their confused imaginations, that you can be here trying such a
question, and venturing to decide upon it? Your Lordships will never do
that, which if you did do, you would be unfit to subsist as a tribunal
for a single hour; and if we, on our part, did not bring before you this
attempt, as the heaviest aggravation of the prisoner's crimes, we
should betray our trust as representatives of the Commons of Great
Britain. Having made this protest in favor of law, of justice, and good
policy, permit me to take a single step more.

I will now show your Lordships that it is very possible, nay, very
probable, and almost certain, that a great part of what these ladies
possessed was a saving of their own, and independent of any grant. It
appears in the papers before you, that these unfortunate ladies had
about 70,000_l._ a year, landed property. Mr. Bristow states in evidence
before your Lordships, that their annual expenses did not exceed a lac
and a half, and that their income was about seven lacs; that they had
possessed this for twenty years before the death of Sujah Dowlah, and
from the death of that prince to the day of the robbery. Now, if your
Lordships will calculate what the savings from an income of 70,000_l._ a
year will amount to, when the party spends about 15,000_l._ a year, you
will see that by a regular and strict economy these people may have
saved considerable property of their own, independent of their titles to
any other property: and this is a rational way of accounting for their
being extremely rich. It may be supposed, likewise, that they had all
those advantages which ladies of high rank usually have in that
country,--gifts at marriage, &c. We know that there are deeds of gift by
husbands to their wives during their lifetime, and many other legal
means, by which women in Asia become possessed of very great property.
But Mr. Hastings has taught them the danger of much wealth, and the
danger of economy. He has shown them that they are saving, not for their