before the House of Lords, from the first records of Parliament to this hour, c

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 Khourd Mahl 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 of any persons 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 Khourd Mahl: 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 any thing 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 every thing there, he had spies upon his regular agents, and spies again upon

them.

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 every thing 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 Lordship's 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

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 honour 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 guaranteed by the Company, but it was doubly guaranteed 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 guarantees, without even the vain and frivolous pretence of a rebellion, and for all its consequences,

;

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 Na"bob, namely, Myrza Hyder Ally, Myrza

Imay ul Ally, and Myrza Syof Ally, did

represent to the said Bristow, that they were "in distress for dry bread and clothes; and in "consequence of such representation, were re"lieved 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, sometime in or about the "month of September, in the said year 1784, "the said Myrza Hyder Ally, one of the three "princes aforesaid, did fly to the province of "Benares, and did remain there in great dis

tress;