for your rebellion." This is his second expedient by way of
justification.

Your Lordships will observe the strange situation in which we are here
placed. If the fact of the rebellion can be proved, the discussion of
the title to the property in question will be totally useless; for, if
the ladies had actually taken up arms to cut the Nabob's throat, it
would require no person to come from the dead to prove to us that the
Nabob, but not Mr. Hastings, had a right, for his own security and for
his own indemnification, to take those treasures, which, whether they
belonged to him or not, were employed in hostilities against him. The
law of self-defence is above every other law; and if any persons draw
the sword against you, violence on your part is justified, and you may
use your sword to take from them that property by which they have been
enabled to draw their sword against you.

But the prisoner's counsel do not trust to this justification; they set
up a title of right to these treasures: but how entirely they have
failed in their attempts to substantiate either the one or the other of
these his alleged justifications your Lordships will now judge. And
first with regard to the title. The treasure, they say, belonged to the
state. The grandmother and mother have robbed the son, and kept him out
of his rightful inheritance. They then produce the Hedaya to show you
what proportion of the goods of a Mussulman, when he dies, goes to his
family; and here, certainly, there is a question of law to be tried. But
Mr. Hastings is a great eccentric genius, and has a course of proceeding
of his own: he first seizes upon the property, and then produces some
Mahometan writers to prove that it did not belong to the persons who
were in possession of it. You would naturally expect, that, when he was
going to seize upon those goods, he would have consulted his