y
Mr. Hastings to go into the service of that Rajah: could you bear such a
thing? would you suffer such evidence to be produced? or do you think
that we should have so little regard for our own reputation as to
venture to produce such evidence before you? Again, we have charged Mr.
Hastings with committing several acts of violence against the Begums.
Let us suppose our proof to be, that two persons who never appeared
before nor since, that two grenadiers in English uniforms, (which would
be a great deal stronger than the case of the nudjeeves, because they
have no particular uniform belonging to them,) that two English
grenadiers, I say, had been taken prisoners in some action and let go
again, who said that Mr. Hastings had instigated them to make war upon
the Begums: would your Lordships suffer such evidence to be produced
before you? No. And yet two of the first women in India are to be
stripped of all they have in the world upon no better evidence than that
which you would utterly reject. You would not disgrace the British
peerage, you would not disgrace this court of justice, you would not
disgrace human reason itself, by confiscating, on such evidence, the
meanest property of the meanest wretch. You would not subject to the
smallest fine for the smallest delinquency, upon such evidence. I will
venture to say, that, in an action of assault and battery, or in an
action for the smallest sum, such evidence would be scouted as odious
and contemptible, even supposing that a perfect reliance might be placed
upon its truth. And yet this is the sort of evidence upon which the
property, the dignity, and the rank of some of the first persons in Asia
are to be destroyed,--by which a British guaranty, and the honor and
dignity of the crown of Great Britain, and of the Parliament itself,
which sent out this man, are to be forfeited.

Observe, besides, my Lords, that the two swordsmen said they were sent
by the Begums. Now they could not be sent by the Begums in their own
person. This was a thing in India impossible. They might, indeed, have
been sent by Jewar and Behar Ali Khan: and then we ask again, How came
these ministers not to be called to an account at the time? Why were
they not called upon for their muster-rolls of these nudjeeves? No,
these men and women suffer the penalty, but they never hear the
accusation nor the evidence.

But to proceed with the evidence of this pretended rebellion. Captain
Williams has told yo