My Lords, we produce this letter to your Lordships, because it is a letter which begins with “Dear Sir Elijah,” and alludes to some family matters, and is therefore more likely to discover the real truth, the true genius of a proceeding, than all the formal and official stuff that ever was produced.  You see the tenderness and affection in which they proceed.  You see it is his dear Sir Elijah.  You see that he does not tell the dear Sir Elijah, the Chief-Justice of India, the pillar of the law, the great conservator of personal liberty and private property,—­he does not tell him that he has been able to convict these eunuchs of any crime; he does not tell him he has the pleasure of informing him what matter he has got upon which a decision at law may be grounded; he does not tell him that he has got the least proof of the want of title in those ladies:  not a word of the kind.  You cannot help observing the soft language used in this tender billet-doux between Mr. Middleton and Sir Elijah Impey.  You would imagine that they were making love, and that you heard the voice of the turtle in the land.  You hear the soft cooing, the gentle addresses,—­“Oh, my hopes!” to-day, “My fears!” to-morrow,—­all the language of friendship, almost heightened into love; and it comes at last to “I have got at the secret hoards of these ladies.—­Let us rejoice, my dear Sir Elijah; this is a day of rejoicing, a day of triumph; and this triumph we have obtained by seizing upon the old lady’s eunuchs,—­in doing which, however, we found a great deal of difficulty.”  You would imagine, from this last expression, that it was not two eunuchs, with a few miserable women clinging about them, that they had to seize, but that they had to break through all the guards which we see lovers sometimes breaking through, when they want to get at their ladies.  Hardly ever did the beauty of a young lady excite such rapture; I defy all the charms this country can furnish to produce a more wonderful effect than was produced by the hoards of these two old women, in the bosoms of Sir Elijah Impey and Mr. Middleton.  “We have got,” he exultingly says, “we have got to the secret hoards of this old lady!” And I verily believe there never was a passion less dissembled; there Nature spoke; there was truth triumphant, honest truth.  Others may feign a passion; but nobody can doubt the raptures of Mr. Hastings, Sir Elijah Impey, and Mr. Middleton.

My Lords, one would have expected to have found here something of their crimes, something of their rebellion, for he talks of a few “necessary severities.”  But no:  you find the real criminal, the real object, was the secret hoards of the old ladies.  It is true, a few severities were necessary to obtain that object:  however, they did obtain it.  How then did they proceed?  First, they themselves took and received, in weight and tale, all the money that was in the place.  I say all; for whether there was any more they never have discovered, with