Now does the history of tyranny furnish, does the history of popular violence deposing kings furnish, anything like the dreadful deposition of this prince, and the cruel and abominable tyranny that has been exercised over him?  Consider, too, my Lords, for what object all this was done.  Was Mr. Hastings endeavoring, by his arbitrary interference and the use of his superior power, to screen a people from the usurpation and power of a tyrant,—­from any strong and violent acts against property, against dignity, against nobility, against the freedom of his people?  No:  you see here a monarch deposed, in effect, by persons pretending to be his allies, and assigning what are pretended to be his wishes as the motive for using his usurped authority in the execution of these acts of violence against his own family and his subjects.  You see him struggling against this violent prostitution of his authority.  He refuses the sanction of his name, which before he had given up to Mr. Hastings to be used as he pleased, and only begs not to be made an instrument of wrong which his soul abhors, and which would make him infamous throughout the world.  Mr. Middleton, however, assumes the sovereignty of the country.  “I,” he says, “am Nabob of Oude:  the jaghires shall be confiscated:  I have given my orders, and they shall be supported by a military force.”

I am ashamed to have so far distrusted your Lordships’ honorable and generous feelings as to have offered you, upon this occasion, any remarks which you must have run before me in making.  Those feelings which you have, and ought to have, feelings born in the breasts of all men, and much more in men of your Lordships’ elevated rank, render my remarks unnecessary.  I need not, therefore, ask what you feel, when a foreign resident at a prince’s court takes upon himself to force that prince to act the part of a tyrant, and, upon his resistance, openly and avowedly assumes the sovereignty of the country.  You have it in proof that Mr. Middleton did this.  He not only put his own name to the orders for this horrible confiscation, but he actually proceeded to dispossess the jaghiredars of their lands, and to send them out of the country.  And whom does he send, in the place of this plundered body of nobility, to take possession of the country?  Why, the usurers of Benares.  Yes, my Lords, he immediately mortgages the whole country to the usurers of Benares, for the purpose of raising money upon it:  giving it up to those bloodsuckers, dispossessed of that nobility, whose interest, whose duty, whose feelings, and whose habits made them the natural protectors of the people.