I will now show your Lordships that it is very possible, nay, very probable, and almost certain, that a great part of what these ladies possessed was a saving of their own, and independent of any grant.  It appears in the papers before you, that these unfortunate ladies had about 70,000_l._ a year, landed property.  Mr. Bristow states in evidence before your Lordships, that their annual expenses did not exceed a lac and a half, and that their income was about seven lacs; that they had possessed this for twenty years before the death of Sujah Dowlah, and from the death of that prince to the day of the robbery.  Now, if your Lordships will calculate what the savings from an income of 70,000_l._ a year will amount to, when the party spends about 15,000_l._ a year, you will see that by a regular and strict economy these people may have saved considerable property of their own, independent of their titles to any other property:  and this is a rational way of accounting for their being extremely rich.  It may be supposed, likewise, that they had all those advantages which ladies of high rank usually have in that country,—­gifts at marriage, &c.  We know that there are deeds of gift by husbands to their wives during their lifetime, and many other legal means, by which women in Asia become possessed of very great property.  But Mr. Hastings has taught them the danger of much wealth, and the danger of economy.  He has shown them that they are saving, not for their families, for those who may possibly stand in the utmost need of it, but for tyrants, robbers, and oppressors.

My Lords, I am really ashamed to have said so much upon the subject of their titles.  And yet there is one observation more to be made, and then I shall have done with this part of the prisoner’s defence.  It is, that the Nabob himself never has made a claim on this ground; even Mr. Hastings, his despotic master, could never get him regularly and systematically to make such a claim; the very reverse of this is the truth.  When urged on to the commission of these acts of violence by Mr. Middleton, you have seen with what horror and how reluctantly he lends his name; and when he does so, he is dragged like a victim to the stake.  At the beginning of this affair, where do we find that he entered this claim, as the foundation of it?  Upon one occasion only, when dragged to join in this wicked act, something dropped from his lips which seemed rather to have been forced into his mouth, and which he was obliged to spit out again, about the possibility that he might have had some right to the effects of the Begums.

We next come to consider the manner in which these acts of violence were executed.  They forced the Nabob himself to accompany their troops, and their Resident, Mr. Middleton, to attack the city and to storm the fort in which these ladies lived, and consequently to outrage their persons, to insult their character, and to degrade their dignity, as well as to rob them of all they had.