naturally to be expected.  The inhabitants rise as if by common consent; every farmer, every proprietor of land, every man who loved his family and his country, and had not fled for refuge, rose in rebellion, as they call it.  My Lords, they did rebel; it was a just rebellion.  Insurrection was there just and legal, inasmuch as Colonel Hannay, in defiance of the laws and rights of the people, exercised a clandestine, illegal authority, against which there can be no rebellion in its proper sense.

As a rebellion, however, and as a rebellion of the most unprovoked kind, it was treated by Colonel Hannay; and to one instance of the means taken for suppressing it, as proved by evidence before your Lordships, I will just beg leave to call your attention.  One hundred and fifty of the inhabitants had been shut up in one of the mud forts I have mentioned.  The people of the country, in their rage, attacked the fort, and demanded the prisoners; they called for their brothers, their fathers, their husbands, who were confined there.  It was attacked by the joint assault of men and women.  The man who commanded in the fort immediately cut off the heads of eighteen of the principal prisoners, and tossed them over the battlements to the assailants.  There happened to be a prisoner in the fort, a man loved and respected in his country, and who, whether justly or unjustly, was honored and much esteemed by all the people.  “Give us our Rajah, Mustapha Khan!” (that was the name of the man confined,) cried out the assailants.  We asked the witness at your bar what he was confined for.  He did not know; but he said that Colonel Hannay had confined him, and added, that he was sentenced to death.  We desired to see the fetwah, or decree, of the judge who sentenced him.  No,—­no such thing, nor any evidence of its having ever existed, could be produced.  We desired to know whether he could give any account of the process, any account of the magistrate, any account of the accuser, any account of the defence,—­in short, whether he could give any account whatever of this man’s being condemned to death.  He could give no account of it, but the orders of Colonel Hannay, who seems to have imprisoned and condemned him by his own arbitrary will.  Upon the demand of Rajah Mustapha by the insurgents being made known to Colonel Hannay, he sends an order to the commander of the fort, a man already stained with the blood of all the people who were murdered there, that, if he had not executed Mustapha Khan, he should execute him immediately.  The man is staggered at the order, and refuses to execute it, as not being directly addressed to him.  Colonel Hannay then sends a Captain Williams, who has appeared here as an evidence at your bar, and who, together with Captain Gordon and Major Macdonald, both witnesses also here, were all sub-farmers and actors under Colonel Hannay.  This Captain Williams, I say, goes there, and, without asking one of those questions which I put to the witness at your bar, and desiring nothing but Colonel Hannay’s word, orders the man to be beheaded; and accordingly he was beheaded, agreeably to the orders of Colonel Hannay.  Upon this, the rebellion blazed out with tenfold fury, and the people declared they would be revenged for the destruction of their zemindar.