My Lords, we here see a body of usurers put into possession of all the estates of the nobility:  let us now see if this act was necessary, even for the avowed purposes of its agents,—­the relief of the Nabob’s financial difficulties, and the payment of his debts to the Company.  Mr. Middleton has told your Lordships that these jaghires would pay the Company’s debt completely in two years.  Then would it not have been better to have left these estates in the hands of their owners, and to have oppressed them in some moderate, decent way?  Might they not have left the jaghiredars to raise the sums required by some settlement with the bankers of Benares, in which the repayment of the money within five or six years might have been secured, and the jaghiredars have had in the mean time something to subsist upon?  Oh, no! these victims must have nothing to live upon.  They must be turned out.  And why?  Mr. Hastings commands it.

Here I must come in aid of Mr. Middleton a little; for one cannot but pity the miserable instruments that have to act under Mr. Hastings.  I do not mean to apologize for Mr. Middleton, but to pity the situation of persons who, being servants of the Company, were converted, by the usurpation of this man, into his subjects and his slaves.  The mind of Mr. Middleton revolts.  You see him reluctant to proceed.  The Nabob begs a respite.  You find in the Resident a willingness to comply.  Even Mr. Middleton is placable.  Mr. Hastings alone is obdurate.  His resolution to rob and to destroy was not to be moved, and the estates of the whole Mahometan nobility of a great kingdom were confiscated in a moment.  Your Lordships will observe that his orders to Mr. Middleton allow no forbearance.  He writes thus to him.

“Sir,—­My mind has been for some days suspended between two opposite impulses:  one arising from the necessity of my return to Calcutta; the other, from the apprehension of my presence being more necessary and more urgently wanted at Lucknow.  Your answer to this shall decide my choice.

“I have waited thus long in the hopes of hearing that some progress had been made in the execution of the plan which I concluded with the Nabob in September last.  I do not find that any step towards it has been yet taken, though three months are elapsed, and little more than that period did appear to me requisite to have accomplished the most essential parts of it, and to have brought the whole into train.  This tardiness, and the opposition prepared to the only decided act yet undertaken, have a bad appearance.  I approve the Nabob’s resolutions to deprive the Begums of their ill-employed treasures.  In both services, it must be your care to prevent an abuse of the powers given to those that are employed in them.  You yourself ought to be personally present.  You must not allow any negotiation or forbearance, but must prosecute both services, until the Begums are at the entire mercy of the Nabob,