ge
upon him the consequences, with all the aggravations attending them; and
we call both upon justice and humanity for redress, as far as it can be
afforded to these people, and for the severest punishments which your
Lordships can inflict upon the author of these evils. If, instead of the
mass of crimes that we have brought before you, this singly had been
charged upon the prisoner, I will say that it is a greater crime than
any man has ever been impeached for before the House of Lords, from the
first records of Parliament to this hour.

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 Khord
Mohul 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 persons of any 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 Khord
Mohul: 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
a