The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume XII Part 4

My Lords, I must here observe to your Lords.h.i.+ps 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 a.s.sisting 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps' 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of her husband's,--to exalt him at the expense of the former, and to exalt, of course, the mother of that b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 pa.s.s 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps. 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 circ.u.mstance 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 Lords.h.i.+ps' vindictive justice and condemnation this recriminatory defence, in which every principle of justice has been violated. And now I will ask your Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps, 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 a.s.suredly 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 Lords.h.i.+ps'

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 Lords.h.i.+ps, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps have seen.

There is one of them whom we cannot pa.s.s 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 grat.i.tude and kindness for the services that they had received. They then pa.s.s 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 Lords.h.i.+ps.

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 circ.u.mstances whilst he was in India? I will read your Lords.h.i.+ps 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 deputys.h.i.+p 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 n.o.ble 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps' 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 Lords.h.i.+ps.

_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 pa.s.sed 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, compa.s.sionate, 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 G.o.d preserve!

After presenting the usual professions of servitude, &c., in the customary manner, my address is presented.

"Your gracious letter, in answer to the pet.i.tion 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 s.h.i.+ne!"

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 Lords.h.i.+ps'

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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps' 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 pa.s.s. 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 pet.i.tion 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 pet.i.tion for something or other which he made to the Begum. That pet.i.tion they have suppressed and sunk. It is plain, however, that the pet.i.tion 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 ent.i.tled 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps. 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 Lords.h.i.+ps' 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.