My Lords, it is necessary for me to state the situation of the family, that you may judge from thence of the corrupt motives of Mr. Hastings’s proceedings.  The Nabob Jaffier Ali Khan had among the women of his seraglio a person called Munny Begum.  She was a dancing-girl, whom he had seen at some entertainment; and as he was of a licentious turn, this dancing-girl, in the course of her profession as a prostitute, so far inveigled the Nabob, that, having a child or pretending to have had a child by him, he brought her into the seraglio; and the Company’s servants sold to that son the succession of that father.  This woman had been sold as a slave,—­her profession a dancer, her occupation a prostitute.  And, my Lords, this woman having put her natural son, as we state, and shall prove, in the place of the legitimate offspring of the Nabob, having got him placed by the Company’s servants on the musnud, she came to be at the head of that part of the household which relates to the women:  which is a large and considerable trust in a country where polygamy is admitted, and where women of great rank may possibly be attended by two thousand of the same sex in inferior situations.  As soon as the legitimate son of the Nabob came to the musnud, there was no ground for keeping this woman any longer in that situation; and upon an application of the Company to Mahomed Reza Khan to know who ought to have the right of superiority, he answered, as he ought to have done, that, though all the women of the seraglio ought to have honor, yet the mother of the Nabob ought to have the superiority of it.  Therefore this woman was removed, and the mother of the Nabob was placed in her situation.  In that situation Mr. Hastings found the seraglio.  If his duties had gone no further than the regulation of an Eastern household, he ought to have kept the Nabob’s mother there by the rules of that country.

What did he do?  Not satisfied with giving to this prostitute every favor that she could desire, (and money must be the natural object of such a person,) Mr. Hastings deposes the Nabob’s own mother, turns her out of the employment, and puts at the head of the seraglio this prostitute, who at the best, in relation to him, could only be a step-mother.  If you heard no more, do your Lordships want anything further to convince you that this must be a violent, atrocious, and corrupt act,—­suppose it had gone no further than the seraglio?  But when I call this woman a dancing-girl, I state something lower than Europeans have an idea of respecting that situation.  She was born a slave, bred a dancing-girl.  Her dancing was not any of those noble and majestic movements which make part of the entertainment of the most wise, of the education of the most virtuous, which improve the manners without corrupting the morals of all civilized people, and of which, among uncivilized people, the professors have their due share of admiration; but these dances were not decent to be seen nor fit to be related.  I shall pass them by.  Your Lordships are to suppose the lowest degree of infamy in occupation and situation, when I tell you that Munny Begum was a slave and a dancing-girl.