My Lords, here is a very proper demand.  The Nabob is astonished at the suspicion, that such a woman as Munny Begum, whose trade in youth had been delusion, should be capable of deluding anybody.  Astonishing it certainly was, that a woman who had been a deluder in youth should be suspected to be the same in old age, and that he, a young man, should be subject to her artifices.  “They must suspect me to be a great blockhead,” he says, “if a man of my rank is to be deluded.”  There he forgot that it is the unhappy privilege of great men to be cheated, to be deluded, much more than other persons; but he thought it so impossible in the case of Munny Begum, that he says, “Produce me the traitor that could suppose it possible for me to be deluded, when I call for this woman as the governor of the country.  I demand satisfaction.”  I rather wonder that Mr. Hastings did not inform him who it was that had reported so gross and improbable a tale, and deliver him up to the fury of the Nabob.

Mr. Hastings is absolutely besieged by him; for he receives another letter upon the 3d of September.  Here are four letters following one another quick as post expresses with horns sounding before them.  “Oh, I die, I perish, I sink, if Munny Begum is not put into the government of the country!—­I therefore desire to have her put into the government of the country, and that you will not keep me longer in this painful suspense, but will be kindly pleased to write immediately to the Munny Begum, that she take on herself the administration of the affairs of the nizamut, which is, in fact, her own family, without the interference of any other person whatever:  by this you will give me complete satisfaction.”  Here is a correspondence more like an amorous than a state correspondence.  What is this man so eager about, what in such a rage about, that he cannot endure the smallest delay of the post with common patience?  Why, lest this old woman (who is not his mother, and with whom he had no other tie of blood) should not be made mistress of himself and the whole country!  However, in a very few months afterwards he himself is appointed by Mr. Hastings to the government; and you may easily judge by the preceding letters who was to govern.  It would be an affront to your Lordships’ judgment to attempt to prove who was to govern, after he had desired to put the whole government of affairs into the hands of Munny Begum.

Now, Munny Begum having obtained this salary, and being invested with this authority, and made in effect the total and entire governor of the country, as I have proved by the Nabob’s letters, let us see the consequences of it; and then I desire to know whether your Lordships can believe that in all this haste, which, in fact, is Mr. Hastings’s haste and impatience, (for we shall prove that the Nabob never did or could take a step but by his immediate orders and directions,)—­whether your Lordships can believe that Mr. Hastings would incur all the odium attending such transactions, unless he had some corrupt consideration.