The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 12 (of 12)

"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 500,000l. 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 70,000l. 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 70,000l. a year will amount to, when the party spends about 15,000l. 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 600,000l.

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 60,000l. more in debt, and forced them to give a bond for that 60,000l.

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."