families, for those who may possibly stand in the utmost need of it,
but for tyrants, robbers, and oppressors.

My Lords, I am really ashamed to have said so much upon the subject of
their titles. And yet there is one observation more to be made, and then
I shall have done with this part of the prisoner's defence. It is, that
the Nabob himself never has made a claim on this ground; even Mr.
Hastings, his despotic master, could never get him regularly and
systematically to make such a claim; the very reverse of this is the
truth. When urged on to the commission of these acts of violence by Mr.
Middleton, you have seen with what horror and how reluctantly he lends
his name; and when he does so, he is dragged like a victim to the stake.
At the beginning of this affair, where do we find that he entered this
claim, as the foundation of it? Upon one occasion only, when dragged to
join in this wicked act, something dropped from his lips which seemed
rather to have been forced into his mouth, and which he was obliged to
spit out again, about the possibility that he might have had some right
to the effects of the Begums.

We next come to consider the manner in which these acts of violence were
executed. They forced the Nabob himself to accompany their troops, and
their Resident, Mr. Middleton, to attack the city and to storm the fort
in which these ladies lived, and consequently to outrage their persons,
to insult their character, and to degrade their dignity, as well as to
rob them of all they had.

That your Lordships may learn something of one of these ladies, called
the Munny Begum, I will refer you to Major Browne's evidence,--a man who
was at Delhi, the fountain-head of all the nobility of India, and must
have known who this lady was that has been treated with such indignity