you, that, in consequence of orders which he had received, he first put him into a gentle confinement.  Your Lordships know what that confinement was; and you know what it is for a man of his rank to be put into any confinement.  We have shown he was thereby incapable of transacting business.  His life had been threatened, if he should not pay in the balance of his accounts within a short limited time; still he was subjected to confinement, while he had money accounts to settle with the whole country.  Could a man in gaol, dishonored and reprobated, take effectual means to recover the arrears which he was called upon to pay?  Could he, in such a situation, recover the money which was unpaid to him, in such an extensive district as Benares?  Yet Mr. Markham tells the Council he thought proper “that Durbege Sing should be put under a gentle confinement, until I shall receive your Honorable Board’s orders for any future measures.”  Thus Mr. Markham, without any orders from the Council, assumed an authority to do that which we assert a Resident at Benares had no right to do, but to which he was instigated by Mr. Hastings’s recommendation that Durbege Sing should be prevented from flight.

Now, my Lords, was it to be expected that a man of Durbege Sing’s rank should suffer these hardships and indignities, and at the same time kiss the rod and say, “I have deserved it all”?  We know that all mankind revolts at oppression, if it be real; we know that men do not willingly submit to punishment, just or unjust; and we find that Durbege Sing had near relatives, who used for his relief all the power which was left them,—­that of remonstrating with his oppressors.  Two arzees, or petitions, were presented to the Council, of which we shall first call your Lordships’ attention to one from the dowager princess of Benares, in favor of her child and of her family.

    From the Ranny, widow of Bulwant Sing.  Received the 15th of
    December, 1782.

“I and my children have no hopes but from your Highness, and our honor and rank are bestowed by you.  Mr. Markham, from the advice of my enemies, having protected the farmers, would not permit the balances to be collected.  Baboo Durbege Sing frequently before desired that gentleman to show his resentment against the people who owed balances, that the balances might be collected, and to give ease to his mind for the present year, conformably to the requests signed by the presence, that he might complete the bundobust.  But that gentleman would not listen to him, and, having appointed a mutsuddy and tahsildar, employs them in the collections of the year, and sent two companies of sepoys and arrested Baboo Durbege Sing upon this charge, that he had secreted in his house many lacs of rupees from the collections, and he carried the mutsuddies and treasurer with their papers to his own presence.  He neither ascertained this matter by proofs, nor does he