was the turn of the learned Counsel's mind, that, when he attempted to be
humorous, no jest could be found, and, when serious, no fact was
visible."] guarded by holy Superstition, and to be snatched from thence
only by Sacrilege."

In showing that the Nabob was driven to this robbery of his relatives by
other considerations than those of the pretended rebellion, which was
afterwards conjured up by Mr. Hastings to justify it, he says,--

"The fact is, that through all his defences--through all his various
false suggestions--through all these various rebellions and
disaffections, Mr. Hastings never once lets go this plea--of
extinguishable right in the Nabob. He constantly represents the seizing
the treasures as a resumption of a right which he could not part
with;--as if there were literally something in the Koran, that made it
criminal in a true Mussulman to keep his engagements with his relations,
and impious in a son to abstain from plundering his mother. I do gravely
assure your Lordships that there is no such doctrine in the Koran, and no
such principle makes a part in the civil or municipal jurisprudence of
that country. Even after these Princesses had been endeavoring to
dethrone the Nabob and to extirpate the English, the only plea the Nabob
ever makes, is his right under the Mahometan law; and the truth is, he
appears never to have heard any other reason, and I pledge myself to make
it appear to Your Lordships, however extraordinary it may be, that not
only had the Nabob never heard of the rebellion till the moment of
seizing the palace, but, still further, that he never heard of it at
all--that this extraordinary rebellion, which was as notorious as the
rebellion of 1745 in London, was carefully concealed from those two
parties--the Begums who plotted it, and the Nabob who was to be the
victim of it.