by the prisoner at your bar. Major Browne was asked, "What was the
opinion at Delhi respecting the rank, quality, and character of the
Princesses of Oude, or of either of them?"--"The elder, or Munny Begum,
was," says he, "a woman of high rank: she was, I believe, the daughter
of Saadut Ali Khân, a person of high rank in the time of Mahommed
Shah."--"Do you know whether any woman in all Hindostan was considered
of superior rank or birth?"--He answers, "I believe not, except those of
the royal family. She was a near relation to Mirza Shaffee Khân, who was
a noble of nobles, the first person at that day in the empire." In
answer to another question put by a noble Lord, in the same examination,
respecting the conversation which he had with Mirza Shaffee Khân, and of
which he had given an account, he says, "He [Mirza Shaffee Khân] spoke
of the attempt to seize the treasures of the Begums, which was then
suspected, in terms of resentment, and as a disgrace in which he
participated, as being related by blood to the house of Sufdar Jung, who
was the husband of the old Begum." He says afterwards, in the same
examination, that he, the Begum's husband, was the second man, and that
her father was the first man, in the Mogul empire. Now the Mogul empire,
when this woman came into the world, was an empire of that dignity that
kings were its subjects; and this very Mirza Shaffee Khân, that we speak
of, her near relation, was then a prince with a million a year revenue,
and a man of the first rank, after the Great Mogul, in the whole empire.

My Lords, these were people that ought to have been treated with a
little decorum. When we consider the high rank of their husbands, their
fathers, and their children, a rank so high that we have nothing in
Great Britain to compare with theirs, we cannot be surprised that they
were left in possession of great revenues, great landed estates, and
great moneyed property. All the female parts of these families, whose
alliance was, doubtless, much courted, could not be proffered in