f upon his nearest
relations, why did he not in person take a single step in this matter?
why do we see nothing but his abused name in it? We see no order under
his own hand. We see all the orders given by the cool Mr. Middleton, by
the outrageous Mr. Johnson, by all that gang of persons that the
prisoner used to disgrace the British name. Who are the officers that
stormed their fort? who put on the irons? who sent them? who supplied
them? They are all, all, English officers. There is not an appearance,
even, of a minister of the Nabob's in the whole transaction. The actors
are all Englishmen; and we, as Englishmen, call for punishment upon
those who have thus degraded and dishonored the English name.

We do not use torture or cruelties, even for the greatest crimes, but
have banished them from our courts of justice; we never suffer them in
any case. Yet those men, in order to force others to break their most
sacred trust, inflict tortures upon them. They drag their poor victims
from dungeon to dungeon, from one place of punishment to another, and
wholly on account of an extorted bond,--for they owed no money, they
could not owe any,--but to got this miserable balance of 60,000_l._,
founded upon their tables of exchange: after they had plundered these
ladies of 500,000_l._ in money, and 70,000_l._ a year in land, they
could not be satisfied without putting usury and extortion upon tyranny
and oppression. To enforce this unjust demand, the miserable victims
were imprisoned, ironed, scourged, and at last threatened to be sent
prisoners to Chunar. This menace succeeded. The persons who had resisted
irons, who had been, as the Begums say, refused food and water, stowed
in an unwholesome, stinking, pestilential prison, these persons
withstood everything till the fort of Chunar was mentioned to them; and
then their fortitude gave way: and why? The fort of Chunar was not in
the dominions of the Nabob, whose rights they pretended to be
vindicating: to name a British fort, in their circumstances, was to name
everything that is most horrible in tyranny; so, at least, it appeared
to them. They gave way; and thus were committed acts of oppression and
cruelty unknown, I will venture to say, in the history of India. The
women, indeed, could not be brought forward and scourged, but their
ministers were tortured, till, for their redemption, these princesses
gave up all their clothes, all the ornaments of their persons, all their
jewels