before a British House of Commons, a British House of Lords, or any
other tribunal in the kingdom; but let me get money enough, and they
won't care how I get it. The estates of whole bodies of nobility may be
confiscated; a people who had lived under their protection may be given
up into the hands of foreign usurers: they will care for none of these
things; they will suffer me to do all this, and to employ in it the
force of British troops, whom I have described as a set of robbers,
provided I can get money." These were Mr. Hastings's views; and, in
accordance with them, the jaghires were all confiscated, the jaghiredars
with their families were all turned out, the possessions delivered up to
the usurer, in order that Mr. Hastings might have the excuse of money to
plead at the bar of the House of Commons, and afterwards at the bar of
the House of Lords. If your Lordships, in your sacred character of the
first tribunal in the world, should by your judgment justify those
proceedings, you will sanction the greatest wrongs that have been ever
known in history.

But to proceed. The next thing to be asked is, Were the promised
pensions given to the jaghiredars? I suppose your Lordships are not idle
enough to put that question to us. No compensation, no consideration,
was given or stipulated for them. If there had been any such thing, the
prisoner could have proved it,--he would have proved it. The means were
easy to him. But we have saved him the trouble of the attempt. We have
proved the contrary, and, if called upon, we will show you the place
where this is proved.

I have now shown your Lordships how Mr. Hastings, having with such
violent and atrocious circumstances usurped the government of Oude, (I
hope I need not use any farther proof that the Nabob was in effect
non-existent in the country,) treated all the landed property. The next