Your Lordships have been already told by one of my able fellow Managers, that Sir Elijah Impey is the person who carried up the message alluded to in Mr. Middleton’s letter.  We have charged it, as an aggravation of the offences of the prisoner at your bar, that the Chief-Justice, who, by the sacred nature of his office, and by the express provisions of the act of Parliament under which he was sent out to India to redress the wrongs of the natives, should be made an instrument for destroying the property, real and personal, of this people.  When it first came to our knowledge that all this private intrigue for the destruction of these high women was carried on through the intrigue of a Chief-Justice, we felt such shame and such horror, both for the instrument and the principal, as I think it impossible to describe, or for anything but complete and perfect silence to express.

But by Sir Elijah Impey was that order carried up to seize and confiscate the treasures of the Begums.  We know that neither the Company nor the Nabob had any claim whatever upon these treasures.  On the contrary, we know that two treaties had been made for the protection of them.  We know that the Nabob, while he was contesting about some elephants and carriages, and some other things that he said were in the hands of their steward, did allow that the treasures in the custody of his grandmother and of his mother’s principal servants were their property.  This is the Nabob who is now represented by Mr. Hastings and his counsel to have become the instrument of destroying his mother and grandmother, and everything else that ought to be dear to mankind, throughout the whole train of his family.

Mr. Hastings, having resolved to seize upon the treasures of the Begums, is at a loss for some pretence of justifying the act.  His first justification of it is on grounds which all tyrants have ready at their hands.  He begins to discover a legal title to that of which he wished to be the possessor, and on this title sets up a claim to these treasures.  I say Mr. Hastings set up this claim, because by this time I suppose your Lordships will not bear to hear the Nabob’s name on such an occasion.  The prisoner pretended, that, by the Mahometan law, these goods did belong to the Nabob; but whether they did or did not, he had himself been an active instrument in the treaty for securing their possession to the Begums,—­a security which he attempts to unlock by his constructions of the Mahometan law.  Having set up this title, the guaranty still remained; and how is he to get rid of that?  In his usual way.  “You have rebelled, you have taken up arms against your own son,” (for that is the pretext,) “and therefore my guaranty is gone, and your goods, whether you have a title to them or not, are to be confiscated for your rebellion.”  This is his second expedient by way of justification.