question will be, How has he treated whatever moneyed property was left
in the country? My Lords, he looked over that immense waste of his own
creating, not as Satan viewed the kingdoms of the world and saw the
power and glory of them,--but he looked over the waste of Oude with a
diabolical malice which one could hardly suppose existed in the
prototype himself. He saw nowhere above-ground one single shilling that
he could attach,--no, not one; every place had been ravaged; no money
remained in sight. But possibly some might be buried in vaults, hid from
the gripe of tyranny and rapacity. "It must be so," says he. "Where can
I find it? how can I get at it? There is one illustrious family that is
thought to have accumulated a vast body of treasures, through a course
of three or four successive reigns. It does not appear openly; but we
have good information that very great sums of money are bricked up and
kept in vaults under ground, and secured under the guard and within the
walls of a fortress": the residence of the females of the family, a
guard, as your Lordships know, rendered doubly and trebly secure by the
manners of the country, which make everything that is in the hands of
women sacred. It is said that nothing is proof against gold,--that the
strongest tower will not be impregnable, if Jupiter makes love in a
golden shower. This Jupiter commences making love; but he does not come
to the ladies with gold for their persons, he comes to their persons for
their gold. This impetuous lover, Mr. Hastings, who is not to be stayed
from the objects of his passion, would annihilate space and time between
him and his beloved object, the jaghires of these ladies, had now,
first, their treasure's affection.

Your Lordships have already had a peep behind the curtain, in the first
orders sent to Mr. Middleton. In the treaty of Chunar you see a desire,
obliquely expressed, to get the landed estates of all these great
families. But even while he was meeting with such reluctance in the