wishes.
+
+     "My dear Sir,--I have this day answered your public letter in the
+     form you seemed to expect. I hope there is nothing in it that may
+     to you appear too pointed. If you wish the matter to be otherwise
+     understood than I have taken up and stated it, I need not say I
+     shall be ready to conform to whatever you may prescribe, and to
+     take upon myself any share of the blame of the hitherto
+     non-performance of the stipulations made on behalf of the Nabob;
+     though I do assure you I myself represented to his Excellency and
+     the ministers, conceiving it to be your desire, that the apparent
+     assumption of the reins of his government, (for in that light he
+     undoubtedly considered it at the first view,) as specified in the
+     agreement executed by him, was not meant to be fully and literally
+     enforced, but that it was necessary you should have something to
+     show on your side, as the Company were deprived of a benefit
+     without a requital; and upon the faith of this assurance alone, I
+     believe I may safely affirm, his Excellency's objections to signing
+     the treaty were given up. If I have understood the matter wrong, or
+     misconceived your design, I am truly sorry for it. However, it is
+     not too late to correct the error; and I am ready to undertake,
+     and, God willing, to carry through, whatever you may, on the
+     receipt of my public letter, tell me is your final resolve.
+
+     "If you determine, at all events, that the measures of reducing the
+     Nabob's army, &c., shall be immediately undertaken, I shall take it
+     as a particular favor, if you will indulge me with a line at
+     Fyzabad, that I may make the necessary previous arrangements with
+     respect to the disposal of my family, which I would not wish to
+     retain here, in the event either of a rupture with the Nabob, or
+     the necessity of employing our forces on the reduction of his
+     aumils and troops. This done, I can begin the work in three days
+     after my return from Fyzabad."
+
+Besides this letter, which I think is sufficiently clear upon the
+subject, there is also another much more clear upon your Lordships'
+minutes, much more distinct and much more pointed, expressive of his
+being resolved to make such representations of every matter as the
+Governor-General may wish. Now a man who is master of the manner in
+which facts are represented, and whose subsequent conduct is to be
+justified by such representations, is not simply accountable for his
+conduct; he is accountable for culpably attempting to form, on false
+premises, the judgment of others upon that conduct. This species of
+delinquency must therefore be added to the rest; and I wish your
+Lordships to carry generally in your minds, that there is not one single
+syllable of representation made by any of those parties, except where
+truth may happen to break out in spite of all the means of concealment,
+which is not to be considered as the representation of Mr. Hastings
+himself in justification of his own conduct.
+
+The letter which I have just now read was written preparatory to the
+transaction which I am now going to state, called _the treaty of
+Chunar_. Having brought his miserable victim thither, he forced him to
+sign a paper called a treaty: but such was the fraud in every part of
+this treaty, that Mr. Middleton himself, who was the instrument and the
+chief agent in it, acknowledges that the Nabob was persuaded to sign it
+by the assurance given to him that it never was to be executed. Here,
+then, your Lordships have a prince first compelled to enter into a
+negotiation, and then induced to accede to a treaty by false assurances
+that it should not be executed, which he declares nothing but force
+should otherwise have compelled him to accede to.
+
+The first circumstance in this transaction that I shall lay before your
+Lordships is that the treaty is declared to have for its objects two
+modes of relieving the Nabob from his distresses,--from distresses which
+we have stated, and which Mr. Hastings has not only fully admitted, but
+has himself proved in the clearest manner to your Lordships. The first
+was by taking away that _wicked rabble_, the British troops, represented
+by Mr. Hastings as totally ruinous to the Nabob's affairs, and
+particularly by removing that part of them which was called the new
+brigade. Another remedial part of the treaty regarded the British
+pensioners. It is in proof before your Lordships that Mr. Hastings
+agreed to recall from Oude that body of pensioners, whose conduct there
+is described in such strong terms as being ruinous to the Vizier and to
+all his affairs. These pensioners Mr. Hastings engaged to recall; but he
+never did recall them. We refer your Lordships to the evidence before
+you, in proof that these odious pensioners, so distressing to the Nabob,
+so ruinous to his affairs, and so disgraceful to our government, were
+not only _not_ recalled by Mr. Hastings, but that, both afterwards, and
+upon the very day of signing the treaty, (as Mr. Middleton himself tells
+you,) upon that very day, I say, he recommended to the Nabob that these
+pensioners might remain upon that very establishment which, by a solemn
+treaty of his own making and his own dictating, he had agreed to
+relieve from this intolerable burden.
+
+Mr. Hastings, your Lordships will remember, had departed from Benares,
+frustrated in his designs of extorting 500,000_l._ from the Rajah for
+the Company's use. He had ravaged the country, without obtaining any
+benefit for his masters: the British soldiers having divided the only
+spoil, and nothing remaining for the share of his employers but
+disgrace. He was therefore afraid to return without having something of
+a lucrative pecuniary nature to exhibit to the Company. Having this
+object in view, Oude appears to have first presented itself to his
+notice, as a country from which some advantage of a pecuniary kind might
+be derived; and accordingly he turned in his head a vast variety of
+stratagems for effecting his purpose.
+
+The first article that occurs in the treaty of Chunar is a power given
+to the Nabob to resume all the jaghires not guarantied by the Company,
+and to give pensions to all those persons who should be removed from
+their jaghires.
+
+Now the first thing which would naturally occur to a man, who was going
+to raise a revenue through the intervention of the prince of the
+country, would be to recommend to that prince a better economy in his
+affairs, and a rational and equal assessment upon his subjects, in order
+to furnish the amount of the demand which he was about to make upon him.
+I need not tell your Lordships, trained and formed as your minds are to
+the rules and orders of good government, that there is no way by which a
+prince can justly assess his subjects but by assessing them all in
+proportion to their respective abilities, and that, if a prince should
+make such a body as the House of Lords in this kingdom (which comes
+near the case I am going to state) separately the subject of assessment,
+such a thing would be contrary to all the principles of regular and just
+taxation in any country in the universe. Some men may possibly, by
+locality or privileges, be excepted from certain taxes, but no taxation
+ever can be just that is thrown upon some particular class only; and if
+that class happen to be small and the demand great, the injustice done
+is directly proportionable to the greatness of the exaction, and
+inversely to the number of the persons who are the objects of it: these
+are clear, irrefragable, and eternal principles. But if, instead of
+exacting a part by a proportionable rate, the prince should go further
+and attempt to shake the whole mass of property itself, a mass perhaps
+not much less than that which is possessed by the whole peers of Great
+Britain, by confiscating the whole of the estates at once, as a
+government resource, without the charge or pretence of any crime, I say
+that such an act would be oppressive, cruel, and wicked in the highest
+degree. Yet this is what Mr. Hastings projected, and actually did
+accomplish.
+
+My Lords, at the treaty of Chunar, as it is called, Mr. Hastings (for he
+always artfully feels his way as he proceeds) first says, that the Nabob
+shall be permitted to do this act, if he pleases. He does not assume the
+government. He does not compel the Nabob to do anything. He does not
+force upon him this abandoned and wicked confiscation of the property of
+the whole nobility of a great country. All that he says is this,--"The
+Nabob _may be permitted_ to resume these jaghires." Why permitted? If
+the act had been legal, proper, and justifiable, he did not want our
+permission; he was a sovereign in his own dominions. But Mr. Hastings
+recollected that some of these jaghires (as they are called, and on
+which I shall say a very few words to your Lordships) were guarantied by
+the Company. The jaghires of his own house, of his mother and
+grandmother, were guarantied by us. I must inform your Lordships, that,
+upon some of our other exactions at an earlier period, the Nabob had
+endeavored to levy a forced loan upon the jaghiredars. This forced loan
+was made and submitted to by those people upon a direct assurance of
+their rights in the jaghires, which right was guarantied by the British
+Resident, not only to the Begums, and to the whole family of the Nabob,
+but also to all the other objects of the tax.
+
+Before I proceed, I will beg leave to state to you briefly the nature of
+these jaghires. The jaghiredars, the holders of jaghires, form the body
+of the principal Mahometan nobility. The great nobility of that country
+are divided into two parts. One part consists of the zemindars, who are
+the ancient proprietors of land, and the hereditary nobility of the
+country: these are mostly Gentoos. The Mahometans form the other part,
+whose whole interest in the land consists in the jaghires: for very few
+indeed of them are zemindars anywhere, in some of the provinces none of
+them are so; the whole of them are jaghiredars.
+
+We have heard, my Lords, much discussion about jaghires. It is in proof
+before your Lordships that they are of two sorts: that a jaghire
+signifies exactly what the word _fee_ does in the English language, or
+_feodum_ in the barbarous Latin of the Feudists; that it is a word which
+signifies a salary or a maintenance, as did originally the English word
+_fee_, derived from the word _feod_ and _feodum_. These jaghires, like
+other fees and like other feods, were given in land, as a maintenance:
+some with the condition of service, some without any condition; some
+were annexed to an office, some were granted as the support of a
+dignity, and none were granted for a less term than life, except those
+that were immediately annexed to a lease. We have shown your Lordships
+(and in this we have followed the example of Mr. Hastings) that some of
+them are fees granted actually in perpetuity; and in fact many of them
+are so granted. We are farther to tell your Lordships, that by the
+custom of the empire they are almost all grown, as the feods in Europe
+are grown, by use, into something which is at least virtually an
+inheritance. This is the state of the jaghires and jaghiredars.
+
+Among these jaghires we find, what your Lordships would expect to find,
+an ample provision for all the nobility of that illustrious family of
+which the Nabob is the head: a prince whose family, both by father and
+mother, notwithstanding the slander of the prisoner against his
+benefactor, was undoubtedly of the first and most distinguished nobility
+of the Mahometan empire. Accordingly, his uncles, all his near
+relations, his mother, grandmother, all possessed jaghires, some of very
+long standing, and most of them not given by the Nabob.
+
+I take some pains in explaining this business, because I trust your
+Lordships will have a strong feeling against any confiscation for the
+purpose of revenue. Believe me, my Lords, if there is anything which
+will root the present order of things out of Europe, it will begin, as
+we see it has already begun in a neighboring country, by confiscating,
+for the purposes of the state, grants made to classes of men, let them
+be held by what names or be supposed susceptible of what abuses soever.
+I will venture to say that Jacobinism never can strike a more deadly
+blow against property, rank, and dignity than your Lordships, if you
+were to acquit this man, would strike against your own dignity, and the
+very being of the society in which we live.
+
+Your Lordships will find in your printed Minutes who the jaghiredars
+were, and what was the amount of their estates. The jaghires of which
+Mr. Hastings authorized the confiscation, or what he calls a
+_resumption_, appear from Mr. Purling's account, when first the forced
+loan was levied upon them under his Residentship, to amount to
+285,000_l._ sterling per annum; which 285,000_l._, if rated and valued
+according to the different value of provisions and other necessaries of
+life in that country and in England, will amount, as near as may be, to
+about 600,000_l._ a year. I am within compass. Everybody conversant with
+India will say it is equivalent at least to 600,000_l._ a year in
+England; and what a blow such a confiscation as this would be on the
+fortunes of the peers of Great Britain your Lordships will judge. I like
+to see your estates as great as they are; I wish they were greater than
+they are; but whatever they are, I wish, above all that they should be
+perpetual. For dignity and property in this country, _Esto perpetua_
+shall be my prayer this day, and the last prayer of my life. The
+Commons, therefore, of Great Britain, those guardians of property, who
+will not suffer the monarch they love, the government which they adore,
+to levy one shilling upon the subject in any other way than the law and
+statutes of this kingdom prescribe, will not suffer, nor can they bear
+the idea, that any single class of people should be chosen to be the
+objects of a contrary conduct, nor that even the Nabob of Oude should be
+permitted to act upon such a flagitious principle. When an English
+governor has substituted a power of his own instead of the legal
+government of the country, as I have proved this man to have done, if he
+found the prince going to do an act which would shake the property of
+all the nobility of the country, he surely ought to raise his hand and
+say, "You shall not make my name your sanction for such an atrocious and
+abominable act as this confiscation would be."
+
+Mr. Hastings, however, whilst he gives, with an urbanity for which he is
+so much praised, his consent to this confiscation, adds, there must be
+pensions secured for all persons losing their estates, who had the
+security of our guaranty. Your Lordships know that Mr. Hastings, by his
+guaranty, had secured their jaghires to the Nabob's own relations and
+family. One would have imagined, that, if the estates of those who were
+without any security were to be confiscated at his pleasure, those at
+least who were guarantied by the Company, such as the Begums of Oude and
+several of the principal nobility of the Nabob's family, would have been
+secure. He, indeed, says that pensions shall be given them; for at this
+time he had not got the length of violating, without shame or remorse,
+all the guaranties of the Company. "There shall," says he, "be pensions
+given." If pensions were to be given to the value of the estate, I ask,
+What has this violent act done? You shake the security of property, and,
+instead of suffering a man to gather his own profits with his own hands,
+you turn him into a pensioner upon the public treasury. I can conceive
+that such a measure will render these persons miserable dependants
+instead of independent nobility; but I cannot conceive what financial
+object can be answered by paying that in pension which you are to
+receive in revenue. This is directly contrary to financial economy. For
+when you stipulate to pay out of the treasury of government a certain
+pension, and take upon you the receipts of an estate, you adopt a
+measure by which government is almost sure of being a loser. You charge
+it with a certain fixed sum, and, even upon a supposition that under the
+management of the public the estate will be as productive as it was
+under the management of its private owner, (a thing highly improbable,)
+you take your chance of a reimbursement subject to all the extra
+expense, and to all the accidents that may happen to a public revenue.
+This confiscation could not, therefore, be justified as a measure of
+economy; it must have been designed merely for the sake of shaking and
+destroying the property of the country.
+
+The whole transaction, my Lords, was an act of gross violence, ushered
+in by a gross fraud. It appears that no pensions were ever intended to
+be paid; and this you will naturally guess would be the event, when such
+a strange metamorphosis was to be made as that of turning a great landed
+interest into a pensionary payment. As it could answer no other purpose,
+so it could be intended for no other, than that of getting possession of
+these jaghires by fraud. This man, my Lords, cannot commit a robbery
+without indulging himself at the same time in the practice of his
+favorite arts of fraud and falsehood.
+
+And here I must again remind your Lordships, that at the time of the
+treaty of Chunar the jaghires were held in the following manner. Of the
+285,000_l._ a year which was to be confiscated, the old grants of Sujah
+Dowlah, [and?] the grandfather of the Nabob, amounted to near two thirds
+of the whole, as you will find in the paper to which we refer you. By
+this confiscation, therefore, the Nabob was authorized to _resume_
+grants of which he had not been the grantor.
+
+    [_Mr. Burke here read the list of the jaghires._]
+
+Now, my Lords, you see that all these estates, except 25,782_l._ a year,
+were either jaghires for the Nabob's own immediate family, settled by
+his father upon his mother, and by his father's father upon his
+grandmother, and upon Salar Jung, his uncle, or were the property of the
+most considerable nobility, to the gross amount of 285,000_l._ Mr.
+Hastings confesses that the Nabob reluctantly made the confiscation to
+the extent proposed. Why? "Because," says he, "the orderlies, namely,
+certain persons so called, subservient to his debaucheries, were persons
+whom he wished to spare." Now I am to show you that this man, whatever
+faults he may have in his private morals, (with which we have nothing at
+all to do,) has been slandered throughout by Mr. Hastings. Take his own
+account of the matter. "The Nabob," says he, "would have confiscated all
+the rest, except his orderlies, whom he would have spared; but I,
+finding where his partiality lay, compelled him to sacrifice the whole;
+for otherwise he would have sacrificed the good to save the bad:
+whereas," says Mr. Hastings, "in effect my principle was to sacrifice
+the good, and at the same time to punish the bad." Now compare the
+account he gives of the proceedings of Asoph ul Dowlah with his own.
+Asoph ul Dowlah, to save some unworthy persons who had jaghires, would,
+if left to his own discretion, have confiscated those only of the
+deserving; while Mr. Hastings, to effect the inclusion of the worthless
+in the confiscation, confiscates the jaghires of the innocent and the
+virtuous men of high rank, and of those who had all the ties of Nature
+to plead for the Nabob's forbearance, and reduced them to a state of
+dependency and degradation.
+
+Now, supposing these two villanous plans, neither of which your
+Lordships can bear to hear the sound of, to stand equal in point of
+morality, let us see how they stand in point of calculation. The
+unexceptionable part of the 285,000_l._ amounted to 260,000_l._ a year;
+whereas, supposing every part of the new grants had been made to the
+most unworthy persons, it only amounted to 25,000_l._ a year. Therefore,
+by his own account, given to you and to the Company, upon this occasion
+he has confiscated 260,000_l._ a year, the property of innocent, if not
+of meritorious individuals, in order to punish by confiscation those who
+had 25,000_l._ a year only. This is the account he gives you himself of
+his honor, his justice, and his policy in these proceedings.
+
+But, my Lords, he shall not escape so. It is in your minutes, that so
+far was the Nabob from wishing to save the new exceptionable grants,
+that, at the time of the forced loan I have mentioned, and also when the
+resumption was proposed, he was perfectly willing to give up every one
+of them, and desired only that his mother, his uncles, and his
+relations, with other individuals, the prime of the Mahometan nobility
+of that country, should be spared. Is it not enough that this poor
+Nabob, this wretched prince, is made a slave to the man now standing at
+your bar, that he is made by him a shame and a scandal to his family,
+his race, and his country, but he must be cruelly aspersed, and have
+faults and crimes attributed to him that do not belong to him? I know
+nothing of his private character and conduct: Mr. Hastings, who deals in
+scandalous anecdotes, knows them: but I take it upon the face of Mr.
+Purling's assertion, and I say, that the Nabob would have consented to
+an arbitrary taxation of the jaghires, and would have given up to
+absolute confiscation every man except those honorable persons I have
+mentioned.
+
+The prisoner himself has called Mr. Wombwell to prove the names of those
+infamous persons with a partiality for whom Mr. Hastings has aspersed
+the Nabob, in order to lay the ground for the destruction of his family.
+They amount to only six in number; and when we come to examine these
+six, we find that their jaghires were perfectly contemptible. The list
+of the other jaghiredars, your Lordships see, fills up pages; and the
+amount of their incomes I have already stated. Your Lordships now see
+how inconsiderable, both in number and amount, were the culpable
+jaghires, in the destruction of which he has involved the greater number
+and the meritorious. You see that the Nabob never did propose any
+exemption of the former at any time; that this was a slander and a
+calumny on that unhappy man, in order to defend the violent acts of the
+prisoner, who has recourse to slander and calumny as a proper way to
+defend violence, outrage, and wrongs.
+
+We have now gone through the first stage of Mr. Hastings's confiscation
+of the estates of these unhappy people. When it came to be put in
+execution, Mr. Middleton finds the Nabob reluctant in the greatest
+degree to make this sacrifice of his family and of all his nobility. It
+touched him in every way in which shame and sympathy can affect a man.
+He falls at the feet of Mr. Middleton; he says, "I signed the treaty of
+Chunar upon an assurance that it was never meant to be put in force."
+Mr. Middleton nevertheless proceeds; he sends the family of the Nabob
+out of the country; but he entertains fears of a general revolt as the
+consequence of this tyrannical act, and refers the case back to Mr.
+Hastings, who insists upon its being executed in its utmost extent. The
+Nabob again remonstrates in the strongest manner; he begs, he prays, he
+dissembles, he delays. One day he pretends to be willing to submit, the
+next he hangs back, just as the violence of Mr. Hastings or his own
+natural feelings and principles of justice dragged him one way or
+dragged him another. Mr. Middleton, trembling, and under the awe of that
+_dreadful responsibility_ under which your Lordships may remember Mr.
+Hastings had expressly laid him upon that occasion, ventures at once to
+usurp the Nabob's government. He usurped it openly and avowedly. He
+declared that he himself would issue his purwannahs as governor of the
+country, for the purpose of executing this abominable confiscation. He
+assumed, I say, to himself the government of the country, and Mr.
+Hastings had armed him with a strong military force for that purpose; he
+declared he would order those troops to march for his support; he at
+last got this reluctant, struggling Nabob to consent in the manner we
+have described.
+
+I shall now read to your Lordships Mr. Middleton's letters, that you may
+hear these men with their own mouths describing their own acts, and that
+your Lordships may then judge whether the highest tone and language of
+crimination comes up to their own description of their own proceedings.
+
+        "_Lucknow, the 6th of Dec., 1781._
+
+     "Finding the Nabob wavering in his determination about the
+     resumption of the jaghires, I this day, in presence of, and with
+     the minister's concurrence, ordered the necessary purwannahs to be
+     written to the several aumils for that purpose, and it was my firm
+     resolution to have dispatched them this evening, with proper people
+     to see them punctually and implicitly carried into execution; but
+     before they were all transcribed, I received a message from the
+     Nabob, who had been informed by the minister of the resolution I
+     had taken, entreating that I would withhold the purwannahs till
+     to-morrow morning, when he would attend me, and afford me
+     satisfaction on this point. As the loss of a few hours in the
+     dispatch of the purwannahs appeared of little moment, and as it is
+     possible the Nabob, seeing that the business will at all events be
+     done, may make it an act of his own, I have consented to indulge
+     him in his request; but, be the result of our interview whatever it
+     may, nothing shall prevent the orders being issued to-morrow,
+     either by him or myself, with the concurrence of the ministers.
+     Your pleasure respecting the Begums I have learnt from Sir Elijah,
+     and the measure heretofore proposed will soon follow the resumption
+     of the jaghires; from both, or, indeed, from the former alone, I
+     have no doubt of the complete liquidation of the Company's
+     balance."
+
+
+       "_Lucknow, the 7th Dec., 1781._
+
+     "My dear Sir,--I had the honor to address you yesterday, informing
+     you of the steps I had taken in regard to the resumption of the
+     jaghires. This morning the Vizier came to me, according to his
+     agreement, but seemingly without any intention or desire to yield
+     me satisfaction on the subject under discussion; for, after a great
+     deal of conversation, consisting on his part of trifling evasion
+     and puerile excuses for withholding his assent to the measure,
+     though at the same time professing the most implicit submission to
+     your wishes, I found myself without any other resource than the one
+     of employing that exclusive authority with which I consider your
+     instructions to vest me. I therefore declared to the Nabob, in
+     presence of the minister and Mr. Johnson, who I desired might bear
+     witness of the conversation, that I construed his rejection of the
+     measure proposed as a breach of his solemn promise to you, and an
+     unwillingness to yield that assistance which was evidently in his
+     power towards liquidating his heavy accumulated debt to the
+     Company, and that I must in consequence determine, in my own
+     justification, to issue immediately the purwannahs, which had only
+     been withheld in the sanguine hope that he would be prevailed upon
+     to make that his own act, which nothing but the most urgent
+     necessity could force me to make mine. He left me without any
+     reply, but afterwards sent for his minister, and authorized him to
+     give me hopes that my requisition would be complied with; on which
+     I expressed my satisfaction, but declared that I could admit of no
+     further delays, and, unless I received his Excellency's formal
+     acquiescence before the evening, I should then most assuredly issue
+     my purwannahs: which I have accordingly done, not having had any
+     assurances from his Excellency that could justify a further
+     suspension. I shall as soon as possible inform you of the effect of
+     the purwannahs, which in many parts I am apprehensive it will be
+     found necessary to enforce with military aid; I am not, however,
+     entirely without hopes that the Nabob, when he sees the inefficacy
+     of further opposition, may alter his conduct, and prevent the
+     confusion and disagreeable consequences which would be too likely
+     to result from the prosecution of a measure of such importance
+     without his concurrence. His Excellency talks of going to Fyzabad,
+     for the purpose heretofore mentioned, in three or four days; I wish
+     he may be serious in this intention, and you may rest assured I
+     shall spare no pains to keep him to it."
+
+
+       "_Lucknow, 28th December, 1781._
+
+     "If your new demand is to be insisted upon, which your letter seems
+     to portend, I must beg your precise orders upon it; as, from the
+     difficulties I have within these few days experienced in carrying
+     the points you had enjoined with the Nabob, I have the best grounds
+     for believing that he would consider it a direct breach of the late
+     agreement, and totally reject the proposal as such; and I must own
+     to you, that, in his present fermented state of mind, I could
+     expect nothing less than despair and a declared rupture.
+
+     "He has by no means been yet able to furnish me with means of
+     paying off the arrears due to the temporary brigade, to the
+     stipulated term of its continuance in his service. The funds
+     necessary for paying off and discharging his own military
+     establishment under British officers, and his pension list, have
+     been raised, on the private credit of Mr. Johnson and myself, from
+     the shroffs of this place, to whom we are at this moment pledged
+     for many lacs of rupees; and without such aid, which I freely and
+     at all hazards yielded, because I conceived it was your anxious
+     desire to relieve the Nabob as soon as possible of this heavy
+     burden, the establishment must have been at his charge to this
+     time, and probably for months to come, while his resources were
+     strained to the utmost to furnish jaidads for its maintenance to
+     this period. I therefore hesitate not to declare it utterly
+     impossible for him, under any circumstances whatever, to provide
+     funds for the payment of the troops you now propose to send him.
+
+     "The wresting Furruckabad, Kyraghur, and Fyzoola Khan's country
+     from his government, (for in that light, my dear Sir, I can
+     faithfully assure you, he views the measures adopted in respect to
+     those countries,) together with the resumption of all the jaghires,
+     so much against his inclination, have already brought the Nabob to
+     a persuasion that nothing less than his destruction, or the
+     annihilation of every shadow of his power, is meant; and all my
+     labors to convince him to the contrary have proved abortive. A
+     settled melancholy has seized him, and his health is reduced beyond
+     conception; and I do most humbly believe that the march of four
+     regiments of sepoys towards Lucknow, under whatever circumstances
+     it might be represented, would be considered by him as a force
+     ultimately to be used in securing his person. In short, my dear
+     Sir, it is a matter of such immediate moment, and involving,
+     apparently, such very serious and important consequences, that I
+     have not only taken upon me to suspend the communication of it to
+     the Nabob until I should be honored with your further commands, but
+     have also ventured to write the inclosed letter to Colonel Morgan:
+     liberties which I confidently trust you will excuse, when you
+     consider that I can be actuated by no other motive than a zeal for
+     the public service, and that, if, after all, you determine that the
+     measure shall be insisted on, it will be only the loss of six or at
+     most eight days in proposing it. But in the last event, I earnestly
+     entreat your orders may be explicit and positive, that I may
+     clearly know what lengths you would wish me to proceed in carrying
+     them into execution. I again declare it is my firm belief, and
+     assure yourself, my dear Mr. Hastings, I am not influenced in this
+     declaration by any considerations but my public duty and my
+     personal attachment to you, that the enforcing the measure you have
+     proposed would be productive of an open rupture between us and the
+     Nabob; nay, that the first necessary step towards carrying it into
+     effect must be, on our part, a declaration of hostility."
+
+Your Lordships have now before your eyes proofs, furnished by Mr.
+Hastings himself from his correspondence with Mr. Middleton,
+irrefragable proofs, that this Nabob, who is stated to have made the
+proposition himself, was dragged to the signature of it; and that the
+troops which are supposed, and fraudulently stated, (and I wish your
+Lordships particularly to observe this,) to have been sent to assist
+him in this measure, were considered by him as a body of troops sent to
+imprison him, and to free him from all the troubles and pains of
+government.
+
+When Mr. Hastings sent the troops for the purpose, as he pretended, of
+assisting the Nabob in the execution of a measure which was really
+adopted in direct opposition to the wishes of that prince, what other
+conclusion could be drawn, but that they were sent to overawe, not to
+assist him? The march of alien troops into a country upon that occasion
+could have no object but hostility; they could have been sent with no
+other design but that of bringing disgrace upon the Nabob, by making him
+the instrument of his family's ruin, and of the destruction of his
+nobility. Your Lordships, therefore, will not wonder that this miserable
+man should have sunk into despair, and that he should have felt the
+weight of his oppression doubly aggravated by its coming from such a man
+as Mr. Hastings, and by its being enforced by such a man as Mr.
+Middleton.
+
+And here I must press one observation upon your Lordships: I do not know
+a greater insult that can be offered to a man born to command than to
+find himself made the tool of a set of obscure men, come from an unknown
+country, without anything to distinguish them but an usurped power.
+Never shall I, out of compliment to any persons, because they happen to
+be my own countrymen, disguise my feelings, or renounce the dictates of
+Nature and of humanity. If we send out obscure people, unknowing and
+unknown, to exercise such acts as these, I must say it is a bitter
+aggravation of the victim's suffering. Oppression and robbery are at all
+times evils; but they are more bearable, when exercised by persons whom
+we have been habituated to regard with awe, and to whom mankind for ages
+have been accustomed to bow.
+
+Now does the history of tyranny furnish, does the history of popular
+violence deposing kings furnish, anything like the dreadful deposition
+of this prince, and the cruel and abominable tyranny that has been
+exercised over him? Consider, too, my Lords, for what object all this
+was done. Was Mr. Hastings endeavoring, by his arbitrary interference
+and the use of his superior power, to screen a people from the
+usurpation and power of a tyrant,--from any strong and violent acts
+against property, against dignity, against nobility, against the freedom
+of his people? No: you see here a monarch deposed, in effect, by persons
+pretending to be his allies, and assigning what are pretended to be his
+wishes as the motive for using his usurped authority in the execution of
+these acts of violence against his own family and his subjects. You see
+him struggling against this violent prostitution of his authority. He
+refuses the sanction of his name, which before he had given up to Mr.
+Hastings to be used as he pleased, and only begs not to be made an
+instrument of wrong which his soul abhors, and which would make him
+infamous throughout the world. Mr. Middleton, however, assumes the
+sovereignty of the country. "I," he says, "am Nabob of Oude: the
+jaghires shall be confiscated: I have given my orders, and they shall be
+supported by a military force."
+
+I am ashamed to have so far distrusted your Lordships' honorable and
+generous feelings as to have offered you, upon this occasion, any
+remarks which you must have run before me in making. Those feelings
+which you have, and ought to have, feelings born in the breasts of all
+men, and much more in men of your Lordships' elevated rank, render my
+remarks unnecessary. I need not, therefore, ask what you feel, when a
+foreign resident at a prince's court takes upon himself to force that
+prince to act the part of a tyrant, and, upon his resistance, openly and
+avowedly assumes the sovereignty of the country. You have it in proof
+that Mr. Middleton did this. He not only put his own name to the orders
+for this horrible confiscation, but he actually proceeded to dispossess
+the jaghiredars of their lands, and to send them out of the country. And
+whom does he send, in the place of this plundered body of nobility, to
+take possession of the country? Why, the usurers of Benares. Yes, my
+Lords, he immediately mortgages the whole country to the usurers of
+Benares, for the purpose of raising money upon it: giving it up to those
+bloodsuckers, dispossessed of that nobility, whose interest, whose duty,
+whose feelings, and whose habits made them the natural protectors of the
+people.
+
+My Lords, we here see a body of usurers put into possession of all the
+estates of the nobility: let us now see if this act was necessary, even
+for the avowed purposes of its agents,--the relief of the Nabob's
+financial difficulties, and the payment of his debts to the Company. Mr.
+Middleton has told your Lordships that these jaghires would pay the
+Company's debt completely in two years. Then would it not have been
+better to have left these estates in the hands of their owners, and to
+have oppressed them in some moderate, decent way? Might they not have
+left the jaghiredars to raise the sums required by some settlement with
+the bankers of Benares, in which the repayment of the money within five
+or six years might have been secured, and the jaghiredars have had in
+the mean time something to subsist upon? Oh, no! these victims must have
+nothing to live upon. They must be turned out. And why? Mr. Hastings
+commands it.
+
+Here I must come in aid of Mr. Middleton a little; for one cannot but
+pity the miserable instruments that have to act under Mr. Hastings. I do
+not mean to apologize for Mr. Middleton, but to pity the situation of
+persons who, being servants of the Company, were converted, by the
+usurpation of this man, into his subjects and his slaves. The mind of
+Mr. Middleton revolts. You see him reluctant to proceed. The Nabob begs
+a respite. You find in the Resident a willingness to comply. Even Mr.
+Middleton is placable. Mr. Hastings alone is obdurate. His resolution to
+rob and to destroy was not to be moved, and the estates of the whole
+Mahometan nobility of a great kingdom were confiscated in a moment. Your
+Lordships will observe that his orders to Mr. Middleton allow no
+forbearance. He writes thus to him.
+
+     "Sir,--My mind has been for some days suspended between two
+     opposite impulses: one arising from the necessity of my return to
+     Calcutta; the other, from the apprehension of my presence being
+     more necessary and more urgently wanted at Lucknow. Your answer to
+     this shall decide my choice.
+
+     "I have waited thus long in the hopes of hearing that some progress
+     had been made in the execution of the plan which I concluded with
+     the Nabob in September last. I do not find that any step towards
+     it has been yet taken, though three months are elapsed, and little
+     more than that period did appear to me requisite to have
+     accomplished the most essential parts of it, and to have brought
+     the whole into train. This tardiness, and the opposition prepared
+     to the only decided act yet undertaken, have a bad appearance. I
+     approve the Nabob's resolutions to deprive the Begums of their
+     ill-employed treasures. In both services, it must be your care to
+     prevent an abuse of the powers given to those that are employed in
+     them. You yourself ought to be personally present. You must not
+     allow any negotiation or forbearance, but must prosecute both
+     services, until the Begums are at the entire mercy of the Nabob,
+     their jaghires in the quiet possession of his aumils, and their
+     wealth in such charge as may secure it against private
+     embezzlement. You will have a force more than sufficient to effect
+     both these purposes.
+
+     "The reformation of his army and the new settlement of his revenues
+     are also points of immediate concern, and ought to be immediately
+     concluded. Has anything been done in either?
+
+     "I now demand and require you most solemnly to answer me. Are you
+     confident in your own ability to accomplish all these purposes, and
+     the other points of my instructions? If you reply that you are, I
+     will depart with a quiet and assured mind to the Presidency, but
+     leave you a dreadful responsibility, if you disappoint me. If you
+     tell me that you cannot rely upon your power, and the other means
+     which you possess for performing these services, I will free you
+     from the charge. I will proceed myself to Lucknow, and I will
+     myself undertake them; and in that case, I desire that you will
+     immediately order bearers to be stationed, for myself and two other
+     gentlemen, between Lucknow and Allahabad, and I will set out from
+     hence in three days after the receipt of your letter.
+
+     "I am sorry that I am under the necessity of writing in this
+     pressing manner. I trust implicitly to your integrity, I am certain
+     of your attachment to myself, and I know that your capacity is
+     equal to any service; but I must express my doubts of your firmness
+     and activity, and above all of your recollection of my
+     instructions, and of their importance. My conduct in the late
+     arrangements will be arraigned with all the rancor of disappointed
+     rapacity, and my reputation and influence will suffer a mortal
+     wound from the failure of them. They have already failed in a
+     degree, since no part of them has yet taken place, but the removal
+     of our forces from the Dooab and Rohilcund, and of the British
+     officers and pensioners from the service of the Nabob, and the
+     expenses of the former thrown without any compensation on the
+     Company.
+
+     "I expect a supply of money equal to the discharge of all the
+     Nabob's arrears, and am much disappointed and mortified that I am
+     not now able to return with it.
+
+     "Give me an immediate answer to the question which I have herein
+     proposed, that I may lose no more time in fruitless inaction."
+
+About this time Mr. Hastings had received information of our inquiries
+in the House of Commons into his conduct; and this is the manner in
+which he prepares to meet them. "I must get money. I must carry with me
+that great excuse for everything, that salve for every sore, that
+expiation for every crime: let me provide that, all is well. You, Mr.
+Middleton, try your nerves: are you equal to these services? Examine
+yourself; see what is in you: are you man enough to come up to it?" says
+the great robber to the little robber, says Roland the Great to his puny
+accomplice. "Are you equal to it? Do you feel yourself a man? If not,
+send messengers and dawks to me, and I, the great master tyrant, will
+come myself, and put to shame all the paltry delegate tools of
+despotism, that have not edge enough to cut their way through and do the
+services I have ordained for them."
+
+I have already stated to your Lordships his reason and motives for this
+violence, and they are such as aggravated his crime by attempting to
+implicate his country in it. He says he was afraid to go home without
+having provided for the payment of the Nabob's debt. Afraid of what? Was
+he afraid of coming before a British tribunal, and saying, "Through
+justice, through a regard for the rights of an allied sovereign, through
+a regard to the rights of his people, I have not got so much as I
+expected"? Of this no man could be afraid. The prisoner's fear had
+another origin. "I have failed," says he to himself, "in my first
+project. I went to Benares to rob; I have lost by my violence the fruits
+of that robbery. I must get the money somewhere, or I dare not appear
+before a British House of Commons, a British House of Lords, or any
+other tribunal in the kingdom; but let me get money enough, and they
+won't care how I get it. The estates of whole bodies of nobility may be
+confiscated; a people who had lived under their protection may be given
+up into the hands of foreign usurers: they will care for none of these
+things; they will suffer me to do all this, and to employ in it the
+force of British troops, whom I have described as a set of robbers,
+provided I can get money." These were Mr. Hastings's views; and, in
+accordance with them, the jaghires were all confiscated, the jaghiredars
+with their families were all turned out, the possessions delivered up to
+the usurer, in order that Mr. Hastings might have the excuse of money to
+plead at the bar of the House of Commons, and afterwards at the bar of
+the House of Lords. If your Lordships, in your sacred character of the
+first tribunal in the world, should by your judgment justify those
+proceedings, you will sanction the greatest wrongs that have been ever
+known in history.
+
+But to proceed. The next thing to be asked is, Were the promised
+pensions given to the jaghiredars? I suppose your Lordships are not idle
+enough to put that question to us. No compensation, no consideration,
+was given or stipulated for them. If there had been any such thing, the
+prisoner could have proved it,--he would have proved it. The means were
+easy to him. But we have saved him the trouble of the attempt. We have
+proved the contrary, and, if called upon, we will show you the place
+where this is proved.
+
+I have now shown your Lordships how Mr. Hastings, having with such
+violent and atrocious circumstances usurped the government of Oude, (I
+hope I need not use any farther proof that the Nabob was in effect
+non-existent in the country,) treated all the landed property. The next
+question will be, How has he treated whatever moneyed property was left
+in the country? My Lords, he looked over that immense waste of his own
+creating, not as Satan viewed the kingdoms of the world and saw the
+power and glory of them,--but he looked over the waste of Oude with a
+diabolical malice which one could hardly suppose existed in the
+prototype himself. He saw nowhere above-ground one single shilling that
+he could attach,--no, not one; every place had been ravaged; no money
+remained in sight. But possibly some might be buried in vaults, hid from
+the gripe of tyranny and rapacity. "It must be so," says he. "Where can
+I find it? how can I get at it? There is one illustrious family that is
+thought to have accumulated a vast body of treasures, through a course
+of three or four successive reigns. It does not appear openly; but we
+have good information that very great sums of money are bricked up and
+kept in vaults under ground, and secured under the guard and within the
+walls of a fortress": the residence of the females of the family, a
+guard, as your Lordships know, rendered doubly and trebly secure by the
+manners of the country, which make everything that is in the hands of
+women sacred. It is said that nothing is proof against gold,--that the
+strongest tower will not be impregnable, if Jupiter makes love in a
+golden shower. This Jupiter commences making love; but he does not come
+to the ladies with gold for their persons, he comes to their persons for
+their gold. This impetuous lover, Mr. Hastings, who is not to be stayed
+from the objects of his passion, would annihilate space and time between
+him and his beloved object, the jaghires of these ladies, had now,
+first, their treasure's affection.
+
+Your Lordships have already had a peep behind the curtain, in the first
+orders sent to Mr. Middleton. In the treaty of Chunar you see a desire,
+obliquely expressed, to get the landed estates of all these great
+families. But even while he was meeting with such reluctance in the
+Nabob upon this point, and though he also met with some resistance upon
+the part even of Mr. Middleton, Mr. Hastings appears to have given him
+in charge some other still more obnoxious and dreadful acts. "While I
+was meditating," says Mr. Middleton, in one of his letters, "upon this
+[the resumption of the jaghires], your orders came to me through Sir
+Elijah Impey." What these orders were is left obscure in the letter: it
+is yet but as in a mist or cloud. But it is evident that Sir Elijah
+Impey did convey to him some project for getting at more wealth by some
+other service, which was not to supersede the first, but to be
+concurrent with that upon which Mr. Hastings had before given him such
+dreadful charges and had loaded him with such horrible responsibility.
+It could not have been anything but the seizure of the Begum's
+treasures. He thus goaded on two reluctant victims,--first the reluctant
+Nabob, then the reluctant Mr. Middleton,--forcing them with the bayonet
+behind them, and urging on the former, as at last appears, to violate
+the sanctity of his mother's house.
+
+Your Lordships have been already told by one of my able fellow Managers,
+that Sir Elijah Impey is the person who carried up the message alluded
+to in Mr. Middleton's letter. We have charged it, as an aggravation of
+the offences of the prisoner at your bar, that the Chief-Justice, who,
+by the sacred nature of his office, and by the express provisions of the
+act of Parliament under which he was sent out to India to redress the
+wrongs of the natives, should be made an instrument for destroying the
+property, real and personal, of this people. When it first came to our
+knowledge that all this private intrigue for the destruction of these
+high women was carried on through the intrigue of a Chief-Justice, we
+felt such shame and such horror, both for the instrument and the
+principal, as I think it impossible to describe, or for anything but
+complete and perfect silence to express.
+
+But by Sir Elijah Impey was that order carried up to seize and
+confiscate the treasures of the Begums. We know that neither the Company
+nor the Nabob had any claim whatever upon these treasures. On the
+contrary, we know that two treaties had been made for the protection of
+them. We know that the Nabob, while he was contesting about some
+elephants and carriages, and some other things that he said were in the
+hands of their steward, did allow that the treasures in the custody of
+his grandmother and of his mother's principal servants were their
+property. This is the Nabob who is now represented by Mr. Hastings and
+his counsel to have become the instrument of destroying his mother and
+grandmother, and everything else that ought to be dear to mankind,
+throughout the whole train of his family.
+
+Mr. Hastings, having resolved to seize upon the treasures of the Begums,
+is at a loss for some pretence of justifying the act. His first
+justification of it is on grounds which all tyrants have ready at their
+hands. He begins to discover a legal title to that of which he wished to
+be the possessor, and on this title sets up a claim to these treasures.
+I say Mr. Hastings set up this claim, because by this time I suppose
+your Lordships will not bear to hear the Nabob's name on such an
+occasion. The prisoner pretended, that, by the Mahometan law, these
+goods did belong to the Nabob; but whether they did or did not, he had
+himself been an active instrument in the treaty for securing their
+possession to the Begums,--a security which he attempts to unlock by his
+constructions of the Mahometan law. Having set up this title, the
+guaranty still remained; and how is he to get rid of that? In his usual
+way. "You have rebelled, you have taken up arms against your own son,"
+(for that is the pretext,) "and therefore my guaranty is gone, and your
+goods, whether you have a title to them or not, are to be confiscated
+for your rebellion." This is his second expedient by way of
+justification.
+
+Your Lordships will observe the strange situation in which we are here
+placed. If the fact of the rebellion can be proved, the discussion of
+the title to the property in question will be totally useless; for, if
+the ladies had actually taken up arms to cut the Nabob's throat, it
+would require no person to come from the dead to prove to us that the
+Nabob, but not Mr. Hastings, had a right, for his own security and for
+his own indemnification, to take those treasures, which, whether they
+belonged to him or not, were employed in hostilities against him. The
+law of self-defence is above every other law; and if any persons draw
+the sword against you, violence on your part is justified, and you may
+use your sword to take from them that property by which they have been
+enabled to draw their sword against you.
+
+But the prisoner's counsel do not trust to this justification; they set
+up a title of right to these treasures: but how entirely they have
+failed in their attempts to substantiate either the one or the other of
+these his alleged justifications your Lordships will now judge. And
+first with regard to the title. The treasure, they say, belonged to the
+state. The grandmother and mother have robbed the son, and kept him out
+of his rightful inheritance. They then produce the Hedaya to show you
+what proportion of the goods of a Mussulman, when he dies, goes to his
+family; and here, certainly, there is a question of law to be tried. But
+Mr. Hastings is a great eccentric genius, and has a course of proceeding
+of his own: he first seizes upon the property, and then produces some
+Mahometan writers to prove that it did not belong to the persons who
+were in possession of it. You would naturally expect, that, when he was
+going to seize upon those goods, he would have consulted his
+Chief-Justice, (for, as Sir Elijah Impey went with him, he might have
+consulted him,) and have thus learnt what was the Mahometan law: for,
+though Sir Elijah had not taken his degree at a Mahometan college,
+though he was not a mufti or a moulavy, yet he had always muftis and
+moulavies near him, and he might have consulted them. But Mr. Hastings
+does not even pretend that such consultations or conferences were ever
+had. If he ever consulted Sir Elijah Impey, where is the report of the
+case? When were the parties before him? Where are the opinions of the
+moulavies? Where is the judgment of the Chief-Justice? Was he fit for
+nothing but to be employed as a messenger, as a common tipstaff? Was he
+not fit to try these rights, or to decide upon them? He has told you
+here, indeed, negatively, that he did not know any title Mr. Hastings
+had to seize upon the property of the Begums, except upon his hypothesis
+of the rebellion. He was asked if he knew any other. He answered, No. It
+consequently appears that Mr. Hastings, though he had before him his
+doctors of all laws, who could unravel for him all the enigmas of all
+the laws in the world, and who had himself shone upon questions of
+Mahometan law, in the case of the Nuddea Begum, did not dare to put this
+case to Sir Elijah Impey, and ask what was his opinion concerning the
+rights of these people. He was tender, I suppose, of the reputation of
+the Chief-Justice. For Sir Elijah Impey, though a very good man to write
+a letter, or take an affidavit in a corner, or run on a message, to do
+the business of an under-sheriff, tipstaff, or bum-bailiff, was not fit
+to give an opinion on a question of Mahometan law.
+
+You have heard Ali Ibrahim Khan referred to. This Mahometan lawyer was
+carried by Mr. Hastings up to Benares, to be a witness of the vast good
+he had done in that province, and was made Chief-Justice there. All,
+indeed, that we know of him, except the high character given of him by
+Mr. Hastings, is, I believe, that he is the Ali Ibrahim Khan whom in the
+Company's records I find mentioned as a person giving bribes upon some
+former occasion to Mr. Hastings; but whatever he was besides, he was a
+doctor of the Mahometan law, he was a mufti, and was made by Mr.
+Hastings the principal judge in a criminal court, exercising, as I
+believe, likewise a considerable civil jurisdiction, and therefore he
+was qualified as a lawyer; and Mr. Hastings cannot object to his
+qualifications either of integrity or of knowledge. This man was with
+him. Why did not he consult him upon this law? Why did he not make him
+out a case of John Doe and Richard Roe, of John Stokes and John a Nokes?
+Why not say, "Sinub possesses such things, under such and such
+circumstances: give me your opinion upon the legality of the
+possession"? No, he did no such thing.
+
+Your Lordships, I am sure, will think it a little extraordinary, that
+neither this chief-justice made by himself, nor that other chief-justice
+whom he led about with him in a string,--the one an English
+chief-justice, with a Mahometan suit in his court, the other a Mahometan
+chief-justice of the country,--that neither of them was consulted as
+lawyers by the prisoner. Both of them were, indeed, otherwise employed
+by him. For we find Ali Ibrahim Khan employed in the same subservient
+capacity in which Sir Elijah Impey was,--in order, I suppose, to keep
+the law of England and the law of Mahomet upon a just par: for upon this
+equality Mr. Hastings always values himself. Neither of these two
+chief-justices, I say, was ever consulted, nor one opinion taken; but
+they were both employed in the correspondence and private execution of
+this abominable project, when the prisoner himself had not either
+leisure or perhaps courage to give his public order in it till things
+got to greater ripeness.
+
+To Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, he did put a question; and, upon my word,
+it did not require an Oedipus or a Sphinx to answer it. Says he, "I
+asked Sir Elijah Impey." What? a question on the title between the Nabob
+and his mother? No such thing. He puts an hypothetical question.
+"Supposing," says he, "a rebellion to exist in that country; will the
+Nabob be justified in seizing the goods of the rebels?" That is a
+question decided in a moment; and I must have a malice to Sir Elijah
+Impey of which I am incapable, to deny the propriety of his answer. But
+observe, I pray you, my Lords, there is something peculiarly good and
+correct in it. He does not take upon him to say one word of the actual
+existence of a rebellion, though he was at the time in the country, and,
+if there had been any, he must have been a witness to it; but, so chaste
+was his character as a judge, that he would not touch upon the juries'
+office. "I am chief-justice here," says he, "though a little wandering
+out of my orbit; yet still the sacred office of justice is in me. Do you
+take upon you the fact; I find the law." Were it not for this sacred
+attention to separate jurisdictions, he might have been a tolerable
+judge of the fact,--just as good a judge as Mr. Hastings: for neither of
+them knew it any other way, as it appears afterwards, but by rumor and
+reports,--reports, I believe, of Mr. Hastings's own raising; for I do
+not know that Sir Elijah Impey had anything to do with them.
+
+But to proceed. With regard to the title of these ladies, according to
+the Mahometan law, you have nothing laid before you by the prisoner's
+counsel but a quotation cut out with the scissors from a Mahometan
+law-book, (which I suspect very much the learned gentlemen have never
+read through,) declaring how a Mahometan's effects are to be
+distributed. But Mr. Hastings could not at the time have consulted that
+learned counsel who now defends him upon the principles of the Hedaya,
+the Hedaya not having been then published in English; and I will venture
+to say, that neither Sir Elijah Impey nor Ali Ibrahim Khan, nor any
+other person, high or low, in India, ever suggested this defence, and
+that it was never thought of till lately found by the learned counsel in
+the English translation of the Hedaya. "God bless me!" now says Mr.
+Hastings, "what ignorance have I been in all this time! I thought I was
+seizing this unjustly, and that the pretence of rebellion was necessary;
+but my counsel have found out a book, since published, and from it they
+produce the law upon that subject, and show that the Nabob had a right
+to seize upon the treasures of his mother." But are your Lordships so
+ignorant--(your Lordships are not ignorant of anything)--are any men so
+ignorant as not to know that in every country the common law of
+distribution of the estate of an intestate amongst private individuals
+is no rule with regard to the family arrangements of great princes? Is
+any one ignorant, that, from the days of the first origin of the Persian
+monarchy, the laws of which have become rules ever since for almost all
+the monarchs of the East, the wives of great men have had, independent
+of the common distribution of their goods, great sums of money and great
+estates in land, one for their girdle, one for their veil, and so on,
+going through the rest of their ornaments and attire,--and that they
+held great estates and other effects over which the reigning monarch or
+his successor had no control whatever? Indeed, my Lords, a more curious
+and extraordinary species of trial than this of a question of right
+never was heard of since the world began. Mr. Hastings begins with
+seizing the goods of the Begums at Fyzabad, nine thousand miles from
+you, and fourteen years after tries the title in an English court,
+without having one person to appear for these miserable ladies. I trust
+you will not suffer this mockery; I hope this last and ultimate shame
+will be spared us: for I declare to God, that the defence, and the
+principles of it, appear to me ten thousand times worse than the act
+itself.
+
+Now, my Lords, this criminal, through his counsel, chooses, with their
+usual flippancy, to say that the Commons have been _cautious_ in stating
+this part of the charge, knowing that they were on tender ground, and
+therefore did not venture to say _entitled_, but _possessed of_ only. A
+notable discovery indeed! We are as far from being taken in by such
+miserable distinctions as we are incapable of making them. We certainly
+have not said that the Begums were entitled to, but only that they were
+possessed of, certain property. And we have so said because we were not
+competent to decide upon their title, because your Lordships are not
+competent to decide upon their title, because no part of this tribunal
+is competent to decide upon their title. You have not the parties before
+you; you have not the cause before you,--but are getting it by oblique,
+improper, and indecent means. You are not a court of justice to try that
+question. The parties are at a distance from you; they are neither
+present themselves, nor represented by any counsel, advocate, or
+attorney: and I hope no House of Lords will ever judge and decide upon
+the title of any human being, much less upon the title of the first
+women in Asia, sequestered, shut up from you, at nine thousand miles'
+distance.
+
+I believe, my Lords, that the Emperor of Hindostan little thought, while
+Delhi stood, that an English subject of Mr. Hastings's description
+should domineer over the Vizier of his empire, and give the law to the
+first persons in his dominions. He as little dreamed of it as any of
+your Lordships now dream that you shall have your property seized by a
+delegate from Lucknow, and have it tried by what tenure a peer or
+peeress of Great Britain hold, the one his estate, and the other her
+jointure, dower, or her share of goods, her paraphernalia, in any court
+of Adawlut in Hindostan. If any such thing should happen, (for we know
+not what may happen; we live in an age of strange revolutions, and I
+doubt whether any more strange than this,) the Commons of Great Britain
+would shed their best blood sooner than suffer that a tribunal at
+Lucknow should decide upon any of your titles, for the purpose of
+justifying a robber that has taken your property. We should do the best
+we could, if such a strange circumstance occurred.
+
+The House of Commons, who are virtually the representatives of Lucknow,
+and who lately took 500,000_l._ of their money, will not suffer the
+natives first to be robbed of their property, and then the titles, which
+by the laws of their own country they have to the goods they possess, to
+be tried by any tribunal in Great Britain. Why was it not tried in India
+before Mr. Hastings? One would suppose that an English governor, if
+called to decide upon such a claim of the Nabob's, would doubtless be
+attended by judges, muftis, lawyers, and all the apparatus of legal
+justice. No such thing. This man marches into the country, not with
+moulavies, not with muftis, not with the solemn apparatus of Oriental
+justice,--no: he goes with colonels, and captains, and majors,--these
+are his lawyers: and when he gets there, he demands from the parties,
+not their title,--no: "Give me your money!" is his cry. It is a shame
+(and I will venture to say, that these gentlemen, upon recollection,
+will feel ashamed) to see the bar justify what the sword is ashamed of.
+In reading this correspondence, I have found these great muftis and
+lawyers, these great chief-justices, attorneys-general, and
+solicitors-general, called colonels and captains, ashamed of these
+proceedings, and endeavoring to mitigate their cruelty; yet we see
+British lawyers in a British tribunal supporting and justifying these
+acts, on the plea of defective titles.
+
+The learned counsel asks, with an air of triumph, whether these ladies
+possessed these treasures by jointure, dower, will, or settlement. What
+was the title? Was it a deed of gift?--was it a devise?--was it _donatio
+causa mortis?_--was it dower?--was it jointure?--what was it? To all
+which senseless and absurd questions we answer, You asked none of these
+questions of the parties, when you guarantied to them, by a solemn
+treaty, the possession of their goods. Then was the time to have asked
+these questions: but you asked none of them. You supposed their right,
+and you guarantied it, though you might then have asked what was their
+right. But besides the force and virtue of the guaranty, these unhappy
+princesses had ransomed themselves from any claim upon their property.
+They paid a sum of money, applied to your use, for that guaranty. They
+had a treble title,--by possession, by guaranty, by purchase.
+
+Again, did you ask these questions, when you went to rob them of their
+landed estates, their money, their ornaments, and even their
+wearing-apparel? When you sent those great lawyers, Major ----, Major
+----, and the other majors, and colonels, and captains, did you call on
+them to exhibit their title-deeds? No: with a pistol at their breast,
+you demanded their money. Instead of forging a charge of rebellion
+against these unhappy persons, why did you not then call on them for
+their vouchers? No rebellion was necessary to give validity to a civil
+claim. What you could get by an ordinary judgment did not want
+confiscation called to its aid. When you had their eunuchs, their
+ministers, their treasurers, their agents and attorneys in irons, did
+you then ask any of these questions? No. "Discover the money you have in
+trust, or _you_ go to corporal punishment,--_you_ go to the castle of
+Chunar,--here is another pair of irons!"--this was the only language
+used.
+
+When the Court of Directors, alarmed at the proceedings against these
+ancient ladies, ordered their Indian government to make an inquiry into
+their conduct, the prisoner had then an opportunity and a duty imposed
+upon him of entering into a complete justification of his conduct: he
+might have justified it by every civil, and by every criminal mode of
+process. Did he do this? No. Your Lordships have in evidence the manner,
+equally despotic, _rebellious_, insolent, fraudulent, tricking, and
+evasive, by which he positively refused all inquiry into the matter. How
+stands it now, more than twelve years after the seizure of their goods,
+at ten thousand miles' distance? You ask of these women, buried in the
+depths of Asia, secluded from human commerce, what is their title to
+their estate. Have you the parties before you? Have you summoned them?
+Where is their attorney? Where is their agent? Where is their counsel?
+Is this law? Is this a legal process? Is this a tribunal,--the highest
+tribunal of all,--that which is to furnish the example for, and to be a
+control on all the rest? But what is worse, you do not come _directly_
+to the trial of this right to property. You are desired to surround and
+circumvent it; you are desired obliquely to steal an iniquitous
+judgment, which you dare not boldly ravish. At this judgment you can
+only arrive by a side wind. You have before you a criminal process
+against an offender. One of the charges against him is, that he has
+robbed matrons of high and reverend place. His defence is, that they had
+not the apt deeds to entitle them in law to this property. _In_ this
+cause, with only the delinquent party before you, you are called upon to
+try their title on his allegations of its invalidity, and by acquitting
+him to divest them not only of their goods, but of their honor,--to call
+them disseizors, wrong-doers, cheats, defrauders of their own son. No
+hearing for them,--no pleading,--all appeal cut off. Was ever a man
+indicted for a robbery, that is, for the forcible taking of the goods
+possessed by another, suffered to desire the prosecutor to show the
+deeds or other instruments by which he acquired those goods? The idea is
+contemptible and ridiculous. Do these men dream? Do they conceive, in
+their confused imaginations, that you can be here trying such a
+question, and venturing to decide upon it? Your Lordships will never do
+that, which if you did do, you would be unfit to subsist as a tribunal
+for a single hour; and if we, on our part, did not bring before you this
+attempt, as the heaviest aggravation of the prisoner's crimes, we
+should betray our trust as representatives of the Commons of Great
+Britain. Having made this protest in favor of law, of justice, and good
+policy, permit me to take a single step more.
+
+I will now show your Lordships that it is very possible, nay, very
+probable, and almost certain, that a great part of what these ladies
+possessed was a saving of their own, and independent of any grant. It
+appears in the papers before you, that these unfortunate ladies had
+about 70,000_l._ a year, landed property. Mr. Bristow states in evidence
+before your Lordships, that their annual expenses did not exceed a lac
+and a half, and that their income was about seven lacs; that they had
+possessed this for twenty years before the death of Sujah Dowlah, and
+from the death of that prince to the day of the robbery. Now, if your
+Lordships will calculate what the savings from an income of 70,000_l._ a
+year will amount to, when the party spends about 15,000_l._ a year, you
+will see that by a regular and strict economy these people may have
+saved considerable property of their own, independent of their titles to
+any other property: and this is a rational way of accounting for their
+being extremely rich. It may be supposed, likewise, that they had all
+those advantages which ladies of high rank usually have in that
+country,--gifts at marriage, &c. We know that there are deeds of gift by
+husbands to their wives during their lifetime, and many other legal
+means, by which women in Asia become possessed of very great property.
+But Mr. Hastings has taught them the danger of much wealth, and the
+danger of economy. He has shown them that they are saving, not for their
+families, for those who may possibly stand in the utmost need of it,
+but for tyrants, robbers, and oppressors.
+
+My Lords, I am really ashamed to have said so much upon the subject of
+their titles. And yet there is one observation more to be made, and then
+I shall have done with this part of the prisoner's defence. It is, that
+the Nabob himself never has made a claim on this ground; even Mr.
+Hastings, his despotic master, could never get him regularly and
+systematically to make such a claim; the very reverse of this is the
+truth. When urged on to the commission of these acts of violence by Mr.
+Middleton, you have seen with what horror and how reluctantly he lends
+his name; and when he does so, he is dragged like a victim to the stake.
+At the beginning of this affair, where do we find that he entered this
+claim, as the foundation of it? Upon one occasion only, when dragged to
+join in this wicked act, something dropped from his lips which seemed
+rather to have been forced into his mouth, and which he was obliged to
+spit out again, about the possibility that he might have had some right
+to the effects of the Begums.
+
+We next come to consider the manner in which these acts of violence were
+executed. They forced the Nabob himself to accompany their troops, and
+their Resident, Mr. Middleton, to attack the city and to storm the fort
+in which these ladies lived, and consequently to outrage their persons,
+to insult their character, and to degrade their dignity, as well as to
+rob them of all they had.
+
+That your Lordships may learn something of one of these ladies, called
+the Munny Begum, I will refer you to Major Browne's evidence,--a man who
+was at Delhi, the fountain-head of all the nobility of India, and must
+have known who this lady was that has been treated with such indignity
+by the prisoner at your bar. Major Browne was asked, "What was the
+opinion at Delhi respecting the rank, quality, and character of the
+Princesses of Oude, or of either of them?"--"The elder, or Munny Begum,
+was," says he, "a woman of high rank: she was, I believe, the daughter
+of Saadut Ali Khan, a person of high rank in the time of Mahommed
+Shah."--"Do you know whether any woman in all Hindostan was considered
+of superior rank or birth?"--He answers, "I believe not, except those of
+the royal family. She was a near relation to Mirza Shaffee Khan, who was
+a noble of nobles, the first person at that day in the empire." In
+answer to another question put by a noble Lord, in the same examination,
+respecting the conversation which he had with Mirza Shaffee Khan, and of
+which he had given an account, he says, "He [Mirza Shaffee Khan] spoke
+of the attempt to seize the treasures of the Begums, which was then
+suspected, in terms of resentment, and as a disgrace in which he
+participated, as being related by blood to the house of Sufdar Jung, who
+was the husband of the old Begum." He says afterwards, in the same
+examination, that he, the Begum's husband, was the second man, and that
+her father was the first man, in the Mogul empire. Now the Mogul empire,
+when this woman came into the world, was an empire of that dignity that
+kings were its subjects; and this very Mirza Shaffee Khan, that we speak
+of, her near relation, was then a prince with a million a year revenue,
+and a man of the first rank, after the Great Mogul, in the whole empire.
+
+My Lords, these were people that ought to have been treated with a
+little decorum. When we consider the high rank of their husbands, their
+fathers, and their children, a rank so high that we have nothing in
+Great Britain to compare with theirs, we cannot be surprised that they
+were left in possession of great revenues, great landed estates, and
+great moneyed property. All the female parts of these families, whose
+alliance was, doubtless, much courted, could not be proffered in
+marriage, and endowed in a manner agreeably to the dignity of such
+persons, but with great sums of money; and your Lordships must also
+consider the multitude of children of which these families frequently
+consisted. The consequences of this robbery were such as might naturally
+be expected. It is said that not one of the females of this family has
+since been given in marriage.
+
+But all this has nothing to do with the rebellion. If they had, indeed,
+rebelled to cut their own son's throat, there is an end of the business.
+But what evidence have you of this fact? and if none can be produced,
+does not the prisoner's defence aggravate infinitely his crime and that
+of his agents? Did they ever once state to these unfortunate women that
+any such rebellion existed? Did they ever charge them with it? Did they
+ever set the charge down in writing, or make it verbally, that they had
+conspired to destroy their son, a son whom Mr. Hastings had brought
+there to rob them? No, this was what neither Mr. Hastings nor his agent
+ever did: for as they never made a civil demand upon them, so they never
+made a criminal charge against them, or against any person belonging to
+them.
+
+I save your Lordships the trouble of listening to the manner in which
+they seized upon these people, and dispersed their guard. Mr. Middleton
+states, that they found great difficulties in getting at their
+treasures,--that they stormed their forts successively, but found great
+reluctance in the sepoys to make their way into the inner inclosures of
+the women's apartments. Being at a loss what to do, their only resource,
+he says, was to threaten that they would seize their eunuchs. These are
+generally persons who have been bought slaves, and who, not having any
+connections in the country where they are settled, are supposed to guard
+both the honor of the women, and their treasures, with more fidelity
+than other persons would do. We know that in Constantinople, and in many
+other places, these persons enjoy offices of the highest trust, and are
+of great rank and dignity; and this dignity and rank they possess for
+the purpose of enabling them to fulfil their great trusts more
+effectually. The two principal eunuchs of the Begums were Jewar and
+Behar Ali Khan, persons of as high rank and estimation as any people in
+the country. These persons, however, were seized, not, says Mr.
+Hastings, for the purpose of extorting money, as assumed in the charge,
+but as agents and principal instruments of exciting the insurrection
+before alluded to, &c. Mr. Hastings declares that they were not seized
+for the purpose of extorting money, but that they were seized in order
+to be punished for their crimes, and, _eo nomine_, for this crime of
+rebellion. Now this crime could not have been committed immediately by
+[the?] women themselves; for no woman can come forward and head her own
+troops. We have not heard that any woman has done so since the time of
+Zenobia, in another part of the East; and we know that in Persia no
+person can behold the face of a woman of rank, or speak to females of
+condition, but through a curtain: therefore they could not go out
+themselves, and be active in a rebellion. But, I own, it would be some
+sort of presumption against them, if Jewar Ali Khan and Behar Ali Khan
+had headed troops, and been concerned in acts of rebellion; and the
+prisoner's counsel have taken abundance of pains to show that such
+persons do sometimes head armies and command legions in the East. This
+we acknowledge that they sometimes do. If these eunuchs had behaved in
+this way, if they had headed armies and commanded legions for the
+purposes of rebellion, it would have been a fair presumption that their
+mistresses were concerned in it. But instead of any proof of such facts,
+Mr. Hastings simply says, "We do not arrest them for the purpose of
+extorting money, but as a punishment for their crimes." By Mr.
+Middleton's account you will see the utter falsity of this assertion.
+God knows what he has said that is true. It would, indeed, be singular
+not to detect him in a falsity, but in a truth. I will now show your
+Lordships the utter falsity of this wicked allegation.
+
+There is a letter from Mr. Middleton to Sir Elijah Impey, dated Fyzabad,
+the 25th of January, 1782, to which I will call your Lordships'
+attention.
+
+     "Dear Sir Elijah,--I have the satisfaction to inform you that we
+     have at length so far obtained the great object of our expedition
+     to this place as to commence on the receipt of money, of which, in
+     the course of this day, we have got about six lacs. I know not yet
+     what amount we shall actually realize, but I think I may safely
+     venture to pronounce it will be equal to the liquidation of the
+     Company's balance. It has been at once the most important and the
+     most difficult point of duty which has ever occurred in my office;
+     and the anxiety, the hopes and fears, which have alternately
+     agitated my mind, cannot be described or conceived but by those who
+     have been witness to what has passed in the course of this long
+     contest. The [Nabob's] ministers have supported me nobly, and
+     deserve much commendation. Without the shrewd discernment and
+     knowledge of the finesse and tricks of the country which Hyder Beg
+     Khan possesses, I believe we should have succeeded but
+     indifferently; for I soon found that no real advantage was to be
+     obtained by proceeding at once to violent extremities with the
+     Begum, and that she was only to be attacked through the medium of
+     her confidential servants, who it required considerable address to
+     get hold of. However, we at last effected it; and by using some few
+     severities with them, we at length came at the secret hoards of
+     this old lady. I will write you more particulars hereafter.
+
+     "I am sorry to inform you my little boy still continues in a very
+     precarious way, though somewhat better than when I had last the
+     honor to address you. My respects to Lady Impey. And believe me,
+     with great regard, my dear Sir Elijah, your faithful, obliged, and
+     most affectionate humble servant,
+
+       "NATHANIEL MIDDLETON."
+
+My Lords, we produce this letter to your Lordships, because it is a
+letter which begins with "_Dear Sir Elijah_," and alludes to some family
+matters, and is therefore more likely to discover the real truth, the
+true genius of a proceeding, than all the formal and official stuff that
+ever was produced. You see the tenderness and affection in which they
+proceed. You see it is his _dear Sir Elijah_. You see that he does not
+tell the dear Sir Elijah, the Chief-Justice of India, the pillar of the
+law, the great conservator of personal liberty and private property,--he
+does not tell him that he has been able to convict these eunuchs of any
+crime; he does not tell him he has the pleasure of informing him what
+matter he has got upon which a decision at law may be grounded; he does
+not tell him that he has got the least proof of the want of title in
+those ladies: not a word of the kind. You cannot help observing the soft
+language used in this tender billet-doux between Mr. Middleton and Sir
+Elijah Impey. You would imagine that they were making love, and that you
+heard the voice of the turtle in the land. You hear the soft cooing, the
+gentle addresses,--"Oh, my hopes!" to-day, "My fears!" to-morrow,--all
+the language of friendship, almost heightened into love; and it comes at
+last to "_I have got at the secret hoards of these ladies_.--Let us
+rejoice, my dear Sir Elijah; this is a day of rejoicing, a day of
+triumph; and this triumph we have obtained by seizing upon the old
+lady's eunuchs,--in doing which, however, we found a great deal of
+difficulty." You would imagine, from this last expression, that it was
+not two eunuchs, with a few miserable women clinging about them, that
+they had to seize, but that they had to break through all the guards
+which we see lovers sometimes breaking through, when they want to get at
+their ladies. Hardly ever did the beauty of a young lady excite such
+rapture; I defy all the charms this country can furnish to produce a
+more wonderful effect than was produced by the hoards of these two old
+women, in the bosoms of Sir Elijah Impey and Mr. Middleton. "We have
+got," he exultingly says, "we have got to the secret hoards of this old
+lady!" And I verily believe there never was a passion less dissembled;
+there Nature spoke; there was truth triumphant, honest truth. Others may
+feign a passion; but nobody can doubt the raptures of Mr. Hastings, Sir
+Elijah Impey, and Mr. Middleton.
+
+My Lords, one would have expected to have found here something of their
+crimes, something of their rebellion, for he talks of a few "necessary
+severities." But no: you find the real criminal, the real object, was
+the secret hoards of the old ladies. It is true, _a few severities_ were
+necessary to obtain that object: however, they did obtain it. How then
+did they proceed? First, they themselves took and received, in weight
+and tale, all the money that was in the place. I say _all_; for whether
+there was any more they never have discovered, with all their search,
+from that day to this. Therefore we fairly presume that they had
+discovered all that there was to discover with regard to money. They
+next took from these unfortunate people an engagement for the amount of
+treasure at a definite sum, without knowing whether they had it or not,
+whether they could procure it or not. The Bhow Begum has told us, as
+your Lordships have it in evidence, that they demanded from her a
+million of money; that she, of course, denied having any such sums; but
+Mr. Middleton forced her unfortunate eunuchs or treasurers, by some _few
+severities_, to give their bond for 600,000_l._
+
+You would imagine, that, when these eunuchs had given up all that was in
+their power, when they had given a bond for what they had not, (for they
+were only the treasurers of other people,) that the bond would not have
+been rigidly exacted. But what do Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton, as
+soon as they get their plunder? They went to their own assay-table, by
+which they measured the rate of exchange between the coins in currency
+at Oude and those at Calcutta, and add the difference to the sum for
+which the bond was given. Thus they seize the secret hoards, they
+examine it as if they were receiving a debt, and they determine what
+this money would and ought to produce at Calcutta: not considering it as
+coming from people who gave all they had to give, but as what it would
+produce at the mint at Calcutta, according to a custom made for the
+profit of the Residents; even though Mr. Hastings, upon another
+occasion, charged upon Mr. Bristow as a crime that he had made that
+profit. This money, my Lords, was taken to that assay-table, which they
+had invented for their own profit, and they made their victims pay a
+rupee and a half batta, or exchange of money, upon each gold mohur; by
+which and other charges they brought them 60,000_l._ more in debt, and
+forced them to give a bond for that 60,000_l._
+
+Your Lordships have seen in what manner these debts were
+contracted,--and that they were contracted by persons engaging, not for
+themselves, for they had nothing; all their property was apparently
+their mistresses'. You will now see in what manner the payment of them
+was exacted; and we shall beg leave to read to you their own accounts of
+their own proceedings. Your Lordships will then judge whether they were
+proceeding against rebels as rebels, or against wealthy people as
+wealthy people, punishing them, under pretence of crimes, for their own
+profit.
+
+In a letter from Mr. Middleton to Mr. Hastings, after two other
+paragraphs, he goes on thus.
+
+"It remained only to get possession of her wealth; and to effect this,
+it was then and is still my firm and unalterable opinion that it was
+indispensably necessary to employ temporizing expedients, and to work
+upon the hopes and fears of the Begum herself, and more especially upon
+those of her principal agents, through whose means alone there appeared
+any probable chance of our getting access to the hidden treasures of the
+late Vizier; and when I acquaint you that by far the greatest part of
+the treasure which has been delivered to the Nabob was taken from the
+most secret recesses in the houses of the two eunuchs, whence, of
+course, it could not have been extracted without the adoption of those
+means which could induce the discovery, I shall hope for your
+approbation of what I did. I must also observe, that no further rigor
+than that which I exerted could have been used against females in this
+country, to whom there can be no access. The Nabob and Salar Jung were
+the only two that could enter the zenanah: the first was a son, who was
+to address a parent, and, of course, could use no language or action but
+that of earnest and reiterated solicitation; and the other was, in all
+appearance, a traitor to our cause. Where force could be employed, it
+was not spared: the troops of the Begum were driven away and dispersed;
+their guns taken; her fort, and the outward walls of her house seized
+and occupied by our troops, at the Nabob's requisition; and her chief
+agents imprisoned and put in irons. No further step was left. And in
+this situation they still remain, and are to continue (excepting only a
+remission of the irons) until the final liquidation of the payment; and
+if then you deem it proper, no possible means of offence being left in
+her hands or those of her agents, all her lands and property having been
+taken, I mean, with your sanction, to restore her house and servants to
+her, and hope to be favored with your early reply, as I expect that a
+few days will complete the final surrender of all that is further
+expected from the Begum."
+
+There are some things in this letter which I shall beg your Lordships to
+remark. There is mention made of a few preliminary severities used by
+Mr. Middleton, in order to get at their money. Well, he did get at the
+money, and he got a bond for the payment of an additional sum, which
+they thought proper to fix at about six hundred thousand pounds, to
+which was added another usurious bond for sixty thousand; and in order
+to extort these forced bonds, and to make up their aggravated crimes of
+usury, violence, and oppression, they put these eunuchs into prison,
+without food and water, and loaded their limbs with fetters. This was
+their second imprisonment; and what followed these few severities your
+Lordships will remark,--still more severities. They continued to
+persecute, to oppress, to work upon these men by torture and by the fear
+of torture, till at last, having found that all their proceedings were
+totally ineffectual, they desire the women to surrender their house;
+though it is in evidence before you, that to remove a woman from her own
+house to another house without her consent is an outrage of the greatest
+atrocity, on account of which many women have not only threatened, but
+have actually put themselves to death. Mr. Hastings himself, in the case
+of Munny Begum, had considered such a proposition as the last degree of
+outrage that could be offered. These women offered to go from house to
+house while their residence was searched; but "No," say their
+tormentors, "the treasure may be bricked up, in so large a house, in
+such a manner that we cannot find it."
+
+But to proceed with the treatment of these unfortunate men. I will read
+to your Lordships a letter of Mr. Middleton to Captain Leonard Jaques,
+commanding at Fyzabad, 18th March, 1782.
+
+     "Sir,--I have received your letter of the 13th instant. The two
+     prisoners, Behar and Jewar Ali Khan, having violated their written
+     solemn engagement with me for the payment of the balance due to the
+     Honorable Company on the Nabob's assignments accepted by them, and
+     declining giving me any satisfactory assurances on that head, I am
+     under the disagreeable necessity of recurring to severities to
+     enforce the said payment. This is, therefore, to desire that you
+     immediately cause them to be put in irons, and kept so until I
+     shall arrive at Fyzabad, to take further measures, as may be
+     necessary."
+
+Here is the answer of Captain Jaques to Mr. Middleton.
+
+        "_April 23d, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--Allow me the honor of informing you that the place the
+     prisoners Behar Ali Khan and Jewar Ali Khan are confined in is
+     become so very unhealthy, by the number obliged to be on duty in so
+     confined a place at this hot season of the year, and so situated,
+     that no reduction can with propriety be made from their guard, it
+     being at such a distance from the battalion."
+
+You see, my Lords, what a condition these unfortunate persons were in at
+that period; you see they were put in irons, in a place highly
+unhealthy; and from this you will judge of the treatment which followed
+the _few severities_. The first yielded a bond for 600,000_l._; the
+second, a bond for 60,000_l._; the third was intended to extort the
+payment of these bonds, and completed their series.
+
+I will now read a letter from Captain Jaques to Mr. Middleton, from the
+printed Minutes, dated _Palace, Fyzabad, May 18th, 1782_, consequently
+written nearly a month after the former.
+
+     "Sir,--The prisoners Behar and Jewar Ali Khan, who seem to be very
+     sickly, have requested their irons might be taken off for a few
+     days, that they might take medicine, and walk about the garden of
+     the place where they are confined, to assist the medicine in its
+     operation. Now, as I am sure they would be equally as secure
+     without their irons as with them, I think it my duty to inform you
+     of this request, and desire to know your pleasure concerning it.
+
+       (Signed) "LEONARD JAQUES."
+
+On the 22d May, 1782, Captain Jaques's humane proposal is thus replied
+to by Mr. Middleton.
+
+     "I am sorry it is not in my power to comply with your proposal of
+     easing the prisoners for a few days of their fetters. Much as my
+     humanity may be touched by their sufferings, I should think it
+     inexpedient to afford them any alleviation while they persist in a
+     breach of their contract with me; and, indeed, no indulgence could
+     be shown them without the authority of the Nabob, who, instead of
+     consenting to moderate the rigors of their situation, would be most
+     willing to multiply them.
+
+       (Signed) "NATHANIEL MIDDLETON."
+
+I will now call your Lordships' attention to other letters connected
+with this transaction.
+
+     _Letter from Major Gilpin to Mr. Middleton, June 5th, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--Agreeably to your instructions, I went to the prisoners,
+     Behar and Jewar Ali Khan, accompanied by Hoolas Roy, who read the
+     papers respecting the balance now due, &c., &c.
+
+     "In general terms they expressed concern at not being able to
+     discharge the same without the assistance of the Begum, and
+     requested indulgence to send a message to her on that subject, and
+     in the evening they would give an answer.
+
+     "I went at the time appointed for the answer, but did not receive a
+     satisfactory one; in consequence of which I desired them to be
+     ready, at the shortest notice, to proceed to Lucknow, and explained
+     to them every particular contained in your letter of the 1st
+     instant respecting them.
+
+     "Yesterday morning I sent for Letafit Ali Khan, and desired him to
+     go to the Bhow Begum, and deliver the substance of my instructions
+     to her, which he did, and returned with the inclosed letter from
+     her. From some circumstances which I have heard to-day, I am
+     hopeful the prisoners will soon think seriously of their removal,
+     and pay the balance rather than submit themselves to an
+     inconvenient journey to Lucknow."
+
+
+     _To Major Gilpin, commanding at Fyzabad, from Mr. Middleton._
+
+     "Sir,--I have been favored with your letter of the 5th instant,
+     informing me of the steps you had taken in consequence of my
+     instructions of the 1st, and covering a letter from the Bhow Begum,
+     which is so unsatisfactory that I cannot think of returning an
+     answer to it. Indeed, as all correspondence between the Begum and
+     me has long been stopped, I request you will be pleased to inform
+     her that I by no means wish to resume it, or maintain any friendly
+     intercourse with her, until she has made good my claim upon her for
+     the balance due.
+
+     "I have now, in conformity to my former instructions, to desire
+     that the two prisoners, Behar and Jewar Ali Khan, may be
+     immediately sent, under a sufficient guard, to Lucknow, unless,
+     upon your imparting to them this intimation, either they or the
+     Begum should actually pay the balance, or give you such assurances
+     or security for the assets to be immediately forthcoming as you
+     think can be relied upon; in which case you will of course suspend
+     the execution of this order."
+
+
+     _Mr. Richard Johnson to Major Gilpin. Lucknow, 24th June, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I have received the honor of your letter of the 20th. The
+     prisoners arrived here this morning. Lieutenant Crow has delivered
+     them over to Captain Waugh, and returns to you in a day or two.
+
+     "I think their hint to you a very good one, and worth improving
+     upon. Was the Bhow Begum to think that she must go to Allahabad, or
+     any other place, while her palace is searched for the hidden
+     treasure of the late Vizier, it might go further than any other
+     step that can be immediately taken towards procuring payment of the
+     balance outstanding.
+
+     "The prisoners are to be threatened with severities to-morrow, to
+     make them discover where the balance may be procurable, the fear of
+     which may possibly have a good effect; and the apprehensions of the
+     Begum lest they should discover the hidden treasure may induce her
+     to make you tenders of payment, which you may give any reasonable
+     encouragement to promote that may occur to you.
+
+     "The jaghire cannot be released to her on any other terms, nor even
+     to the Nabob, until the five lacs for which it was granted be paid
+     up; and the prisoners must also be detained until the full fifty
+     lacs be liquidated: consequently nothing but the fear of an
+     increase of demand, upon breach of the first engagement on her
+     part, will induce her to prompt payment."
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Richard Johnson to the Commanding Officer of the
+     Guard. Lucknow, 23d July, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--Some violent demands having been made for the release of the
+     prisoners, it is necessary that every possible precaution be taken
+     for their security. You will therefore be pleased to be very strict
+     in guarding them; and I herewith send another pair of fetters, to
+     be added to those now upon the prisoners."
+
+
+     _Letter from Robert Steere Allen to Richard Johnson, Esq., Acting
+     Resident. Lucknow, 23d July, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I have received your instructions, and ordered the fetters
+     to be added; but they are by much too small for their feet. The
+     utmost regard shall be paid to the security of the prisoners. I
+     have sent back the fetters, that you may have them altered, if you
+     think proper."
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Johnson to the Officer commanding the Guard.
+     Lucknow, 28th June, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--The Nabob having determined to inflict corporal punishment
+     upon the prisoners under your guard, this is to desire that his
+     officers, when they shall come, may have free access to the
+     prisoners, and be permitted to do with them as they shall see
+     proper, only taking care that they leave them always under your
+     charge."
+
+I will now trouble your Lordships with the following passages from Mr.
+Holt's evidence.
+
+     "_Q._ Did you ever see the two ministers of the Begum?--_A._ I saw
+     them brought into Lucknow.--_Q._ In what situation were they, when
+     you saw them brought into Lucknow?--_A._ They were brought in their
+     palanquins, attended by a guard of sepoys.--_Q._ Under whose
+     command were the sepoys?--_A._ That they were brought in by?--_Q._
+     Yes.--_A._ I do not recollect.--_Q._ Were those sepoys that brought
+     in the prisoners part of the Nabob's army, or were they any British
+     troops?--_A._ To the best of my recollection, they were detached
+     from a regiment then stationed at Fyzabad.--_Q._ In whose service
+     was that regiment?--_A._ In the Company's.--_Q._ Were they
+     imprisoned in any house near that in which you resided?--_A._ They
+     were imprisoned immediately under the window of the house in which
+     I resided, close to it.--_Q._ Did you or did you not ever see any
+     preparations made for any corporal punishment?--_A._ I saw
+     something of a scaffolding.--_Q._ For what purpose?--_A._ I heard
+     it was for the purpose of tying them up.--_Q._ Whose prisoners did
+     you consider these men to be?--_A._ I considered them as prisoners
+     of the Resident; they were close to his house, and under an
+     European officer."
+
+Your Lordships have now seen the whole process, except one dreadful part
+of it, which was the threatening to send the Begum to the castle at
+Chunar. After all these cruelties, after all these menaces of further
+cruelties, after erecting a scaffold for actually exercising the last
+degree of criminal punishment, namely, by whipping these miserable
+persons in public,--after everything has been done but execution, our
+inability to prove by evidence this part of their proceedings has
+secured to your Lordships a circumstance of decorum observed on the
+stage where murders, executions, whippings, and cruelties are performed
+behind the scenes. I know as certainly as a man can know such a thing,
+from a document which I cannot produce in evidence here, but I have it
+in the handwriting of the Resident, Mr. Bristow, that Behar Ali Khan was
+actually scourged in the manner that we speak of. I had it in writing in
+the man's hand; I put the question to him, but he refused to answer it,
+because he thought it might criminate himself, and criminate us all; but
+if your Lordships saw the scaffold erected for the purpose, (and of
+this we have evidence,) would you not necessarily believe that the
+scourging did follow? All this was done in the name of the Nabob; but if
+the Nabob is the person claiming his father's effects, if the Nabob is
+the person vindicating a rebellion against himself upon his nearest
+relations, why did he not in person take a single step in this matter?
+why do we see nothing but his abused name in it? We see no order under
+his own hand. We see all the orders given by the cool Mr. Middleton, by
+the outrageous Mr. Johnson, by all that gang of persons that the
+prisoner used to disgrace the British name. Who are the officers that
+stormed their fort? who put on the irons? who sent them? who supplied
+them? They are all, all, English officers. There is not an appearance,
+even, of a minister of the Nabob's in the whole transaction. The actors
+are all Englishmen; and we, as Englishmen, call for punishment upon
+those who have thus degraded and dishonored the English name.
+
+We do not use torture or cruelties, even for the greatest crimes, but
+have banished them from our courts of justice; we never suffer them in
+any case. Yet those men, in order to force others to break their most
+sacred trust, inflict tortures upon them. They drag their poor victims
+from dungeon to dungeon, from one place of punishment to another, and
+wholly on account of an extorted bond,--for they owed no money, they
+could not owe any,--but to got this miserable balance of 60,000_l._,
+founded upon their tables of exchange: after they had plundered these
+ladies of 500,000_l._ in money, and 70,000_l._ a year in land, they
+could not be satisfied without putting usury and extortion upon tyranny
+and oppression. To enforce this unjust demand, the miserable victims
+were imprisoned, ironed, scourged, and at last threatened to be sent
+prisoners to Chunar. This menace succeeded. The persons who had resisted
+irons, who had been, as the Begums say, refused food and water, stowed
+in an unwholesome, stinking, pestilential prison, these persons
+withstood everything till the fort of Chunar was mentioned to them; and
+then their fortitude gave way: and why? The fort of Chunar was not in
+the dominions of the Nabob, whose rights they pretended to be
+vindicating: to name a British fort, in their circumstances, was to name
+everything that is most horrible in tyranny; so, at least, it appeared
+to them. They gave way; and thus were committed acts of oppression and
+cruelty unknown, I will venture to say, in the history of India. The
+women, indeed, could not be brought forward and scourged, but their
+ministers were tortured, till, for their redemption, these princesses
+gave up all their clothes, all the ornaments of their persons, all their
+jewels, all the memorials of their husbands and fathers,--all were
+delivered up, and valued by merchants at 50,000_l._; and they also gave
+up 5,000_l._ in money, or thereabouts: so that, in reality, only about
+5,000_l._, a mere nothing, a sum not worth mentioning, even in the
+calculations of extortion and usury, remained unpaid.
+
+But, my Lords, what became of all this money? When you examine these
+witnesses here, they tell you it was paid to Hyder Beg Khan. Now they
+had themselves received the money in tale at their own assay-table. And
+when an account is demanded of the produce of the goods, they shrink
+from it, and say it was Hyder Beg Khan who received the things and sold
+them. Where is Hyder Beg Khan's receipt? The Begums say (and the thing
+speaks for itself) that even gold and jewels coming from them lost their
+value; that part of the goods were spoilt, being kept long unsold in
+damp and bad warehouses; and that the rest of the goods were sold, as
+thieves sell their spoil, for little or nothing. In all this business
+Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton were themselves the actors, chief actors;
+but now, when they are called to account, they substitute Hyder Beg Khan
+in their place, a man that is dead and gone, and you hear nothing more
+of this part of the business.
+
+But the sufferings of these eunuchs did not end here; they were, on
+account of this odd 5,000_l._, confined for twelve months,--not
+prisoners at large, like this prisoner who thrusts his sore leg into
+your Lordships' faces every day, but in harsh and cruel confinement.
+These are the persons that I feel for. It is their dungeon, it is their
+unrevenged wrongs that move me. It is for these innocent, miserable,
+unhappy men, who were guilty of no offence but fidelity to their
+mistresses, in order to vex and torture whom (the first women in Asia)
+in the persons of their ministers these cruelties were exercised,--these
+are they for whom I feel, and not for the miserable sore leg or whining
+cant of this prisoner. He has been the author of all these wrongs; and
+if you transfer to him any of the sympathy you owe to these sufferers,
+you do wrong, you violate compassion. Think of their irons. Has not this
+criminal, who put on these irons, been without one iron? Has he been
+threatened with torture? Has he been locked up without food and water?
+Have his sufferings been aggravated as the sufferings of these poor men
+were aggravated? What punishment has been inflicted, and what can be
+inflicted upon him, in any manner commensurate with the atrocity of his
+crimes?
+
+At last, my Lords, these unhappy men were released. Mr. Bristow, who had
+been sent to Lucknow, writes to Mr. Hastings, and informs him that
+severities could do no more, that imprisonments and menaces could get no
+more money. I believe not, for I doubt much whether any more was to be
+got. But whether there was or not, all the arts of extortion, fortified
+by all the arts of tyranny, of every name and species, had failed, and
+therefore Mr. Bristow released the prisoners,--but without any warrant
+for so doing from Mr. Hastings, who, after having received this letter
+from Mr. Bristow, gets the Supreme Council to order these very
+severities to be continued till the last farthing was paid. In order to
+induce the Council to sanction this measure, he suppressed Mr. Bristow's
+declaration, that severities could do nothing more in exacting further
+payments; and the Resident, I find, was afterwards obliquely punished
+for his humanity by Mr. Hastings.
+
+Mr. Bristow's letter is dated the 12th of December, and he thus writes.
+
+"The battalion at Fyzabad" (where the Begums and their ministers had
+been confined) "is recalled, and my letter to the board of the 1st
+instant has explained my conduct to the Begum. The letter I addressed
+her, a translation of which I beg leave to inclose, (No. 2,) was with a
+view of convincing her that you readily assented to her being freed from
+the restraints which had been imposed upon her, and that your
+acquiescence in her sufferings was a measure of necessity, to which you
+were forced by her extraordinary conduct. I wished to make it appear
+this was a matter on which you directed me to consult the Vizier's
+pleasure, that it might be known you were the spring from whence she was
+restored to her dignity and consequence."
+
+On the 3d of March following, the Council agree to send the following
+order to Mr. Bristow.
+
+"We desire you will inform us if any and what means have been taken for
+recovering the balance due from the Begum at Fyzabad, and, if necessary,
+that you recommend it to the Vizier to enforce the most effectual means
+for that purpose."
+
+My Lords, you see the fraud he has put upon the Council. You will find
+that Mr. Bristow's letters, up to the 3d of March, had been suppressed;
+and though then communicated, yet he instigated his cat's-paw, that
+blind and ignorant Council, to demand from the Vizier the renewal of
+these very severities and cruelties, the continuance of which the
+letters in his pocket had shown him were of no effect. Here you have an
+instance of his implacable cruelty; you see that it never relaxes, never
+remits, and that, finding all the resources of tyranny useless and
+ineffective, he is still willing to use them, and for that purpose he
+makes a fraudulent concealment of the utter inefficacy of all the means
+that had been used.
+
+But, you will ask, what could make him persevere in these acts of
+cruelty, after his avarice had been more than satiated? You will find it
+is this. He had had some quarrel with these women. He believed that they
+had done him some personal injury or other, of which he nowhere informs
+you. But, as you find that in the case of Cheyt Sing he considered his
+visit to General Clavering as an horrid outrage against himself, which
+he never forgave, and revenged to the ruin of that miserable person, so
+you find that he has avowed the same malicious disposition towards the
+Begums, arising from some similar cause. In page 367 of your printed
+Minutes, he says,--"I am sorry that I must in truth add, that a part of
+the resentment of the Begums was, as I had too much reason to suspect,
+directed to myself personally. The incidents which gave rise to it are
+too light to be mixed with the professed subject and occasion of this
+detail; and as they want the authenticity of recorded evidence, I could
+lay no claim to credit in my relation of them. At some period I may be
+induced to offer them to the world, my ultimate and unerring judges,
+both of that and of every other trait in my political character."
+
+My Lords, you have an anecdote here handed to you which is the key of a
+great part of this transaction. He had determined upon some deep and
+desperate revenge for some injury or affront of some kind or other that
+he thought he had received from these people. He accuses them of a
+personal quarrel with himself; and yet he has not the honor or honesty
+to tell you what it was,--what it was that could induce them to
+entertain such a personal resentment against him as to ruin themselves
+and their country by their supposed rebellion. He says, that some time
+or other he will tell it to the world. Why did he not tell his counsel,
+and authorize them to tell a story which could not be unimportant, as it
+was connected with a rebellion which shook the British power in India to
+its foundation? And if it be true that this rebellion had its rise in
+some wicked act of this man, who had offended these women, and made
+them, as he says, his mortal enemies, you will then see that you never
+can go so deep with this prisoner that you do not find in every criminal
+act of his some other criminal act. In the lowest deep there is still a
+lower deep. In every act of his cruelty there is some hidden, dark
+motive, worse than the act itself, of which he just gives you a hint,
+without exposing it to that open light which truth courts and falsehood
+basely slinks from.
+
+But cruelly as they have suffered, dreadfully as they have been robbed,
+insulted as they have been, in every mode of insult that could be
+offered to women of their rank, all this must have been highly
+aggravated by coming from such a man as Mr. Middleton. You have heard the
+audacious and insulting language he has held to them, his declining to
+correspond with them, and the mode of his doing it. There are, my Lords,
+things that embitter the bitterness of oppression itself: contumelious
+acts and language, coming from persons who the other day would have
+licked the dust under the feet of the lowest servants of these ladies,
+must have embittered their wrongs, and poisoned the very cup of malice
+itself.
+
+Oh! but they deserved it. They were concerned in a wicked, outrageous
+rebellion: first, for expelling their own son from his dominions; and,
+secondly, for expelling and extirpating the English nation out of
+India.--Good God Almighty! my Lords, do you hear this? Do you understand
+that the English nation had made themselves so odious, so particularly
+hateful, even to women the most secluded from the world, that there was
+no crime, no mischief, no family destruction, through which they would
+not wade, for our extermination? Is this a pleasant thing to hear of?
+Rebellion is, in all parts of the world, undoubtedly considered as a
+great misfortune: in some countries it must be considered as a
+presumption of some fault in government: _nowhere is it boasted of as
+supplying the means of justifying acts of cruelty and insult, but with
+us_.
+
+We have, indeed, seen that a rebellion did exist in Baraitch and
+Goruckpore. It was an universal insurrection of the people: an
+insurrection for the very extermination of Englishmen,--for the
+extermination of Colonel Hannay,--for the extermination of Captain
+Gordon,--for the extermination of Captain Williams, and of all the other
+captains and colonels exercising the office of farmer-general and
+sub-farmer-general in the manner that we have described. We know that
+there did exist in that country such a rebellion. But mark, my Lords,
+against whom!--against these mild and gracious sovereigns, Colonel
+Hannay, Captain Gordon, Captain Williams. Oh, unnatural and abominable
+rebellion!--But will any one pretend to say that the Nabob himself was
+ever attacked by any of these rebels? No: the attacks were levelled
+against the English. The people rose in favor of their lawful sovereign,
+against a rebellion headed by Mr. Middleton, who, you see, usurped his
+authority,--headed by Colonel Hannay,--headed by Captain Gordon,--headed
+by all those abominable persons exercising, under the Nabob's name, an
+authority destructive to himself and his subjects. Against them there
+was a rebellion. But was this an unnatural rebellion,--a rebellion
+against usurped authority, to save the prince, his children, and state,
+from a set of vile usurpers?
+
+My Lords, I shall soon close our proceeding for this day, because I wish
+to leave this part of our charge strongly and distinctly impressed upon
+your Lordships' memory, and because nothing can aggravate it. I shall
+next proceed, in the farther examination of the prisoner's defence, to
+dissipate, as I trust we have done, and as I hope we shall do, all the
+miserable stuff they have given by way of defence. I shall often have
+occasion to repeat and press upon your Lordships that that miserable
+defence is a heavy aggravation of his crime. At present, I shall
+conclude, leaving this part of our charge with the impression upon your
+Lordships' minds that this pretended rebellion was merely an
+insurrection against the English, excited by their oppression.
+
+If the rebellion was against the Nabob, or if he was the author of the
+oppression which caused it, why do the English only appear to be
+concerned in both of them? How comes it that the Nabob never appears to
+have expressed any resentment against the rebels? We shall prove beyond
+a doubt, that the Begums had nothing to do with it. There was, indeed,
+as I have already said, what may be called a rebellion; but it was a
+rebellion against--not the Nabob, but in favor of the lawful prince of
+the country,--against the usurpers of his authority and the destroyers
+of his country. With this, as a rebellion, Mr. Hastings has charged
+these women; he has charged them with a war against their son, for the
+purpose of exterminating the English. Look, I pray you, at the whole
+business, consider all the circumstances of it, and ask yourselves
+whether this is not a charge, not only so grossly improbable, but so
+perfectly impossible, that there is not any evidence which can make it
+even plausible. Consider next, my Lords, on the other side, the evidence
+of their innocence, and then ask yourselves whether any additional
+matter could make its probability in the least degree more probable. My
+Lords, the evidence we have produced is neither more nor less than that
+of almost all the persons who have had a share in exciting that
+rebellion, and who, to justify their own horrible cruelty, have
+attempted to charge the natural consequences of that cruelty upon these
+unhappy women.
+
+But where, all this time, is the Nabob, against whom this rebellion is
+pretended to be directed? Was it ever even insinuated to him that his
+mother had raised a rebellion against him? When were the proofs shown to
+him? Did he ever charge her with it? He surely must have been most
+anxious to prevent and suppress a rebellion against himself: but not one
+word on that subject has ever come out of his mouth; nor has any one
+person been produced to show that he was informed of the existence of
+such a rebellion. The persons said to be rebels are his mother and
+grandmother; and I again ask, Was there the least intimation given to
+him by Mr. Middleton, or by any other person, of their being even
+suspected of rebellion against him? There was, indeed, a hint of some
+rebellion, which the creatures of Mr. Hastings got at obliquely; but
+neither the person against whom the rebellion is supposed to exist, nor
+the persons who were said to be guilty of it, were ever either informed
+of or charged with it. I defy the prisoner and his whole gang to produce
+one word ever uttered by any one of them, from which the Nabob or
+Begums could learn that they were supposed to be concerned in the
+rebellion: so that none of those who were said to be the principal
+actors in the scene ever heard of the parts they were acting from the
+actual authors and managers of the business. Not one word was uttered of
+a charge made, much less of proof given. Nothing was heard but "Give me
+the money!"--irons,--new irons,--new imprisonment,--and at last the
+castle of Chunar.
+
+And here I beg leave to pause, and to leave upon your minds the
+impression, first, of the wrong that was done, the violence, and the
+robbery,--and, secondly, of the pretences, both civil and criminal, by
+which they have attempted to justify their proceedings.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+SIXTH DAY, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--Your Lordships will recollect that we closed the last day of
+your proceeding in this trial at a most interesting part of our charge,
+or rather of our observations upon that charge. We closed at that awful
+moment when we found the first women of Oude pillaged of all their
+landed and of all their moneyed property, in short, of all they
+possessed. We closed by reciting to you the false pretence on which this
+pillage was defended, namely, that it was the work of the Nabob. Now we
+had before proved to you, from evidence adduced by the prisoner himself,
+that this Nabob was a mere tool in his hands; and therefore, if this
+pretence be true, it aggravates his guilt: for surely the forcing a son
+to violate the property of his mother must everywhere be considered a
+crime most portentous and enormous. At this point we closed; and after
+the detail which has been given you already of these horrible and
+iniquitous proceedings, some apology may perhaps be necessary for
+entering again into the refutation of this iniquitous pretence.
+
+My honorable fellow Manager who preceded me in this business did, in his
+remarks upon the inference drawn by the prisoner's counsel from the
+seizure of the Begums' treasures by the Nabob, as evidence of their
+guilt, as he ought to do,--he treated it with proper contempt. I
+consider it, indeed, to be as little an evidence of their guilt as he
+does, and as little a defence of that seizure as he does. But I consider
+it in another and in a new light, namely, as a heavy aggravation of the
+prisoner's crimes, and as a matter that will let you into the whole
+spirit of his government; and I warn your Lordships against being
+imposed on by evasions, of which if it were possible for you to be the
+dupes, you would be unfit to be judges of the smallest matters in the
+world, civil or criminal.
+
+The first observation which I shall beg leave to make to your Lordships
+is this, that the whole of the proceedings, from beginning to end, has
+been a mystery of iniquity, and that in no part of them have the orders
+of the Company been regarded, but, on the contrary, the whole has been
+carried on in a secret and clandestine manner.
+
+It is necessary that your Lordships should be acquainted with the manner
+in which the correspondence of the Company's servants ought to be
+carried on and their proceedings regulated; your Lordships, therefore,
+will please to hear read the orders given concerning correspondence of
+every kind with the country powers. You will remember the period when
+these orders were issued, namely, the period at which the act passed for
+the better direction of the servants of the Company. By this act Mr.
+Hastings was appointed to be Governor-General, and the Court of
+Directors was required by that act to prepare orders and instructions,
+which Mr. Hastings was required by the same act to comply with. You will
+see what these instructions and orders were, and in what manner he has
+complied with them.
+
+
+     _Extract of General Instructions to the Governor-General and
+     Council, 29th of March, 1774._
+
+     "We direct that you assemble in Council twice every week, and that
+     all the members be duly summoned; that the correspondence with the
+     princes or country powers in India be carried on by the
+     Governor-General only, but that all letters sent by him be first
+     approved in Council, and that he lay before the Council, at their
+     next meeting, all letters received by him in the course of such
+     correspondence, for their information. We likewise direct that a
+     copy of such parts of the country correspondence be communicated to
+     our Board of Trade: (to be constituted as hereinafter mentioned) as
+     may any ways relate to the business of their department."
+
+You will observe, my Lords, two important circumstances in these
+instructions: first, that, after the board had regularly met, the
+Persian correspondence, kept by the Governor only, was to be
+communicated to the Council; and, secondly, that he should write no
+answer to any part of the business until he had previously consulted the
+Council upon it. Here is the law of the land,--an order given in
+pursuance of an act of Parliament. Your Lordships will consider how Mr.
+Hastings comported himself with regard to those orders: for we charge it
+as a substantive crime, independent of the criminal presumptions arising
+from it, that he violated an act of Parliament which imposed direct
+instructions upon him as to the manner in which he was to conduct all
+matters of business with the native powers.
+
+My Lords, we contend strongly that all the positive rules and
+injunctions of the law, though they are merely positive, and do not
+contain anything but mere matters of regulation, shall be strictly
+observed. The reason is this, and a serious reason it is: official
+tyranny and oppression, corruption, peculation, and bribery are crimes
+so secret in their nature that we can hardly ever get to the proof of
+them without the assistance of rules, orders, and regulations of a
+positive nature, intended to prevent the perpetration of these crimes,
+and to detect the offender in case the crimes should be actually
+perpetrated. You ought, therefore, to presume, that, whenever such rules
+or laws are broken, these crimes are intended to be committed; for you
+have no means of security against the commission of secret crimes but by
+enforcing positive laws, the breach of which must be always plain, open,
+and direct. Such, for instance, is the spirit of the laws, that,
+although you cannot directly prove bribery or smuggling in a hundred
+cases where they have been committed, you can prove whether the proper
+documents, proper cockets, proper entries in regular offices have been
+observed and performed, or not. By these means you lock the door against
+bribery, you lock the door against corruption, against smuggling and
+contraband trade. But how? By falling upon and attacking the offence?
+No, by falling upon and attacking the breach of the regulation. You
+prove that the man broke the regulation, and, as he could have no other
+motive or interest in breaking it, you presume that he broke it
+fraudulently, and you punish the man not for the crime the regulation
+was meant to prevent, but you punish him for the breach of the
+regulation itself.
+
+Next to the breach of these positive instructions, your Lordships will
+attend to the consequent concealment and mystery by which it was
+accompanied. All government must, to preserve its authority, be sincere
+in its declarations and authentic in its acts. Whenever in any matter of
+policy there is a mystery, you must presume a fraud; whenever in any
+matter of money there is concealment, you must presume misconduct: you
+must therefore affix your punishment to the breach of the rule;
+otherwise the conviction of public delinquents would be unattainable.
+
+I have therefore put before you that rule which he has violated; and we,
+the Commons, call upon your Lordships to enforce that rule, and to
+avenge the breach of it. You have seen the consequences of breaking the
+rule; and we have charged and do charge it as a heavy aggravation of
+those consequences, that, instead of consulting the Council, instead of
+laying the whole correspondence before them, instead of consulting them
+upon his answers, he went himself up into the country, took his
+Majesty's chief-justice along with him, and made that person the
+instrument of those wrongs, violences, robberies, and concealments
+which we call upon your Lordships to punish.
+
+My Lords, an extraordinary circumstance occurred in the course of our
+proceedings in another place, which I must state, to show you in what a
+horrible manner your laws have been trampled upon and despised. None of
+the proceedings which have been last stated to your Lordships respecting
+the seizure of the treasures of the Begums appear upon any public record
+whatever. From the manner in which they came to our knowledge, your
+Lordships will perceive what must have been the prisoner's own opinion
+of the horrible nature of proceedings which he thought so necessary to
+be concealed.
+
+Whilst we were inquiring into the violences committed against the
+Begums, in breach of the treaty entered into with them, there came into
+my hands an anonymous letter containing a full account of all the matter
+which has lately been stated to you. It came anonymously; and I did not
+know from what quarter it came. I do not even know with certainty at
+this hour: I say, not with certainty, for I can only form a conjecture.
+This anonymous communication enabled us to produce all the
+correspondence with Mr. Middleton respecting the cruelties exercised
+towards the Begums and their eunuchs in order to extort money. We found
+the names of Major Gilpin and several other persons in these letters. We
+also found in them a strong fox smell of a Sir Elijah Impey, that his
+brush and crime had left behind him; we traced him by that scent; and as
+we proceeded, we discovered the footsteps of as many of the wolves as
+Mr. Hastings thought proper to leave there. We sent for and examined Mr.
+Middleton, and Major Gilpin produced his correspondence. When we applied
+to Mr. Middleton, we found that all this part of his correspondence had
+been torn out of his book; but having come at it by means of our
+anonymous communication, we subsequently proved and established it, in
+the manner we have done before your Lordships. Here, then, you have
+important matter which this anonymous letter has brought to light; and
+otherwise the whole of this correspondence, so essential to the
+interests and justice of Great Britain, would have been concealed by
+this wicked man. Thus, I say, his violation of a positive law would have
+remained undiscovered, if mere accident had not enabled us to trace this
+iniquity to its source. Therefore I begin our proceedings this day by
+stating to your Lordships this fact, and by calling upon your justice to
+punish him for this violation of the laws of his country.
+
+We have told you who the instruments were by which all this wickedness
+was committed, Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson, persons who were sent as
+ambassadors to represent the interests of the Company at the court of an
+independent prince. Over this prince they usurped an absolute power;
+they even made use of British officers in his own service and receiving
+his pay, to enslave his person, and to force him to rob his kindred.
+These agents were aided by an English chief-justice, sent under the
+authority of an act of Parliament to represent the sovereign majesty of
+English justice, and to be a restraint upon the misconduct of the
+Company's servants. These are the instruments with which this man works.
+We have shown you his system; we have shown you his instruments: we will
+now proceed with the examination of the pretences upon which this horrid
+and nefarious act is attempted to be justified. We have not entered into
+this examination for the sake of refuting things that want no
+refutation, but for the purpose of showing you the spirit of the whole
+proceeding, and making it appear to your Lordships, as I trust it will
+appear, that the wicked act done there is not half so bad as the wicked
+defence made here.
+
+The first part of Sir Elijah Impey's commission, as your Lordships will
+remember, was to seize upon the Begums' treasures. He had likewise
+another budget of instructions, which has been discovered in the trunks
+of which your Lordships have heard,--secret instructions to be given by
+him to Mr. Middleton for the furtherance of this business. And that his
+office of Chief-Justice should not lie dormant, he was commissioned to
+seek for affidavits or written testimony from any persons, for the
+purpose of convicting these women of a design of atrociously revolting
+against their son, and deposing him from the government, with a view of
+getting rid of the English inhabitants. This was the accusation; and the
+evidence to support it Sir Elijah Impey was sent to collect.
+
+My Lords, I must here observe to your Lordships that there is no act of
+violence which, merely as an act of violence, may not in some sort be
+borne: because an act of violence infers no principle; it infers nothing
+but a momentary impulse of a bad mind, proceeding, without law or
+justice, to the execution of its object. For at the same time that it
+pays no regard to law, it does not debauch it, it does not wrest it to
+its purposes: the law disregarded still exists; and hope still exists in
+the sufferer, that, when law shall be resorted to, violence will cease,
+and wrongs will be redressed. But whenever the law itself is debauched,
+and enters into a corrupt coalition with violence, robbery, and wrong,
+then all hope is gone; and then it is not only private persons that
+suffer, but the law itself, when so corrupted, is often perverted into
+the worst instrument of fraud and violence; it then becomes most odious
+to mankind, and an infinite aggravation of every injury they suffer.
+
+We have therefore in our charge strongly reprobated Sir Elijah Impey's
+going to take such affidavits. "Oh! but," they say, "a judge may take an
+affidavit in his chamber privately; and he may take an affidavit, though
+not exactly in the place of his jurisdiction, to authenticate a bond, or
+the like."--We are not to be cheated by words. It is not dirty shreds of
+worn-out parchments, the sweepings of Westminster Hall, that shall serve
+us in place of that justice upon, which the world stands. Affidavits! We
+know that in the language of our courts affidavits do not signify a body
+of evidence to sustain a criminal charge, but are generally relative to
+matter [matters?] in process collateral to the charge, which, not coming
+before the jury, are made known to the judge by way of affidavit.
+
+But was it ever heard, or will it be borne, that a person exercising a
+judicial office under his Majesty should walk beyond the sphere of his
+jurisdiction,--that he should desert the station in which he was placed
+for the protection of the natives, and should march to such a place as
+Lucknow in order to take depositions for criminating persons in that
+country, without so much as letting these poor victims know one article
+in the depositions so taken? These depositions, my Lords, were made to
+criminate, they were meant to justify a forfeiture, and are not in the
+nature of those voluntary affidavits which, whether made within
+jurisdiction or without, whether made publicly or privately, signify
+comparatively nothing to the cause. I do not mean, to say that any
+process of any court has not its weight, when the matter is within it in
+the ordinary course of proceedings: it is the extraordinary course, the
+extrajudicial conduct, which divests it of that just weight it otherwise
+would have.
+
+This chief-justice goes to Lucknow, where he holds his court, such as it
+was. He is ready to authenticate any process by the signature of the
+English chief-justice, in a court which he holds by night, in a court
+which he holds in darkness and secrecy. He holds his court in Fyzabad;
+he holds it, unknown to the Nabob of Oude, in his own capital, and
+without giving him the least knowledge of or any notice of what he was
+proceeding to do. He holds it at the lodgings of Colonel Morgan, a
+pensioner of the Nabob; and the person assisting him is Mr. Middleton,
+who is likewise, as we have proved to you, one of the Nabob's
+pensioners, a monopolizer of trade in the country, and a person who
+received much the major part of his emoluments from the Nabob's hands.
+
+In that clandestine manner, in the Nabob's own house, in his own capital
+city, in the lodging of his dependant and pensioner, Colonel Morgan,
+with no other witness that we know of than Mr. Middleton, was this
+iniquitous, dark procedure held, to criminate the mother of the Nabob.
+We here see a scene of dark, mysterious contrivance: let us now see what
+is brought out in the face of open day. The attestations themselves,
+which you have seen on the record before you. They were brought
+out--where? there? No: they were brought out in another place; they were
+brought out at Calcutta,--but were never communicated to the Nabob. He
+never knew anything of the matter. Let us now see what those
+attestations were. Your Lordships will bear in mind that I do not advert
+to this thing, which they bring as evidence, in the way of imputation of
+its being weak, improper, and insufficient evidence, but as an
+incontrovertible proof of crimes, and of a systematic design to ruin
+the accused party, by force there and by chicane here: these are the
+principles upon which I am going to talk to you upon this abominable
+subject,--of which, I am sorry to say, I have no words sufficient to
+express my horror. No words can express it; nor can anything but the
+severity of your Lordships' judgments find an adequate expression of it.
+It is not to be expressed in words, but in punishment.
+
+Having stated before whom the evidence collected in this body of
+affidavits was taken, I shall now state who the persons were that gave
+it. They were those very persons who were guilty of robbing and ruining
+the whole country: yes, my Lords, the very persons who had been accused
+of this in the mass by Mr. Hastings himself. They were nothing less than
+the whole body of those English officers who were usurping the office of
+farmers-general, and other lucrative offices in the Nabob's government,
+and whose pillage and peculations had raised a revolt of the whole
+kingdom against themselves. These persons are here brought in a mass to
+clear themselves of this charge by criminating other persons, and
+clandestinely imputing to them the effect of their own iniquity.
+
+But supposing these witnesses to be good for anything, supposing it fit
+that the least attention should be paid them, the matter of their
+testimony may very possibly be true without criminating the Begum. It
+criminates Saadut Ali Khan, the brother of the Nabob; the word Begum is
+never mentioned in the crimination but in conjunction with his; and much
+the greater part of it criminates the Nabob himself. Now, my Lords, I
+will say, that the matter of these affidavits, forgetting who the
+deponents were, may possibly be true, as far as respects Saadut Ali
+Khan, but that it is utterly as improbable, which is the main point and
+the stress of the thing, with respect to the Begums, as it is impossible
+with respect to the Nabob. That Saadut Ali, being a military man, a man
+ambitious and aspiring to greatness, should take advantage of the abuses
+of the English government and of the discontent of the country, that he
+should, I say, raise a revolt against his brother is very possible; but
+it is scarcely within possibility that the mother of the Nabob should
+have joined with the illegitimate son against her legitimate son. I can
+only say that in human affairs there is the possibility of truth in
+this. It is possible she might wish to depose her legitimate son, her
+only legitimate son, and to depose him for the sake of a bastard son of
+her husband's,--to exalt him at the expense of the former, and to exalt,
+of course, the mother of that bastard at her own expense, and to her own
+wrong. But I say, that this, though possible, is grossly improbable. The
+reason why the Begum is implicated in this charge with Saadut Ali by the
+affidavits cannot escape your notice. Their own acquittal might be the
+only object of the deponents in their crimination of the latter; but the
+treasures of the former were the objects of their employers, and these
+treasures could not be come at but by the destruction of the Begums.
+
+But, my Lords, there are other affidavits, or whatever your Lordships
+may call them, that go much further. In order to give a color to the
+accusation, and make it less improbable, they say that the Nabob himself
+was at the bottom of it, and that he joined with his brother and his
+mother to extirpate out of his dominions that horrible grievance, the
+English brigade officers,--those English officers who were the
+farmers-general, and who, as we have proved by Mr. Hastings's own
+evidence, had ruined the country. Nothing is more natural than that a
+man, sensible of his duty to himself and his subjects, should form a
+scheme to get rid of a band of robbers that were destroying his country
+and degrading and ruining his family. Thus you see a family compact
+naturally accounted for: the Nabob at the head of it, his mother joining
+her own son, and a natural brother joining in the general interests of
+the family. This is a possible case. But is this the case pressed by
+them? No: they pass lightly over the legitimate son; they scarcely touch
+upon Saadut Ali Khan; they sink the only two persons that could give
+probability or possibility to this business, and endeavor to throw the
+whole design upon these two unfortunate women.
+
+Your Lordships see the wickedness and baseness of the contrivance. They
+first, in order to keep the whole family in terror, accuse the whole
+family; then, having possessed themselves of the treasures of the Begums
+upon another pretence, they endeavor to fix upon them that improbable
+guilt which they had with some degree of probability charged upon the
+whole family, as a farther justification of that spoliation. Your
+Lordships will see what an insult is offered to the Peers of Great
+Britain, in producing before you, by way of defence, such gross,
+scandalous, and fraudulent proceedings.
+
+Who the first set of witnesses were which they produced before their
+knight-errant chief-justice, Sir Elijah Impey, who wandered in search of
+a law adventure, I have laid open to your Lordships. You have now had
+an account of the scandalous manufacture of that batch of affidavits
+which was in the budget of Sir Elijah Impey,--that Pandora's box which I
+have opened, and out of which has issued every kind of evil. This
+chief-justice went up there with the death-warrant of the Begums'
+treasures, and, for aught he knew, the death-warrant of their persons.
+At the same time that he took these affidavits he became himself a
+witness in this business; he appears as a witness. How? Did he know any
+one circumstance of the rebellion? No, he does not even pretend to do
+so. "But," says he, "in my travels I was obliged to avoid Fyzabad, upon
+account of the suspected rebellion there." Another chief-justice would
+have gone fifty miles about to avoid Lucknow, for everybody knows that
+Lucknow was the focus and centre of extortion, corruption, and
+peculation, and that a worse air for the lungs of a chief-justice could
+not be found in the world. If his lungs wanted the benefit of pure air,
+he would even have put himself in the focus of a rebellion, to have kept
+at a distance from the smell of carrion and putrid corruption of every
+kind that was at Lucknow. A chief-justice may go to a place where a
+rebellion is raging, he may die a martyr to his honor; but a
+chief-justice who puts himself into the focus of peculation, into the
+focus of bribery, into the focus of everything that is base and
+corrupt,--what can we expect from him but that he will be engaged in
+clandestine jobs there? The former might kill Sir Elijah Impey, the
+knight-errant, but the chief-justice would remain pure and entire;
+whereas Sir Elijah Impey has escaped from Lucknow, and the chief-justice
+is left by Mr. Hastings to shift for himself.
+
+After mentioning this violation of the laws of hospitality by Sir Elijah
+Impey, I would ask, Was any notice given by him, or by any of Mr.
+Hastings's agents, to the Nabob, who was so immediately interested in
+this matter? Was any notice given to the Begums that any such charge was
+entertained against them? Not a word. Was it notified to the eunuchs?
+Was it to Saadut Ali Khan? Not a word. They were all within their power.
+The eunuchs were a year in irons, and they were subjected to the want of
+food and water for a part of that year. They were dragged from Fyzabad
+to Lucknow, and from Lucknow to Fyzabad. During all that time was there
+a word mentioned to them by any one person on the part of Mr. Hastings,
+that they were accused of this matter? Not a word.
+
+We now submit to your Lordships' vindictive justice and condemnation
+this recriminatory defence, in which every principle of justice has been
+violated. And now I will ask your Lordships whether you would have
+suffered such a procedure in the case of the prisoner at your bar. It
+was asked by a person of great authority in this House, when we were
+going to produce certain evidence against Mr. Hastings, (we do not say
+whether we offered to produce it properly or improperly,--that is
+another matter,)--we were asked, I say, whether our intentions of
+producing that evidence had been communicated to Mr. Hastings. Had he
+had an opportunity of cross-examining the witnesses who had given that
+evidence? No, he added, that evidence must be rejected. Now I say to
+your Lordships, upon the same ground, deal with the Begums as you dealt
+with Mr. Hastings. Do not keep two weights and measures for different
+persons in the same cause. You would not suffer such evidence to be
+produced against him; you will not assuredly suffer such evidence to be
+produced to you in his favor and against them.
+
+My Lords, the cause between this man and these unfortunate women is at
+last come into Westminster Hall; the cause is come to a solemn trial;
+and we demand other witnesses and other kinds of proof than what these
+affidavits furnish. My Lords, the persons who have been examined here
+are almost all of them the same persons who made these affidavits; but
+there is this material difference in their evidence: at your Lordships'
+bar they sunk all those parts of their former evidence which criminated
+the Nabob and Saadut Ali, and confined their testimony wholly to what
+related to the Begums. We were obliged, by a cross-examination, to
+squeeze out of them the disavowal of what they had deposed on the former
+occasion. The whole of their evidence we leave to the judgment of your
+Lordships, with these summary remarks: first, that they are the persons
+who were to profit by their own wrong; they are the persons who had
+seven months' arrears paid to them out of the money of these unfortunate
+ladies; they are the persons who, to justify the revolt which they had
+caused in the country by their robbery, charge their own guilt upon
+others. The credibility of their evidence is therefore gone. But if it
+were not affected by these circumstances, Mr. Hastings has put an end to
+it by telling you that there is not one of them who is to be credited
+upon his oath,--no, not in a court-martial; and can it, therefore, be
+expected that in a case of peculation they will do otherwise than acquit
+the party accused? He has himself laid before you the horrible state of
+the whole service; your Lordships have it fresh in your memories, and
+ringing in your ears. You have also heard from witnesses brought by Mr.
+Hastings himself, that these soldiers committed misdemeanors of the very
+same kind with those which we have stated. They ought not, therefore, to
+be listened to for a moment; and we aver that it is an aggravation of
+the prisoner's crimes, that he has brought the instruments of his guilt,
+the persons of whom he has complained as having ruined and destroyed
+that country, and whom he had engaged, at the Nabob's desire, in the
+treaty of Chunar, to send out of the country, as being a nuisance in
+it,--to bring, I say, these people here, to criminate, at a distance of
+nine thousand miles, these unfortunate women, where they have neither
+attorney or agent who can from local knowledge cross-examine them. He
+has the audacity to bring these people here; and in what manner they
+comport themselves, when they come here, your Lordships have seen.
+
+There is one of them whom we cannot pass by: that is, Captain Gordon.
+The other witnesses, who appeared here as evidences to criminate the
+Begums, did it by rumors and hearsays. They had heard some person say
+that the Begums had encouraged rebellion, always coupling them with
+Saadut Ali Khan, and sometimes with the Nabob, because there might have
+been some probability for their charge in the transactions with Saadut
+Ali Khan, which, though impossible with regard to the Begums, they
+thought would implicate him [them?] in his designs. But Captain Gordon
+is to give a different account of the proceedings.
+
+Captain Gordon was one of Colonel Hannay's under-farmers. He was hunted
+out of the country and, as one of the Begums says, pursued by a
+thousand of the zemindars, for robbing the whole country. This woman,
+through respect to the British name, that name which guarantied her
+possessions to her, receives this Captain Gordon and Captain Williams
+with every mark of kindness, hospitality, and protection, that could be
+given them. She conveys them from the borders to the city of Fyzabad,
+and from Fyzabad, her capital, supposed to be the nest of her rebellion,
+on to their place of destination. They both write her letters full of
+expressions of gratitude and kindness for the services that they had
+received. They then pass on to Lucknow to Sir Elijah Impey, and there
+they sink every word of kindness, of any service or protection that they
+had received, or of any acknowledgment that they had ever made of it.
+They sink all this: not one word of it appears in their affidavits.
+
+How, then, did we come to the knowledge of it? We got it from Major
+Gilpin, who was examined in the course of these proceedings; and we used
+it in our charge, from the papers that we hold in our hands. Mr.
+Hastings has confessed the fact; and Mr. Middleton has endeavored to
+slur it over, but could not completely conceal it. We have established
+the fact, and it is in evidence before your Lordships.
+
+You have now, then, in this manner, got these testimonials given by
+English officers in favor of these women; and by the same means the
+letters of the latter accusing the former are come to your hands: and
+now these same English officers come here with their recriminatory
+accusation. Now why did they not make it at Lucknow? Why did not Mr.
+Hastings, when Mr. Middleton had such papers for him in his hands, why,
+I ask, did not Mr. Hastings procure some explanation of the
+circumstances whilst he was in India? I will read your Lordships the
+letter, that you may not only know, but feel, the iniquity of this
+business.
+
+
+     _Letter from the Mother of the Vizier to Mr. Hastings; received the
+     6th of January, 1782._
+
+     "Our situation is pretty well, and your good health is constantly
+     prayed for. I had sent Behar Ali Khan to you. Accordingly people
+     invented a falsehood, that Behar Ali Khan was gone to get the
+     deputyship of the Subah; and some persons here were saying,
+     'Wherefore has she sent Behar Ali Khan to Calcutta to the Nabob
+     Amaud ul Dowlah? We will never permit the affair to succeed.' And
+     accordingly it has so happened. For they say that you also have not
+     put your seal to the treaty: and the people here say, 'Why does the
+     noble lady correspond with the English gentlemen?' On this account,
+     I did not send a letter at the time when you came this way. Now the
+     state of affairs here is thus. On the 27th Zehedja, Asoph ul Dowlah
+     Banadur, without my knowledge, sent his own aumils into my
+     jaghires. I accordingly wrote several times to Mr. Middleton on
+     this business: that his seal was to the treaty and writing of
+     discharge; why did he not negotiate in my favor? Mr. Middleton
+     replied, 'The Nabob is the master.' I wrote frequently, but without
+     effect. Being helpless, I represent to you the state of my affairs,
+     that, notwithstanding the existence of this treaty, I have been
+     treated in this manner. It is useless for me to stay here. Whatever
+     is is a compact; whenever any one deviates from his compact, he
+     meets with no credit for the future; and the light of mine eyes,
+     Asoph ul Dowlah, wrote to me that he had sent his own aumils into
+     my jaghires, and would pay ready money from his treasury. Reflect
+     on my security for his adhering to his future engagements, from the
+     consideration of his conduct under his past promises. I do not
+     agree to his ready money. Let me have my jaghires as formerly;
+     otherwise, leaving this place, I will wait on you at Benares, and
+     thence will go towards Shahjehanabad, because he has not adhered to
+     his engagement. Send letters to Asoph ul Dowlah, and to Mr.
+     Middleton, and Hussein Reza Khan, and Hyder Beg Khan, not to molest
+     the Begum's jaghires, and to let them remain, as formerly, with the
+     Begum's aumils. And it is here suspected of me that my aumil
+     plundered the property of Mr. John Gordon. The case is this. Mr.
+     John Gordon arrived at Taunda, a jaghire of mine, fighting with the
+     zemindars of Acberpore, which belongs to the Khalseh. Accordingly,
+     Mr. John Gordon having come to Taunda, my aumil performed whatever
+     appertained to his duty. Afterwards Mr. John Gordon wrote to me to
+     send my people, that he might come with them to Fyzabad. I sent
+     people accordingly to bring Mr. John Gordon, and the said gentleman
+     arrived here in complete safety; and Mr. John Gordon is now
+     present. Ask him yourself of these matters. Mr. John Gordon will
+     represent matters in detail; the truth will then become known, how
+     ill-founded the calumny is. Should you come here for a few days, it
+     will be very well, and if not, I will wait on you; and your coming
+     here is very necessary, that all my affairs may become arranged.
+     And send a speedy answer to my letters, and a letter to Asoph ul
+     Dowlah, and Mr. Middleton, and Hussein Reza Khan, and Hyder Beg
+     Khan, on the subject of ceasing to molest my jaghires. And send me
+     constantly news of your health, for my peace of mind depends
+     thereon."
+
+This letter was transmitted to Mr. Hastings. I desire your Lordships
+will remark upon this letter, for it is a most important one indeed. It
+is hardly worth observing that all this correspondence came out of the
+various trunks of which your Lordships have already heard, and that this
+letter is out of the trunk of Mr. Hastings's private Persian secretary
+and interpreter, Mr. Jonathan Scott. Now, my Lords, in this letter there
+are several things worthy of your Lordships' observation. The first is,
+that this woman is not conscious of having ever been accused of any
+rebellion: the only accusation that ever came to her ears was, that
+Captain Gordon said that his baggage had been robbed by one of her
+aumils. She denies the truth of this charge; and she produces
+testimonials of their good behavior to him; and, what is the essential
+point of all, she desires Mr. Hastings to apply to this Mr. John Gordon,
+and to know from him what truth or falsehood there is in that
+accusation, and what weight there is in the attestation she produces.
+"Mr. Gordon is now present," says she; "ask him yourself of these
+matters." This reasonable request was not complied with. Mr. Gordon
+swears before Sir Elijah Impey to the robbery; but he never mentions the
+paper he had written, in which he confessed that he owed his life to
+this very lady. No inquiry was made into this matter. Colonel Hannay
+was then alive. Captain Gordon was alive, and she refers to him: yet
+that very man was sworn before Sir Elijah Impey, and accuses his
+prisoner. Did the prisoner at your bar make that attestation known to
+the Begum, whose letter at that very time was in his possession, in Mr.
+Scott's trunk,--that very letter in which he is desired to make the
+inquiry from Captain Gordon?
+
+Mr. Hastings is acquainted with the facts stated by the Begum, and with
+Captain Gordon's accusation. Did he afterwards inform her of this
+accusation? or did he ask this Captain Gordon one question in India,
+where the matter might be ventilated? Not one word, my Lords. Therefore
+we fix upon him fraud, deceit, and the production of false evidence,
+after the woman had desired to have the man who was the evidence against
+her examined upon the spot. This he does not do, but with much more
+prudence he brings him here. And for what? To discredit his own
+testimony, and the written evidence. And how does he discredit them?
+There are two of these papers, which I beg leave to read to your
+Lordships.
+
+
+     _Copy of a Letter to Jewar and Behar Ali Khan, from Mr. Gordon._
+
+     "Sirs, my indulgent friends, remain under, &c., &c., &c. After
+     compliments, I have the pleasure to inform you, that yesterday,
+     having taken leave of you, I passed the night at Noorgunge, and
+     next morning about ten or eleven o'clock, through your favor and
+     benevolence, arrived safe at Goondah. Mir Aboo Buksh Zemindar and
+     Mir Rustum Ali accompanied me.
+
+     "To what extent can I prolong the praises of you, my beneficent
+     friends? May the Supreme Being, for this benign, compassionate,
+     humane action, have you in His keeping, and increase your property,
+     and speedily grant me the pleasure of an interview; until which
+     time continue to favor me with friendly letters, and oblige me by
+     any commands in my power to execute. May your wishes be ever
+     crowned with success! My compliments," &c., &c., &c.
+
+
+     _Copy of an Address from Mr. Gordon to the Begum._
+
+     "Begum Saib of exalted dignity and generosity, whom God preserve!
+     After presenting the usual professions of servitude, &c., in the
+     customary manner, my address is presented.
+
+     "Your gracious letter, in answer to the petition of your servant
+     from Goondah, exalted me. From the contents, I became unspeakably
+     impressed with the honor it conferred. May the Almighty protect
+     that royal purity, and bestow happiness, increase of wealth, and
+     prosperity! The welfare of your servant is entirely owing to your
+     favor and benevolence; a few days have elapsed since I arrived at
+     Goondah, with the Colonel Saib.
+
+     "This is presented for your Highness's information. I cherish hopes
+     from your generosity, that, considering me in the light of one of
+     your servants, you will always continue to exalt and honor me with
+     your gracious letters. May the sun of prosperity continually
+     shine!"
+
+These acknowledgments of the Begum's friendly disposition and services
+were concealed, when the charge was made against this woman at Lucknow
+before Sir Elijah Impey: I wish to impress this upon your Lordships'
+mind; and that before Mr. Hastings left Bengal, in the trunk of Major
+Scott, his private Persian interpreter, was this letter. Did he make
+that inquiry of Captain Gordon? No. Did he make that inquiry of Colonel
+Hannay? Did he make any inquiry into the matter, after his perusal of
+these letters? Or did he give this poor woman any opportunity of
+obtaining justice against this Captain Gordon, who, after acknowledging
+that he owed his life to her favor, calumniates and traduces her to her
+utter destruction? No, he never did; and therefore he is chargeable, and
+I charge him, with everything that is wrongful in Captain Gordon's
+evidence.
+
+These papers, which carry with them a clear refutation of all the
+charges against the Begum, are never once produced, though Captain
+Gordon was referred to expressly for inquiry and explanation of the
+whole transaction by the woman herself. You hear nothing of them; there
+is no appearance of them in the affidavits; no such papers were laid
+before the Supreme Council; none were transmitted to the Court of
+Directors: but at last the House of Commons having come at the truth of
+this matter, Mr. Hastings, not daring to deny the existence of these
+papers, brings Captain Gordon to be examined here, in order to prove
+that papers which he had himself written were false. Is this to be
+tolerated? What will your Lordships think of a man that comes to attest
+his own infamy,--to declare that he has written papers containing
+falsehoods, and to invalidate the false testimony which he had before
+given? Is he to be suffered, I say, to come here, and endeavor to prove
+the absolute falsity of his own deeds by his own evidence?
+
+The next point for your Lordships' consideration is the evidence which
+he produces to prove the falsity of a paper written by himself. Why, he
+himself is the sole evidence. And how does he prove it? Why, says he,
+"The reason of my writing that letter was this: she had sent a person
+with me as an escort, and this person was desirous of receiving some
+proof that he had done his duty; and therefore I wrote a complaisant
+letter. I meant nothing by it. It was written merely to satisfy the mind
+of the man." Now is that the way in which formal and solemn letters,
+written upon great occasions to great people, are to be explained away?
+If he had said nothing but "Your servant, such a one, has done his
+duty," this explanation might pass. But you see it has another
+complexion. It speaks of his owing his life to her. But if you admit
+that it is possible (for possibilities have an unknown extent) that he
+wrote such a letter at such a time and for such a purpose, and that the
+letter he wrote was false, and that the falsity of the letter is proved
+by his own testimony given in an affidavit which we have also reason to
+believe is false, your Lordships must at the same time admit that it is
+one of the most complex pieces of fraud and falsehood that, I believe,
+ever existed in the world. But it is worse than all this. There is
+another letter, written some days after, which I will read to you, and
+which he has not pretended to say was written only to testify that a
+messenger had executed his commission properly.
+
+"Your gracious letter," (he thus writes,) "in answer to the petition of
+your servant from Goondah, exalted me. From the contents, I became
+unspeakably impressed with the honor it conferred."
+
+My Lords, this letter was not sent back by a messenger, in
+acknowledgment of his having done his duty, but was written in
+consequence of a correspondence in the nature of a petition for
+something or other which he made to the Begum. That petition they have
+suppressed and sunk. It is plain, however, that the petition had been
+sent, and was granted; and therefore the apology that is made for the
+former letter does not apply to this letter, which was written
+afterwards.
+
+How, then, do they attempt to get rid of this difficulty? Why, says
+Captain Gordon, "_The Colonel Saib_ (by whom was meant Colonel Hannay)
+was not at Goondah, as stated in the letter, but at Succara, about
+eighteen miles from it, and therefore you ought not to pay much regard
+to this paper." But he does not deny the letter, nor was it possible for
+him to deny it. He says Colonel Hannay was not there. But how do we know
+whether Colonel Hannay was there or not? We have only his own word for
+it. But supposing he was not there, and that it was clearly proved that
+he was eighteen miles distant from it, Major Naylor was certainly with
+Captain Gordon at the time. Might not his Persian scribe (for he does
+not pretend to say he wrote the letter himself) take Major Naylor for a
+colonel, (for he was the superior officer to Captain Gordon,) and think
+him the Colonel Saib? For errors of that kind may be committed in our
+own country. Every day we may take a major for a lieutenant-colonel.
+This was an error that might easily have happened in such a case. He was
+in as high rank as Colonel Hannay; for Colonel Hannay at that time was
+only a major. I do not believe either of them was properly entitled to
+the name of Colonel Saib. I am ashamed, my Lords, to be obliged to
+remark upon this prevarication. Their own endeavors to get rid of their
+own written acts by contradictory evidence and false constructions
+sufficiently clear these women of the crimes of which they were accused;
+and I may now ask the prisoner at your bar how he dares to produce
+Captain Gordon here, how he dares thus to insult the Peers, how he dares
+thus to insult the public justice of his country, after not having dared
+to inquire, upon the spot, of this man, to whom he was referred by the
+Begums for an account of this very transaction?
+
+I hope your Lordships have got enough of this kind of evidence. All the
+rest is of the same batch, and of the same description,--made up of
+nothing but hearsays, except in one particular only. This I shall now
+mention to your Lordships. Colonel Popham and another gentleman have
+told you, that, in a battle with Cheyt Sing's forces, they took
+prisoners two wounded nudjeeves or swordsmen, and that these men told
+them that they were sent there by the Begums,--that they had got two
+rupees and two wounds, but that they thought two rupees a bad
+compensation for two wounds. These two men, with their two wounds and
+two rupees, had, however, been dismissed. It does not appear that this
+accident was considered by these officers to be of consequence enough to
+make them ever tell one word of it to Mr. Hastings, though they knew he
+was collecting evidence of the disaffection of the Begums, of all kinds,
+good, bad, and indifferent, from all sorts of persons.
+
+My Lords, I must beg leave to say a few words upon this matter; because
+I consider it as one of the most outrageous violations of your
+Lordships' dignity, and the greatest insult that was ever offered to a
+court of justice. A nudjeeve is a soldier armed with a sword. It appears
+in evidence that the Nabob had several corps of nudjeeves in his
+service; that the Begums had some nudjeeves; and that Colonel Hannay had
+a corps of nudjeeves. It is well known that every prince in Hindostan
+has soldiers of that description,--in like manner, probably, as the
+princes of Europe have their guards. The whole, then, amounts to this:
+that a story told by two men who were wounded in an action far from the
+place from which they were supposed to come, who were not regularly
+examined, not cross-examined, not even kept for examination, and whose
+evidence was never reported, is to be a reason why you are to believe
+that these Begums were concerned in a rebellion against their son, and
+deserved to forfeit all their lands and goods, and to suffer the
+indignities that we have stated.
+
+My Lords, I am really ashamed to mention so scandalous a thing; but let
+us put a case: let us suppose that we had accused Mr. Hastings of
+instigating the Rajah of Berar to fall upon some of the country powers,
+and that the evidence we produced at your bar to prove it was, that an
+officer had taken two nudjeeves, who declared they were instigated by
+Mr. Hastings to go into the service of that Rajah: could you bear such a
+thing? would you suffer such evidence to be produced? or do you think
+that we should have so little regard for our own reputation as to
+venture to produce such evidence before you? Again, we have charged Mr.
+Hastings with committing several acts of violence against the Begums.
+Let us suppose our proof to be, that two persons who never appeared
+before nor since, that two grenadiers in English uniforms, (which would
+be a great deal stronger than the case of the nudjeeves, because they
+have no particular uniform belonging to them,) that two English
+grenadiers, I say, had been taken prisoners in some action and let go
+again, who said that Mr. Hastings had instigated them to make war upon
+the Begums: would your Lordships suffer such evidence to be produced
+before you? No. And yet two of the first women in India are to be
+stripped of all they have in the world upon no better evidence than that
+which you would utterly reject. You would not disgrace the British
+peerage, you would not disgrace this court of justice, you would not
+disgrace human reason itself, by confiscating, on such evidence, the
+meanest property of the meanest wretch. You would not subject to the
+smallest fine for the smallest delinquency, upon such evidence. I will
+venture to say, that, in an action of assault and battery, or in an
+action for the smallest sum, such evidence would be scouted as odious
+and contemptible, even supposing that a perfect reliance might be placed
+upon its truth. And yet this is the sort of evidence upon which the
+property, the dignity, and the rank of some of the first persons in Asia
+are to be destroyed,--by which a British guaranty, and the honor and
+dignity of the crown of Great Britain, and of the Parliament itself,
+which sent out this man, are to be forfeited.
+
+Observe, besides, my Lords, that the two swordsmen said they were sent
+by the Begums. Now they could not be sent by the Begums in their own
+person. This was a thing in India impossible. They might, indeed, have
+been sent by Jewar and Behar Ali Khan: and then we ask again, How came
+these ministers not to be called to an account at the time? Why were
+they not called upon for their muster-rolls of these nudjeeves? No,
+these men and women suffer the penalty, but they never hear the
+accusation nor the evidence.
+
+But to proceed with the evidence of this pretended rebellion. Captain
+Williams has told your Lordships that he once had a great number of
+letters and papers to prove this rebellion of the Begums. But he
+declares that he has lost all these letters. A search was ordered to be
+made in Mr. Hastings's record-office, called a trunk; and accordingly in
+the trunk is found a paper worthy of such a place and such a cause. This
+letter, which has been made use of to criminate the Begums, has not
+their names mentioned, nor is there any possibility of their being
+included in it. By this paper which is preserved you may judge of the
+whole of the papers that are lost. Such a letter, I believe, was never
+before brought as evidence in a court of justice. It is a letter said to
+have been intercepted, and is as follows.
+
+     "To the most noble * * * * *, whose prosperity be everlasting!
+
+     "It is represented, that the august purwannah [command], having
+     completed his honorable arrival on the 16th of the month in the
+     evening, highly exalted me. It is ordered that I should charge
+     Medeporee, and the other enrolled sepoys belonging to my district,
+     and take bonds from them that none of them go for service to the
+     Rajah; and that, when four or five hundred men, nudjeeves and
+     others, are collected, I should send them to the presence.
+     According to the order, I have written to Brejunekar Shah Rehemet
+     Ullah, who is in Bhooaparah, charging him to take bonds from them,
+     and that whatever sepoys fit for service are collected he should
+     send to the presence. As at this time the wind is contrary, the
+     sepoys will not * * * * without travelling charges; for I have
+     learnt from a letter previously received from Brejunekar Shah
+     Rehemet Ullah, that the people there also are badly inclined. By
+     the grace of God, the unalterable glory shall be * * * * *. Zehan
+     Beg and the nudjeeves who were in the fort of Aneelah have gone off
+     to Goruckpore."
+
+This is a letter of somebody or other employed by somebody or other for
+the recruiting service,--it should seem, by the word "presence,"
+somebody employed in enlisting forces for the Nabob. The charge against
+the Begum was, that she had joined with the rebellious Rajahs to
+exterminate her son's government and the English influence in that
+country. In this very paper you see that the soldiers entering into that
+service, and officers who are to contract for soldiers, are expressly
+bound not to join the Rajahs; and this they produce as proof that the
+Begums had joined the Rajahs, and had joined them in a rebellion, for
+the purpose of exterminating their son, in the first instance, and the
+English afterwards.
+
+There is another circumstance which makes their own acts the refutation
+of their false pretences. This letter says that the country is
+disaffected, and it mentions the ill-disposed parts of the country. Now
+we all know that the country was ill-disposed; and we may therefore
+conclude this paper was written by, and addressed to, some person who
+was employed against the persons so ill-disposed,--namely, the very
+Rajahs so mentioned before. The prisoner's counsel, after producing this
+paper, had the candor to declare that they did not see what use could be
+made of it. No, to be sure, they do not see what use can be made of it
+for their cause; but I see the use that can be made of it against their
+cause. I say that the lost papers, upon which they do so much insist,
+deserve no consideration, when the only paper that they have preserved
+operates directly against them; and that therefore we may safely infer,
+that, if we had the rest of the contents of this trunk, we should
+probably find them make as strongly against them as this paper does. You
+have no reason to judge of them otherwise than by the specimen: for how
+can you judge of what is lost but from what remains?
+
+The man who hid these papers in his trunk never understood one word of
+the Persian language, and consequently was liable to every kind of
+mistake, even though he meant well. But who is this man? Why, it is
+Captain Williams,--the man who in his affidavits never mentioned the
+Begums without mentioning Saadut Ali. It is Captain Williams,--whom we
+charge to have murdered a principal man of the country by his own hand,
+without law or legal process. It is Captain Williams,--one of those
+British officers whom Mr. Hastings states to be the pests of the
+country. This is the man who comes here as evidence against these women,
+and produces this monstrous paper.
+
+All the evidence they had produced to you amounts to no more than that
+such a man _believes_ such a man _heard of something_; and to close the
+whole of this hearsay account, Sir Elijah Impey, who always comes in as
+a supplement, declares that no man doubted of the existence of this
+rebellion, and of the guilt of the Begums, any more than of the
+rebellion of 1745: a comparison which, I must say, is, by way of
+evidence, a little indecorous in a chief-justice of India. Your
+Lordships are sufficiently acquainted with the history of that rebellion
+to know, that, when Lord Lovat was tried at this bar, the proceedings
+against him were not founded on second-hand hearsay. The existence of
+the rebellion of 1745 was proved, notwithstanding its notoriety; but
+neither notoriety nor proof would have signified anything, if Lord
+Lovat's participation in it had not been brought home to him directly,
+personally, and particularly. Yet a chief-justice, sent to India to
+represent the sacred majesty of the crown of England, has gone so far as
+to say at your bar that no more doubt could be entertained of the
+existence either of the rebellion or the guilt of the Begums than of the
+rebellion in 1745. Besides, he forgets that he himself carried the order
+to confiscate these people's property without any trial whatever. But
+this is the way of proceeding by an English chief-justice in India,--a
+chief-justice who had rendered himself the instrument, the
+letter-carrier, the messenger, I had almost said the executioner of Mr.
+Hastings.
+
+From this view of the whole matter your Lordships will form an estimate
+of the spirit of Indian government and Indian justice. But to blow away
+and to put an end to all their false pretences, their hearsays, and talk
+of nudjeeves, and wounds, and the like, I ask, Who is the first witness
+that we have produced upon this occasion? It is the Nabob himself,
+negativing all these pretences. Did he believe them? Not a word from him
+of any rebellion, actual or suspected. Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, said
+that he was obliged to wheel round, and to avoid that dangerous place,
+Fyzabad. His friends urged him to this. "For God's sake," say they,
+"have a reverend care of your sacred person! What will become of the
+justice of India, what will become of the natives, if you, their
+legitimate protector, should fall into the hands of these wicked,
+rebellious women at Fyzabad?" But although the Chief-Justice does this,
+the Nabob, whose deposition is said to be the first object of this
+rebellion, takes leave of Mr. Hastings at the very moment when it is
+raging in the highest possible degree, and gallops into its very focus.
+
+And under what circumstances does he do this? He had brought some
+considerable forces with him. No man of his rank in that country ever
+goes without them. He left a part of these forces with Mr. Hastings,
+notwithstanding he was going into the centre of the rebellion. He then
+went on with a corps of about a thousand horse. He even left a part of
+these with Mr. Middleton, and galloped, attended by a few horse, into
+the very capital, where the Begums, we are told, had ten thousand armed
+men. He put himself into their power, and, not satisfied with this, the
+very first thing we hear of him after his arrival is, that he paid his
+mother a friendly visit,--thus rushing into the den of a lioness who was
+going to destroy her own whelp. Is it to be credited, my Lords, that a
+prince would act thus who believed that a conspiracy was formed against
+him by his own mother? Is it to be credited that any man would trust a
+mother who, contrary to all the rules of Nature and policy, had
+conspired to destroy her own son?
+
+Upon this matter your Lordships have the evidence of Captain Edwards,
+who was aide-de-camp to the Nabob, who was about his person, his
+attendant at Chunar, and his attendant back again. I am not producing
+this to exculpate the Begums,--for I say you cannot try them here, you
+have not the parties before you, they ought to have been tried on the
+spot,--but I am going to demonstrate the iniquity of this abominable
+plot beyond all doubt: for it is necessary your Lordships should know
+the length, breadth, and depth of this mystery of iniquity.
+
+Captain Edwards being asked,--"Whether he ever heard any native of
+credit and authority in the Nabob's dominions, who appeared to believe
+the rebellion of the Begums?--_A._ No, I never did.--_Q._ Have you any
+reason to believe that the Nabob gave credit to it?--_A._ I really
+cannot rightly presume to say whether the Nabob did or did not; but I am
+apt to believe that he did not.--_Q._ Have you any reason, and what, to
+form a belief about it?--_A._ I have. I think, if he supposed the
+rebellion, ever existed at Fyzabad, he would have been the first person
+to take and give the alarm to the British troops.--_Q._ And no such
+alarm was taken or given to the British troops?--_A._ No, I think not:
+as I was always about his person, and in the camp, I think I certainly
+must have known it or heard of it; but I never did."
+
+We assure your Lordships, you will find upon your printed Minutes, that
+Captain Edwards says he was credibly informed that the Nabob left behind
+him a part of his guard of horse; and that, so desirous was he to go
+into the power of this cruel lioness, his mother, that he advanced, as
+he is a vigorous man, and a bold and spirited rider, leaving all his
+guards behind him, and rode before them into the middle of Fyzabad.
+There is some more evidence to the same purpose in answer to the
+question put next to that which I read before.
+
+"_Q._ When you did hear of the rebellion, did not you understand it to
+have been alleged that one object of it was to dethrone the Nabob
+himself, as well as to extirpate the English?--_A._ I understood that
+the intention of the princesses, the Begums, was to extirpate the
+English troops out of the country and out of those dominions, and
+likewise to depose her son, and set another son, who seems to have been
+a greater favorite of that family, upon the throne, in the room of the
+present Nabob; and that son's name is Saadut Ali. I have only heard this
+from report. I have no other knowledge but mere report. I understood
+from the report, she was to extirpate the English, and depose her son
+who is now upon the throne.--_Q._ Was it after or before the seizing of
+the treasures, that you heard a circumstantial account of the supposed
+object of the rebellion?--_A._ The report was more general after the
+seizing of the treasures; but yet there were reports prevailing in the
+neighborhood that our troops were sent there in consequence of the
+charge that was made by Colonel Hannay and some of his officers of
+rebellion existing then at Fyzabad, or having existed, I cannot rightly
+say which.--_Q._ Was that report after the order for the troops to march
+to Fyzabad?--_A._ It was more general, it was very general then when the
+troops did march there, and more general after the seizing of the
+treasures.--_Q._ When did the troops first march?--_A._ It was some time
+in the month of January, I believe, in the year 1782.--_Q._ While you
+was with the Nabob in passing from Lucknow to Chunar, and while you was
+with him or the army returning from Chunar, did you then, out of the
+whole army, regular or irregular, ever hear of any report of the Begums
+being in rebellion?--_A._ No, I do not recollect I ever did.--_Q. (Upon
+cross-examination.)_ Do you recollect at what time in August, 1781, you
+left Lucknow to proceed with the Nabob to Chunar?--_A._ No, I cannot
+rightly mention the date: all that I know is this, that I accompanied
+the Nabob, Mr. Middleton, and his attendants, all the way from Lucknow
+to Chunargur. I really cannot recollect; I have no notes, and it is so
+distant a time since that I do not recollect the particulars of the
+month or the day; but I recollect perfectly I accompanied the Nabob all
+the way from Lucknow to Chunar, and returned again with him until he
+struck off on the road for Fyzabad."
+
+Your Lordships see plainly the whole of this matter. When they had
+resolved to seize the Begums' treasures, they propagated this report
+just in proportion to their acts. As they proceeded, the report grew
+hotter and hotter. This man tells you when it was that the propagation
+of this report first began, when it grew hot, and when it was in its
+greatest heat. He tells you that not one native of credit in the country
+believed it,--that he did not think the Nabob himself believed it; and
+he gives a reason that speaks for itself, namely, that he, the Nabob,
+would have been the first man to give the alarm, if he believed in a
+rebellion, as he was to be the object of it. He says the English were
+the principal spreaders of the report. It was, in fact, a wicked report,
+propagated by Mr. Middleton and the English agents for the purpose of
+justifying their iniquitous spoliation of the Begums.
+
+This is the manner in which the matter stands upon the ground of
+rebellion, with the exception of Major Gilpin's and Hyder Beg Khan's
+testimony. This last man we have proved to have been kept in his office
+by Mr. Hastings's influence, and to have been entirely under his
+government. When this dependant comes to give his attestation, he gives
+a long account of all the proceedings of Cheyt Sing's rebellion, with
+which the rebellion charged on the Begums was supposed to be coincident;
+and he ends it very remarkably,--that he tells the whole truth, and
+nothing but the truth. But it is also remarkable, that even this Hyder
+Beg Khan never mentions by name the rebellion of the Begums, nor says
+that he ever heard a word about it: a strong proof that he did not dare,
+in the face of his country, to give countenance to such a falsehood.
+
+Major Gilpin's evidence leaves not even the shadow of a pretence for
+this charge. He had the Begums and their eunuchs under his custody for a
+full year; he was strictly ordered to watch them and to guard them; and
+during all that time he lived at Fyzabad. He was the man who commanded
+the troops, who had all the witnesses in his power, who had daily access
+to all parties at Fyzabad, and who, moreover, was a person attached to
+Mr. Hastings in the strongest manner. Your Lordships will now be pleased
+to hear read to you this part of Major Gilpin's evidence.
+
+"_Q._ Had you any opportunity of knowing the character of the Begums,
+and whether they were disaffected to our government?--_A._ I had a very
+good opportunity of knowing, from the circumstance of my having
+commanded so long there. The elder Begum, it was generally understood,
+(and I have reason to believe,) was disaffected to our government; and
+my sentiments of her conduct stand recorded in my correspondence to the
+court of Lucknow to that effect; but with respect to the Bhow Begum, I
+acquit her entirely of any disaffection to our government, so far as
+comes to my knowledge: appearances were for some time against her; but,
+on cool, deliberate inquiry, I found there was no ground for supposing
+her guilty of any rebellious principles, at the time of Cheyt Sing's
+rebellion.--_Q._ Whether that, according to your belief, is not your
+present opinion?--_A._ I think I have answered that very fully, that it
+was upon those very principles that I did form an opinion of her
+innocence; how far they are justifiable or right I will not take upon me
+to say upon oath; there was no one circumstance that came to my
+knowledge, during my residence at Fyzabad or my residence in India, that
+I would wish to withhold from your Lordships.--_Q._ You state here,
+'upon cool, deliberate inquiry': what was that cool, deliberate
+inquiry?--_A._ That cool, deliberate inquiry was the conversations I had
+with the ministers and the people of Fyzabad, and the letters from
+herself expressing her innocence; and it appeared to me from those
+letters that she really was our friend and ally."
+
+The same witness goes on afterwards to say:--
+
+"_Q._ I understood you to say, that originally the report prevailed with
+respect to both the Begums, but that you was induced to alter that
+opinion with respect to the younger Begum, in consequence of Mr.
+Gordon's letters, and the intelligence of some of her ministers and
+other persons: were not those other persons in the interest of the
+younger Begum?--_A._ In general the town of Fyzabad were in her
+interest.--_Q._ In what sense do you mean generally in her interest?
+Were the persons you conversed with merely those who were in her service
+and household, or the inhabitants of Fyzabad in general?--_A._ Both: I
+held conversations with both her own body-servants and the inhabitants
+of the city."
+
+A little lower down, in the same page:--
+
+"_Q._ What do you mean by the word rebellion, as applied to the Begums?
+In what sense do you use it?--_A._ In raising troops, and in other acts
+of rebellion, in the common acceptation of the word.--_Q._ Against
+whom?--_A._ Against the Nabob's government and the British government
+jointly: but I beg to know the particular time and circumstance the
+question alludes to.--_Q._ I understand you to have said you understood
+the elder Begum was in a constant state of rebellion. In what sense do
+you use the word rebellion? Did you say the elder Begum was in a
+constant state of rebellion?--_A._ I always understood her to be
+disaffected to the English government: it might not be a proper
+expression of mine, the word rebellion.--_Q._ Do you know of any act by
+the elder Begum against the Vizier?--_A._ I cannot state any.--_Q._ Do
+you know of any act which you call rebellion, committed by the elder
+Begum against the Company?--_A._ I do not know of any particular
+circumstance, only it was generally supposed that she was disaffected to
+the Company.--_Q._ What acts of disaffection or hostility towards the
+English do you allude to, when you speak of the conversation of the
+world at the time?--_A._ I have answered that question as fully as I
+can,--that it was nothing but conversation,--that I knew of no
+particular act or deed myself."
+
+This man, then, declares, as your Lordships have heard, that, upon cool,
+deliberate inquiry made at Fyzabad from all the inhabitants, he did not
+believe in the existence of any rebellion;--that as to the Bhow Begum,
+the grandmother, who was a person that could only be charged with it in
+a secondary degree, and as conspiring with the other, he says he knows
+no facts against her, except that at the battle of Buxar, in the year
+1764, she had used some odd expressions concerning the English, who were
+then at war with her son Sujah Dowlah. This was long before we had any
+empire or pretence to empire in that part of India: therefore the
+expression of a rebellion, which he had used with regard to her, was, he
+acknowledged, improper, and that he only meant he had formed some
+opinion of her disaffection to the English.
+
+As to the Begum, he positively acquits her of any rebellion. If he,
+therefore, did not know it, who was an active officer in the very centre
+of the alleged rebellion, and who was in possession of all the persons
+from whom information was to be got, who had the eunuchs in prison, and
+might have charged them with this rebellion, and might have examined and
+cross-examined them at his pleasure,--if this man knew nothing about it,
+your Lordships will judge of the falsehood of this wicked rumor, spread
+about from hand to hand, and which was circulated by persons who at the
+same time have declared that they never heard of it before Sir Elijah
+Impey went up into the country, the messenger of Mr. Hastings's orders
+to seize the treasures of the Begums, and commissioned to procure
+evidence in justification of that violence and robbery.
+
+I now go to another part of this evidence. There is a person they call
+Hoolas Roy,--a man in the employment of the Resident, Mr. Middleton. The
+gentlemen who are counsel for the prisoner have exclaimed, "Oh! he was
+nothing but a news-writer. What! do you take any notice of him?" Your
+Lordships would imagine that the man whom they treat in this manner, and
+whose negative evidence they think fit to despise, was no better than
+the writers of those scandalous paragraphs which are published in our
+daily papers, to misrepresent the proceedings of this court to the
+public. But who in fact is this Hoolas Roy, whom they represent, for the
+convenience of the day, to be nothing but a news-writer? I will read to
+your Lordships a letter from Major Naylor to Colonel Jaques, commanding
+the second battalion, twentieth regiment.
+
+     "Sir,--Hoolas Roy, the person appointed by the Nabob for
+     transacting the business for which the troops are required here,
+     will hold constant communication and intercourse with you; and as
+     he is instructed and acquainted with the best method to accomplish
+     this business, Mr. Middleton requests implicit attention to be paid
+     to what he may from time to time represent respecting the prisoners
+     or the business on which he is employed; in short, as he is the
+     person nominated by the Nabob, he wishes Hoolas Roy to be
+     considered in the same light as if he himself was present."
+
+Mr. Middleton, in a letter to Lieutenant Francis Rutledge, writes thus
+of him:--
+
+     "Sir,--When, this note is delivered to you by Hoolas Roy, I have to
+     desire that you order the two prisoners to be put in irons, keeping
+     them from all food, &c., agreeable to my instructions of
+     yesterday."
+
+You will first see in how confidential a manner Hoolas Roy was employed,
+and in what light he was held: that he was employed to carry some
+instructions which do not indeed appear, but were accompanied by an
+order from Mr. Middleton. "When these instructions shall come to you, to
+put these prisoners in irons and keep them without food, &c." The Begums
+say, without food and water. _Et cetera_ are words of large import; but
+he was "to keep them without food, &c., agreeable to my instructions of
+yesterday." This was a pretty general warrant for sufferings. This
+Hoolas Roy, this mere news-writer, was not only intrusted with this
+warrant, but Mr. Middleton declares him to be a person who was to be
+received there, and to represent the Nabob, and very justly too; for he,
+Mr. Middleton, was undoubtedly the real nabob of the country. The man,
+therefore, whom they talk of in this contemptuous manner in order to
+make slight of an observation we made, and which I shall make again, and
+whom they affect to consider as a mere paragraph-monger in some
+scandalous newspaper, was a man vested by Mr. Middleton with authority
+equal to that of the Nabob himself.
+
+Mr. Hastings not only thought him of consequence enough to be a witness
+to the severities used on the ministers of the Begums, but he considered
+that he would afterwards be a fit witness to the rebellion. I pray your
+Lordships to mark this: he sent for this Hoolas Roy, (who is now nothing
+but a mere paragraph-monger,)--he sent for him from Fyzabad to
+Benares,--a pretty long journey; and at last caused him to be examined
+before Sir Elijah Impey. He has, however, sunk his evidence: a
+suppression which is strongly in favor of the Begums, and equally strong
+against their accuser. Here we have a man who was intrusted with all
+their orders,--who represented the English government,--who represented
+the Nabob's government: this man is sent for by Mr. Hastings; he gives
+his deposition before Sir Elijah Impey; and the deposition so given is
+not to be found either upon the Company's record, in Sir Elijah Impey's
+trunk, in Jonathan Scott's trunk, nor in any other place whatever. The
+evidence of a witness who could speak most clearly, as probably he did,
+and most decisively, upon this subject, is sunk. They suppress, and dare
+not produce, the affidavit of the man who was at the bottom of every
+secret of both governments. They had the folly to let you know,
+obliquely, that he had been sent for by Mr. Hastings, but they conceal
+the information obtained from him: a silence more damning than any
+positive evidence could be. You have here a proof of their practice of
+producing such evidence only as they thought most favorable to their
+wicked purposes, in the destruction of this great and ancient family.
+
+But all the English, they say, believed in the existence of this
+rebellion. This we deny. Mr. Purling, who was Resident the year before
+its pretended explosion, has told you that he never knew of anything
+like a plot carrying on by these women. We were almost ashamed to put
+the question to him. Did Mr. Bristow, the next Resident, know or
+believe in this plot? He seems, indeed, to have been induced to give
+some oblique hints to Mr. Hastings of improper conduct on the part of
+the Begums, but without stating what it was. In a letter to Mr.
+Hastings, he appears to endeavor to soften the cruel temper of this
+inflexible man by going a little way with him, by admitting that he
+thought they had behaved improperly. When Mr. Wombwell, another
+Resident, is asked whether any Englishman doubted of it, he says Mr.
+Bristow doubted of it. No one, indeed, who reads these papers, can avoid
+seeing that Mr. Bristow did not believe one word of it,--no more, in
+fact, than did Mr. Hastings, or anybody else.
+
+But, my Lords, let us go from these inferior agents and servants of the
+Company to their higher officers. Did Mr. Stables believe it? This
+gentleman was Mr. Hastings's colleague in the Council,--a man of as
+much honor, I really believe, as ever went to India,--a faithful old
+servant of the Company, and very worthy of credit. I believe there is
+not a spot upon him during all his long service under the Company: if
+any, it is his being a little too obsequious, sometimes, to Mr.
+Hastings. Did he believe it? No, he did not: and yet he was one of the
+persons authorized to investigate it coolly, and most able to do so.
+
+Upon the whole, then, the persons who best knew the state of the country
+did not believe it; the Nabob did not believe it; the Begums were never
+charged with it; no ground of suspicion is suggested, except loose
+rumors and the story of two nudjeeves. Under these circumstances the
+treasures of these ancient ladies were seized, their property
+confiscated, and the Nabob dragged most reluctantly to this act. Yes,
+my Lords, this poor, miserable victim was forced to violate all the laws
+of Nature, all decency, all property, to rob his own mother, for the
+benefit of Mr. Hastings. All this he was forced to do: he was made the
+reluctant instrument of punishing his mother and grandmother for a plot
+of which even their accusers do not pretend to say that the parties
+accused had ever received any intimation.
+
+My Lords, in forming your judgment upon this nefarious proceeding, your
+Lordships will not fail to advert to the fundamental principles, the
+acknowledged maxims and established rules, of all judgment and
+justice,--that conviction ought to precede execution, that trial ought
+to precede conviction, and that a prosecutor's information and evidence
+ought to be the preliminary step and substance of the trial. Here
+everything was reversed: Sir Elijah Impey goes up with the order for
+execution; the party accused is neither arraigned nor tried; this same
+Sir Elijah then proceeds to seek for witnesses and to take affidavits;
+and in the mean time neither the Nabob, the ostensible prosecutor, nor
+his mother and grandmother, the parties accused, knew one word of the
+matter.
+
+But possibly some peculiarity in the circumstances of the case rendered
+such a proceeding necessary, and may justify it. No such peculiarity has
+been proved or even alleged; nay, it is in the highest degree improbable
+that it could have existed. Mr. Hastings had another opportunity of
+doing himself justice. When an account of this business was transmitted
+to the Court of Directors, they ordered him to inquire into it: and your
+Lordships will see what he did in consequence of this order. Your
+Lordships will then judge of the extreme audacity of the defence which
+he has made of this act at your bar, after having refused to institute
+any inquiry into it, although, he had the positive order of the Court of
+Directors, and was in the place where that inquiry could be made
+effectually, and in the place where the unfortunate women could have an
+opportunity of clearing themselves.
+
+I will first read to your Lordships an extract from the letter of the
+Court of Directors to the board at Calcutta, dated the 14th of February,
+1783.
+
+     "4. By the second article of the treaty [of Chunar] the Nabob is
+     permitted to resume such jaghires as he shall think proper, with a
+     reserve, that all such jaghiredars, for the amount of whose
+     jaghires the Company are guaranties, shall, in case of a resumption
+     of their lands, be paid the amount of the net collections through
+     the Resident.
+
+     "5. We do not see how the Governor-General could consent to the
+     resumption of such lands as the Company had engaged should remain
+     in the hands of those who possessed them previous to the execution
+     of the late treaty, without stronger proofs of the Begums'
+     defection than have been laid before us; neither can we allow it to
+     be good policy to reduce the several jaghiredars, and thus uniting
+     the territory, and the troops maintained for the protection of that
+     territory, under one head, who, by that means, at some future
+     period, may become a very powerful enemy to the Company.
+
+     "6. With respect to the resumption of the jaghires possessed by the
+     Begums in particular, and the subsequent seizure of the treasure
+     deposited with the Vizier's mother, which the Governor-General, in
+     his letter to the board, 23d January, 1782, has declared he
+     strenuously encouraged and supported, we hope and trust, for the
+     honor of the British nation, that the measure appeared to be fully
+     justified in the eyes of all Hindostan. The Governor-General has
+     informed us that it can be well attested, that the Begums
+     principally excited and supported the late commotions, and that
+     they carried their inveteracy to the English nation so far as to
+     aim at our utter extirpation.
+
+     "7. It must have been publicly known that in 1775 the Resident at
+     the Vizier's court not only obtained from the Begum, widow of the
+     late Sujah Dowlah, on the Nabob's account, thirty lacs of rupees,
+     half of which was to be paid to the Company, but also the
+     forbearance of twenty-six lacs, for the repayment of which she had
+     security in land, on the Nabob's agreeing to renounce all further
+     claims upon her, and that to this agreement the Company were
+     guaranties.
+
+     "8. We find that on the 21st December, 1775, the Begum complained
+     of a breach of engagements on the part of the Nabob, soliciting
+     your protection for herself, her mother, and for all the women
+     belonging to the seraglio of the late Nabob, from the distresses to
+     which they were reduced; in consequence whereof it was agreed in
+     consultation, 3d January, 1776, to remonstrate with the
+     Vizier,--the Governor-General remarking, that, as the
+     representative of our government has become an agent in this
+     business, and has pledged the honor and faith of the Company for
+     the punctual observance of the conditions under which the treaty
+     was concluded, you had a right to interfere, and justice demanded
+     it, if it should appear that those engagements have been violated.
+     And the board at the same time resolved, that, as soon as the
+     Begum's engagements with the Nabob, to which Mr. Bristow is a
+     party, shall be fulfilled on her part, this government will think
+     themselves bound to protect her against any further demand or
+     molestation.
+
+     "9. If, therefore, the disaffection of the Begums was not a matter
+     of public notoriety, we cannot but be alarmed for the effects which
+     these subsequent transactions must have had on the minds of the
+     natives of India. The only consolation we feel upon this occasion
+     is, that the amount of those jaghires for which the Company were
+     guaranties is to be paid through our Resident at the court of the
+     Vizier; and it very materially concerns the credit of your
+     government on no account to suffer such payments to be evaded.
+
+     "10. If it shall hereafter be found that the Begums did not take
+     that hostile part against the Company which has been represented,
+     as well in the Governor-General's Narrative as in several documents
+     therein referred to,--and as it nowhere appears, from the papers at
+     present in our possession, that they excited any commotion previous
+     to the imprisonment of Rajah Cheyt Sing, but only armed themselves
+     in consequence of that transaction,--and as it is probable that
+     such a conduct proceeded entirely from motives of self-defence,
+     under an apprehension that they themselves might likewise be laid
+     under unwarrantable contributions,--we direct that you use your
+     influence with the Vizier that their jaghires may be restored to
+     them; but if they should be under apprehensions respecting the
+     future conduct of the Vizier, and wish our further protection, it
+     is our pleasure that you afford those ladies an asylum within the
+     Company's territories, and there be paid the amount of the net
+     collections of their jaghires, agreeably to the second article of
+     the late treaty, through the medium of our Resident, as may be
+     ascertained upon an average estimate of some years back."
+
+You see, my Lords, the Directors had received every one of his false
+impressions. They had conceived an idea, that, after the rebellion of
+Cheyt Sing, (but not before, upon his own showing,) the Begums had shown
+a disposition to arm. They here assume a false fact, which Mr. Hastings
+stated in his representation of the business to them. They assume a
+variety of other false facts: they assume that the amount of the
+jaghires of the Begums were to be paid them in regular pensions; whereas
+they were totally confiscated, without any compensation at all. And yet,
+upon Mr. Hastings's own showing, they found the transaction to be so
+dishonorable to the British government, that they desire him to make
+inquiry into it, and give redress accordingly.
+
+Here, then, is another order of the Company, another call upon Mr.
+Hastings to examine to the bottom of this affair. The Directors, after
+giving him credit for that enormous mass of falsehoods which we have
+proved him to have stated in his Narrative, found themselves so utterly
+dissatisfied, that they gave this conditional order to restore the
+Begums to their jaghires. Your Lordships will find it in evidence upon
+your minutes, that he contumaciously disobeyed this order,--that he
+would not consent to the propositions of the Council for inquiring into
+the conduct of these injured women, but stifled every attempt that was
+made by others to do them justice. And yet he here has the effrontery to
+propose that your Lordships should inquire into the business at your
+bar,--that you should investigate a matter here which he refused to
+inquire into on the spot, though expressly ordered by his masters so to
+do.
+
+I will now read to your Lordships a short extract from his own narrative
+of his own proceedings. It begins with reciting part of a note entered
+by Mr. Macpherson in the Consultations of the Council, at the time when
+the orders of the Court of Directors which I have just alluded to were
+taken into consideration.
+
+"What the Court of Directors seem to have most at heart are, first, that
+the engagement of the second article of the Benares treaty should be
+faithfully fulfilled,--and, secondly, to guard against the future
+misconduct of the Vizier, if he should be disposed to oppress the
+Begums; that we should therefore ascertain whether the amount of the
+jaghires of the Begums is regularly paid to them through the Company's
+Resident, and give them notice that no future demands shall be made upon
+them. This the Governor-General might, I think, do in a letter that
+would make the Begums sensible of their past misconduct, yet inform them
+of the lenity and gracious intentions of the Company, in ordering them
+an asylum in Bengal, in case of future distress."
+
+In consequence of the foregoing opinion from Mr. Macpherson, the
+following minute was delivered by the Governor-General.
+
+"I should gladly acquiesce in the motion made by Mr. Macpherson, if I
+thought it possible to frame a letter to the Begums in any terms which
+should at the same time convey the intimation proposed by it and not
+defeat the purpose of it, or be productive of evils greater than any
+which exist in consequence of the proceedings which have already taken
+place, and which time has almost obliterated. The orders of the Court of
+Directors are conditional; they require nothing, but in the event of
+discoveries made subsequent to the advices which were before you on the
+14th February last, in alleviation of the former conduct of the Begums.
+Nothing has since appeared in relation to them, but their refusal, or
+rather that of one, to fulfil her engagements for the payment of the
+remainder of the sum exacted from her by the Nabob Vizier in the
+beginning of last year. Whatever obedience may be due to the clear
+ascertained spirit of the orders of the Court of Directors, this
+obligation cannot extend to points to which neither the letter nor
+evident spirit of their orders apply. If I am rightly informed, the
+Nabob Vizier and the Begums are on terms of mutual good-will. It would
+ill become this government to interpose its influence by any act which
+might tend to revive their animosities: and a very slight occasion would
+be sufficient to effect it. It will be to little purpose to tell them
+that their conduct has, in our estimation of it, been very wrong, and at
+the same time to announce to them the orders of our superiors, which
+more than indicate the reverse. They will instantly take fire on such a
+declaration, proclaim the judgment of the Company in their favor, demand
+a reparation of the acts which they will construe wrongs with such a
+sentence warranting that construction,--and either accept the
+invitation, to the proclaimed scandal of the Vizier, which will not add
+to the credit of our government, or remain in his dominions, but not
+under his authority, to add to his vexations and the disorders of the
+country, by continual intrigues and seditions. Enough already exists to
+affect his peace, and the quiet of his people; if we cannot heal, let us
+not inflame the wounds which have been inflicted.
+
+"If the Begums think themselves aggrieved to such a degree as to justify
+them in an appeal to a foreign jurisdiction,--to appeal to it against a
+man standing in the relation of son and grandson to them,--to appeal to
+the justice of those who have been the abettors and instruments of their
+imputed wrongs,--let us at least permit them to be the judges of their
+own feelings, and prefer their complaints before we offer to redress
+them: they will not need to be prompted. I hope I shall not depart from
+the simplicity of official language, in saying, that the majesty of
+justice ought to be approached with solicitation, not descend to provoke
+or invite it, much less to debase itself by the suggestion of wrongs and
+the promise of redress, with the denunciation of punishment before
+trial, and even before accusation."
+
+My Lords, if, since the beginning of the world, such a paper as this was
+ever before written by a person standing in the relation of a servant to
+his master, I shall allow that every word we have said to your Lordships
+upon this occasion to mark his guilt ought to be expunged from your
+minutes and from our charges.
+
+Before I proceed to make any observations upon this act of open
+rebellion against his superiors, I must beg your Lordships to remark the
+cruelty of purpose, the hostile feeling, towards these injured women,
+which were displayed in this daring defiance. Your Lordships will find
+that he never is a rebel to one party without being a tyrant to some
+others; that _rebel_ and _tyrant_ are correlative terms, when applied to
+him, and that they constantly go together.
+
+It is suggested by the Directors, that the Nabob is the persecutor, the
+oppressor, and that Mr. Hastings is the person who is to redress the
+wrong. But here they have mistaken the matter totally. For we have
+proved to your Lordships that Mr. Hastings was the principal in the
+persecution, and that the Nabob was only an instrument. "If I am rightly
+informed," he says, "the Nabob and the Begums are on terms of mutual
+good-will. It would ill become this government to interpose its
+influence by any act which might tend to revive their animosities: and a
+very slight occasion would be sufficient to effect it." What animosities
+had they towards each other? None that we know of. Mr. Hastings gets the
+Nabob to rob his mother; and then he supposes, contrary to truth,
+contrary to fact, contrary to everything your Lordships have heard, that
+the Nabob would fall into a fury, if his mother was to obtain any
+redress,--and that, if the least inquiry into this business was made, it
+would create a flame in the Nabob's mind, on account of the active,
+energetic, spirited part he had taken in these transactions.
+"Therefore," says he, "oh, for God's sake, soothe the matter! It is a
+green wound; don't uncover it; do nothing to irritate. It will be to
+little purpose to tell them that their conduct has in our estimation of
+it been very wrong, and at the same time announce to them the orders of
+our superiors, which more than indicate the reverse." Now, my Lords, to
+what does all this amount? "First," says he, "I will not do them
+justice,--I will not enter upon an inquiry into their wrongs." Why?
+"Because they charge us with having inflicted them." Then, surely, for
+that reason, you ought to commence an inquiry. "No," says he, "that
+would be telling them that our superiors suspect we are in the wrong."
+But when his superiors more than indicated suspicions, was he not bound
+tenfold to make that inquiry, for his honor and for their satisfaction,
+which they direct him to make? No, he will not do it, "because," says
+he, "the Begums would either accept the offer of an asylum in the
+Company's territories, to the proclaimed scandal of the Vizier, which
+would not add to the credit of our government, or they would remain in
+his dominions, but not under his authority, to add to his vexations, and
+the disorders of the country, by continual intrigues and seditions."
+
+You see, my Lords, this man is constantly thrusting this peaceable Nabob
+before him; goading and pushing him on, as if with a bayonet behind, to
+the commission of everything that is base and dishonorable. You have him
+here declaring that he will not satisfy the Directors, his masters, in
+their inquiries about those acts, for fear of the Nabob's taking
+umbrage, and getting into a flame with his mother,--and for fear the
+mother, supported by the opinion of the Directors, should be induced to
+resent her wrongs. What, I say, does all this amount to? It amounts to
+this:--"The Begums accuse me of doing them injustice; the Directors
+indicate a suspicion that they have been injured; therefore I will not
+inquire into the matter." Why? "Because it may raise disturbances." But
+what disturbance could it raise? The mother is disarmed, and could not
+hurt the Nabob. All her landed estates he knew were confiscated; he knew
+all her money was in his own possession; he knew she had not the means,
+if she had been disposed, to create intrigues and cabals;--what
+disturbance, then, could be created by his sending a letter to know what
+she had to say upon the subject of her wrongs?
+
+"_If_" says he, "_the Begums think themselves aggrieved._" Observe, my
+Lords, that the institution of an inquiry is no measure of the Begums;
+it is an order of the Court of Directors, made by them upon his own
+representation of his own case, and upon nothing else. The Begums did
+not dare to murmur; they did not dare to ask for redress, God knows the
+poor creatures were, at or about the time, his
+prisoners,--robbed,--stripped of everything,--without hope and without
+resource. But the Directors, doing their duty upon that occasion, did
+condemn him upon his own false representations contained in that bundle
+of affidavits upon which his counsel now contend that your Lordships
+should acquit him.--"But," says he, "are they to _appeal to a foreign
+jurisdiction_?" When these women were to be robbed, we were not
+foreigners to them; on the contrary, we adjudged them guilty of
+rebellion. We sent an English chief-justice to collect materials of
+accusation against them. We sent English officers to take their money.
+The whole was an English transaction. When wrong is to be done, we have
+then an interest in the country to justify our acting in it; but when
+the question is of redressing wrongs, when the question is of doing
+justice, when the question is of inquiry, when the question is of
+hearing complaints, then it is a foreign jurisdiction. You are to suffer
+Mr. Hastings--to make it foreign, or to make it domestic, just as it
+answers his purposes.--But they are "_to appeal against a man standing
+in the relation of son and grandson to them, and to appeal to the
+justice of those who have been the abettors and instruments of their
+imputed wrongs_." Why, my Lords, if he allows that he is the abettor of,
+and the instrument to which the Directors impute these wrongs, why, I
+ask, does he, with those charges lying upon him, object to all inquiry
+in the manner you have seen?
+
+But the Company's Governor is, it seems, all at once transformed into a
+great sovereign;--"_the majesty of justice ought to be approached with
+solicitation_." Here, my Lords, he forgets at once the Court of
+Directors, he forgets the laws of England, he forgets the act of
+Parliament, he forgets that any obedience is due to his superiors. The
+Begums were to approach him by the orders of the Court of Directors; he
+sets at nought these orders, and asserts that he must be approached with
+solicitations.
+
+"_Time_," says he, "_has obliterated their sufferings._" Oh, what a balm
+of oblivion time spreads over the wrongs, wounds, and afflictions of
+others, in the mind of the person who inflicts those wrongs and
+oppressions! The oppressor soon forgets. This robbery took place in
+17[81]; it was in the year 1783 when he asserted that the waters of
+Lethe had been poured over all their wrongs and oppressions. Your
+Lordships will mark this insulting language, when he says that both the
+order of the Directors and the application of the Begums for redress
+must be _solicitations to him_.
+
+     [Here Mr. Burke was interrupted by Mr. Hastings, who said, "My
+     Lords, there was no order. I find a man's patience may be
+     exhausted. I hear so many falsehoods, that I must declare there was
+     no order of the Court of Directors. Forgive me, my Lords. He may
+     say what he pleases; I will not again controvert it. But there is
+     no order; if there is, read it." Mr. Burke then proceeded.]
+
+Judge you, my Lords, what the insolence, audacity, and cruelty of this
+man must have been, from his want of patience in his present situation,
+and when he dares to hold this language here. Your Lordships will reckon
+with him for it, or the world will reckon with you.
+
+     [Mr. Hastings here again interrupted Mr. Burke, and said, "There
+     was no order for inquiry."]
+
+_Mr. Burke._--Your Lordships have heard the letter read,--I mean the
+letter from the Directors, which I read just now. You will judge whether
+it is an order or not. I did hope within these two days to put an end to
+this business; but when your Lordships hear us charged with direct
+falsehood at your bar, when you hear this wicked wretch who is before
+you--
+
+     [_From a Lord._--Order! order! order!]
+
+_Mr. Burke._--Order, my Lords, we call for, in the name of the Commons!
+Your Lordships have heard us accused at your bar of falsehood, after we
+had read the order upon which our assertion was founded. This man, whom
+we have described as the scourge and terror of India, this man gets up,
+and charges us, not with a mistake, an error, a wrong construction, but
+a direct falsehood,--and adds, that his patience is worn out with the
+falsehood he hears. This is not an English court of justice, if such a
+thing is permitted. We beg leave to retire, and take instructions from
+our constituents. He ought to be sent to Bridewell for going on in this
+manner.
+
+     [_Mr. Wyndham here read the letter again._]
+
+_Mr. Burke._--With regard to the ravings of this unhappy man, I am sure,
+if I were only considering what passed from him to the Managers in this
+box, and knowing what allowance is due to a wounded conscience, brought
+before an awful tribunal, and smarting under the impressions of its own
+guilt, I would pass them over. But, my Lords, we have the honor of the
+Commons, we have the honor of this court to sustain. [Your Lordships,
+the other day, for an offence committed against a constable, who was
+keeping the way under your orders, did, very justly, and to the great
+satisfaction of the public, commit the party to Bridewell, for a much
+slighter insult against the honor and dignify of your court.] And I
+leave it, therefore, for the present, till your Lordships can seriously
+consider what the mode of proceeding in this matter ought to be.--I now
+proceed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have read to your Lordships the orders of the Court of Directors: I
+again say we consider them as orders: your Lordships are as good judges
+of the propriety of the term as we are. You have heard them read; you
+have also heard that the Council at Calcutta considered them as orders,
+for resolutions were moved upon them; and Mr. Stables, in evidence
+before you here, who was one of the Council, so considered them: and yet
+this man has the frantic audacity in this place to assert that they were
+not orders, and to declare that he cannot stand the repetition of such
+abominable falsehoods as are perpetually urged against him. We cannot
+conceive that your Lordships will suffer this; and if you do, I promise
+you the Commons will not suffer the justice of the country to be trifled
+with and insulted in this manner: because, if such conduct be suffered
+by your Lordships, they must say that very disagreeable consequences
+will ensue, and very disagreeable inferences will be drawn by the public
+concerning it. You will forgive, and we know how to forgive, the ravings
+of people smarting under a conscious sense of their guilt. But when we
+are reading documents given in evidence, and are commenting upon them,
+the use of this kind of language really deserves your Lordships'
+consideration. As for us, we regard it no more than we should other
+noise and brawlings of criminals who in irons may be led through the
+streets, raving at the magistrate that has committed them. We consider
+him as a poor, miserable man, railing at his accusers: it is natural he
+should fall into all these frantic ravings, but it is not fit or natural
+that the Court should indulge him in them. Your Lordships shall now hear
+in what sense Mr. Wheler and Mr. Stables, two other members of the
+Council, understood this letter.
+
+Mr. Wheler thus writes.--"It always has been and always will be my wish
+to conform implicitly to the orders of the Court of Directors, and I
+trust that the opinion which I shall give upon that part of the Court's
+letter which is now before us will not be taken up against its meaning,
+as going to a breach of them. The orders at present under the board's
+consideration are entirely provisional. Nothing has passed since the
+conclusion of the agreement made by the Governor-General with the Vizier
+at Chunar which induces me to alter the opinion which I before held, as
+well from the Governor-General's reports to this board as the opinions
+which I have heard of many individuals totally unconcerned in the
+subject, that the Begums at Fyzabad did take a hostile part against the
+Company during the disturbances in Benares; and I am impressed with a
+conviction that the conduct of the Begums did not proceed entirely from
+motives of self-defence. But as the Court of Directors appear to be of a
+different opinion, and conceive that there ought to be stronger proofs
+of the defection of the Begums than have been laid before them, I think,
+that, before we decide on their orders, the late and present Resident at
+the Vizier's court, and the commanding officers in the Vizier's country,
+ought to be required to collect and lay before the board all the
+information they can obtain with respect to the defection of the Begums
+during the troubles in Benares, and their present disposition to the
+Company."
+
+Mr. Stables, September 9th, 1783, writes thus.--"The Court of Directors,
+by their letter of the 14th February, 1783, seem not to be satisfied
+that the disaffection of the Begums to this government is sufficiently
+proved by the evidence before them. I therefore think that the late and
+present Resident and commanding officers in the Vizier's country at the
+time should be called upon to collect what further information they can
+on this subject, in which the honor and dignity of this government is so
+materially concerned, that such information may be immediately
+transmitted to the Court of Directors."
+
+When questioned upon this subject at your Lordships' bar, he gives this
+evidence.--"_Q._ What was your motive for proposing that
+investigation?--_A._ A letter from the Court of Directors; I conceived
+it to be ordered by them.--_Q._ Did you conceive the letter of the Court
+of Directors positively to direct that inquiry?--_A._ I did so certainly
+at the time, and I beg to refer to the minutes which expressed it."--A
+question was put to the same witness by a noble lord. "_Q._ The witness
+has stated, that at the time he has mentioned he conceived the letter
+from the Court of Directors to order an inquiry, and that it was upon
+that opinion that he regulated his conduct, and his proposal for such
+inquiry. I wish to know whether the expression, '_at the time_,' was
+merely casual, or am I to understand from it that the witness has
+altered his opinion of the intention of this letter since that
+time?--_A._ I certainly retain that opinion, and I wished the inquiry to
+go on."
+
+My Lords, you see that his colleagues so understood it; you see that we
+so understood it; and still you have heard the prisoner, after charging
+us with falsehood, insultingly tell us we may go on as we please, we may
+go on in our own way. If your Lordships think that it was not a positive
+order, which Mr. Hastings was bound to obey, you will acquit him of the
+breach of it. But it is a most singular thing, among all the astonishing
+circumstances of this case, that this man, who has heard from the
+beginning to the end of his trial breaches of the Company's orders
+constantly charged upon him,--(nay, I will venture to say, that there is
+not a single step that we have taken in this prosecution, or in
+observations upon evidence, in which we have not charged him with an
+avowed direct breach of the Company's order,--you have heard it ten
+times this day,--in his defence before the Commons he declares he did
+intentionally, in naming Mr. Markham, break the Company's orders,)--it
+is singular, I say, that this man should now pretend to be so sore upon
+this point. What is it now that makes him break through all the rules of
+common decency and common propriety, and show all the burnings of guilt,
+upon being accused of the breach of one of the innumerable orders which
+he has broken, of which he has avowed the breaking, and attempted to
+justify himself a thousand times in the Company's books for having
+broken?
+
+My Lords, one of his own body, one of the Council, has sworn at your bar
+what he repeatedly declared to be his sense of it. We consider it as one
+of the strongest orders that can be given, because the reason of the
+order is added to it: the Directors declaring, that, if it should not be
+found upon inquiry, (you see, my Lords, it puts the very case,)--"if you
+do not find such and such things, we shall consider the English honor
+wounded and stained, and we direct you to make reparation." There are,
+in fact, two orders contained in this letter, which we take to be
+equally strong and positive,--and we charge him with the breach of both:
+namely, the order for inquiry, and the conditional order of restoring to
+the Begums their jaghires, or making satisfaction for them; and in case
+of any apprehension of reluctance in the Nabob, to bring them for
+security into the Company's territories. The two last positive orders
+are preceded by the supposition of an inquiry which was to justify him
+either in the acts he had done or to justify him in making restitution.
+He did neither the one nor the other. We aver that he disobeyed all
+these orders. And now let his impatience break out again.
+
+Your Lordships have seen, amongst the various pretences by which this
+man has endeavored to justify his various delinquencies, that of fearing
+to offend the Nabob by the restoration of their jaghires to the Begums
+is one. Your Lordships will form your own judgment of the truth or
+falsehood of this pretence, when you shall have heard the letter which I
+shall now read to you, written to Mr. Hastings by the Nabob himself.
+
+
+     _Letter from the Nabob Vizier to Mr. Hastings, 25th February,
+     1782._
+
+     "You performed on every occasion towards me whatever was becoming
+     of friendship: I, too, have done whatever affection required and
+     you commanded; and in future also, whatever may be your pleasure,
+     there shall be no deviation therefrom, because whatever you direct
+     is altogether for my benefit. The business for which I came to
+     Fyzabad is become settled by your favor: particulars will become
+     known to your wisdom from the writings of Mr. Middleton. I am
+     grateful for your favors. If in these matters you sincerely approve
+     me, communicate it, for it will be a comfort to me. Having
+     appointed my own aumils to the jaghire of the lady mother, I have
+     engaged to pay her cash. She has complied with my views. Her
+     pleasure is, that, after receiving an engagement, he should deliver
+     up the jaghires. What is your pleasure in this matter? If you
+     command, it will comfort the lady mother giving her back the
+     jaghire after I have obtained my views; or I will have it under my
+     aumil. I am obedient to your pleasure."
+
+Your Lordships here see the Begum a suppliant to have her jaghire
+restored, (after entering into some engagement that might have been
+required of her,) and the Nabob, in a tone equally suppliant, expressing
+his consent, at least, that her request should be complied with, if the
+command of Mr. Hastings could be procured.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, in order to save your Lordships' time, and that I might not
+overload this business, I did not intend to have troubled you with any
+observations upon this part of it; but the charge of falsehood which the
+prisoner at your bar has had the audacity to bring against us has
+induced me to lay it more particularly before, you. We have now done
+with it; but before we retire, your Lordships will permit me to
+recapitulate briefly the substance of what has now been urged respecting
+his conduct towards these miserable women. We accuse him of reiterated
+breaches of the orders of the Court of Directors, both in the letter and
+spirit of them, and of his contempt of the opinions which his colleagues
+in office had formed of them. We charge him with the aggravation of
+these delinquencies, by the oppression and ruin which they brought upon
+the family of the Nabob, by the infraction of treaties, and by the
+disrepute which in his person was sustained by the government he
+represented, and by the stain left upon the justice, honor, and good
+faith of the English nation. We charge him with their farther
+aggravation by sundry false pretences alleged by him in justification of
+this conduct, the pretended reluctance of the Nabob, the fear of
+offending him, the suggestion of the Begums having forgotten and
+forgiven the wrongs they had suffered, and of the danger of reviving
+their discontent by any attempt to redress them, and by his insolent
+language, that the majesty of justice with which he impudently invests
+himself was only to be approached with solicitation. We have farther
+stated, that the pretence that he was only concerned in this business as
+an accessary is equally false; it being, on the contrary, notorious,
+that the Nabob was the accessary, forced into the service, and a mere
+instrument in his hands, and that he and Sir Elijah Impey (whose
+employment in this business we stated as a farther aggravation) were the
+authors and principal agents. And we farther contend, that each of these
+aggravations and pretences is itself, in fact and in its principle, a
+substantive crime.
+
+Your Lordships witnessed the insolence with which this man, stung to the
+quick by the recital of his crime, interrupted me; and you heard his
+recrimination of falsehood against us. We again avouch the truth of all
+and every word we have uttered, and the validity of every proof with
+which we have supported them. Let his impatience, I say, now again burst
+forth,--he who feels so sensibly everything that touches him, and yet
+seeks for an act of indemnity for his own atrocities, by endeavoring to
+make you believe that the wrongs of a desolated family are within one
+year forgotten by them, and buried in oblivion.
+
+I trust, my Lords, that both his prosecutors and his judges will evince
+that patience which the criminal wants. Justice is not to wait to have
+its majesty approached with solicitation. We see that throne in which
+resides invisibly, but virtually, the majesty of England; we see your
+Lordships representing, in succession, the juridical authority in the
+highest court in this kingdom: but we do not approach you with
+solicitation; we make it a petition of right; we claim it; we demand it.
+The right of seeking redress is not suppliant, even before the majesty
+of England; it comes boldly forward, and never thinks it offends its
+sovereign by claiming what is the right of all his people.
+
+We have now done with this business: a business as atrocious as any that
+is known in the history of mankind; a business that has stained,
+throughout all Asia, the British character, and by which our fame for
+honor, integrity, and public faith has been forfeited; a business which
+has introduced us throughout that country as breakers of faith,
+destroyers of treaties, plunderers of the weak and unprotected, and has
+dishonored and will forever dishonor the British name. Your Lordships
+have had all this in evidence. You have seen in what manner the Nabob,
+his country, his revenues, his subjects, his mother, his family, his
+nobility, and all their fortunes, real and personal, have been disposed
+of by the prisoner at your bar; and having seen this, you will by the
+impatience of this criminal estimate the patience of the unfortunate
+women into whose injuries he refused to inquire. What he would not do
+the Commons have done. They know that you have a feeling different from
+that which he manifested on this occasion; they do not approach you
+suppliantly, but demand justice; they insist, that, as the Commons have
+done their part, your Lordships will perform yours.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We shall next proceed to show your Lordships how he acted towards
+another set of women, the women of the late Sujah Dowlah, and for whom
+the Directors had ordered a maintenance to be secured by an express
+treaty. You will see that he is cruel towards the weak sex, and to all
+others in proportion as they are weak and powerless to resist him. You
+will see, I say, when he had usurped the whole government of Oude, and
+brought it into a servile dependence on himself, how these women fared;
+and then your Lordships will judge whether or not, and in what degree,
+he is criminal.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+SEVENTH DAY. THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--When I had last the honor of addressing your Lordships from
+this place, my observations were principally directed to the unjust
+confiscation and seizure of the jaghires and treasures of the Begums,
+without previous accusation, or trial, or subsequent inquiry into their
+conduct, in violation of a treaty made with them and guarantied by the
+East India Company,--to the long imprisonment and cruel treatment of
+their ministers, and to the false pretences and abominable principles by
+which the prisoner at your bar has attempted to justify his conduct. The
+several acts of violence and of oppression were, as we have shown your
+Lordships, committed with circumstances of aggravated atrocity highly
+disgraceful to the British name and character,--and particularly by his
+forcing the Nabob to become the means and instrument of reducing his
+mother and grandmother and their families to absolute want and distress.
+
+I have now to call your attention to his treatment of another branch of
+this miserable family,--the women and children of the late Nabob Sujah
+ul Dowlah. These persons were dependent upon the Begums, and by the
+confiscation of their property, and by the ruin of various persons who
+would otherwise have contributed to their maintenance, were reduced to
+the last extremity of indigence and want. Being left without the common
+necessaries of life, they were driven to the necessity of breaking
+through all those local principles of decorum which constitute the
+character of the female sex in that part of the world; and after
+fruitless supplications and shrieks of famine, they endeavored to break
+the inclosure of the palace, and to force their way to the market-place,
+in order to beg for bread. When they had thus been forced to submit to
+the extremity of disgrace and degradation, by exposing themselves to
+public view with the starving children of their late sovereign, the
+brothers and sisters of the reigning prince, they were, in this attempt,
+attacked by the sepoys armed with bludgeons, and driven back by blows
+into the palace.
+
+My Lords, we have first laid before you the sufferings and disgraces of
+women of the first distinction in Asia, protected by their rank,
+protected by their sex, protected by their near relation to the prince
+of the country, protected by two guaranties of the representative of the
+British government in India. We now come to another class of women, who
+suffered by the violent misappropriation of the revenues of the Nabob,
+by which their regular allowance was taken from them; and your Lordships
+will find that this man's crimes, at every step we take, ripen in guilt,
+his acts of positive injustice are always aggravated by his conduct with
+regard to the consequences of them, and form but a small part in the
+mass of oppression and tyranny which we have brought before you.
+
+My Lords, the unjust seizure of the jaghires and treasures of the
+Begums, out of which those women were maintained, reduced them to a
+state of indigence, and exposed them not only to the sufferings which
+belong to the physical nature of man, but also to the indignities which
+particularly affected their sex and condition. But before I proceed, I
+will beg leave to restate to your Lordships and recall to your memory
+who these women were.
+
+The Nabob Sujah Dowlah had but one legitimate wife. Though the Mahometan
+law admits of this number's being extended in certain cases even to
+four, yet it is for the most part held disreputable, especially when a
+person is married to a woman of the first distinction, to have more than
+one legitimate wife. Upon looking into the Hedaya, your Lordships will
+see with what extreme rigor fornication is forbidden; but we know that
+persons of high rank, by customs that supersede both religion and laws,
+add to the number of their wives, or substitute in their room wives of a
+subordinate description, and indulge themselves in this license to an
+unlimited degree. You will find in Chardin's Travels, where he treats of
+the subject of marriage, that such is the custom of all the princes of
+the East. The wives of this subordinate class, though they are in
+reality no better than concubines, and are subject to the power and
+caprices of their lords, are yet allowed, in the eye of the severest
+moralists, to have some excuse for their frailty and their weakness; and
+they accordingly always do find a degree of favor in this world, and
+become the object of particular protection.
+
+We know that Sujah ul Dowlah was a man unquestionably in his manners
+very licentious with regard to women, that he had a great number of
+these women in his family, and that his women and the women attendant
+upon the persons of his favorites had increased to a very great number.
+We know that his sons amounted to twenty,--or, according to Mr.
+Hastings's own account, to nineteen. Montesquieu supposes that there are
+more females born in the East than in the West. But he says this upon no
+good ground. We know by better and more regular information concerning
+this matter, that the birth of males and females in that country is in
+the same proportion as it is here; and therefore, if you suppose that he
+had twenty sons, you may suppose he had about nineteen daughters. By the
+customs of that country, all these sons and daughters were considered as
+persons of eminent distinction, though inferior to the legitimate
+children,--assuming the rank of their father, without considering the
+rank which their mother held. All these wives with their children, and
+all their female servants and attendants, amounting in the whole to
+about eight hundred persons, were shut up in what they call the _Khord
+Mohul_, or Lesser Palace. This place is described by one of the
+witnesses to be about as large as St. James's Square. Your Lordships
+have been told, that, in other circumstances as well as this, these
+women were considered as objects of a great degree of respect, and of
+the greatest degree of protection. I refer your Lordships to the treaty
+by which their maintenance was guarantied by the English government.
+
+In order to let your Lordships see that I state nothing to you but what
+is supported not only by general history, which is enough to support an
+account of general manners, but by the particular and peculiar opinions
+of a person best informed of the nature of the case, I will refer you to
+the Nabob himself: for, undoubtedly, the Nabob of Oude, the Vizier of
+the Empire, the Subahdar of the country, was most likely to be the best
+judge of what respect was due to the women of his father's family. I
+will therefore read to your Lordships, from his own letters, what the
+Nabob's opinion was upon this subject.
+
+
+     _Extract of a Letter from the Vizier, received 23d of August,
+     1782._
+
+     "I never found resource equal to the necessary expenses. Every
+     year, by taking from the ministers, and selling the articles of my
+     harkhanna, I with great distress transacted the business. But I
+     could not take care of my dependants: so that some of my brothers,
+     from their difficulties, arose and departed; and the people of the
+     Khord Mohul of the late Nabob, who are all my mothers, from their
+     distresses are reduced to poverty and involved in difficulties. No
+     man of rank is deficient in the care of his dependants, in
+     proportion to his ability."
+
+
+     _Another Letter from the Vizier, received the 31st July, 1784._
+
+     "My brother, dear as life, Saadut Ali Khan, has requested that I
+     would permit his mother to go and reside with him. My friend, all
+     the mothers of my brothers, and the women of the late Nabob, whom I
+     respect as my own mothers, are here, and it is incumbent upon me to
+     support them: accordingly I do it; and it is improper that they
+     should be separated, nor do I approve it. By God's blessing and
+     your kindness, I hope that all the women of the late Nabob may
+     remain here; it is the wish also of my grandmother and my mother
+     that they should."
+
+Your Lordships now see in what degree of estimation the Nabob held these
+women. He regarded the wives of his father as his honorary mothers; he
+considers their children as his brethren; he thinks it would be highly
+dishonorable to his government, if one of them was taken out of the
+sanctuary in which they are placed, and in which, he says, the great of
+the country are obliged to maintain their dependants. This is the
+account given by the person best acquainted with the usages of the
+country, best acquainted with his own duties, best acquainted with his
+own wishes.
+
+Now, my Lords, you will see in what light another person, the agent of a
+trading company, who designates himself under the name of Majesty, and
+assumes other great distinctions, presumes also to consider these
+persons,--and in what contempt he is pleased to hold what is respected
+and what is held sacred in that country. What I am now going to quote is
+from the prisoner's second defence. For I must remind your Lordships
+that Mr. Hastings has made three defences,--one in the House of Commons,
+another in the lobby of the House of Commons, and a third at your
+Lordships' bar. The second defence, though delivered without name, to
+the members in the lobby of the House of Commons, has been proved at
+your Lordships' bar to be written by himself. This lobby, this
+out-of-door defence, militates in some respects, as your Lordships will
+find, with the in-door defence; but it probably contains the real
+sentiments of Mr. Hastings himself, delivered with a little more
+freeness when he gets into the open air,--like the man who was so vain
+of some silly plot he had hatched, that he told it to the
+hackney-coachman, and every man he met in the streets.
+
+He says,--"Begums are the ladies of an Eastern prince; but these women
+are also styled the ladies of the late Vizier, and their sufferings are
+painted in such strong colors that the unsuspecting reader is led to mix
+the subjects together, and to suppose that these latter, too, were
+princesses of Oude, that all their sufferings proceeded from some act of
+mine, or had the sanction of my authority or permission. The fact is,
+that the persons of the Khord Mohul (or Little Seraglio) were young
+creatures picked up wherever youth and beauty could be found, and mostly
+purchased from amongst the most necessitous and meanest ranks of the
+people, for the Nabob's pleasures." In the in-door defence, he says,
+"The said women, who were mostly persons of low condition, and the said
+children, if any such there were, lived in the Khord Mohul, on an
+establishment entirely distinct from the said Begums'."
+
+My Lords, you have seen what was the opinion of the Nabob, who ought to
+know the nature and circumstances of his father's palace, respecting
+these women; you hear what Mr. Hastings's opinion is: and now the
+question is, whether your Lordships will consider these women in the
+same light in which the person does who is most nearly connected with
+them and most likely to know them, or in the way in which Mr. Hastings
+has thought proper, within doors and without doors, to describe them.
+Your Lordships will be pleased to observe that he has brought no proof
+whatever of facts which are so boldly asserted by him in defiance of
+proof to the contrary, totally at variance with the letter of the son of
+the man to whom these women belonged. Your Lordships, I say, will remark
+that he has produced not one word of evidence, either within the House
+of Commons or the House of Peers, or in the lobby, or anywhere else, to
+verify any one word he has said. He slanders these women in order to
+lessen that compassion which your Lordships might have for the
+sufferings he inflicted upon them. But admitting that some of these
+women were of a meaner condition, and that they derived nothing from
+their connection with the dignity of the person by whom they had
+children, (and we know that in the whole they amounted to about
+fourscore children, the Nabob having a race like the patriarchs of old,
+as many great persons in that part of the world still have,)--supposing,
+I say, all this to be true, yet, when persons are reduced from ease and
+affluence to misery and distress, they naturally excite in the mind a
+greater degree of compassion by comparing the circumstances in which
+they once stood with those into which they are fallen: for famine,
+degradation, and oppression were famine, degradation, and oppression to
+those persons, even though they were as mean as Mr. Hastings chooses to
+represent them. But I hope, as you will sympathize with the great on
+account of their condition, that you will sympathize with all mankind on
+the ground of the common condition of humanity which belongs to us all;
+therefore I hope your Lordships will not consider the calumny of Mr.
+Hastings against those women as any other than as an aggravation of his
+offence against them. That is the light in which the House of Commons
+considered it; for they had heard both his in-door and out-door defence,
+and they still persevered in making the charge, and do persevere in
+making it still.
+
+We have first stated what these women were,--in what light they stood
+with the Nabob,--in what light they stood with the country at large. I
+have now to state in what light they stood with the British government,
+previous to this invasion of their rights; and we will prove they were
+the actual subjects of a guaranty by the Company.
+
+
+     _Extract from an Agreement made by Mr. Middleton, to all the
+     Particulars of which he engages to procure a Treaty from the Nabob
+     Asoph ul Dowlah, after his Arrival, and that he will also sign it,
+     as follows._
+
+     "First, That, whenever the Begum shall choose to go to Mecca, she
+     shall be permitted to go.
+
+     "Second, That, when the Nabob shall arrive, I [Mr. Middleton] will
+     procure suitable allowances to be made to the ladies of the zenanah
+     and the children of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah, and take care
+     that they are paid.
+
+     "Third, That the festivals (_shadee_) and marriages of the children
+     of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah shall be at the disposal of the
+     Begum: whenever she thinks proper, she shall marry them; and
+     whatever money shall be necessary for these expenses shall be paid
+     by the Nabob.
+
+     "Fourth, That the syer of Coda Gunge and Ali Gunge shall be
+     retained by the Begum as heretofore.
+
+     "Fifth, That I [Mr. Middleton] will, upon the arrival of the Nabob,
+     procure Vizier Gunge and the garden of Sepoy Dand Khan, or their
+     equivalent, for the Begum.
+
+     "Sixth, That I [Mr. Middleton] will endeavor to obtain from the
+     Nabob the sum of 1,150,000 rupees on account of the purchase of
+     Metchee Bohaun, and the house of Sahebjee, and the fort of the
+     Gossim, with the land and garden and the barraderry on the banks of
+     Goomply [Goomty?], and bazaar and garden of the house of Mahnarain
+     and the house of Beng Peofand at Lucknow: all of which the Nabob
+     Asoph ul Dowlah has assumed possession of.
+
+     "Seventh, That I will settle with the Nabob the allowances to be
+     made in ready money to the ladies of the zenanah and others
+     specified, in the following amount: Total, 17 lacs 250 rupees per
+     month.
+
+     "Eighth, Upon the arrival of the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah Bahadur, I
+     will endeavor with all my influence to settle the monthly
+     allowances of Mohrum Ali Khan and Mahmud Eltifant Khan, &c., the
+     attendants of the Begums.
+
+     "Ninth, That, if the Begum shall go to Mecca, she shall leave her
+     mahals and jaghires to the Begum, the mother of Asoph ul Dowlah,
+     who shall remit the revenues thereof to the Burree Begum: no one
+     shall prevent her enjoying her jaghires."
+
+Now, my Lords, we will read the copy of an engagement under the seal of
+the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah, and under the seal and signature, in English,
+of Mr. Middleton, as follows.
+
+     "First, I, who am the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah Bahadur, do agree that
+     the jaghires and the gunges and monthly allowance of the officers
+     and servants, and of the ladies of the zenanah, and of those
+     specified in the accounts annexed, shall be at the disposal and
+     under the management and authority of the Begum, and no one shall
+     oppose or prevent it: this I will punctually observe. In this
+     agreement Mr. Middleton and the English are engaged.
+
+     "Second, Whenever the Begum may choose to go to Mecca, I will not
+     oppose it.
+
+     "Third, Whenever the Begum should go to Mecca, she shall leave her
+     lands, jaghires, &c., either in the care of my mother or of me; and
+     I will procure bills for the amount of their revenues, and send
+     them to her: no one shall oppose this.
+
+     "Fourth, The Begum shall have authority over all the ladies of her
+     zenanah; she shall let them remain with me, and not let them go
+     anywhere without my permission, or keep them with her.
+
+     "Fifth, The jaghires Coda Gunge and Ali Gunge, &c., with the mahal
+     and syer belonging to the Begum and made over, shall remain as
+     heretofore in her possession: Total, 14,460 rupees per month.
+
+     "Eighth, The Begum has authority over the ladies and attendants of
+     the zenanah; neither myself nor any one else will oppose it.
+
+     "Ninth, The Begum, my grandmother, shall have the authority in all
+     festivals, and in the marriage of the children of the late Nabob
+     Sujah ul Dowlah, and, with the consent of my mother and myself,
+     shall regulate them: excepting in the festivals (_shadee_), the
+     authority is mine.
+
+     "The English are guaranties to the above engagements, so long as
+     the Begum shall exist."
+
+
+Your Lordships will observe something here worthy of your notice. You
+will first perceive, that the very treaty in which Mr. Hastings, by his
+representative, Mr. Middleton, was a party concerned, supposes that the
+Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah had other children besides the reigning prince by
+his sole legitimate wife; and yet Mr. Hastings, in his defence, has
+thought proper, with a full knowledge of that circumstance, to doubt
+whether there were any other children. You next see that these women
+have Mr. Middleton's (that is, Mr. Hastings's) guaranty for the
+allowances which are made and settled upon them, and for the maintenance
+of their attendants, for the security and enjoyment of their own
+possessions, for their having a law officer of high rank, a moulavy, of
+their own. In short, there is a regular establishment formed for all
+these women: they are not separated as a part distinct from the Begums,
+but they are put by this very guaranty entirely under their management;
+the maintenance of the children is secured; the whole order and economy
+of their establishment is delivered entirely to the Begum, the
+grandmother, and the Begum, the mother, of the Nabob.
+
+My Lords, you see that all these arrangements have the solemn guaranty
+of the Company, and that these women form a very considerable part of
+that guaranty; and therefore your Lordships will not treat their
+sufferings, inflicted in violation of the Company's own settlement and
+guaranty, as a matter of no consideration for you.
+
+But to proceed.--We have proved to your Lordships that the Nabob was
+reduced to a state of the greatest possible misery and distress; that
+his whole revenue was sequestered into the hands of Mr. Hastings's
+agents; that by the treaty of Chunar he was to be relieved from the
+expense of a body of troops with which he had been burdened without his
+own voluntary consent,--nay, more, the temporary brigade, which Mr.
+Hastings proposed to take off, but kept on, which he considers not only
+as a great distress to his finances, but a dreadful scourge and calamity
+to his country,--there was a whole pension-list upon it, with such
+enormous pensions as 18,000_l._ a year to Sir Eyre Coote, and other
+pensions, that Mr. Hastings proposed to take off, but did not; that, in
+proportion as the Nabob's distress increased, Mr. Hastings's demands
+increased too; he was not satisfied, with taking from him for the
+Company, but he took from him for himself; he demanded six hundred
+thousand pounds as a loan, when he knew he had neither money nor credit.
+
+The consequence of these acts of violence was, that these people,
+besieged by the English troops, and deprived of every resource, even of
+the funds of charity, by which the protectors of the family, male and
+female, might have relieved them, but which the cruel rapacity of Mr.
+Hastings had either entirely taken away or greatly diminished, were
+reduced to the last extremity of distress.
+
+After the length of time which has elapsed since we first brought these
+matters with their proofs, I shall beg leave, before you go to judgment,
+to refresh your memory with a recital of a part of that evidence, in
+order that your Lordships may again fully and distinctly comprehend the
+nature and extent of the oppression, cruelty, and injustice committed by
+Mr. Hastings, and by which you may estimate the punishment you will
+inflict upon him.
+
+
+     _Letter from Captain Leonard Jaques to Richard Johnson, Esq.,
+     Resident at the Vizier's Court; March 6th, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--The women belonging to the Khord Mohul complain of their
+     being in want of every necessary of life, and are at last drove to
+     that desperation, that they at night get on the top of the zenanah,
+     make a great disturbance, and last night not only abused the
+     sentinels posted in the gardens, but threw dirt at them; they
+     threatened to throw themselves from the walls of the zenanah, and
+     also to break out of it. Humanity obliges me to acquaint you of
+     this matter, and to request to know if you have any direction to
+     give me concerning it. I also beg leave to acquaint you, I sent for
+     Letafit Ali Khan, the cojah who has the charge of them, who informs
+     me their complaint is well grounded,--that they have sold
+     everything they had, even to the clothes from their backs, and now
+     have no means of existing. Inclosed, I transmit you a letter from
+     Mandall on the subject."
+
+
+     _Letter from Captain Jaques to Richard Johnson, Esq., March 7th,
+     1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I beg leave to address you again concerning the women in the
+     Khord Mohul. Their behavior last night was so furious that there
+     seemed the greatest probability of their proceeding to the utmost
+     extremities, and that they would either throw themselves from the
+     walls or force the doors of the zenanah. I have made every inquiry
+     concerning the cause of their complaints, and find from Letafit Ali
+     Khan that they are in a starving condition, having sold all their
+     clothes and necessaries, and now have not wherewithal to support
+     nature. And as my instructions are quite silent upon this head,
+     should be glad to know how to proceed in case they were to force
+     the doors of the zenanah; as I suspect it will happen, should no
+     subsistence be very quickly sent to them."
+
+
+     _Letter from Major Gilpin to John Bristow, Esq., Resident at the
+     Court of Lucknow; 30th October, 1782._
+
+     "Last night, about eight o'clock, the women in the Khord Mohul
+     Zenanah, under the charge of Letafit Ali Khan, assembled on the
+     tops of the buildings, crying in a most lamentable manner for
+     food,--that for the last four days they had got but a very scanty
+     allowance, and that yesterday they had got none. The melancholy
+     cries of famine are more easily imagined than described; and from
+     their representations, I fear that the Nabob's agents for that
+     business are very inattentive. I therefore think it requisite to
+     make you acquainted with the circumstance, that his Excellency the
+     Nabob may cause his agents to be more circumspect in their conduct
+     to these poor, unhappy women."
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Bristow to Major Gilpin; Fyzabad, 4th November,
+     1782._
+
+     "Sir,--I have received your letters of the 12th, 19th, 27th, and
+     30th ultimo. I communicated the contents of that of the 30th to the
+     minister, who promised me to issue orders for the payment of a sum
+     of money to relieve the distress of the Khord Mohul. I shall also
+     forward a bill for 10,000 rupees to you in the course of three or
+     four days; and if in the mean time you may find means to supply to
+     the amount of that sum, I will become personally responsible to
+     you for the repayment."
+
+
+     _Letter from Major Gilpin to John Bristow, Esq., at the Court of
+     Lucknow; Fyzabad, 15th November, 1782._
+
+     "Sir,--The repeated cries of the women in the Khord Mohul Zenanah
+     for subsistence have been truly melancholy. They beg most piteously
+     for liberty, that they may earn their daily bread by laborious
+     servitude, or be relieved from their misery by immediate death. In
+     consequence of their unhappy situation, I have this day taken the
+     liberty of drawing on you in favor of Ramnarain at ten days' sight,
+     for twenty son Kerah rupees, ten thousand of which I have paid to
+     Cojah Letafit Ali Khan, under whose charge that zenanah is."
+
+These, my Lords, are the state of the distresses in the year 1782, and
+your Lordships will see that they continued almost, with only occasional
+reliefs, during the period of that whole year. Now we enter into the
+year 1783, to show you that it continued during the whole time; and then
+I shall make a very few remarks upon it.
+
+I will now read to your Lordships a part of Mr. Holt's evidence, by
+which it is proved that Mr. Hastings was duly advertised of all these
+miserable and calamitous circumstances.
+
+    "_Q._ Whether you saw a letter of intelligence from Fyzabad
+    containing a relation of the treatment of the women in the Khord
+    Mohul?--_A._ Yes, I did, and translated it.--_Q._ From whom did it
+    come?--_A._ Hoolas Roy.--_Q._ Who was he?--_A._ An agent of the
+    Resident at Fyzabad, employed for the purpose of transmitting
+    information to the Resident.--_Q._ Was that paper transmitted to
+    Mr. Hastings?--_A._ To the best of my recollection, it was
+    transmitted to the Board, after I had attested it.--_Q._ Do you
+    remember at what distance of time after the receipt of the
+    intelligence respecting the distresses of the Khord Mohul that paper
+    was transmitted to Calcutta?--_A._ I cannot say.--_Q._ Do you
+    believe it was transmitted within ten months after the time it was
+    received?--_A._ I understood it to be a letter received just before
+    it was transmitted.--_Q._ Then you understand it was transmitted
+    as soon as received?--_A._ Yes, in the course of three days.--_Q._
+    Can you bring to your mind the time at which the translation was
+    made?--_A._ To the best of my recollection, it was in January,
+    1784.--_Q._ Whether the distresses that had been complained of had
+    ceased for above a twelvemonth before the distresses of the Khord
+    Mohul?--_A._ I understood they were new distresses.--_Q._ Then you
+    state that that account transmitted in 1784 was, as you understand,
+    an account of new distresses?--_A._ Yes."
+
+I shall now refer your Lordships to page 899 of your printed Minutes.
+
+     [The Managers for the Commons acquainted the House, that they would
+     next read the paper of intelligence which had been authenticated by
+     Mr. Holt, in his evidence at the bar, relative to the miserable
+     situation of these women, which they meant to bring home to Mr.
+     Hastings.]
+
+
+     _An Extract of a Consultation of the 17th February, 1784._
+
+     "At a Council: present, the Honorable Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+     Governor-General, President, Edward Wheler and John Stables,
+     Esqrs.; Mr. Macpherson absent from the Presidency for the benefit
+     of his health: the following letter and its inclosures were
+     received from Mr. Bristow on the 8th instant, and circulated.
+
+     "'Honorable Sir, and Gentlemen,--I have the honor to forward, for
+     your further information, the inclosure No. 3; it contains a
+     relation of the hardships endured by the ladies of the late
+     Vizier's zenanah.'
+
+       (Signed) 'JOHN BRISTOW.'
+
+
+     "_Translation of a Paper of Intelligence from Fyzabad._
+
+     "'The ladies, their attendants, and servants were still as
+     clamorous as last night. Letafit, the darogah, went to them, and
+     remonstrated with them on the impropriety of their conduct, at the
+     same time assuring them that in a few days all their allowances
+     would be paid, and should that not be the case, he would advance
+     them ten days' subsistence, upon condition that they returned to
+     their habitations. None of them, however, consented to his
+     proposal, but were still intent upon making their escape through
+     the bazaar, and in consequence formed themselves in the following
+     order,--the children in the front, behind them the ladies of the
+     seraglio, and behind them again their attendants; but their
+     intentions were frustrated by the opposition which they met with
+     from Letafit's sepoys. The next day Letafit went twice to the
+     women, and used his endeavors to make them return into the zenanah,
+     promising to advance them ten thousand rupees, which, upon the
+     money being paid down, they agreed to comply with; but night coming
+     on, nothing transpired.
+
+     "'On the day following, their clamors were more violent than usual.
+     Letafit went to confer with them on the business of yesterday,
+     offering the same terms. Depending upon the fidelity of his
+     promises, they consented to return to their apartments, which they
+     accordingly did, except two or three of the ladies, and most of
+     their attendants. Letafit went then to Hossmund Ali Khan, to
+     consult with him about what means they should take. They came to a
+     resolution of driving them in by force, and gave orders to their
+     sepoys to beat any one of the women who should attempt to move
+     forward; the sepoys accordingly assembled, and each one being
+     provided with a bludgeon, they drove them, by dint of beating, into
+     the zenanah. The women, seeing the treachery of Letafit, proceeded
+     to throw stones and bricks at the sepoys, and again attempted to
+     get out; but finding that impossible, from the gates being shut,
+     they kept up a continual discharge till about twelve o'clock, when,
+     finding their situation desperate, they returned into the Rung
+     Mohul, and forced their way from thence into the palace, and
+     dispersed themselves about the house and gardens. After this they
+     were desirous of getting into the Begum's apartments; but she,
+     being apprised of their intentions, ordered the doors to be shut.
+     In the mean time Letafit and Hossmund Ali Khan posted sentries to
+     secure the gates of the Lesser Mohul. During the whole of this
+     conflict, the ladies and women remained exposed to the view of the
+     sepoys.
+
+     "'The Begum then sent for Letafit and Hossmund Ali Khan, whom she
+     severely reprimanded, and insisted upon knowing the cause of this
+     infamous behavior. They pleaded in their defence the impossibility
+     of helping it, as the treatment the women had met with had only
+     been conformable to his Excellency the Vizier's orders. The Begum
+     alleged, that, even admitting that the Nabob had given these
+     orders, they were by no means authorized in this manner to disgrace
+     the family of Sujah Dowlah, and should they not receive their
+     allowances for a day or two, it could be of no great moment; what
+     had passed was now at an end, but that the Vizier should certainly
+     be acquainted with the whole of the affair, and that whatever he
+     directed she should implicitly comply with. The Begum then sent for
+     two of the children who were wounded in the affray of last night,
+     and after endeavoring to soothe them, she again sent to Letafit and
+     Hossmund Ali Khan, and in the presence of the children again
+     expressed her disapprobation of their conduct, and the
+     improbability of Asoph ul Dowlah's suffering the ladies and
+     children of Sujah Dowlah to be disgraced by being exposed to the
+     view of the sepoys. Upon which Letafit produced the letter from the
+     Nabob, representing that he was amenable only to the order of his
+     Excellency, and that whatever he ordered it was his duty to obey;
+     and that, had the ladies thought proper to have retired quietly to
+     their apartments, he would not have used the means he had taken to
+     compel them. The Begum again observed, that what had passed was now
+     over. She then gave the children four hundred rupees and dismissed
+     them, and sent word by Sumrud and the other eunuchs, that, if the
+     ladies would peaceably retire to their apartments, Letafit would
+     supply them with three or four thousand rupees for their present
+     expenses, and recommended them not to incur any further disgrace,
+     and that, if they did not think proper to act agreeably to her
+     directions, they would do wrong. The ladies followed her advice,
+     and about ten at night went back to the zenanah. The next morning
+     the Begum waited upon the mother of Sujah Dowlah, and related to
+     her all the circumstances of the disturbance. The mother of Sujah
+     Dowlah returned for answer, that, after there being no accounts
+     kept by crores of revenue, she was not surprised that the family of
+     Sujah Dowlah, in their endeavors to procure subsistence, should be
+     obliged to expose themselves to the meanest of the people. After
+     bewailing their misfortunes and shedding many tears, the Begum took
+     her leave and returned home.'"
+
+As a proof of the extremity of the distress which reigned in the Khord
+Mohul, your Lordships have been told that these women must have perished
+through famine, if their gaolers, Captain Jaques and Major Gilpin, had
+not raised money upon their own credit, and supplied them with an
+occasional relief. And therefore, when they talk of his peculation, of
+his taking but a bribe here and a bribe there, see the consequences of
+his system of peculation, see the consequences of a usurpation which
+extinguishes the natural authority of the country, see the consequences
+of a clandestine correspondence that does not let the injuries of the
+country come regularly before the authorities in Oude to relieve it,
+consider the whole mass of crimes, and then consider the sufferings that
+have arisen in consequence of it.
+
+My Lords, it was not corporal pain alone that these miserable women
+suffered. The unsatisfied cravings of hunger and the blows of the
+sepoys' bludgeons could touch only the physical part of their nature.
+But, my Lords, men are made of two parts,--the physical part, and the
+moral. The former he has in common with the brute creation. Like theirs,
+our corporeal pains are very limited and temporary. But the sufferings
+which touch our moral nature have a wider range, and are infinitely more
+acute, driving the sufferer sometimes to the extremities of despair and
+distraction. Man, in his moral nature, becomes, in his progress through
+life, a creature of prejudice, a creature of opinions, a creature of
+habits, and of sentiments growing out of them. These form our second
+nature, as inhabitants of the country and members of the society in
+which Providence has placed us. This sensibility of our moral nature is
+far more acute in that sex which, I may say without any compliment,
+forms the better and more virtuous part of mankind, and which is at the
+same time the least protected from the insults and outrages to which
+this sensibility exposes them. This is a new source of feelings, that
+often make corporal distress doubly felt; and it has a whole class of
+distresses of its own. These are the things that have gone to the heart
+of the Commons.
+
+We have stated, first, the sufferings of the Begum, and, secondly, the
+sufferings of the two thousand women (I believe they are not fewer in
+number) that belong to them, and are dependent upon them, and dependent
+upon their well-being. We have stated to you that the Court of Directors
+were shocked and astonished, when they received the account of the
+first, before they had heard the second. We have proved they desired him
+to redress the former, if, upon inquiry, he found that his original
+suspicions concerning their conduct were ill-founded. He has declared
+here that he did not consider these as orders. Whether they were orders
+or not, could anything have been more pressing upon all the duties and
+all the sentiments of man than at least to do what was just,--that is,
+to make such an inquiry as in the result might justify his acts, or have
+entitled them to redress? Not one trace of inquiry or redress do we
+find, except we suppose, as we hear nothing after this of the famine,
+that Mr. Bristow, who seems to be a man of humanity, did so effectually
+interpose, that they should no longer depend for the safety of their
+honor on the bludgeons of the sepoys, by which alone it seems they were
+defended from the profane view of the vulgar, and which we must state as
+a matter of great aggravation in this case.
+
+The counsel on the other side say that all this intelligence comes in an
+anonymous paper without date, transmitted from a newspaper-writer at
+Fyzabad. This is the contempt with which they treat this serious paper,
+sent to Mr. Hastings himself by official authority,--by Hoolas Roy, who
+was the news-writer at Fyzabad,--the person appointed to convey
+authentic intelligence concerning the state of it to the Resident at
+Lucknow. The Resident received it as such; he transmitted it to Mr.
+Hastings; and it was not till this hour, till the counsel were
+instructed (God forgive them for obeying such instructions!) to treat
+these things with ridicule, that we have heard this Hoolas Roy called a
+common news-writer of anonymous information, and the like. If the
+information had come in any way the least authentic, instead of coming
+in a manner the most authentic in which it was possible to come to Mr.
+Hastings, he was bound by every feeling of humanity, every principle of
+regard to his own honor and his employers', to see whether it was true
+or false; if false, to refute it; if true, to afford redress: he has
+done neither. Therefore we charge him with being the cause; we charge
+upon him the consequences, with all the aggravations attending them; and
+we call both upon justice and humanity for redress, as far as it can be
+afforded to these people, and for the severest punishments which your
+Lordships can inflict upon the author of these evils. If, instead of the
+mass of crimes that we have brought before you, this singly had been
+charged upon the prisoner, I will say that it is a greater crime than
+any man has ever been impeached for before the House of Lords, from the
+first records of Parliament to this hour.
+
+I need not remind your Lordships of one particular circumstance in this
+cruel outrage. No excuse or pretence whatever is brought forward in its
+justification. With respect to the Begums, they have been charged with
+rebellion; but who has accused the miserable inhabitants of the Khord
+Mohul of rebellion, or rebellious designs? What hearsay is there, even,
+against them of it? No: even the persons permitted by Mr. Hastings to
+rob and destroy the country, and who are stated by him to have been so
+employed,--not one of that legion of locusts which he had sent into the
+country to eat up and devour the bread of its inhabitants, and who had
+been the cause both of the famine itself and of the inability of the
+Begums to struggle with it,--none of these people, I say, ventured even
+a hearsay about these women.
+
+Were the sufferers few? There were eight hundred of them, besides
+children. Were they persons of any rank and consequence? We are told
+that they were persons of considerable rank and distinction, connected
+with and living under the protection of women of the first rank in Asia.
+Were they persons not deserving pity? We know that they were innocent
+women and children, not accused, and unsuspected, of any crime. He has
+taken into his head to speak contemptuously of these women of the Khord
+Mohul: but your Lordships will consider both descriptions generally with
+some respect; and where they are not objects of the highest respect,
+they will be objects of your compassion. Your Lordships, by your
+avenging justice, will rescue the name of the British government from
+the foulest disgrace which this man has brought upon it.
+
+An account of these transactions, as we have proved by Mr. Holt's
+evidence, was regularly transmitted and made known to him. But why do I
+say made known to him? Do not your Lordships know that Oude was
+his,--that he treated it like his private estate,--that he managed it in
+all its concerns as if it were his private demesne,--that the Nabob
+dared not do a single act without him,--that he had a Resident there,
+nominated by himself, and forced upon the Nabob, in defiance of the
+Company's orders? Yet, notwithstanding all this, we do not find a trace
+of anything done to relieve the aggravated distresses of these
+unfortunate people.
+
+These are some of the consequences of that abominable system which, in
+defiance of the laws of his country, Mr. Hastings established in Oude.
+He knew everything there; he had spies upon his regular agents, and
+spies again upon them. We can prove, (indeed, he has himself proved,)
+that, besides his correspondence with his avowed agents, Major Palmer
+and Major Davy, he had secret correspondence with a whole host of agents
+and pensioners, who did and must have informed him of every circumstance
+of these affairs. But if he had never been informed of it at all, the
+Commons contend, and very well and justly contend, that he who usurps
+the government of a country, who extinguishes the authority of its
+native sovereign, and places in it instruments of his own, and that in
+defiance of those whose orders he was bound to obey, is responsible for
+everything that was done in the country. We do charge him with these
+acts of delinquencies and omissions, we declare him responsible for
+them; and we call for your Lordships' judgment upon these outrages
+against humanity, as cruel perhaps as ever were suffered in any country.
+
+My Lords, if there is a spark of manhood, if there is in your breasts
+the least feeling for our common humanity, and especially for the
+sufferings and distresses of that part of human nature which is made by
+its peculiar constitution more quick and sensible,--if, I say, there is
+a trace of this in your breasts, if you are yet alive to such feelings,
+it is impossible that you should not join with the Commons of Great
+Britain in feeling the utmost degree of indignation against the man who
+was the guilty cause of this accumulated distress. You see women, whom
+we have proved to be of respectable rank and condition, exposed to what
+is held to be the last of indignities in that country,--the view of a
+base, insulting, ridiculing, or perhaps vainly pitying populace. You
+have before you the first women in Asia, who consider their honor as
+joined with that of these people, weeping and bewailing the calamities
+of their house. You have seen that in this misery and distress the sons
+of the Nabob were involved, and that two of them were wounded in an
+attempt to escape: and yet this man has had the impudence to declare his
+doubts of the Nabob's having had any children in the place, though the
+account of what was going on had been regularly transmitted to him.
+After this, what is there in his conduct that we can wonder at?
+
+My Lords, the maintenance of these women had been guarantied by the
+Company; but it was doubly guarantied under the great seal of humanity.
+The conscience of every man, and more especially of the great and
+powerful, is the keeper of that great seal, and knows what is due to its
+authority. For the violation of both these guaranties, without even the
+vain and frivolous pretence of a rebellion, and for all its
+consequences, Mr. Hastings is answerable; and he will not escape your
+justice by those miserable excuses which he has produced to the Court of
+Directors, and which he has produced here in his justification. My
+Lords, that justification we leave with your Lordships.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We now proceed to another part of our charge, which Mr. Hastings has not
+thought proper to deny, but upon which we shall beg leave to make a few
+observations. You will first hear read to you, from the 17th article of
+our charge, the subject-matter to which we now wish to call your
+attention.
+
+     "That in or about the month of March, 1783, three of the said
+     brothers of the Nabob, namely, Mirza Hyder Ali, Mirza Imayut Ali,
+     and Mirza Syef Ali, did represent to the said Bristow that they
+     were in distress for dry bread and clothes, and in consequence of
+     such representation were relieved by the intervention of the said
+     Bristow, but soon after the deputation of the said Warren Hastings
+     to Oude, in the year 1784, that is to say, some time in or about
+     the month of September, in the said year 1784, the said Mirza Hyder
+     Ali, one of the three princes aforesaid, did fly to the province of
+     Benares, and did remain there in great distress; and that, although
+     the said Warren Hastings did write to the said Nabob an account of
+     the aforesaid circumstances, in certain loose, light, and
+     disrespectful expressions concerning the said Mirza Hyder Ali, he
+     did not, as he was in duty bound to do, in any wise exert that
+     influence which he actually and notoriously possessed over the mind
+     of the said Nabob, for the relief of the said prince, the brother
+     of the said Nabob, but, without obtaining any satisfactory and
+     specific assurances, either from the said Nabob or the said
+     minister, the said Warren Hastings did content himself with
+     advising the said prince to return to his brother, the said Nabob."
+
+The answer of Mr. Hastings to that part of the 17th article states:--
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings says, that in or about the month of
+     July, in the year 1783, a paper was received, inclosed in a letter
+     to the Governor-General and Council, from Mr. Bristow, purporting
+     to be a translation of a letter from three brothers of the said
+     Vizier, in which they did represent themselves to be in distress
+     for dry bread and clothes; but whether such distress actually
+     existed, and was relieved by the said Bristow, the said Warren
+     Hastings cannot set forth.
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that some time in the
+     month of September, 1784, the said Warren Hastings, being then at
+     Benares, did receive information that Mirza Hyder Ali was arrived
+     there, and the said Warren Hastings, not knowing before that time
+     that there was any such person, did write to the Nabob Vizier, to
+     the purport or effect following:--'A few days since I learnt that a
+     person called Mirza Hyder Ali was arrived at Benares, and calls
+     himself a son of the deceased Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah, and I was also
+     told that he came from Fyzabad; as I did not know whether he left
+     Fyzabad with or without your consent, I therefore did not pay him
+     much attention, and I now trouble you to give me every information
+     on this subject, how he came here, and what your intentions are
+     about him; he remains here in great distress, and I therefore wish
+     to know your sentiments.'
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that, having received
+     an answer from the said Vizier, he did, on or about the 13th of
+     October, 1784, inclose the same in a letter to the said Mirza, of
+     which letter the following is a copy:--'An answer is arrived to
+     what I wrote on your account to the Nabob Vizier, which I inclose
+     to you: having read it, you will send it back. I conceive you had
+     better go to the Nabob Vizier's presence, who will certainly afford
+     you protection and assistance. I will write what is proper to carry
+     with you to the Nabob, and it will in every respect be for your
+     good; whatever may be your intention on this head, you will write
+     to me.'
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings submits, that it was no part of his
+     duty as Governor-General to interfere with the said Vizier on
+     behalf of the said Mirza, or to obtain from the said Vizier any
+     specific assurances on the subject."
+
+Continuation of the 17th article of the charge:--
+
+     "That, in order to avoid famine at home, another of the said
+     Nabob's brothers, by name Mirza Jungli, was under the necessity of
+     flying from his native country, and did seek protection from a
+     certain Mahometan lord called Mirza Shuffee Khan, then
+     prime-minister of the Mogul, from whom he did go to the camp of the
+     Mahratta chief Mahdajee Sindia, where he did solicit and obtain a
+     military command, together with a grant of lands, or jaghire, for
+     the subsistence of himself, his family, and followers; but wishing
+     again to be received under the protection of the British
+     government, the said Mirza Jungli, in 1783, did apply to the said
+     Resident Bristow, through David Anderson, Esquire, then on an
+     embassy in the camp of the said Sindia; and in consequence of such
+     application, the said Bristow, sensible of the disgrace which the
+     exile of the said Mirza Jungli reflected both on the said Nabob of
+     Oude and the British nation, did negotiate with the said Nabob and
+     his ministers for the return of the said Mirza Jungli, and for the
+     settlement and regular payment of some proper allowance for the
+     maintenance of the said Mirza Jungli; but the allowance required
+     was ultimately refused; and although the whole of the transactions
+     aforesaid were duly represented to the said Warren Hastings by the
+     said Anderson and by the said Bristow, and although he had himself
+     received, so early as the 23d of August, 1782, a letter from the
+     Vizier, grievously complaining of the cruel and extortious demands
+     made upon him by the said Warren Hastings, in which letter he did
+     expressly mention the flight of his brothers, and the distresses of
+     the women of his late father, who he said were all as his mothers,
+     and that his said brothers, from the resumption of their jaghires,
+     were reduced to great affliction and distress, and he did attribute
+     the said flight of some of his brethren, and the distresses of the
+     rest, and of the women who stood in a species of maternal relation
+     to him, as owing to the aforesaid oppressive demands, yet he, the
+     said Warren Hastings, did cruelly, inhumanly, and corruptly decline
+     to make any order for the better provision of any of the said
+     eminent family, or for the return of the said prince, who had fled
+     from his brother's court to avoid the danger of perishing by
+     famine."
+
+Answer of Mr. Hastings to that part of the charge:--
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that he was informed
+     that Mirza Jungli, in the said article also mentioned, did leave
+     his native country in distress, and did go to Mirza Shuffee Khan,
+     in the said article also mentioned; and the said Warren Hastings
+     likewise admits he was informed that the said Mirza Jungli did
+     afterwards leave the said Mirza Shuffee Khan, and repair to the
+     camp of Mahdajee Sindia, with a view of obtaining some
+     establishment for himself and followers.
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that in certain letters
+     written by David Anderson, Esquire, and John Bristow, Esquire, it
+     was represented that the said Mirza Jungli did apply to the said
+     Bristow, through the said Anderson, then on an embassy in the camp
+     of the said Sindia, and that in consequence thereof the said
+     Bristow did, amongst other things, apply to the said Nabob Vizier
+     for a certain allowance to be made for the said Mirza, and for the
+     regular payment thereof, and that a certain allowance was
+     accordingly settled by the said Vizier on the said Mirza; and the
+     said Warren Hastings says, that information of the above
+     transactions was transmitted to the Board of Council, and that a
+     letter from the said Vizier was received on the 23d of August,
+     1782, containing certain representations of the distresses of
+     himself and his family; and he admits that no order was made by
+     him, the said Warren Hastings, for the provision of any of the said
+     family, or for the return of the said Mirza; but the said Warren
+     Hastings denies that he was guilty of any cruelty, inhumanity, or
+     corruption, or of any misconduct whatsoever, in the matters
+     aforesaid."
+
+Continuation of the charge:--
+
+     "That some time in or about the month of December, 1783, the Nabob
+     Bahadur, another of the brothers of the said Nabob of Oude, did
+     represent to the said Bristow, that he, the said Nabob Bahadur, had
+     not received a farthing of his allowance for the current year, and
+     was without food; and being wounded by an assassin, who had also
+     murdered his aunt in the very capital of Oude, the said Nabob
+     Bahadur had not a daum to pay the surgeon, who attended him for the
+     love of God alone. That at or about the period of this said
+     representation the said Bristow was recalled, and the said Warren
+     Hastings proceeded up to Lucknow, but did not inquire into the said
+     representations transmitted by the said Bristow to Calcutta, nor
+     did order any relief."
+
+Mr. Hastings's answer to the part of the charge last read:--
+
+     "And the said Warren Hastings further says, that on the 29th of
+     January, 1784, after the recall of the said Bristow, he, the said
+     Bristow, did transmit to the Governor-General and Council two
+     letters, one dated 28th of December, 1783, the other 7th of
+     January, 1784, purporting to be written by the said Nabob Bahadur,
+     addressed to him, the said Bristow, to the effect in the said
+     article stated; and the said Warren Hastings admits, that, when at
+     Lucknow, he did not institute any inquiry into the supposed
+     transaction in the said 17th article stated, or make any order
+     concerning the said Bahadur, and he denies that it was his duty so
+     to do."
+
+Here is the name of this Nabob from a list of the jaghiredars stated by
+Mr. Purling, page 485 printed Minutes. Amongst the names of jaghiredars,
+the times when granted, and the amount of the jaghires, there occurs
+that of the Nabob Bahadur, with a grant of a jaghire of the amount of
+20,000 rupees.
+
+    [The _Lord Chancellor_ here remarked, that what had been
+    just read was matter of the 17th article of the charge
+    and parts of the answer to it, and that, upon looking
+    back to the former proceedings, it has escaped his
+    attention, if any matter contained in the 17th article
+    had been made matter of the charge; that it therefore
+    seemed to him that it could not be brought in upon a
+    reply, not having been made matter of the charge
+    originally.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ My Lords, I have to say to this, that I
+    believe you have heard these facts made matter of charge
+    by the House of Commons, that I conceive they have been
+    admitted by the prisoner, and that the Commons have
+    nothing to do with the proofs of anything in their
+    charge which is fully and in terms admitted. The proofs
+    which they have produced to your Lordships were upon
+    matters which were contested; but here the facts are
+    admitted in the fullest manner. We neither have
+    abandoned them, intended to abandon them, or ever shall
+    abandon them; we have made them, as a charge, upon
+    record; the answers to them have been recorded, which
+    answers are complete admissions of every fact in the
+    charge.
+
+    _Lord Chancellor._ I do not make myself understood. The
+    objection is not that there has not been evidence given
+    upon the 17th article, but at the close of the case on
+    the part of the Managers for the House of Commons no
+    mention having been made of the matter contained in the
+    17th article, that therefore, although it may all have
+    been admitted by the answer to be true, yet in justice,
+    if from that answer you ground the charge, it is
+    necessary the defendant should be heard upon it.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ If your Lordships choose that the defendant
+    shall be heard upon it, we have no kind of objection,
+    nor ever had, or proposed an objection to the defendant
+    being heard upon it. Your Lordships know that the
+    defendant's counsel value themselves upon having
+    abandoned their defence against certain parts of the
+    charge; your Lordships know that they declared that they
+    broke off thus in the middle of their defence in order
+    to expedite this business.
+
+    _Lord Chancellor._ Referring to the proceedings, I think
+    it a matter perfectly clear, that, in the course of the
+    charge, after certain articles had been gone through,
+    the Managers for the Commons closed the case there,
+    leaving therefore all the other articles, excepting
+    those that had been discussed, as matters standing with
+    the answers against them, but not insisted upon in
+    making out the charge. Of course, therefore, if the
+    defendant had gone into any of those articles, the
+    defendant must have been stopped upon them, because he
+    would then have been making a case in defence to that
+    which had not been made a case in the prosecution. The
+    objection, therefore, is not at all that no evidence has
+    been examined. To be sure, it would be an answer to that
+    to say, you are now proceeding upon an admission; but
+    even upon those facts that are admitted, (if the facts
+    are admitted that are insisted upon as matter in
+    charge,) that should come in the original state of the
+    cause, and the defendant in common justice must be heard
+    upon that, and then, and then only, come the
+    observations in reply.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ We do not know, not are informed, that any
+    charge, information, or indictment, that is before the
+    court, and upon record, and is not denied by the
+    defendant, does not stand in full force against him. We
+    conceive it to be so; we conceive it to be agreeable to
+    the analogy of all proceedings; and the reason why we
+    did not go into and insist upon it was, that, having a
+    very long cause before us, and having the most full and
+    complete admission upon this subject, we did not proceed
+    further in it. The defendant defends himself by averring
+    that _it was not his duty_. It was not our business to
+    prove that it was his duty. It was he that admitted the
+    facts assumed to be the foundation of his duty; the
+    negative he was bound to prove, and he never offered to
+    prove it. All that I can say upon this point is, that
+    his delinquency in the matter in question appeared to us
+    to be a clear, distinct case,--to be a great
+    offence,--an offence charged upon the record, admitted
+    upon the record, and never by us abandoned. As to his
+    defence having been abandoned, we refer your Lordships
+    to the last petition laid by him upon your table, (that
+    libellous petition, which we speak of as a libel upon
+    the House of Commons,) and which has no validity but as
+    it asserts a matter of fact from the petitioner; and
+    there you will find that he has declared explicitly,
+    that, for the accommodation and ease of this business,
+    and for its expedition, he did abandon his defence at a
+    certain period.
+
+    _Lord Chancellor._ A charge consisting of a variety of
+    articles in their nature (however connected with each
+    other in their subject, but in their nature) distinct
+    and specific, if only certain articles are pressed in
+    the charge, to those articles only can a defence be
+    applied; and all the other articles, that are not made
+    matter of charge _originally_, have never, in the course
+    of any proceeding whatever, been taken up _originally_
+    in reply.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ With great respect to your Lordship's
+    judgment, we conceive that the objection taken from our
+    not having at a certain period argued or observed upon
+    the prisoner's answer to the articles not insisted upon
+    is not conclusive; inasmuch as the record still stands,
+    and as our charge still stands. It was never abandoned;
+    and the defendant might have made a justification to it,
+    if he had thought fit: he never did think fit so to do.
+    If your Lordships think that we ought not to argue upon
+    it here in our reply, because we did not argue upon it
+    before,--well and good; but we have argued and do argue
+    in our reply many things to which he never gave any
+    answer at all. I shall beg leave, if your Lordships
+    please, to retire with my fellow Managers for a moment,
+    to consult whether we shall press this point or not. We
+    shall not detain your Lordships many minutes.
+
+    (_The Managers withdrew: in a few minutes the Managers
+    returned, again into the Hall._)
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ My Lords, the Managers have consulted among
+    themselves upon this business; they first referred to
+    your printed proceedings, in order to see the particular
+    circumstance on which the observation of your Lordship
+    is founded; we find it thus stated:--"Then the Managers
+    for the Commons informed the Lords, that, saving to
+    themselves their undoubted rights and privileges, the
+    Commons were content to rest their charge here." We
+    rested our charge there, not because we meant to efface
+    any precedent matter of the charge which had been made
+    by us, and of which the facts had been admitted by the
+    defendant, but, simply saving our rights and privileges,
+    that is, to resume, (and to make new matter, if we
+    thought fit,) the Commons were content to rest the
+    charge there.
+
+    I have further to remark to your Lordships, that the
+    counsel for the defendant have opened a vast variety of
+    matter that is not upon record, either on our part or on
+    theirs, in order to illustrate and to support their
+    cause; and they have spoken day after day upon the
+    principles on which their defence was made. My great
+    object now is an examination of those principles, and to
+    illustrate the effects of these principles by examples
+    which are not the less cogent, the less weighty, and the
+    less known, because they are articles in this charge.
+    Most assuredly they are not. If your Lordships recollect
+    the speeches that were made here, you know that great
+    merit was given to Mr. Hastings for matters that were
+    not at all in the charge, and which would put us under
+    the greatest difficulties, if we were to take no notice
+    of them in our reply. For instance, his merits in the
+    Mahratta war, and a great mass of matter upon that
+    subject, were obliquely, and for other purposes, brought
+    before you, upon which they argued. That immense mass of
+    matter, containing an immense mass of principles, and
+    which was sometimes supported by alleged facts,
+    sometimes by none, they have opened and argued upon, as
+    matter relative to principle. In answer to their
+    argument, we propose to show the mischiefs that have
+    happened from the mischievous principles laid down by
+    Mr. Hastings, and the mischievous consequences of them.
+
+    If, however, after this explanation, your Lordships are
+    of opinion that we ought not to be allowed to take this
+    course, wishing to fall in with your Lordships'
+    sentiments, we shall abandon it. But we will remind your
+    Lordships that such things stand upon your records; that
+    they stand unanswered and admitted on your records; and
+    consequently they cannot be destroyed by any act of
+    ours, but by a renunciation of the charge, which
+    renunciation we cannot make, because the defendant has
+    clearly and fully admitted it to be founded in fact. We
+    cannot plead error; we cannot retract it. And why?
+    Because he has admitted it. We therefore only remind
+    your Lordships that the charge stands uncontradicted;
+    and that the observation we intended to make upon it was
+    to show your Lordships that the principles upon which he
+    defends all such conduct are totally false and
+    groundless. But though your Lordships should be of
+    opinion that we cannot press it, yet we cannot abandon
+    it; it is not in your power, it is not in our power, it
+    is not in his power to abandon that charge. You cannot
+    acquit him of that charge; it is impossible. If,
+    however, your Lordships, for the accommodation of
+    business, method of proceedings, or any circumstance of
+    that kind, wish we should say no more upon the subject,
+    we close the subject there. Your Lordships are in
+    possession both of the charge and the admission; and we
+    wish, and we cannot wish better than, to leave it as it
+    is upon the record.
+
+    The _Lord Chancellor_ here said,--The opinion of the
+    Lords can only be with me matter of conjecture. I
+    certainly was not commanded by the House to state the
+    observation that had occurred to me; but in the position
+    in which it now stands, I feel no difficulty in saying,
+    as my own judgment, that nothing can be matter in reply
+    that does not relate to those articles that were pressed
+    in the original charge; and therefore, in this position
+    of the business of reply, you cannot go into new matter
+    arising out of other articles that were not originally
+    insisted upon.
+
+    _Mr. Burke._ We were aware of the objection that might
+    be made to admitting our observations, if considered as
+    observations upon the 17th article, but not when
+    considered with reference to facts on the record before
+    you, for the purpose of disproving the principles upon
+    which the defendant and his counsel had relied: that was
+    the purpose for which we proposed chiefly to make them.
+    But your Lordship's [the Lord Chancellor's] own personal
+    authority will have great weight with us, and, unless we
+    perceive some other peer differ from you, we will take
+    it in the course we have constantly done. We never have
+    sent your Lordships out of the hall to consent
+    [consult?] upon a matter upon which that noble lord
+    appeared to have formed a decision in his own mind; we
+    take for granted that what is delivered from the
+    woolsack, to which no peer expresses a dissent, is the
+    sense of the House; as such we take it, and as such we
+    submit to it in this instance.
+
+    Therefore, leaving this upon the record as it stands,
+    without observing upon it, and submitting to your
+    Lordships' decision, that we cannot, according to order,
+    observe in reply upon what was not declared by us to be
+    a part of the charges we meant to insist upon, we
+    proceed to another business.]
+
+We have already stated to your Lordships, and we beg to remind you of
+it, the state and condition of the country of Oude when Mr. Hastings
+first came to it,--his subsequent and immediate usurpation of all the
+powers of government, and the use he made of them,--the tyranny he
+exercised over the Nabob himself,--the tyranny he exercised upon his
+mother and grandmother, and all the other females of his family, and
+their dependants of every description, to the number of about eight
+hundred persons,--the tyranny exercised (though we are not at liberty
+to press it now) upon his brethren. We have shown you how he confiscated
+the property of all the jaghiredars, the nobility of the country. We
+have proved to your Lordships that he was well acquainted with all the
+misery and distress occasioned by these proceedings, and that he
+afforded the sufferers no relief. We now proceed to review the effect of
+this general mass of usurpation, tyranny, and oppression upon the
+revenues and the prosperity of the country.
+
+Your Lordships will first be pleased to advert to the state in which Mr.
+Hastings found the country,--in what state he found its revenues,--who
+were the executive ministers of the government,--what their conduct was,
+and by whom they were recommended and supported. For the evidence of
+these facts we refer your Lordships to your printed Minutes: there, my
+Lords, they stand recorded: they never can be expunged out of your
+record, and the memory of mankind, whether we be permitted to press them
+at this time upon your Lordships or not. Your Lordships will there find
+in what manner the government was carried on in Oude in 1775, before the
+period of Mr. Hastings's usurpation. Mr. Hastings, you will find, has
+himself there stated that the minister was recommended by the Begums;
+and you will remark this, because Mr. Hastings afterwards makes her
+interference in the government of her son a part of his crimination of
+the Begum.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Resident at the court of Oude thus writes on the 2d of March, 1775.
+
+     "Notwithstanding the confidence the Nabob reposes in Murtezza Khan,
+     the Begums are much dissatisfied with his elevation. They
+     recommended to his Excellency to encourage the old servants of the
+     government, whose influence in the country, and experience, might
+     have strengthened his own authority, and seated him firmly on the
+     musnud. In some measure this, too, may appear consistent with the
+     interests of the Company; for, as Elija Khan and the old ministers
+     have by frequent instances within their own knowledge experienced
+     the power of our government, such men, I should conceive, are much
+     more likely to pay deference to the Company than a person who at
+     present can have but a very imperfect idea of the degree of
+     attention which ought to be paid to our connection with the Nabob."
+
+Your Lordships see that the Begums recommended the old servants,
+contrary to the maxims of Rehoboam,--those who had served his father and
+had served the country, and who were strongly inclined to support the
+English interest there. Your Lordships will remark the effects of the
+Begum's influence upon the state of things in 1775, that the Nabob had
+been advised by his mother to employ the confidential servants of his
+father,--persons conversant in the affairs of the country, persons
+interested in it, and persons who were well disposed to support the
+English connection. Your Lordships will now attend to a letter from Mr.
+Bristow, at Lucknow, to the board, dated 28th November, 1775.
+
+     "I also neglected no part of my duty on the spot, but advised the
+     minister, even at Lucknow, according to my letter of the 3d
+     instant, to recommend it to the Nabob to dismiss his useless and
+     mutinous troops, which measure seems by present appearances to have
+     succeeded beyond expectation: as the rest of the army do now pay
+     the greatest attention to his Excellency's orders; already the
+     complaints of the violences the troops used to commit are greatly
+     decreased; they profess obedience; and, by the best intelligence I
+     can obtain of their disposition, there seems to be little doubt
+     that the example made by disbanding Bussunt's corps has every good
+     effect we could wish, which had crossed the river and voluntarily
+     surrendered their arms the day before yesterday to the Nabob."
+
+His next letter is dated 13th June, 1776.
+
+     "Honorable Sir and Sirs,--It is Elija Khan's first object to
+     regulate the Vizier's revenue; and I must do him the justice to
+     say, that the short time he has been in office he has been
+     indefatigable, and already settled the greater part of the province
+     of Oude, and fixed on the districts for the assignments of the army
+     subsidy; Corah and Allahabad he has disposed of, and called for the
+     Dooab and Rohilcund accounts, in order to adjust them as soon as
+     possible. This activity will, I hope, produce the most salutary
+     effects,--as, the present juncture being the commencement of the
+     season for the cultivation, the aumils, by being thus early placed
+     in their offices, have the opportunity of advancing _tukavy_,
+     encouraging the ryots, and making their agreements in their several
+     districts, in letting under-farms, or disposing of the lands in
+     such a manner as they may judge most expedient. If, though similar
+     to the late minister's conduct, a delay of two or three months
+     should occur in the settlement of the lands, the people throughout
+     the country would be disheartened, and inevitably a very heavy
+     balance accrue on the revenue. I have troubled the honorable board
+     with this detail, in the first place, to show the propriety of
+     Elija Khan's conduct, and, in the next, the essential service that
+     will be rendered to the Vizier by continuing Colonel Parker's
+     detachment during the whole rains in Corah, if required by the
+     Vizier."
+
+My Lords, you have now had a view of the state of Oude, previous to the
+first period of our connection with it. Your Lordships have seen and
+understand that part of the middle period, with which we do not mean to
+trouble you again. You will now be pleased to attend to a letter from
+Fyzoola Khan to the Governor-General, received the 13th of February,
+1778.
+
+     "This country of Cuttah, which formerly depended on the Rohilla
+     States, and which I consider as now appertaining to the Company,
+     was very populous and flourishing; but since the commencement of
+     the Nabob Vizier's government, the farmers appointed by his
+     ministers have desolated the country. Its situation is at present
+     very ruinous; thousands of villages, formerly populous, are now
+     utterly deserted, and no trace left of them. I have already written
+     to Roy Buckstowr Sing a full account of the tyranny and oppression
+     exercised by the farmers, to be communicated to you: the constant
+     revenue of a country depends on the care of its rulers to preserve
+     it in a flourishing state. I have been induced to make the
+     representation by my attachment to the interest of the Company; for
+     otherwise it is no concern of mine. Should these oppressions
+     continue one or two years longer, and the rulers take no measures
+     to put a stop to them, the whole country will be a desert."
+
+My Lords, upon these statements I have only to make this remark,--that
+you have seen the first state of this country, and that the period when
+it had fallen into the state last described was about two years after
+Mr. Hastings had obtained the majority in the Council and began to
+govern this country by his lieutenants. We know that the country was put
+by him under military collectors: you see the consequences. The person
+who makes this representation to Mr. Hastings of the state of the
+country, of its distress and calamity, and of the desolation of a
+thousand of the villages formerly flourishing in it, is no less a person
+than a prince of a neighboring country, a person of whom you have often
+heard, and to whom the cause of humanity is much indebted, namely,
+Fyzoola Khan,--a prince whose country the English Resident, travelling
+through, declares to be cultivated like a garden. That this was the
+state of the Rohilla country is owing to its having very fortunately
+been one of those that escaped the dominion of Mr. Hastings.
+
+We will now read to your Lordships a letter from Sir Eyre Coote to the
+board at Calcutta, dated the 11th of September, 1779.
+
+     "Honorable Sir and Sirs,--The day before yesterday I encamped near
+     Allahabad, where the Vizier did me the honor of a visit; and
+     yesterday morning, in my way hither, I returned it, and was
+     received by his Excellency with every mark of respect and
+     distinction. This morning he called here, and we had some general
+     conversation, which principally turned upon the subject of his
+     attachment to the English, and his readiness to show the sincerity
+     of it upon all occasions. It is to be wished we had employed the
+     influence which such favorable sentiments must have given us more
+     to the benefit of the country and ourselves; but I fear the
+     distresses which evidently appear on the face of the one, and the
+     failure of the revenues to the other, are not to be wholly ascribed
+     to the Vizier's mismanagement."
+
+This is the testimony of Mr. Hastings's own pensioner, Sir Eyre Coote,
+respecting the known state of the country during the time of this
+horrible usurpation, which Sir Eyre Coote mentions under the soft name
+of our _influence_. But there could be but one voice upon the subject,
+and that your Lordships shall now hear from Mr. Hastings himself. We
+refer your Lordships to the Minute of the Governor-General's
+Consultation, Fort William, 21st May, 1781: he is here giving his
+reasons for going into the upper provinces.
+
+     "The province of Oude having fallen into a state of great disorder
+     and confusion, its resources being in an extraordinary degree
+     diminished, and the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah having earnestly
+     entreated the presence of the Governor-General, and declared, that,
+     unless some effectual measures are taken for his relief, he must be
+     under the necessity of leaving his country, and coming down to
+     Calcutta, to present his situation to this government,--the
+     Governor-General therefore proposes, with the concurrence of Mr.
+     Wheler, to visit the province of Oude as speedily as the affairs of
+     the Presidency will admit, in hopes that, from a minute and
+     personal observation of the circumstances of that country, the
+     system of management which has been adopted, and the characters
+     and conduct of the persons employed, he may possibly be able to
+     concert and establish some plan by which the province of Oude may
+     in time be restored to its former state of affluence, good order,
+     and prosperity."
+
+Your Lordships have now the whole chain of the evidence complete, with
+regard to the state of the country, up to the period of Mr. Hastings's
+journey into the country. You see that Mr. Hastings himself admits it to
+have been formerly in a most flourishing, orderly, and prosperous state.
+Its condition in 1781 he describes to you in words than which no enemy
+of his can use stronger, in order to paint the state in which it then
+was. In this state he found it, when he went up in the year 1781; and he
+left it, with regard to any substantial regulation that was executed or
+could be executed, in the state in which he found it,--after having
+increased every one of those grievances which he pretended to redress,
+and taken from it all the little resources that remained in it.
+
+We now come to a subsequent period, at which time the state of the
+country is thus described by Mr. Bristow, on the 12th December, 1782.
+
+     "Despotism is the principle upon which every measure is founded,
+     and the people in the interior parts of the country are ruled at
+     the discretion of the aumil or foujdar for the time being. They
+     exercise, within the limits of their jurisdiction, the powers of
+     life and death, and decisions in civil and other cases, in the same
+     extent as the sovereign at the capital. The forms prescribed by the
+     ancient institutions of the Mogul empire are unattended to, and the
+     will of the provincial magistrate is the sole law of the people.
+     The total relaxation of the Vizier's authority, his inattention and
+     dislike to business, leave the aumils in possession of this
+     dangerous power, unawed, uncontrolled by any apprehension of
+     retrospection, or the interference of justice. I can hardly quote
+     an instance, since the Vizier's accession to the musnud, of an
+     aumil having been punished for oppression, though the complaints of
+     the people and the state of the country are notorious proofs of the
+     violences daily committed: it is even become unsafe for travellers
+     to pass, except in large bodies; murders, thefts, and other
+     enormities shocking to humanity, are committed in open day."
+
+In another paragraph of the same letter, he says,--
+
+     "Such has been the system of this government, that the oppressions
+     have generally originated with the aumils. They have been rarely
+     selected for their abilities or integrity, but from favor, or the
+     means to advance a large sum upon being appointed to their office.
+     The aumil enters upon his trust ruined in reputation and fortune;
+     and unless he accomplishes his engagements, which is seldom the
+     case, disgrace and punishment follow. Though the balance of revenue
+     may be rigorously demanded of him, it has not been usual to
+     institute any inquiry for oppression. The zemindars, thus left at
+     the mercy of the aumils, are often driven to rebellion. The weak
+     are obliged to submit to his exactions, or fly the country; and the
+     aumil, unable to reduce the more powerful, is compelled to enter
+     into a disgraceful compromise. Every zemindar looks to his fort for
+     protection, and the country is crowded with them: Almas Ali Khan
+     asserts there are not less than seven hundred in his districts.
+     Hence it has become a general custom to seize the brother, son, or
+     some near relation or dependant of the different zemindars, as
+     hostages for the security of the revenue: a great aumil will
+     sometimes have three or four hundred of these hostages, whom he is
+     obliged to confine in places of security. A few men like Almas Ali
+     Khan and Coja Ain ul Din have, from their regularity in the
+     performance of pecuniary engagements, rendered themselves useful to
+     the Vizier. A strict scrutiny into his affairs was at all times
+     irksome to his Excellency, and none of the ministers or officers
+     about his person possessing the active, persevering spirit
+     requisite to conduct the detail of engagements for a number of
+     small farms, it became convenient to receive a large sum from a
+     great farmer without trouble or deficiency. This system was
+     followed by the most pernicious consequences; these men were above
+     all control, they exacted their own terms, and the districts they
+     farmed were most cruelly oppressed. The revenue of Rohilcund is
+     reduced above a third, and Almas Ali Khan's administration is well
+     known to have been extremely violent."
+
+We will next read to your Lordships an extract from Captain Edwards's
+evidence.
+
+    "_Q._ Had you any opportunity of observing the general face of the
+    country in the time of Sujah Dowlah?--_A._ I had.--_Q._ Did you
+    remark any difference in the general state of the country at that
+    time and the period when you made your latter observation?--did you
+    observe any difference between the condition of the country at that
+    time, that of Sujah Dowlah in the year 1774, and the latter period
+    you have mentioned?--_A._ I did,--a very material difference.--_Q._
+    In what respect?--_A._ In the general aspect that the country bore,
+    and the cultivation of the country,--that it was infinitely better
+    cultivated in 1774 than it was in 1783.--_Q._ You said you had no
+    opportunity of observing the face of the country till you was
+    appointed aide-de-camp to the Nabob?--_A._ No,--except by marching
+    and countermarching. I marched in the year 1774 through the Nabob
+    Sujah ul Dowlah's provinces into Rohilcund.--_Q._ Had you those
+    opportunities from the time of your going there in 1774?--_A._ I
+    had; but not so much as I had after being appointed aide-de-camp to
+    the Vizier, because I was always before in a subordinate situation:
+    I marched in a direct line before, with the troops; but afterwards,
+    when I was aide-de-camp to his Excellency, I was my own master, and
+    made frequent excursions into the different parts of the
+    country.--_Q._ Had you an opportunity of observing the difference in
+    the general happiness and disposition of the people?--_A._ I
+    had.--_Q._ Did you observe a difference in that respect also between
+    your first coming and the year 1783?--_A._ Yes, a very sensible
+    difference: in Sujah ul Dowlah's time the country was in a very
+    flourishing state, in merchandise, cultivation, and every article of
+    commerce, and the people then seemed to be very happy under his
+    government, which latterly was not the case; because the country in
+    reality appeared in the year 1774 in a flourishing state, and in the
+    year 1783 it appeared comparatively forlorn and desolate.--_Q._ Was
+    the court of Asoph ul Dowlah, when you left India, equal in point
+    of splendor to what it was in the time of Sujah ul Dowlah?--_A._ By
+    no means: it was not equally splendid, but far inferior.--_Q._ Were
+    the dependants and officers belonging to the court paid in the same
+    punctual manner?--_A._ No: I really cannot say whether they were
+    paid more regularly in Sujah Dowlah's time, only they appeared more
+    wealthy and more able to live in a splendid style in his time than
+    they ever have done since his death."
+
+Here, then, your Lordships see the state of the country in 1783. Your
+Lordships may trace the whole progress of these evils, step by step,
+from the death of Sujah ul Dowlah to the time of Mr. Hastings's
+obtaining a majority in the Council, after which he possessed the sole
+and uncontrolled management of the country; you have seen also the
+consequences that immediately followed till the year 1784, when he went
+up a second time into the country.
+
+I do not know, my Lords, that it is necessary to make any observation
+upon this state of things. You see that the native authority was, as we
+have proved, utterly extinguished by Mr. Hastings, and that there was
+no superintendent power but his. You have heard of the oppressions of
+the farmers of the revenues; and we have shown you that these farmers
+generally were English officers. We have shown you in what manner
+Colonel Hannay, one of these farmers sent by Mr. Hastings, acted, and
+particularly the accumulation of hostages which were made by him. We
+have shown you, that by their arbitrary and tyrannical proceedings all
+regular government was subverted, and that the country experienced the
+last and most dreadful effects of anarchy. We have shown you that no
+other security was left to any human being, but to intrench themselves
+in such forts as they could make, and that these forts, in one district
+only of the country, had increased in number to the amount of seven
+hundred. Your Lordships also know, that, when the prisons and mud forts
+in which Colonel Hannay kept his hostages confined were full, he kept
+them in uncovered cages in the open air. You know that all these farmers
+of revenue were either English and military men, or natives under an
+abject submission to them; you know that they had the whole country in
+assignments, that the jaghires were all confiscated for their benefits;
+and you find that the whole system had its origin at the time when Mr.
+Hastings alone formed in effect the authority of the Supreme Council.
+The weakness of the Nabob, as Sir Eyre Coote tells you, could not have
+been alone the cause of these evils, and that our influence over him, if
+not actually the cause of the utter ruin, desolation, and anarchy of
+that country, might have been successfully exerted in preventing.
+
+When your Lordships shall proceed to judgment upon these accumulated
+wrongs, arising out of the usurped power of the prisoner at your bar,
+and redressed by him in no one instance whatever, let not the usurpation
+itself of the Nabob's power be considered as a trivial matter. When any
+prince at the head of a great country is entirely stripped of everything
+in his government, civil or military, by which his rank may be
+distinguished or his virtues exercised, he is in danger of becoming a
+mere animal, and of abandoning himself wholly to sensual gratifications.
+Feeling no personal interest in the institutions or in the general
+welfare of the country, he suffers the former (and many wise and
+laudable institutions existed in the provinces of the Nabob, for their
+good order and government) to fall into disuse, and he leaves the
+country itself to persons in inferior situations, to be wasted and
+destroyed by them. You find that in Oude, the very appearance of justice
+had been banished out of it, and that every aumil exercised an arbitrary
+power over the lives and fortunes of the people. My Lords, we have the
+proofs of all these facts in our hands; they are in your Lordships'
+minutes; and though we can state nothing stronger than is stated in the
+papers themselves, yet we do not so far forget our duty as not to point
+out to your Lordships such observations as arise out of them.
+
+To close the whole, your Lordships shall how hear read an extract from a
+most curious and extraordinary letter, sent by him to the Court of
+Directors, preparatory to his return to England.
+
+     "My only remaining fear is, that the members of the Council, seeing
+     affairs through a different medium from that through which I view
+     them, may be disposed, if not to counteract the system which I have
+     formed, to withhold from it their countenance and active support.
+     While I myself remain, it will be sufficient if they permit it to
+     operate without interruption; and I almost hope, in the event of a
+     new administration of your affairs which shall confine itself to
+     the same forbearance, and manifest no symptoms of intended
+     interference, the objects of my arrangements will be effectually
+     attained; for I leave them in the charge of agents whose interests,
+     ambition, and every prospect of life are interwoven with their
+     success, and the hand of Heaven has visibly blest the soil with
+     every elementary source of progressive vegetation: but if a
+     different policy shall be adopted, if new agents are sent into the
+     country and armed with authority for the purpose of vengeance or
+     corruption, to no other will they be applied. If new demands are
+     raised on the Nabob Vizier, and accounts overcharged on one side
+     with a wide latitude taken on the other to swell his debt beyond
+     the means of payment,--if political dangers are portended, to
+     ground on them the pleas of burdening his country with unnecessary
+     defences and enormous subsidies,--or if, even abstaining from
+     direct encroachment on the Nabob's rights, your government shall
+     show but a degree of personal kindness to the partisans of the late
+     usurpation, or by any constructive indication of partiality and
+     disaffection furnish ground for the expectation of an approaching
+     change of system, I am sorry to say that all my labors will prove
+     abortive; for the slightest causes will be sufficient to deject
+     minds sore with the remembrance of past conflicts, and to elevate
+     those whose only dependence is placed in the renewal of the
+     confusion which I have labored with such zeal to eradicate, and
+     will of course debilitate the authority which can alone insure
+     future success. I almost fear that this denunciation of effects
+     from causes so incompetent, as they will appear to those who have
+     not had the experience which I have had of the quick sensibility
+     which influences the habits of men placed in a state of polity so
+     loose, and subject to the continual variations of capricious and
+     despotic authority, will be deemed overcharged, or perhaps void of
+     foundation; nor, if they should come to pass, will it be easy to
+     trace them with any positive evidence to their connection: yet it
+     is my duty to apprise you of what I apprehend, on grounds which I
+     deem of absolute certainty, may come to pass; and I rely on your
+     candor for a fair interpretation of my intention."
+
+Here, my Lords, the prisoner at your bar has done exactly what his
+bitterest accuser would do: he goes through, head by head, every one of
+the measures which he had himself pursued in the destruction of the
+country; and he foretells, that, if any one of those measures should
+again be pursued, or even if good cause should be given to suspect they
+would be renewed, the country must fall into a state of inevitable
+destruction. This supersedes all observation. This paper is a
+recapitulated, minute condemnation of every step which he took in that
+country, and which steps, are every one of them upon your Lordships'
+minutes.
+
+But, my Lords, we know very well the design of these pretended
+apprehensions, and why he wished to have that country left in the state
+he speaks of. He had left a secret agent of his own to control that
+ostensible government, and to enable him, sitting in the place where he
+now sits, to continue to govern those provinces in the way in which he
+now governs them.
+
+     [_A murmur having arisen here, Mr. Burke proceeded._]
+
+If I am called upon to reword what I have just said, I shall repeat my
+words, and show strong grounds and reasons to indicate that he governs
+Oude now as much as he ever did.
+
+You see, my Lords, that the reform which he pretended to make in 1781
+produced the calamities which he states to have existed in 1784. We
+shall now show that the reform which he pretended to make in 1784
+brought on the calamities which Lord Cornwallis states in his evidence
+to have existed in 1787.
+
+We will now read two letters from Lord Cornwallis: the first is dated
+the 16th November, 1787.
+
+     "I was received at Allahabad and attended to Lucknow by the Nabob
+     and his ministers with every mark of friendship and respect. I
+     cannot, however, express how much I was concerned, during my short
+     residence at his capital, and my progress through his dominions, to
+     be witness of the disordered state of his finances and government,
+     and of the desolate appearances of his country. The evils were too
+     alarming to admit of palliation, and I thought it my duty to exhort
+     him, in the most friendly manner, to endeavor to apply effectual
+     remedies to them. He began with urging as apology, that, whilst he
+     was not certain of the expense [extent?] of our demands upon him,
+     he had no real interest in being economical in his expenses, and
+     that, while we interfered in the internal management of his
+     affairs, his own authority and that of his ministers were despised
+     by his own subjects. It would have been useless to discuss these
+     topics with him; but while I repeated my former declarations of our
+     being determined to give no ground in future for similar
+     complaints, he gave me the strongest assurances of his being
+     resolved to apply himself earnestly to the encouragement of
+     agriculture, and to endeavor to revive the commerce of his
+     country."
+
+The second is dated the 25th April, 1788.
+
+     "Till I saw the Vizier's troops, I was not without hope that upon
+     an emergency he would have been able to have furnished us with some
+     useful cavalry; but I have no reason to believe that he has any in
+     his service upon which it would be prudent to place any dependence;
+     and I think it right to add, that his country appears to be in so
+     ruined a state, and his finances in so much disorder, that even in
+     case of war we ought not to depend upon any material support from
+     him."
+
+My Lords, I have only to remark upon these letters, that, so far as they
+go, they prove the effects of Mr. Hastings's reformation, from which he
+was pleased to promise the Company such great things. But when your
+Lordships know that he had left his dependant and minister, Hyder Beg
+Khan, there, whose character, as your Lordships will find by a reference
+to your minutes he has represented as black as hell, to be the real
+governor there, and to carry on private correspondence with him here,
+and that he had left Major Palmer, his private agent, for a considerable
+time in that country to carry on his affairs, your Lordships will easily
+see how it has come to pass that the Vizier, such a man as you have
+heard him described to be, was not alone able to restore prosperity to
+his country.
+
+My Lords, you have now seen what was the situation of the country in
+Sujah Dowlah's time, prior to Mr. Hastings's interference with the
+government of it, what it was during his government, and what situation
+it was in when Lord Cornwallis left it. Nothing now remains but to call
+your Lordships' attention to perhaps the most extraordinary part of
+these transactions. But before we proceed, we will beg leave to go back
+and read to your Lordships the Nabob's letter of the 24th February,
+1780.
+
+     "I have received your letter, and understand the contents. I cannot
+     describe the solidity of your friendship and brotherly affection
+     which subsisted between you and my late father. From the friendship
+     of the Company he received numberless advantages; and I,
+     notwithstanding I was left an orphan, from your favor and that of
+     the Company was perfectly at ease, being satisfied that everything
+     would be well, and that I should continue in the same security that
+     I was during my father's lifetime, from your protection. I
+     accordingly, from the day of his death, have never omitted to
+     cultivate your favor, and the protection of the Company; and
+     whatever was the desire and directions of the Council at that time
+     I have ever since conformed to, and obeyed with readiness. Thanks
+     be given to God that I have never as yet been backward in
+     performing the will of the English Company, of the Council, and of
+     you, and have always been from my heart ready to obey them, and
+     have never given you any trouble from my difficulties or wishes.
+     This I have done simply from my own knowledge of your favor towards
+     me, and from my being certain that you would learn the particulars
+     of my distresses and difficulties from other quarters, and would
+     then show your friendship and good-will in whatever was for my
+     advantage. But when the knife had penetrated to the bone, and I was
+     surrounded with such heavy distresses that I could no longer live
+     in expectations, I then wrote an account of my difficulties. The
+     answer which I have received to it is such, that it has given me
+     inexpressible grief and affliction. I never had the least idea or
+     expectation from you and the Council that you would ever have
+     given your orders in so afflicting a manner, in which you never
+     before wrote, and which I could not have imagined. As I am resolved
+     to obey your orders, and directions of the Council, without any
+     delay, as long as I live, I have, agreeably to those orders,
+     delivered up all my private papers to him [the Resident], that,
+     when he shall have examined my receipts and expenses, he may take
+     whatever remains. As I know it to be my duty to satisfy you, the
+     Company, and Council, I have not failed to obey in any instance,
+     but requested of him that it might be done so as not to distress me
+     in my necessary expenses: there being no other funds but those for
+     the expenses of my mutsuddies, household expenses, and servants,
+     &c. He demanded these in such a manner, that, being remediless, I
+     was obliged to comply with what he required. He has accordingly
+     stopped the pensions of my old servants for thirty years, whether
+     sepoys, mutsuddies, or household servants, and the expenses of my
+     family and kitchen, together with the jaghires of my grandmother,
+     mother, and aunts, and of my brothers and dependants, which were
+     for their support. I had raised fifteen hundred horse and three
+     battalions of sepoys to attend upon me; but, as I have no resources
+     to support them, I have been obliged to remove the people stationed
+     in the mahals, and to send his people into the mahals, so that I
+     have not now one single servant about me. Should I mention what
+     further difficulties I have been reduced to, it would lay me open
+     to contempt. Although I have willingly assented to this which
+     brings such distress on me, and have in a manner altogether ruined
+     myself, yet I failed not to do it for this reason, because it was
+     for your satisfaction, and that of the Council; and I am patient,
+     and even thankful, in this condition; but I cannot imagine from
+     what cause you have conceived displeasure against me. From the
+     commencement of my administration, in every circumstance, I
+     received strength and security from your favor, and that of the
+     Council; and in every instance you and the Council have shown your
+     friendship and affection for me; but at present, that you have sent
+     these orders, I am greatly perplexed."
+
+We will not trouble your Lordships with the remainder of the letter,
+which is all in the same style of distress and affliction, and of the
+abject dependence of a man who considers himself as insulted, robbed,
+and ruined in that state of dependence.
+
+In addition to the evidence contained in this letter, your Lordships
+will be pleased to recollect the Nabob's letter which we read to your
+Lordships yesterday, the humble and abject style of which you will never
+forget. Oh, consider, my Lords, this instance of the fate of human
+greatness! You must remember that there is not a trace anywhere, in any
+of the various trunks of Mr. Hastings, that he ever condescended so much
+as to give an answer to the suppliant letters of that unhappy man. There
+was no mode of indignity with which he did not treat his family; there
+was no mode of indignity with which he did not treat his person; there
+was no mode of indignity with which he did not treat his minister, Hyder
+Beg Khan,--this man whom he represents to be the most infamous and
+scandalous of mankind, and of whom he, nevertheless, at the same time
+declares, that his only support with the Vizier was the support which
+he, Warren Hastings, as representative of the English government, gave
+him.
+
+We will now read a paper which perhaps ought not to have been received
+in evidence, but which we were willing to enter in your minutes as
+evidence, in order that everything should come before you. Your
+Lordships have heard the Nabob speak of his misery, distress, and
+oppression; but here he makes a complete defeasance, as it were, of the
+whole charge, a direct disavowal of every one of the complaints, and
+particularly that of having never received an answer to these
+complaints. Oh, think, I say, my Lords, of the degraded, miserable, and
+unhappy state to which human nature may be reduced, when you hear this
+unhappy man declare that all the charges which we have made upon this
+subject relative to him, and which are all either admitted by him or
+taken from his own representation, are now stated by him in a paper
+before you to be all false, and that there is not a word of the
+representation which he had made of Mr. Hastings that has the least
+truth in it! Your Lordships will find this in that collection of various
+papers which ought to be preserved and put into every museum in Europe,
+as one of the most extraordinary productions that was ever exhibited to
+the world.
+
+
+     _Papers received the 8th of March, 1788, and translated pursuant to
+     an Order of the Governor-General in Council, dated the 21th of
+     April, 1788, under the Seal of His Excellency the Nabob Asoph ul
+     Dowlah, Asoph Jah Bahadur, Vizier ul Momalik._
+
+     "I have at this time learnt that the gentlemen in power in England,
+     upon the suspicion that Mr. Hastings, during his administration,
+     acted contrary to the rules of justice and impartiality, and,
+     actuated by motives of avidity, was inimical towards men without
+     cause; that he broke such engagements and treaties as had been made
+     between the Company and other chiefs; that he extended the hand of
+     oppression over the properties of men, tore up the roots of
+     security and prosperity from the land, and rendered the ryots and
+     subjects destitute by force and extortion.--As this accusation, in
+     fact, is destitute of uprightness and void of truth, therefore,
+     with a view to show the truth in its true colors, I have written
+     upon this sheet with truth and sincerity, to serve as an evidence,
+     and to represent real facts,--to serve also as information and
+     communication, that Mr. Hastings, from the commencement of his
+     administration until his departure for England, whether during the
+     lifetime of the deceased Nabob, of blessed memory, Vizier ul Moolk,
+     Sujah ul Dowlah Bahadur, my father, or during my government, did
+     not at any time transact contrary to justice any matter which took
+     place from the great friendship between me and the Company, nor in
+     any business depart from the path of truth and uprightness, but
+     cultivated friendship with integrity and sincerity, and in every
+     respect engaged himself in the duties of friendship with me, my
+     ministers and confidants. I am at all times, and in every way,
+     pleased with and thankful for his friendly manners and qualities;
+     and my ministers and confidants, who have always, every one of
+     them, been satisfied with his conduct, are forever grateful for his
+     friendship and thankful for his virtues. As these matters are real
+     facts, and according to truth, I have written these lines as an
+     evidence, and transmit this paper to England, through the
+     government of Calcutta, for the information of the gentlemen of
+     power and rank in England."
+
+Observe, my Lords, the candor of the Commons. We produce this evidence,
+which accuses us, as Mr. Hastings does, of uttering everything that is
+false; we choose to bring our shame before the world, and to admit that
+this man, on whose behalf and on the behalf of whose country we have
+accused Mr. Hastings, has declared that this accusation (namely, this
+impeachment) is destitute of uprightness and without truth. But, my
+Lords, this is not only a direct contradiction to all he has ever said,
+to all that has been proved to you by us, but a direct contradiction to
+all the representations of Mr. Hastings himself. Your Lordships will
+hence see what credit is to be given to these papers.
+
+Your Lordships shall now hear what Hyder Beg Khan says: that Hyder Beg
+Khan who stands recorded in your minutes as the worst of mankind; who is
+represented as writing letters without the Nabob's consent, and in
+defiance of him; the man of whom Mr. Hastings says, that the Nabob is
+nothing but a tool in his hands, and that the Nabob is and ever must be
+a tool of somebody or other. Now, as we have heard the tool speak, let
+us hear how the workman employed to work with this tool speaks.
+
+
+     _Extract from Hyder Beg Khan's Letter to the Governor and Council._
+
+     "It is at this time learnt by the Nabob Vizier, and us, his
+     ministers, that the gentlemen of power in England are displeased
+     with Mr. Hastings, on the suspicion that during his administration
+     in this country, from motives of avidity, he committed oppressions
+     contrary to the rules of justice, took the properties of men by
+     deceit and force, injured the ryots and subjects, and rendered the
+     country destitute and ruined. As the true and upright disposition
+     of Mr. Hastings is in every respect free of this suspicion, we
+     therefore with truth and sincerity declare by these lines, written
+     according to fact, that Mr. Hastings, from the first of his
+     appointment to the government of this country until his departure
+     for Europe, during his authority in the management of the affairs
+     of the country, whether in the lifetime of the Nabob Sujah ul
+     Dowlah Bahadur, deceased, or whether during the present reign, did
+     not, in any matters which took place from the great friendship
+     between this government and the Company, act in any wise upon
+     motives of avidity, and, not having, in any respect, other than
+     justice and propriety in intention, did not swerve from their
+     rules. He kept his Excellency the Vizier always pleased and
+     satisfied" (you will remember, my Lords, the last expressions of
+     his pleasure and satisfaction) "by his friendship and attention in
+     every matter. He at all times showed favor and kindness towards us,
+     the ministers of this government; and under his protection having
+     enjoyed perfect happiness and comfort, we are from our hearts
+     satisfied with and grateful for his benevolence and goodness."
+
+Here, my Lords, you have the character which Hyder Beg Khan gives of Mr.
+Hastings,--of the man who he knew had loaded him, as he had done, with
+every kind of indignity, reproach, and outrage with which a man can be
+loaded. Your Lordships will see that this testimony repeats, almost word
+for word, the testimony of the Vizier Nabob,--which shows who the real
+writer is.
+
+My Lords, it is said, that there is no word in the Persian language to
+express gratitude. With these signal instances of gratitude before us, I
+think we may venture to put one into their dictionary. Mr. Hastings has
+said he has had the pleasure to find from the people of India that
+gratitude which he has not met with from his own countrymen, the House
+of Commons. Certainly, if he has done us services, we have been
+ungrateful indeed; if he has committed enormous crimes, we are just. Of
+the miserable, dependent situation to which these people are reduced,
+that they are not ashamed to come forward and deny everything they have
+given under their own hand,--all these things show the portentous nature
+of this government, they show the portentous nature of that phalanx with
+which the House of Commons is at present at war, the power of that
+captain-general of every species of Indian iniquity, which, under him,
+is embodied, arrayed, and paid, from Leadenhall Street to the
+furthermost part of India.
+
+We have but one observation more to offer upon this collection of
+_razinamas_, upon these miserable testimonials given by these wretched
+people in contradiction to all their own previous
+representations,--directly in contradiction to those of Mr. Hastings
+himself,--directly in contradiction to those of Lord
+Cornwallis,--directly in contradiction to truth itself. It is this. Here
+is Mr. Hastings with his agents canvassing the country, with all that
+minuteness with which a county is canvassed at an election; and yet in
+this whole book of razinamas not one fact adduced by us is attempted to
+be disproved, not one fact upon which Mr. Hastings's defence can be
+founded is attempted to be proved. There is nothing but bare vile
+panegyrics, directly belied by the state of facts, directly belied by
+the persons themselves, directly belied by Mr. Hastings at your bar, and
+by all the whole course of the correspondence of the country.
+
+We here leave to your Lordships' judgment the consideration of the
+elevated rank of the persons aggrieved and degraded to the lowest state
+of dependence and actual distress,--the consideration of the condition
+of the country gentlemen, who were obliged to hide their heads, wherever
+they could, from the plunderers and robbers established under his
+authority in every part of the country, and that of the miserable common
+people, who have been obliged to sell their children through want of
+food to feed them,--the consideration, I say, of the manner in which
+this country, in the highest, in the middle, and in the lowest classes
+of its inhabitants, nay, in physical works of God, was desolated and
+destroyed by this man.
+
+Having now done with the province of Oude, we will proceed to the
+province of Bengal, and consider what was the kind of government which
+he exercised there, and in what manner it affected the people that were
+subjected to it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bengal, like every part of India subject to the British empire, contains
+(as I have already had occasion to mention) three distinct classes of
+people, forming three distinct social systems. The first is the
+Mahometans, which, about seven hundred years ago, obtained a footing in
+that country, and ever since has in a great degree retained its
+authority there. For the Mahometans had settled there long before the
+foundation of the Bengal empire, which was overturned by Tamerlane: so
+that this people, who are represented sometimes loosely as strangers,
+are people of ancient and considerable settlement in that country; and
+though, like Mahometan settlers in many other countries, they have
+fallen into decay, yet, being continually recruited from various parts
+of Tartary under the Mogul empire, and from various parts of Persia,
+they continue to be the leading and most powerful people throughout the
+peninsula; and so we found them there. These people, for the most part,
+follow no trades or occupation, their religion and laws forbidding them
+in the strictest manner to take usury or profit arising from money that
+is in any way lent; they have, therefore, no other means for their
+support but what arises from their adherence to and connection with the
+Mogul government and its viceroys. They enjoy under them various
+offices, civil and military,--various employments in the courts of law,
+and stations in the army. Accordingly a prodigious number of people,
+almost all of them persons of the most ancient and respectable families
+in the country, are dependent upon and cling to the subahdars or
+viceroys of the several provinces. They, therefore, who oppress,
+plunder, and destroy the subahdars, oppress, rob, and destroy an immense
+mass of people. It is true that a supervening government, established
+upon another, always reduces a certain portion of the dependants upon
+the latter to want. You must distress, by the very nature of the
+circumstances of the case, a great number of people; but then it is your
+business, when, by the superiority which you have acquired, however you
+may have acquired it, (for I am not now considering whether you have
+acquired it by fraud or force, or whether by a mixture of both,) when, I
+say, you have acquired it, it is your business not to oppress those
+people with new and additional difficulties, but rather to console them
+in the state to which they are reduced, and to give them all the
+assistance and protection in your power.
+
+The next system is composed of the descendants of the people who were
+found in the country by the Mahometan invaders. The system before
+mentioned comprehends the official interest, the judicial interest, the
+court interest, and the military interest. This latter body includes
+almost the whole landed interest, commercial interest, and moneyed
+interest of the country. For the Hindoos not being forbidden by their
+laws or religious tenets, as laid down in the Shaster, many of them
+became the principal money-lenders and bankers; and thus the Hindoos
+form the greatest part both of the landed and moneyed interest in that
+country.
+
+The third and last system is formed of the English interest; which in
+reality, whether it appears directly or indirectly, is the governing
+interest of the whole country,--of its civil and military interest, of
+its landed, moneyed, and revenue interest; and what to us is the
+greatest concern of all, it is this system which is responsible for the
+government of that country to the government of Great Britain. It is
+divided into two parts: one emanating from the Company, and afterwards
+regulated by act of Parliament; the other a judicial body, sent out by
+and acting under the authority of the crown itself. The persons
+composing that interest are those whom we usually call the servants of
+the Company. They enter into that service, as your Lordships know, at an
+early period of life, and they are promoted accordingly as their merit
+or their interest may provide for them. This body of men, with respect
+to its number, is so small as scarcely to deserve mentioning; but, from
+certain circumstances, the government of the whole country is fallen
+into their hands. Amongst these circumstances, the most important and
+essential are their having the public revenues and the public purse
+entirely in their own hands, and their having an army maintained by that
+purse, and disciplined in the European manner.
+
+Such was the state of that country when Mr. Hastings was appointed
+Governor in 1772. Your Lordships are now to decide upon the manner in
+which he has comported himself with regard to all these three interests:
+first, whether he has made the ancient Mahometan families as easy as he
+could; secondly, whether he has made the Hindoo inhabitants, the
+zemindars and their tenants, as secure in their property and as easy in
+their tenure as he could; and lastly, whether he has made the English
+interest a blessing to the country, and, whilst it provided moderate,
+safe, and proper emoluments to the persons that were concerned in it, it
+kept them from oppression and rapine, and a general waste and ravage of
+the country: whether, in short, he made all these three interests pursue
+that one object which all interests and all governments ought to pursue,
+the advantage and welfare of the people under them.
+
+My Lords, in support of our charge against the prisoner at your bar,
+that he acted in a manner directly the reverse of this, we have proved
+to you that his first acts of oppression were directed against the
+Mahometan government,--that government which had been before, not only
+in name, but in effect, to the very time of his appointment, the real
+government of the country. After the Company had acquired its right over
+it, some shadow still remained of the ancient government. An allowance
+was settled for the Nabob of Bengal, to support the dignity of his
+court, which amounted to between four and five hundred thousand pounds a
+year. In this was comprehended the support of the whole mass of
+nobility,--the soldiers, serving or retired,--all the officers of the
+court, and all the women that were dependent upon them,--the whole of
+the criminal jurisdiction of the country, and a very considerable part
+of the civil law and the civil government. These establishments formed
+the constitutional basis of their political government.
+
+The Company never had (and it is a thing that we can never too often
+repeat to your Lordships)--the Company never had of right despotic power
+in that country, to overturn any of these establishments. The Mogul, who
+gave them their charters, could not give them such a power,--he did not
+_de facto_ give them such a power; the government of this country did
+not by act of Parliament, and the Company did not and could not by their
+delegation, give him such a power; the act by which he was appointed
+Governor did not give him such a power. If he exercised it, he usurped
+it; and therefore, every step we take in the examination of his conduct
+in Bengal, as in every step we take upon the same subject everywhere
+else, we look for the justification of his conduct to laws,--the Law of
+Nations, the laws of this country, and the laws of the country he was
+sent to govern.
+
+The government of that country, by the ancient constitution of the Mogul
+empire, besides the numberless individual checks and counter-checks in
+the inferior officers [offices?], is divided into the viceroyal part and
+the subahdarry part. The viceroyal part takes in all criminal justice
+and political government. Mr. Hastings found the country under a
+viceroy, governing according to law, acting by proper judges and
+magistrates under him: he himself not being the judicial, but executive
+power of the country,--that which sets the other in action, and does not
+supersede it or supply its place. The other, the subahdarry power, which
+was by the grant of the dewanny conferred upon the Company, had under
+its care the revenues, as much of the civil government as is concerned
+with the revenues, and many other matters growing out of it. These two
+offices are cooerdinate and dependent on each other. The Company, after
+contracting to maintain the army out of it, got the whole revenue into
+their power. The army being thus within their power, the subahdar by
+degrees vanished into an empty name.
+
+When we thus undertook the government of the country, conscious that we
+had undertaken a task which by any personal exertion of our own we were
+unable to perform in any proper or rational way, the Company appointed a
+native of the country, Mahomed Reza Khan, who stands upon the records of
+the Company, I venture to say, with such a character as no man perhaps
+ever did stand, to execute the duties of both offices. Upon the
+expulsion of Cossim Ali Khan, the Nabob of Bengal, all his children were
+left in a young, feeble, and unprotected state; and in that state of
+things, Lord Clive, Mr. Sumner, who sits near Mr. Hastings, and the rest
+of the Council, wisely appointed Mahomed Reza Khan to fulfil the two
+offices of deputy-viceroy and deputy-dewan, for which he had immense
+allowances, and great jaghires and revenues, I allow. He was a man of
+that dignity, rank, and consideration, added to his knowledge of law and
+experience in business, that Lord Clive and Mr. Sumner, who examined
+strictly his conduct at that time, did not think that 112,000_l._ a
+year, the amount of the emoluments which had been allowed him, was a
+great deal too much; but at his own desire, and in order that these
+emoluments might be brought to stated and fixed sums, they reduced it to
+90,000_l._,--an allowance which they thought was not more than
+sufficient to preserve the state of so great a magistrate, and a man of
+such rank, exercising such great employments. The whole revenue of the
+Company depended upon his talents and fidelity; and you will find, that,
+on the day in which he surrendered the revenues into our hands, the
+dewanny, under his management, was a million more than it produced on
+the day Mr. Hastings left it. For the truth of this I refer your
+Lordships to a letter of the Company sent to the Board of Control. This
+letter is not in evidence before your Lordships, and what I am stating
+is merely historical. But I state the facts, and with the power of
+referring for their proof to documents as authentic as if they were
+absolutely in evidence before you. Assuming, therefore, that all these
+facts may be verified by the records of the Company, I have now to state
+that this man, by some rumors true or false, was supposed to have
+misconducted himself in a time of great calamity in that country. A
+great famine had about this time grievously afflicted the whole province
+of Bengal.--I must remark by the way, that these countries are liable to
+this calamity; but it is greatly blessed by Nature with resources which
+afford the means of speedy recovery, if their government does not
+counteract them. Nature, that inflicts the calamity, soon heals the
+wound; it is in ordinary seasons the most fertile country, inhabited by
+the most industrious people, and the most disposed to marriage and
+settlement, probably, that exists in the whole world; so that population
+and fertility are soon restored, and the inhabitants quickly resume
+their former industrious occupations.
+
+During the agitation excited in the country by the calamity I have just
+mentioned, Mahomed Reza Khan, through the intrigues of Rajah Nundcomar,
+one of his political rivals, and of some English faction that supported
+him, was accused of being one of the causes of the famine. In answer to
+this charge, he alleged, what was certainly a sufficient justification,
+that he had acted under the direction of the English board, to which his
+conduct throughout this business was fully known. The Company, however,
+sent an order from England to have him tried; but though he frequently
+supplicated the government at Calcutta that his trial should be
+proceeded in, in order that he might be either acquitted and discharged
+or condemned, Mr. Hastings kept him in prison two years, under pretence
+(as he wrote word to the Directors) that Mahomed Reza Khan himself was
+not very desirous to hasten the matter. In the mean time the Court of
+Directors, having removed him from his great offices, authorized and
+commanded Mr. Hastings (and here we come within the sphere of your
+minutes) to appoint a successor to Mahomed Reza Khan, fit to fulfil the
+duties of his station. Now I shall first show your Lordships what sort
+of person the Court of Directors described to him as most fit to fill
+the office of Mahomed Reza Khan, what sort of person he did appoint, and
+then we will trace out to you the consequences of that appointment.
+
+
+     _Letter from the Court of Directors to the President and Council at
+     Fort William, dated 28th August, 1771._
+
+     "Though we have not a doubt but that, by the exertion of your
+     abilities, and the care and assiduity of our servants in the
+     superintendency of the revenues, the collections will be conducted
+     with more advantage to the Company and ease to the natives than by
+     means of a naib dewan, we are fully sensible of the expediency of
+     supporting some ostensible minister in the Company's interest at
+     the Nabob's court, to transact the political affairs of the sircar,
+     and interpose between the Company and the subjects of any European
+     power, in all cases wherein they may thwart our interest or
+     encroach on our authority; and as Mahomed Reza Khan can no longer
+     be considered by us as one to whom such a power can be safely
+     committed, we trust to your local knowledge the selection of some
+     person well qualified for the affairs of government, and of whose
+     attachment to the Company you shall be well assured: such person
+     you will recommend to the Nabob to succeed Mahomed Reza as minister
+     of the government, and guardian of the Nabob's minority; and we
+     persuade ourselves that the Nabob will pay such regard to your
+     recommendation as to invest him with the necessary power and
+     authority.
+
+     "As the advantages which the Company may receive from the
+     appointment of such minister will depend on his readiness to
+     promote our views and advance our interest, we are willing to allow
+     him so liberal a gratification as may excite his zeal and secure
+     his attachment to the Company; we therefore empower you to grant to
+     the person whom you shall think worthy of this trust an annual
+     allowance not exceeding three lacs of rupees, (thirty thousand
+     pounds,) which we consider not only as a munificent reward for any
+     services he shall render the Company, but sufficient to enable him
+     to support his station with suitable rank and dignity. And here we
+     must add, that, in the choice you shall make of a person to be the
+     active minister of the Nabob's government, we hope and trust that
+     you will show yourselves worthy of the confidence we have placed in
+     you, by being actuated therein, by no other motives than those of
+     the public good and the safety and interest of the Company."
+
+Here, my Lords, a person was to be named fit to fill the office and
+supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khan, who was deputy-viceroy of Bengal,
+at the head of the criminal justice of the country, and, in short, at
+the head of the whole ostensible Mahometan government; he was also to
+supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khan as naib dewan, from which Reza
+Khan was to be removed: for you will observe, the Directors always speak
+of a man fit to perform all the duties of Mahomed Reza Khan; and amongst
+these he was to be as the guardian of the Nabob's person, and the
+representative of his authority and government.
+
+Mr. Hastings, having received these orders from the Court of Directors,
+did--what? He alleges in his defence, that no positive commands were
+given him. But a very sufficient description was given of the person who
+ought to succeed Mahomed Reza Khan, in whom the Company had before
+recognized all the necessary qualities; and they therefore desire him to
+name a similar person. But what does Mr. Hastings do in consequence of
+this authority? He names no man at all. He searches into the seraglio of
+the Nabob, and names a woman to be the viceroy of the province, to be
+the head of the ostensible government, to be the guardian of the Nabob's
+person, the conservator of his authority, and a proper representative of
+the remaining majesty of that government.
+
+Well, my Lords, he searched the seraglio. When you have to take into
+consideration the guardianship of a person of great dignity, there are
+two circumstances to be attended to: one, a faithful and affectionate
+guardianship of his person; and the other, a strong interest in his
+authority, and the means of exercising that authority in a proper and
+competent manner. Mr. Hastings, when he was looking for a woman in the
+seraglio, (for he could find women only there,) must have found actually
+in authority there the Nabob's own mother: certainly a person who by
+nature was most fit to be his guardian; and there is no manner of doubt
+of her being sufficiently competent to that duty. Here, then, was a
+legitimate wife of the Nabob Jaffier Ali Khan, a woman of rank and
+distinction, fittest to take care of the person and interests, as far as
+a woman could take care of them, of her own son. In this situation she
+had been placed before, during the administration of Mahomed Reza Khan,
+by the direct orders of the Governor, Sir John Cartier. She had, I say,
+been put in possession of that trust which it was natural and proper to
+give to such a woman. But what does Mr. Hastings do? He deposes this
+woman. He strips her of her authority with which he found her invested
+under the sanction of the English government. He finds out a woman in
+the seraglio, called Munny Begum, who was bound to the Nabob by no tie
+whatever of natural affection. He makes this woman the guardian of the
+young Nabob's person. She had a son who had been placed upon the musnud
+after the death of his father, Sujah Dowlah, and had been appointed his
+guardian. This young Nabob died soon afterwards, and was succeeded by
+Nujim ul Dowlah, another natural son of Sujah Dowlah. This prince being
+left without a mother, this woman was suffered to retain the
+guardianship of the Nabob till his death. When Mobarek ul Dowlah, a
+legitimate son of Sujah Dowlah, succeeded him, Sir John Cartier did what
+his duty was: he put the Nabob's own mother into the place which she was
+naturally entitled to hold, the guardianship of her own son, and
+displaced Munny Begum. The whole of the arrangement by which Munny Begum
+was appointed guardian of the two preceding Nabobs stands in the
+Company's records stigmatized as a transaction base, wicked, and
+corrupt. We will read to your Lordships an extract from a letter which
+has the signature of Mr. Sumner, the gentleman who sits here by the side
+of Mr. Hastings, and from which you will learn what the Company and the
+Council thought of the original nomination of Munny Begum and of her
+son. You will find that they considered her as a great agent and
+instrument of all the corruption there; and that this whole transaction,
+by which the bastard son of Munny Begum was brought forward to the
+prejudice of the legitimate son of the Nabob, was considered to be, what
+it upon the very face of it speaks itself to be, corrupt and scandalous.
+
+
+     _Extract of a General Letter from the President and Council at
+     Calcutta, Bengal, to the Select Committee of the Directors._
+
+     Paragraph 5.--"At Fort St. George we received the first advices of
+     the demise of Mir Jaffier, and of Sujah Dowlah's defeat. It was
+     there firmly imagined that no definitive measures would be taken,
+     either with respect to a peace or filling the vacancy in the
+     nizamut, before our arrival,--as the 'Lapwing' arrived in the month
+     of January with your general letter, and the appointment of a
+     committee with express powers to that purpose, for the successful
+     exertion of which the happiest occasion now offered. However, a
+     contrary resolution prevailed in the Council. The opportunity of
+     acquiring immense fortunes was too inviting to be neglected, and
+     the temptation too powerful to be resisted. A treaty was hastily
+     drawn up by the board,--or rather, transcribed, with few
+     unimportant additions, from that concluded with Mir Jaffier,--and a
+     deputation, consisting of Messrs. Johnstone, senior, Middleton, and
+     Leycester, appointed to raise the natural son of the deceased Nabob
+     to the subahdarry, in prejudice of the claim of the grandson; and
+     for this measure such reasons assigned as ought to have dictated a
+     diametrically opposite resolution. Meeran's son was a minor, which
+     circumstance alone would have naturally brought the whole
+     administration into our hands at a juncture when it became
+     indispensably necessary we should realize the shadow of power and
+     influence, which, having no solid foundation, was exposed to the
+     danger of being annihilated by the first stroke of adverse fortune.
+     But this inconsistence was not regarded, nor was it material to the
+     views for precipitating the treaty, which was pressed on the young
+     Nabob at the first interview, in so earnest and indelicate a manner
+     as highly disgusted him and chagrined his ministers, while not a
+     single rupee was stipulated for the Company, whose interests were
+     sacrificed that their servants might revel in the spoils of a
+     treasury, before impoverished, but now totally exhausted.
+
+     "6. This scene of corruption was first disclosed at a visit the
+     Nabob paid to Lord Clive and the gentlemen of the Committee a few
+     days after our arrival. He there delivered to his Lordship a letter
+     filled with bitter complaints of the insults and indignity he had
+     been exposed to, and the embezzlement of near twenty lacs of rupees
+     issued from his treasury for purposes unknown during the late
+     negotiations. So public a complaint could not be disregarded, and
+     it soon produced an inquiry. We referred the letter to the board in
+     expectation of obtaining a satisfactory account of the application
+     of this money, and were answered only by a warm remonstrance
+     entered by Mr. Leycester against that very Nabob in whose elevation
+     he boasts of having been a principal agent.
+
+     "7. Mahomed Reza Khan, the naib subah, was then called upon to
+     account for this large disbursement from the treasury; and he soon
+     delivered to the Committee the very extraordinary narrative entered
+     in our Proceedings the 6th of June, wherein he specifies the
+     several names and sums, by whom paid, and to whom, whether in cash,
+     bills, or obligations. So precise, so accurate an account as this
+     of money for secret and venal services was never, we believe,
+     before this period, exhibited to the Honorable Court of Directors,
+     at least never vouched by undeniable testimony and authentic
+     documents: by Juggut Seet, who himself was obliged to contribute
+     largely to the sums demanded; by Muley Ram, who was employed by Mr.
+     Johnstone in all these pecuniary transactions; by the Nabob and
+     Mahomed Reza Khan, who were the heaviest sufferers; and, lastly, by
+     the confession of the gentlemen themselves whose names are
+     specified in the distribution list.
+
+     "8. Juggut Seet expressly declared in his narrative, that the sum
+     which he agreed to pay the deputation, amounting to 125,000 rupees,
+     was extorted by menaces; and since the close of our inquiry, and
+     the opinions we delivered in the Proceedings of the 21st of June,
+     it fully appears that the presents from the Nabob and Mahomed Reza
+     Khan, exceeding the immense sum of seventeen lacs, were not the
+     voluntary offerings of gratitude, but contributions levied on the
+     weakness of the government, and violently exacted from the
+     dependent state and timid disposition of the minister. The charge,
+     indeed, is denied on the one hand, as well as affirmed on the
+     other. Your honorable board must therefore determine how far the
+     circumstance of extortion may aggravate the crime of disobedience
+     to your positive orders,--the exposing the government in a manner
+     to sale, and receiving the infamous wages of corruption from
+     opposite parties and contending interests. We speak with boldness,
+     because we speak from conviction founded upon indubitable evidence,
+     that, besides the above sums specified in the distribution account,
+     to the amount of 228,125_l._ sterling, there was likewise to the
+     value of several lacs of rupees procured from Nundcomar and Roy
+     Dullub, each of whom aspired at and obtained a promise of that very
+     employment it was predetermined to bestow on Mahomed Reza Khan.
+
+        (Signed at the end,)
+        "CLIVE.
+        W^M B. SUMNER.
+        JOHN CARNAC.
+        H. VERELST.
+        FRA^S SYKES."
+
+My Lords, the persons who sign this letter are mostly the friends, and
+one of them is the gentleman who is bail for and sits near Mr. Hastings.
+They state to you this horrible and venal transaction, by which the
+government was set to sale, by which a bastard son was elevated to the
+wrong of the natural and legitimate heir, and in which a prostitute, his
+mother, was put in the place of the honorable and legitimate mother of
+the representative of the family.
+
+Now, if there was one thing more than another under heaven, which Mr.
+Hastings ought to have shunned, it was the suspicion of being concerned
+in any such infamous transaction as that which is here recorded to be
+so,--a transaction in which the country government had before been sold
+to this very woman and her offspring, and in which two great candidates
+for power in that country fought against each other, and perhaps the
+largest offerer carried it.
+
+When a Governor-General sees the traces of corruption in the conduct of
+his predecessors, the traces of injustice following that corruption, the
+traces of notorious irregularity in setting aside the just claimants in
+favor of those that have no claim at all, he has that before his eyes
+which ought to have made him the more scrupulously avoid, and to keep at
+the farthest distance possible from, the contagion and even the
+suspicion of being corrupted by it. Moreover, my Lords, it was in
+consequence of these very transactions that the new covenants were made,
+which bind the servants of the Company never to take a present of above
+two hundred pounds, or some such sum of money, from any native in
+circumstances there described. This covenant I shall reserve for
+consideration in another part of this business. It was in pursuance of
+this idea, and to prevent the abuse of the prevailing custom of visiting
+the governing powers of that country with a view of receiving presents
+from them, that the House of Commons afterwards, in its inquiries, took
+up this matter and passed the Regulating Act in 1773.
+
+But to return to Munny Begum.--This very person, that had got into power
+by the means already mentioned, did Mr. Hastings resort to, knowing her
+to be well skilled in the trade of bribery,--knowing her skilful
+practice in business of this sort,--knowing the fitness of her eunuchs,
+instruments, and agents, to be dealers in this kind of traffic. This
+very woman did Mr. Hastings select, stigmatized as she was in the
+Company's record, stigmatized by the very gentleman who sits next to
+him, and whose name you have heard read to you as one of those members
+of the Council that reprobated the horrible iniquity of the transaction
+in which this woman was a principal agent. For though neither the young
+Nabob nor his mother ought to have been raised to the stations in which
+they were placed, and were placed there for the purpose of facilitating
+the receipt of bribes, yet the order of Nature was preserved, and the
+mother was made the guardian of her own son: for though she was a
+prostitute and he a bastard, yet still she was a mother and he a son;
+and both Nature and legitimate disposition with regard to the
+guardianship of a son went together.
+
+But what did Mr. Hastings do? Improving upon the preceding transaction,
+improving on it by a kind of refinement in corruption, he drives away
+the lawful mother from her lawful guardianship; the mother of nature he
+turns out, and he delivers her son to the stepmother to be the guardian
+of his person. That your Lordships may see who this woman was, we shall
+read to you a paper from your Lordships' minutes, produced before Mr.
+Hastings's face, and never contradicted by him from that day to this.
+
+     At a Consultation, 24th July, 1775.--"Shah Chanim, deceased, was
+     sister to the Nabob Mahub ul Jung by the same father, but different
+     mothers; she married Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khan, by whom she had a
+     son and a daughter; the name of the former was Mir Mahomed Sadduc
+     Ali Khan, and the latter was married to Mir Mahomed Cossim Khan
+     Sadduc. Ali Khan had two sons and two daughters; the sons' names
+     are Mir Sydoc and Mir Sobeem, who are now living; the daughters
+     were married to Sultan Mirza Daood.
+
+     "Baboo Begum, the mother of the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah, was the
+     daughter of Summin Ali Khan, and married Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khan.
+     The history of Munny Begum is this. At a village called Balkonda,
+     near Sekundra, there lived a widow, who, from her great poverty,
+     not being able to bring up her daughter Munny, gave her to a slave
+     girl belonging to Summin Ali Khan, whose name was Bissoo. During
+     the space of five years she lived at Shahjehanabad, and was
+     educated by Bissoo after the manner of a dancing-girl. Afterwards
+     the Nabob Shamut Jung, upon the marriage of Ikram ul Dowlah,
+     brother to the Nabob Surajah ul Dowlah, sent for Bissoo Beg's set
+     of dancing-girls from Shahjehanabad, of which Munny Begum was one,
+     and allowed them ten thousand rupees for their expenses, to dance
+     at the wedding. While this ceremony was celebrating, they were kept
+     by the Nabob; but some months afterwards he dismissed them, and
+     they took up their residence in this city. Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khan
+     then took them into keeping, and allowed Munny and her set five
+     hundred rupees per month, till at length, finding that Munny was
+     pregnant, he took her into his own house. She gave birth to the
+     Nabob Nujim ul Dowlah, and in this manner she has remained in the
+     Nabob's family ever since."
+
+My Lords, I do not mean to detain you long upon this part of the
+business, but I have thought it necessary to advert to these
+particulars. As to all the rest, the honorable and able Manager who
+preceded me has sufficiently impressed upon your Lordships' minds the
+monstrous nature of the deposing of the Nabob's mother from the
+guardianship of her son, for the purpose of placing this woman there at
+the head of all his family and of his domestic concerns in the seraglio
+within doors, and at the head of the state without, together with the
+disposal of the whole of the revenue that was allowed him. Mr. Hastings
+pretends, indeed, to have appointed at the same time a trusty mutsuddy
+to keep the accounts of the revenue; but he has since declared that no
+account had been kept, and that it was in vain to desire it or to call
+for it. This is the state of the case with respect to the appointment of
+Munny Begum.
+
+With regard to the reappointment of Mahomed Reza Khan, you have heard
+from my worthy fellow Manager that he was acquitted of the charges that
+had been brought against him by Mr. Hastings, after a long and lingering
+trial. The Company was perfectly satisfied with the acquittal, and
+declared that he was not only acquitted, but honorably acquitted; and
+they also declared that he had a fair claim to a compensation for his
+sufferings. They not only declared him innocent, but meritorious. They
+gave orders that he should be considered as a person who was to be
+placed in office again upon the first occasion, and that he had entitled
+himself to this favor by his conduct in the place which he had before
+filled.
+
+The Council of the year 1775, (whom I can never mention nor shall
+mention without honor,) who complied faithfully with the act of
+Parliament, who never disobeyed the orders of the Company, and to whom
+no man has imputed even the shadow of corruption, found that this Munny
+Begum had acted in the manner which my honorable fellow Manager has
+stated: that she had dissipated the revenue, that she had neglected the
+education of the Nabob, and had thrown the whole judicature of the
+country into confusion. They ordered that she should be removed from her
+situation; that the Nabob's own mother should be placed at the head of
+the seraglio, a situation to which she was entitled; and with regard to
+the rest of the offices, that Mahomed Reza Khan should be employed to
+fill them.
+
+Mr. Hastings resisted these propositions with all his might; but they
+were by that happy momentary majority carried against him, and Mahomed
+Reza Khan was placed in his former situation. But Mr. Hastings, though
+thus defeated, was only waiting for what he considered to be the
+fortunate moment for returning again to his corrupt, vicious,
+tyrannical, and disobedient habits. The reappointment of Mahomed Reza
+Khan had met with the fullest approbation of the Company; and they
+directed, that, as long as his good behavior entitled him to it, he
+should continue in the office. Mr. Hastings, however, without alleging
+any ill behavior, and for no reason that can be assigned, but his
+corrupt engagement with Munny Begum, overturned (upon the pretence of
+restoring the Nabob to his rights) the whole of the Company's
+arrangement, as settled by the late majority, and approved by the Court
+of Directors.
+
+I have now to show you what sort of a man the Nabob was, who was thus
+set up in defiance of the Company's authority; what Mr. Hastings himself
+thought of him; what the judges thought of him; and what all the world
+thought of him.
+
+I must first make your Lordships acquainted with a little preliminary
+matter. A man named Roy Rada Churn had been appointed vakeel, or agent,
+to manage the Nabob's affairs at Calcutta. One of this man's creditors
+attached him there. Roy Rada Churn pleaded his privilege as the vakeel
+or representative of a sovereign prince. The question came to be tried
+in the Supreme Court, and the issue was, Whether the Nabob was a
+sovereign prince or not. I think the court did exceedingly wrong in
+entertaining such a question; because, in my opinion, whether he was or
+was not a sovereign prince, any person representing him ought to be left
+free, and to have a proper and secure means of concerting his affairs
+with the Council. It was, however, taken otherwise; the question was
+brought to trial, whether the Nabob was a sovereign prince sufficient to
+appoint and protect a person to manage his affairs, under the name of an
+ambassador. In that cause did Mr. Hastings come forward to prove, by a
+voluntary affidavit, that he had no pretensions, no power, no authority
+at all,--that he was a mere pageant, a thing of straw,--and that the
+Company exercised every species of authority over him, in every
+particular, and in every respect; and that, therefore, to talk of him as
+an efficient person was an affront to the common sense of mankind: and
+this you will find the judges afterwards declared to be their opinion.
+
+I will here press again one remark, which perhaps you may recollect that
+I have made before, that the chief and most usual mode in which all the
+villanies perpetrated in India, by Mr. Hastings and his co-partners in
+iniquity, has been through the medium and instrumentality of persons
+whom they pretended to have rights of their own, and to be acting for
+themselves; whereas such persons were, in fact, totally dependent upon
+him, Mr. Hastings, and did no one act that was not prescribed by him.
+In order, therefore, to let you see the utter falsehood, fraud,
+prevarication, and deceit of the pretences by which the native powers of
+India are represented to be independent, and are held up as the
+instruments of defying the laws of this kingdom, under pretext of their
+being absolute princes, I will read the affidavit of Warren Hastings,
+Esquire, Governor-General of Bengal, made the 31st July, 1775.
+
+     "This deponent maketh oath, and saith, That the late President and
+     Council did, in or about the month of August, 1772, by their own
+     authority appoint Munny Begum, relict of the late Nabob, Mir
+     Jaffier Ali Khan, to be guardian to the present Nabob, Mobarek ul
+     Dowlah, and Rajah Gourdas, son of Maha Rajah Nundcomar, to be dewan
+     of the said Nabob's household, allowing to the said Munny Begum a
+     salary of 140,000 rupees per annum, and to the said Rajah Gourdas,
+     for himself and officers, a salary of 100,000 rupees per annum:
+     That the said late President and Council did, in or about the month
+     of August, 1772, plan and constitute regular and distinct courts of
+     justice, civil and criminal, by their own authority, for
+     administration of justice to the inhabitants throughout Bengal,
+     without consulting the said Nabob or requiring his concurrence, and
+     that the said civil courts were made solely dependent on the
+     Presidency of Calcutta; and the said criminal courts were put under
+     the inspection and control of the Company's servants, although
+     ostensibly under the name of the Nazim, as appears from the
+     following extracts from the plan for the administration of justice,
+     constituted by the President and Council as aforesaid."
+
+My Lords, we need not go through all the circumstances of this
+affidavit, which is in your minutes, and, to save time, I will refer
+your Lordships to them. This affidavit, as I have already said, was put
+into the court to prove that the Nabob had no power or authority at all;
+but what is very singular in it, and which I recommend to the particular
+notice of your Lordships, when you are scrutinizing this matter, is,
+that there is not a single point stated, to prove the nullity of this
+Nabob's authority, that was not Mr. Hastings's on particular act. Well,
+the Governor-General swears; the judge of the court refers to him in his
+decision; he builds and bottoms it upon the Governor-General's
+affidavit;--he swears, I say, that the Council, by their own authority,
+appointed Munny Begum to be guardian to the Nabob.
+
+"By what authority," the Governor-General asks, "did the Council erect
+courts of law and superintend the administration of justice, without any
+communication with the Nabob? Had the Nabob himself any idea that he was
+a sovereign? Does he complain of the reduction of his stipend or the
+infringement of treaties? No; he appears to consider himself to be, what
+in fact he really is, absolutely dependent on the Company, and to be
+willing to accept any pittance they would allow him for his maintenance:
+he claims no rights. Does he complain that the administration of justice
+is taken into the hands of the Company? No: by the treaty, the
+protection of his subjects is delivered up to the Company; and he well
+knew, that, whoever may be held up as the ostensible prince, the
+administration of justice must be in the hands of those who have power
+to enforce it." He goes on,--"The Governor-General, who, I suppose, had
+a delicacy to state more than what had before been made public, closes
+his affidavit with saying that all he has deposed to he believes to be
+publicly known, as it is particularly set forth in the printed book
+entitled 'Reports of the Committee of the House of Commons.' I knew," he
+adds, "it was there, and was therefore surprised at this application; it
+is so notorious, that everybody in the settlement must have known it:
+when I say everybody, I mean with an exception to the gentlemen who have
+applied to the court. The only reason I can give for their applying is
+the little time they have been in the country." The judge (I think it is
+Chief-Justice Impey) then goes on,--"Perhaps this question might have
+been determined merely on the dates of the letters to the
+Governor-General; but as the Council have made the other a serious
+question, I should not have thought that I had done my duty, if I had
+not given a full and determinate opinion upon it: I should have been
+sorry, if I had left it doubtful whether the empty name of a Nabob
+should be thrust between a delinquent and the laws, so as effectually to
+protect him from the hand of justice."
+
+My Lords, the court, as you see, bottoms its determination on what we
+stand upon here, Mr. Hastings's evidence, that the empty name of a
+pretended sovereign should not be thrust forth between a delinquent and
+justice.
+
+What does Mr. Le Maistre, the other judge, say upon this occasion? "With
+regard to this phantom, that man of straw, Mobarek ul Dowlah, it is an
+insult on the understanding of the court to have made the question of
+his sovereignty. But as it came from the Governor-General and Council, I
+have too much respect for that body to treat it ludicrously, and I
+confess I cannot consider it seriously, and we always shall consider a
+letter of business from the Nabob the same as a letter from the
+Governor-General and Council."
+
+This is the unanimous opinion of all the judges concerning the state and
+condition of the Nabob. We have thus established the point we mean to
+establish: that any use which shall be made of the Nabob's name for the
+purpose of justifying any disobedience to the orders of the Company, or
+of bringing forward corrupt and unfit persons for the government, could
+be considered as no other than the act of the persons who shall make
+such a use of it; and that no letter that the Nabob writes to any one in
+power was or could be considered as any other than the letter of that
+person himself. This we wish to impress upon your Lordships, because, as
+you have before seen the use that has been made in this way of the Nabob
+of Oude, you may judge of the use that has been made of the name of
+Hyder Beg Khan, and of the names of all the eminent persons of the
+country.
+
+One word more and I have done. If, whilst you remark the use that is
+made of this man's name, your Lordships shall find that this use has
+ever been made of his name for his benefit, or for the purpose of giving
+him any useful or substantial authority, or of meliorating his condition
+in any way whatever; forgive the fraud, forgive the disobedience. But if
+we have shown your Lordships that it was for no other purpose than to
+disobey the orders of the Company, to trample upon the laws of his
+country, to introduce back again, and to force into power, those very
+corrupt and wicked instruments which had formerly done so much
+mischief, and for which mischief they were removed, then we shall not
+have passed our time in vain, in endeavoring to prove that this man, in
+the opinion of a court of justice, and by public notoriety, and by Mr.
+Hastings's own opinion, was held to be fit for nothing but to be made a
+tool in his hands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having stated to your Lordships generally the effects produced upon the
+Mahometan interest of Bengal by the misconduct of the prisoner at your
+bar with respect to the appointment of the guardian of the Nabob or
+Subahdar of that province, and of the ministers of his government, I
+shall have the honor of attending your Lordships another day, and shall
+show you the use that has been made of this government and of the
+authority of the Nabob, who, as your Lordships have seen, was the mere
+phantom of power; and I shall show how much a phantom he was for every
+good purpose, and how effectual an instrument he was made for every bad
+one.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+EIGHTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 1794
+
+
+My Lords,--Your Lordships heard, upon the last day of the meeting of
+this high court, the distribution of the several matters which I should
+have occasion to lay before you, and by which I resolved to guide
+myself in the examination of the conduct of Mr. Hastings with regard to
+Bengal. I stated that I should first show the manner in which he
+comported himself with regard to the people who were found in possession
+of the government when we first entered into Bengal. We have shown to
+your Lordships the progressive steps by which the native government was
+brought into a state of annihilation. We have stated the manner in which
+that government was solemnly declared by a court of justice to be
+depraved, and incompetent to act, and dead in law. We have shown to your
+Lordships (and we have referred you to the document) that its death was
+declared upon a certificate of the principal attending physician of the
+state, namely, Mr. Warren Hastings himself. This was declared in an
+affidavit made by him, wherein he has gone through all the powers of
+government, of which he had regularly despoiled the Nabob Mobarek ul
+Dowlah, part by part, exactly according to the ancient formula by which
+a degraded knight was despoiled of his knighthood: they took, I say,
+from him all the powers of government, article by article,--his helmet,
+his shield, his cuirass; at last they hacked off his spurs, and left him
+nothing. Mr. Hastings laid down all the premises, and left the judges to
+draw the conclusion.
+
+Your Lordships will remark (for you will find it on your minutes) that
+the judges have declared this affidavit of Mr. Hastings to be a
+_delicate_ affidavit. We have heard of affidavits that were true; we
+have heard of affidavits that were perjured; but this is the first
+instance that has come to our knowledge (and we receive it as a proof of
+Indian refinement) of a delicate affidavit. This affidavit of Mr.
+Hastings we shall show to your Lordships is not entitled to the
+description of a good affidavit, however it might be entitled, in the
+opinion of those judges, to the description of a delicate affidavit,--a
+phrase by which they appear to have meant that he had furnished all the
+proofs of the Nabob's deposition, but had delicately avoided to declare
+him expressly deposed. The judges drew, however, this indelicate
+conclusion; the conclusion they drew was founded upon the premises; it
+was very just and logical; for they declared that he was a mere cipher.
+They commended Mr. Hastings's delicacy, though they did not imitate it;
+but they pronounced sentence of deposition upon the said Nabob, and they
+declared that any letter or paper that was produced from him could not
+be considered as an act of government. So effectually was he removed by
+the judges out of the way, that no minority, no insanity, no physical
+circumstances, not even death itself, could put a man more completely
+out of sight. They declare that they would consider his letters in no
+other light than as the letters of the Company, represented by the
+Governor-General and Council. Thus, then, we find the Nabob legally
+dead.
+
+We find next, that he was politically dead. Mr. Hastings, not satisfied
+with the affidavit he made in court, has thought proper upon record to
+inform the Company and the world of what he considered him to be civilly
+and politically.
+
+
+     _Minute entered by the Governor-General._
+
+     "_The Governor-General._--I object to this motion," (a motion
+     relative to the trial above alluded to,) "because I do not
+     apprehend that the declaration of the judges respecting the Nabob's
+     sovereignty will involve this government in any difficulties with
+     the French or other foreign nations." (Mark, my Lords, these
+     political effects.) "How little the screen of the Nabob's name has
+     hitherto availed will appear in the frequent and inconclusive
+     correspondence which has been maintained with the foreign
+     settlements, the French especially, since the Company have thought
+     proper to stand forth in their real character in the exercise of
+     the dewanny. From that period the government of these provinces has
+     been wholly theirs; nor can all the subtleties and distinctions of
+     political sophistry conceal the possession of power, where the
+     exercise of it is openly practised and universally felt in its
+     operation. In deference to the commands of the Company, we have
+     generally endeavored, in all our correspondence with foreigners, to
+     evade the direct avowal of our possessing the actual rule of the
+     country,--employing the unapplied term government, for the power to
+     which we exacted their submission; but I do not remember any
+     instance, and I hope none will be found, of our having been so
+     disingenuous as to disclaim our own power, or to affirm that the
+     Nabob was the real sovereign of these provinces. In effect, I do
+     not hesitate to say that I look upon this state of indecision to
+     have been productive of all the embarrassments which we have
+     experienced with the foreign settlements. None of them have ever
+     owned any dominion but that of the British government in these
+     provinces. Mr. Chevalier has repeatedly declared, that he will not
+     acknowledge any other, but will look to that only for the support
+     of the privileges possessed by his nation, and shall protest
+     against that alone as responsible for any act of power by which
+     their privileges may be violated or their property disturbed. The
+     Dutch, the Danes, have severally applied to this government, as to
+     the ruling power, for the grant of indulgences and the redress of
+     their grievances. In our replies to all, we have constantly assumed
+     the prerogatives of that character, but eluded the direct avowal of
+     it; under the name of influence we have offered them protection,
+     and we have granted them the indulgences of government under
+     elusive expressions, sometimes applied to our treaties with the
+     Nabobs, sometimes to our own rights as the dewan; sometimes openly
+     declaring the virtual rule which we held of these provinces, we
+     have contended with them for the rights of government, and
+     threatened to repel with force the encroachments on it; we in one
+     or two instances have actually put these threats into execution, by
+     orders directly issued to the officers of government and enforced
+     by detachments from our own military forces; the Nabob was never
+     consulted, nor was the pretence ever made that his orders or
+     concurrence were necessary: in a word, we have always allowed
+     ourselves to be treated as principals, we have treated as
+     principals, but we have contented ourselves with letting our
+     actions insinuate the character which we effectually possessed,
+     without asserting it.
+
+     "For my own part, I have ever considered the reserve which has been
+     enjoined us in this respect as a consequence of the doubts which
+     have long prevailed, and which are still suffered to subsist,
+     respecting the rights of the British government and the Company to
+     the property and dominion of these provinces, not as inferring a
+     doubt with respect to any foreign power. It has, however, been
+     productive of great inconveniences; it has prevented our acting
+     with vigor in our disputes with the Dutch and French. The former
+     refuse to this day the payment of the _bahor peshcush_, although
+     the right is incontestably against them, and we have threatened to
+     enforce it. Both nations refuse to be bound by our decrees, or to
+     submit to our regulations; they refuse to submit to the payment of
+     the duties on the foreign commerce but in their own way, which
+     amounts almost to a total exemption; they refuse to submit to the
+     duty of ten per cent which is levied upon foreign salt, by which,
+     unless a stop can be put to it by a more decisive rule, they will
+     draw the whole of that important trade into their own colonies; and
+     even in the single instance in which they have allowed us to
+     prescribe to them, namely, the embargo on grain, on the
+     apprehension of a dearth, I am generally persuaded that they
+     acquiesced from the secret design of taking advantage of the
+     general suspension, by exporting grain clandestinely under cover of
+     their colors, which they knew would screen them from the rigorous
+     examination of our officers. We are precluded from forming many
+     arrangements of general utility, because of the want of control
+     over the European settlements; and a great part of the defects
+     which subsist in the government and commercial state of the country
+     are ultimately derived from this source. I have not the slightest
+     suspicion that a more open and decided conduct would expose us to
+     worse consequences from the European nations; on the contrary, we
+     have the worst of the argument while we contend with them under
+     false colors, while they know us under the disguise, and we have
+     not the confidence to disown it. What we have done and may do under
+     an assumed character is full as likely to involve us in a war with
+     France, a nation not much influenced by logical weapons, (if such
+     can be supposed to be the likely consequence of our own trifling
+     disagreements with them,) as if we stood forth their avowed
+     opponents. To conclude, instead of regretting, with Mr. Francis,
+     the occasion which deprives us of so useless and hurtful a
+     disguise, I should rather rejoice, were it really the case, and
+     consider it as a crisis which freed the constitution of our
+     government from one of its greatest defects."
+
+Now, my Lords, the delicacy of the affidavit is no more; the great
+arcanum of the state is avowed: it is avowed that the government is
+ours,--that the Nabob is nothing. It is avowed to foreign nations; and
+the disguise which we have put on, Mr. Hastings states, in his opinion,
+to be hurtful to the affairs of the Company. Here we perceive the exact
+and the perfect agreement between his character as a delicate
+affidavit-maker in a court of justice and his indelicate declarations
+upon the records of the Company for the information of the whole world
+concerning the real arcanum of the Bengal government.
+
+Now I cannot help praising his consistency upon this occasion, whether
+his policy was right or wrong. Hitherto we find the whole consistent, we
+find the affidavit perfectly supported. The inferences which delicacy at
+first prevented him from producing better recollection and more perfect
+policy made him here avow. In this state things continued. The Nabob,
+your Lordships see, is dead,--dead in law, dead in politics, dead in a
+court of justice, dead upon the records of the Company. Except in mere
+animal existence, it is all over with him.
+
+I have now to state to your Lordships, that Mr. Hastings, who has the
+power of putting even to death in this way, possesses likewise the art
+of restoring to life. But what is the medicine that revives them? Your
+Lordships, I am sure, will be glad to know what nostrum, not hitherto
+pretended to by quacks in physic, by quacks in politics, nor by quacks
+in law, will serve to revive this man, to cover his dead bones with
+flesh, and to give him life, activity, and vigor. My Lords, I am about
+to tell you an instance of a recipe of such infallible efficacy as was
+never before discovered. His cure for all disorders is disobedience to
+the commands of his lawful superiors. When the orders of the Court of
+Directors are contrary to his own opinions, he forgets them all. Let the
+Court of Directors but declare in favor of his own system and his own
+positions, and that very moment, merely for the purpose of declaring his
+right of rebellion against the laws of his country, he counteracts them.
+Then these dead bones arise,--or, to use a language more suitable to
+the dignity of the thing, Bayes's men are all revived. "Are these men
+dead?" asks Mr. Bayes's friend. "No," says he, "they shall all get up
+and dance immediately." But in this ludicrous view of Mr. Hastings's
+conduct, your Lordships must not lose sight of its great importance. You
+cannot have in an abstract, as it were, any one thing that better
+develops the principles of the man, that more fully develops all the
+sources of his conduct, and of all the frauds and iniquities which he
+has committed, in order at one and the same time to evade his duty to
+the Court of Directors, that is to say, to the laws of his country, and
+to oppress, crush, rob, and ill-treat the people that are under him.
+
+My Lords, you have had an account of the person who represented the
+Nabob's dignity, Mahomed Reza Khan; you have heard of the rank he bore,
+the sufferings that he went through, his trial and honorable acquittal,
+and the Company's order that the first opportunity should be taken to
+appoint him Naib Subah, or deputy of the Nabob, and more especially to
+represent him in the administering of justice. Your Lordships are also
+acquainted with what was done in consequence of those orders by the
+Council-General, in the restoration and reestablishment of the executive
+power in this person,--not in the poor Nabob, a poor, helpless,
+ill-bred, ill-educated boy, but in the first Mussulman of the country,
+who had before exercised the office of Naib Subah, or deputy
+viceroy,--in order to give some degree of support to the expiring honor
+and justice of that country. The majority, namely, General Clavering,
+Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, whose names, as I have before said,
+will, for obedience to the Company, fidelity to the laws, honor to
+themselves, and a purity untouched and unimpeached, stand distinguished
+and honored, in spite of all the corrupt and barking virulence of India
+against them,--these men, I say, obeyed the Company: they had no secret
+or fraudulent connection with Mahomed Reza Khan; but they reinstated him
+in his office.
+
+The moment that real death had carried away two of the most virtuous of
+this community, and that Mr. Hastings was thereby reestablished in his
+power, he returned to his former state of rebellion to the Company, and
+of fraud and oppression upon the people. And here we come to the
+revivificating medicine. I forgot to tell your Lordships, that this
+Nabob, whose letters were declared by a court of law, with his own
+approbation, to be in effect letters of the Governor-General and
+Council, concludes a formal application transmitted to them, and dated
+17th November, 1777, with a demand of the restoration of his rights. Mr.
+Hastings upon this enters the following minute:--
+
+     "The Nabob's demands are grounded upon positive rights, which will
+     not admit of a discussion; he has an incontestable right to the
+     management of his own household; he has an incontestable right to
+     the nizamut."
+
+My Lords, you have heard his affidavit, you have heard his avowed and
+recorded opinion. In direct defiance of both, because he wishes to make
+doubtful the orders of the Company and to evade his duty, he here makes
+without any delicacy a declaration, which if it be true, the affidavit
+is a gross perjury, let it be managed with what delicacy he pleases. The
+word _nizamut_, which he uses, may be unfamiliar to your Lordships. In
+India it signifies the whole executive government, though the word
+strictly means viceroyalty: all the princes of that country holding
+their dominions as representatives of the Mogul, the great nominal
+sovereign of the empire. To convince you that it does so, take his own
+explanation of it.
+
+     "It is his by inheritance: the adawlut and the foujdarry having
+     been repeatedly declared by the Company and by this government to
+     appertain to the nizamut. The adawlut, namely, the distribution of
+     civil justice, and the foujdarry, namely, the executive criminal
+     justice of that country, that is to say, the whole sovereign
+     government of the courts of justice, have been declared by the
+     Company to appertain to the nizamut."
+
+I beg of your Lordships to recollect, when you take into your
+consideration the charges of the House of Commons, that the person they
+accuse, and persons suborned by him, have never scrupled to be guilty,
+without sense of shame, of the most notorious falsehoods, the most
+glaring inconsistencies, and even of perjury itself; and that it is thus
+they make the power of the Company dead or alive, as best suits their
+own wicked, clandestine, and fraudulent purposes, and the great end of
+all their actions and all their politics plunder and peculation.
+
+I must here refer your Lordships to a minute of Mr. Francis's, which I
+recommend to your reading at large, and to your very serious
+recollection, in page 1086; because it contains a complete history of
+Mr. Hastings's conduct, and of its effects upon this occasion.
+
+And now to proceed.--The Nabob, in a subsequent application to the
+Company's government at Calcutta, desires that Munny Begum may be
+allowed to take on herself the whole administration of the affairs of
+the nizamut, (not the superiority in the administration of the affairs
+of the seraglio only, though this would have been a tyrannical
+usurpation of the power belonging to the legitimate mother of the
+Nabob,) without the interference of any person whatever; and he adds,
+that by this the Governor will give him complete satisfaction. In all
+fraudulent correspondence you are sure to find the true secret of it at
+last. It has been said by somebody, that the true sense of a letter is
+to be learnt from its postscript. But this matter is so clumsily
+managed, that, in contempt of all decency, the first thing the Nabob
+does is to desire he may be put into the hands of Munny Begum, and that
+without the interference of anybody whatever.
+
+The next letter, immediately following on the heels of the former, was
+received by the Council on the 12th of February, 1778. In this letter he
+desires that Mahomed Reza Khan may be removed from his office in the
+government; and he expresses his hopes, that, as he himself is now come
+to years of maturity, and by the blessing of God is not so devoid of
+understanding as to be incapable of conducting his affairs, he says, "I
+am therefore hopeful, from your favor and regard to justice, that you
+will deliver me from the authority of the aforesaid Mahomed Reza Khan,
+and give your permission that I take on myself the management of the
+adawlut and foujdarry." There is no doubt of this latter application, in
+contradiction to the former, having arisen from a suspicion that the
+appointment of Munny Begum would be too gross, and would shock the
+Council; and Mr. Hastings therefore orders the second letter to be
+written from the Nabob, in which he claims the powers of government for
+himself. Then follows a letter from the Governor-General, informing the
+Nabob that it had been agreed, that, his Excellency being now arrived at
+years of maturity, the control of his own household, and the courts
+dependent on the nizamut and foujdarry, should be placed in his hands;
+and Mahomed Reza Khan was directed at the same time to resign his
+authority to the Nabob.
+
+Here your Lordships see Munny Begum in effect completely invested with,
+and you will see how she has used her power: for I suppose your
+Lordships are sick of the name of Nabob, as a real actor in the
+government. You now see the true parties in the transaction,--namely,
+the lover, Warren Hastings, Esquire, and Munny Begum, the object of his
+passion and flame, to which he sacrifices as much as Antony ever did to
+Cleopatra. You see the object of his love and affection placed in the
+administration of the viceroyalty; you see placed at her disposal the
+administration of the civil judicature, and of the executory
+justice,--together with the salary which was intended for Mahomed Reza
+Khan.
+
+Your Lordships will be pleased to remember that this distribution of the
+Nabob's government was made in direct defiance of the orders of the
+Company. And as a further proof of this defiance, it will not escape
+your Lordships, that, before this measure was carried into execution,
+Mr. Barwell being one day absent from the Council, Mr. Hastings fell
+into a minority; and it was agreed, upon that occasion, that the whole
+affair should be referred home to the Court of Directors, and that no
+arrangement should be made till the Directors had given their opinion.
+Mr. Hastings, the very moment after Mr. Barwell's return to his seat in
+the Council, rescinds this resolution, which subjected the orders of the
+Court of Directors to their own reconsideration; and he hurries headlong
+and precipitately into the execution of his first determination. Your
+Lordships will also see in this act what sort of use Mr. Hastings made
+of the Council; and I have therefore insisted upon all these practices
+of the prisoner at your bar, because there is not one of them in which
+some principle of government is not wounded, if not mortally wounded.
+
+My Lords, we have laid before you the consequences of this proceeding.
+We have shown what passed within the walls of the seraglio, and what
+tyranny was exercised by this woman over the multitude of women there. I
+shall now show your Lordships in what manner she made use of her power
+over the _supreme judicature_, to peculate, and to destroy the country;
+and I shall adduce, as proofs of this abuse of her authority, the facts
+I am about to relate, and of which there is evidence before your
+Lordships.
+
+There was an ostensible man, named Sudder ul Huk Khan, placed there at
+the head of the administration of justice, with a salary of seven
+thousand pounds a year of the Company's money. This man, in a letter to
+the Governor-General and Council, received the 1st of September, 1778,
+says,--"His Highness himself [the Nabob] is not deficient in regard for
+me, but certain bad men have gained an ascendency over his temper, by
+whose instigation he acts." You will see, my Lords, how this poor man
+was crippled in the execution of his duty, and dishonored by the
+corruption of this woman and her eunuchs, to whom Mr. Hastings had given
+the supreme government, and with it an uncontrolled influence over all
+the dependent parts. After thus complaining of the slights he receives
+from the Nabob, he adds,--"Thus they cause the Nabob to treat me,
+sometimes with indignity, at others with kindness, just as they think
+proper to advise him: their view is, that, by compelling me to
+displeasure at such unworthy treatment, they may force me either to
+relinquish my station, or to join with them and act with their advice,
+and appoint creatures of their recommendation to the different offices,
+from which they might draw profit to themselves." In a subsequent letter
+to the Governor, Sudder ul Huk Khan says,--"The Begum's ministers,
+before my arrival, with the advice of their counsellors, caused the
+Nabob to sign a receipt, in consequence of which they received, at two
+different times, near fifty thousand rupees, in the name of the officers
+of the adawlut, foujdarry, &c., from the Company's sircar; and having
+drawn up an account current in the manner they wished, they got the
+Nabob to sign it, and then sent it to me." In the same letter he asserts
+that these people have the Nabob entirely in their power.
+
+Now I have only to remark to your Lordships, that the first and
+immediate operation of Mr. Hastings's regulation, which put everything
+into the hands of this wicked woman for her corrupt purposes, was, that
+the office of chief-justice was trampled upon and depraved, and made use
+of to plunder the Company of money, which was appropriated to their own
+uses,--and that the person ostensibly holding this office was forced to
+become the instrument in the hands of this wicked woman and her two
+wicked eunuchs. This, then, was the representation which the
+chief-justice made to Mr. Hastings, as one of the very first fruits of
+his new arrangement. I am now to tell you what his next step was. This
+same Mr. Hastings, who had made the Nabob master of everything and
+placed everything at his disposal, who had maintained that the Nabob was
+not to act a secondary part and to be a mere instrument in the hands of
+the Company, who had, as you have seen, revived the Nabob, now puts him
+to death again. He pretends to be shocked at these proceedings of the
+Nabob, and, not being able to prevent their coming before the Council of
+the Directors at home, he immediately took Sudder ul Huk Khan under his
+protection.
+
+Now your Lordships see Mr. Hastings appearing in his own character
+again,--exercising the power he had pretended to abdicate, whilst the
+Nabob sinks and subsides under him. He becomes the supporter of Sudder
+ul Huk Khan, now that the infamy of the treatment he received could no
+longer be concealed from the Council. On the 1st of September, 1778, the
+Governor informs the Nabob, "that it is highly expedient that Sudder ul
+Huk Khan should have full control in all matters relative to his office,
+and the sole appointment and dismission of the sudder and mofussil
+officers; and that his seal and signature should be authentic to all
+papers having relation to the business intrusted to him: I therefore
+intimate to you, that he should appoint and dismiss all the officers
+under him, and that your Excellency should not interfere in any one
+[way?]."
+
+The Nabob, in a letter to the Governor, received the 3d of September,
+1778, says,--"Agreeably to your pleasure, I have relinquished all
+concern with the affairs of the foujdarry and adawlut, leaving the
+entire management in Sudder ul Huk Khan's hands." Here you see the Nabob
+again reduced to his former state of subordination. This
+chief-justiceship, which was declared to be his inherent right, he is
+obliged to submit to the control of Mr. Hastings, and to declare that he
+will not interfere at all in a matter which Mr. Hastings had declared to
+be his incommunicable attribute. I do not say that Mr. Hastings
+interfered improperly. Certainly it was not fit that the highest court
+of justice in all Bengal should be made the instrument of the rapacity
+of a set of villains with a prostitute at their head: just as if a gang
+of thieves in England, with their prostitutes at their head, should
+seize the judge which ought to punish them, and endeavor to make use of
+his name in their iniquitous transactions. But your Lordships will find
+that Mr. Hastings is here acting a merely ostensible part, and that he
+has always a means of defeating privately what he declares publicly to
+be his intention. Your Lordships will see soon how this ended. Mr.
+Hastings gets the Nabob to give up all his authority over the
+chief-justice; but he says not one word of Munny Begum, the person who
+had the real authority in her hands, and who was not forbidden to
+interfere with him. Mr. Hastings's order is dated the 1st September,
+1778. On the 3d of September, the Nabob is said to have relinquished all
+concern with Sudder ul Huk Khan. In a letter received the 30th of
+September, (that is, about twenty-seven days after the date of Mr.
+Hastings's order,) you will see how this pretended order was managed.
+Sudder ul Huk Khan thus writes, in a letter received the 30th of
+September.
+
+     "Yatibar Ali Khan," (Munny Begum's chief eunuch,) "from the amount
+     of salaries of the officers of the adawlut and foujdarry, which
+     before my arrival he had received for two months from the sircar,
+     made disbursements according to his own pleasure. He had before
+     caused the sum of 7,400 rupees, on account of the price of mine and
+     my peshcar's khelauts, to be carried to account, and now
+     continually sends a man to demand from me 4,300 and odd rupees, as
+     a balance of the price of khelauts, and constantly presses me to
+     take it from the amount of the salaries of the officers of the
+     adawlut and foujdarry and send it to him; and I shall be under the
+     necessity of complying. I mention this for your information."
+
+My Lords, you see again how Mr. Hastings's pretended orders were obeyed.
+They were orders addressed to the Nabob, whom he knew to be nothing, and
+who could neither control or take the least share in the execution of
+them; but he leaves the thing loose as to Manny Begum and her eunuchs,
+who he knew could alone carry them into effect. Your Lordships see that
+the first use made of the restored authority of the Nabob was, under
+various pretences, to leave the salaries of the officers of government
+unprovided for, to rob the public treasury, and to give the Company's
+money to the eunuchs, who were acting in the manner I have stated to
+you.
+
+Information of these proceedings reaches Calcutta; a regular complaint
+from a person in the highest situation in the government is made, and
+the Governor-General is obliged again to take up the matter; and I
+shall now read to your Lordships a letter of the 10th of October, 1778,
+which contains a representation so pointed and so very just of the fatal
+effects which his interference in the administration of justice had
+produced as not to stand in need of any comment from me. It speaks too
+plainly to require any.
+
+
+     _The Governor-General's Letter to the Nabob_.
+
+     "At your Excellency's request I sent Sudder ul Huk Khan to take on
+     him the administration of the affairs of the adawlut and foujdarry,
+     and hoped by that means not only to have given satisfaction to your
+     Excellency, but that, through his abilities and experience, these
+     affairs would have been conducted in such manner as to have secured
+     the peace of the country and the happiness of the people; and it is
+     with the greatest concern I learn that this measure is so far from
+     being attended with the expected advantages, that the affairs both
+     of the foujdarry and adawlut are in the greatest confusion
+     imaginable, and daily robberies and murders are perpetrated
+     throughout the country. This is evidently owing to the want of a
+     proper authority in the person appointed to superintend them. I
+     therefore addressed your Excellency on the importance and delicacy
+     of the affairs in question, and of the necessity of lodging full
+     power in the hands of the person chosen to administer them, in
+     reply to which your Excellency expressed sentiments coincident with
+     mine; notwithstanding which, your dependants and people, actuated
+     by selfish and avaricious views, have by their interference so
+     impeded the business as to throw the whole country into a state of
+     confusion, from which nothing can retrieve it but an unlimited
+     power lodged in the hands of the superintendent. I therefore
+     request that your Excellency will give the strictest injunctions to
+     all your dependants not to interfere in any manner with any matter
+     relative to the affairs of the adawlut and foujdarry, and that you
+     will yourself relinquish all interference therein, and leave them
+     entirely to the management of Sudder ul Huk Khan. This is
+     absolutely necessary to restore the country to a state of
+     tranquillity; and if your Excellency has any plan to propose for
+     the management of the affairs in future, be pleased to communicate
+     it to me, and every attention shall be paid to give your Excellency
+     satisfaction."
+
+My Lords, I think I have read enough to you for our present
+purpose,--referring your Lordships for fuller information to your
+Minutes, page 1086, which I beg you to read with the greatest attention.
+
+I must again beg your Lordships to remark, that, though Mr. Hastings has
+the impudence still to pretend that he wishes for the restoration of
+order and justice in the country, yet, instead of writing to Munny Begum
+upon the business, whom he knew to be the very object complained of, and
+whose eunuchs are expressly mentioned in the complaint, he writes to the
+Nabob, whom he knew to be a pageant in his own court and government, and
+whose name was not even mentioned in this last complaint. Not one word
+is said, even in this letter to the Nabob, of Munny Begum or of her
+eunuchs. My Lords, when you consider his tacit support of the authors of
+the grievance, and his ostensible application for redress to the man
+who he knew never authorized and could not redress the grievance, you
+must conclude that he meant to keep the country in the same state for
+his own corrupt purposes. In this state the country in fact continued;
+Munny Begum and her eunuchs continued to administer and squander the
+Company's money, as well as the Nabob's; robberies and murders continued
+to prevail throughout the country. No appearance was left of order, law,
+or justice, from one end of Bengal to the other.
+
+The account of this state of things was received by the Court of
+Directors with horror and indignation. On the 27th of May, 1779, they
+write, as you will find in page 1063 of your printed Minutes, a letter
+to their government at Calcutta, condemning their proceedings and the
+removal of Mahomed Reza Khan, and they order that Munny Begum shall be
+displaced, and Mahomed Reza Khan restored again to the seat of justice.
+
+Mr. Francis, upon the arrival of these reiterated orders, moved in
+Council for an obedience to them. Mr. Hastings, notwithstanding he had
+before his eyes all the horrible consequences that attended his new
+arrangement, still resists that proposition. By his casting voice in the
+Council he counter-orders the orders of the Court of Directors, and
+sanctions a direct disobedience to their authority, by a resolution that
+Mahomed Reza Khan should not be restored to his employment, but that
+this Sudder ul Huk Khan, who still continued in the condition already
+described, should remain in the possession of his office. I say nothing
+of Sudder ul Huk Khan; he seems to be very well disposed to do his duty,
+if Mr. Hastings's arrangements had suffered him to do it; and indeed,
+if Mahomed Reza Khan had been reinstated, and no better supported by Mr.
+Hastings than Sudder ul Huk Khan, he could probably have kept the
+country in no better order, though, perhaps, his name, and the authority
+and weight which still adhered to him in some degree, might have had
+some influence.
+
+My Lords, you have seen his defiance of the Company; you have seen his
+defiance of all decency; you see his open protection of prostitutes and
+robbers of every kind ravaging Bengal; you have seen this defiance of
+the authority of the Court of Directors flatly, directly, and
+peremptorily persisted in to the last. Order after order was reiterated,
+but his disobedience arose with an elastic spring in proportion to the
+pressure that was upon it.
+
+My Lords, here there was a pause. The Directors had been disobeyed; and
+you might suppose that he would have been satisfied with this act of
+disobedience. My Lords, he was resolved to let the native governments of
+the country know that he despised the orders of the Court of Directors,
+and that, whenever he pretended to obey them, in reality he was resolved
+upon the most actual disobedience. An event now happened, the
+particulars of which we are not to repeat here. Disputes, conducted, on
+Mr. Francis's side, upon no other principle, that we can discover, but a
+desire to obey the Company's orders, and to execute his duty with
+fidelity and disinterestedness, had arisen between him and Mr. Hastings.
+Mr. Francis, about the time we have been speaking of, finding resistance
+was vain, reconciles himself to him,--but on the most honorable terms as
+a public man, namely, that he should continue to follow and obey the
+laws, and to respect the authority of the Court of Directors. Upon this
+reconciliation, it was agreed that Mahomed Reza Khan should be restored
+to his office. For this purpose Mr. Hastings enters a minute, and writes
+to the Nabob an ostensible letter. But your Lordships will here see an
+instance of what I said respecting a double current in all Mr.
+Hastings's proceedings. Even when he obeys or pretends to obey the
+Company's orders, there is always a private channel through which he
+defeats them all.
+
+
+     _Letter from Mr. Hastings to the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah, written
+     the 10th of February, 1780._
+
+     "The Company, whose orders are peremptory, have directed that
+     Mahomed Reza Khan shall be restored to the offices he held in
+     January, 1778. It is my duty to represent this to your Excellency,
+     and to recommend your compliance with their request, that Mahomed
+     Reza Khan may be invested with the offices assigned to him under
+     the nizamut by the Company."
+
+Your Lordships see here that Mr. Hastings informs the Nabob, that,
+having received peremptory orders from the Company, he restores and
+replaces Mahomed Reza Khan. Mahomed Reza Khan, then, is in
+possession,--and in possession by the best of all titles, the orders of
+the Company. But you will also see the manner in which he evades his
+duty, and vilifies in the eyes of these miserable country powers the
+authority of the Directors. He is prepared, as usual, with a defeasance
+of his own act; and the manner in which that defeasance came to our
+knowledge is this. We knew nothing of this private affair, till Mr.
+Hastings, in his answer before the House of Commons, finding it
+necessary to destroy the validity of some of his own acts, brought
+forward Sir John D'Oyly. He was brought forward before us, not as a
+witness in his own person for the defence of Mr. Hastings, but as a
+narrator who had been employed by Mr. Hastings as a member of that
+Council which, as you have heard, drew up his defence. My Lords, you
+have already seen the public agency of this business, you have heard
+read the public letter sent to the Nabob: there you see the ostensible
+part of the transaction. Now hear the banian, Sir John D'Oyly, give an
+account of his part in it, extracted from Mr. Hastings's defence before
+the House of Commons.
+
+     "I was appointed Resident [at the Court of the Nabob] on the
+     resignation of Mr. Byam Martin, in the month of January, 1780, and
+     took charge about the beginning of February of the same year. The
+     substance of the instructions I received was, to endeavor, by every
+     means in my power, to conciliate the good opinion and regard of the
+     Nabob and his family, that I might be able to persuade him to adopt
+     effectual measures for the better regulation of his expenses, which
+     were understood to have greatly exceeded his income; that I might
+     prevent his forming improper connections, or taking any steps
+     derogatory to his rank, and by every means in my power support his
+     credit and dignify in the eyes of the world; and with respect to
+     the various branches of his family, I was instructed to endeavor to
+     put a stop to the dissensions which had too frequently prevailed
+     amongst them. The Nabob, on his part, was recommended to pay the
+     same attention to my advice as he would have done to that of the
+     Governor-General in person. Some time, I think, in the month of
+     February of the same year, I received a letter from Mr. Hastings,
+     purporting that the critical situation of affairs requiring the
+     union and utmost exertion of every member of the government to give
+     vigor to the acts necessary for its relief, he had agreed to an
+     accommodation with Mr. Francis; but to effect this point he had
+     been under the necessity of making some painful sacrifices, and
+     particularly that of the restoration of Mahomed Reza Khan to the
+     office of Naib Subah, a measure which he knew must be highly
+     disagreeable to the Nabob, and which nothing but the urgent
+     necessity of the case should have led him to acquiesce in; that he
+     relied on me to state all these circumstances in the most forcible
+     manner to the Nabob, and to urge his compliance, assuring him that
+     it should not continue longer than until the next advices were
+     received from the Court of Directors."
+
+Here Mr. Hastings himself lets us into the secrets of his government. He
+writes an ostensible letter to the Nabob, declaring that what he does is
+in conformity to the orders of the Company. He writes a private letter,
+in which he directs his agent to assure the Nabob that what he had done
+was not in compliance with the orders of the Company, but in consequence
+of the arrangement he had made with Mr. Francis, which arrangement he
+thought necessary for the support of his own personal power. His design,
+in thus explaining the transaction to the Nabob, was in order to
+prevent the native powers from looking to any other authority than his,
+and from having the least hopes of redress of their complaints from the
+justice of this country or from any legal power in it. He therefore
+tells him that Mahomed Reza Khan was replaced, not in obedience to the
+orders of the Company, but to gratify Mr. Francis. If he quarrels with
+Mr. Francis, he makes that a reason for disobeying the orders of his
+masters; if he agrees with him, he informs the people concerned in the
+transaction, privately, that he acts, not in consequence of the orders
+that he has received, but from other motives. But that is not all. He
+promises that he will take the first opportunity to remove Mahomed Reza
+Khan from his office again. Thus the country is to be re-plunged into
+the same distracted and ruined state in which it was before. And all
+this is laid open fully and distinctly before you. You have it on the
+authority of Sir John D'Oyly. Sir John D'Oyly is a person in the secret;
+and one man who is in the secret is worth a thousand ostensible persons.
+
+Mahomed Reza Khan, I must now tell you, was accordingly reinstated in
+all his offices, and the Nabob was reduced to the situation, as Mr.
+Hastings upon another occasion describes it, of a mere cipher. But mark
+what followed,--mark what this Sir John D'Oyly is made to tell you, or
+what Mr. Hastings tells you for him: for whether Sir John D'Oyly has
+written this for Mr. Hastings, or Mr. Hastings for Sir John D'Oyly, I do
+not know; because they seem, as somebody said of two great friends, that
+they had but one will, one bed, and one hat between them. These
+gentlemen who compose Mr. Hastings's Council have but one style of
+writing among them; so that it is impossible for you to determine by
+which of the masters of this Roman school any paper was
+written,--whether by D'Oyly, by Shore, or by Hastings, or any other of
+them. They have a style in common, a kind of bank upon which they have a
+general credit; and you cannot tell to whose account anything is to be
+placed.
+
+But to proceed.--Sir John D'Oyly says there, that the Nabob is reduced
+again to a cipher. Now hear what he afterwards says. "About the month of
+June, 1781, Mr. Hastings, being then at Moorshedabad, communicated to me
+his intention of performing his promise to the Nabob, by restoring him
+to the management of his own affairs,"--that is to say, by restoring
+Munny Begum again, and by turning out Mahomed Reza Khan. Your Lordships
+see that he communicated privately his intentions to Sir John D'Oyly,
+without communicating one word of them to his colleagues in the Supreme
+Council, and without entering any minute in the records of the Council,
+by which it could be known to the Directors.
+
+Lastly, in order to show you in what manner the Nabob was to be restored
+to his power, I refer your Lordships to the order he gave to Sir John
+D'Oyly for investigating the Nabob's accounts, and for drawing up
+articles of instructions for the Nabob's conduct in the management of
+his affairs. You will there see clearly how he was restored: that is to
+say, that he was taken out of the hands of the first Mussulman in that
+country, the man most capable of administering justice, and whom the
+Company had expressly ordered to be invested with that authority, and to
+put him into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly. Is Sir John D'Oyly a
+Mussulman? Is Sir John D'Oyly fit to be at the head of such a
+government? What was there that any person could see about him, that
+entitled him to or made him a fit person to be intrusted with this
+power, in defiance of the Company's orders? And yet Mahomed Reza Khan,
+who was to have the management of the Nabob's affairs, was himself put
+under the most complete and perfect subjection to this Sir John D'Oyly.
+But, in fact, Munny Begum had the real influence in everything. Sir John
+D'Oyly himself was only Mr. Hastings's instrument there to preserve it,
+and between them they pillaged the Nabob in the most shocking manner,
+and must have done so to the knowledge of Mr. Hastings. A letter written
+at this time by Mr. Hastings to the Nabob discovers the secret beyond
+all power of evasion.
+
+
+     _Instructions from the Governor-General to the Nabob Mobarek ul
+     Dowlah, respecting his Conduct in the Management of his Affairs._
+
+     "9th. These I make the conditions of the compliance which the
+     Governor-General and Council have yielded to your late requisition.
+     It is but just that you should possess what is your acknowledged
+     right; but their intention would be defeated, and you would be in a
+     worse situation, if you were to be left a prey, without a guide,
+     until you have acquired experience, (which, to the strength and
+     goodness of your understanding, will be the work but of a short
+     period,) to the rapacity, frauds, and artifices of mankind. You
+     have offered to give up the sum of four lacs of rupees to be
+     allowed the free use of the remainder of your stipend. This we have
+     refused, because it would be contrary to justice. You should
+     consider this as a proof of the sincerity of the above
+     arrangements which have been recommended to you, and of their
+     expediency to your real interests; and your attention to them will
+     be a means of reconciling the Company to the resolution which we
+     have taken, and which will be reported to them in a light very
+     hurtful both to you and to us, if an improper effect should attend
+     it. These I have ordered Sir John D'Oyly to read in your presence,
+     and to explain them to you, that no part of them may escape your
+     notice; and he has my positive orders to remonstrate to you against
+     every departure from them. Upon all these occasions, I hope and
+     expect that you will give him a particular and cordial attention,
+     and regard what he shall say as if said by myself; for I know him
+     to be a person of the strictest honor and integrity. I have a
+     perfect reliance on him; and you cannot have a more attached or
+     more disinterested counsellor. Although I desire to receive your
+     letters frequently, yet, as many matters will occur which cannot so
+     easily be explained by letter as by conversation, I desire that you
+     will on such occasions give your orders to him respecting such
+     points as you may desire to have imparted to me; and I, postponing
+     every other concern, will give you an immediate and the most
+     satisfactory reply concerning them."
+
+My Lords, here is a man who is to administer his own affairs, who has
+arrived at sufficient age to supersede the counsel and advice of the
+great Mahometan doctors and the great nobility of the country, and he is
+put under the most absolute guardianship of Sir John D'Oyly. But Mr.
+Hastings has given Sir John D'Oyly a great character. I cannot confirm
+it, because I can confirm the character of none of Mr. Hastings's
+instruments. They must stand forth here, and defend their own character
+before you.
+
+Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to another circumstance in
+this transaction. You see here 40,000_l._ a year offered by this man for
+his redemption. "I will give you," he says, "40,000_l._ a year to have
+the management of my own affairs." Good heavens! Here is a man, who,
+according to Mr. Hastings's assertion, had an indisputable right to the
+management of his own affairs, but at the same time was notoriously so
+little fit to have the management of them as to be always under some
+corrupt tyranny or other, offers 40,000_l._ a year out of his own
+revenues to be left his own master, and to be permitted to have the
+disposal of the remainder. Judge you of the bribery, rapine, and
+peculation which here stare you in the face. Judge of the nature and
+character of that government for the management of which 40,000_l._, out
+of 160,000_l._ a year of its revenue, is offered by a subordinate to the
+supreme authority of the country. This offer shows that at this time the
+Nabob had it not himself. Who had it? Sir John D'Oyly; he is brought
+forward as the person to whom is given the management of the whole.
+Munny Begum had the management before. But, whether it be an Englishman,
+a Mussulman, a white man or a black man, a white woman or a black woman,
+it is all Warren Hastings.
+
+With respect to the four lacs of rupees, he gets Sir John D'Oyly, in the
+narrative that he makes before the House of Commons, positively to deny
+in the strongest manner, and he says the Nabob would give oath of it,
+that the Nabob never gave a commission to any one to make such an
+offer. That such an offer was made had been long published and long in
+print, with the remarks such as I have made upon it in the Ninth Report
+of the Select Committee; that the Committee had so done was well known
+to Mr. Hastings and Sir John D'Oyly; not one word on the part of Mr.
+Hastings, not one word on the part of Sir John D'Oyly was said to
+contradict it, until the appearance of the latter before the House of
+Commons. But, my Lords, there is something much more serious in this
+transaction. It is this,--that the evidence produced by Mr. Hastings is
+the evidence of witnesses who are mere phantoms; they are persons who
+could not, under Mr. Hastings's government, eat a bit of bread but upon
+his own terms, and they are brought forward to give such evidence as may
+answer his purposes.
+
+You would naturally have imagined, that, in the House of Commons, where
+clouds of witnesses had been before produced by the friends and agents
+of Mr. Hastings, he would then have brought forward Sir John to
+contradict this reported offer; but not a word from Sir John D'Oyly. At
+last he is examined before the Committee of Managers. He refuses to
+answer. Why? Because his answers might criminate himself. My Lords,
+every answer that most of them have been required to make they are
+sensible they cannot make without danger of criminating themselves,
+being all involved in the crimes of the prisoner. He has corrupted and
+ruined the whole service; there is not one of them that dares appear and
+give a fair and full answer in any case, as you have seen in Mr.
+Middleton, and many others at your bar. "I will not answer this
+question," they say, "because it tends to criminate myself." How comes
+it that the Company's servants are not able to give evidence in the
+affairs of Mr. Hastings, without its tending to criminate themselves?
+
+Well,--Sir John D'Oyly is in England,--why is he not called now? I have
+not the honor of being intimately acquainted with him, but he is a man
+of a reputable and honorable family. Why is he not called by Mr.
+Hastings to verify the assertion, and why do they suffer this black
+record to stand before your Lordships to be urged by us, and to press it
+as we do against him? If he knows that Sir John D'Oyly can acquit him of
+this part of our accusation, he would certainly bring him as a witness
+to your bar; but he knows he cannot. When, therefore, I see upon your
+records that Sir John D'Oyly and Mr. Hastings received such an offer for
+the redemption of the Nabob's affairs out of their hands, I conclude,
+first, that at the time of this offer the Nabob had not the disposal of
+his own affairs,--and, secondly, that those who had the disposal of them
+disposed of them so corruptly and prodigally that he thought they could
+hardly be redeemed at too high a price. What explanation of this matter
+has been attempted? There is no explanation given of it at all. It
+stands clear, full, bare in all its nakedness before you. They have not
+attempted to produce the least evidence against it. Therefore in that
+state I leave it with you; and I shall only add, that Mr. Hastings
+continued to make Munny Begum the first object of his attention, and
+that, though he could not entirely remove Mahomed Reza Khan from the
+seat of justice, he was made a cipher in it. All his other offices were
+taken out of his hands and put into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly,
+directly contrary to the orders of the Company, which certainly implied
+the restitution of Mahomed Reza Khan to all the offices which he had
+before held. He was stripped of everything but a feeble administration
+of justice, which, I take for granted, could not, under the
+circumstances, have been much better in his hands than it had been in
+Sudder ul Huk Khan's.
+
+Mr. Hastings's protection of this woman continued to the last; and when
+he was going away, on the 3d of November, 1783, he wrote a sentimental
+letter to the Court of Directors in her praise. This letter was
+transmitted without having been communicated to the Council. You have
+heard of delicate affidavits; here you have a sentimental official
+despatch: your Lordships will find it in page 1092 and 1093 of your
+printed Minutes. He writes in such a delicate, sentimental strain of
+this woman, that I will venture to say you will not find in all the
+"Arcadia," in all the novels and romances that ever were published, an
+instance of a greater, a more constant, and more ardent affection,
+defying time, ugliness, and old age, did ever exist, than existed in Mr.
+Hastings towards this old woman, Munny Begum. As cases of this kind,
+cases of gallantry abounding in sentimental expressions, are rare in the
+Company's records, I recommend it as a curiosity to your Lordships'
+reading, as well as a proof of what is the great spring and movement of
+all the prisoner's actions. On this occasion he thus speaks of Munny
+Begum.
+
+     "She, too, became the victim of your policy, and of the resentments
+     which succeeded. Something, too, she owed of the source of her
+     misfortunes to the belief of the personal gratitude which she
+     might entertain for the public attention which I had shown to her.
+     Yet, exposed as she was to a treatment which a ruffian would have
+     shuddered at committing, and which no recollection of past enmities
+     shall compel me to believe, even for a moment, proceeded from any
+     commission of authority, she still maintained the decorum of her
+     character; nor even then, nor before, nor since that period, has
+     the malice of calumny ever dared to breathe on her
+     reputation."--Delicate! sentimental!--"Pardon, honorable Sirs, this
+     freedom of expostulation. I must in honest truth repeat, that your
+     commands laid the first foundation of her misfortunes; to your
+     equity she has now recourse through me for their alleviation, that
+     she may pass the remainder of her life in a state which may at
+     least efface the remembrance of the years of her affliction; and to
+     your humanity she and an unseen multitude of the most helpless of
+     her sex cry for subsistence."
+
+Moving and pathetic!--I wish to recommend every word of this letter to
+your Lordships' consideration, as a model and pattern of perfection.
+Observe his pity for a woman who had suffered such treatment from the
+servants of the Company (a parcel of ruffians!)--treatment that a
+ruffian would be ashamed of! Your Lordships have seen, in the evidence,
+what this ruffianism was. It was neither more nor less than what was
+necessary in order to get at the accounts, which she concealed, as his
+own corrupt transactions. She was told, indeed, that she must privately
+remove to another house whilst her papers were examining. Mr. Hastings
+can never forget this. He cannot believe that anybody dare send such an
+order; and he calls upon you to consider the helplessness of their sex,
+and the affronts offered to women.
+
+For Heaven's sake, my Lords, recollect the manner in which Mr. Hastings
+and his creatures treated the Begums of Oude, and consider that this
+woman was only threatened (for the threat was never attempted to be
+executed) that she must, if she did not deliver up the accounts,
+probably be removed to another house, and leave the accounts behind her.
+This blot can never be effaced; and for this he desires the Court of
+Directors to make her a large allowance to comfort her in her old age.
+In this situation Mr. Hastings leaves her. He leaves in the situation I
+have described the justice of the country. The only concern he has at
+parting is, that this woman may have a large allowance.
+
+But I have yet to tell your Lordships, and it appears upon your printed
+Minutes, that this woman had a way of comforting herself:--for old
+ladies of that description, who have passed their youth in amusements,
+in dancing, and in gallantries, in their old age are apt to take comfort
+in brandy. This lady was a smuggler, and had influence enough to avoid
+payment of the duty on spirits, in which article she is the largest
+dealer in the district,--as, indeed, she is in almost every species of
+trade. Thus your Lordships see that this sentimental lady, whom Mr.
+Hastings recommends to the Directors, had ways of comforting herself.
+She carried on, notwithstanding her dignity, a trade in spirits. Now a
+Mahometan of distinction never carries on any trade at all,--it is an
+unknown thing,--very few Mahometans of any rank carry on any trade at
+all; but that a Mahometan should carry on a trade in spirits is a
+prodigy never heard of before; for a woman of quality, for a woman of
+sentiment, to become a dealer in spirits is, my Lords, a thing reserved
+for the sentimental age of Mr. Hastings; and I will venture to say that
+no man or woman could attempt any such a trade in India, without being
+dishonored, ruined in character, and disgraced by it. But she appears
+not only to have been a dealer in it, but, through the influence which
+Mr. Hastings gave her, to have monopolized the trade in brandy, and to
+have evaded the duties. This, then, is the state in which we leave the
+two sentimental lovers,--the one consoling herself with brandy, the
+other wheedling and whining; and, as Swift describes the progress of an
+intrigue in some respects similar, which he calls "The Progress of
+Love," whereas this is the Progress of Sentiment,
+
+    "They keep at Staines the Old Blue Boar,
+    Are cat and dog, and rogue and whore."
+
+Here they set up the sign of the Old Blue Boar. Munny Begum monopolizes
+the trade in spirits; and hence she and Mr. Hastings commence their
+sentimental correspondence.--And now, having done with this progress of
+love, we return to the progress of justice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have seen how Sudder ul Huk Khan, the chief-justice of Mr. Hastings's
+own nomination, was treated. Now you shall see how justice was left to
+shift for herself under Mahomed Reza Khan. In page 1280 of your
+Lordships' Minutes you will see the progress of all these
+enormities,--of Munny Begum's dealing in spirits, of her engrossing the
+trade, of her evading duties,--and, lastly, the extinction of all order
+in that country, and the funeral of justice itself. Mr. Shore's evidence
+respecting this state of the country will admit of no doubt.
+
+
+     _Mr. Shore's Remarks accompanying the Governor-General's Minutes of
+     the 18th May, 1785._
+
+     "Foujdarry jurisdiction.--Of the foujdarry jurisdiction nothing has
+     yet been said. In this department criminal justice is administered,
+     and it is the only office left to the Nabob. I do not see any
+     particular reason for changing the system itself, and perhaps it
+     would on many accounts be improper; but some regulations are highly
+     necessary. Mahomed Reza is at the head of this department, and is
+     the only person I know in the country qualified for it. If he were
+     left to himself, I have not a doubt but he would conduct it well;
+     but he is so circumscribed by recommendations of particular
+     persons, and by the protection held out to his officers by
+     Europeans, that to my knowledge he has not been able to punish
+     them, even when they have been convicted of the greatest
+     enormities; and he has often on this account been blamed, where his
+     hands were tied up."
+
+My Lords, you now see in this minute of Sir John Shore, now
+Governor-General of Bengal, one of Mr. Hastings's own committee for
+drawing up his defence, the review which he had just then taken of the
+ruins of the government which had been left to him by Mr. Hastings. You
+see here not the little paltry things which might deserve in their
+causes the animadversion of a rough satirist like Doctor Swift, whom I
+have just quoted, but you see things ten thousand times more serious,
+things that deserve the thunderbolt of vindictive justice upon the head
+of the prisoner at your bar. For you see, that, after he had ostensibly
+restored Mahomed Reza Khan, the man who could and would have executed
+his office with fidelity and effect, the man who was fit for and
+disposed to do his duty, there was still neither law, order, nor justice
+in the country. Why? Because of the interposition of Europeans, and men
+who must have been patronized and supported by Europeans. All this
+happened before Mr. Hastings's departure: so that the whole effect of
+the new arrangement of government was known to him before he left
+Calcutta. The same pretended remedy was applied. But in fact he left
+this woman in the full possession of her power. His last thoughts were
+for her; for the justice of the country, for the peace and security of
+the people of Bengal, he took no kind of care; these great interests
+were left to the mercy of the woman and her European associates.
+
+My Lords, I have taken some pains in giving you this history. I have
+shown you his open acts and secret stratagems, in direct rebellion to
+the Court of Directors,--his double government, his false pretences of
+restoring the Nabob's independence, leading in effect to a most servile
+dependence, even to the prohibition of the approach of any one, native
+or European, near him, but through the intervention of Sir John D'Oyly.
+I therefore again repeat it, that Sir John D'Oyly, and the English
+gentlemen who were patronized and countenanced by Mr. Hastings, had
+wrought all that havoc in the country before Mr. Hastings left it.
+
+I have particularly dwelt upon the administration of justice, because I
+consider it as the source of all good, and the maladministration of it
+as the source of all evil in the country. Your Lordships have heard how
+it was totally destroyed by Mr. Hastings through Sir John D'Oyly, who
+was sent there by him for the purpose of forming a clandestine
+government of corruption and peculation. This part of our charge speaks
+for itself, and I shall dismiss it with a single observation,--that not
+the least trace of an account of all these vast sums of money delivered
+into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly for the use of the Nabob appears in
+any part of the Company's records. The undeniable inferences to be drawn
+from this fact are, first, that, wherever we find concealment of money,
+and the ceasing of an account, there has been fraud,--and, secondly,
+that, if we find this concealment accompanied with the devastation of a
+country, and the extinction of justice in it, that devastation of the
+country and that extinction of justice have been the result of that
+fraudulent peculation.
+
+I am sure your Lordships will not think that a charge of the
+annihilation of administrative justice, in which the happiness and
+prosperity of a great body of nobility, of numerous ancient and
+respectable families, and of the inhabitants in general of extensive and
+populous provinces are concerned, can, if it stood single and alone, be
+a matter of trifling moment. And in favor of whom do all these
+sacrifices appear to have been made? In favor of an old prostitute, who,
+if shown to your Lordships here, like Helen to the counsellors of Troy,
+would not, I think, be admitted to have charms that could palliate this
+man's abominable conduct; you would not cry out with them,--
+
+    [Greek: Ou nemesis, ...
+            Toied' amphi gunaiki polun chronon algea paschein.]
+
+For I will fairly say that there are some passions that have their
+excuses; but the passion towards this woman was the passion of avarice
+and rapacity only,--a passion, indeed, which lasted to the end of his
+government, and for which he defied the orders of the Court of
+Directors, rebelled against his masters, and finally subverted the
+justice of a great country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, I have done with this business. I come next to the third
+division of the natives, those who form the landed interest of the
+country. A few words only will be necessary upon this part of the
+subject. The fact is, that Mr. Hastings, at one stroke, put up the
+property of all the nobility and gentry, and of all the freeholders, in
+short, the whole landed interest of Bengal, to a public auction, and let
+it to the highest bidder. I will make no observations upon the nature of
+this measure to your Lordships, who represent so large a part of the
+dignity, together with so large a part of the landed interest of this
+kingdom: though I think, that, even under your Lordships' restrictive
+order, I am entitled so to do; because we have examined some witnesses
+upon this point, in the revenue charge. Suffice it to say, that it is in
+evidence before your Lordships that this sale was ordered. Mr. Hastings
+does not deny it. He says, indeed, he did it not with an ill intention.
+My answer is, that it could have been done with no other than a bad
+intention. The owners of the land had no way left to save themselves but
+to become farmers of their own estates; and from the competition which
+naturally took place, (and he himself declared, that the persons,
+whether owners or strangers, to whom he let the lands, had agreed to
+rents which surpassed their abilities to pay,) I need not tell you what
+must have been the consequence, when it got into such rapacious hands,
+and was taken out of the hands of its natural proprietors: that the
+public revenue had sunk and lost by it, and that the country was wasted
+and destroyed. I leave it to your Lordships' own meditation and
+reflection; and I shall not press it one step further than just to
+remind you of what has been so well opened and pressed by my fellow
+Managers. He, Mr. Hastings, confesses that he let the lands to his own
+banians; he took his own domestic servants and put them in the houses of
+the nobility of the country; and this he did in direct violation of an
+express order made by himself, that no banian of a collector (the spirit
+of which order implied ten thousand times more strongly the exclusion of
+any banians of a Governor-General) should have any one of those farms.
+We also find that he made a regulation that no farmers should rent more
+than a lac of rupees; but at the same time we find his banians holding
+several farms to more than that amount. In short, we find that in every
+instance, where, under some plausible pretence or other, the fixed
+regulations are violated, it touches him so closely as to make it
+absolutely impossible not to suppose that he himself had the advantage
+of it.
+
+For, in the first place, you have proof that he does take bribes, and
+that he has corrupt dealings. This is what he admits; but he says that
+he has done it from public-spirited motives. Now there is a rule,
+formed upon a just, solid presumption of law, that, if you find a man
+guilty of one offence contrary to known law, whenever there is a
+suspicious case against him of the same nature, the _onus probandi_ that
+he is not guilty is turned upon him. Therefore, when I find the
+regulations broken,--when I find farms given of more than a lac of
+rupees,--when I find them given to the Governor-General's own banian,
+contrary to the principle of the regulation, contrary, I say, in the
+strongest way to it,--when I find that he accumulates farms beyond the
+regulated number,--when I find all these things done, and besides that
+the banian has great balances of account against him,--then, by the
+presumption of law, I am bound to believe that all this was done, not
+for the servants, but for the master.
+
+It is possible Mr. Hastings might really be in love with Munny Begum; be
+it so,--many great men have played the fool for prostitutes, from Mark
+Antony's days downwards; but no man ever fell in love with his own
+banian. The persons for whom Mr. Hastings was guilty of all this rapine
+and oppression have neither relations nor kindred whom they own, nor
+does any trace of friendship exist among them; they do not live in
+habits of intimacy with any one; they are good fellows and
+bottle-companions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I must now proceed to observe upon another matter which has been stated
+to your Lordships,--namely, that, as soon as he obtained the majority in
+the Council, (that beginning of all evils, that opening of Pandora's
+box,) by the death of General Clavering and Colonel Monson, the first
+thing he did was to appoint a commission, called an _aumeeny_, to go
+through the whole country, to enter every man's house, to examine his
+title-deeds, and to demand his papers of accounts of every kind, for the
+purpose of enabling himself to take advantage of the hopes and fears of
+all the parties concerned, and thus to ravage and destroy all their
+property.
+
+And whom does he place at the head of this commission, to be the manager
+of the whole affair? Gunga Govind Sing, another banian of his, and one
+of his own domestic servants. This we have discovered lately, and not
+without some surprise; for though I knew he kept a rogue in his house,
+yet I did not think that it was a common receptacle of thieves and
+robbers. I did not know till lately that this Gunga Govind Sing was his
+domestic servant; but Mr. Hastings, in a letter to the Court of
+Directors, calls him his faithful domestic servant, and as such calls
+upon the Company to reward him. To this banian all the Company's
+servants are made subject; they are bound to obey all his orders, and
+those of his committee. I hope I need not tell your Lordships what sort
+of stuff this committee was made of, by which Gunga Govind Sing was
+enabled to ravage the whole country.
+
+But, say his counsel, Mr. Hastings thought that the value of the lands
+was thoroughly known; they had been investigated three times over, and
+they were all let by public auction to the highest bidder.--This may or
+may not be a true test of their value; but it is a test which, as it led
+to the almost entire confiscation of the landed interest of Bengal,
+Bahar, and Orissa, three great kingdoms, by a dash of that man's pen,
+into the hands of his banians and creatures, I can never think of it,
+or of its author, without horror.
+
+Some people say, you ought to hate the crime and love the criminal. No,
+that is the language of false morality; you ought to hate the crime and
+the criminal, if the crime is of magnitude. If the crime is a small one,
+then you ought to be angry with the crime and reluctant to punish the
+criminal; but when there are great crimes, then you may hate them
+together. What! am I to love Nero? to fall in love with Heliogabalus? is
+Domitian to be the subject of my affection? No, we hate the crime, and
+we hate the criminal ten times more; and if I use indignant language, if
+I use the language of scorn and horror with respect to the criminal, I
+use the language that becomes me.
+
+But, says one of the counsel, the Company might possess a knowledge of
+the country in general, but they could not know every _bega_, of it,
+(about the third part of an acre of land,) without such a commission.
+That is to say, you could not squeeze everything out of the people,
+without ordering such a villain as Gunga Govind Sing, (I call things, by
+their names,) that most atrocious and wicked instrument of the most
+atrocious and wicked tyranny, to examine every man's papers, to oblige
+every man to produce his titles and accounts upon pain of criminal
+punishment, to be inflicted at the discretion of this commissioner, this
+Gunga Govind Sing. For an account of these acts, and for a description
+of an aumeeny, I refer your Lordships to the evidence in your Minutes,
+from page 1287 to 1301; and I pass on, expressing only my horror and
+detestation at it, and wishing to kindle in your Lordships' minds the
+same horror and detestation of it.
+
+Thus you see that Mr. Hastings was not satisfied with confiscation only.
+He comes just afterwards with a blister upon the sore. He lets loose
+another set of ravagers and inquisitors upon them, under Gunga Govind
+Sing, and these poor people are ravaged by the whole tribe of Calcutta
+banians.
+
+Mr. Hastings has himself defined an aumeen in page 1022, where he states
+that Nundcomar desired him to make his son an aumeen. "The promise which
+he [Nundcomar] says I made him, that he should be constituted aumeen,
+that is, inquisitor-general over the whole country, and that I would
+delegate to him my whole power and influence, is something more than a
+negative falsehood." He justly and naturally reprobates the proposition
+of appointing an inquisitor-general over the whole country; and yet we
+see him afterwards appointing Gunga Govind Sing such an
+inquisitor-general over the whole country, in order that a bega of land
+should not escape him.
+
+Let us see how all this ended, and what it is that leads me directly to
+the presumption of corruption against him in this wicked _aumeeny_
+scheme. Now I will admit the whole scheme to have been well intended, I
+will forgive the letting all the lands of Bengal by public auction, I
+will forgive all he has done with regard to his banians, I shall forgive
+him even this commission itself, if he will show your Lordships that
+there was the smallest use made of it with regard to the settlement of
+the revenues of the Company. If there was not, then there is obviously
+one use only that could be made of it, namely, to put all the people of
+the whole country under obedience to Gunga Govind Sing. What, then, was
+done? Titles and accounts were exacted; the estimate was made, acre by
+acre; but we have not been able to find one word on their records of any
+return that was made to the Company of this investigation, or of any
+settlement or assessment of the country founded upon it, or of any
+regulation that was established upon it. Therefore, as an honest man,
+and as a man who is standing here for the Commons of Great Britain, I
+must not give way to any idle doubts and ridiculous suppositions. I
+cannot, I say, entertain any doubts that the only purpose it was
+designed to answer was to subject the whole landed interest of the
+country to the cruel inquisition of Gunga Govind Sing, and to the cruel
+purposes of Mr. Hastings. Show me another purpose and I will give up the
+argument: for if there are two ways of accounting for the same act, it
+is possible it may be attributed to the better motive; but when we see
+that a bad thing was done under pretence of some good, we must attach a
+bad motive to it, if the pretence be never fulfilled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have now done with the landed interest of Bengal. I have omitted much
+which might have been pressed upon your Lordships, not from any
+indisposition to remark upon the matter more fully, but because it has
+been done already by abler persons; I only wished to make some practical
+inferences, which, perhaps, in the hurry of my brother Managers, might
+possibly have escaped them; I wished to show you that one system of
+known or justly presumed corruption pervades the whole of this business,
+from one end to the other. Having thus disposed of the native landed
+interest, and the native zemindars or landholders of the country, I pass
+to the English government.
+
+My Lords, when we have shown plainly the utter extinction of the native
+Mahometan government, when we have shown the extinction of the native
+landed interest, what hope can there be for that afflicted country but
+in the servants of the Company? When we have shown the corrupt state of
+that service, what hope but from the Court of Directors, what hope but
+in the superintending control of British tribunals? I think as well of
+the body of my countrymen as any man can do. I do not think that any man
+sent out to India is sent with an ill purpose, or goes out with bad
+dispositions. No: I think the young men who go there are fair and
+faithful representatives of the people of the same age,--uncorrupted,
+but corruptible from their age, as we all are. They are sent there
+young. There is but one thing held out to them,--"You are going to make
+your fortune." The Company's service is to be the restoration of decayed
+noble families; it is to be the renovation of old, and the making of new
+ones. Now, when such a set of young men are sent out with these hopes
+and views, and with little education, or a very imperfect one,--when
+these people, from whatever rank of life selected, many from the best,
+most from the middling, very few from the lowest, but, high, middling,
+or low, they are sent out to make two things coincide which the wit of
+man was never able to unite, to make their fortune and form their
+education at once. What is the education of the generality of the world?
+Reading a parcel of books? No. Restraint of discipline, emulation,
+examples of virtues and of justice, form the education of the world. If
+the Company's servants have not that education, and are left to give
+loose to their natural passions, some would be corrupt of course, and
+some would be uncorrupt; but probably the majority of them would be
+inclined to pursue moderate courses between these two. Now I am to show
+you that Mr. Hastings left these servants but this alternative: "Be
+starved, be depressed, be ruined, disappoint the hopes of your families,
+or be my slaves, be ready to be subservient to me in every iniquity I
+shall order you to commit, and to conceal everything I shall wish you to
+conceal." This was the state of the service. Therefore the Commons did
+well and wisely, when they sent us here, not to attack this or that
+servant who may have peculated, but to punish the man who was sent to
+reform abuses, and to make Bengal furnish to the world a brilliant
+example of British justice.
+
+I shall now proceed to state briefly the abuses of the Company's
+government,--to show you what Mr. Hastings was expected to do for their
+reformation, and what he actually did do; I shall then show your
+Lordships the effects of the whole.
+
+I shall begin by reading to your Lordships an extract from the
+Directors' letter to Bengal, of the 10th April, 1773.
+
+     "We wish we could refute the observation, that almost every attempt
+     made by us and our administrations at your Presidency for the
+     reforming of abuses has rather increased them, and added to the
+     miseries of the country we are so anxious to protect and cherish.
+     The truth of this observation appears fully in the late appointment
+     of supervisors and chiefs. Instituted as they were, to give relief
+     to the industrious tenants, to improve and enlarge our investments,
+     to destroy monopolies and retrench expenses, the end has by no
+     means been answerable to the institution. Are not the tenants more
+     than ever oppressed and wretched? Are our investments improved?
+     Have not the raw silk and cocoons been raised upon us fifty per
+     cent in price? We can hardly say what has not been made a monopoly.
+     And as to the expenses of your Presidency, they are at length
+     swelled to a degree we are no longer able to support. These facts
+     (for such they are) should have been stated to us as capital
+     reasons why neither our orders of 1771, nor indeed any regulations
+     whatever, could be carried into execution. But, perhaps, as this
+     would have proved too much, it was not suggested to us; for nothing
+     could more plainly indicate a state of anarchy, and that there was
+     no government existing in our servants in Bengal."
+
+     "And therefore, when oppression pervades the whole country, when
+     youths have been suffered with impunity to exercise sovereign
+     jurisdiction over the natives, and to acquire rapid fortunes by
+     monopolizing of commerce, it cannot be a wonder to us or
+     yourselves, that dadney merchants do not come forward to contract
+     with the Company, that the manufactures find their way through
+     foreign channels, or that our investments are at once enormously
+     dear and of a debased quality.
+
+     "It is evident that the evils which have been so destructive to us
+     lie too deep for any partial plans to reach or correct; it is
+     therefore our resolution to aim at the root of these evils: and we
+     are happy in having reason to believe that in every just and
+     necessary regulation we shall meet with the approbation and support
+     of the legislature, who consider the public as materially
+     interested in the Company's prosperity.
+
+     "In order to effectuate this great end, the first step must be to
+     restore perfect obedience and due subordination to your
+     administration. Our Governor and Council must reassume and exercise
+     their delegated powers upon every just occasion,--punish
+     delinquents, cherish the meritorious, discountenance that luxury
+     and dissipation which, to the reproach of government, prevailed in
+     Bengal. Our President, Mr. Hastings, we trust, will set the example
+     of temperance, economy, and application; and upon this, we are
+     sensible, much will depend. And here we take occasion, to indulge
+     the pleasure we have in acknowledging Mr. Hastings's services upon
+     the coast of Coromandel, in constructing, with equal labor and
+     ability, the plan which has so much improved our investments there;
+     and as we are persuaded he will persevere in the same laudable
+     pursuit through every branch of our affairs in Bengal, he, in
+     return, may depend on the steady support and favor of his
+     employers.
+
+     "Your settlement being thus put into a train of reform, (without
+     which, indeed, all regulations will prove ineffectual,) you are
+     next to revert to the old system, when the business of your
+     Presidency was principally performed by our own servants, who then
+     had knowledge of our investments, and every other department of our
+     concerns: you will therefore fill the several offices with the
+     factors and writers upon your establishment, (for, with our present
+     appointments, we are assured there will be sufficient for this
+     purpose,) and thus you will banish idleness, and its attendants,
+     extravagance and dissipation. And here we enjoin you to transmit to
+     us a faithful and minute state of the pay and every known
+     emolument of all below Council: for, as it is notorious that even
+     youths in our service expend in equipage, servants, dress, and
+     living infinitely more than our stated allowances can afford, we
+     cannot but be anxious to discover the means by which they are
+     enabled to proceed in this manner; and, indeed, so obnoxious is
+     this conduct to us, and so injurious in its consequences, that we
+     expect and require you to show your displeasure to all such as
+     shall transgress in this respect, contrasting it at the same time
+     with instances of kindness towards the sober, frugal, and
+     industrious."
+
+My Lords, you see the state in which the Directors conceived the country
+to be. That it was in this state is not denied by Mr. Hastings, who was
+sent out for the purpose of reforming it. The Directors had swept away
+almost the whole body of their Bengal servants for supposed corruption;
+and they appointed a set of new ones, to regenerate, as it were, the
+government of that country.
+
+Mr. Hastings says, "I was brought to India like other people." This,
+indeed, is true; and I hope it will prove an example and instruction to
+all mankind never to employ a man who has been bred in base and corrupt
+practices, from any hope that his local knowledge may make him the
+fittest person to correct such practices. Mr. Hastings goes on to say,
+that you could not expect more from him than could be done by a man bred
+up, as he was, in the common habits of the country. This is also true.
+My Lords, you might as well expect a man to be fit for a perfumer's
+shop, who has lain a month in a pig's stye, as to expect that a man who
+has been a contractor with the Company for a length of time is a fit
+person for reforming abuses. Mr. Hastings has stated in general his
+history, his merits, and his services. We have looked over with care the
+records relative to his proceedings, and we find that in 1760 and 1761
+he was in possession of a contract for bullocks and a contract for
+provisions. It is no way wrong for any man to take a contract, provided
+he does not do what Mr. Hastings has condemned in his
+regulations,--become a contractor with his masters. But though I do not
+bear upon Mr. Hastings for having spent his time in being a
+bullock-contractor, yet I say that he ought to have laid aside all the
+habits of a bullock-contractor when he was made a great minister for the
+reformation of a great service full of abuses. I will show your
+Lordships that he never did so; that, on the contrary, being bred in
+those bad habits, and having had the education that I speak of, he
+persevered in the habits which had been formed in him to the very last.
+
+I understand it has been imputed as a sort of a crime in me, that I
+stated something of the obscurity of Mr. Hastings's birth. The
+imputation has no foundation. Can it be believed that any man could be
+so absurd as to attack a man's birth, when he is accusing his actions?
+No, I have always spoken of the low, sordid, and mercenary habits in
+which he was bred; I said nothing of his birth. But, my Lords, I was a
+good deal surprised when a friend of his and mine yesterday morning put
+into my hands, who had been attacking Mr. Hastings's life and conduct, a
+pedigree. I was appealing to the records of the Company; they answer by
+sending me to the Herald's Office. Many of your Lordships' pedigrees
+are obscure in comparison with that of Mr. Hastings; and I only wonder
+how he came to derogate from such a line of nobles by becoming a
+contractor for bullocks.
+
+A man may be an honest bullock-contractor, (God forbid that many of them
+in this country should not be very honest!) but I find his terms were
+nearly four times as high as those which the House of Commons had
+condemned as exorbitant. They were not only unusually high, but the
+bullocks were badly supplied, and the contract had not been fairly
+advertised. It was therefore agreed to declare the same void at the
+expiration of twelve months, on the 1st December, 1763. I say again,
+that I do not condemn him for being a bullock-contractor; but I am
+suspicious of his honesty, because he has been nursed in bad and vicious
+habits. That of contracting with his masters is a bad habit, as he
+himself has stated in a record which is printed by the House of Commons.
+I condemn him for being a fraudulent bullock-contractor: for he was
+turned out of that contract for fraudulent practices; it was declared
+void, and given to another at a lower price. After it was so disposed
+of, Mr. Hastings himself, condemning his own original contract, which
+was at twelve rupees for a certain species of bullocks, took the
+contract again at seven; and on these terms it continued. What I
+therefore contend for is this, that he carried with him the spirit of a
+fraudulent bullock-contractor through the whole of the Company's
+service, in its greatest and most important parts.
+
+My Lords, the wading through all these corruptions is an unpleasant
+employment for me; but what am I to think of a man who holds up his
+head so high, that, when a matter of account is in discussion, such as
+appears in this very defence that I have in my hand, he declares he does
+not know anything about it? He cannot keep accounts: that is beneath
+him. We trace him throughout the whole of his career engaged in a great
+variety of mercantile employments; and yet, when he comes before you,
+you would imagine that he had been bred in the study of the sublimest
+sciences, and had no concern in anything else,--that he had been engaged
+in writing a poem, an Iliad, or some work that might revive fallen
+literature. There is but one exception to his abhorrence of accounts: he
+always contrives to make up a good account for himself.
+
+My Lords, we have read to you a letter in which the Court of Directors
+have described the disorders of their service, the utter ruin of it, the
+corruption that prevailed in it, and the destruction of the country by
+it. When we are said to exaggerate, we use no stronger words than they
+do. We cannot mince the matter; your Lordships should not mince it; no
+little paltry delicacies should hinder you, when there is a country
+expiring under all these things, from calling the authors to a strict
+account. The Court of Directors sent him that statement; they
+recommended to him a radical reformation. What does he do? We will read
+his letter of 1773, in which you will find seeds sown for the
+propagation of all those future abuses which terminated in the utter and
+irremediable destruction of the whole service. After he has praised the
+Directors for the trust that they had placed in him, after expressing
+his highest gratitude, and so on, he says,--
+
+     "While I indulge the pleasure which I receive from the past
+     successes of my endeavors, I own I cannot refrain from looking back
+     with a mixture of anxiety on the omissions by which I am sensible I
+     may since have hazarded the diminution of your esteem. All my
+     letters addressed to your Honorable Court, and to the Secret
+     Committee, repeat the strongest promises of prosecuting the
+     inquiries into the conduct of your servants, which you have been
+     pleased to commit particularly to my charge. You will readily
+     perceive that I must have been sincere in those declarations; since
+     it would have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I
+     foreseen my inability to perform them. I find myself now under the
+     disagreeable necessity of avowing that inability; at the same time
+     I will boldly take upon me to affirm, that, on whomsoever you might
+     have delegated that charge, and by whatever powers it might have
+     been accompanied, it would have been sufficient to occupy the
+     entire attention of those who were intrusted with it, and, even
+     with all the aids of leisure and authority, would have proved
+     ineffectual. I dare appeal to the public records, to the testimony
+     of those who have opportunities of knowing me, and even to the
+     detail which the public voice can report of the past acts of this
+     government, that my time has been neither idly nor uselessly
+     employed; yet such are the cares and embarrassments of this various
+     state, that, although much may be done, much more, even in matters
+     of moment, must necessarily remain neglected. To select from the
+     miscellaneous heap which each day's exigencies present to our
+     choice those points on which the general welfare of your affairs
+     most essentially depends, to provide expedients for future
+     advantages, and guard against probable evils, are all that your
+     administration can faithfully promise to perform for your service,
+     with their united labors most diligently exerted. They cannot look
+     back without sacrificing the objects of their immediate duty, which
+     are those of your interest, to endless researches, which can
+     produce no real good, and may expose your affairs to all the
+     ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both here and at
+     home."
+
+My Lords, you see here, that, after admitting that he has promised to
+the Court of Directors to do what they ordered him to do, (and he had
+promised to make a radical reform in their whole service, and to cure
+those abuses which they have stated,) he declares that he will not
+execute them; he pleads a variety of other occupations; but as to that
+great fundamental grievance he was appointed to eradicate, he declares
+he will not even attempt it. "Why did you promise?"--it naturally occurs
+to ask him that question. "Why," says he, "you will readily perceive
+that I must have been sincere in those declarations; since it would
+have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I known my
+inability to perform them." This is a kind of argument that belongs to
+Mr. Hastings exclusively. Most other people would say, "You may judge of
+the sincerity of my promises by my zeal in the performance"; but he
+says, "You may judge of the sincerity of my promises, because I would
+not promise, if I had not thought I should be able to perform." It runs
+in this ridiculous circle: "I promised to obey the Court of Directors;
+therefore I knew that I could obey them: but I could not obey them;
+therefore I was absolved from my promise, and did not attempt to obey
+them." In fact, there is not so much as one grievance or abuse in the
+country, that he reformed. And this was systematical in Mr. Hastings's
+conduct,--that he was resolved to connive at the whole of the iniquities
+of the service, because he was resolved that every one of those existing
+iniquities should be practised by himself. "But," says he, "the
+reformation required can produce no real good, and may expose your
+affairs to all the ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both
+here and at home." This he gives you as a reason why he will not
+prosecute the inquiry into abuses abroad,--because he is afraid that you
+should punish him at home for doing his duty abroad,--that it will
+expose him to malevolence at home; and therefore, to avoid being subject
+to malevolence at home, he would not do his duty abroad.
+
+He follows this with something that is perfectly extraordinary: he
+desires, instead of doing his duty, which he declares it is impossible
+to do, that he may be invested with an arbitrary power. I refer your
+Lordships to pages 2827, 2828, and 2829 of the printed Minutes, where
+you will find the system of his government to be formed upon a
+resolution not to use any one legal means of punishing corruption, or
+for the prevention of corruption; all that he desires is, to have an
+absolute arbitrary power over the servants of the Company. There you
+will see that arbitrary power for corrupt purposes over the servants of
+the Company is the foundation of every part of his whole conduct. Remark
+what he says here, and then judge whether these inferences are to be
+eluded by any chicane.
+
+     "In the charge of oppression, although supported by the cries of
+     the people and the most authentic representations, it is yet
+     impossible, in most cases, to obtain legal proofs of it; and unless
+     the discretionary power which I have recommended be somewhere
+     lodged, the assurance of impunity from any formal inquiry will
+     baffle every order of the board; as, on the other hand, the fear of
+     the consequences will restrain every man within the bounds of his
+     duty, if he knows himself liable to suffer by the effects of a
+     single control."
+
+My Lords, you see two things most material for you to consider in the
+judgment of this great cause, which is the cause of nations. The first
+thing for you to consider is the declaration of the culprit at your bar,
+that a person may be pursued by the cries of a whole people,--that
+documents the most authentic and satisfactory, but deficient in
+technical form, may be produced against him,--in short, that he may be
+guilty of the most enormous crimes,--and yet that legal proofs may be
+wanting. This shows you how seriously you ought to consider, before you
+reject any proof upon the idea that it is not technical legal proof. To
+this assertion of Mr. Hastings I oppose, however, the opinion of a
+gentleman who sits near his side, Mr. Sumner, which is much more
+probable.
+
+Mr. Hastings says, that the power of the Council is not effectual
+against the inferior servants, that [it?] is too weak to coerce them.
+With much more truth Mr. Sumner has said, in his minute, you might
+easily coerce the inferior servants, but that the dread of falling upon
+persons in high stations discourages and puts an end to complaint. I
+quote the recorded authority of the gentleman near him, as being of
+great weight in the affairs of the Company, to prove what is infinitely
+more probable, the falsehood of Mr. Hastings's assertion, that an
+inferior servant cannot be coerced, and that they must riot with
+impunity in the spoils of the people.
+
+But we will go to a much more serious part of the business. After
+desiring arbitrary power in this letter, he desires a perpetuation of
+it. And here he has given you a description of a bad Governor, to which
+I must call your attention, as your Lordships will find it, in every
+part of his proceeding, to be exactly applicable to himself and to his
+own government.
+
+     "The first command of a state so extensive as that of Bengal is not
+     without opportunities of private emoluments; and although the
+     allowance which your bounty has liberally provided for your
+     servants may be reasonably expected to fix the bounds of their
+     desires, yet you will find it extremely difficult to restrain men
+     from profiting by other means, who look upon their appointment as
+     the measure of a day, and who, from the uncertainty of their
+     condition, see no room for any acquisition but of wealth, since
+     reputation and the consequences which follow the successful conduct
+     of great affairs are only to be attained in a course of years.
+     Under such circumstances, however rigid your orders may be, or
+     however supported, I am afraid that in most instances they will
+     produce no other fruits than either avowed disobedience or the
+     worst extreme of falsehood and hypocrisy. These are not the
+     principles which should rule the conduct of men whom you have
+     constituted the guardians of your property, and checks on the
+     morals and fidelity of others. The care of self-preservation will
+     naturally suggest the necessity of seizing the opportunity of
+     present power, when the duration of it is considered as limited to
+     the usual term of three years, and of applying it to the provision
+     of a future independency; therefore every renewal of this term is
+     liable to prove a reiterated oppression. It is perhaps owing to the
+     causes which I have described, and a proof of their existence, that
+     this appointment has been for some years past so eagerly solicited
+     and so easily resigned. There are yet other inconveniences
+     attendant on this habit, and perhaps an investigation of them all
+     would lead to endless discoveries. Every man whom your choice has
+     honored with so distinguished a trust seeks to merit approbation
+     and acquire an _eclat_ by innovations, for which the wild scene
+     before him affords ample and justifiable occasion."
+
+You see, my Lords, he has stated, that, if a Governor is appointed to
+hold his office only for a short time, the consequence would be either
+an avowed disobedience, or, what is worse, extreme falsehood and
+hypocrisy. Your Lordships know that this man has held his office for a
+long time, and yet his disobedience has been avowed, and his hypocrisy
+and his falsehood have been discovered, and have been proved to your
+Lordships in the course of this trial. You see this man has declared
+what are the principles which should rule the conduct of men whom you
+have constituted the guardians of your property, and checks upon the
+morals and fidelity of others. Mr. Hastings tells you himself directly
+what his duty was; he tells you himself, and he pronounces his own
+condemnation, what was expected from him, namely, that he should give a
+great example himself, and be a check and guardian of the fidelity of
+all that are under him. He declares, at the end of this letter, that a
+very short continuance in their service would enable him to make a
+fortune up to the height of his desire. He has since thought proper to
+declare to you that he is a beggar and undone, notwithstanding all his
+irregular resources in that very service.
+
+I have read this letter to your Lordships, that you may contrast it with
+the conduct of the prisoner, as stated by us, and proved by the evidence
+we have adduced. We have stated and proved that Mr. Hastings did enter
+upon a systematic connivance at the peculation of the Company's
+servants, that he refused to institute any check whatever for the
+purpose of preventing corruption, and that he carried into execution no
+one measure of government agreeably to the positive and solemn
+engagements into which he had entered with the Directors. We therefore
+charge him, not only with his own corruptions, but with a systematic,
+premeditated corruption of the whole service, from the time when he was
+appointed, in the beginning of the year 1772, down to the year 1785,
+when he left it. He never attempted to detect any one single abuse
+whatever; he never endeavored once to put a stop to any corruption in
+any man, black or white, in any way whatever. And thus he has acted in a
+government of which he himself declares the nature to be such that it is
+almost impossible so to detect misconduct as to give legal evidence of
+it, though a man should be declared by the cries of the whole people to
+be guilty.
+
+My Lords, he desires an arbitrary power over the Company's servants to
+be given to him. God forbid arbitrary power should be given into the
+hands of any man! At the same time, God forbid, if by power be meant the
+ability to discover, to reach, to check, and to punish subordinate
+corruption, that he should not be enabled so to do, and to get at, to
+prosecute, and punish delinquency by law! But honesty only, and not
+arbitrary power, is necessary for that purpose. We well know, indeed,
+that a government requiring arbitrary power has been the situation in
+which this man has attempted to place us.
+
+We know, also, my Lords, that there are cases in which the act of the
+delinquent may be of consequence, while the example of the criminal,
+from the obscurity of his situation, is of little importance: in other
+cases, the act of the delinquent may be of no great importance, but the
+consequences of the example dreadful. We know that crimes of great
+magnitude, that acts of great tyranny, can but seldom be exercised, and
+only by a few persons. They are privileged crimes. They are the dreadful
+prerogatives of greatness, and of the highest situations only. But when
+a Governor-General descends into the muck and filth of peculation and
+corruption, when he receives bribes and extorts money, he does acts that
+are imitable by everybody. There is not a single man, black or white,
+from the highest to the lowest, that is possessed in the smallest degree
+of momentary authority, that cannot imitate the acts of such a
+Governor-General. Consider, then, what the consequences will be, when it
+is laid down as a principle of the service, that no man is to be called
+to account according to the existing laws, and that you must either
+give, as he says, arbitrary power, or suffer your government to be
+destroyed.
+
+We asked Mr. Anderson, whether the covenant of every farmer of the
+revenue did not forbid him from giving any presents to any persons, or
+taking any. He answered, he did not exactly remember, (for the memory of
+this gentleman is very indifferent, though the matter was in his own
+particular province,) but he thought it did; and he referred us to the
+record of it. I cannot get at the record; and therefore you must take it
+as it stands from Mr. Anderson, without a reference to the record,--that
+the farmers were forbidden to take or give any money to any person
+whatever, beyond their engagements. Now, if a Governor-General comes to
+that farmer, and says, "You must give a certain sum beyond your
+engagements," he lets him loose to prey upon the landholders and
+cultivators; and thus a way is prepared for the final desolation of the
+whole country, by the malversation of the Governor, and by the
+consequent oppressive conduct of the farmers.
+
+Mr. Hastings being now put over the whole country to regulate it, let us
+see what he has done. He says, "Let me have an arbitrary power, and I
+will regulate it." He assumed arbitrary power, and turned in and out
+every servant at his pleasure. But did he by that arbitrary power
+correct any one corruption? Indeed, how could he? He does not say he
+did. For when a man gives ill examples in himself, when he cannot set on
+foot an inquiry that does not terminate in his own corruption, of course
+he cannot institute any inquiry into the corruption of the other
+servants.
+
+But again, my Lords, the subordinate servant will say, "I cannot rise"
+(properly here, as Mr. Hastings has well observed) "to the height of
+greatness, power, distinction, rank, or honor in the government; but I
+can make my fortune, according to my degree, my measure, and my place."
+His views will be then directed so to make it. And when he sees that the
+Governor-General is actuated by no other views,--when he himself, as a
+farmer, is confidently assured of the corruptions of his superior,--when
+he knows it to be laid down as a principle by the Governor-General, that
+no corruption is to be inquired into, and that, if it be not expressly
+laid down, yet that his conduct is such as to make it the same as if he
+had actually so laid it down,--then, I say, every part of the service is
+instantly and totally corrupted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall next refer your Lordships to the article of contracts. Five
+contracts have been laid before you, the extravagant and corrupt profits
+of which have been proved to amount to 500,000_l._ We have shown you, by
+the strongest presumptive evidence, that these contracts were given for
+the purpose of corrupting the Company's servants in India, and of
+corrupting the Company itself in England. You will recollect that
+40,000_l._ was given in one morning for a contract which the contractor
+was never to execute: I speak of Mr. Sulivan's contract. You will also
+recollect that he was the son of the principal person in the Indian
+direction, and who, in or out of office, was known to govern it, and to
+be supported by the whole Indian interest of Mr. Hastings. You have seen
+the corruption of Sir Eyre Coote, in giving to Mr. Croftes the bullock
+contract. You have seen the bullock contracts stated to Mr. Hastings's
+face, and not denied, to have been made for concealing a number of
+corrupt interests. You have seen Mr. Auriol's contract, given to the
+secretary of the Company by Mr. Hastings in order that he might have the
+whole records and registers of the Company under his control. You have
+seen that the contract and commission for the purchase of stores and
+provisions, an enormous job, was given to Mr. Belli, an obscure man, for
+whom Mr. Hastings offers himself as security, under circumstances that
+went to prove that Mr. Belli held this commission for Mr. Hastings.
+These, my Lords, are things that cannot be slurred over. The
+Governor-General is corrupt; he corrupts all about him; he does it upon
+system; he will make no inquiry.
+
+My Lords, I have stated the amount of the sums which he has squandered
+away in these contracts; but you will observe that we have brought
+forward but five of them. Good God! when you consider the magnitude and
+multiplicity of the Company's dealings, judge you what must be the
+enormous mass of that corruption of which he has been the cause, and in
+the profits of which he has partaken. When your Lordships shall have
+considered this document, his defence, which I have read in part to you,
+see whether you are not bound, when he imputes to us and throws upon us
+the cause of all his corruption, to throw back the charge by your
+decision, and hurl it with indignation upon himself.
+
+But there is another shameless and most iniquitous circumstance, which I
+have forgotten to mention, respecting these contracts. He not only
+considered them as means of present power, and therefore protected his
+favorites without the least inquiry into their conduct, and with
+flagrant suspicion of a corrupt participation in their delinquency, but
+he goes still farther: he declares, that, if he should be removed from
+his government, he will give them a lease in these exorbitant profits,
+for the purpose of securing a corrupt party to support and bear him out
+by their evidence, upon the event of any inquiry into his conduct,--to
+give him a _razinama_, to give him a flourishing character, whenever he
+should come upon his trial. Hear what his principles are; hear what the
+man himself avows.
+
+        "_Fort William, October 4, 1779._
+
+     "In answer to Mr. Francis's insinuation, that it is natural enough
+     for the agent to wish to secure himself before the expiration of
+     the present government, I avow the fact as to myself as well as the
+     agent. When I see a systematic opposition to every measure proposed
+     by me for the service of the public, by which an individual may
+     eventually benefit, I cannot hesitate a moment to declare it to be
+     my firm belief, that, should the government of this country be
+     placed in the hands of the present minority, they would seek the
+     ruin of every man connected with me; it is therefore only an act
+     of common justice in me to wish to secure them, as far as I legally
+     can, from the apprehension of future oppression."
+
+Here is the principle avowed. He takes for granted, and he gives it the
+name of oppression, that the person who should succeed him would take
+away those unlawful and wicked emoluments, and give them to some other.
+"But," says he, "I will put out of the Company's power the very means
+of redress."
+
+The document which I am now going to read to your Lordships contains a
+declaration by Mr. Hastings of another mean which he used of corrupting
+the whole Company's service.
+
+
+     _Minute of the Governor-General.--Extract from that Minute._
+
+     "Called upon continually by persons of high rank and station, both
+     in national and in the Company's councils, to protect and prefer
+     their friends in the army, and by the merits and services which
+     have come under my personal knowledge and observation, I suffer
+     both pain and humiliation at the want of power to reward the
+     meritorious, or to show a proper attention to the wishes of my
+     superiors, without having recourse to means which must be
+     considered as incompatible with the dignity of my station. The
+     slender relief which I entreat of the board from this state of
+     mortification is the authority to augment the number of my staff,
+     which will enable me to show a marked and particular attention in
+     circumstances such as above stated, and will be no considerable
+     burden to the Company."
+
+My Lords, you here see what he has been endeavoring to effect, for the
+express purpose of enabling him to secure himself a corrupt influence in
+England. But there is another point much more material, which brings the
+matter directly home to this court, and puts it to you either to punish
+him or to declare yourselves to be accomplices in the corruption of the
+whole service. Hear what the man himself says. I am first to mention to
+your Lordships the occasion upon which the passage which I shall read to
+you was written. It was when he was making his enormous and shameful
+establishment of a Revenue Board, in the year 1781,--of which I shall
+say a few words hereafter, as being a gross abuse in itself: he then
+felt that the world would be so much shocked at the enormous prodigality
+and corrupt profusion of what he was doing, that he at last spoke out
+plainly.
+
+
+     _A Minute of Mr. Hastings, transmitted in a Letter by Mr. Wheler._
+
+     "In this, as it must be the case in every reformation, the interest
+     of individuals has been our principal, if not our only impediment.
+     We could not at once deprive so large a body of our fellow-servants
+     of their bread, without feeling that reluctance which humanity must
+     dictate,--not unaccompanied, perhaps, with some concern for the
+     consequence which our own credit might suffer by an act which
+     involved the fortunes of many, and extended its influence to all
+     their connections. This, added to the justice which was due to your
+     servants, who were removed for no fault of theirs, but for the
+     public convenience, induced us to continue their allowances until
+     other offices could be provided for them, and the more cheerfully
+     to submit to the expediency of leaving others in a temporary or
+     partial charge of the internal collections. In effect, the civil
+     officers [offices?] of this government might be reduced to a very
+     scanty number, were their exigency alone to determine the list of
+     your covenanted servants, which at this time consist of no less a
+     number than two hundred and fifty-two,--many of them the sons of
+     the first families in the kingdom of Great Britain, and every one
+     aspiring to the rapid acquisition of lacs, and to return to pass
+     the prime of their lives at home, as multitudes have done before
+     them. Neither will the revenues of this country suffice for such
+     boundless pretensions, nor are they compatible with yours and the
+     national interests, which may eventually suffer as certain a ruin
+     from the effects of private competition and the claims of patronage
+     as from the more dreaded calamities of war, or the other ordinary
+     causes which lead to the decline of dominion."
+
+My Lords, you have here his declaration, that patronage, which he avows
+to be one of the principles of his government, and to be the principle
+of the last of his acts, is worse than war, pestilence, and famine,--and
+that all these calamities together might not be so effectual as this
+patronage in wasting and destroying the country. And at what time does
+he tell you this? He tells it you when he himself had just wantonly
+destroyed an old regular establishment for the purpose of creating a new
+one, in which he says he was under the necessity of pensioning the
+members of the old establishment from motives of mere humanity. He here
+confesses himself to be the author of the whole mischief. "I could,"
+says he, "have acted better; I might have avoided desolating the country
+by peculation; but," says he, "I had sons of the first families in the
+kingdom of Great Britain, every one aspiring to the rapid acquisition of
+lacs, and this would not suffer me to do my duty." I hope your Lordships
+will stigmatize the falsehood of this assertion. Consider, my Lords,
+what he has said,--two hundred and fifty men at once, and in
+succession, aspiring to come home in the prime of their youth with
+_lacs_. You cannot take _lacs_ to be less than two; we cannot make a
+plural less than two. Two lacs make 20,000_l._ Then multiply that, by
+252, and you will find more than 2,500,000_l._ to be provided for that
+set of gentlemen, and for the claims of patronage. Undoubtedly such a
+patronage is worse than the most dreadful calamities of war, and all the
+other causes which lead to decline of dominion.
+
+My Lords, I beseech you to consider this plan of corrupting the
+Company's servants, beginning with systematical corruption, and ending
+with an avowed declaration that he will persist in this iniquitous
+proceeding, and to the utmost of his power entail it upon the Company,
+for the purpose of securing his accomplices against all the consequences
+of any change in the Company's government. "I dare not," says he, "be
+honest: if I make their fortunes, you will judge favorably of me; if I
+do not make their fortunes, I shall find myself crushed with a load of
+reproach and obloquy, from which I cannot escape in any other way than
+by bribing the House of Peers." What a shameful avowal this to be made
+in the face of the world! Your Lordships' judgment upon this great cause
+will obliterate it from the memory of man.
+
+But his apprehension of some change in the Company's government is not
+his only pretext for some of these corrupt proceedings; he adverts also
+to the opposition which he had to encounter with his colleagues, as
+another circumstance which drove him to adopt others of these scandalous
+expediences. Now there was a period when he had no longer to contend
+with, or to fear, that opposition.
+
+When he had got rid of the majority in the Council, which thwarted him,
+what did he do? Did he himself correct any of the evils and disorders
+which had prevailed in the service, and which his hostile majority had
+purposed to reform? No, not one,--notwithstanding the Court of Directors
+had supported the majority in all their declarations, and had accused
+him of corruption and rebellion in every part of his opposition to them.
+Now that he was free from the yoke of all the mischief of that cursed
+majority which he deprecates, and which I have heard certain persons
+consider as a great calamity, (a calamity indeed it was to
+patronage,)--as soon, I say, as he was free from this, you would imagine
+he had undertaken some great and capital reformation; for all the power
+which the Company could give was in his hands,--total, absolute, and
+unconfined.
+
+I must here remind your Lordships, that the Provincial Councils was an
+establishment made by Mr. Hastings. So confident was he in his own
+opinion of the expediency of them, that he transmitted to the Court of
+Directors a draught of an act of Parliament to confirm them. By this act
+it was his intention to place them beyond the possibility of mutation.
+Whatever opinion others might entertain of their weakness, inefficacy,
+or other defects, Mr. Hastings found no such things in them. He had
+declared in the beginning that he considered them as a sort of
+experiment, but that in the progress he found them answer so perfectly
+well that he proposed even an act of Parliament to support them. The
+Court of Directors, knowing the mischiefs that innovation had produced
+in their service, and the desolations which it had brought on the
+country, commanded him not to take any step for changing them, without
+their orders. Contrary, however, to his own declarations, contrary to
+the sketch of an act of Parliament, which, for aught he knew, the
+legislature might then have passed, (I know that it was in contemplation
+to pass, about that time, several acts for regulating the Company's
+affairs, and, for one, I should have been, as I always have been, a good
+deal concerned in whatever tended to fix some kind of permanent and
+settled government in Bengal,)--in violation, I say, of his duty, and in
+contradiction to his own opinion, he at that time, without giving the
+parties notice, turns out of their employments, situations, and bread,
+the Provincial Councils.
+
+And who were the members of those Provincial Councils? They were of high
+rank in the Company's service; they were not junior servants, boys of a
+day, but persons who had gone through some probation, who knew something
+of the country, who were conversant in its revenues and in the course of
+its business; they were, in short, men of considerable rank in the
+Company's service. What did he do with these people? Without any regard
+to their rank in the service,--no more than he had regarded the rank of
+the nobility of the country,--he sweeps them all, in one day, from their
+independent situations, without reference to the Directors, and turns
+them all into pensioners upon the Company. And for what purpose was this
+done? It was done in order to reduce the Company's servants, who, in
+their independent situations, were too great a mass and volume for him
+to corrupt, to an abject dependence upon his absolute power. It was,
+that he might tell them, "You have lost your situations; you have
+nothing but small alimentary pensions, nothing more than a maintenance;
+and you must depend upon me whether you are to have anything more or
+not." Thus at one stroke a large division of the Company's servants, and
+one of the highest orders of them, were reduced, for their next bread,
+to an absolute, submissive dependence upon his will; and the Company was
+loaded with the pensions of all these discarded servants. Thus were
+persons in an honorable, independent situation, earned by long service
+in that country, and who were subject to punishment for their crimes, if
+proved against them, all deprived, unheard, of their employments. You
+would imagine that Mr. Hastings had at least charged them with
+corruption. No, you will see upon your minutes, that, when he abolished
+the Provincial Councils, he declared at the same time that he found no
+fault with the persons concerned in them.
+
+Thus, then, he has got rid, as your Lordships see, of one whole body of
+the Company's servants; he has systematically corrupted the rest, and
+provided, as far as lay in his power, for the perpetuation of their
+corruption; he has connived at all their delinquencies, and has
+destroyed the independence of all the superior orders of them.
+
+Now hear what he does with regard to the Council-General itself. They
+had, by the act that made Mr. Hastings Governor, the management of the
+revenues vested in them. You have been shown by an honorable and able
+fellow Manager of mine, that he took the business of this department
+wholly out of the hand of the Council; that he named a committee for
+the management of it, at an enormous expense,--committee made up of his
+own creatures and dependants; and that, after destroying the Provincial
+Councils, he brought down the whole management of the revenue to
+Calcutta. This committee took this important business entirely out of
+the hands of the Council, in which the act had vested it, and this
+committee he formed without the orders of the Court of Directors, and
+directly contrary to the act, which put the superintendence in the hands
+of the Council.
+
+Oh, but he reserved a superintendence over them.--You shall hear what
+the superintendence was; you shall see, feel, smell, touch; it shall
+enter into every avenue and pore of your soul. It will show you what was
+the real principle of Mr. Hastings's government. We will read to you
+what Sir John Shore says of that institution, and of the only ends and
+purposes which it could answer; your Lordships will then see how far he
+was justifiable in violating an act of Parliament, and giving out of the
+Council's hands the great trust which the laws of his country had vested
+in them. It is part of a paper written in 1785 by Mr. Shore, who was
+sole acting president of this committee to which all Bengal was
+delivered. He was an old servant of the Company, and he is now at the
+head of the government of that country. He was Mr. Hastings's particular
+friend, and therefore you cannot doubt either of his being a competent
+evidence, or that he is a favorable evidence for Mr. Hastings, and that
+he would not say one word against the establishment of which he himself
+was at the head, that was not perfectly true, and forced out of him by
+the truth of the case. There is not a single part of it that does not
+point out some abuse.
+
+     "In the actual collection of the revenues, nothing is more
+     necessary than to give immediate attention to all complaints, which
+     are preferred daily without number, and to dispatch them in a
+     summary manner. This cannot be done where the control is remote. In
+     every purgunnah throughout Bengal there are some distinct usages,
+     which cannot be clearly known at a distance; yet in all complaints
+     of oppression or extortion, these must be known before a decision
+     can be pronounced. But to learn at Calcutta the particular customs
+     of a district of Rajeshahye or Dacca is almost impossible; and
+     considering the channel through which an explanation must pass, and
+     through which the complaint is made, any coloring may be given to
+     it, and oppression and extortion, to the ruin of a district, may be
+     practised with impunity. This is a continual source of
+     embarrassment to the Committee of Revenue in Calcutta.
+
+     "One object of their institution was to bring the revenues without
+     the expenses of agency to the Presidency, and to remove all local
+     control over the farmers, who were to pay their rents at Calcutta.
+     When complaints are made against farmers by the occupiers of the
+     lands, it is almost impossible to discriminate truth from
+     falsehood; but to prevent a failure in the revenue, it is found
+     necessary, in all doubtful cases, to support the farmer,--a
+     circumstance which may give rise to and confirm the most cruel acts
+     of oppression. The real state of any district cannot be known by
+     the Committee. An occupier or zemindar may plead, that an
+     inundation has ruined him, or that his country is a desert through
+     want of rain. An aumeen is sent to examine the complaint. He
+     returns with an exaggerated account of losses, proved in volumes of
+     intricate accounts, which the Committee have no time to read, and
+     for which the aumeen is well paid. Possibly, however, the whole
+     account is false. Suppose no aumeen is employed, and the renter is
+     held to the tenor of his engagement, the loss, if real, must
+     occasion his ruin, unless his assessment is very moderate indeed.
+
+     "I may venture to pronounce that the real state of the districts is
+     now less known, and the revenue less understood, than in the year
+     1774. Since the natives have had the disposal of accounts, since
+     they have been introduced as agents and trusted with authority,
+     intricacy and confusion have taken place. The records and accounts
+     which have been compiled are numerous, yet, when any particular
+     account is wanted, it cannot be found. It is the business of all,
+     from the ryots to the dewan, to conceal and deceive. The simplest
+     matters of fact are designedly covered with a veil through which no
+     human understanding can penetrate.
+
+     "With respect to the present Committee of Revenue, it is morally
+     impossible for them to execute the business they are intrusted
+     with. They are invested with a general control, and they have an
+     executive authority larger than ever was before given to any board
+     or body of men. They may and must get through the business; but to
+     pretend to assert that they really execute it would be folly and
+     falsehood.
+
+     "The grand object of the native dewannies was to acquire
+     independent control, and for many years they have pursued this
+     with wonderful art. The farmers and zemindars under the Committee
+     prosecute the same plan, and have already objections to anything
+     that has the least appearance of restriction. All control removed,
+     they can plunder as they please.
+
+     "The Committee must have a dewan, or executive officer, call him by
+     what name you please. This man, in fact, has all the revenues paid
+     at the Presidency at his disposal, and can, if he has any
+     abilities, bring all the renters under contribution. It is of
+     little advantage to restrain the Committee themselves from bribery
+     or corruption, when their executive officer has the power of
+     protecting [practising?] both undetected.
+
+     "To display the arts employed by a native on such an occasion would
+     fill a volume. He discovers the secret resources of the zemindars
+     and renters, their enemies and competitors, and by the engines of
+     hope and fear raised upon these foundations he can work them to his
+     purpose. The Committee, with the best intentions, best abilities,
+     and steadiest application, must, after all, be a tool in the hand
+     of their dewan."
+
+Here is the account of Mr. Hastings's new Committee of Revenue,
+substituted in the place of an establishment made by act of Parliament.
+Here is what he has substituted for Provincial Councils. Here is what he
+has substituted in the room of the whole regular order of the service,
+which he totally subverted. Can we add anything to this picture? Can we
+heighten it? Can we do anything more than to recommend it to your
+Lordships' serious consideration?
+
+But before I finally dismiss this part of our charge, I must request
+your Lordships' most earnest attention to the true character of these
+atrocious proceedings, as they now stand proved before you, by direct or
+the strongest presumptive evidence, upon the Company's records, and by
+his own confessions and declarations, and those of his most intimate
+friends and avowed agents.
+
+Your Lordships will recollect, that, previously to the appointment of
+Mr. Hastings to be the Governor-General, in 1772, the collection of the
+revenues was committed to a naib dewan, or native collector, under the
+control of the Supreme Council,--and that Mr. Hastings did at that time,
+and upon various occasions afterwards, declare it to be his decided and
+fixed opinion, that nothing would be so detrimental to the interests of
+the Company, and to the happiness and welfare of the inhabitants of
+their provinces, as changes, and more especially sudden changes, in the
+collection of their revenues. His opinion was also most strongly and
+reiteratedly pressed upon him by his masters, the Court of Directors.
+The first step taken after his appointment was to abolish the office of
+naib dewan, and to send a committee through the provinces, at the
+expense of 50,000_l._ a year, to make a settlement of rents to be paid
+by the natives for five years. At the same time he appointed one of the
+Company's servants to be the collector in each province, and he
+abolished the General Board of Revenue, which had been established at
+Moorshedabad, chiefly for the following reasons: that, by its exercising
+a separate control, the members of the Supreme Council at Calcutta were
+prevented from acquiring that intimate acquaintance with the revenues
+which was necessary to persons in their station; and because many of the
+powers necessary for the collection of the revenues could not be
+delegated to a subordinate council. In consideration of these opinions,
+orders, and declarations, he, in 1773, abolished the office of
+collector, and transferred the management of the revenues to several
+councils of revenue, called Provincial Councils, and recommended their
+perpetual establishment by act of Parliament. In the year 1774, in
+contradiction of his former opinion respecting the necessity of the
+Supreme Council possessing all possible means of becoming acquainted
+with the details of the revenue, he again recommended the continuance of
+the Provincial Councils in all their parts. This he again declared to be
+his deliberate opinion in 1775 and in 1776.
+
+In the mean time a majority of the Supreme Council, consisting of
+members who had generally differed in opinion from Mr. Hastings, had
+transmitted their advice to the Court of Directors, recommending some
+changes in the system of Provincial Councils. The Directors, in their
+reply to this recommendation, did in 1777 order the Supreme Council to
+form a new plan for the collection of the revenues, and to transmit it
+to them for their consideration.
+
+No such plan was transmitted; but in the year 1781, Mr. Hastings having
+obtained a majority in the Council, he again changed the whole system,
+both of collection of the revenue and of the executive administration of
+civil and criminal justice. And who were the persons substituted in the
+place of those whom he removed? Names, my Lords, with which you are
+already but too well acquainted. At their head stands Munny Begum; then
+comes his own domestic, and private bribe-agent, Gunga Govind Sing; then
+his banian, Cantoo Baboo; then that instrument of all evil, Debi Sing;
+then the whole tribe of his dependants, white and black, whom he made
+farmers of the revenue, with Colonel Hannay at their head; and, lastly,
+his confidential Residents, secret agents, and private secretaries, Mr.
+Middleton, Major Palmer, &c., &c. Can your Lordships doubt, for a single
+instant, of the real spirit of these proceedings? Can you doubt of the
+whole design having originated and ended in corruption and peculation?
+
+We have fully stated to you, from the authority of these parties
+themselves, the effects and consequences of these proceedings,--namely,
+the dilapidation of the revenues, and the ruin and desolation of the
+provinces. And, my Lords, what else could have been expected or designed
+by this sweeping subversion of the control of the Company's servants
+over the collections of the revenue, and the vesting of it in a black
+dewan, but fraud and peculation? What else, I say, was to be expected,
+in the inextricable turnings and windings of that black mystery of
+iniquity, but the concealment of every species of wrong, violence,
+outrage, and oppression?
+
+Your Lordships, then, have seen that the whole country was put into the
+hands of Gunga Govind Sing; and when you remember who this Gunga Govind
+Sing was, and how effectually Mr. Hastings had secured him against
+detection, in every part of his malpractices and atrocities, can you for
+a moment hesitate to believe that the whole project was planned and
+executed for the purpose of putting all Bengal under contribution to Mr.
+Hastings? But if you are resolved, after all this, to entertain a good
+opinion of Mr. Hastings,--if you have taken it into your heads, for
+reasons best known to yourselves, to imagine that he has some hidden
+virtues, which in the government of Bengal he has not displayed, and
+which, to us of the House of Commons, have not been discernible in any
+one single instance,--these virtues may be fit subjects for paragraphs
+in newspapers, they may be pleaded for him by the partisans of his
+Indian _faction_, but your Lordships will do well to remember that it is
+not to Mr. Hastings himself that you are trusting, but to Gunga Govind
+Sing. If the Committee were tools in his hands, must not Mr. Hastings
+have also been a tool in his hands? If they with whom he daily and
+hourly had to transact business, and whose office it was to control and
+restrain him, were unable so to do, is this control and restraint to be
+expected from Mr. Hastings, who was his confidant, and whose corrupt
+transactions he could at any time discover to the world? My worthy
+colleague has traced the whole of Mr. Hastings's bribe account, in the
+most clear and satisfactory manner, to Gunga Govind Sing,--him first,
+him last, him midst, and without end. If we fail of the conviction of
+the prisoner at your bar, your Lordships will not have acquitted Mr.
+Hastings merely, but you will confirm all the robberies and rapines of
+Gunga Govind Sing. You will recognize him as a faithful governor of
+India. Yes, my Lords, let us rejoice in this man! Let us adopt him as
+our own! Let our country, let this House, be proud of him! If Mr.
+Hastings can be acquitted, we must admit Gunga Govind Sing's government
+to be the greatest blessing that ever happened to mankind. But if Gunga
+Govind Sing's government be the greatest curse that ever befell
+suffering humanity, as we assert it to have been, there is the man that
+placed him in it; there is his father, his godfather, the first author
+and origin of all these evils and, calamities. My Lords, remember
+Dinagepore; remember the bribe of 40,000_l._ which Gunga Govind Sing
+procured for Mr. Hastings in that province, and the subsequent horror of
+that scene.
+
+But, my Lords, do you extend your confidence to Gunga Govind Sing? Not
+even the face of this man, to whom the revenues of the Company, together
+with the estates, fortunes, reputations, and lives of the inhabitants of
+that country were delivered over, is known in those provinces. He
+resides at Calcutta, and is represented by a variety of under-agents. Do
+you know Govind Ghose? Do you know Nundulol? Do you know the whole tribe
+of peculators, whom Mr. Hastings calls his faithful domestic servants?
+Do you know all the persons that Gunga Govind Sing must employ in the
+various ramifications of the revenues throughout all the provinces? Are
+you prepared to trust all these? The Board of Revenue has confessed that
+it could not control them. Mr. Hastings himself could not control them.
+The establishment of this system was like Sin's opening the gates of
+Hell: like her, he could open the gate,--but to shut, as Milton says,
+exceeded his power. The former establishments, if defective, or if
+abuses were found in them, might have been corrected. There was at least
+the means of detecting and punishing abuse. But Mr. Hastings destroyed
+the means of doing either, by putting the whole country into the hands
+of Gunga Govind Sing.
+
+Now, having seen all these things done, look to the account. Your
+Lordships will now be pleased to look at this business as a mere account
+of revenue. You will find, on comparing the three years in which Mr.
+Hastings was in the minority with the three years after the appointment
+of this Committee, that the assessment upon the country increased, but
+that the revenue was diminished; and you will also find, which is a
+matter that ought to astonish you, that the expenses of the collections
+were increased by no less a sum than 500,000_l._ You may judge from this
+what riot there was in rapacity and ravage, both amongst the European
+and native agents, but chiefly amongst the natives: for Mr. Hastings did
+not divide the greatest part of this spoil among the Company's servants,
+but among this gang of black dependants. These accounts are in pages
+1273 and 1274 of your Minutes.
+
+My Lords, weighty indeed would have been the charge brought before your
+Lordships by the Commons of Great Britain against the prisoner at your
+bar, if they had fixed upon no other crime or misdemeanor than that
+which I am now pressing upon you,--his throwing off the allegiance of
+the Company, his putting a black master over himself, and his subjecting
+the whole of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, the whole of the Company's
+servants, the Company's revenues, the Company's farms, to Gunga Govind
+Sing. But, my Lords, it is a very curious and remarkable thing, that we
+have traced this man as Mr. Hastings's bribe-broker up to the time of
+the nomination of this Committee; we have traced him through a regular
+series of bribery; he is Mr. Hastings's bribe-broker at Patna; he is Mr.
+Hastings's bribe-broker at Nuddea; he is his bribe-broker at Dinagepore;
+we find him his bribe-broker in all these places; but from the moment
+that this Committee was constituted, it became a gulf in which the
+prevention, the detection, and the correction of all kind of abuses
+were sunk and lost forever. From the time when this Committee and Gunga
+Govind Sing were appointed, you do not find one word more of Mr.
+Hastings's bribes. Had he then ceased to receive any? or where are you
+to look for them? You are to look for them in that 500,000_l._ excess of
+expense in the revenue department, and in the rest of all that corrupt
+traffic of Gunga Govind Sing of which we gave you specimens at the time
+we proved his known bribes to you. These are nothing but index-hands to
+point out to you the immense mass of corruption which had its origin,
+and was daily accumulating in these provinces, under the protection of
+Mr. Hastings. And can you think, and can we talk of such transactions,
+without feeling emotions of indignation and horror not to be described?
+Can we contemplate such scenes as these,--can we look upon those
+desolated provinces, upon a country so ravaged, a people so
+subdued,--Mahometans, Gentoos, our own countrymen, all trampled under
+foot by this tyrant,--can we do this; without giving expression to those
+feelings which, after animating us in this life, will comfort us when we
+die, and will form our best part in another?
+
+My Lords, I am now at the last day of my endeavors to inspire your
+Lordships with a just sense of these unexampled atrocities. I have had a
+great encyclopedia of crimes to deal with; I will get through them as
+soon as I can; and I pray your Lordships to believe, that, if I omit
+anything, it is to time I sacrifice it,--that it is to want of strength
+I sacrifice it,--that it is to necessity, and not from any despair of
+making, from the records and from the evidence, matter so omitted as
+black as anything that I have yet brought before you.
+
+The next thing of which I have to remind your Lordships respecting these
+black agents of the prisoner is, that we find him, just before his
+departure from India, recommending three of them, Gunga Govind Sing,
+Gunga Ghose, and Nundulol, as persons fit and necessary to be rewarded
+for their services by the Company. Now your Lordships will find, that,
+of these faithful domestic servants, there is not one of them who was
+not concerned in these enormous briberies, and in betraying their own
+native and natural master. If I had time for it, I believe I could trace
+every person to be, in proportion to Mr. Hastings's confidence in him,
+the author of some great villany. These persons he thinks had not been
+sufficiently rewarded, and accordingly he recommends to the board, as
+his dying legacy, provision for these faithful attached servants of his,
+and particularly for Gunga Govind Sing. The manner in which this man was
+to be rewarded makes a part of the history of these transactions, as
+curious, perhaps, as was ever exhibited to the world. Your Lordships
+will find it in page 2841 of your Minutes.
+
+The Rajah of Dinagepore was a child at that time about eleven years old,
+and had succeeded to the Rajahship (by what means I shall say nothing)
+when he was about five years old. He is made to apply to Mr. Hastings
+for leave to grant a very considerable part of his estate to Gunga
+Govind Sing, as a reward for his services. These services could only be
+known to the Rajah's family by having robbed it of at least 40,000_l._,
+the bribe given to Mr. Hastings. But the Rajah's family is so little
+satisfied with this bountiful and liberal donation to Gunga Govind
+Sing, that they desire that several purgunnahs, or farms, that are
+mentioned in the application made to the Council, should be separated
+from the family estate and given to this man. Such was this
+extraordinary gratitude: gratitude, not for money received, but for
+money taken away,--a species of gratitude unknown in any part of the
+world but in India; gratitude pervading every branch of the family; his
+mother coming forward and petitioning likewise that her son should be
+disinherited; his uncle, the natural protector and guardian of his
+minority, coming forward and petitioning most earnestly that his nephew
+should be disinherited: all the family join in one voice of supplication
+to Mr. Hastings, that Gunga Govind Sing may have a very large and
+considerable part of their family estate given to him. Mr. Hastings,
+after declaring that certain circumstances respecting this property,
+which are mentioned in his minutes, were to his knowledge true, but
+which your Lordships, upon examination, will find to be false, and
+falsified in every particular, recommends, in the strongest manner, to
+the board, a compliance with this application. He was at this time on
+the eve of his departure from India, in haste to provide for his
+faithful servants; and he well knew that this his last act would be held
+binding upon his successors, who were devoted to him.
+
+Here, indeed, is genuine and heroic gratitude,--gratitude for money
+received, not for money taken away; and yet this gratitude was towards a
+person who had paid himself out of the benefit which had been conferred,
+at the expense of a third party. For Gunga Govind Sing had kept for
+himself 20,000_l._ out of 40,000_l._ taken from the Rajah. For this
+cheat, stated by Mr. Larkins to be such, and allowed by Mr. Hastings
+himself to be such, he, with a perfect knowledge of that fraud and cheat
+committed upon the public, (for he pretends that the money was meant for
+the Company,) makes this supplication to his colleagues, and departs.
+
+After his departure, Gunga Govind Sing, relying upon the continuance of
+the corrupt influence which he had gained, had the impudence to come
+forward and demand the confirmation of this grant by the
+Council-General. The Council, though willing to accede to Mr. Hastings's
+proposition, were stopped in a moment by petitions much more natural,
+but of a direct contrary tenor. The poor infant Rajah raises his cries
+not to be deprived of his inheritance; his mother comes forward and
+conjures the Council not to oppress her son and wrong her family; the
+uncle comes and supplicates the board to save from ruin these devoted
+victims which were under his protection. All these counter-petitions
+come before the Council while the ink is hardly dry upon the petitions
+which Mr. Hastings had left behind him, as proofs of the desire of this
+family to be disinherited in favor of Gunga Govind Sing. Upon the
+receipt of these remonstrances, the board could not proceed in the
+business, and accordingly Gunga Govind Sing was defeated.
+
+But Gunga Govind Sing was unwilling to quit his prey. And what does he
+do? I desire your Lordships to consider seriously the reply of Gunga
+Govind Sing, as it appears upon your minutes. It is a bold answer. He
+denies the right of the Rajah to these estates. "Why," says he, "all
+property in this country depends upon the will of your government. How
+came this Rajah's family into possession of this great zemindary? Why,
+they got it at first by the mere favor of government. The whole was an
+iniquitous transaction. This is a family that in some former age has
+robbed others; and now let me rob them." In support of this claim, he
+adds the existence of other precedents, namely, "that many clerks or
+mutsuddies and banians at Calcutta had," as he says, "got possession of
+the lands of other people without any pretence of right;--why should not
+I?" Good God! what precedents are these!
+
+Your Lordships shall now hear the razinama, or testimonial, which, since
+Mr. Hastings's arrival in England, this Rajah has been induced to send
+to the Company from India, and you will judge then of the state in which
+Mr. Hastings has left that country. Hearken, my Lords, I pray you, to
+the razinama of this man, from whom 40,000_l._ was taken by Mr. Hastings
+and Gunga Govind Sing, and against whom an attempt was made by the same
+persons to deprive him of his inheritance. Listen to this razinama, and
+then judge of all the other testimonials which have been produced on the
+part of the prisoner at your bar. His counsel rest upon them, they glory
+in them, and we shall not abate them one of these precious testimonials.
+They put the voice of grateful India against the voice of ungrateful
+England. Now hear what grateful India says, after our having told you
+for what it was so grateful.
+
+     "I, Radanaut, Zemindar of Purgunnah Havelly Punjera, commonly
+     called Dinagepore:--As it has been learnt by me, the mutsuddies and
+     respectable officers of my zemindary, that the ministers of
+     England are displeased with the late Governor, Warren Hastings,
+     Esquire, upon the suspicion that he oppressed us, took money from
+     us by deceit and force, and ruined the country, therefore we, upon
+     the strength of our religion, which we think it incumbent on and
+     necessary for us to abide by, following the rules laid down in
+     giving evidence, declare the particulars of the acts and deeds of
+     Warren Hastings, Esquire, full of circumspection and caution,
+     civility and justice, superior to the conduct of the most learned,
+     and by representing what is fact wipe away the doubts that have
+     possessed the minds of the ministers of England; that Mr. Hastings
+     is possessed of fidelity and confidence, and yielding protection to
+     us; that he is clear from the contamination of mistrust and wrong,
+     and his mind is free of covetousness and avarice. During the time
+     of his administration, no one saw other conduct than that of
+     protection to the husbandmen, and justice; no inhabitant ever
+     experienced affliction, no one ever felt oppression from him. Our
+     reputations have always been guarded from attacks by his prudence,
+     and our families have always been protected by his justice."
+
+Good God! my Lords, "_our families protected by his justice_"! What!
+after Gunga Govind Sing, in concert with Mr. Hastings, had first robbed
+him of 40,000_l._, and then had attempted to snatch, as it were, out of
+the mouths of babes and sucklings the inheritance of their fathers, and
+to deprive this infant of a great part of his family estate? Here is a
+child, eleven years old, who never could have seen Mr. Hastings, who
+could know nothing of him but from the heavy hand of oppression,
+affliction, wrong, and robbery, brought to bear testimony to the virtues
+of Mr. Hastings before a British Parliament! Such is the confidence they
+repose in their hope of having bribed the English nation by the millions
+and millions of money, the countless lacs of rupees, poured into it from
+India, that they had dared to bring this poor robbed infant to bear
+testimony to the character of Mr. Hastings! These are the things which
+are to be opposed to the mass of evidence which the House of Commons
+bring against this man,--evidence which they bring from his own acts,
+his own writing, and his own records,--a cloud of testimony furnished by
+himself in support of charges brought forward and urged by us agreeably
+to the magnitude of his crimes, with the horror which is inspired by
+them, and with the contempt due to this paltry attempt towards his
+defence, which they had dared to produce from the hands of an infant but
+eleven years old when Mr. Hastings quitted that country!
+
+But to proceed with the razinama.
+
+     "He never omitted the smallest instance of kindness towards us, but
+     healed the wounds of despair with the salve of consolation, by
+     means of his benevolent and kind behavior, never permitting one of
+     us to sink in the pit of despondence. He supported every one by his
+     goodness, overset the designs of evil-minded men by his authority,
+     tied the hand of oppression with the strong bandage of justice, and
+     by these means expanded the pleasing appearance of happiness and
+     joy over us. He reestablished justice and impartiality. We were
+     during his government in the enjoyment of perfect happiness and
+     ease, and many of us are thankful and satisfied. As Mr. Hastings
+     was well acquainted with our manners and customs, he was always
+     desirous in every respect of doing whatever would preserve our
+     religious rites, and guard them against every kind of accident and
+     injury, and at all times protected us. Whatever we have experienced
+     from him, and whatever happened from him, we have written without
+     deceit or exaggeration."
+
+My Lords, before I take leave of this affair of bribes and of the great
+bribe-broker, let me just offer a remark to your Lordships upon one
+curious transaction. My Lords, we have charged a bribe taken from the
+Nabob of Oude, and we have stated the corrupt and scandalous proceeding
+which attended it. I thought I had done with Oude; but as there is a
+golden chain between all the virtues, so there is a golden chain which
+links together all the vices. Mr. Hastings, as you have seen, and as my
+honorable colleague has fully opened it to you, received a bribe or
+corrupt present from the Nabob of Oude in September, 1781. We heard no
+more of this bribe than what we had stated, (no other trace of it ever
+appearing in the Company's records, except in a private letter written
+by Mr. Hastings to the Court of Directors, and afterwards in a
+communication such as you have heard through Mr. Larkins,) till October,
+1783.
+
+But, my Lords, we have since discovered, through and in consequence of
+the violent disputes which took place between Mr. Hastings and the clan
+of Residents that were in Oude,--the Resident of the Company, Mr.
+Bristow, the two Residents of Mr. Hastings, Mr. Middleton and Mr.
+Johnson, and the two Residents sent by him to watch over all the rest,
+Major Palmer and Major Davy,--upon quarrels, I say, between them, we
+discovered that Mr. Middleton had received the offer of a present of
+100,000_l._ in February, 1782. This circumstance is mentioned in a
+letter of Mr. Middleton's, in which he informs Mr. Hastings that the
+Nabob had destined such a sum for him.
+
+Now the first thing that will occur to your Lordships upon such an
+affair will be a desire to know what it was that induced the Nabob to
+make this offer. It was but in the September preceding that Mr. Hastings
+had received, for his private use, as the Nabob conceived, so bountiful
+a present as 100,000_l._; what motive, then, could he have had in
+February to offer him another 100,000_l._? This man, at the time, was
+piercing heaven itself with the cries of despondency, despair, beggary,
+and ruin. You have seen that he was forced to rob his own family, in
+order to satisfy the Company's demands upon him; and yet this is
+precisely the time when he thinks proper to offer 100,000_l._ to Mr.
+Hastings. Does not the mind of every man revolt, whilst he exclaims, and
+say, "What! another 100,000_l._ to Mr. Hastings?" What reason had the
+Nabob to think Mr. Hastings so monstrously insatiable, that, having but
+the September before received 100,000_l._, he must give him another in
+February? My Lords, he must, in the interval, have threatened the Nabob
+with some horrible catastrophe, from which he was to redeem himself by
+this second present. You can assign no other motive for his giving it.
+We know not what answer Mr. Hastings made to Mr. Middleton upon that
+occasion, but we find that in the year 1783 Mr. Hastings asserts that he
+sent up Major Palmer and Major Davy to persuade the Nabob to transfer
+this present, which the Nabob intended for him, to the Company's
+service. Remark, my Lords, the progress of this affair. In a formal
+accusation preferred against Mr. Middleton, he charges him with
+obstructing this design of his. In this accusation, my Lords, you find
+him at once in the curious character of prosecutor, witness, and judge.
+
+Let us see how he comports himself. I shall only state to you one of the
+articles of his impeachment; it is the third charge; it is in page 1267
+of your Lordships' Minutes.
+
+     "For sending repeatedly to the Vizier, and to his minister, Hyder
+     Beg Khan, to advise them against transferring the ten lacs of
+     rupees intended as a present to the Governor-General to the
+     Company's account; as it would be a precedent for further demands,
+     which if the Vizier did not refuse in the first instance, the
+     government would never cease to harass him for money."
+
+The first thing that will occur to your Lordships is an assertion of the
+accuser's:--"I am morally certain, that jaidads or assets for ten lacs,
+either in assignment of land or in bills, had been prepared, and were in
+the charge or possession of Mr. Middleton, before Major Palmer's
+arrival, and left with Mr. Johnson on Mr. Middleton's departure."
+
+My Lords, here is an accusation that Mr. Middleton had actually received
+money, either in bills or assets of some kind or other,--and that, upon
+quitting his Residency, he had handed it over to his successor, Mr.
+Johnson. Here are, then, facts asserted, and we must suppose
+substantiated. Here is a sum of money to be accounted for, in which
+there is a gross malversation directly charged as to these particulars,
+in Mr. Hastings's opinion. Mr. Macpherson, another member of the
+Council, has declared, that he understood at the time that the ten lacs
+were actually deposited in bills, and that it was not a mere offer made
+by the Nabob to pay such a sum from the future revenue of the country.
+Mr. Hastings has these facts disclosed to him. He declares that he was
+"_morally_ certain" of it,--that is, as certain as a man can be of
+anything; because physical certitude does not belong to such matters.
+The first thing you will naturally ask is, "Why does he not ask Mr.
+Johnson how he had disposed of that money which Mr. Middleton had put in
+his hands?" He does no such thing; he passes over it totally, as if it
+were no part of the matter in question, and the accusation against Mr.
+Middleton terminates in the manner you will there find stated. When Mr.
+Johnson is asked, "Why was not that money applied to the Company's
+service?" he boldly steps forward, and says, "I prevented it from being
+so applied. It never was, it never ought to have been, so applied; such
+an appropriation of money to be taken from the Nabob would have been
+enormous upon that occasion."
+
+What, then, does Mr. Hastings do? Does he examine Mr. Middleton upon the
+subject, who charges himself with having received the money? Mr.
+Middleton was at that very time in Calcutta, called down thither by Mr.
+Hastings himself. One would naturally expect that he would call upon him
+to explain for what purpose he left the money with Mr. Johnson. He did
+no such thing. Did he examine Mr. Johnson himself, who was charged with
+having received the money from Mr. Middleton? Did he ask him what he had
+done with that money? Not one word. Did he send for Major Palmer and
+Major Davy to account for it? No. Did he call any shroff, any banker,
+any one person concerned in the payment of the money, or any one person
+in the management of the revenue? No, not one. Directly in the face of
+his own assertions, directly contrary to his moral conviction of the
+fact that the money had been actually deposited, he tries Mr. Johnson
+collusively and obliquely, not upon the account of what was done with
+the money, but why it was prevented from being applied to the Company's
+service; and he acquits him in a manner that (taking the whole of it
+together) will give your Lordships the finest idea possible of a Bengal
+judicature, as exercised by Mr. Hastings.
+
+"I am not sorry," says he, "that Mr. Johnson chose to defeat my
+intentions; since it would have added to the Nabob's distresses, but
+with no immediate relief to the Company. If, in his own breast, he can
+view the secret motives of this transaction, and on their testimony
+approve it, I also acquit him."
+
+Merciful God! Here is a man accused by regular articles of impeachment.
+The accuser declares he is morally certain that the money had been
+received, but was prevented from being applied to its destination by the
+person accused; and he acquits him. Does he acquit him from his own
+knowledge, or from any evidence? No: but he applies to the man's
+conscience, and says, "If you in your conscience can acquit yourself, I
+acquit you."
+
+Here, then, is a proceeding the most astonishing and shameless that
+perhaps was ever witnessed: a court trying a man for a delinquency and
+misapplication of money, destined, in the first instance, for the use of
+the judge, but which he declares ought, in his own opinion, to be set
+apart for the public use, and which he was desirous of applying to the
+Company's service, without regard to his own interest, and then the
+judge declaring he is not sorry that his purpose had been defeated by
+the party accused. Instead, however, of censuring the accused, he
+applies to the man's own conscience. "Does your conscience," says he,
+"acquit you of having acted wrong?" The accused makes no reply; and then
+Mr. Hastings, by an hypothetical conclusion, acquits him.
+
+Mr. Hastings is accused by the Commons for that, having a moral
+certainty of the money's being intended for his use, he would not have
+ceased to inquire into the actual application of it but from some
+corrupt motive and intention. With this he is charged. He comes before
+you to make his defence. Mr. Middleton is in England. Does he call Mr.
+Middleton to explain it here? Does he call upon Mr. Johnson, who was the
+other day in this court, to account for it? Why did he not, when he sent
+for these curious papers and testimonials to Major Palmer, (the person
+authorized, as he pretends, by him, to resign all his pretensions to the
+money procured,) send for Major Palmer, who is the person that accused
+him in this business,--why not send for him to bear some testimony
+respecting it? No: he had time enough, but at no one time and in no
+place did he do this; therefore the imputation of the foulest corruption
+attaches upon him, joined with the infamy of a collusive prosecution,
+instituted for the sake of a collusive acquittal.
+
+Having explained to your Lordships the nature, and detailed the
+circumstances, as far as we are acquainted with them, of this fraudulent
+transaction, we have only further to remind you, that, though Mr.
+Middleton was declared guilty of five of the six charges brought against
+him by Mr. Hastings, yet the next thing you hear is, that Mr. Hastings,
+after declaring that this conduct of Mr. Middleton had been very bad,
+and that the conduct of the other servants of the Company concerned with
+him had been ten times worse, he directly appoints him to one of the
+most honorable and confidential offices the Company had to dispose of:
+he sends him ambassador to the Nizam,--to give to all the courts of
+India a specimen of the justice, honor, and decency of the British
+government.
+
+My Lords, with regard to the bribe for the _entertainment_, I only beg
+leave to make one observation to you upon that article. I could say, if
+the time would admit it, a great deal upon that subject; but I wish to
+compress it, and I shall therefore only recommend it in general to your
+Lordships' deliberate consideration. The covenant subsisting between the
+Company and its servants was made for the express purpose of putting an
+end to all such entertainments. By this convention it is ordered that no
+presents exceeding 200_l._ [400_l._?] shall be accepted upon any
+pretence for an entertainment. The covenant was intended to put an end
+to the custom of receiving money for entertainments, even when visiting
+an independent Oriental prince. But your Lordships know that the Nabob
+was no prince, but a poor, miserable, undone dependant upon, the
+Company. The present was also taken by Mr. Hastings at a time when he
+went upon the cruel commission of cutting down the Nabob's allowance
+from 400,000_l._ to 260,000_l._ [160,000_l._?], and when he was reducing
+to beggary thousands of persons who were dependent for bread upon the
+Nabob, and ruining, perhaps, forty thousand others. I shall say no more
+upon that subject, though, in truth, it is a thing upon which much
+observation might be made.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall now pass on to another article connected with, though not making
+a direct part of, that of corrupt bribery: I mean the swindling
+subterfuges by which he has attempted to justify his corrupt practices.
+At one time, he defends them by pleading the necessities of his own
+affairs,--as when he takes presents and entertainments avowedly for his
+own profits. At another time he defends them by pleading the goodness of
+his intentions: he intended, he says, to give the money to the Company.
+His last plea has something in it (which shall I say?) of a more awful
+or of a more abandoned character, or of both. In the settlement of his
+public account, before he left India, he takes credit for a bond which
+he had received from Nobkissin upon some account or other. He then,
+returns to England, and what does he do? Pay off? No. Give up the bond
+to the Company? No. He says, "I will account to the Company for this
+money." And when he comes to give this account of the expenditure of
+this money, your Lordships will not be a little astonished at the items
+of it. One is for founding a Mahometan college. It is a very strange
+thing that Rajah Nobkissin, who is a Gentoo, should be employed by Mr.
+Hastings to found a Mahometan college. We will allow Mr. Hastings, who
+is a Christian, or would be thought a Christian, to grow pious at last,
+and, as many others have done, who have spent their lives in fraud,
+rapacity, and peculation, to seek amends and to expiate his crimes by
+charitable foundations. Nay, we will suppose Mr. Hastings to have taken
+it into his head to turn Mahometan, (Gentoo he could not,) and to have
+designed by a Mahometan foundation to expiate his offences. Be it so;
+but why should Nobkissin pay for it? We will pass over this also. But
+when your Lordships shall hear of what nature that foundation was, I
+believe you will allow that a more extraordinary history never did
+appear in the world.
+
+In the first place, he stated to the Council, on the 18th of April,
+1781, that in the month of November, 1780, a petition was presented to
+him by a considerable number of Mussulmen, in compliance with which this
+Mahometan college appears to have been founded. It next appears from his
+statement, that in the April following, (that is, within about six
+months after the foundation,) many students had finished their
+education. You see what a hot-bed bribery and corruption is. Our
+universities cannot furnish an education in six years: in India they
+have completed it within six months, and have taken their degrees.
+
+Mr. Hastings says, "I have supported this establishment to this time at
+my own expense; I desire the Company will now defray the charge of it."
+He then calculates what the expenses were; he calculates that the
+building would cost about 6,000_l._, and he gets from the Company a bond
+to raise money for paying this 6,000_l._ You apparently have the
+building now at the public expense, and Mr. Hastings still stands
+charged with the expense of the college for six months. He then proposes
+that a tract of land should be given for the college, to the value of
+about three thousand odd pounds a year,--and that in the mean time there
+should be a certain sum allotted for its expenses. After this Mr.
+Hastings writes a letter from the Ganges to the Company, in which he
+says not a word about the expense of the building, but says that the
+college was founded and maintained at his own expense, though it was
+thought to be maintained by the Company; and he fixes the commencement
+of the expense in September, 1779. But, after all, we find that the very
+professor who was to be settled there never so much as arrived in
+Calcutta, or showed his face there, till some time afterwards. And look
+at Mr. Larkins's private accounts, and you will find that he charges the
+expense to have commenced not until October, 1781. It is no error,
+because it runs through and is so accounted in the whole: and it thus
+appears that he has charged, falsely and fraudulently, a year more for
+that establishment than it cost him.
+
+At last, then, when he was coming away, (for I hasten to the conclusion
+of an affair ludicrous indeed in some respects, but not unworthy of your
+Lordships' consideration,) "after remarking that he had experienced for
+three years the utility of this institution, he recommends that they
+will establish a fund for 3,000_l._ a year for it, and give it to the
+master." He had left Gunga Govind Sing as a Gentoo legacy, and he now
+leaves the Mussulman as a Mahometan legacy to the Company.
+
+Your Lordships shall now hear what was the upshot of the whole. The
+Company soon afterwards hearing that this college was become the
+greatest nuisance in Calcutta, and that it had raised the cries of all
+the inhabitants against it, one of their servants, a Mr. Chapman, was
+deputed by the Governor, Sir John Shore, to examine into it, and your
+Lordships will find the account he gives of it in your minutes. In
+short, my Lords, we find that this was a seminary of robbers,
+housebreakers, and every nuisance to society; so that the Company was
+obliged to turn out the master, and to remodel the whole. Your Lordships
+will now judge of the merits and value of this, one of the sets-off
+brought forward by the prisoner against the charges which we have
+brought forward against him: it began in injustice and peculation, and
+ended in a seminary for robbers and housebreakers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nothing now remains to be pressed by me upon your Lordships'
+consideration, but the account given by the late Governor-General, Earl
+Cornwallis, of the state in which he found the country left by his
+predecessor, Mr. Hastings, the prisoner at your bar. But, patient as I
+know your Lordships to be, I also know that your strength is not
+inexhaustible; and though what I have farther to add will not consume
+much of your Lordships' time, yet I conceive that there is a necessity
+for deferring it to another day.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH
+
+IN
+
+GENERAL REPLY.
+
+NINTH DAY: MONDAY, JUNE 16, 1794.
+
+
+My Lords,--I should think it necessary to make an apology to your
+Lordships for appearing before you one day more, if I were inclined to
+measure this business either by the standard of my own ability, or by my
+own impatience, or by any supposed impatience of yours. I know no
+measure, in such a case, but the nature of the subject, and the duty
+which we owe to it. You will therefore, my Lords, permit me, in a few
+words, to lead you back to what we did yesterday, that you may the
+better comprehend the manner in which I mean to conclude the business
+to-day.
+
+My Lords, we took the liberty of stating to you the condition of Bengal
+before our taking possession of it, and of the several classes of its
+inhabitants. We first brought before you the Mahometan inhabitants, who
+had the judicial authority of the country in their hands; and we proved
+to you the utter ruin of that body of people, and with them of the
+justice of the country, by their being, both one and the other, sold to
+an infamous woman called Munny Begum. We next showed you, that the whole
+landed interest, the zemindars, or Hindoo gentry of the country, was
+likewise ruined by its being given over, by letting it on a five years'
+lease, to infamous farmers, and giving it up to their merciless
+exactions,--and afterwards by subjecting the rank of those zemindars,
+their title-deeds, and all their pecuniary affairs, to the minutest
+scrutiny, under pain of criminal punishment, by a commission granted to
+a nefarious villain called Gunga Govind Sing. We lastly showed you that
+the remaining third class, that of the English, was partly corrupted, or
+had its authority dissolved, and that the whole superintending English
+control was subverted or subdued,--that the products of the country were
+diminished, and that the revenues of the Company were dilapidated, by an
+overcharge of expenses, in four years, to the amount of 500,000_l._, in
+consequence of these corrupt, dangerous, and mischievous projects.
+
+We have farther stated, that the Company's servants were corrupted by
+contracts and jobs; we proved that those that were not so corrupted were
+removed from their stations or reduced to a state of abject dependence;
+we showed you the destruction of the Provincial Councils, the
+destruction of the Council-General, and the formation of a committee for
+no other ends whatever but for the purposes of bribery, concealment, and
+corruption. We next stated some of the most monstrous instances of that
+bribery; and though we were of opinion that in none of them any
+satisfactory defence worth mentioning had been made, yet we have thought
+that this should not hinder us from recalling to your Lordships'
+recollection the peculiar nature and circumstances of one of those
+proceedings.
+
+The proceedings to which we wish to call your attention are those
+belonging to the second bribe given by the Nabob of Oude to Mr.
+Hastings. Mr. Hastings's own knowledge and opinion that that money was
+set apart for his use, either in bills or assets, I have before stated;
+and I now wish to call your Lordships' minute recollection to the manner
+in which the fraudulent impeachment of Mr. Middleton, for the purpose of
+stifling an inquiry into that business, was carried on. Your Lordships
+will remember that I proved to you, upon the face of that proceeding,
+the collusive nature of the accusation, and that the real state of the
+case was not charged,--and that Mr. Hastings acquitted the party accused
+of one article of the charge, not upon the evidence of the case,
+contrary to his own avowed, declared, moral certainty of his guilt, but
+upon a pretended appeal to the conscience of the man accused. He did
+not, however, give him a complete, formal, official acquittal, but
+referred the matter to the Court of Directors, who could not possibly
+know anything of the matter, without one article of evidence whatever
+produced at the time or transmitted. We lastly proved to you, that,
+after finding him guilty of five charges, and leaving the other to the
+Court of Directors, Mr. Hastings, without any reason assigned, appointed
+him to a great office in the Company's service.
+
+These proceedings were brought before you for two purposes: first, to
+show the corrupt principle of the whole proceeding; next, to show the
+manner in which the Company's servants are treated. They are accused and
+persecuted, until they are brought to submit to whatever terms it may be
+thought proper to impose upon them; they are then formally, indeed,
+acquitted of the most atrocious crimes charged against them, but
+virtually condemned upon some articles, with the scourge hung over
+them,--and in some instances rewarded by the greatest, most honorable,
+and most lucrative situations in the Company's service. My Lords, it is
+on the same ground of the wicked, pernicious, and ruinous principles of
+Mr. Hastings's government, that I have charged this with everything that
+is chargeable against him, namely, that, if your Lordships should ratify
+those principles by your acquittal of him, they become principles of
+government,--rejected, indeed, by the Commons, but adopted by the
+Peerage of Great Britain.
+
+There is another article which I have just touched, but which I must do
+more than barely notice, upon account of the evil example of it: I mean
+the taking great sums of money, under pretence of an entertainment. Your
+Lordships will recollect, that, when this business was charged against
+him in India, Mr. Hastings neither affirmed nor denied the fact.
+Confession could not be there extorted from him. He next appeared before
+the House of Commons, and he still evaded a denial or a confession of
+it. He lastly appeared before your Lordships, and in his answer to our
+charge he in the same manner evaded either a confession or a denial. He
+forced us to employ a great part of a session in endeavoring to
+establish what we have at last established, the receipt of the sums
+first charged, and of seven lacs more, by him. At length the proof could
+not be evaded; and after we had fought through all the difficulties
+which the law could interpose in his defence, and of which he availed
+himself with a degree of effrontery that has, I believe, no example in
+the world, he confesses, avows, and justifies his conduct. If the custom
+alleged be well founded, and be an honorable and a proper and just
+practice, why did he not avow it in every part and progress of our
+proceedings here? Why should he have put us to the necessity of wasting
+so many months in the proof of the fact? And why, after we have proved
+it, and not before, did he confess it, avow it, and even glory in it?
+
+I must remind your Lordships that the sum charged to be so taken by way
+of entertainment made only a part, a single article, of the bribes
+charged by Nundcomar to have been received by Mr. Hastings; and when we
+find him confessing, what he could not deny, that single article, and
+evading all explanation respecting the others, and not giving any reason
+whatever why one was received and the others rejected, your Lordships
+will judge of the strong presumption of his having taken them all, even
+if we had given no other proofs of it. We think, however, that we have
+proved the whole very satisfactorily. But whether we have or not, the
+proof of a single present received is sufficient; because the principle
+to be established respecting these bribes is this,--whether or not a
+Governor-General, paying a visit to any of the poor, miserable,
+dependent creatures called sovereign princes in that country, (men whom
+Mr. Hastings has himself declared to be nothing but phantoms, and that
+they had no one attribute of sovereignty about them,) whether, I say, he
+can consider them to be such sovereign princes as to justify his taking
+from them great sums of money by way of a present. The Nabob, in fact,
+was not a sovereign prince, nor a country power, in any sense but that
+which the Company meant to exempt from the custom of making presents. It
+was their design to prevent their servants from availing themselves of
+the real dependence of the nominal native powers to extort money from
+them under the pretence of their sovereignty. Such presents, so far from
+being voluntary, were in reality obtained from their weakness, their
+hopeless and unprotected condition; and you are to decide whether or not
+this custom, which is insisted upon by the prisoner's counsel, with
+great triumph, to be a thing which he could not evade, without breaking
+through all the usages of the country, and violating principles
+established by the most clear law of India, is to be admitted as his
+justification.
+
+It was on this very account, namely, the extortion suffered by these
+people, under the name or pretence of presents, that the Company first
+bound their servants by a covenant, which your Lordships shall now hear
+read.
+
+     "That they shall not take any grant of lands, or rents or revenues
+     issuing out of lands, or any territorial possession, jurisdiction,
+     dominion, power, or authority whatsoever, from any of the Indian
+     princes, sovereigns, subahs, or nabobs, or any of their ministers,
+     servants, or agents, for any service or services, or upon any
+     account or pretence whatsoever, without the license or consent of
+     the Court of Directors."
+
+This clause in the covenant had doubtless a regard to Lord Clive, and to
+Sir Hector Munro, and to some others, who had received gifts, and grants
+of jaghires, and other territorial revenues, that were confirmed by the
+Company. But though this confirmation might be justifiable at a time
+when we had no real sovereignty in the country, yet the Company very
+wisely provided afterwards, that under no pretence whatever should their
+servants have the means of extorting from the sovereigns or pretended
+sovereigns of the country any of their lands or possessions. Afterwards
+it appeared that there existed abuses of a similar nature, and
+particularly (as was proved before us in the year 1773, and reported to
+our House, upon the evidence of Mahomed Reza Khan) the practice of
+frequently visiting the princes, and of extorting, under pretence of
+such visits, great sums of money. All their servants, and the
+Governor-General particularly, were therefore obliged to enter into the
+following covenant:--
+
+     "That they shall not, directly or indirectly, accept, take, or
+     receive, or agree to accept, take, or receive, any gift, reward,
+     gratuity, allowance, donation, or compensation, in money, effects,
+     jewels, or otherwise howsoever, from any of the Indian princes,
+     sovereigns, subahs, or nabobs, or any of their ministers, servants,
+     or agents, exceeding the value of four thousand rupees, for any
+     service or services performed or to be performed by them in India,
+     or upon any other account or pretence whatsoever."
+
+By this covenant, my Lords, Mr. Hastings is forbidden to accept, upon
+any pretence and under any name whatsoever, any sum above four thousand
+rupees,--that is to say, any sum above four hundred pounds. Now the sum
+that was here received is eighteen thousand pounds sterling, by way of a
+present, under the name of an allowance for an entertainment, which is
+the precise thing which his covenant was made to prevent. The covenant
+suffered him to receive four hundred pounds: if he received more than
+that money, he became a criminal, he had broken his covenant, and
+forfeited the obligation he had made with his masters. Think with
+yourselves, my Lords, what you will do, if you acquit the prisoner of
+this charge. You will avow the validity, you will sanction the principle
+of his defence: for, as the fact is avowed, there is an end of that.
+
+Good God! my Lords, where are we? If they conceal their gifts and
+presents, they are safe by their concealment; if they avow them, they
+are still safer. They plead the customs of the country, or rather, the
+customs which we have introduced into the country,--customs which have
+been declared to have their foundation in a system of the most
+abominable corruption, the most flagitious extortion, the most dreadful
+oppression,--those very customs which their covenant is made to abolish.
+Think where your Lordships are. You have before you a covenant declaring
+that he should take under no name whatever (I do not know how words
+could be selected in the English language more expressive) any sum more
+than four hundred pounds. He says, "I have taken eighteen thousand
+pounds." He makes his counsel declare, and he desires your Lordships to
+confirm their declaration, that he is not only justifiable in so doing,
+but that he ought to do so,--that he ought to break his covenant, and
+act in direct contradiction to it. He does not even pretend to say that
+this money was intended, either inwardly or outwardly, avowedly or
+covertly, for the Company's service. He put absolutely into his own
+pocket eighteen thousand pounds, besides his salary.
+
+Consider, my Lords, the consequences of this species of iniquity. If any
+servant of the Company, high in station, chooses to make a visit from
+Calcutta to Moorshedabad, which Moorshedabad was then the residence of
+our principal revenue government,--if he should choose to take an
+airing for his health, if he has a fancy to make a little voyage for
+pleasure as far as Moorshedabad, in one of those handsome barges or
+budgeros of which you have heard so much in his charge against
+Nundcomar, he can put twenty thousand pounds into his pocket any day he
+pleases, in defiance of all our acts of Parliament, covenants, and
+regulations.
+
+Do you make your laws, do you make your covenants, for the very purpose
+of their being evaded? Is this the purpose for which a British tribunal
+sits here, to furnish a subject for an epigram, or a tale for the
+laughter of the world? Believe me, my Lords, the world is not to be thus
+trifled with. But, my Lords, you will never trifle with your duty. You
+have a gross, horrid piece of corruption before you,--impudently
+confessed, and more impudently defended. But you will not suffer Mr.
+Hastings to say, "I have only to go to Moorshedabad, or to order the
+Nabob to meet me half way, and I can set aside and laugh at all your
+covenants and acts of Parliament." Is this all the force and power of
+the covenant by which you would prevent the servants of the Company from
+committing acts of fraud and oppression, that they have nothing to do
+but to amuse themselves with a tour of pleasure to Moorshedabad in order
+to put any sum of money in their pocket that they please?
+
+But they justify themselves by saying, such things have been practised
+before. No doubt they have; and these covenants were made that they
+should not be practised any more. But your Lordships are desired to say,
+that the very custom which the covenant is made to destroy, the very
+grievance itself, may be pleaded; the abuse shall be admitted to
+destroy the law made to prevent it. It is impossible, I venture to say,
+that your Lordships should act thus. The conduct of the criminal is not
+half so abhorrent as the justification is affronting to justice, whilst
+it tends to vilify and degrade the dignity of the Peerage and the
+character of the Commons of Great Britain, before the former and against
+the latter of which such a justification is produced in the face of the
+world.
+
+At the same time that we call for your justice upon this man, we beseech
+you to remember the severest justice upon him is the tenderest pity
+towards the innocent victims of his crimes. Consider what was at that
+time the state of the people from whom, in direct defiance of his
+covenant, he took this sum of money. Were they at this time richer, were
+they more opulent, was the state of the country more flourishing than
+when Mr. Sumner, when Mr. Vansittart, in short, than when the long line
+of Mr. Hastings's predecessors visited that country? No, they were not.
+Mr. Hastings at this very time had reduced the Nabob's income from
+450,000_l._ [400,000_l._?] sterling a year, exclusive of other
+considerable domains and revenues, to 160,000_l._ He was, indeed, an
+object of compassion. His revenues had not only been reduced during his
+state of minority, but they were reduced when he afterwards continued in
+a state in which he could do no one valid act; and yet, in this state,
+he was made competent to give away, under the name of compensation for
+entertainments, the sum of 18,000_l._,--perhaps at that time nearly all
+he had in the world.
+
+Look at your minutes, and you will find Mr. Hastings had just before
+this time said that the bread of ten thousand persons, many of them of
+high rank, depended upon the means possessed by the Nabob for their
+support,--that his heart was cut and afflicted to see himself obliged to
+ruin and starve so many of the Mahometan nobility, the greatest part of
+whose yet remaining miserable allowances were now taken away. You know,
+and you will forgive me again remarking, that it is the nature of the
+eagles and more generous birds of prey to fall upon living, healthy
+victims, but that vultures and carrion crows, and birds of that base and
+degenerate kind, always prey upon dead or dying carcases. It is upon
+ruined houses, it is upon decayed families, it is upon extinguished
+nobility, that Mr. Hastings chooses to prey, and to justify his making
+them his prey.
+
+But again we hear, my Lords, that it is a custom, upon ceremonial and
+complimentary visits, to receive these presents. Do not let us deceive
+ourselves. Mr. Hastings was there upon no visit either of ceremony or
+politics. He was a member, at that time, of the Committee of Circuit,
+which went to Moorshedabad for the purpose of establishing a system of
+revenue in the country. He went up upon that business only, as a member
+of the Committee of Circuit, for which business he was, like other
+members of the Committee of Circuit, amply paid, in addition to his
+emoluments as Governor, which amounted to about 30,000_l._ a year. Not
+satisfied with those emoluments, and without incurring new known expense
+of any kind or sort, he was paid for the extra expenses of his journey,
+as appears in your minutes, like other members of the Committee of
+Circuit. In fact, he was on no visit there at all. He was merely
+executing his duty in the settlement of the revenue, as a member of the
+Committee of Circuit. I do not mean to praise the Committee of Circuit
+in anyway: God forbid I should!--for we know that it was a committee of
+robbers. He was there as one of that committee, which I am pretty well
+justified in describing as I have done, because the Court of Directors,
+together with the Board of Control, did, in the year 1786, declare that
+the five years' settlement (which originated in that committee) was a
+thing bought and sold: your Lordships may read it whenever you please,
+in the 80th paragraph of their letter.
+
+Your Lordships are now fully in possession of all the facts upon which
+we charge the prisoner with peculation, by extorting or receiving large
+sums of money, upon pretence of visits, or in compensation of
+entertainments. I appeal to your Lordships' consciences for a serious
+and impartial consideration of our charge. This is a business not to be
+hurried over in the mass, as amongst the acts of a great man, who may
+have his little errors among his great services; no, you cannot, as a
+judicial body, huddle all this into a hotchpotch, and decide upon it in
+a heap. You will have to ask yourselves,--Is this justifiable by his
+covenant? Is this justifiable by law? Is this justifiable, under the
+circumstances of the case, by an enlarged discretion? Is it to be
+justified under any principles of humanity? Would it be justifiable by
+local customs, if such were applicable to the case in question? and even
+if it were, is it a practice fit for an English Governor-General to
+follow?
+
+I dwell the longer upon this, because the fact is avowed; the whole is
+an issue of law between us,--whether a Governor-General, in such a case,
+ought to take such money; and therefore, before I finally dismiss it, I
+beg leave to restate it briefly once more for your Lordships'
+consideration.
+
+First I wish to leave fixed in your Lordships' minds, what is distinctly
+fixed, and shall never go out of ours, that his covenant did not allow
+him to take above four hundred pounds as a present, upon any pretence
+whatsoever.
+
+Your Lordships will observe we contend, that, if there was a custom,
+this covenant puts an end to that custom. It was declared and intended
+so to do. The fact is, that, if such custom existed at all, it was a
+custom applicable only to an ambassador or public minister sent on a
+necessary complimentary visit to a sovereign prince. We deny,
+positively, that there is any such general custom. We say, that he never
+was any such minister or that he ever went upon any such complimentary
+visit. We affirm, that, when he took this money, he was doing an act of
+quite another nature, and came upon that business only to Moorshedabad,
+the residence of the prince of the country. Now do you call a man who is
+going to execute a commission, a commission more severe than those
+issued against bankrupts, a commission to take away half a man's income,
+and to starve a whole body of people dependent upon that income,--do you
+call this a complimentary visit? Is this a visit for which a man is to
+have great entertainments given him? No, the pretence for taking this
+money is worse than the act itself. When a man is going to execute upon
+another such harsh cruelty, when he is going upon a service at which he
+himself says his mind must revolt, is that precisely the time when he is
+to take from his undone host a present, as if he was upon a visit of
+compliment, or about to confer some honor or benefit upon him,--to
+augment his revenues, to add to his territories, or to conclude some
+valuable treaty with him? Was this a proper time to take at all from an
+helpless minor so large a sum of money?
+
+And here I shall leave this matter for your Lordships' consideration,
+after reminding you that this poor Nabob is still at Moorshedabad, and
+at the mercy of any English gentleman who may choose to take 18,000_l._,
+or any other given sum of money from him, after the example of the
+prisoner at your bar, if it should be sanctioned by your connivance. Far
+different was the example set him by General Clavering. In page 1269
+your Lordships will find the most honorable testimony to the uprightness
+and fidelity of this meritorious servant of the Company. It runs thus:
+"Conceiving it to be the intention of the legislature that the
+Governor-General and members of the Council should receive no presents,
+either from the Indian powers or any persons whatever, he [General
+Clavering] has strictly complied, since his arrival here, both with the
+spirit and the letter of the act of Parliament, and has accordingly
+returned all the presents which have been made to him." I have dwelt
+thus long upon this subject, not merely upon account of its own corrupt
+character, which has been sufficiently stigmatized by my honorable
+colleague, but upon account of the principle that is laid down by the
+prisoner, in his defence of his conduct,--a principle directly leading
+to a continuance of the same iniquitous practice, and subversive of
+every attempt to check or control it.
+
+I must beg leave to recall your Lordships' attention to another, but
+similar instance of his peculation, another and new mode of taking
+presents: I mean, the present which Mr. Hastings took, through Gunga
+Govind Sing, from those farmers of the revenues amongst whom he had
+distributed the pillage of the whole country. This scandalous breach of
+his covenant he attempts to justify by the inward intention of his own
+mind to apply the money so taken to the public service. Upon this, my
+Lords, I shall only observe, that this plea of an inward intention in
+his own mind may, if admitted, justify any evil act whatever of this
+kind. You have seen how presents from the Nabob are justified; you have
+seen how the taking a sum of money or allowance for entertainment,
+directly contrary to the covenant, how that is attempted to be
+justified; you see in what manner he justifies this last-mentioned act
+of peculation; and your Lordships will now have to decide upon the
+validity of these pleas.
+
+There still remains, unobserved upon, an instance of his malversation,
+wholly new in its kind, to which I will venture to desire your Lordships
+very seriously to turn your attention. In all the causes of peculation
+or malversation in office that ever have been tried before this high
+court, or before any lower court of judicature, in all the judicial
+records of modern crimes, or of antiquity, you will not find anything in
+any degree like it. We have all, in our early education, read the
+Verrine Orations. We read them not merely to instruct us, as they will
+do, in the principles of eloquence, and to acquaint us with the manners,
+customs, and laws of the ancient Romans, of which they are an abundant
+repository, but we may read them from a much higher motive. We may read
+them from a motive which the great author had doubtless in his view,
+when by publishing them he left to the world and to the latest posterity
+a monument by which it might be seen what course a great public accuser
+in a great public cause ought to pursue, and, as connected with it, what
+course judges ought to pursue in deciding upon such a cause. In these
+orations you will find almost every instance of rapacity and peculation
+which we charge upon Mr. Hastings. Undoubtedly, many Roman and English
+governors have received corrupt gifts and bribes, under various
+pretences. But in the cause before your Lordships there is one species
+of disgrace, in the conduct of the party accused, which I defy you to
+find in Verres, or in the whole tribe of Roman peculators, in any
+governor-general, proconsul, or viceroy. I desire you to consider it not
+included in any other class of crimes, but as a species apart by itself.
+It is an individual, a single case; but it is like the phoenix,--it
+makes a class or species by itself: I mean the business of Nobkissin.
+The money taken from him was not money pretended to be received in lieu
+of entertainment; it was not money taken from a farmer-general of
+revenue, out of an idea that his profits were unreasonable, and greater
+than government ought to allow; it was not a donation from a great man,
+as an act of his bounty. No, it was a sum of money taken from a private
+individual,--or rather, as has been proved to you by Mr. Larkins, his
+own book-keeper, money borrowed, for which he had engaged to give his
+bond. That he had actually deposited his bond for this money Mr. Larkins
+has proved to you,--and that the bond was carried to Nobkissin's credit,
+in his account with the government. But Mr. Hastings, when he was
+called upon for the money, withdraws the bond; he will not pay the
+money; he refused to pay it upon the applications made to him both in
+India and here at home; and he now comes to your Lordships and says, "I
+borrowed this money, I intended to give my bond for it, as has been
+proved before you; but I must have it for my own use." We have heard of
+governors being everything that is bad and wicked; but a governor
+putting himself in the situation of a common cheat, of a common
+swindler, never was, I believe, heard of since the creation of the world
+to this day. This does not taste of the common oppressions of power;
+this does not taste of the common abuses of office; but it in no way
+differs from one of those base swindling cases that come to be tried and
+heavily punished in the King's Bench every day. This is neither more nor
+less than a plain, barefaced cheat.
+
+Now, my Lords, let us see how it is justified. To justify openly and
+directly a cheat, to justify a fraud upon an individual, is reserved for
+our times. But, good Heavens, what a justification have we here! Oh, my
+Lords, consider into what a state Indian corruption has brought us in
+this country, when any person can be found to come to the bar of the
+House of Lords and say, "I did cheat, I did defraud; I did promise, and
+gave my bond; I have now withdrawn it, but I will account for it to you
+as to a gang of robbers concerned with me in the transaction. I confess
+I robbed this man; but I have acted as trustee for the gang. Observe
+what I have done for the gang. Come forward, Mr. Auriol, and prove what
+handsome budgeros I gave the company: were not they elegantly painted,
+beautifully gilt, charming and commodious? I made use of them as long
+as I had occasion; and though they are little worse for wear, and would
+hardly suffer the least percentage deduction from prime cost upon them,
+I gave them to the company. Oh, I did not put the money into my own
+pocket. I provided for myself and wore a suit of lace clothes, when I
+was Jew bail for some of this company: it will turn, for it is hardly
+the worse for wear, though I appeared two or three times, in different
+characters, as bail for you on such and such an occasion. I therefore
+set off these items against this money which I gained by swindling on
+your account. It is true I also picked such a one's pocket of a watch;
+here it is; I have worn it as long as it was convenient; now I give the
+watch to the company, and let them send it to the pawnbroker for what it
+will bring. Besides all this, I maintained aide-de-camps for you, and
+gave them house-rent." (By the way, my Lords, what sort of aide-de-camps
+were these? Who made him a military man, and to have such a legion of
+aide-de-camps?) "But," says he, "I paid house-rent for them; that is, in
+other words, I paid, at night-cellars and houses in Saint Giles's,
+sixpence a week for some of the gang." (This, my Lords, is the real
+spirit of the whole proceeding, and more especially of the last item in
+it.) "Then," says he, "I was the gang's schoolmaster, and taught lessons
+on their account. I founded a Mahometan school." (Your Lordships have
+already heard something of this shameful affair, of this scene of
+iniquity,--I think of such iniquity as the world never yet had to blush
+at.) "I founded a Mahometan college for your use; and I bore the expense
+of it from September, 1780, when I placed a professor there, called
+Mudjed-o-Din."--This Mudjed-o-Din was to perfect men, by contract, in
+all the arts and sciences, in about six months; and the chief purpose of
+the school was, as Mr. Hastings himself tells you, to breed theologians,
+magistrates, and moulavies, that is to say, judges and doctors of law,
+who were to be something like our masters in chancery, the assessors of
+judges, to assist them in their judgments. Such was the college founded
+by Mr. Hastings, and he soon afterwards appropriated one of the
+Company's estates, (I am speaking of matters of public notoriety,) worth
+3,000_l._ a year, for its support. Heaven be praised, that Mr. Hastings,
+when he was resolved to be pious and munificent, and to be a great
+founder, chose a Mahometan rather than a Christian foundation, so that
+our religion was not disgraced by such a foundation!
+
+Observe how he charges the expense of the foundation to the Company
+twice over. He first makes them set aside an estate of 3,000_l._ a year
+for its support. In what manner this income was applied during Mr.
+Hastings's stay in India no man living knows; but we know, that, at his
+departure, one of the last acts he did was to desire it should be put
+into the hands of Mudjed-o-Din. He afterwards, as you have seen, takes
+credit to himself with the Company for the expenses relative to this
+college.
+
+I must now introduce your Lordships to the last visitation that was made
+of this college. It was visited by order of Lord Cornwallis in the year
+1788, upon the complaints made against it which I have already mentioned
+to your Lordships,--that it was a sink of filth, vermin, and misery. Mr.
+Chapman, who was the visitor, and the friend of Mr. Hastings, declares
+that he could not sit in it even for a few minutes; his words are,--"The
+wretched, squalid figures that from every part ran out upon me appeared
+to be more like anything else than students." In fact, a universal
+outcry was raised by the whole city against it, not only as a receptacle
+of every kind of abuse, not only of filth and excrements which made it
+stink in the natural nostrils, but of worse filth, which made it
+insufferably offensive to the moral nostrils of every inhabitant. Such
+is the account given of a college supported at an expense of 3,000_l._ a
+year, (a handsome foundation for a college,) and for building which the
+Company was charged 5,000_l._: though no vouchers of its expenditure
+were ever given by Mr. Hastings. But this is not all. When Lord
+Cornwallis came to inquire into it, he found that Mudjed-o-Din had sunk
+the income of the estate from 3,000_l._ to 2,000_l._ a year,--in short,
+that it had been a scene of peculation, both by the masters and
+scholars, as well as of abandonment to every kind of vicious and
+licentious courses; and all this without the shadow of any benefit
+having been derived from it. The visitors expressly inquired whether
+there was any good mixed with all this evil; and they found it was all
+bad and mischievous, from one end to the other. Your Lordships will
+remark, that the greatest part of this disgusting business must have
+been known to Mr. Hastings when he gave to Mudjed-o-Din the disposal of
+3,000_l._ a year. And now, my Lords, can you vote this money, expended
+in the manner which I have stated to you, to be a set-off in his favor,
+in an account for money which was itself swindled from a private
+individual?
+
+But there still remains behind another more serious matter belonging to
+this affair; and I hope you will not think that I am laying too much
+stress upon it, when I declare, that, if I were to select from the whole
+of his conduct one thing more dishonorable than another to the British
+nation, it would be that which I am now about to mention. I will leave
+your Lordships to judge of the sincerity of this declaration, when you
+shall have heard read a paper produced by the prisoner in justification
+of conduct such as I have stated his to have been. It is the _razinama_,
+or attestation, of Munny Begum (the woman whom Mr. Hastings placed in
+the seat of justice in that country) concerning this college, made
+precisely at the time of this inquisition by Lord Cornwallis into the
+management of it. Your Lordships will see what sort of things
+attestations are from that country: that they are attestations procured
+in diametrical contradiction to the certain knowledge of the party
+attesting. It is in page 2350 of your Minutes. Indeed, my Lords, these
+are pages which, unless they are effaced by your judgment, will rise up
+in judgment against us, some day or other.
+
+     "He [Mr. Hastings] respected the learned and wise men, and, in
+     order for the propagation of learning, he built a college, and
+     endowed it with a provision for the maintenance of the students,
+     insomuch that thousands reaping the benefits thereof offer up their
+     prayers for the prosperity of the King of England, and for the
+     success of the Company."
+
+I must here remind your Lordships of another attestation of the same
+character, and to the same effect. It comes from Mahomed Reza Khan, who,
+as your Lordships will remember, had been reduced by Mr. Hastings from
+a situation of the highest rank and authority, with an income of
+suitable magnitude, to one of comparative insignificance, with a small
+salary annexed. This man is made to disgrace himself, and to abet the
+disgrace and injury done to his country, by bearing his testimony to the
+merits of this very college.
+
+I hope your Lordships will never lose sight of this aggravating
+circumstance of the prisoner's criminality,--namely, that you never find
+any wicked, fraudulent, and criminal act, in which you do not find the
+persons who suffered by it, and must have been well acquainted with it,
+to be the very persons who are brought to attest in its favor. O Heaven!
+but let shame for one moment veil its face, let indignation suppress its
+feelings, whilst I again call upon you to view all this as a mere
+swindling transaction, in which the prisoner was attempting to defraud
+the Company.
+
+Mr. Hastings has declared, and you will find it upon the Company's
+records, that this institution (which cost the Company not less than
+40,000_l._ in one way or other) did not commence before October in the
+year 1780; and he brings it before the board in April, 1781,--that is,
+about six months after its foundation. Now look at his other account, in
+which he makes it to begin in the year 1779, and in which he has
+therefore overcharged the expenses of it a whole year.--But Mr. Larkins,
+who kept this latter account for him, may have been inaccurate.--Good
+Heavens! where are we? Mr. Hastings, who was bred an accountant, who was
+bred in all sorts of trade and business, declares that he keeps no
+accounts. Then comes Mr. Larkins, who keeps an account for him; but he
+keeps a false account. Indeed, all the accounts from India, from one
+end to another, are nothing but a series of fraud, while Mr. Hastings
+was concerned in them. Mr. Larkins, who keeps his private account just
+as his master kept the public accounts, has swindled from the Company a
+whole year's expenses of this college. I should not thus repeatedly
+dwell upon this transaction, but because I wish your Lordships to be
+cautious how you admit such accounts at all to be given in evidence,
+into the truth of which you cannot penetrate in any regular way. Upon
+the face of the two accounts there is a gross fraud. It is no matter
+which is true or false, as it is an account which you are in no
+situation to decide upon. I lay down this as a fixed judicial rule, that
+no judge ought to receive an account (which, is as serious a part of a
+judicial proceeding as can be) the correctness of which he has no means
+of ascertaining, but must depend upon the sole word of the accountant.
+
+Having stated, therefore, the nature of the offence, which differs
+nothing from a common dog-trot fraud, such as we see amongst the meanest
+of mankind, your Lordships will be cautious how you admit these, or any
+other of his pretended services, to be set off against his crimes. These
+stand on record confessed before you; the former, of which you can form
+no just estimate, and into which you cannot enter, rest for their truth
+upon his own assertions, and they all are found, upon the very face of
+them, to carry marks of fraud as well as of wickedness.
+
+I have only further to observe to your Lordships, that this
+Mudjed-o-Din, who, under the patronage of Mr. Hastings, was to do all
+these wonders, Lord Cornwallis turned out of his office with every mark
+of disgrace, when he attempted to put into some more respectable state
+that establishment which Mr. Hastings had made a sink of abuse.
+
+I here conclude all that I have to say upon this business, trusting that
+your Lordships will feel yourselves more offended, and justice more
+insulted, by the defence than by the criminal acts of the prisoner at
+your bar; and that your Lordships will concur with us in thinking, that
+to make this unhappy people make these attestations, knowing the direct
+contrary of every word which they say to be the truth, is a shocking
+aggravation of his guilt. I say they must know it; for Lord Cornwallis
+tells you it is notorious; and if you think fit to inquire into it, you
+will find that it was unusually notorious.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, we have now brought to a conclusion our observations upon the
+effects produced by that mass of oppression which we have stated and
+proved before your Lordships,--namely, its effects upon the revenues,
+and upon the public servants of the Company. We have shown you how
+greatly the former were diminished, and in what manner the latter were
+reduced to the worst of all bad states, a state of subserviency to the
+will of the Governor-General. I have shown your Lordships that in this
+state they were not only rendered incapable of performing their own
+duty, but were fitted for the worst of all purposes, cooeperation with
+him in the perpetration of his criminal acts, and collusion with him in
+the concealment of them. I have lastly to speak of these effects as they
+regard the general state and welfare of the country. And here your
+Lordships will permit me to read the evidence given by Lord Cornwallis,
+a witness called by the prisoner at your bar, Mr. Hastings himself.
+
+
+     _The Evidence of Lord Cornwallis. Page 2721._
+
+     "_Q._ Whether your Lordship recollects an account that you have
+     given to the Court of Directors, in your letter of the 2d of
+     August, 1789, concerning the state of those provinces?--_A._ I
+     really could not venture to be particular as to any letter I may
+     have written so long since, as I have brought no copies of my
+     letters with me from India, having left them at Bengal when I went
+     to the coast.--_Q._ Whether your Lordship recollects, in any letter
+     that you wrote about the 2d of August, 1789, paragraph 18, any
+     expressions to this effect, namely: 'I am sorry to be obliged to
+     say, that agriculture and internal commerce have for many years
+     been gradually declining, and that at present, excepting the class
+     of shroffs and banians, who reside almost entirely in great towns,
+     the inhabitants of these provinces are advancing hastily to a
+     general state of poverty and wretchedness':--whether your Lordship
+     recollects that you have written a letter to that effect?--_A._ I
+     cannot take upon me to recollect the words of a letter that I have
+     written five years ago, but I conclude I must have written to that
+     effect.--_Q._ Whether your Lordship recollects that in the
+     immediately following paragraph, the 19th, you wrote to this
+     effect: 'In this description' (namely, the foregone description) 'I
+     must even include almost every zemindar in the Company's
+     territories, which, though it may have been partly occasioned by
+     their own indolence and extravagance, I am afraid must also be in a
+     great measure attributed to the defects of our former system of
+     management.' (Paragraph 20.) 'The settlement, in conformity to
+     your orders, will only be made for ten years certain, with the
+     notification of its being your intention to declare it a perpetual,
+     an unalterable assessment of these provinces, if the amount and the
+     principles upon which it has been made should meet with your
+     approbation':--whether your Lordship recollects to have written
+     something to the effect of these two last paragraphs, as well as of
+     the first?--_A._ I do recollect that I did write it; but in that
+     letter I alluded to the former system of annual assessments.--_Q._
+     Whether your Lordship recollects that you wrote, on or about the
+     18th of September, 1789, in one of your minutes, thus: 'I may
+     safely assert that one third of the Company's territory in
+     Hindostan is now a jungle, inhabited only by wild beasts: will a
+     ten years' lease induce any proprietor to clear away that jungle,
+     and encourage the ryot to come and cultivate his lands, when at the
+     end of that lease he must either submit to be taxed _ad libitum_
+     for the newly cultivated lands, or lose all hopes of deriving any
+     benefit from his labor, for which perhaps by that time he will
+     hardly be repaid?'--whether your Lordship recollects a minute to
+     that effect?--_A._ I perfectly recollect to have written that
+     minute.--_Q._ Now with respect to a letter, dated November the 3d,
+     1788, paragraph 38, containing the following sentiments: 'I shall
+     therefore only remark in general, that, from frequent changes of
+     system or other reasons, much is wanting to establish good order
+     and regulations in the internal business of the country, and that,
+     from various causes, by far the greatest part of the zemindars, and
+     other landholders and renters, are fallen into a state much below
+     that of wealth and affluence. This country, however, when the
+     fertility of its soil, and the industry and ingenuity of its
+     numerous inhabitants are taken into consideration, must
+     unquestionably be admitted to be one of the finest in the world;
+     and, with the uniform attention of government to moderation in
+     exaction, and to a due administration of justice, may long prove a
+     source of great riches both to the Company and to Britain.'
+     (Paragraph 39.) 'I am persuaded, that, by a train of judicious
+     measures, the land revenue of these provinces is capable in time of
+     being increased; but, consistent with the principles of humanity,
+     and even those of your own interest, it is only by adopting
+     measures for the gradual cultivation and improvement of these waste
+     lands, and by a gentle and cautious plan for the resumption of
+     lands that have been fraudulently alienated, that it ought ever to
+     be attempted to be accomplished. Men of speculative and sanguine
+     dispositions, and others, either from ignorance of the subject, or
+     with views of recommending themselves to your favor, may
+     confidently hold forth specious grounds to encourage you to hope
+     that a great and immediate accession to that branch of your revenue
+     might be practicable. My public duty obliges me to caution you, in
+     the most serious manner, against listening to propositions which
+     recommend this attempt; because I am clearly convinced, that, if
+     carried into execution, they would be attended with the most
+     baneful consequences.' (Paragraph 40.) 'Desperate adventurers,
+     without fortune or character, would undoubtedly be found, as has
+     already been too often experienced, to rent the different districts
+     of the country at the highest rates that could be put upon them;
+     that [but?] the delusion would be of a short duration, and the
+     impolicy and inhumanity of the plan would, when perhaps too late
+     for effectual remedy, become apparent by the complaints of the
+     people and the disappointments at the treasury in the payments of
+     the revenue, and would probably terminate in the ruin and
+     depopulation of the unfortunate country':--whether your Lordship
+     recollects to have written anything to that effect about that
+     time?--_A._ I perfectly recollect having written the extracts that
+     have been read."
+
+My Lords, Lord Cornwallis has been called, he has been examined before
+you. We stopped our proceedings ten days for the purpose of taking his
+evidence. We do not regret this delay. And he has borne the testimony
+which you have heard to the effects of Mr. Hastings's government of a
+country once the most fertile and cultivated, of a people the most
+industrious, flourishing, and happy,--that the one was wasted and
+desolated, the other reduced to a condition of want and misery, and that
+the zemindars, that is, the nobility and gentry of the country, were so
+beggared as not to be able to give even a common decent education to
+their children, notwithstanding the foundation of Mr. Hastings's
+colleges. You have heard this noble person, who had been an eye-witness
+of what he relates, supplicating for their relief, and expressly stating
+that most of the complicated miseries, and perhaps the cruelest of the
+afflictions they endured, arose from the management of the country
+having been taken out of the hands of its natural rulers, and given up
+to Mr. Hastings's farmers, namely, the banians of Calcutta. These are
+the things that ought to go to your Lordships' hearts. You see a country
+wasted and desolated. You see a third of it become a jungle for wild
+beasts. You see the other parts oppressed by persons in the form and
+shape of men, but with all the character and disposition of beasts of
+prey. This state of the country is brought before you, and by the most
+unexceptionable evidence,--being brought forward through Mr. Hastings
+himself. This evidence, whatever opinion you may entertain of the
+effrontery or of the impudence of the criminal who has produced it, is
+of double and treble force. And yet at the very time when Lord
+Cornwallis is giving this statement of the country and its inhabitants,
+at the very time when he is calling for pity upon their condition, are
+these people brought forward to bear testimony to the benign and
+auspicious government of Mr. Hastings, directed, as your Lordships know
+it was, by the merciful and upright Gunga Govind Sing.
+
+My Lords, you have now the evidence of Lord Cornwallis on the one hand,
+and the razinamas of India on the other. But before I dismiss this part
+of my subject, I must call your Lordships' attention to another
+authority,--to a declaration, strictly speaking, _legal_, of the state
+to which our Indian provinces were reduced, and of the oppressions which
+they have suffered, during the government of Mr. Hastings: I speak of
+the act 24 Geo. III. cap. 25, intituled, "An act for the better
+regulation and management of the affairs of the East India Company, and
+of the British possessions in India, and for establishing a court of
+judicature for the more speedy and effectual trial of persons accused of
+offences committed in the East Indies," Sec. 39.
+
+My Lords, here is an act of Parliament; here are regulations enacted in
+consequence of an inquiry which had been directed to be made into the
+grievances of India, for the redress of them. This act of Parliament
+declares the existence of oppressions in the country. What oppressions
+were they? The oppressions which it suffered by being let out to the
+farmers of the Company's revenues. Who was the person that sold these
+revenues to the farmers? Warren Hastings. By whom were these oppressions
+notified to the Court of Directors? By Lord Cornwallis. Upon what
+occasion were these letters written by my Lord Cornwallis? They were
+answers to inquiries made by the Court of Directors, and ordered by an
+act of Parliament to be made. The existence, then, of the grievances,
+and the cause of them, are expressly declared in an act of Parliament.
+It orders an inquiry; and Lord Cornwallis, in consequence of that
+inquiry, transmits to the Court of Directors this very information; he
+gives you this identical state of the country: so that it is
+consolidated, mixed, and embodied with an act of Parliament itself,
+which no power on earth, I trust, but the power that made it, can shake.
+I trust, I say, that neither we, the Commons, nor you, the Lords, nor
+his Majesty, the sovereign of this country, can shake one word of this
+act of Parliament,--can invalidate the truth of its declaration, or the
+authority of the persons, men of high honor and character, that made
+that inquiry and this report. Your Lordships must repeal this act in
+order to acquit Mr. Hastings.
+
+But Mr. Hastings and his counsel have produced evidence against this act
+of Parliament, against the order of the Court of Directors by which an
+inquiry and report were made under that act, against Lord Cornwallis's
+return to that inquiry; and now, once for all, hear what the miserable
+wretches are themselves made to say, to invalidate the act of
+Parliament, to invalidate the authority of the Court of Directors, to
+invalidate the evidence of an official return of Lord Cornwallis under
+the act. Pray hear what these miserable creatures describe as an
+elysium, speaking with rapture of their satisfaction, under the
+government of Mr. Hastings.
+
+     "All we zemindars, chowdries, and talookdars of the district of
+     Akbarnagur, commonly called Rajamahal, in the kingdom of Bengal,
+     have heard that the gentlemen in England are displeased with Mr.
+     Hastings, on suspicion that he oppressed us inhabitants of this
+     place, took our money by deceit and force, and ruined the country;
+     therefore we, upon the strength of our religion and religious
+     tenets, which we hold as a duty upon us, and in order to act
+     conformable to the duties of God in delivering evidence, relate the
+     praiseworthy actions, full of prudence and rectitude, friendship
+     and politeness, of Mr. Hastings, possessed of great abilities and
+     understanding, and, by representing facts, remove the doubts that
+     have possessed the minds of the gentlemen in England;--that Mr.
+     Hastings distributed protection and security to religion, and
+     kindness and peace to all; he is free from the charge of
+     embezzlement and fraud, and that his heart is void of covetousness
+     and avidity; during the period of his government, no one
+     experienced from him other than protection and justice, never
+     having felt hardships from him, nor did the poor ever know the
+     weight of an oppressive hand from him; our characters and
+     reputations have always been guarded in quiet from attack by the
+     vigilance of his power and foresight, and preserved by the terror
+     of his justice; he never omitted the smallest instance of kindness
+     and goodness towards us and those entitled to it, but always
+     applied by soothings and mildness the salve of comfort to the
+     wounds of affliction, not allowing a single person to be
+     overwhelmed by despair; he displayed his friendship and kindness to
+     all; he destroyed the power of the enemies and wicked men by the
+     strength of his terror; he tied the hands of tyrants and oppressors
+     by his justice, and by this conduct he secured happiness and joy to
+     us; he reestablished the foundation of justice, and we at all
+     times, during his government, lived in comfort and passed our days
+     in peace; we are many, many of us satisfied and pleased with him.
+     As Mr. Hastings was perfectly well acquainted with the manners and
+     customs of these countries, he was always desirous of performing
+     that which would tend to the preservation of our religion, and of
+     the duties of our sects, and guard the religious customs of each
+     from the effects of misfortune and accidents; in every sense he
+     treated us with attention and respect. We have represented without
+     deceit what we have ourselves seen, and the facts that happened
+     from him."
+
+This, my Lords, is in page 2374 of the printed Minutes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, we spare you the reading of a great number of these
+attestations; they are all written in the same style; and it must appear
+to your Lordships a little extraordinary, that, as they are said to be
+totally voluntary, as the people are represented to be crowding to make
+these testimonials, there should be such an unison in the heart to
+produce a language that is so uniform as not to vary so much as in a
+single tittle,--that every part of the country, every province, every
+district, men of every caste and of every religion, should all unite in
+expressing their sentiments in the very same words and in the very same
+phrases. I must fairly say it is a kind of miraculous concurrence, a
+miraculous gratitude. Mr. Hastings says that gratitude is lost in this
+part of the world. There it blooms and flourishes in a way not to be
+described. In proportion as you hear of the miseries and distresses of
+these very people, in the same proportion do they express their comfort
+and satisfaction, and that they never knew what a grievance was of any
+sort. Lord Cornwallis finds them aggrieved, the Court of Directors find
+them aggrieved, the Parliament of Great Britain find them aggrieved, and
+the court here find them aggrieved; but they never found themselves
+aggrieved. Their being turned out of house and home, and having all
+their land given to farmers of revenue for five years to riot in and
+despoil them of all they had, is what fills them with rapture. They are
+the only people, I believe, upon the face of the earth, that have no
+complaints to make of their government, in any instance whatever. Theirs
+must be something superior to the government of angels; for I verily
+believe, that, if one out of the choir of the heavenly angels were sent
+to govern the earth, such is the nature of man, that many would be found
+discontented with it. But these people have no complaint, they feel no
+hardships, no sorrow; Mr. Hastings has realized more than the golden
+age. I am ashamed for human nature, I am ashamed for our government, I
+am ashamed for this court of justice, that these things are brought
+before us; but here they are, and we must observe upon them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, we have done, on our part; we have made out our case; and it
+only remains for me to make a few observations upon what Mr. Hastings
+has thought proper to put forward in his defence. Does he meet our case
+with anything but these general attestations, upon which I must first
+remark, that there is not one single matter of fact touched upon in
+them? Your Lordships will observe, and you may hunt them out through the
+whole body of your minutes, that you do not find a single fact mentioned
+in any of them. But there is an abundance of panegyric; and if we were
+doing nothing but making satires, as the newspapers charge us with
+doing, against Mr. Hastings, panegyric would be a good answer.
+
+But Mr. Hastings sets up pleas of merit upon this occasion. Now,
+undoubtedly, no plea of merit can be admitted to extinguish, as your
+Lordships know very well, a direct charge of crime. Merit cannot
+extinguish crime. For instance, if Lord Howe, to whom this country owes
+so much as it owes this day for the great and glorious victory which
+makes our hearts glad, and I hope will insure the security of this
+country,--yet if Lord Howe, I say, was charged with embezzling the
+King's stores, or applying them in any manner unbecoming his situation,
+to any shameful or scandalous purpose,--if he was accused of taking
+advantage of his station, to oppress any of the captains of his
+ships,--if he was stated to have gone into a port of the allies of this
+country, and to have plundered the inhabitants, to have robbed their
+women, and broken into the recesses of their apartments,--if he had
+committed atrocities like these, his glorious victory could not change
+the nature and quality of such acts. My Lord Malmesbury has been lately
+sent to the King of Prussia; we hope and trust that his embassy will be
+successful, and that this country will derive great benefit from his
+negotiations; but if Lord Malmesbury, from any subsidy that was to be
+paid to the King of Prussia, was to put 50,000_l._ in his own pocket, I
+believe that his making a good and advantageous treaty with the King of
+Prussia would never be thought a good defence for him. We admit, that,
+if a man has done great and eminent services, though they cannot be a
+defence against a charge of crimes, and cannot obliterate them, yet,
+when sentence comes to be passed upon such a man, you will consider,
+first, whether his transgressions were common lapses of human frailty,
+and whether the nature and weight of the grievances resulting from them
+were light in comparison with the services performed. I say that you
+cannot acquit him; but your Lordships might think some pity due to him,
+that might mitigate the severity of your sentence. In the second place,
+you would consider whether the evidence of the services alleged to be
+performed was as clear and undoubted as that of the crimes charged. I
+confess, that, if a man has done great services, it may be some
+alleviation of lighter faults; but then they ought to be urged as
+such,--with modesty, with humility, with confession of the faults, and
+not with a proud and insolent defiance. They should not be stated as
+proofs that he stands justified in the eye of mankind for committing
+unexampled and enormous crimes. Indeed, humility, suppliant guilt,
+always makes impression in our bosoms, so that, when we see it before
+us, we always remember that we are all frail men; and nothing but a
+proud defiance of law and justice can make us forget this for one
+moment. I believe the Commons of Great Britain, and I hope the persons
+that speak to you, know very well how to allow for the faults and
+frailties of mankind equitably.
+
+Let us now see what are the merits which Mr. Hastings has set up against
+the just vengeance of his country, and against his proved delinquencies.
+From the language of the prisoner, and of his counsel, you would imagine
+some great, known, acknowledged services had been done by him. Your
+Lordships recollect that most of these presumed services have been
+considered, and we are persuaded justly considered, as in themselves
+crimes. He wishes your Lordships to suppose and believe that these
+services were put aside either because we could not prove the facts
+against him or could not make out that they were criminal, and
+consequently that your Lordships ought to presume them to have been
+meritorious; and this is one of the grounds upon which he demands to be
+acquitted of the charges that have been brought forward and proved
+against him. Finding in our proceedings, and recorded upon our journals,
+an immense mass of criminality with which he is charged, and finding
+that we had selected, as we were bound to select, such parts as might be
+most conveniently brought before your Lordships, (for to have gone
+through the whole would have been nearly impossible,) he takes all the
+rest that we have left behind and have not brought here as charges, and
+converts them, by a strange metamorphosis, into merits.
+
+My Lords, we must insist, on the part of the House of Commons, we must
+conjure your Lordships, for the honor of a cooerdinate branch of the
+legislature, that, whenever you are called upon to admit what we have
+condemned as crimes to be merits, you will at least give us an
+opportunity of being heard upon the matter,--that you will not suffer
+Mr. Hastings, when attempting to defend himself against our charges, in
+an indirect and oblique manner to condemn or censure the House of
+Commons itself, as having misrepresented to be crimes the acts of a
+meritorious servant of the public. Mr. Hastings has pleaded a variety of
+merits, and every one of these merits, without the exception of one of
+them, have been either directly censured by the House of Commons, and
+censured as a ground for legislative provision, or they remain upon the
+records of the House of Commons, with the vouchers for them, and proofs;
+and though we have not actually come to the question upon every one of
+them, we had come, before the year 1782, to forty-five direct
+resolutions upon his conduct. These resolutions were moved by a person
+to whom this country is under many obligations, and whom we must always
+mention with honor, whenever we are speaking of high situations in this
+country, and of great talents to support them, and of long public
+services in the House of Commons: I mean Mr. Dundas, then Lord Advocate
+of Scotland, and now one of the principal Secretaries of State, and at
+the head, and worthily and deservedly at the head, of the East Indian
+department. This distinguished statesman moved forty-five resolutions,
+the major part of them directly condemning these very acts which Mr.
+Hastings has pleaded as his merits, as being delinquencies and crimes.
+All that the House of Commons implore of your Lordships is, that you
+will not take these things, which we call crimes, to be merits, without
+hearing the House of Commons upon the subject-matter of them. I am sure
+you are too noble and too generous, as well as too just and equitable,
+to act in such a manner.
+
+The first thing that Mr. Hastings brings forward in his defence is,
+that, whereas the Company were obliged to pay a certain tribute to the
+Mogul, in consideration of a grant by which the Moguls gave to us the
+legal title under which we hold the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and
+Orissa, he did stop the payment of that tribute, or acknowledgment,
+small as it was,--that, though bound by a treaty recognized by the
+Company and recognized by the nation, though bound by the very sunnud by
+which he held the very office he was exercising, yet he had broken the
+treaty, and refused to pay the stipulated acknowledgment. Where are we,
+my Lords? Is this merit? Good God Almighty! the greatest blockhead, the
+most ignorant, miserable wretch, a person without either virtue or
+talents, has nothing to do but to order a clerk to strike a pen through
+such an account, and then to make a merit of it to you. "Oh!" says he,
+"I have by a mere breach of your faith, by a single dash of my pen,
+saved you all this money which you were bound to pay. I have exonerated
+you from the payment of it. I have gained you 250,000_l._ a year
+forever. Will you not reward a person who did you such a great and
+important service, by conniving a little at his delinquencies?"
+
+But the House of Commons will not allow that this was a great and
+important service; on the contrary, they have declared the act itself to
+be censurable. There is our resolution,--Resolution the 7th:--
+
+"That the conduct of the Company and their servants in India to the
+King," (meaning the Mogul king) "and Nudjif Khan, with respect to the
+tribute payable to the one, and the stipend to the other, and with
+respect to the transfer of the provinces of Corah, and Allahabad to the
+Vizier, was contrary to policy and good faith; and that such wise and
+practicable measures should be adopted in future as may tend to redeem
+the national honor, and recover the confidence and attachment of the
+princes of India."
+
+This act of injustice, against which we have fulminated the thunder of
+our resolutions as a heavy crime, as a crime that dishonored the nation,
+and which measures ought to be taken to redress, this man has the
+insolence to bring before your Lordships as a set-off against the crimes
+we charge him with. This outrageous defiance of the House of Commons,
+this outrageous defiance of all the laws of his country, I hope your
+Lordships will not countenance. You will not let it pass for nothing: on
+the contrary, you will consider it as aggravating heavily his crimes.
+And, above all, you will not suffer him to set off this, which we have
+declared to be injurious to our national honor and credit, and which he
+himself does not deny to be a breach of the public faith, against other
+breaches of the public faith with which we charge him,--or to justify
+one class of public crimes by proving that he has committed others.
+
+Your Lordships see that he justifies this crime upon the plea of its
+being profitable to the Company; but he shall not march off even on this
+ground with flying colors. My Lords, pray observe in what manner he
+calculates these profits. Your Lordships will find that he makes up the
+account of them much in the same manner as he made up the account of
+Nobkissin's money. There is, indeed, no account which he has ever
+brought forth that does not carry upon it not only ill faith and
+national dishonor, but direct proofs of corruption. When Mr. Hastings
+values himself upon this shocking and outrageous breach of faith, which
+required nothing but a base and illiberal mind, without either talents,
+courage, or skill, except that courage which defies all consequences,
+which defies shame, which defies the judgment and opinion of his country
+and of mankind, no other talents than may be displayed by the dash of a
+pen, you will at least expect to see a clear and distinct account of
+what was gained by it.
+
+In the year 1775, at a period when Mr. Hastings was under an eclipse,
+when honor and virtue, in the character of General Clavering, Colonel
+Monson, and Mr. Francis, sat for a short period at the
+Council-Board,--during that time, Mr. Hastings's conduct upon this
+occasion was called into question. They called for an account of the
+revenues of the country,--what was received, and what had been paid; and
+in the account returned they found the amount of the tribute due to the
+Mogul, 250,000_l._, entered as paid up to October, 1774. Thus far all
+appeared fair upon the face of it; they took it for granted, as your
+Lordships would take it for granted, at the first view, that the tribute
+in reality had been paid up to the time stated. The books were balanced:
+you find a debtor; you find a creditor; every item posted in as regular
+a manner as possible. Whilst they were examining this account, a Mr.
+Croftes, of whom your Lordships have heard very often, as
+accountant-general, comes forward and declares that there was a little
+error in the account. And what was the error? That he had entered the
+Mogul's tribute for one year more than it had actually been paid. Here
+we have the small error of a payment to the Mogul of 250,000_l._ This
+appeared strange. "Why," says Mr. Croftes, "I never discovered it; nor
+was it ever intimated to me that it had been stopped from October, 1773,
+till the other day, when I was informed that I ought not to have made an
+entry of the last payments." These were his expressions. You will find
+the whole relation in the Bengal Appendix, printed by the orders of the
+Court of Directors. When Mr. Croftes was asked a very natural question,
+"Who first told you of your mistake? who acquainted you with Mr.
+Hastings's orders that the payment should be expunged from the account?"
+what is his answer? It is an answer worthy of Mr. Middleton, an answer
+worthy of Mr. Larkins, or of any of the other white banians of Mr.
+Hastings:--"Oh, I have forgotten." Here you have an accountant-general
+kept in ignorance, or who pretends to be ignorant, of so large a payment
+as 250,000_l._; who enters it falsely in his account; and when asked who
+apprised him of his mistake, says that he has really forgotten.
+
+Oh, my Lords, what resources there are in oblivion! what resources there
+are in bad memory! No genius ever has done so much for mankind as this
+mental defect has done for Mr. Hastings's accountants. It was said by
+one of the ancient philosophers, to a man who proposed to teach people
+memory,--"I wish you could teach me oblivion; I wish you could teach me
+to forget." These people have certainly not been taught the art of
+memory, but they appear perfect masters of the art of forgetting. My
+Lords, this is not all; and I must request your Lordships' attention to
+the whole of the account, as it appears in the account of the arrears
+due to the King, annexed to your minutes. Here is a kind of labyrinth,
+where fraud runs into fraud. On the credit side you find stated there,
+eight lacs paid to the Vizier, and to be taken from the Mogul's tribute,
+for the support of an army, of which he himself had stipulated to bear
+the whole expenses. These eight lacs are thus fraudulently accounted for
+upon the face of the thing; and with respect to eighteen lacs, the
+remainder of the tribute, there is no account given of it at all. This
+sum Mr. Hastings must, therefore, have pocketed for his own use, or that
+of his gang of peculators; and whilst he was pretending to save you
+eight lacs by one fraud, he committed another fraud of eighteen lacs for
+himself: and this is the method by which one act of peculation begets
+another in the economy of fraud.
+
+Thus much of these affairs I think myself bound to state to your
+Lordships upon this occasion; for, although not one word has been
+produced by the counsel to support the allegations of the prisoner at
+your bar, yet, knowing that your Lordships, high as you are, are still
+but men, knowing also that bold assertions and confident declarations
+are apt to make some impression upon all men's minds, we oppose his
+allegations. But how do we oppose them? Not by things of the like
+nature. We oppose them by showing you that the House of Commons, after
+diligent investigation, has condemned them, and by stating the grounds
+upon which the House founded its condemnation. We send you to the
+records of the Company, if you want to pursue this matter further, to
+enlighten your own minds upon the subject. Do not think, my Lords, that
+we are not aware how ridiculous it is for either party, the accuser or
+the accused, to make here any assertions without producing vouchers for
+them: we know it; but we are prepared and ready to take upon us the
+proof; and we should be ashamed to assert anything that we are not able
+directly to substantiate by an immediate reference to uncontradicted
+evidence.
+
+With regard to the merits pleaded by the prisoner, we could efface that
+plea with a single stroke, by saying there is no evidence before your
+Lordships of any such merits. But we have done more: we have shown you
+that the things which he has set up as merits are atrocious crimes, and
+that there is not one of them which does not, in the very nature and
+circumstances of it, carry evidence of base corruption, as well as of
+flagrant injustice and notorious breach of public faith.
+
+The next thing that he takes credit for is precisely an act of this
+description. The Mogul had, by solemn stipulation with the Company, a
+royal domain insured to him, consisting of two provinces, Corah and
+Allahabad. Of both these provinces Mr. Hastings deprived the Mogul, upon
+weak pretences, if proved in point of fact, but which were never proved
+in any sense, against him. I allude particularly to his alleged alliance
+with the Mahrattas,--a people, by the way, with whom we were not then
+at war, and with whom he had as good a right as Nudjif Khan to enter
+into alliance at that time. He takes these domains, almost the last
+wrecks of empire left to the descendant of Tamerlane, from the man, I
+say, to whose voluntary grants we owe it that we have put a foot in
+Bengal. Surely, we ought, at least, to have kept our faith in leaving
+this last retreat to that unfortunate prince. The House of Commons was
+of that opinion, and consequently they resolved, "That the transfer of
+Corah and Allahabad to the Vizier was contrary to policy and good
+faith." This is what the Commons think of this business which Mr.
+Hastings pleads as merits.
+
+But I have not yet done with it. These provinces are estimated as worth
+twenty-two lacs, or thereabouts, that is, about 220,000_l._, a year. I
+believe they were improvable to a good deal more. But what does Mr.
+Hastings do? Instead of taking them into the Company's possession for
+the purpose of preserving them for the Mogul, upon the event of our
+being better satisfied with his conduct, or of appropriating them to the
+Company's advantage, he sells them to the Nabob of Oude, who he knew had
+the art, above all men, of destroying a country which he was to keep, or
+which he might fear he was not to keep, permanent possession of. And
+what do you think he sold them for? He sold them at a little more than
+two years' purchase. Will any man believe that Mr. Hastings, when he
+sold these provinces to the Vizier for two years' purchase, and when
+there was no man that would not have given ten years' purchase for them,
+did not put the difference between the real and pretended value into his
+own pocket, and that of his associates?
+
+We charge, therefore, first, that this act for which he assumes merit
+was in itself a breach of faith; next, that the sale of these provinces
+was scandalously conducted; and thirdly, that this sale, at one fifth of
+the real value, was effected for corrupt purposes. Thus an act of
+threefold delinquency is one of the merits stated with great pomp by his
+counsel.
+
+Another of his merits is the stoppage of the pension which the Company
+was under an obligation to pay to Nudjif Khan: a matter which, even if
+admitted to be a merit, is certainly not worth, as a set-off, much
+consideration.
+
+But there is another set-off of merit upon which he plumes himself, and
+sets an exceedingly high value: the sale of the Rohilla nation to that
+worthless tyrant, the Vizier, their cruel and bitter enemy,--the
+cruelest tyrant, perhaps, that ever existed, and their most implacable
+enemy, if we except Mr. Hastings, who appears to have had a concealed
+degree of animosity, public, private, or political, against them. To
+this man he sold this whole nation, whose country, cultivated like a
+garden, was soon reduced, as Mr. Hastings, from the character of the
+Vizier, knew would be the consequence, to a mere desert, for 400,000_l._
+He sent a brigade of our troops to assist the Vizier in extirpating
+these people, who were the bravest, the most honorable, and generous
+nation upon earth. Those who were not left slaughtered to rot upon the
+soil of their native country were cruelly expelled from it, and sent to
+publish the merciless and scandalous behavior of Great Britain from one
+end of India to the other. I believe there is not an honest, ingenuous,
+or feeling heart upon the face of the globe, I believe there is no man
+possessing the least degree of regard to honor and justice, humanity
+and good policy, that did not reprobate this act. The Court of
+Directors, when they heard of it, reprobated it in the strongest manner;
+the Court of Proprietors reprobated it in the strongest manner; by the
+House of Commons, after the most diligent investigation, it was, in a
+resolution moved by Mr. Dundas, reprobated in the strongest manner: and
+this is the act which Mr. Hastings brings forward before your Lordships
+as a merit.
+
+But, again, I can prove that in this, perhaps the most atrocious of all
+his demerits, there is a most horrid and nefarious secret corruption
+lurking. I can tell your Lordships that Sir Robert Barker was offered by
+this Vizier, for about one half of this very country, namely, the
+country of the Rohillas, a sum of fifty lacs of rupees,--that is,
+500,000_l._ Mr. Hastings was informed of this offer by Sir Robert
+Barker, in his letter of the 24th March, 1773. Still, in the face of
+this information, Mr. Hastings took for the Company only forty lacs of
+rupees. I leave your Lordships to draw your own conclusion from these
+facts. You will judge what became of the difference between the price
+offered and the price accounted for as taken. Nothing on earth can hide
+from mankind why Mr. Hastings made this wicked, corrupt bargain for the
+extermination of a brave and generous people,--why he took 400,000_l._
+for the whole of that, for half of which he was offered and knew he
+might have had 500,000_l._
+
+Your Lordships will observe, that for all these facts there is no
+evidence, on the one side or on the other, directly before you. Their
+merits have been insisted upon, in long and laborious details and
+discussions, both by Mr. Hastings himself and by his counsel. We have
+answered them for that reason; but we answer them with a direct
+reference to records and papers, from which your Lordships may judge of
+them as set-offs and merits. I believe your Lordships will now hardly
+receive them as merits to set off guilt, since in every one of them
+there is both guilt in the act, and strong ground for presuming that he
+had corruptly taken money for himself.
+
+The last act of merit that has been insisted upon by his counsel is the
+Mahratta peace. They have stated to you the distresses of the Company to
+justify the unhandsome and improper means that he took of making this
+peace. Mr. Hastings himself has laid hold of the same opportunity of
+magnifying the difficulties which, during his government, he had to
+contend with. Here he displays all his tactics. He spreads all his
+sails, and here catches every gale. He says, "I found all India
+confederated against you. I found not the Mahrattas alone; I found war
+through a hundred hostile states fulminated against you; I found the
+Peshwa, the Nizam, Hyder Ali, the Rajah of Berar, all combined together
+for your destruction. I stemmed the torrent: fortitude is my character.
+I faced and overcame all these difficulties, till I landed your affairs
+safe on shore, till I stood the saviour of India."
+
+My Lords, we of the House of Commons have before heard all this; but we
+cannot forget that we examined into every part of it, and that we did
+not find a single fact stated by him that was not a ground of censure
+and reprobation. The House of Commons, in the resolutions to which I
+have alluded, have declared, that Mr. Hastings, the first author of
+these proceedings, took advantage of an ambiguous letter of the Court
+of Directors to break and violate the most solemn, the most
+advantageous, and useful treaty that the Company had ever made in India;
+and that this conduct of his produced the strange and unnatural junction
+which he says he found formed against the Company, and with which he had
+to combat. I should trouble your Lordships with but a brief statement of
+the facts; and if I do not enter more at large in observing upon them,
+it is because I cannot but feel shocked at the indecency and impropriety
+of your being obliged to hear of that as merit which the House of
+Commons has condemned in every part. Your Lordships received obliquely
+evidence from the prisoner at your bar upon this subject; yet, when we
+came and desired your full inquiry into it, your Lordships, for wise and
+just reasons, I have no doubt, refused our request. I must, however,
+again protest on the part of the Commons against your Lordships
+receiving such evidence at all as relevant to your judgment, unless the
+House of Commons is fully heard upon it.
+
+But to proceed.--The government of Bombay had offended the Mahratta
+States by a most violent and scandalous aggression. They afterwards made
+a treaty of peace with them, honorable and advantageous to the Company.
+This treaty was made by Colonel Upton, and is called the Treaty of
+Poorunder. Mr. Hastings broke that treaty, upon his declared principle,
+that you are to look in war for the resources of your government. All
+India was at that time in peace. Hyder Ali did not dare to attack us,
+because he was afraid that his natural enemies, the Mahrattas, would
+fall upon him. The Nizam could not attack us, because he was also afraid
+of the Mahrattas. The Mahratta state itself was divided into such
+discordant branches as to make it impossible for them to unite in any
+one object; that commonwealth, which, certainly at that time was the
+terror of India, was so broken, as to render it either totally
+ineffective or easy to be resisted. There was not one government in
+India that did not look up to Great Britain as holding the balance of
+power, and in a position to control and do justice to every individual
+party in it. At that juncture Mr. Hastings deliberately broke the treaty
+of Poorunder; and afterwards, by breaking faith with and attacking all
+the powers, one after another, he produced that very union which one
+would hardly have expected that the incapacity or ill faith of any
+Governor could have effected. Your Lordships shall hear the best and
+most incontrovertible evidence both of his incapacity and ill faith, and
+of the consequences which they produced. It is the declaration of one of
+the latest of their allies concerning all these proceedings. It is
+contained in a letter from the Rajah of Berar, directly and strongly
+inculpating Mr. Hastings, upon facts which he has never denied and by
+arguments which he has never refuted, as being himself the cause of that
+very junction of all the powers of India against us.
+
+
+     _Letter from Benaram Pundit._
+
+     "As the friendship of the English is, at all events, the first and
+     most necessary consideration, I will therefore exert myself in
+     establishing peace: for the power of making peace with all is the
+     best object; to this all other measures are subservient, and will
+     certainly be done by them, the English. You write, that, after
+     having laid the foundation of peace with the Pundit Purdhaun, it
+     is requisite that some troops should be sent with General Goddard
+     against Hyder Naig, and take possession of his country, when all
+     those engagements and proposals may be assented to. My reason is
+     confounded in discussing this suggestion, at a time when Hyder Naig
+     is in every respect in alliance with the Peshwa, and has assisted
+     with his soul and life to repel the English. For us to unite our
+     troops with those of the enemy and extirpate him, would not this
+     fix the stamp of infamy upon us forever? Would any prince, for
+     generations to come, ever after assist us, or unite with the
+     Peshwa? Be yourself the judge, and say whether such a conduct would
+     become a prince or not. Why, then, do you mention it? why do you
+     write it?
+
+     "The case is as follows.--At first there was the utmost enmity
+     between Hyder Naig and the Pundit Purdhaun, and there was the
+     fullest intention of sending troops into Hyder Naig's country; and
+     after the conclusion of the war with Bombay and the capture of
+     Ragonaut Row, it was firmly resolved to send troops into that
+     quarter; and a reliance was placed in the treaty which was entered
+     into by the gentlemen of Bombay before the war. But when Ragonaut
+     again went to them, and General Goddard was ready to commence
+     hostilities,--when no regard was paid to the friendly proposals
+     made by us and the Pundit Peshwa,--when they desisted from coming
+     to Poonah, agreeable to their promise, and a categorical answer was
+     given to the deputies from Poonah,--the ministers of Poonah then
+     consulted among themselves, and, having advised with the Nabob
+     Nizam ul Dowlah, they considered that as enemies were appearing on
+     both sides, and it would be difficult to cope with both, what was
+     to be done? Peace must be made with one of them, and war must be
+     carried on with the other. They wished above all things, in their
+     hearts, to make peace with the English gentlemen, and to unite with
+     them to punish Hyder Naig; but these gentlemen had plainly refused
+     to enter into any terms of reconciliation. It was therefore
+     advisable to accommodate matters with Hyder Naig, although he had
+     been long an enemy. What else could be done? Having nothing left
+     for it, they were compelled to enter into an union with Hyder."
+
+My Lords, this declaration, made to Mr. Hastings himself, was never
+answered by him. Indeed, answered it could not be; because the thing was
+manifest, that all the desolation of the Carnatic by Hyder Ali, all
+these difficulties upon which he has insisted, the whole of that union
+by which he was pressed, and against which, as he says, he bore up with
+such fortitude, was his own work, the consequences of his bad faith, and
+his not listening to any reasonable terms of peace.
+
+But, my Lords, see what sort of peace he afterwards made. I could prove,
+if I were called upon so to do, from this paper that they have had the
+folly and madness to produce to you for other purposes, that he might at
+any time have made a better treaty, and have concluded a more secure and
+advantageous peace, than that which at last he acceded to; that the
+treaty he made was both disadvantageous and dishonorable, inasmuch as we
+gave up every ally we had, and sacrificed them to the resentment of the
+enemy; that Mahdajee Sindia gained by it an empire of a magnitude
+dangerous to our very existence in India; that this chief was permitted
+to exterminate all the many little gallant nations that stood between us
+and the Mahrattas, and whose policy led them to guard against the
+ambitious designs of that government. Almost all these lesser powers,
+from Central India, quite up to the mountains that divide India from
+Tartary, almost all these, I say, were exterminated by him, or were
+brought under a cruel subjection. The peace he made with Mr. Hastings
+was for the very purpose of doing all this; and Mr. Hastings enabled
+him, and gave him the means of effecting it.
+
+Advert next, my Lords, to what he did with other allies. By the treaty
+of Poorunder, made by Colonel Upton, and which he flagitiously broke, we
+had acquired, what, God knows, we little merited from the Mahrattas,
+twelve lacs, (112,000_l._) for the expenses of the war,--and a country
+of three lacs of annual revenue, the province of Baroach and the isle of
+Salsette, and other small islands convenient for us upon that coast.
+This was a great, useful, and momentous accession of territory and of
+revenue: and we got it with honor; for not one of our allies were
+sacrificed by this treaty. We had even obtained from the Mahrattas for
+Ragonaut Row, our support of whom against that government was a
+principal cause of the war, an establishment of a thousand horse, to be
+maintained at their expense, and a jaghire for his other expenses of
+three lacs of rupees per annum, payable monthly, with leave to reside
+within their territories, with no other condition than that he should
+not remove from the place fixed for his residence for the purpose of
+exciting disturbances against their government. They also stipulated for
+the pardon, of all his adherents except four; and the only condition
+they required from us was, that we should not assist him in case of any
+future disturbance. But Mr. Hastings, by his treaty, surrendered that
+country of three lacs of revenue; he made no stipulation for the
+expenses of the war, nor indemnity for any of the persons whom he had
+seduced into the rebellion in favor of Ragonaut Row; he gave them all up
+to the vengeance of their governments, without a stroke of a pen in
+their favor, to be banished, confiscated, and undone; and as to Ragonaut
+Row, instead of getting him this honorable and secure retreat, as he was
+bound to do, this unfortunate man was ordered to retire to his enemy's
+(Mahdajee Sindia's) country, or otherwise he was not to receive a
+shilling for his maintenance.
+
+I will now ask your Lordships, whether any man but Mr. Hastings would
+claim a merit with his own country for having broken the treaty of
+Poorunder? Your Lordships know the opinion of the House of Commons
+respecting it; his colleagues in Council had remonstrated with him upon
+it, and had stated the mischiefs that would result from it; and Sir Eyre
+Coote, the commander of the Company's forces, writing at the same time
+from Madras, states, that he thought it would infallibly bring down upon
+them Hyder Ali, who, they had reason to think, was bent upon the utter
+destruction of the power of this country in India, and was only waiting
+for some crisis in our affairs favorable to his designs. This, my Lords,
+is to be one of the set-offs against all the crimes, against the
+multiplied frauds, cruelties, and oppressions, all the corrupt
+practices, prevarications, and swindlings, that we have alleged against
+him.
+
+My Lords, it would be an endless undertaking, and such as, at this hour
+of the day, we, as well as your Lordships, are little fitted to engage
+in, if I were to attempt to search into and unveil all the secret
+motives, or to expose as it deserves the shameless audacity of this
+man's conduct. None of your Lordships can have observed without
+astonishment the selection of his merits, as he audaciously calls them,
+which has been brought before you. The last of this selection, in
+particular, looks as if he meant to revile and spit upon the legislature
+of his country, because we and you thought it fit and were resolved to
+publish to all India that we will not countenance offensive wars, and
+that you felt this so strongly as to pass the first act of a kind that
+was ever made, namely, an act to limit the discretionary power of
+government in making war solely,--and because you have done this solely
+and upon no other account and for no other reason under heaven than the
+abuse which that man at your bar has made of it, and for which abuse he
+now presumes to take merit to himself. I will read this part of the act
+to your Lordships.
+
+     [_Mr. Burke here read 24th Geo. III. cap. 25, sect. 34._]
+
+     "And whereas to pursue schemes of conquest and extension of
+     dominion in India are measures repugnant to the wish, the honor,
+     and policy of this nation, be it therefore further enacted by the
+     authority aforesaid, that it shall not be lawful for the
+     Governor-General and Council of Port William aforesaid, without the
+     express command and authority of the said Court of Directors, or of
+     the Secret Committee of the said Court of Directors, in any case,
+     (except where hostilities have actually been commenced, or
+     preparations actually made for the commencement of hostilities,
+     against the British nation in India, or against some of the princes
+     or states dependent thereon, or whose territories the said United
+     Company shall be at such time engaged by any subsisting treaty to
+     defend or guaranty,) either to declare war, or commence
+     hostilities, or enter into any treaty for making war, against any
+     of the country princes or states in India, or any treaty for
+     guarantying the possessions of any country princes or states; and
+     that in such case it shall not be lawful for the said
+     Governor-General and Council to declare war, or commence
+     hostilities, or enter into treaty for making war, against any other
+     prince or state than such as shall be actually committing
+     hostilities or making preparations as aforesaid, or to make such
+     treaty for guarantying the possessions of any prince or state, but
+     upon the consideration of such prince or state actually engaging to
+     assist the Company against such hostilities commenced or
+     preparations made as aforesaid; and in all cases where hostilities
+     shall be commenced or treaty made, the said Governor-General and
+     Council shall, by the most expeditious means they can devise,
+     communicate the same unto the said Court of Directors, together
+     with a full state of the information and intelligence upon which
+     they shall have commenced such hostilities or made such treaties,
+     and their motives and reasons for the same at large."
+
+It is the first act of the kind that ever was made in this kingdom, the
+first statute, I believe, that ever was made by the legislature of any
+nation, upon the subject; and it was made solely upon the resolutions
+to which we had come against the violent, intemperate, unjust, and
+perfidious acts of this man at your Lordships' bar, and which acts are
+now produced before your Lordships as merits.
+
+To show further to your Lordships how necessary this act was, here is a
+part of his own correspondence, the last thing I shall beg to read to
+your Lordships, and upon which I shall make no other comment than that
+you will learn from it how well British faith was kept by this man, and
+that it was the violation of British faith which prevented our having
+the most advantageous peace, and brought on all the calamities of war.
+It is part of a letter from the minister of the Rajah of Berar, a man
+called Benaram Pundit, with whom Mr. Hastings was at the time treating
+for a peace; and he tells him why he might have had peace at that time,
+and why he had it not,--and that the cause of it was his own ridiculous
+and even buffoonish perfidiousness, which exposed him to the ridicule of
+all the princes of India, and with him the whole British nation.
+
+     "But afterwards reflecting that it was not advisable for me to be
+     in such haste before I had fully understood all the contents of the
+     papers, I opened them in the presence of the Maha Rajah, when all
+     the kharetas, letters, copies, and treaties were perused with the
+     greatest attention and care. First, they convinced us of your great
+     truth and sincerity, and that you never, from the beginning to this
+     time, were inclined to the present disputes and hostilities; and
+     next, that you have not included in the articles of the treaty any
+     of your wishes or inclinations; and in short, the garden of the
+     treaty appeared to us, in all its parts, green and flourishing:
+     but though the fruit of it was excellent yet they appeared
+     different from those of Colonel Upton's treaty, (the particulars of
+     which I have frequently written to you,) and, upon tasting them,
+     proved to be bitter and very different, when compared to the former
+     articles. How can any of the old and established obligations be
+     omitted, and new matters agreed to, when it is plain that they will
+     produce losses and damages? Some points which you have mentioned,
+     under the plea of the faith and observance of treaties, are of such
+     a nature that the Poonah ministers can never assent to them. In all
+     engagements and important transactions, in which the words _but_,
+     and _although_, and _besides_, and _whereas_, and _why_, and other
+     such words of doubt, are introduced, it gives an opening to
+     disputes and misunderstandings. A treaty is meant for the entire
+     removal of all differences, not for increase of them. My departure
+     to Poonah has therefore been delayed."
+
+My Lords, consider to what ironies and insults this nation was exposed,
+and how necessary it was for us to originate that bill which your
+Lordships passed into an act of Parliament, with his Majesty's assent.
+The words _but_, _although_, _besides_, _whereas_, and _why_, and such
+like, are introduced to give an opening, and so on. Then he desires him
+to send another treaty, fit for him to sign.
+
+     "I have therefore kept the treaty with the greatest care and
+     caution in my possession, and, having taken a copy of it, I have
+     added to each article another, which appeared to me proper and
+     advisable, and without any loss or disadvantage to the English, or
+     anything more in favor of the Pundit Purdhaun than what was
+     contained in the former treaties. This I have sent to you, and hope
+     that you will prepare and send a treaty conformable to that,
+     without any _besides_, or _if_, or _why_, or _but_, and _whereas_,
+     that, as soon as it arrives, I may depart for Poonah, and, having
+     united with me Row Mahdajee Sindia, and having brought over the
+     Nabob Nizam ul Dowlah to this business, I may settle and adjust all
+     matters which are in this bad situation. As soon as I have received
+     my dismission from thence, I would set off for Calcutta, and
+     represent to you everything which for a long while I have had on my
+     mind, and by this transaction erect to the view of all the world
+     the standard of the greatness and goodness of the English and of my
+     master, and extinguish the flames of war with the waters of
+     friendship. The compassing all these advantages and happy prospects
+     depends entirely upon your will and consent; and the power of
+     bringing them to an issue is in your hands alone."
+
+My Lords, you may here see the necessity there was for passing the act
+of Parliament which I have just read to you, in order to prevent in
+future the recurrence of that want of faith of which Mr. Hastings had
+been so notoriously guilty, and by which he had not only united all
+India against us, and had hindered us from making, for a long time, any
+peace at all, but had exposed the British character to the irony, scorn,
+derision, and insult of the whole people of that vast continent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, in the progress of this impeachment, you have heard our
+charges; you have heard the prisoner's plea of merits; you have heard
+our observations on them. In the progress of this impeachment, you have
+seen the condition in which Mr. Hastings received Benares; you have seen
+the condition in which Mr. Hastings received the country of the
+Rohillas; you have seen the condition in which he received the country
+of Oude; you have seen the condition in which he received the provinces
+of Bengal; you have seen the condition of the country when the native
+government was succeeded by that of Mr. Hastings; you have seen the
+happiness and prosperity of all its inhabitants, from those of the
+highest to those of the lowest rank. My Lords, you have seen the very
+reverse of all this under the government of Mr. Hastings,--the country
+itself, all its beauty and glory, ending in a jungle for wild beasts.
+You have seen flourishing families reduced to implore that pity which
+the poorest man and the meanest situation might very well call for. You
+have seen whole nations in the mass reduced to a condition of the same
+distress. These things in his government at home. Abroad, scorn,
+contempt, and derision cast upon and covering the British name, war
+stirred up, and dishonorable treaties of peace made, by the total
+prostitution of British faith. Now take, my Lords, together, all the
+multiplied delinquencies which we have proved, from the highest degree
+of tyranny to the lowest degree of sharping and cheating, and then
+judge, my Lords, whether the House of Commons could rest for one moment,
+without bringing these matters, which have baffled all legislation at
+various times, before you, to try at last what judgment will do.
+Judgment is what gives force, effect, and vigor to laws; laws without
+judgment are contemptible and ridiculous; we had better have no laws
+than laws not enforced by judgments and suitable penalties upon
+delinquents. Revert, my Lords, to all the sentences which have
+heretofore been passed by this high court; look at the sentence passed
+upon Lord Bacon, look at the sentence passed upon Lord Macclesfield; and
+then compare the sentences which your ancestors have given with the
+delinquencies which were then before them, and you have the measure to
+be taken in your sentence upon the delinquent now before you. Your
+sentence, I say, will be measured according to that rule which ought to
+direct the judgment of all courts in like cases, lessening it for a
+lesser offence, and aggravating it for a greater, until the measure of
+justice is completely full.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My Lords, I have done; the part of the Commons is concluded. With a
+trembling solicitude we consign this product of our long, long labors to
+your charge. Take it!--take it! It is a sacred trust. Never before was a
+cause of such magnitude submitted to any human tribunal.
+
+My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and
+surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing
+generations, between which, as a link in the great chain of eternal
+order, we stand. We call this nation, we call the world to witness, that
+the Commons have shrunk from no labor, that we have been guilty of no
+prevarication, that we have made no compromise with crime, that we have
+not feared any odium whatsoever, in the long warfare which we have
+carried on with the crimes, with the vices, with the exorbitant wealth,
+with the enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern corruption. This
+war, my Lords, we have waged for twenty-two years, and the conflict has
+been fought at your Lordships' bar for the last seven years. My Lords,
+twenty-two years is a great space in the scale of the life of man; it is
+no inconsiderable space in the history of a great nation. A business
+which has so long occupied the councils and the tribunals of Great
+Britain cannot possibly be huddled over in the course of vulgar, trite,
+and transitory events. Nothing but some of those great revolutions that
+break the traditionary chain of human memory, and alter the very face of
+Nature itself, can possibly obscure it. My Lords, we are all elevated to
+a degree of importance by it; the meanest of us will, by means of it,
+more or less become the concern of posterity,--if we are yet to hope for
+such a thing, in the present state of the world, as a recording,
+retrospective, civilized posterity: but this is in the hands of the
+great Disposer of events; it is not ours to settle how it shall be.
+
+My Lords, your House yet stands,--it stands as a great edifice; but let
+me say, that it stands in the midst of ruins,--in the midst of the ruins
+that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed
+and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it has pleased Providence to
+place us in such a state that we appear every moment to be upon the
+verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only,
+which defies all mutation,--that which existed before the world, and
+will survive the fabric of the world itself: I mean justice,--that
+justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of
+every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and
+with regard to others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned
+to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He
+comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.
+
+My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your Lordships;
+there is nothing sinister which can happen to you, in which we shall not
+be involved: and if it should so happen that we shall be subjected to
+some of those frightful changes which we have seen,--if it should happen
+that your Lordships, stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human
+society, should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those
+scaffolds and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious
+queens have shed their blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the nobles,
+amidst the magistrates who supported their thrones, may you in those
+moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they felt in the
+critical moments of their dreadful agony!
+
+My Lords, there is a consolation, and a great consolation it is, which
+often happens to oppressed virtue and fallen dignity. It often happens
+that the very oppressors and persecutors themselves are forced to bear
+testimony in its favor. I do not like to go for instances a great way
+back into antiquity. I know very well that length of time operates so as
+to give an air of the fabulous to remote events, which lessens the
+interest and weakens the application of examples. I wish to come nearer
+to the present time. Your Lordships know and have heard (for which of us
+has not known and heard?) of the Parliament of Paris. The Parliament of
+Paris had an origin very, very similar to that of the great court before
+which I stand; the Parliament of Paris continued to have a great
+resemblance to it in its constitution, even to its fall: the Parliament
+of Paris, my Lords, WAS; it is gone! It has passed away; it has
+vanished like a dream! It fell, pierced by the sword of the Comte de
+Mirabeau. And yet I will say, that that man, at the time of his
+inflicting the death-wound of that Parliament, produced at once the
+shortest and the grandest funeral oration that ever was or could be made
+upon the departure of a great court of magistracy. Though he had himself
+smarted under its lash, as every one knows who knows his history, (and
+he was elevated to dreadful notoriety in history,) yet, when he
+pronounced the death sentence upon that Parliament, and inflicted the
+mortal wound, he declared that his motives for doing it were merely
+political, and that their hands were as pure as those of justice itself,
+which they administered. A great and glorious exit, my Lords, of a great
+and glorious body! And never was a eulogy pronounced upon a body more
+deserved. They were persons, in nobility of rank, in amplitude of
+fortune, in weight of authority, in depth of learning, inferior to few
+of those that hear me. My Lords, it was but the other day that they
+submitted their necks to the axe; but their honor was unwounded. Their
+enemies, the persons who sentenced them to death, were lawyers full of
+subtlety, they were enemies full of malice; yet lawyers full of
+subtlety, and enemies full of malice, as they were, they did not dare to
+reproach them with having supported the wealthy, the great, and
+powerful, and of having oppressed the weak and feeble, in any of their
+judgments, or of having perverted justice, in any one instance whatever,
+through favor, through interest, or cabal.
+
+My Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! But if you stand,--and
+stand I trust you will, together with the fortune of this ancient
+monarchy, together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and
+illustrious kingdom,--may you stand as unimpeached in honor as in power!
+May you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of
+virtue, as a security for virtue! May you stand long, and long stand the
+terror of tyrants! May you stand the refuge of afflicted nations! May
+you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual residence of an inviolable
+justice!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS,
+
+AND
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+
+
+GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+Advertisement to the Reader, Prefixed to the First Octavo Edition      v
+
+Advertisement to the Second Octavo Edition                          xvii
+
+A Vindication of Natural Society: or, A View of the Miseries and
+  Evils arising to Mankind from every Species of Artificial Society    1
+
+A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
+  and Beautiful; with an Introductory Discourse concerning Taste      67
+
+A Short Account of a late Short Administration                       263
+
+Observations on a late Publication, intituled,
+  "The Present State of the Nation"                                  269
+
+Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents                     433
+
+
+VOL. II.
+
+Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774                            1
+
+Speeches on Arrival at Bristol and at the Conclusion of the Poll,
+  October 13 and November 3, 1774                                     81
+
+Speech on moving Resolutions for Conciliation with America,
+  March 22, 1775                                                      99
+
+Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the Affairs of America,
+  April 3, 1777                                                      187
+
+Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol, on the Bills depending in
+  Parliament relative to the Trade of Ireland, April 23 and
+  May 2, 1778                                                        247
+
+Speech on presenting to the House of Commons a Plan for the Better
+  Security of the Independence of Parliament, and the Economical
+  Reformation of the Civil and other Establishments,
+  February 11, 1780                                                  265
+
+Speech at Bristol previous to the Election, September 6, 1780        365
+
+Speech at Bristol on declining the Poll, September 9, 1780           425
+
+Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill, December 1, 1783                431
+
+A Representation to his Majesty, moved in the House of Commons,
+  June 14, 1784                                                      537
+
+
+VOL. III.
+
+Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, February 28, 1785;               1
+  with an Appendix
+
+Substance of Speech on the Army Estimates, February 9, 1790          211
+
+Reflections on the Revolution in France                              231
+
+
+VOL. IV.
+
+Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, in Answer to some
+  Objections to his Book on French Affairs                             1
+
+Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs                                  57
+
+Letter to a Peer of Ireland on the Penal Laws against Irish
+  Catholics                                                          217
+
+Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Subject of the Roman
+  Catholics of Ireland                                               241
+
+Hints for a Memorial to be delivered to Monsieur de M.M.             307
+
+Thoughts on French Affairs                                           313
+
+Heads for Consideration on the Present State of Affairs              379
+
+Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with respect to France: with
+  an Appendix                                                        403
+
+
+VOL. V.
+
+Observations on the Conduct of the Minority, particularly in the
+  last Session of Parliament, 1793                                     1
+
+Preface to the Address of M. Brissot to his Constituents:
+  with an Appendix                                                    65
+
+Letter to William Elliot, Esq., occasioned by a Speech made in
+  the House of Lords by the **** of *******, in the Debate concerning
+  Lord Fitzwilliam, 1795                                             107
+
+Thoughts and Details on Scarcity                                     131
+
+Letter to a Noble Lord on the Attacks made upon Mr. Burke and his
+  Pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the
+  Earl of Lauderdale, 1796                                           171
+
+Three Letters to a Member of Parliament on the Proposals for
+  Peace with the Regicide Directory of France.
+
+    Letter I. On the Overtures of Peace                              233
+
+    Letter II. On the Genius and Character of the French
+      Revolution as it regards other Nations                         342
+
+    Letter III. On the Rupture of the Negotiation; the Terms
+       of Peace proposed; and the Resources of the Country for
+       the Continuance of the War                                    384
+
+
+VOL. VI.
+
+Preface to the Second Posthumous Volume, in a Letter to the Right
+  Hon. William Elliot                                                  v
+
+Fourth Letter on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory
+   of France: with the Preliminary Correspondence                      1
+
+Letter to the Empress of Russia, November 1, 1791                    113
+
+Letter to Sir Charles Bingham, Bart., on the Irish Absentee Tax,
+  October 30, 1773                                                   121
+
+Letter to the Hon. Charles James Fox, on the American War,
+  October 8, 1777                                                    135
+
+Letter to the Marquis of Rockingham, with Addresses to the King,
+  and the British Colonists in North America, in Relation to the
+  Measures of Government in the American Contest, and a Proposed
+  Secession of the Opposition from Parliament, January, 1777         149
+
+Letter to the Right Hon. Edmund S. Pery, in relation to a Bill
+  for the Relief of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, July 18, 1778    197
+
+Two Letters to Thomas Burgh, Esq., and John Merlott, Esq., in
+  Vindication of his Parliamentary Conduct relative to the Affairs
+  of Ireland, 1780                                                   207
+
+Letters and Reflections on the Executions of the Rioters in 1780     239
+
+Letter to the Right Hon. Henry Dundas: with the Sketch of a Negro
+  Code, 1792                                                         255
+
+Letter to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting, held at
+  Aylesbury, April 13, 1780, on the Subject of Parliamentary
+  Reform                                                             291
+
+Fragments of a Tract relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland  299
+
+Letter to William Smith, Esq., on the Subject of Catholic
+  Emancipation, January 29, 1795                                     361
+
+Second Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Catholic Question,
+  May 26, 1795                                                       375
+
+Letter to Richard Burke, Esq., on Protestant Ascendency in Ireland,
+  1793                                                               385
+
+Letter on the Affairs of Ireland, 1797                               413
+
+
+VOL. VII.
+
+Fragments and Notes of Speeches In Parliament.
+
+  Speech on the Acts of Uniformity, February 8, 1772                   3
+
+  Speech on a Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters,
+    March 17, 1773                                                    21
+
+  Speech on a Motion, for Leave to bring in a Bill to repeal and
+    alter certain Acts respecting Religious Opinions, upon the
+    Occasion of a Petition of the Unitarian Society, May 11, 1792     39
+
+  Speech relative to the Middlesex Election, February 7, 1771         59
+
+  Speech on a Bill for shortening the Duration of Parliaments,
+    May 8, 1780                                                       69
+
+  Speech on a Motion for a Committee to inquire into the State of
+    the Representation of the Commons in Parliament, May 7, 1782      89
+
+  Speech on a Motion for Leave to bring in a Bill for explaining
+    the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels, March 7, 1771.
+    Together with a Letter in Vindication of that Measure, and a
+    Copy of the proposed Bill                                        105
+
+  Speech on a Bill for the Repeal of the Marriage Act,
+    June 15, 1781                                                    129
+
+  Speech on a Motion for Leave to bring in a Bill to quiet the
+    Possessions of the Subject against Dormant Claims of the Church,
+    February 17, 1772                                                137
+
+Hints for an Essay on the Drama                                      143
+
+An Essay towards an Abridgment of the English History. In Three Books.
+
+  Book I. To the Fall of the Roman Power In Britain                  159
+
+  Book II. To the Norman Invasion                                    227
+
+  Book III. Through the Reign of John                                327
+
+    Fragment.--An Essay towards an History of the Laws of England    475
+
+
+VOL. VIII.
+
+Ninth Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons
+  on the Affairs of India, June 25, 1783.
+
+  Observations on the State of the Company's Affairs in India          3
+
+  Connection of Great Britain with India                              41
+
+  Effect of the Revenue Investment on the Company                     56
+
+  Internal Trade of Bengal                                            76
+    Silk                                                              83
+    Raw Silk                                                          88
+    Cloths, or Piece-Goods                                            99
+    Opium                                                            116
+    Salt                                                             142
+    Saltpetre                                                        170
+
+  British Government in India                                        173
+
+Eleventh Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on
+  the Affairs of India. With Extracts from the Appendix.
+  November 18, 1783                                                  217
+
+Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against Warren
+  Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General of Bengal: presented to
+  the House of Commons in April and May, 1788.--Articles I.-VI.
+
+  Art. I. Rohilla War                                                307
+      II. Shah Allum                                                 319
+     III. Benares.
+       Part I. Rights and Titles of the Rajah of Benares             327
+       Part II. Designs of Mr. Hastings to ruin the Rajah of Benares 339
+       Part III. Expulsion of the Rajah of Benares                   354
+       Part IV. Second Revolution in Benares                         380
+       Part V. Third Revolution in Benares                           386
+      IV. Princesses of Oude                                         397
+       V. Revolutions in Furruckabad                                 467
+      VI. Destruction of the Rajah of Sahlone                        484
+
+
+VOL. IX.
+
+Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against
+  Warren Hastings, Esq., late Governor-General of Bengal: presented
+  to the House of Commons in April and May, 1786.--Articles VII.-XXII.
+
+Art. VII. Contracts                                                    3
+    VIII. Presents                                                    22
+      IX. Resignation of the Office of Governor-General               42
+       X. Surgeon-General's Contract                                  60
+      XI. Contracts for Poolbundy Repairs                             60
+     XII. Contracts for Opium                                         63
+    XIII. Appointment of R.J. Sulivan                                 70
+     XIV. Ranna of Gohud                                              72
+      XV. Revenues. Part I.                                           79
+                    Part II.                                          87
+     XVI. Misdemeanors in Oude                                        95
+    XVII. Mahomed Reza Khan                                          179
+   XVIII. The Mogul delivered up to the Mahrattas                    202
+     XIX. Libel on the Court of Directors                            228
+      XX. Mahratta War and Peace                                     238
+     XXI. Correspondence                                             266
+    XXII. Fyzoola Khan
+            Part I. Rights of Fyzoola Khan, etc., before the
+              Treaty of Lall-Dang                                    268
+            Part II. Rights of Fyzoola Khan under the Treaty
+              of Lall-Dang                                           275
+            Part III. Guaranty of the Treaty of Lall-Dang            278
+            Part IV. Thanks of the Board to Fyzoola Khan             286
+            Part V. Demand of Five Thousand Horse                    287
+            Part VI. Treaty of Chunar                                296
+            Part VII. Consequences of the Treaty of Chunar           302
+            Part VIII. Pecuniary Commutation of the Stipulated Aid   306
+            Part IX. Full Vindication of Fyzoola Khan by Major
+              Palmer and Mr. Hastings                                313
+
+Appendix to the Eighth and Sixteenth Charges                         319
+
+Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal.
+
+  Speech in Opening the Impeachment.
+    First Day: Friday, February 15, 1788                             329
+    Second Day: Saturday, February 16                                396
+
+
+VOL. X.
+
+Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal.
+
+  Speech in Opening the Impeachment.
+    Third Day: Monday, February 18, 1788                               3
+    Fourth Day: Tuesday, February 19                                  99
+
+  Speech on the Sixth Article of Charge.
+    First Day: Tuesday, April 21, 1789                               149
+    Second Day: Saturday, April 25                                   240
+    Third Day: Tuesday, May 5                                        306
+    Fourth Day: Thursday, May 7                                      396
+
+
+VOL. XI.
+
+Report from the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to
+  inspect the Lords' Journals in Relation to their Proceedings on
+  the Trial of Warren Hastings, Esq. With an Appendix. Also,
+   Remarks in Vindication of the Same from the Animadversions of
+   Lord Thurlow. 1794                                                  1
+
+Speeches in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal. (Continued.)
+
+  Speech in General Reply.
+    First Day: Wednesday, May 28, 1794                               157
+    Second Day: Friday, May 30                                       227
+    Third Day. Tuesday, June 3                                       300
+    Fourth Day: Thursday, June 5                                     372
+
+
+VOL. XII.
+
+Speeches In the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq.,
+  late Governor-General of Bengal. (Continued.)
+
+  Speech in General Reply.
+    Fifth Day: Saturday, June 7, 1794                                  3
+    Sixth Day: Wednesday, June 11                                     75
+    Seventh Day: Thursday, June 12                                   143
+    Eighth Day: Saturday, June 14                                    235
+    Ninth Day: Monday, June 16                                       335
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Accidental things ought to be carefully distinguished from
+    permanent causes and effects, v. 234.
+
+Account, capital use of an, what, i. 511.
+
+Act of navigation, i. 378; ii. 30, 33.
+
+Acts of grace, impolicy of, ii. 386.
+
+Acts of indemnity and oblivion, probable effects of, as a
+    means of reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.
+
+Addison, Mr., the correctness of his opinion of the cause of
+    the grand effect of the rotund questioned, i. 150.
+  his fine lines on honorable political connections, i. 529.
+
+Administration, Short Account of a Late Short, (Marquis of
+    Rockingham's,) i. 263.
+  censures on that administration, i. 379.
+  state of public affairs at the time of its formation, i. 381.
+  character and conduct of it, i. 388.
+  idea of it respecting America, i. 397.
+  remarks on its foreign negotiations, i. 412.
+  character of a united administration, i. 419.
+  of a disunited one, i. 425.
+  the administration should be correspondent to the legislature, i. 471.
+
+Admiration, the first source of obedience, iv. 251.
+  one of the principles which interest us in the characters
+    of others, vii. 148.
+
+Adrian, first contracts the hounds of the Roman Empire, vii. 214.
+
+Advice, compulsive, from constituents, its authority first
+    resisted by Mr. Burke, iv. 95.
+
+Adviser, duty of an, iv. 42.
+
+Agricola, Julius, character and conduct of, vii. 199.
+
+Aix, the Archbishop of, his offer of contribution, why refused
+    by the French National Assembly, iii. 390.
+
+Aix-la-Chapelle, the treaty of, remarks on, v. 441.
+
+Akbar, the Emperor, obtains possession of Bengal, ix. 392
+
+Alfred the Great, character and conduct of, vii. 261.
+  his care and sagacity in improving the laws and institutions
+    of England, vii. 482.
+
+Allegiance, oath of, remarkable one taken by the nobility to
+    King Stephen, vii. 388.
+
+Alliance, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.
+  the famous Triple Alliance negotiated by Temple and De Witt, v. 438.
+  alliance between Church and State in a Christian commonwealth,
+    a fanciful speculation, vii. 43.
+
+Ambition, one of the passions belonging to society, i. 124.
+  nature and end of, i. 124.
+  misery of disappointed, i. 335.
+  ought to be influenced by popular motives, i. 474.
+  influence of, iii. 107.
+  one of the natural distempers of a democracy, iv. 164.
+  legislative restraints on it in democracies always violent
+    and ineffectual, iv. 164.
+  not an exact calculator, vii. 82.
+  virtue of a generous ambition for applause for public services, x. 176.
+
+America, advantage of, to England, i. 297.
+  nature of various taxes there, i. 355.
+  project of a representation of in Parliament, its difficulties, i. 372.
+  its rapidly increasing commerce, ii. 112.
+  eloquent description of rising glories of, in vision, ii. 115.
+  temper and character of its inhabitants, ii. 120.
+  their spirit of liberty, whence, ii. 120, 133
+  proposed taxation of, by grant instead of imposition, ii. 154.
+  danger in establishing a military government there, vi. 176.
+
+American Stamp Act, its origin, i. 385.
+  repeal of the, i. 265, 389.
+  reasons of the repeal, ii. 48.
+  good effects of the repeal, i. 401; ii. 59.
+
+Ancestors, our, reverence due to them, iii. 562; iv. 213.
+
+Angles, in buildings, prejudicial to their grandeur, i. 151.
+
+Animals, their cries capable of conveying great ideas, i. 161.
+
+Anniversaries, festive, advantages of, iv. 369.
+
+Anselm, appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, vii. 373.
+  supports Henry I. against his brother Robert, vii. 377.
+
+Apparitions, singular inconsistency in the ideas of the vulgar
+    concerning them, vii. 181.
+
+Arbitrary power, steals upon a people by lying dormant for a
+    time, or by being rarely exercised, ii. 201.
+  cannot be exercised or delegated by the legislature, ix. 455.
+  not recognized in the Gentoo code, xi. 208.
+
+Arbitrary system, must always be a corrupt one, x. 5.
+  danger in adopting it as a principle of action, xi. 322.
+
+Areopagus, court and senate of, remarks on the, iii. 507.
+
+Ariosto, a criticism of Boileau on, vii. 154.
+
+Aristocracy, affected terror at the growth of the power of the,
+    in the reign of George II., i. 457.
+  influence of the, i. 457.
+  too much spirit not a fault of the, i. 458.
+  general observations on the, iii. 415.
+  character of a true natural one, iv. 174.
+  regulations in some states with respect to, iv. 250.
+  must submit to the dominion of prudence and virtue, v. 127.
+  character of the aristocracy of France before the Revolution,
+    iii. 412; vi. 39.
+
+Aristotle, his caution against delusive geometrical accuracy
+    in moral arguments, ii. 170.
+  his observations on the resemblance between a democracy and
+    a tyranny, iii. 397.
+  his distinction between tragedy and comedy, vii. 153.
+  his natural philosophy alone unworthy of him, vii. 252.
+  his system entirely followed by Bede, vii. 252.
+
+Armies yield a precarious and uncertain obedience to a senate, iii. 524.
+  remarks on the standing armies of France and England, iii. 224.
+
+Army commanded by General Monk, character of it, iv. 36.
+
+Art, every work of, great only as it deceives, i. 152.
+
+Artist, a true one effects the noblest designs by easy methods, i. 152.
+
+Artois, Comte d', character of, iv. 430.
+
+Ascendency, Protestant, observations on it, vi. 393.
+
+Asers, their origin and conquests, vii. 228.
+
+Assassination, recommended and employed by the National Assembly
+    of France, iv. 34.
+  the dreadful consequences of this policy, in case of war, iv. 34.
+
+Astonishment, cause and nature of, i. 160, 217.
+
+Atheism by establishment, what, v. 310.
+  ought to be repressed by law, vii. 35.
+  schools of, set up by the French regicides at the public charge, vi. 106.
+
+Atheists, modern, contrasted with those of antiquity, iv. 355.
+
+Athenians, at the head of the democratic interests of Greece, iv. 321.
+
+Athens, the plague of, remarkable prevalence of wickedness
+    during its continuance, vii. 84.
+
+Augustin, state of religion in Britain when he arrived there, vii. 233.
+  introduced Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons, vii. 235.
+
+Aulic Council, remarks on the, v. 119.
+
+Austria began in the reign of Maria Theresa to support great
+    armies, v. 368.
+  her treaty of 1756 with France, deplored by the French in 1773, v. 370.
+
+Authority, its only firm seat in public opinion, ii. 224; vi. 165.
+  the people the natural control on it, iv. 164.
+  the exercise and control of it together contradictory, iv. 164.
+  the monopoly of it an evil, v. 151.
+
+Avarice, an instrument and source of oppression in India,
+    iii. 107; ix. 491.
+
+
+Bacon, Lord, a remark of his applied to the revolution in France, v. 175.
+  his demeanor at his impeachment, xi. 173.
+
+Bacon, N., his work on the laws of England not entitled to
+    authority, vii. 479.
+
+Bail, method of giving it introduced by Alfred, vii. 265.
+  advantage of it, vii. 265.
+
+Ball, John, abstract of a discourse of, iv. 178.
+
+Ballot, all contrivances by it vain to prevent a discovery of
+    the inclinations, iii. 507.
+
+Balmerino, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 34.
+
+Banian, functions and character of the, ix. 363.
+
+Bank paper in England, owing to the flourishing condition of
+    commerce, iii. 541.
+
+Bards, the, character of their verses, vii. 178.
+
+Bartholomew, St., massacre of, iii. 420.
+
+Bathurst, Lord, his imagined vision of the rising glories of
+    America, ii. 114.
+
+Bayle, Mr., an observation of his on religious persecution, vi. 333.
+
+Beauchamp, Lord, his bill concerning imprisonment; Mr. Burke's
+    course with respect to it, ii. 382.
+
+Beauty, a cause of love, i. 114, 165.
+  proportion not the cause of it in vegetables, i. 166.
+  nor in animals, i. 170.
+  nor in the human species, i. 172.
+  beauty and proportion not ideas of the same nature, i. 181.
+  the opposite to beauty not disproportion or deformity, but
+    ugliness, i. 181.
+  fitness not the cause of beauty, i. 181.
+  nor perfection, i. 187.
+  how far the idea of beauty applicable to the qualities of the
+    mind, i. 188.
+  how far applicable to virtue, i. 190.
+  the real cause of beauty, i. 191.
+  beautiful objects, small, i. 191.
+  and smooth, i. 193.
+  and of softly varied contour, i. 194.
+  and delicate, i. 195.
+  and of clear, mild, or diversified, colors, i. 196.
+  beauty of the physiognomy, i. 198.
+  beauty of the eye, i. 198.
+  the beautiful in feeling, i. 201.
+  the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.
+  physical effects of beauty, i. 232.
+
+Bede, the Venerable, brief account of him and his works, vii. 250.
+
+Bedford, the first earl of, who, v. 201.
+
+Begums of Oude, accused by the East India Company of rebellion, ii. 475.
+  pretence for seizing their treasures, xii. 33.
+
+Benares, city of, the capital of the Indian religion, ii. 477, 484.
+  province of, its projected sale to the Nabob of Oude, xi. 259.
+  devastation of, during Mr. Hastings's government, xi. 302, 347.
+  the Rajah of, nature of his authority, xi. 240.
+  imprisoned by Mr. Hastings's order, xi. 277.
+  the Ranny of, the soldiery incited by Mr. Hastings to plunder her,
+    ii. 486.
+
+Benfield, Paul, his character and conduct, iii. 97.
+
+Bengal, extent and condition, of, ii. 498.
+  conquest of, by the Emperor Akbar, ix. 392.
+  era of the independent subahs of, ix. 392.
+  era of the British empire in, ix. 393.
+  nature of the government exercised there by Mr. Hastings, xii. 211.
+
+Bengal Club, observations on the, iv. 324.
+
+Bidjegur, fortress of, taken by order of Mr. Hastings, xi. 291.
+
+Biron, Duchess of, murdered by the French regicides, vi. 41.
+
+Bitterness, in description, a source of the sublime, i. 162.
+
+Blackness, effects of, i. 229.
+
+Boadicea, Roman outrages against, vii. 197.
+
+Boileau, his criticism on a tale in Ariosto, vii. 154.
+
+Bolingbroke, Lord, animadversions on his philosophical works, i. 3.
+  some characteristics of his style, i. 7.
+  a presumptuous and superficial writer, iii. 398.
+  a remark of his on the superiority of a monarchy over other
+    forms of government, iii. 398.
+
+Boncompagni, Cardinal, character of him, iv. 338.
+
+Borrower, the public, and the private lender, not adverse
+    parties with contending interests, v. 455.
+
+Bouillon, Godfrey of, engages in the Crusade, vii. 372.
+
+Boulogne, fortress of, surrendered to France, v. 204.
+  importance of it to England, v. 204.
+
+Bouvines, victory of, important advantages of it to France, vii. 458.
+
+Brabancons, mercenary troops in the time of Henry II., their
+    character, vii. 420.
+
+Bribing, by means of it, rather than by being bribed, wicked
+    politicians bring ruin on mankind, iii. 107.
+
+Brissot, his character and conduct, iv. 371.
+  Preface to his Address to his Constituents, v. 65.
+
+Britain, invasion of, by Caesar, vii. 165.
+  account of its ancient inhabitants, vii. 170.
+  invaded by Claudius, vii. 191.
+  reduced by Ostorius Scapula, vii. 191.
+  finally subdued by Agricola, vii. 199.
+  why not sooner conquered, vii. 202.
+  nature of the government settled there by the Romans, vii. 205.
+  first introduction of Christianity into, vii. 221.
+  deserted by the Romans, vii. 223.
+  entry and settlement of the Saxons there, and their conversion
+    to Christianity, vii. 227.
+
+Britons, more reduced than any other nation that fell under the
+    German power, vii. 232.
+
+Brown, Dr., effect of his writings on the people of England, v. 239.
+
+Buch, Captal de, his severe treatment of the Jacquerie in France, iv. 177.
+
+Buildings, too great length in them, prejudicial to grandeur
+    of effect, i. 152.
+  should be gloomy to produce an idea of the sublime, i. 158.
+
+Burke, Mr., his sentiments respecting several leading members
+    of the Whig party, iv. 66.
+  and respecting a union of Ireland with Great Britain, iv. 297.
+  respecting acts of indemnity and oblivion as a means of
+    reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.
+  his animadversions on the conduct of Mr. Fox, v. 7.
+  his pathetic allusion to his deceased son, v. 207.
+
+Burnet, Bishop, his statement of the methods which carried men
+    of parts to Popery in France, iii. 430.
+
+Bute, Earl of, his resignation, i. 381.
+  his successors recommended by him, i. 381.
+  supposed head of the court party called "King's Men," i. 467.
+
+
+Caesar, Julius, his policy with respect to the Gauls, vii. 163.
+  his invasion of Germany, vii. 164.
+  and of Britain, vii. 165.
+
+Calais, lost by the surrender of Boulogne, v. 204.
+
+Calamity, its deliberations rarely wise, iii. 540.
+  public calamity often arrested by the seasonable energy of a
+    single man, v. 124.
+
+Caligula undertakes an expedition against Britain, vii. 190.
+
+Calonne, M. de, remarks on his work, "L'Etat de la France," iii. 479.
+  extract from it, iii. 549.
+
+Campanella, curious story concerning him, i. 212.
+
+Canada Bills, convention for their liquidation, i. 409.
+
+Canterbury, dispute between the suffragan bishops of the province
+    and the monks of the Abbey of St. Austin, vii. 446.
+
+Cantons, French, their origin, nature, and function, iii. 462, 464, 471.
+
+Cantoo Baboo, Mr. Hastings's banian, x. 19.
+
+Canute, his character and conduct, vii. 276.
+  remarks on his code of laws, vii. 483.
+
+Capital, monopoly of, not an evil, v. 151.
+
+Care, appearance of, highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence, i. 154.
+
+Carnatic, the extent, nature, and condition of the country,
+    ii. 492; iii. 65.
+  dreadful devastation of it by Hyder Ali Khan, iii. 62.
+
+Caste, consequences of losing it in India, x. 89.
+
+Castile, different from Catalonia and Aragon, iv. 340.
+
+Castles, great numbers of them built in the reign of Stephen, vii. 389.
+
+Casuistry, origin and requisites of, iv. 168.
+  danger of pursuing it too far, iv. 168.
+
+Catholics, Letter to an Irish Peer on the Penal Laws against, iv. 217.
+
+Celsus, his opinion that internal remedies were not of early
+    use proved to be erroneous, vii. 184.
+
+Cerealis, extract from his fine speech to the Gauls, iv. 272.
+
+Change and reformation, distinction between, v. 186.
+
+Characters of others, principles which interest us in them, vii. 148.
+
+Charity, observations on, v. 146.
+  not to be interfered with by the magistrate, v. 146.
+
+Charles I. defended himself on the practice of his predecessors, ii. 279.
+  his ill-judged attempt to establish the rites of the Church
+    of England in Scotland, vii. 8.
+
+Charles II. obliged by the sense of the nation to abandon
+    the Dutch war, ii. 219.
+  brief character of him, iv. 37.
+  his government compared with that of Cromwell, iv. 467.
+
+Charles XII. of Sweden, parallel between him and Richard I.
+    of England, vii. 436.
+
+Charters are kept when their purposes are maintained, ii. 565.
+
+Chatham, Lord, his character, ii. 61.
+
+Cheselden, Mr., his story of a boy who was couched for a cataract, i. 226.
+
+Chester, the County Palatine of, admitted to representation
+    in Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII., ii. 150.
+
+Chesterfield, Lord, his conduct (when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland)
+    with respect to the Roman Catholics, iv. 235.
+
+Cheyt Sing, Rajah of Benares, nature of his authority, ii. 479; xi. 240.
+  imprisoned by order of Mr. Hastings, xi. 277.
+
+Christendom, the several states of, have all been formed slowly
+    and without any unity of design, v. 373.
+
+Christianity, original introduction of, into Britain, vii. 221.
+
+Church, the, has power to reform her doctrine, discipline,
+    and rites, vii. 7.
+
+Church establishment in England, observations on it, iii. 352.
+  the provision made for its clergy by the state, iii. 364.
+  education of its clergy contrasted with that of the Roman
+    Catholic clergy, iv. 231.
+  eulogy on it, vi. 401; vii. 36, 56.
+
+Cicero, remarks on his orations against Verres, xii. 349.
+
+Circumstances, importance of them in all political principles,
+    iii. 240; vii. 55.
+
+Citizens, not to be listened to, in matters relating to agriculture,
+    v. 146.
+
+Civil list, debts due on it, request for a supply for discharging
+    them, how made, i. 508.
+  plan of economy relative to it, ii. 350.
+
+Civil society, great purpose of, vi. 333.
+
+Civil vicinity, law of, what, v. 322.
+
+Civil wars corrupt the morals of the people, ii. 203.
+
+Clamor, justifiable when it is caused by abuse, vii. 121.
+
+Clarendon, Constitutions of, vii. 403.
+
+Claudius, the Emperor invades Britain, vii. 191.
+
+Clavering, Sir John, eulogy on him, x. 246; xii. 348.
+
+Clear expression, different from a strong one, i. 260.
+
+Clearness not necessary for affecting the passions, i. 133.
+
+Clergy, convocation of, a part of the constitution, ii. 226.
+  observations on the provision made by the state for them, iii. 364, 448.
+  Roman Catholic, in France, character of them before the
+    Revolution, iii. 424.
+  laws of William and Anne respecting the Popish clergy, vi. 317.
+  review of the state of the clergy in England down to the reign
+    of Henry II., vii. 398.
+
+Clive, Lord, sent to India, ix. 438.
+  his conduct there, ix. 439.
+
+Clootz, Anacharsis, his masquerade embassy to the Constituent
+    Assembly of France, vi. 49.
+
+Coke, Lord, ingenious quotation in his Reports, i. 5.
+  his observation on discretion in judicature, iv. 292.
+
+Colonies, commercial, mode of levying taxes in them, an important
+    and difficult consideration, i. 354.
+  American, import ten times more from Great Britain, than they
+    spend in return, i. 393.
+
+Colonists, the British, in America, character of, i. 395.
+  Address to, vi. 183.
+
+Colors, soft and cheerful ones unfit to produce grand images, i. 158.
+
+Comedy, observations on, vii. 150.
+  Aristotle's distinction between it and tragedy, vii. 153.
+
+Comines, Philip de, his remarks on the English civil wars, vi. 252.
+
+Commerce and liberty, the two main sources of power to Great
+    Britain, ii. 87.
+  great increase of, in America, ii. 112.
+
+Common law, nature of the, vii. 462.
+
+Common Pleas, court of, its origin, vii. 466.
+
+Commons, the House of, observations on its nature and character, i. 491.
+  what qualities recommend a man to a seat in it, in popular
+    elections, i. 497.
+  can never control other parts of the government, unless the
+    members themselves are controlled by their constituents, i. 503.
+  ought to be connected with and dependent on the people, i. 508.
+  has a collective character, distinct from that of its members, ii. 66.
+  duty of the members to their constituents, ii. 95.
+  general observations on its privileges and duties, ii. 544.
+  the collective sense of the people to be received from it, ii. 545.
+  its powers and capacities, ii. 552.
+  cannot renounce its share of authority, iii. 258.
+  its composition, iii. 289.
+  the most powerful and most corruptible part of the constitution, vii. 62.
+  a superintendence over the doctrines and proceedings of the
+    courts of justice, one of its principal objects, vii. 107.
+  concise view of its proceedings on the East India question, ii. 559.
+
+Commonwealths, not subject to laws analogous to those of
+    physical life, v. 124, 234.
+
+Communes, in France, their origin, nature, and function,
+    iii. 462, 464, 472.
+
+Compurgators, in Saxon law, what, vii. 318.
+
+Condorcet, brief character of him, iv. 356, 372.
+  extract from a publication of his, iv. 356.
+
+Confidence, unsuspecting, in government, importance of it, ii. 234.
+  of mankind, how to be secured, v. 414.
+
+Connections, party, political, observations on them, i. 527, 530.
+  commended by patriots in the commonwealths of antiquity, i. 527.
+  the Whig connection in Queen Anne's reign, i. 529.
+
+Conquest cannot give a right to arbitrary power, ix. 456.
+
+Conscience, a tender one ought to be tenderly handled, vii. 54.
+
+Constantine the Great, changes made by him in the internal
+    policy of the Roman Empire, vii. 220.
+
+Constantinople, anecdote of the visit of an English country
+    squire to, v. 387.
+  anecdote of the Greeks at the taking of, vi. 96.
+
+Constituents, in England, more in the spirit of the constitution
+    to lessen than to enlarge their number, i. 370.
+  their duty to their representatives, ii. 370.
+  compulsive instruction from them first rejected by Mr. Burke, iv. 95.
+  points in which they are incompetent to instruct their
+    representatives, vii. 74, 75.
+
+Constitution, a, cannot defend itself, vi. 100.
+  consequences of disgracing the frame and constitution of
+    the state, vii. 103.
+  the English, a change in it, an immense and difficult operation,
+    i. 371, 520.
+  English, changes in it to be attempted only in times of general
+    confusion, i. 371.
+  eulogy on it, iii. 561; v. 210; vii. 100.
+  the whole scheme of it to prevent any one of its principles
+    from being carried to an extreme, iv. 207.
+  not struck out at a heat, iv. 209.
+  commendation of it by Montesquieu, iv. 212.
+  the only means of its subversion, what, v. 49, 52.
+
+Constitutional Society, The, its nature and design, iii. 236.
+
+Conti, Prince de, his character and conduct, iv. 436.
+
+Contract, an implied, one, always, between the laborer and
+    his employer, v. 137.
+
+Contracting parties, not necessary that they should have
+    different interests, v. 139.
+
+Control and exercise of authority together contradictory, iv. 164.
+
+Convocation of the clergy, though a part of the constitution,
+    now called for form only, ii. 226.
+
+Conway, General, moves the repeal of the American Stamp Act, ii. 52.
+
+Cornwallis, Lord, (Baron,) proceedings in his trial, xi. 30.
+
+Cornwallis, Lord, (Marquis,) his evidence at the trial of
+    Warren Hastings, xii. 359.
+
+Coronation oath, its obligations with respect to Roman Catholics, iv. 259.
+
+Corporate bodies, their usefulness as instruments, iii. 441.
+  more under the direction of the state than private citizens, iii. 447.
+
+Corruption, of nature and example, what the only security against, ii. 238.
+  in pecuniary matters, the suspicion of it how to be avoided, iii. 95.
+
+Cossim, Ali Khan, his character and conduct, ix. 405.
+
+Country, lore of, remarks on, xi. 422.
+
+Credit and power incompatible, i. 368.
+
+Crimes, the acts of individuals, not of denominations, ii. 418.
+  according to the criminal law, what, vi. 340.
+
+Cromwell, brief character of him, iii. 294.
+  his principle in the appointment of judges, iv. 13.
+  his conduct in government, iv. 37.
+  his government compared with that of Charles II., iv. 467.
+
+Cross, the effect of it not so grand in architecture as that of
+    the parallelogram, i. 150.
+
+Crown, the influence of it, what, i. 444.
+  inheritable nature of it, iii. 258.
+  this principle maintained at the Revolution, iii. 254.
+  the only legitimate channel of communication with other nations, v. 10.
+
+Crusade, origin and progress of the, vii. 369.
+
+Curfew, origin and policy of the, vii. 354.
+
+Curiosity, the first and simplest emotion of the human mind, i. 101.
+  general observations on it, i. 101.
+
+Custom, considered in relation to deformity and beauty, i. 179.
+  not the cause of pleasure, i. 180.
+
+Cyprus, account of the conquest of it by Richard I., vii. 428.
+
+
+Danger and pain, the idea of them a source of the sublime, i. 110, 130.
+  with certain modifications, delightful, i. 111.
+  the danger of anything very dear to us removes for the time
+    all other affections from the mind, iv. 95.
+
+Darkness more productive of sublime ideas than light, i. 156.
+  necessary to the highest degree of the sublime in building, i. 158.
+  Locke's opinion concerning, i. 225.
+  terrible in its own nature, i. 226.
+  why, i. 227.
+
+Davies, Sir John, his statement of the benefits of the extension
+    of English constitutional law to Ireland, ii. 147; iv. 273.
+
+Day, not so sublime as night, i. 158.
+
+Debi Sing, his character and conduct, x. 69.
+
+Debt, the interest of, not the principal, that which distresses
+    a nation, i. 329.
+
+Debts, civil, faults of the law with regard to, ii. 384.
+  public, excessive, their tendency to subvert government, iii. 437.
+
+Deceivers and cheats never can repent, iv. 9.
+
+Declaration of Right, contains the principles of the Revolution
+    of 1688, iii. 252.
+  drawn by Lord Somers, iii. 254.
+  proceeds upon the principle of reference to antiquity, iii. 273.
+
+Defensive measures, though vigorous at first, relax by degrees, iv. 355.
+  necessary considerations with regard to them, vi. 100.
+
+Definitions, frequently fallacious, i. 81.
+
+Deformity not opposed to beauty, but to the complete common form, i. 178.
+
+Deity, power the most striking of his attributes, i. 143.
+
+Delamere, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 31.
+
+Delight, what, i. 107.
+  distinguished from pleasure, i. 108.
+  the misfortunes of others sometimes a source of, i. 118.
+  the attendant of every passion which animates us to any active
+    purpose, i. 119.
+  how pain can be a cause of, i. 215.
+
+Democracy, no example in modern times of a considerable one, iii. 396.
+  an absolute one, not to be reckoned among the legitimate forms
+    of government, iii. 396.
+  Aristotle's observation on the resemblance between a democracy
+    and a tyranny; iii. 397.
+  the vice of the ancient democracies, what, iii. 508.
+  the foodful nurse of ambition, iv. 104.
+
+Departments in France, their origin, nature, and function, iii. 461, 465.
+
+Depth thought to have a grander effect than height, i. 147.
+
+Description, verbal, a means of raising a stronger emotion
+    than painting, i. 133.
+
+Desirable things always practicable, ii. 357.
+
+Despotism, nature of, i. 446; ix. 458.
+
+D'Espremenil, the illustrious French magistrate, murdered by
+    the Revolutionists, vi. 40.
+
+Dialogue, advantages and disadvantages of it as a mode of
+    argumentation, vi. 9.
+
+Difference in taste, commonly so called, whence, i. 89.
+
+Difficulty, a source of greatness in idea, i. 153.
+  its disciplinary uses, iii. 453.
+  political difficulties, ill consequences of attempting to
+    elude them, iii. 454.
+
+Dignity, national, no standard for rating the conditions of peace, v. 257.
+
+Dimension, greatness of, a powerful cause of the sublime, i. 147.
+  necessary to the sublime in building, i. 152.
+  but incompatible with beauty, i. 242.
+
+Dinagepore, Rajah of, account of him, xii. 318.
+
+Diogenes, anecdote of him, iv. 61.
+
+Directory, the, by whom settled, vii. 13.
+  rejected at the Restoration, vii. 13.
+
+Disappointment, what, i. 108.
+
+Discontents, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present, i. 433.
+  produced by a system of favoritism, i. 469.
+
+Discretion, Lord Coke's remark on, iv. 292.
+
+Discretionary powers of the monarch, should be exercised upon
+    public principles, i. 469.
+
+Discrimination, a coarse, the greatest enemy to accuracy of
+    judgment, v. 143.
+
+Dissenters, observations on the Test Act, in reference to them, iv. 264.
+
+Distress, great, never teaches wise lessons to mankind, iv. 10.
+
+Distrust, advantages of, iv. 443.
+
+Disunion in government, mischief of, i. 425.
+
+Divorce, observations on, v. 313.
+
+Domesday Book, origin, and nature of it, vii. 354.
+
+Double cabinet, project of a, in the English court, i. 447.
+  nature and design of it, i. 454.
+  mischievous influence of it, i. 478.
+  how recommended at court, i. 485.
+  its operation upon Parliament, i. 490.
+  singular doctrine propagated by it, i. 525.
+
+Drama, Hints for an Essay on the, vii. 143.
+
+Dramatic writing, difficulty of, vii. 145.
+  origin of, vii. 149.
+
+Druids, some account of their origin, character, and functions, vii. 176.
+  the opinion that their religion was founded on the unity of
+    the Godhead, confuted, vii. 185.
+
+Dryden, his translation of a passage in Virgil, v. 391.
+
+Du Bos, his theory of the greater effect of painting than of
+    poetry on the passions, controverted, i. 134.
+
+Dunkirk, demolition of, i. 412.
+
+Dunning, Mr., brief character of, ii. 398.
+
+Du Pin, M. de la Tour, his account of the state of the army
+    in France, iii. 512.
+
+Durham, County Palatine of, admitted to representation in
+    Parliament, in the reign of Charles II., ii. 152.
+
+Duty, effectual execution of it, how to be secured, ii. 353.
+  determined by situation, ii. 465; iv. 167.
+  people do not like to be told of it, iv. 163.
+  not dependent on the will, iv. 165.
+
+
+Easter, whence the name derived, vii. 237.
+  disputes about the time of celebrating it promote the study
+    of astronomy and chronology, vii. 252.
+
+East India Company, origin of the, ix. 348.
+  system of its service, ix. 350.
+  a fundamental part of its constitution, that its government
+    shall be a written one, ix. 369.
+  two sources of its power, ix. 345.
+  its negotiations with government, i. 362.
+  observations on its charter, ii. 438.
+  extent and population of its possessions, ii. 443, 444.
+  observations on its conduct, ii. 446.
+  its treatment of the nations indirectly subject to its
+    authority, ii. 466.
+  its administration in the countries immediately under its
+    government, ii. 497.
+  concise view of the proceedings of the House of Commons
+    relative to it, ii. 559.
+
+East Indies, origin of the extensive British possessions there, ii. 560.
+
+Ecclesiastical investiture, origin and nature of, vii. 382.
+
+Economy and war not easily reconciled, i. 310.
+  admirable system of, in France, under Necker, ii. 273.
+  difficulty of attempting a plan of public economy, ii. 268.
+  rules for a proper plan of, ii. 286.
+  things prescribed by the principles of radical economy, ii. 310.
+  distinction between economy and parsimony, v. 195.
+  political economy, had its origin in England, v. 192.
+
+Education, effect of it on the colonists in America, ii. 124.
+  description of a good one, iv. 24; xii. 280.
+
+Edward the Confessor, his character and conduct, vii. 278.
+
+Election, popular, of magistrates, importance of it to a state, i. 472.
+  right of, what, i. 505.
+  mischief of frequent elections, i. 517; vii. 75.
+  the expense of them an important consideration, vii. 78.
+
+Elizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., murdered by the French regicides, vi. 41.
+
+Emphyteusis of the Romans, nature of it, vi. 354.
+
+Empires do not fall by their own weight, vi. 27.
+
+England, nature of its monarchy, ii. 288.
+  eulogy on its constitution, v. 210;
+  natural representation of its people, what it is, v. 284.
+  its constant policy with regard to France, iv. 397.
+  always necessarily the soul and head of any confederacy
+    against France, iv. 397; v. 245.
+
+English History, An Abridgment of the, vii. 157.
+
+Enmity, when avowed, is always felt, vi. 57.
+
+Enthusiasm, excited by other causes besides religion, v. 361.
+
+Eostre, the name of a Saxon goddess,--whence the term Easter, vii. 237.
+
+Epicureans, the, why tolerated in their atheism by the supporters
+    of the ancient heathen religions, vii. 31.
+  their physics the most rational of the ancient systems, vii. 251.
+  why discredited, vii. 251.
+
+Equity, criminal, a monster in jurisprudence, i. 500.
+
+Established Church, the, should be powerful, but comprehensive
+    and tolerant, vii. 36.
+
+Established religion of a state, has often torn to pieces the
+    civil establishment, vi. 357.
+
+Establishment, legal, ground of a legislative alteration of it, vii. 10.
+  ground of the constitutional provision for the exclusive
+    application of tithes to its support, vii. 12.
+
+Etiquette, its signification and uses, v. 434.
+
+Europe, general division of, before the universal prevalence
+    of the Roman power, vii. 159.
+  the original inhabitants of Greece and Italy of the same race
+    with the people of Northern Europe, vii. 161.
+  view of the state of Europe at the time of the Norman invasion, vii. 327.
+
+Evidence, circumstantial, remarks on it, xi. 93.
+
+Example, of men of principle, never without use, i. 426.
+  the only argument of effect in civil life, i. 499.
+  what the only security against a corrupt one, ii. 238.
+  the school of mankind, v. 331.
+
+Executions of criminals, observations on them, vi. 245.
+
+Exercise necessary to the finer organs, i. 216.
+
+Expression, difference between a clear and a strong one, i. 260.
+
+Eye, the, in what its beauty consists, i. 198.
+
+Eyre, Sir Robert, (Solicitor-General,) extracts from his
+    speech at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 138.
+
+
+Factions, formed upon and generate opinions, vii. 44.
+
+Fame, a passion for it, the instinct of all great souls, ii. 65.
+  the separation of it from virtue, a harsh divorce, ii. 243.
+
+Fanaticism, epidemical, formidable nature of it, iii. 435.
+  may be caused by a theory concerning government as much as by
+    a dogma in religion, iv. 192.
+
+Farmer, dangerous to try experiments on him, v. 147.
+  amount of his usual profits, what, v. 148.
+  difficulties of his business, v. 152.
+
+Favoritism, a system of, in the executory government of England,
+    at variance with the plan of the legislature, i. 469.
+
+Fear, cause of it, i. 210.
+  early and provident fear the mother of safety, vii. 50.
+
+Feeling, the beautiful in, i. 201.
+
+Female sex, the moral sensibility more acute in them then in men, xii. 164.
+
+Finances, three standards to judge of the condition of a nation
+    with regard to them, i. 330.
+  importance of them to a state, iii. 534.
+  admirable management of the French finances under Necker, ii. 273.
+
+Financier, duty of a judicious one in respect to his calculations, i. 348.
+  his objects, what, iii. 538, 558.
+
+Fire, a chief object of worship to the Druids, why, vii. 182.
+
+Firmness, a virtue only when it accompanies the most perfect
+    wisdom, i. 440.
+
+Fitness, not the cause of beauty, i. 181.
+  the real effects of it, i. 184.
+
+Flattery, why so prevalent, i. 124.
+
+Florence, republic of, its origin, vii. 331.
+
+Force, not impaired, either in effect or opinion, by an
+    unwillingness to exert itself, ii. 108.
+  objections to its employment against the American colonies, ii. 118.
+
+Forest lands, plan of economical reform concerning them, ii. 300.
+
+Foster, Justice, extracts from his Crown Cases and Discourses on
+    the Crown Law, xi. 28, 123.
+
+Fox, (C.J.) panegyrics on him, ii. 533; iii. 219.
+  reluctant dissent from his opinion concerning the assumption
+    of citizenship by the French army, iii. 218.
+  animadversions on his commendation of the French Revolution,
+    iv. 77; v. 7.
+  policy of a treaty with France maintained by him, v. 26.
+  his conduct contrasted with that of Mr. Pitt, v. 60.
+
+France, from its vicinity, always an object of English vigilance
+    with regard to its power or example, iii. 216.
+  Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with respect to, iv. 403.
+  the liberties of Europe dependent on its being a great and
+    preponderating power, iv. 455.
+  character of its government before the Revolution, as shown
+    by a review of the condition of the kingdom, iii. 400.
+  its exterior splendor just before the Revolution, v. 236.
+  state of things there during the Revolution, iv. 70.
+  barbarous treatment of the king and queen at the outbreak of
+    the Revolution, iii. 325.
+  eloquent description of the queen as Dauphiness, and of the
+    revolution in her fortunes, iii. 331.
+  observations on her execution, vi. 40.
+  degraded office to which the king was appointed by the Revolutionists,
+    iii. 496; iv. 20.
+  with his own hand pulled down the pillars of his throne, iv. 362.
+  character of the king's brothers, iv. 429.
+  character of the aristocracy before the Revolution, iii. 412; vi. 39.
+
+Franchise and office, difference between them, iv. 252.
+  effect of separating property from franchise, iv. 256.
+
+Franklin, Dr., conjectures on his visit to Paris, vi. 152.
+
+Freedom, the great contests for it in England chiefly on the
+    question of taxation, ii. 120.
+  but in the ancient commonwealths chiefly on the right of
+    election of magistrates, or on the balance among the
+    several orders of the state, ii. 120.
+  character of civil freedom, ii. 229.
+  our best securities for it obtained from princes who were
+    either war-like or prodigal, vi. 35.
+
+French Affairs, Thoughts on, iv. 313.
+
+French Directory, the character of its members, v. 448.
+  their conduct towards the foreign ministers, vi. 48.
+
+French emigrants, capable of being serviceable in restoring
+    order to France, iv. 427.
+
+French literary cabal, their plan for the destruction of
+    Christianity, iii. 378.
+
+French moneyed interest, at variance with the landed interest, iii. 376.
+
+French Revolution, characterized as one of doctrine and theoretic
+    dogma, iv. 319.
+  its fundamental principle, iv. 322.
+
+Frenchmen naturally more intense in their application than
+    Englishmen, iv. 54.
+  mischievous consequences of this, iv. 55.
+
+Friends of the Liberty of the Press, a club formed under the
+    auspices of Mr. Fox, v. 20.
+  origin and character of it, v. 20.
+
+Friends of the People, origin, composition, and proceedings of
+    the club so called, v. 12.
+  a libellous petition of theirs, v. 47.
+
+Frugality, founded on the principle that all riches have limits, ii. 308.
+
+
+Gaming, a principle inherent in human nature, ii. 293.
+  a general spirit of it encouraged by the Revolutionists
+    in France, iii. 488.
+  they who are under its influence treat their fortunes lightly, iv. 204.
+
+Garrick, David, anecdote of him, vi. 47.
+
+Gauls, their early incursions into Greece and Italy, vii. 161.
+  reduced at last by the Romans under Caesar, vii. 162.
+  policy of Caesar with regard to them, vii. 163.
+
+Geneva, possible benefits to it from state granaries, v. 155.
+
+Genghis Khan, observations on his code, xi. 212.
+
+Genoa, republic of, its origin, vii. 831.
+
+Gentoo law, the primeval law of India, xi. 207.
+
+Gentoos, the original inhabitants of Hindostan, ix. 377.
+  distribution of the people into orders or castes, ix. 380.
+  origin and character of their laws, ix. 482.
+  extracts from Halhed's translation of them, xi. 209.
+
+George II., character of his reign, i. 456.
+
+George III., advantages under which he came to the throne, i. 450.
+
+Germanic Custumary, the source of the polity of every country
+    in Europe, v. 319.
+
+Germans, of Scythian original, vii. 322.
+  brief account of their manners and institutions, vii. 291.
+  in certain of their institutions the outlines of the
+    constitution of England delineated, vii. 293.
+
+Germany, how likely to be affected by the Revolution in France, iv. 328.
+
+Gibraltar, the object of England in retaining it, iv. 383.
+
+Glastonbury Abbey, its extraordinary wealth and splendor, vii. 245.
+
+Go-betweens, the world governed by, iv. 189.
+  their mode of influence, iv. 190.
+
+Good fame of every man, ought to be protected by the laws, vii. 112.
+
+Gothic Custumary, the source of the polity of every country
+    in Europe, v. 319.
+
+Government, the forms of a free one not altogether incompatible
+    with the ends of an arbitrary one, i. 444.
+  project of government devised in the court of Frederick,
+    Prince of Wales, i. 447.
+  considered, i. 450.
+  nature and design of it, i. 460.
+  name of it, i. 466.
+  important ends of a mixed government, i. 469.
+  folly of hazarding plans of government except from a seat
+    of authority, ii. 104.
+  government a practical thing, ii. 227; iii. 310.
+  character of a free one, ii. 227.
+  an eminent criterion of a wise one, what, ii. 278.
+  reform in it should be early and temperate, ii. 280.
+  without means of some change, is without the means of its
+    conservation, iii. 259.
+  difficulty of forming a free one, iii. 560.
+  the particular form of it to be determined by the circumstances
+    and habits of a country, iv. 109.
+  a theory concerning it may be as much a cause of fanaticism as
+    a dogma in religion, iv. 192.
+  the establishment of one a difficult undertaking for foreign
+    powers to act in as principals, iv. 410.
+  not subject to laws analogous to those or physical life, v. 124, 234.
+  restraint the great purpose of, v. 133, 189.
+  policy of, in times of scarcity, v. 156.
+  important problem concerning, v. 166.
+  perishes only through its own weakness, v. 169.
+  impossible where property does not rule, v. 377.
+  the great objects of, v. 466; vii. 72.
+  its duty and right to attend much to opinions, vii. 44.
+  stands on opinion, vii. 91.
+
+Grace, acts of, impolicy of them, ii. 386.
+
+Gracefulness, an idea belonging to posture and motion, i. 200.
+
+Granaries, public, danger in erecting them, v. 153.
+  fit only for a state too small for agriculture, v. 155.
+
+Grand Seignior, the, not an arbitrary monarch, ix. 464.
+
+Great personages, wisely provided that we should interest
+    ourselves in their fate, xi. 308.
+  everywhere made the objects of tragedy, xi. 308.
+
+Greece, its original inhabitants of the same race as the
+    people of Northern Europe, vii. 161.
+  situation of it from a remote period, vii. 161.
+
+Greek Church, character of its secular clergy, iv. 230.
+
+Green Cloth, Court of, its origin and composition, ii. 304.
+
+Grenville, Mr., character of him, ii. 37.
+
+Grenville, Lord, eulogy of him, v. 174.
+
+Grief, cause of, i. 108.
+
+Guienne, William, Duke of, engages in the Crusade, vii. 374.
+
+Guilt, gigantic, overpowers our ideas of justice, iv. 466.
+  expedients for concealing it, frequently the cause of its
+    detection, x. 49.
+  is never wise, x. 49; xi. 261.
+
+
+Habeas Corpus, remarks upon the suspension of it in respect
+    to Americans, ii. 190.
+
+Habit and use, not causes of pleasure, i. 180.
+
+Hale, Sir Matthew, Cromwell's declaration to him when he
+    appointed him judge, iv. 13.
+  defect in his History of the Common Law, vii. 476.
+  causes of it, vii. 476.
+
+Halhed's translation of the Gentoo code, remarks on it, xi. 207.
+
+Hallmote, or Court Baron, what, vii. 301.
+
+Hannay, Colonel, his character and conduct, xi. 418.
+
+Happiness, civil, what, x. 135.
+
+Hardwicke, Lord, his declaration as to the general rule of
+    evidence, xi. 77.
+
+Harrington, his opinion as to a commonwealth not governed
+    by its property, v. 377.
+
+Hastings, Mr., articles of charge against him presented to
+    the House of Commons, 1786, viii. 305-ix. 318.
+  appendix to the eighth and sixteenth charges, ix. 319.
+  speeches of Mr. Burke in his impeachment, ix. 327-x. 451;
+    xi. 155-xii. 398.
+  Report from the Committee appointed to inspect the Lords'
+    Journals, in relation to their proceedings on his trial, xi. 1.
+  his conduct in the treaty with the Mahrattas, ii. 454.
+  brief account of his treatment of the Nabob of Oude, ii. 467.
+  of the Begums of Oude, ii. 476.
+  of the Ranny of Benares, ii. 485.
+  his venal agreement for the extirpation of the Rohillas, viii. 308.
+  his fraudulent sale of the territories of the Mogul, viii. 322.
+  his designs against the Rajah of Benares, viii. 339.
+  orders the arrest of the Rajah, viii. 361.
+  instigates the plunder of his family by the soldiery, viii. 368.
+  usurps the government of Benares, viii. 380.
+  his oppressive impositions and exactions, viii. 381.
+  enforces the confiscation of the landed estates of the
+    Begums of Oude, viii. 403.
+  orders the seizure of their treasures, viii. 409.
+  severities practised upon their ministers in the execution of
+    those orders, viii. 414.
+  endeavors to stifle an inquiry into his proceedings, viii. 448.
+  corruptly abandons the Nabob of Furruckabad and his country
+    to the oppressions of the Nabob of Oude, viii. 472.
+  causes the destruction of the Rajah of Sahlone, viii. 486.
+  sets at defiance the orders of the Company with respect to
+    contracts, ix. 4.
+  and with respect to salaries, ix. 11.
+  his illegal and extravagant allowances to Sir Eyre Coote, ix. 12.
+  and to Brigadier-General Stibbert, ix. 13.
+  and to Sir John Day, ix. 15.
+  and for the civil establishment of Fort William, ix. 17.
+  his appointment of the Secretary of the Council as agent for
+    the supply of rice, with enormous commissions, ix. 19.
+  his corrupt receipt of presents in numerous instances, ix. 23.
+  tender and subsequent disavowal of his resignation, and
+    refusal to vacate office, ix. 42.
+  his illegal contract with the Surgeon-General, ix. 60.
+  his contracts for Poolbundy repairs, ix. 60.
+  his opium contracts, ix. 63.
+  his appointment of R.J. Sulivan to office, ix. 70.
+  his conduct with regard to the Ranna of Gohud, ix. 72.
+  his frequent, violent, and unauthorized changes in the
+    revenue and judicial systems of Bengal, ix. 79, 87.
+  permits his own banian to hold farms to a large amount in
+    different districts, in violation of his own regulations, ix. 83.
+  refuses relief to the distresses of the Nabob of Oude, ix. 98.
+  seeks to enforce unjust demands against the Nabob, ix. 98.
+  illegally assumes the delegation of the whole functions of the
+    Council, for the purpose of making a treaty with the Nabob, ix. 104.
+  in contravention of treaty stipulations, burdens the Nabob
+    with the continued maintenance of British troops, ix. 109, 112.
+  makes unjustifiable demands on, and receives unlawful presents
+    from the Nabob, ix. 110, 114.
+  on his own simple allegation of indefinite offences, urges the
+    Nabob to put to death Almas Ali Khan, ix. 154.
+  establishes a system of disreputable and ruinous interference
+    in the government of the Nabob, ix. 162.
+  attempts to abandon the British army to the sole discretion of
+    the Nabob, ix. 168.
+  arrests and continues in long imprisonment Mahomed Reza Khan,
+    without any proofs of guilt, ix. 185.
+  appoints Munny Begum to be guardian to the Nabob of Bengal,
+    and administratrix of the government, ix. 187.
+  seeks the aggrandizement of the Mahrattas, ix. 220, 228.
+  the Mogul delivered up to them through his instrumentality, ix. 221.
+  he libels and asperses the Court of Directors, ix. 228.
+  forces the Mahrattas into a war, by repeatedly invading
+    their country, ix. 253.
+  concludes a dishonorable treaty of peace and alliance with them, ix. 254.
+  withholds and conceals his official correspondence and
+    proceedings from the Directors and Council, ix. 267.
+  his conduct with regard to Fyzoola Khan, ix. 268.
+  his arbitrary principles of government, ix. 446; xi. 194.
+  his corrupt system of government, x. 5.
+  general farming of the lands at auction, in derogation of
+    the rights of proprietors, x. 15.
+  sale of offices, x. 21.
+  conduct in reference to the accusations of Nundcomar, x. 24, 205.
+  in the case of Munny Begum and the Nabob of Bengal,
+    x. 26, 193, 278; xii. 218, 245.
+  the receipt of bribes justified by an intention to apply
+    them to the Company's service, x. 43, 324.
+  account given of some of these transactions to the Directors, x. 44, 338.
+  delegation of the management of the revenues to a nominal
+    council, with Gunga Govind Sing as agent, x. 53.
+  appointment of Debi Sing to the charge of the province
+    of Dinagepore, x. 65.
+  the enormities of this man, mock inquiries into them, and
+    Mr. Hastings's responsibility in the premises, x. 77, 92, 186.
+  Mr. Hastings's measures justified by himself, as producing
+    an increase of revenue, x. 136.
+  remarks on the testimonials of the natives in his favor,
+    x. 154; xii. 356.
+  proofs of personal corruption, x. 161-295.
+  charged with peculation by General Clavering, x. 244.
+  opinions of counsel concerning his proposed prosecution
+    by the Directors, x. 257.
+  his connivance in the general corruption of the Service,
+    x. 296; xii. 294.
+  recriminatory charges against the House of Commons, xi. 166.
+  powers claimed by him, and the manner and results of their
+    exercise, xi. 195, 236, 238.
+  in the case of Cheyt Sing and the province of Benares, xi. 236.
+  of the Nabob of Oude, his kindred and country, xi. 372; xii. 3.
+  of the province of Bengal, xii. 208.
+  his extravagant and corrupt contracts, xii. 297.
+  his conduct in reference to various presents, xii. 324, 338, 350.
+  observations on the Mahometan college founded by him, xii. 352.
+  Lord Cornwallis's testimony to the disastrous effects of
+    his revenue system, xii. 359.
+  examination of the merits set up by him, xii. 370.
+
+Hawles, Sir John, extracts from his speech at the trial of
+    Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 126, 135.
+
+Height, less grand than depth, i. 147.
+
+Helvetii, remarkable emigration of them related by Caesar, vii. 172.
+
+Henry I. of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 375.
+
+Henry II. of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 394.
+
+Henry IV. of England, severs the Duchy and County Palatine of
+    Lancaster from the crown, ii. 296.
+
+Henry IV. of France, brief character of him, iii. 411.
+
+Hii, or Columbkill, brief account of it, vii. 249.
+
+Hindoo institutions, characteristics of, ix. 382.
+
+Hindoo polity, destroyed by Mr. Hastings, ix. 394.
+
+Hindostan, eras in its history, ix. 386.
+
+History, moral lessons to be drawn from it, iii. 418, 421.
+  caution with regard to the study of it, iv. 468.
+
+Hobbes, his view of war as the state of Nature, i. 15.
+
+Holland, Sir John, extracts from his speech at the trial of
+    Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 146.
+
+Holy Land, view of its condition at the commencement of the
+    third Crusade, vii. 426.
+
+Homer, his similitudes seldom exact, i. 88.
+  a simile from the Iliad, i. 105.
+  his representation of Discord, obscure and magnificent, i. 138.
+  no instance in the Iliad of the fall of any man remarkable
+    for stature and strength that touches us with pity, i. 243.
+  has given to the Trojans more of the amiable and social virtues
+    than to the Greeks, i. 243.
+  would excite pity for the Trojans, admiration for the Greeks, i. 243.
+  his masterly representation of the grief of Priam over the
+    body of Hector, iv. 95.
+  observation on his representation of the ghosts of heroes at
+    the sacrifices of Ulysses, vii. 181.
+  his works introduced into England by Theodorus, Archbishop of
+    Canterbury, vii. 249.
+
+Honest men, no safety for them but by believing all possible
+    evil of evil men, iv. 7.
+
+Horace, the truth of an observation in his Art of Poetry,
+    discussed, i. 134.
+  a passage from him of similar import to one from David, i. 143.
+
+Household, the royal, has strong traces of feudality, ii. 303.
+
+Howard, the philanthropist, his labors, ii. 387.
+
+Hudibras, humorous lines from, applicable to the modern Whigs, iv. 150.
+
+Hume, Mr., his account of the secret of Rousseau's principles
+    of composition, iii. 459.
+  his remark on the doctrines of John Ball, iv. 355.
+
+Humility, the basis of the Christian system, iv. 26.
+  humanity cannot be degraded by it, v. 253.
+
+Husbandry, classification of laborers in, v. 144.
+
+Hyder Ali Khan, scheme of the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot
+    to extirpate him, iii. 61.
+  dreadful devastation of the Carnatic by him, iii. 83.
+
+Hypaethra of the Greeks, what, vii. 187.
+
+
+Imagination, what, i. 86.
+  no bounds to men's passions when they are under its influence, iv. 192.
+
+Imitation, one of the passions belonging to society, i. 122.
+  its source and use, i. 122.
+
+Impeachment, the great guardian of the purity of the constitution, i. 495.
+
+Impey, Sir Elijah, (Chief Justice of Bengal,) accused of the
+    official murder of Nundcomar, x. 218.
+  resolution of the House of Commons concerning this accusation, x. 311.
+  serves as bearer of Mr. Hastings's order to seize the
+    treasures of the Begums of Oude, xii. 32.
+  acts as commissioner to seek affidavits against the Begums, xii. 82.
+
+Indecision, the natural accomplice of violence, iv. 190.
+
+Indemnification, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.
+
+Indemnity and oblivion, acts of, their probable effects as
+    means of reconciling France to a monarchy, iv. 460.
+
+Independence of mind, always more or less influenced by
+    independence of fortune, vii. 78.
+
+India, the people of, classification of them, ix. 376; xi. 207.
+
+Indians, British alliances with them in the American war denounced,
+    vi. 171.
+
+Indifference, pleasure, and pain, viewed in relation to each
+    other, as states of the mind, i. 103.
+
+Indolence, the prevailing characteristic of the class of
+    elegant, weak-minded people, vii. 147.
+
+Industry, effect of the Irish Popery laws in discouraging it,
+    vi. 351.
+
+Infinite, the artificial, consists in succession and uniformity
+    of parts, i. 149, 220.
+
+Infinity, a source of the sublime, i. 148.
+  in agreeable images, a cause of pleasure, i. 153.
+
+Influence of the crown, operation of it, i. 444.
+
+Inheritance, value of this principle in the British constitution, iii. 274.
+
+Injury is quick and rapid, justice slow, x. 151; xi. 181.
+
+Innocence, contrasted with guilt, ix. 371.
+
+Insolvency, who ought to suffer in a case of, iii. 381.
+
+Institutions, ancient juridical ones in England, intended to
+    retard the headlong course of violence and oppression, ii. 193.
+  in political institutions, soundness of the materials of
+    more importance than the fashion of the work, v. 120.
+  how, when revolutionized, to be reestablished, v. 126.
+  benefits of institution, properly conditional, vii. 15.
+
+Interest of a debt, not the principal, distresses a nation, i. 329.
+
+Intolerance, mischief of it, vii. 34.
+
+Ireland, danger of a proposed tax upon, i. 352.
+  early transmission thither of English liberties and institutions,
+    ii. 146.
+  Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol relative to the Trade of Ireland,
+    ii. 247.
+  Mr. Burke's defence of his Parliamentary conduct with regard to it,
+    ii. 377.
+  the plan for the government of Ireland until 1782, what, iv. 233.
+  the true revolution there, that of 1782, iv. 276.
+  state of religion there before the grant of Pope Adrian IV., vi. 342.
+  object of the grant, vi. 342.
+  mutual importance of Ireland and Great Britain to one another, vi. 420.
+  reduction of Ireland by Henry II., vii. 410.
+  nature and previous condition of the country, vii. 410.
+  motives which led Adrian to commission Henry to reduce it, vii. 410, 413.
+  the English laws said to have been established there at its
+    subjugation by John, vii. 449.
+
+Irish language, names of the letters of it taken from the names
+    of several species of trees, vii. 412.
+
+Isocrates, observation of his in one of his orations against
+    the Sophists, i. 5.
+
+Italy, its original inhabitants of the same race as the people
+    of Northern Europe, vii. 161.
+  its situation from a remote period, vii. 161.
+
+
+Jacobinism by establishment, what, v. 309.
+
+Jacobins, their character, iv. 437, v. 285, vi. 367.
+  their great object, v. 39.
+
+Jacquerie, brief notice of the, iv. 177.
+
+Jaffier Ali Khan, made Nabob of Bengal by the English, ix. 401.
+
+Jaghires, Indian, nature of them, xii. 9.
+
+Jekyl, Sir Joseph, his character, iv. 130.
+  extracts from his speech at the trial of Dr. Sacheverell,
+    iv. 130, 131, 132, 136, 137, 142, 143.
+
+Jews, a source of great revenue to William the Conqueror, vii. 351.
+
+Job, observations on its sublime representation of a vision
+    in the night, i. 137.
+  its sublime descriptions of the war-horse, the wild ass,
+    and the unicorn and leviathan, i. 140.
+
+John, King of England, brief account of his reign, vii. 437.
+
+Judge, duty of one, xi. 104.
+
+Judges, ought to be the very last to feel the necessities
+    of the state, ii. 351.
+
+Judgment and wit, difference between them, i. 87.
+  the senses should be put under the tuition of the judgment, iii. 15.
+  a coarse discrimination the greatest enemy to accuracy of
+    judgment, v. 143.
+
+Juridical and legislative acts, difference between them, vii. 63.
+
+Juries, an institution of gradual formation, vii. 115.
+  not attributable to Alfred, vii. 264.
+  never prevalent amongst the Saxons, vii. 264.
+
+Jurisprudence, nature and importance of the science, iii. 357.
+  abrogation of it in France at the Revolution, v. 307.
+  state of the study of it in England, vii. 476.
+  whole frame of it altered since the Conquest, vii. 478.
+
+Justice is slow, injury quick and rapid, x. 151; xi. 181.
+  general observations on it, xii. 393, 395.
+
+
+Keppel, Lord, character of him, v. 222.
+
+Kilkenny, Statutes of, prove the ancient existence in Ireland
+    of the spirit of the Popery laws, iv. 273.
+
+King, the things in which he has an individual interest, i. 485.
+  nature of his office, iii. 497.
+  just powers of the king of France, iv. 49.
+  power of the king of England, iv. 50.
+  Address to the, in relation to the Measures of Government in
+    the American Contest, vi. 161.
+
+Kings, naturally lovers of low company, ii. 337.
+  in what sense the servants of the people, iii. 269.
+
+King's Men, or King's Friends, character of the court corporation
+    so called, i. 466.
+
+Knight-errantry, origin of it, vii. 390.
+
+
+Labor, necessary, why, i. 215.
+  human labor called by the ancients _instrumentum vocale_, v. 140.
+  that on which the farmer is most to rely for the repayment
+    of his capital, v. 140.
+
+Laborer and employer, always an implied contract between them, v. 137.
+  the first and fundamental interest of the laborer, what, v. 140.
+
+Laboring poor, impropriety of the expression, v. 135, 466.
+
+Lacedemonians, at the head of the aristocratic interests of Greece,
+    iv. 321.
+
+La Fontaine, has not one original story, vii. 145.
+
+Lancaster, Duchy and County Palatine of, severed from the crown
+    by Henry IV., ii. 296.
+
+Landed estate of the crown, remarks on it, ii. 299.
+
+Landed Interest, policy of the French Republic with regard to it, iv. 323.
+
+Landed property, the firm basis of every stable government, v. 491.
+
+Lanfranc, character of him, vii. 363.
+
+Langton, Stephen, his appointment to the see of Canterbury
+    through the influence of the Pope, vii. 447, 451.
+  oath administered by him to King John on his absolution, vii. 455.
+
+Law's Mississippi scheme, character of it, iii. 554.
+
+Law of neighborhood, what, v. 321.
+
+Law, remarks on the study of it, ii. 125.
+
+Laws, reach but a very little way, i. 470.
+  their severity tempered by trial by jury, i. 499.
+  superseded by occasions of public necessity, ii. 329.
+  bad ones the worst sort of tyranny, ii. 395.
+  laws and manners, a knowledge of what belongs to each the duty
+    of a statesman, v. 167.
+  civil laws not all merely positive, v. 321.
+  two things requisite to the solid establishment of them, vi. 321.
+  equity and utility, the two foundations of them, vi. 323.
+  ought to be in unison with manners, vii. 27.
+  of England, Essay towards an History of the, vii. 475.
+  of England, written in the native language until the Norman
+    Conquest, vii. 481.
+  of other Northern nations, written in Latin, vii. 481.
+  cause of this difference, vii. 481.
+  of Canute the Great, remarks on them, vii. 483.
+  of Edward the Confessor, so called, vii. 484.
+  ancient Saxon, review of their sanctions, vii. 484.
+  sources of them, vii. 487.
+  Gentoo, sources of them, ix. 482.
+  Mahometan, sources of them, ix. 480; xi. 216.
+
+Lawful enjoyment, the surest method to prevent unlawful
+    gratification, iv. 256.
+
+Lawsuit, observations on that comedy, vii. 152.
+
+Learning, an attention to it necessary to Christianity, vii. 246.
+  contributed, in the early ages, to the temporal power of the
+    clergy, vii. 399.
+
+Lechmere, Mr., extracts from his speeches at the trial of
+    Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 122, 124, 142.
+
+Legislation, important problem in, v. 166.
+
+Legislative and juridical acts, the difference between them, vii. 63.
+
+Legislative right, not to be exercised without regard to the
+    general opinion of those who are to be governed, ii. 224.
+
+Legislators, bound only by the great principles of reason and
+    equity, and the general sense of mankind, ii. 196.
+  character of a true legislator, ii. 456.
+  duties of legislators, v. 166; vi. 319.
+  the mode of proceeding of the ancient legislators, iii. 476.
+
+Legislature, the true end of it, what, ii. 225; iii. 457.
+  its power of regulating the succession to the crown, iv. 134.
+
+Leland, Dr., his book (View of Deistical Writers) the best on
+    the subject, vii. 34.
+
+Length, too great, in buildings, prejudicial to grandeur of effect, i. 152.
+
+Letter of Mr. Burke to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on American
+    Affairs, ii. 187.
+  to Gentlemen of Bristol, on the Trade of Ireland, ii. 249, 258.
+  to a Member of the National Assembly, on French Affairs, iv. 1.
+  to a Peer of Ireland, on the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics, iv. 217.
+  to Sir Hercules Langrishe, on the Roman Catholics of Ireland,
+    iv. 241; vi. 375.
+  to William Elliot, Esq., on a Speech in the House of Lords,
+    in the Debate concerning Lord Fitzwilliam, v. 107.
+  to a Noble Lord, on the Attacks upon himself and his Pension, v. 171.
+  on a Regicide Peace, v. 233, 342, 384; vi. 1.
+  to the Empress of Russia, vi. 113.
+  to Sir Charles Bingham, on the Irish Absentee Tax, vi. 121.
+  to Hon. Charles James Fox, on the American War, vi. 135.
+  to the Marquis of Rockingham, on the Plans of the Opposition
+    in reference to the American War, vi. 151.
+  to Rt. Hon. Edmund S. Pery, on the Relief of the Roman
+    Catholics of Ireland, vi. 197.
+  to Thomas Burgh, Esq., in Vindication of his Parliamentary
+    Conduct relative to Ireland, vi. 209.
+  to John Merlott, Esq., on the same subject, vi. 235.
+  to the Lord Chancellor and others, with Thoughts on the
+    Executions of the Rioters in 1780, vi. 239.
+  to Rt. Hon. Henry Dundas, with the Sketch of a Negro Code, vi. 255.
+  to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting, on
+    Parliamentary Reform, vi. 291.
+  to William Smith, Esq., on Catholic Emancipation, vi. 361.
+  to Richard Burke, Esq., on Protestant Ascendency in Ireland, vi. 385.
+  on the Affairs of Ireland in 1797, vi. 413.
+  on Mr. Dowdeswell's Bill for explaining the Powers of Juries
+    in Prosecutions for Libels, vii. 123.
+
+Libel, the elements of a, vii. 113.
+
+Libelling, not the crime of an illiterate people, vii. 111.
+
+Liberty and commerce, the two main sources of power to Great Britain,
+    ii. 87.
+  mistakes about liberty, ii. 228.
+  cannot long exist among a people generally corrupt, ii. 242.
+  necessity of regulating it, iii. 240, 559,
+  how far men are qualified for it, iv. 51.
+  the distinguishing part of the British constitution, iv. 97.
+  its preservation the peculiar duty of the House of Commons, iv. 97.
+  order and virtue necessary to its existence, iv. 97.
+  a constitution uniting public and private liberty with the elements of
+    a beneficent and stable government, an elaborate contrivance, iv. 211.
+  partial freedom and true liberty contrasted, vi. 389.
+  review of the causes of the revolution in favor of liberty in
+    the reign of King John, vii. 472.
+
+Light, how a cause of the sublime, i. 156.
+  when excessive, resembles darkness in its effects, i. 157.
+  light and riant colors opposed to the sublime, i. 159.
+
+Limerick, treaty of, observations on two of its articles, vi. 345.
+
+Lindisfarne, brief account of, vii. 250.
+
+Liturgy of the Established Church, alteration of it ineffectual
+    for the quieting of discontent, vii. 13.
+
+Locke, Mr., his opinion concerning pleasure and pain, i. 105.
+  his opinion concerning darkness, i. 225.
+
+Longinus, an observation of his on the effect of sublime
+    passages in poets and orators, i. 124.
+
+Lords, House of, affected alarm at a supposed intrenchment by it on
+    the balance of the constitution, in the reign of George II., i. 457.
+  the feeblest part of the constitution, v. 49.
+
+Loudness, a source of the sublime, i. 159.
+
+Louis XIII., his hatred of Richelieu, iii. 499.
+
+Louis XIV., his dislike to Mazarin and Louvois, iii. 499.
+  his conduct at the peace of Ryswick, vi. 58.
+  reason given by him for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, vi. 328.
+
+Louis XVI., barbarous treatment experienced by him at the Revolution,
+    iii. 325; iv. 19.
+  unjustly called an arbitrary monarch, iii. 339.
+  degraded office to which he was appointed by the Revolutionists,
+    iii. 496; iv. 20.
+  not the first cause of the evil by which he suffered, v. 366.
+  his character, v. 378.
+  character of his brothers, iv. 429.
+
+Love, its origin, nature, and objects, i. 125.
+  the physical cause of it, i. 232.
+  nature of that taught by Rousseau, iv. 30.
+  observations on the love of parents to their children, xi. 422.
+  and on the love of country, xi. 422; iii. 292, 494.
+
+Lucretius, passages from him, illustrative of the sublime, i. 144, 257.
+
+Luxury, some good consequences of it, i. 424.
+  a tax on it, the only contribution that can be termed voluntary, v. 461.
+
+
+Machiavel, an observation of his on war and peace, i. 15.
+  his maxim concerning wickedness by halves, vi. 43.
+
+Madmen, a frequent appearance in them accounted for, i. 149.
+
+Magna Charta, observations on it, iii. 272; iv. 266.
+  origin and nature of it, vii. 460.
+
+Magnanimity, in politics, often the truest wisdom, ii. 181.
+
+Magnificence, a source of the sublime, i. 154.
+
+Magnitude, in building, necessary to the sublime, i. 152.
+
+Mahomed Reza Khan, arrested by Mr. Hastings, x. 184.
+
+Mahometanism, its conquests in Hindostan, ix. 387.
+
+Mahometan government, character of it, ix. 463.
+  laws, sources of them, ix. 480; xi. 216.
+
+Mahrattas, their territories invaded by the East India Company, ii. 453.
+  treaties with them, ii. 453, 454.
+
+Majority, in a commonwealth, question as to the proper power of,
+    iii. 299; iv. 170.
+  not true that in all contests the decision will be in their favor,
+    vii. 53.
+
+Malesherbes, murdered by the French Revolutionists, vi. 40.
+
+Malvoisins, what, vii. 389.
+
+Man, a creature of habit and opinions, ii. 234; xii. 164.
+
+Manifestoes, implying superiority over an enemy, when commonly made,
+    iv. 405.
+  matters usually contained in them, iv. 405.
+
+Manilla ransom, remarks on it, i. 407.
+
+Manners, while they remain entire, correct the vices of law, ii. 202.
+  corrupted by civil wars, ii. 203.
+  maintained in Europe for ages by the spirit of nobility and of
+    religion, iii. 335.
+  in England, derived from France, iii. 336.
+  have done alone in England what institutions and manners
+    together have done in France, iv. 327.
+  statesmen ought to know what appertains respectively to manners
+    and laws, v. 167.
+  of more importance than laws, v. 310.
+  laws ought to be in unison with them, vii. 27.
+
+Mansfield, Lord, his declarations concerning rules of evidence, xi. 84.
+
+Mara, the name of a Saxon goddess,--whence the term Night-Mare, vii. 237.
+
+Marriage, beneficial results of the Christian doctrine concerning it,
+    v. 312.
+  endeavors of the French Constituent Assembly to desecrate it, v. 312.
+  ends for which it was instituted, vii. 131.
+  restraints upon it in the reign of King John, vii. 464.
+
+Marriage Act, principles upon which it is grounded, vii. 131.
+
+Mathematical and metaphysical reasoning, compared with moral, vii. 73.
+
+Mazarin, Cardinal, not loved by Louis XIV., iii. 499.
+  bon-mot of a flatterer of his, on the match between Louis XIV.
+    and a daughter of Spain, vi. 20.
+
+Mediterranean Sea, importance to England of keeping a strong
+    naval force there, v. 421.
+
+Memorial to be delivered to Monsieur de M.M., Hints for a, iv. 307.
+
+Merchants, English, their evidence, petitions, and consultations
+    respecting America, i. 399, 405, 406.
+  principles and qualities of, ii. 506.
+
+Mercy, not opposed to justice, iv. 465; vi. 252.
+  consists not in the weakness of the means, but in the benignity
+    of the ends, vi. 168.
+
+Metaphysician, nothing harder than the heart of a thorough-bred one,
+    v. 216.
+
+Migration, in early times, caused by pasturage and hunting, vii. 171.
+  and by wars, vii. 171.
+
+Military life, its attractions to those who have had experience of it,
+    v. 464.
+
+Military and naval officers, the fortitude required of them, v. 468.
+
+Militia, probable origin of it, vii. 422.
+
+Milton, his admirable description of Death, i. 132.
+  his celebrated portrait of Satan, i. 135.
+  his description of the appearance of the Deity, i. 156.
+  example from him of the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.
+  of the power of words, i. 259.
+
+Ministers, Prussian, infected with the principles of the
+    French Revolution, iv. 359.
+  British, to be controlled by the House of Commons, v. 57.
+  observations on their duty in giving information to the public, vi. 14.
+
+Minority, Observations on the Conduct of the, in Parliament,
+    in the Session of 1792, v. 1.
+  power of a restless one, v. 285.
+
+Mistletoe, veneration of the Druids for it, vii. 183.
+
+Modes of life, injustice of sudden legislative violence to suc
+     as the laws had previously encouraged, iii. 439.
+
+Modesty, heightens all other virtues, i. 188; v. 128.
+  but sometimes their worst enemy, v. 129.
+
+Mogul, the Great, his grants to the East India Company, ii. 560; ix. 345.
+  sold by the Company, ii. 448.
+  the Company's treaties with him broken by them, ii. 452.
+  conspiracy to murder his son, ix. 412.
+
+Mohun, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 32.
+
+Mona, the principal residence of the Druids in the beginning of
+    Nero's reign, vii. 195.
+  reduced by Suetonius Paulinus, vii. 196.
+
+Monarchy, preferred by Bolingbroke to other governments, iii. 398.
+  one of its advantages, to have no local seat, iv. 431.
+
+Monastic institutions, their important uses, iii. 440; vii. 244, 245.
+
+Money, the value of it how to be judged, v. 454.
+
+Moneyed companies, dangerous to tax great ones, i. 368.
+
+Moneyed interest, when dangerous to a government, iii. 437.
+
+Moneyed men, ought to be allowed to set a value on their money, v. 455.
+
+Monk, General, character of the army commanded by him, iv. 36.
+
+Monopoly of authority, an evil; of capital, a benefit, v. 151.
+
+Montesquieu, his remark on the legislators of antiquity, iii. 477.
+  character of him, iv. 211.
+  his false view of the people of India, xi. 207.
+
+Moral duties, not necessary that the reasons of them should be made
+    clear to all, i. 7.
+
+Moral order of things, great disasters in it affect the mind like
+    miracles in the physical, iii. 337.
+
+Moral questions never abstract ones, vii. 55.
+
+Moral reasoning, compared with mathematical and metaphysical, vii. 73.
+
+Mortality, a general one always a time of remarkable wickedness, vii. 84.
+
+Multitudes, the shouting of, a source of the sublime, i. 159.
+  a multitude told by the head, not the people, iv. 183.
+
+Munny Begum, (of Bengal,) her history, x. 195; xii. 226.
+  appointed by Mr. Hastings regent of Bengal, and guardian of the
+    Nabob, x. 196; xii. 218.
+  (of Oude,) her noble birth, rank, and connections, xii. 46.
+
+Music, remark concerning the beautiful in it, i. 204.
+
+Mystery, in any matter of policy, affords presumption of fraud, xii. 79.
+
+
+Nabob of Arcot, the Subah of the Deccan sold to him by the
+    East India Company, ii. 450.
+  nature of his debts, iii. 25, 28, 29, 35, 39, 47.
+
+Nabob of Oude, conduct of the East India Company towards him, ii. 466.
+
+Nantes, Edict of, reason assigned by Louis XIV. for the revocation
+    of it, vi. 328.
+  observations thereon, vi. 328.
+
+Naples, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France, iv. 337.
+
+Nation, Present State of the, Observations on a late Publication
+    so intituled, i. 269.
+  character of this publication, i. 274.
+  state of the nation in 1770, i. 437.
+  speculation of the ministry on the cause of it, i. 438.
+  animadversions on their views, i. 439.
+
+National Assembly of France, corresponds with the Revolution
+    Society of London, iii. 237.
+  its composition and character, iii. 283, 450.
+  studies recommended by it to the youth of France, iv. 25.
+  its worship of Rousseau, iv. 25.
+
+Natural powers in man, the senses, the imagination, and the judgment,
+    i. 82.
+
+Nature, state of, inconveniences of it, i. 10.
+  the social, impels a man to propagate his principles, v. 361.
+
+Navigation, Act of, its policy, i. 378; ii. 30, 38.
+
+Navy, the great danger of economical experiments upon it, i. 345.
+
+Necessity, the plea of, remarks on it, v. 450.
+
+Negro Code, Sketch of a, vi. 262.
+
+Negro slaves, denunciation of attempts to excite insurrections among them
+    in the colonies by proclamations of the English governors, vi. 171.
+
+Neighborhood, the law of, what, v. 321.
+
+Newfoundland, view of the trade with it, i. 320.
+
+Newspapers, powerful influence of them in the diffusion of French
+    principles, iv. 327.
+
+Night, a cause of the sublime, i. 132, 158.
+
+Norman conquest, extraordinary facility of it, vii. 287.
+  attempt to account for it, vii. 288.
+  the great era of the English laws, vii. 487.
+
+Normandy, reunion of it to the crown of France, vii. 445.
+
+North, Lord, observations on his character, v. 182; vi. 216, 223.
+
+Novelty, the first and simplest source of pleasure to the mind, i. 101.
+  the danger of indulging a desire for it in practical cases, iv. 76.
+
+Nundcomar, accuses Mr. Hastings of corruption, x. 24.
+
+Nuzzer, or Nuzzerana, what, x. 171.
+
+
+Oak, the, why venerated by the Druids, vii. 183.
+
+Oath, the Coronation, observations upon it in reference to the
+    Roman Catholics, iv. 260.
+
+Obscurity, generally necessary to the terrible, i. 132.
+  why more affecting than clearness, i. 135.
+
+Obstinacy, though a great and very mischievous vice, closely
+    allied to the masculine virtues, ii. 66.
+
+Office, men too much conversant in it rarely have enlarged minds, ii. 38.
+  in feudal times, the lowest offices often held by considerable persons,
+    ii. 303.
+  the reason of this, ii. 304.
+
+Officers, military and naval, nature of the fortitude required
+    of them, v. 468.
+
+Opinion, popular, the support of government, ii. 224; vi. 165; vii. 91.
+  an equivocal test of merit, v. 183.
+  the generality of it not always to be judged of by the noise of the
+    acclamation, v. 286.
+
+Opinions, men impelled to propagate their own by their social nature,
+    v. 361.
+  their influence on the affections and passions, v. 403; vii. 44.
+  the most decided often stated in the form of questions, vi. 28.
+  the interest and duty of government to attend much to them, vii. 44.
+
+Oppression, the poorest and most illiterate are judges of it, iv. 281.
+
+Orange, Prince of, (afterwards William III.,) extracts from his
+    Declaration, iv. 147.
+
+Ordeal, purgation by, vii. 314.
+
+Oude, extent and government of, under Sujah ul Dowlah, xi. 373.
+
+
+Pain, pleasure, and indifference, their mutual relation as states
+    of the mind, i. 103.
+  nature and cause of pain, i. 210.
+  how a cause of delight, i. 215.
+
+Paine, Thomas, remarks on his character, v. iii; vi. 60.
+
+Painting and poetry, their power, when due to imitation, and when
+    to sympathy, i. 123.
+
+Pandulph, the Pope's legate, his politic dealing with King John, vii. 451.
+  parallel between his conduct to King John and that of the
+    Roman consuls to the Carthaginians in the last Punic war, vii. 453.
+
+Papal power, uniform steadiness of it in the pursuit of its
+    ambitious projects, vii. 449.
+
+Papal pretensions, sources of their growth and support, vii. 384.
+
+Papal States, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France,
+    iv. 337.
+
+Parliament, remarks on it, i. 491.
+  the power of dissolving it, the most critical and delicate
+    of all the trusts vested in the crown, ii. 553.
+  disadvantages of triennial parliaments, vii. 79.
+
+Parliaments of France, character of them, iii. 505.
+
+Parliament of Paris, observations on its subversion, xii. 396.
+
+Parliamentary disorders, ideas for the cure of them, i. 516.
+
+Parsimony, a leaning towards it in war may be the worst management, i. 310.
+
+Party divisions, inseparable from free government, i. 271.
+  definition of the term, party, i. 530.
+  evils of party domination, vi. 390.
+
+Passions, all concern either self-preservation or society, i. 110.
+  final cause of the difference between those belonging to
+    self-preservation and those which regard the society of the sexes,
+    i. 113.
+  those which belong to self-preservation turn upon pain and danger,
+    i. 125.
+  nature and objects of those belonging to society, i. 125.
+  a control over them necessary to the existence of society, iv. 52.
+  strong ones awaken the faculties, v. 287.
+  vehement passion not always indicative of an infirm judgment, v. 407.
+  mere general truths interfere very little with them, vi. 326.
+  passions which interest men in the characters of others, vii. 148.
+
+Pasturage and hunting, weaken men's ties to any particular
+    habitation, vii. 171.
+
+Paulus, observation of his on law, vi. 324.
+
+Peace, requisites of a good one, i. 295.
+  the steps taken to bring one about always an augury of what
+    it is likely to be, v. 251.
+  a ground of peace never laid until it is as good as concluded, v. 260.
+  an arrangement of peace in its nature a permanent settlement, v. 349.
+
+Penal statute of William III. against the Papists, repeal of it, ii. 391.
+
+People, accurate idea of the term, iv. 169.
+  evils of an abuse of it, iv. 411.
+  the temper of the people the first study of a statesman, i. 436.
+  in seasons of popular discontent, something generally amiss
+    in the government, i. 440.
+  the people have no interest in disorder, i. 441.
+  generally fifty years behindhand in their politics, i. 442.
+  a connection with their interests a necessary qualification
+    of a minister, i. 474.
+  sense of the people, how to be ascertained by the king, i. 475.
+  should show themselves able to protect every representative
+    in the performance of his duty, i. 503.
+  liberty cannot long exist where they are generally corrupt, ii. 242.
+  the people of England love a mitigated monarchy more than
+    even the best republic, iv. 149.
+  danger of teaching them to think lightly of their engagements
+    to their governors, iv. 162.
+  the natural control on authority, iv. 164.
+  dangerous nature of a power capable of resisting even their
+    erroneous choice of an object, vi. 296.
+  points on which they are incompetent to give advice to their
+    representatives, vii. 74, 75.
+
+Perfection not the cause of beauty, i. 187.
+
+Persecution, religious, an observation of Mr. Bayle concerning it, vi. 333.
+  general observations on it, vi. 394.
+
+Persecutor, a violent one, frequently an unbeliever in his own creed,
+    vi. 86.
+
+Peshcush, what, x. 171.
+
+Peters, Hugh, remarks on a passage in a sermon of his, iii. 318.
+
+Petition of Right, rests the franchises of the subject not on
+    abstract right, but on inheritance, iii. 273.
+
+Philosophical inquiries, how to be conducted, i. 70.
+  use of them, i. 72.
+
+Philosophy, Lord Bolingbroke's, animadversions on it, i. 4.
+
+Physic, the profession of it, in ancient times, annexed to
+    the priesthood, vii. 183.
+
+Physiognomy, has a considerable share in the beauty of the
+    human species, i. 198.
+
+Pilgrimages of the Middle Ages, benefits of them, vii. 247.
+
+Pitt, Mr., remarks on his conduct in 1784, v. 57.
+  his Declaration on the war with the French Republic, v. 278; vi. 21.
+  eulogy of it, v. 279, 390; vi. 22.
+  and of his speech on that war, v. 390.
+
+Place Bill, proposed remedy for parliamentary disorders, i. 518.
+
+Plagues, in Athens and in London, wickedness remarkably prevalent
+    during their continuance, vii. 84.
+
+Pleasure and pain, observations on them, i. 102.
+  pleasure, pain, and indifference, their mutual relation,
+    as states of the mind, i. 103.
+
+Poetry, more powerful than painting in moving the passions, i. 134.
+  does not depend for its effect on raising ideas or sensible
+    images of things, i. 246, 255.
+  this exemplified, i. 252.
+  affects rather by sympathy than imitation, i. 257.
+  dramatic poetry strictly imitation, i. 257.
+  descriptive poetry operates chiefly by substitution, i. 257.
+
+Poland, character of the revolution there, iv. 195.
+  contrasted with the revolution in France, iv. 198.
+
+Policy, a refined one, the parent of confusion, ii. 106.
+  inseparable from justice, iii. 438.
+
+Political connection, how regarded by the ancient Romans, i. 528.
+  England governed by one in the reign of Queen Anne, i. 529.
+  general observations on, i. 530.
+
+Political economy, had its origin in England, v. 192.
+
+Political system, an unwise or mischievous one not necessarily
+    of short duration, iv. 353.
+
+Politician, duties of one, iii. 557, 559.
+
+Politics, ought to be adjusted to, human nature, i. 398.
+  different in different ages, i. 442.
+  unsuitable to the pulpit, iii. 246.
+
+Polybius, anecdote concerning him, iv. 285.
+
+Poor, the laboring, their poverty owing to their numbers, v. 134.
+  proper compassion for them, v. 135, 466.
+
+Poorunder, treaty of, broken by Mr. Hastings, xii. 382.
+
+Pope, the, his dispute with Henry I., vii. 384.
+  his pretext for giving Henry II. a commission to conquer
+    Ireland, vii. 413.
+  his excommunication of King John, vii. 449.
+  treatment of him by the French Revolutionists, v. 418.
+
+Popery Laws, Tract on the, vi. 299.
+
+Popular election, a mighty evil, vii. 72.
+
+Popular opinion, an equivocal test of merit, v. 183.
+
+Population, rapid increase of it in America, ii. 110.
+  state of it, a standard by which, to estimate the effects
+    of a government on any country, iii. 400.
+  view of that of France, at different periods, iii. 400.
+  comparative effects of peace and war on it, as regards the
+    higher classes, v. 472.
+
+Power, all sublimity some modification of it, i. 138.
+  incompatible with credit, i. 368.
+  the civil power, when it calls in the aid of the military,
+    perishes by the assistance it receives, i. 484.
+  arbitrary power steals upon a people by being rarely exercised, ii. 201.
+  persons possessed of power ought to have a strong sense of
+    religion, iii. 354.
+  the ability to use it for the great and lasting benefit of
+    a country a test of statesmanship, iii. 441.
+  not willingly abandoned by its possessors, iv. 11.
+  dissensions in the commonwealth mostly concerning the hands
+    in which it is to be placed, iv. 163.
+  necessity of teaching men to restrain the immoderate exercise
+    and inordinate desire of it, iv. 163.
+  active power never willingly placed by legislators in the hands
+    of the multitude, iv. 164.
+  danger of a resumption of delegated power by the people, iv. 168.
+  does not always accompany property, iv. 349.
+  the possession of it discovers a man's true character, v. 362.
+  men will incur the greatest risks for the sake of it, vii. 82.
+  originates from God alone, ix. 456.
+  the supreme power in every constitution must be absolute, ix. 460.
+  ends to which a superintending, controlling power ought to
+    be directed, xi. 417.
+
+Prejudice, cannot be created, vi. 368.
+
+Prerogative, remarks on the exercise of it, ii. 225.
+
+Presbyterianism, remarks on it, iv. 452.
+
+Prescription, part of the law of Nature, iii. 433.
+  the most solid of all titles, and the most recognized in
+    jurisprudence, vi. 412; vii. 94.
+
+Present State of Affairs, Heads for Consideration on the, iv. 379.
+
+Price, Dr. Richard, observations on his sermon on the Love of
+    our Country, iii. 244, 301, 304, 316.
+
+Price of commodities, how raised, v. 142.
+  danger of attempting to raise it by authority, v. 143.
+
+Primogeniture, right of, operation of the Popery Laws in taking
+    it away, vi. 302.
+
+Principal of a debt, cannot distress a nation, i. 329.
+
+Principalities, the, proposal to unite them to the crown, ii. 298.
+
+Privations, all general ones great, i. 146.
+
+Profit, an honorable and fair one, the best security against
+    avarice and rapacity, ii. 335.
+
+Projects, new, requirements of men of sense with respect to them, i. 367.
+
+Property, ought greatly to predominate over ability in the
+    representation, iii. 298.
+  importance of the power of perpetuating it in families, iii. 298.
+  not always accompanied with power, iv. 349.
+
+Proportion, what, i. 166.
+  not the cause of beauty in vegetables, i. 166.
+  nor in animals, i. 170.
+  nor in the human species, i. 172.
+  whence the idea of proportion, as the principal component
+    of beauty, arose, i. 178.
+
+Prosperity, discovers the real character of a man, iv. 22.
+  a prejudice in favor of it, however obtained, iv. 425.
+
+Protestant, the state so declared at the Revolution, with a
+    qualification, iv. 257.
+
+Protestant ascendency, observations on, vi. 391.
+
+Protestant Association, the, animadversions on it, ii. 389, 415.
+
+Protestantism, at no period established, undefined, in England, iv. 258.
+
+Protestants, errors of the early, ii. 390.
+  misconduct of those in the South of France at the Revolution, iv. 452.
+
+Provisions, trade of, danger of tampering with it, v. 133.
+
+Prudence, the first in rank of the political and moral virtues, iv. 81.
+  its decisions differ from those of judicature, iv. 251.
+  its rules and definitions rarely exact, never universal, v. 241.
+
+Psalms, and Prophets, crowded with instances of the introduction of the
+    terrible in Nature to heighten the awe of the Divine presence, i. 144.
+
+Public affairs, state of them previous to the formation of the
+    Rockingham administration, i. 381.
+
+Public men, not all equally corrupt, ii. 240.
+
+Public service, means of rewarding it necessary in every state, ii. 330.
+
+Punishment, considerations necessary to be observed in inflicting
+    it, iv. 466; vi. 245.
+  under the Saxon laws, extremely moderate, vii. 321.
+
+Purveyance and receipt in kind, what, ii. 306.
+  taken away by the 12th Charles II., ii. 306.
+  revived the next year, ii. 306.
+
+Pythagoras, his discipline contrasted with that of Socrates, vii. 179.
+  why silence enjoined by him, vii. 179.
+
+
+Raimond, Count of Toulouse, engages in the Crusade, vii. 372.
+
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, abusive epithet applied to him by Lord Coke, xi. 175.
+
+Reason, sound, no real virtue without it, iv. 24.
+  never inconvenient but when it comes to be applied, vi. 326.
+
+Reasoners, men generally the worse reasoners for having been
+    ministers, i. 338.
+
+Reformation, in government, should be early and temperate, ii. 280.
+  and slow, iii. 456.
+  different from change, v. 186.
+  general observations on it, iii. 455; iv. 111; vi. 294; vii. 71.
+  in England, has always proceeded upon the principle of
+    reference to antiquity, iii. 272.
+
+Reformation, the, observations on it, ii. 389.
+  effects of it, iv. 319.
+
+Reformers, English, character of them, iii. 430.
+
+Regicide by establishment, what, v. 309.
+
+Regicide Peace, Letters on, v. 233, 342, 384; vi. 9.
+
+Religion, writers against it never set up any of their own, i. 7.
+  effects of it on the colonists of America, ii. 122.
+  the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and
+    of all comfort, iii. 350.
+  the respect entertained for it in England, iii. 352.
+  a strong sense of it necessary to those in power, iii. 354.
+  mischievous consequences of changing it, except under
+    strong conviction, iv. 453.
+  the magistrate has a right to direct the exterior ceremonies
+    of it, vii. 30.
+  the Christian, in its rise overcame all opposition, vii. 25.
+
+Religious opinions, not the only cause of enthusiasm, v. 361.
+
+Repetition, of the same story, effect of it, iv. 328.
+
+Report on the Affairs of India, Ninth, viii. 1.
+  Eleventh, viii. 217.
+  on the Lords' Journals, xi. 1.
+  Vindication of, this Report from the Animadversions of
+    Lord Thurlow, xi. 149.
+
+Representation, ought to include both the ability and the
+    property of a state, iii. 297.
+  virtual, what, iv. 293.
+  natural, what, v. 284.
+  of America in the British Parliament, project of, i. 372.
+  consideration of its difficulties, i. 373.
+  of England, and that of France in the National Assembly,
+    compared, iii. 481.
+
+Representation to his Majesty on the Speech from the Throne, ii. 537.
+
+Representative, his duty to his constituents, ii. 95, 281, 357.
+
+Republican government, remarks on, iv. 109.
+
+Reputation, public, how to be secured, ix. 341.
+
+Resemblance, pleasing to the imagination, i. 87.
+
+Responsibility of ministers of state, nature of it, iii. 501; v. 507.
+
+Revenge, observations on, xi. 179.
+
+Revenue, great importance of it to a state, iii. 534.
+  its administration the sphere of every active virtue, iii. 535.
+
+Revolution of 1688, diminished influence of the crown at that
+    time how compensated, i. 445.
+  principles of it contained in the Declaration of Right, iii. 252.
+  the subversion of the old, and the settlement of the new
+    government, inseparably combined in it, iv. 80.
+  grounds of it, iv. 121.
+  contrasted with the French Revolution, iii. 225.
+
+Revolution in France, Reflections on the, iii. 231.
+  general observations on it, iii. 220.
+  characterized as a revolution of doctrine and theoretic dogma, iv. 319.
+  contrasted with the English Revolution of 1688, iii. 225.
+
+Revolution Society, correspond with the National Assembly of France,
+    iii. 238.
+  remarks on its principles and proceedings, iii. 238.
+
+Reynolds, Sir Joshua, on idiosyncrasy in taste and judgment, iv. 212.
+
+Rich, need the consolations of religion, iii. 366.
+  trustees for those who labor, v. 134.
+
+Richard I., brief account of his reign, vii. 425.
+  parallel between him and Charles XII. of Sweden, vii. 436.
+
+Richelieu, Cardinal, hated by Louis XIII., iii. 499.
+
+Rights, assumed, their consequences of great moment in deciding
+    on their validity, iv. 183.
+
+Rights of Men, Jacobinical theory of, animadversions on it, iii. 307.
+  sophistically confounded with their power, iii. 313.
+
+Robespierre, his character, vi. 62.
+
+Rochford, Lord, his remonstrance with regard to Corsica, i. 480.
+
+Rockingham, Marquis of, Short Account of his Administration, i. 263.
+  formation of his administration, i. 379.
+  state of public affairs at the time, i. 381.
+  character and conduct of it, i. 388.
+  ideas of it with regard to America, i. 403.
+  his Lordship's conduct in American affairs, ii. 40.
+
+Rohilla nation, sale of it by the East India Company, ii. 449.
+
+Roland, character of him, v. 70.
+
+Roman Catholics, Mr. Burke's defence of his Parliamentary
+    conduct with regard to them, ii. 388.
+  Letter on the Penal Laws against, iv. 217.
+  mode of education necessary for their clergy, iv. 229, 231.
+  condition of their clergy before the restraint on marriage, iv. 230.
+  mischievous consequences of placing the appointment of the Irish
+    Roman Catholic clergy in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant, iv. 234.
+
+Roman politics, under the Empire, different from those which
+    actuated the Republic, vii. 203.
+  dominion over the Britons and other conquered nations, methods
+    by which it was preserved, vii. 205.
+  procurators under the Emperors, why invested with greater
+    powers than the legates, vii. 208.
+  military ways, character and purpose of them, vii. 211.
+  number and extent of the principal ones in Britain, vii. 211.
+  revenues, nature of them, vii. 211.
+  three great changes in the government after the dissolution of
+    the Commonwealth, vii. 220.
+
+Rome, ancient, destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, vii. 80.
+  and by its heavy taxes, vii. 213.
+  bounds of the empire first contracted by Adrian, vii. 214.
+
+Rome, modern, its example a caution not to attempt to feed the
+    people by the hands of the magistrates, v. 155.
+
+Rota, in the French National Assembly, effect of it, iv. 350.
+
+Rotund, noble effect of it, i. 150.
+  accounted for, i. 150.
+
+Rousseau, the secret of his principles of composition, iii. 459.
+  a resemblance to him an object of rivalry to the leaders of
+    the National Assembly, iv. 25.
+  vanity his ruling passion, iv. 26.
+  brief character of him, iv. 27.
+  totally destitute of taste, iv. 30.
+  morality of the passions in his Nouvelle Eloise, iv. 31.
+  character of his style, iv. 32.
+
+Russell, Baron, the first, his character, v. 201.
+
+Russia, the Emperor of, the true policy of his government, v. 422.
+
+Russian treaty of commerce, i. 410.
+
+
+Sacheverell, Dr., his impeachment carried on for the purpose of
+    stating the grounds and principles of the Revolution, iv. 119.
+  extracts from speeches of Managers at his trial, iv. 122-146.
+  proceedings in his trial, xi. 16.
+
+Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, reduces Palestine, vii. 427.
+  defeated by Richard I., vii. 429.
+
+Salaries, objections to a tax upon them, ii. 283.
+
+Sallust, remarks on his finely contrasted characters of Caesar and Cato,
+    i. 189.
+
+Salt, monopoly of, by the French government, i. 332.
+
+Santerre, his brutal conduct to Louis XVI., vi. 101.
+
+Saracens, their fierce irruptions and conquests, vii. 328.
+
+Savile, Sir George, his bill for the repeal of the statute of
+    William III. against Papists, ii. 396.
+  his character, ii. 397.
+
+Saxons, a brief account of their laws and institutions, vii. 291.
+  under their rule, the succession to the crown in England
+    partly hereditary and partly elective, vii. 297.
+  their laws wholly abolished in England since the Conquest, vii. 478.
+  sources of them, vii. 487.
+
+Scarcity, Thoughts and Details on, v. 131.
+  proper policy in respect to the poor, in times of, v. 156.
+
+Scotland, beneficial effects on trade of its union with England, ii. 254.
+  its Church establishment under the Union, iv. 258.
+
+Scripture, indefinite nature of subscription to it, vii. 18.
+
+Scythians, all Northern Europe originally inhabited by them, vii. 160.
+
+Selden, his statement of the Parliamentary practice in the
+    examination of witnesses, xi. 108.
+
+Self-preservation, the passions which concern it the strongest
+    ones, i. 110.
+  the sublime an idea belonging to it, i. 164.
+
+Senses, general remarks on them, i. 82.
+  ought to be put under the tuition of the judgment, iii. 15.
+
+Serpent, why an object of idolatry, vii. 184.
+
+Shakspeare, his description of the king's army in Henry IV. an
+    example of the sublime, i. 155.
+
+Shelburne, Lord, animadversions on a passage in a speech of his, ii. 544.
+
+Silence, why enjoined by Pythagoras and the Druids, vii. 178.
+
+Sirach, Son of, fine example of the sublime from his Book of Wisdom,
+    i. 155.
+
+Slaves, never so beneficial to their masters as freemen, v. 147.
+
+Smells, a source of the sublime, i. 162.
+
+Smith, Sir Sydney, Captain, observations on his case, v. 400.
+
+Smoothness, why beautiful, i. 234.
+
+Social nature, the, impels a man to propagate his principles, v. 361.
+
+Society, Natural, A Vindication of, i. 1.
+  definition of the term, i. 11.
+  notion of, how first introduced, i. 11.
+  political society, its nature and origin, i. 11; iii. 359; iv. 165.
+  its continuance under a permanent covenant, iii. 359; iv. 165.
+  the great purpose of it, what, vi. 333.
+  society and solitude compared, as sources of pleasure or pain, i. 115.
+
+Socrates, his discipline contrasted with that of Pythagoras, vii. 179.
+
+Solitude, something may be done in it for society, v. 125.
+
+Somers, Lord, the Declaration of Right drawn by him, iii. 254.
+
+Sophia, the Princess, why named in the Act of Settlement as
+    the root of inheritance to the kings of England, iii. 262.
+
+Sophia, St., Church of, anecdote of the Greeks assembled there,
+    at the taking of Constantinople, vi. 96.
+
+Sound, a source of the sublime, i. 159.
+  grand effect of a single one of some strength repeated after
+    intervals, i. 160.
+  a low, tremulous, intermitting one productive of the sublime, i. 160.
+  the beautiful in sounds, i. 203.
+
+Spain, how likely to be affected by the revolution in France, iv. 339.
+  not a substantive power, iv. 385.
+
+Speech of Mr. Burke on American Taxation, ii. 1.
+  at his Arrival at Bristol, ii. 85.
+  at the Conclusion of the Poll, ii. 89.
+  on Conciliation with America, ii. 99.
+  on Economical Reform, ii. 265.
+  previous to the Election in 1780, ii. 365.
+  on Declining the Poll, ii. 425.
+  on Mr. Fox's East India Bill, ii. 431.
+  on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, iii. 1.
+  on the Army Estimates, iii. 211.
+  on the Acts of Uniformity, vii. 3.
+  on the Relief of Protestant Dissenters, vii. 21.
+  on the Petition of the Unitarians, vii. 39.
+  on the Middlesex Election, vii. 59.
+  on Shortening the Duration of Parliaments, vii. 69.
+  on Reform of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament, vii. 89.
+  on the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels, vii. 105.
+  on the Repeal of the Marriage Act, vii. 129.
+  on Dormant Claims of the Church, vii. 137.
+  in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, ix. 327-x. 145;
+    x. 147-451; xi. 155-xii. 393.
+
+Spelman, Sir Henry, his difficulties in the study of the law, vii. 477.
+
+Spirituous liquors, beneficial effects of them, v. 164.
+
+Spon, M., his curious story of Campanella, i. 212.
+
+Spring, why the pleasantest of the seasons, i. 153.
+
+Stability, one of the requisites of a good peace, i. 295.
+
+Stafford, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 31.
+  remarks on the prosecution, xi. 112.
+
+Stamp Act, American, its origin, i. 385.
+  repeal of it, i. 389; ii. 47.
+  motives for the repeal, i. 391, 399.
+  good effects of the repeal, i. 401; ii. 59.
+
+Stanhope, General, extracts from his speech at the trial
+    of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 127.
+
+Starry heaven, why productive of the idea of grandeur, i. 154.
+
+State, the, meaning of the term, iv, 248.
+  consideration of its fitness for an oligarchical form, connected with the
+    question of vesting it solely in some one description of citizens,
+    iv. 251.
+  not subject to laws analogous to those of physical life, v. 124, 234.
+  the internal causes affecting the fortunes of states uncertain
+    and obscure, v. 235.
+  great irregularities in their rise, culmination, and decline, v. 235.
+  in a conflict between equally powerful states, an infinite advantage
+    afforded by unyielding determination, v. 243.
+
+Statesmen, duties of, i. 436; v. 167.
+  standard of one, iii. 440.
+  difference between them and professors in universities, vii. 41.
+
+Stephen, brief account of his reign, vii. 386.
+
+Stonehenge, wherein an object of admiration, i. 153; vii. 179.
+
+Stones, rude ones, why objects of veneration, vii. 185.
+
+Strafford, Earl of, proceedings in his trial, xi. 14. 113.
+
+Sublime, sources of it, i. 110.
+  the strongest emotion of the mind, i. 110.
+  in all things abhors mediocrity, i. 157.
+
+Sublime and Beautiful, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin
+    of our Ideas of the, i. 67.
+  stand on very different foundations, i. 192.
+  comparison between them, i. 205.
+  on the efficient cause of them, i. 208.
+
+Succession, hereditary, the principle of it recognized at
+    the Revolution, iii. 252.
+
+Succession, in visual objects, effects of it explained, i. 222.
+
+Suddenness, a source of the sublime, i. 160.
+
+Suffering, the force to endure, needful to those who aspire to
+    act greatly, v. 250.
+
+Sujah ul Dowlah, his character, xi. 373.
+
+Sully, M. de, an observation of his on revolutions in great
+    states, i. 441.
+
+Superstition, nature of it, iii. 442.
+
+Surplus produce, nature and application of it, iii. 444.
+
+Sweetness, its nature, i. 235.
+  relaxing, i. 237.
+
+Swift, Dr., a saying of his concerning public benefactors, ii. 472.
+
+Sympathy, observations on it, i. 177; v. 398.
+
+
+Taille, nature of, i. 330, 333.
+
+Talents, eminent, obscure and vulgar vices sometimes blended with, iv. 26.
+
+Tallien, the regicide, his sanguinary brutality, vi. 102.
+
+Tamerlane, his conquests in Hindostan, ix. 388.
+  remarks on his Institutes, ix. 467; xi. 214.
+
+Tanistry, what, vii. 297.
+
+Taste, discourse concerning it, i. 79.
+  definition of it, i. 81.
+  want of it, whence, i. 95.
+  a wrong or bad one, what, i. 95.
+  a good one, i. 96.
+  of no mean importance in the regulation of life, iv. 30.
+
+Taxes, mode of levying them in commercial colonies an
+    important and difficult consideration, i. 354.
+  nature of several in America, i. 355.
+  colonial, Lord North's project of a ransom of them by auction, ii. 171.
+  the great contests for freedom in England chiefly upon the
+    question of taxing, ii. 120.
+  taxes on different establishments, remarks concerning them, i. 368.
+  upon salaries, ii. 283.
+  details of English taxes, v. 476.
+
+Terror, sometimes a source of delight, i. 119.
+  how, i. 214.
+  an effect of the sublime, i. 130.
+  its physical effects, i. 211.
+
+Test Act, observations on it, iv. 264.
+
+Thanes, brief account of them, vii. 300.
+
+Theatre, general observations on the, iii. 338.
+  prosperous condition of it in England, v. 485.
+  made an affair of state in the French Republic, vi. 104.
+
+Theodorus, Archbishop of Canterbury, brief account of him, vii. 249.
+  his services to the cause of letters in England, vii. 249.
+
+Three Seals, the history of the affair so called, ix. 408.
+
+Time blends the conquered with the conquerors, iv. 272.
+
+Toleration, true, exemplified, iii. 431.
+  ought to be tender and large, iv. 258.
+  favorable to, and a part of Christianity, vii. 25.
+  not a virtue of the ancient heathens, vii. 31.
+
+Toulon, fleet of, injudicious measures of the English government
+    with regard to it, iv. 445.
+
+Townshend, Charles, character of him, ii. 64.
+
+Trade, sometimes seems to perish when it only assumes a
+    different form, i. 313.
+  quickly and deeply affected by taxes, i. 391.
+  tests of the state of it, what, v. 493.
+  Board of, its character and history, ii. 340.
+
+Tragedy, observations on the effects of, i. 120.
+  its subjects and passions, vii. 150.
+  great personages everywhere made the objects of it, xi. 308.
+
+Transmigration of souls, origin of the doctrine, vii. 181.
+
+Treasurer's staff, Lord Coke's account of the purpose of it, ii. 354.
+
+Trent, Council of, its wise introduction of the discipline of
+    seminaries for priests, iv. 231.
+
+Triangle, the poorest of all figures in its effect, i. 152.
+
+Triennial Parliaments, evils of them, vii. 79.
+
+Trinoda necessitas, in Saxon law, what, vii. 325.
+
+Turkey, power sought there with avidity, notwithstanding the
+    danger and insecurity of its tenure, vii. 82.
+
+Tyranny, aggravated by contumely, ii. 484.
+  the desire and design of it often lurk in the claim of an
+    extravagant liberty, iv. 115.
+  never learns moderation from the ill success of first oppressions, x. 83.
+
+
+Ugliness, the opposite to beauty, but not to proportion and fitness,
+    i. 199.
+  consistent with the sublime, i. 199.
+
+Uniformity and succession of parts constitute the artificial infinite,
+    i. 149.
+
+Universal, nothing of this nature can be rationally affirmed or any
+    moral or political subject, iv. 80.
+
+Use, to be carefully attended to in most works of art, i. 154.
+  use and habit not causes of pleasure, i. 180.
+
+
+Vanity, nature and tendency of, iv. 26.
+
+Variation, beautiful, why, i. 239.
+
+Vastness, a cause of the sublime, i. 147.
+  unity why necessary to it, i. 219.
+
+Vattel, extracts from his Law of Nations, iv. 471.
+
+Venice, its restrictions with respect to offices of state, iv. 249.
+  origin of the republic, vii. 331.
+  acquires the island of Cyprus, vii. 428.
+  the only state in Europe which benefited by the Crusades, vii. 428.
+
+Verbal description, a means of raising a stronger emotion
+    than painting, i. 133.
+
+Vice, the instances rare of an immediate transition to it
+    from virtue, i. 421.
+
+Vices, obscure and vulgar ones sometimes blended with eminent
+    talents, iv. 26.
+  in common society receive palliating names, xi. 177.
+
+Vicinity, civil, law of, what, v. 322.
+
+Virgil, his figure of Fame obscure, yet magnificent, i. 138.
+  remarks on his combination of images at the mouth of hell, i. 146.
+  an example from him of the sublime effect of an uncertain light, i. 161.
+  and of the cries of animals, i. 162.
+  and of powerful smells, i. 163.
+  his picture of the murder of Priam, i. 259.
+  of the Harpies, v. 187
+
+Virtue, how far the idea of beauty may be applied to it, i. 190.
+  description of the gradual extinguishment of it in public men, i. 421.
+  will catch, as well as vice by contact, ii. 242.
+  virtues which cause admiration, i. 188.
+  virtues which engage the heart, i. 188.
+
+Visual objects of great dimensions, why sublime, i. 217.
+  effects of succession in them explained, i. 222.
+
+Voters, more in the spirit of the English constitution to lessen
+    than to enlarge their number, i. 370.
+
+
+Wages, the rate of them has no direct relation, to the price
+    of provisions, v. 136.
+
+Wales, misgovernment of, by England, for two hundred years, ii. 148.
+  alteration of the system in the reign of Henry VIII., ii. 150.
+
+Wales, Frederick, Prince of, project of government devised
+    in his court, i. 447.
+  means adopted for its introduction and recommendation to
+    popular favor, i. 451, 453.
+  nature of the party formed for its support, i. 459.
+  name of this party, i. 466.
+  and of the new system, i. 466.
+
+Walpole, Mr., (afterwards Sir Robert,) his character, iv. 128.
+  extract from his speech in the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, iv. 129.
+  forced into the war with Spain by popular clamor, v. 288.
+  fault in his general proceeding, v. 289.
+
+War, its original may be very far from being its principal purpose, i. 298.
+  not easily reconciled with economy, i. 310.
+  the ground of a political war, laborers and manufacturers
+    not capable of conceiving, v. 38.
+  of England with the French Republic, a war with an armed doctrine,
+    v. 250.
+  can never be carried on long against the will of the people, v. 283.
+  general observations on, v. 318.
+  the power of making it, why put under the discretion of the crown,
+    v. 335.
+  principle of the law of nations with regard to it, vi. 349.
+
+Warwick, Earl of, proceedings in his trial, xi. 32.
+
+Water, why venerated by the Druids, vii. 182.
+
+Weakness, human, in adversity, never pitied by those who applaud
+    prosperous folly and guilt, iv. 183.
+
+Wealth, internal, consists in useful commodities as much as in
+    gold and silver, i. 321.
+  of a country, a standard by which to estimate the character
+    of the government, iii. 402.
+  can never rank first in England, iv. 327.
+  ought always to be the servant of virtue and public honor, v. 242.
+  remark of a foreigner on the display of it in the shops in London,
+    v. 496.
+
+Whigs, the great connection of, in the reign of Queen Anne, i. 529.
+  the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell, for what purpose carried
+    on by them, iv. 119.
+  statement of the principles of the new Whigs, iv. 120, 151.
+  opinion of the new, with respect to the power of the people
+    over the commonwealth, iv. 161.
+  Appeal from the New to the Old, iv. 57.
+
+Wilkes, Mr., his contest with the court party, i. 497.
+  pretence for punishing him, i. 500.
+
+Will and duty contradictory terms, iv. 165.
+  duty not subject to will, iv. 165.
+
+William of Normandy, the extraordinary facility of his conquest
+    of England explained, vii. 288.
+  his numerous followers accounted for, vii. 333.
+  brief account of his reign, vii. 335.
+  view of his revenue, vii. 346.
+  his character, vii. 362.
+
+William Rufus, brief account of his reign, vii. 364.
+
+William III., his elevation to the throne an act not of choice,
+    but of necessity, iii. 254.
+  his judicious appointments to the vacant bishoprics, iv. 14.
+  the spirited address of the Commons to him respecting the war
+    with France, v. 296.
+  the Grand Alliance against France his masterpiece, v. 297.
+  his indomitable perseverance in pressing this measure, v. 299.
+  address of the House of Lords respecting it, v. 300.
+
+Wintoun, Lord, proceedings in his trial, xi. 22.
+
+Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, example of the sublime from that
+    book, i. 155.
+
+Wishes, vehement, the discovery of them generally frustrates
+    their attainment, v. 252.
+
+Wit and judgement, difference between them, i. 87.
+
+Words, the proper medium for conveying the affections of the mind, i. 133.
+  affect us in a manner very different from natural objects,
+    painting, or architecture, i. 246.
+  three sorts of them, i. 247.
+  general words before ideas, i. 249.
+  effect of them, i. 250.
+  may affect without raising images, i. 252.
+  this exemplified in the case of the poet Blacklock, i. 252.
+  and of Saunderson, the mathematician, i. 253.
+  how words influence the passions, i. 258.
+  the only means by which many ideas have ever been at all
+    presented to the senses, i. 259.
+  the source of a great part of the mischiefs that vex the world, vi. 397.
+  the world much influenced by them, xi. 172.
+
+Writers, when they act in a body and with one direction, have
+    great influence on the public mind, iii. 380
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable
+Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.), by Edmund Burke
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF EDMUND BURKE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 18315.txt or 18315.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/3/1/18315/
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Susan Skinner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at
+http://gallica.bnf.fr)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/18315.zip b/18315.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bdb7d67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/18315.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6713f1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #18315 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18315)