Now, my Lords, this criminal, through his counsel, chooses, with their
usual flippancy, to say that the Commons have been _cautious_ in stating
this part of the charge, knowing that they were on tender ground, and
therefore did not venture to say _entitled_, but _possessed of_ only. A
notable discovery indeed! We are as far from being taken in by such
miserable distinctions as we are incapable of making them. We certainly
have not said that the Begums were entitled to, but only that they were
possessed of, certain property. And we have so said because we were not
competent to decide upon their title, because your Lordships are not
competent to decide upon their title, because no part of this tribunal
is competent to decide upon their title. You have not the parties before
you; you have not the cause before you,--but are getting it by oblique,
improper, and indecent means. You are not a court of justice to try that
question. The parties are at a distance from you; they are neither
present themselves, nor represented by any counsel, advocate, or
attorney: and I hope no House of Lords will ever judge and decide upon
the title of any human being, much less upon the title of the first
women in Asia, sequestered, shut up from you, at nine thousand miles'
distance.

I believe, my Lords, that the Emperor of Hindostan little thought, while
Delhi stood, that an English subject of Mr. Hastings's description
should domineer over the Vizier of his empire, and give the law to the
first persons in his dominions. He as little dreamed of it as any of
your Lordships now dream that you shall have your property seized by a
delegate from Lucknow, and have it tried by what tenure a peer or
peeress of Great Britain hold, the one his estate, and the other her
jointure, dower, or her share of goods, her paraphernalia, in any court
of Adawlut in Hindostan. If any such thing should happen, (for we know
not what may happen; we live in an age of strange revolutions, and I