In the year 1775, that powerful, magnificent, and illustrious prince, Sujah Dowlah, died in possession of the country of Oude.  He had long governed a happy and contented people, and, if we except the portion of tyranny which we admit he really did exercise towards some few individuals who resisted his power, he was a wise and beneficent governor.  This prince died in the midst of his power and fortune, leaving somewhere about fourscore children.  Your Lordships know that the princes of the East have a great number of wives; and we know that these women, though reputed of a secondary rank, are yet of a very high degree, and honorably maintained according to the customs of the East.  Sujah Dowlah had but one lawful wife:  he had by her but one lawful child, Asoph ul Dowlah.  He had about twenty-one male children, the eldest of whom was a person whom you have heard of very often in these proceedings, called Saadut Ali.  Asoph ul Dowlah, being the sole legitimate son, had all the pretensions to succeed his father, as Subahdar of Oude, which could belong to any person under the Mogul government.

Your Lordships will distinguish between a Zemindar, who is a perpetual landholder, the hereditary proprietor of an estate, and a Subahdar, who derives from his master’s will and pleasure all his employments, and who, instead of having the jaghiredars subject to his supposed arbitrary will, is himself a subject, and must have his sovereign’s patent for his place.  Therefore, strictly and properly speaking, there is no succession in the office of Subahdar.  At this time the Company, who alone could obtain the sunnuds [sunnud?], or patent, from the Great Mogul, upon account of the power they possessed in India, thought, and thought rightly, that with an officer who had no hereditary power there could be no hereditary engagements,—­and that in their treaty with Asoph ul Dowlah, for whom they had procured the sunnud from the Great Mogul, they were at liberty to propose their own terms, which, if honorable and mutually advantageous to the new Subahdar and to the Company, they had a right to insist upon.  A treaty was therefore concluded between the Company and Asoph ul Dowlah, in which the latter stipulated to pay a fixed subsidy for the maintenance of a certain number of troops, by which the Company’s finances were greatly relieved and their military strength greatly increased.

This treaty did not contain one word which could justify any interference in the Nabob’s government.  That evil system, as Mr. Hastings calls it, is not even mentioned or alluded to; nor is there, I again say, one word which authorized Warren Hastings, or any other person whatever, to interfere in the interior affairs of his country.  He was legally constituted Viceroy of Oude; his dignity of Vizier of the Empire, with all the power which that office gave him, derived from and held under the Mogul government, he legally possessed; and this evil system, which Mr. Hastings says led him to commit the enormities of which you shall hear by-and-by, was neither more nor less than what I have now stated.