these are clear, irrefragable, and eternal principles.  But if, instead of exacting a part by a proportionable rate, the prince should go further and attempt to shake the whole mass of property itself, a mass perhaps not much less than that which is possessed by the whole peers of Great Britain, by confiscating the whole of the estates at once, as a government resource, without the charge or pretence of any crime, I say that such an act would be oppressive, cruel, and wicked in the highest degree.  Yet this is what Mr. Hastings projected, and actually did accomplish.

My Lords, at the treaty of Chunar, as it is called, Mr. Hastings (for he always artfully feels his way as he proceeds) first says, that the Nabob shall be permitted to do this act, if he pleases.  He does not assume the government.  He does not compel the Nabob to do anything.  He does not force upon him this abandoned and wicked confiscation of the property of the whole nobility of a great country.  All that he says is this,—­“The Nabob may be permitted to resume these jaghires.”  Why permitted?  If the act had been legal, proper, and justifiable, he did not want our permission; he was a sovereign in his own dominions.  But Mr. Hastings recollected that some of these jaghires (as they are called, and on which I shall say a very few words to your Lordships) were guarantied by the Company.  The jaghires of his own house, of his mother and grandmother, were guarantied by us.  I must inform your Lordships, that, upon some of our other exactions at an earlier period, the Nabob had endeavored to levy a forced loan upon the jaghiredars.  This forced loan was made and submitted to by those people upon a direct assurance of their rights in the jaghires, which right was guarantied by the British Resident, not only to the Begums, and to the whole family of the Nabob, but also to all the other objects of the tax.

Before I proceed, I will beg leave to state to you briefly the nature of these jaghires.  The jaghiredars, the holders of jaghires, form the body of the principal Mahometan nobility.  The great nobility of that country are divided into two parts.  One part consists of the zemindars, who are the ancient proprietors of land, and the hereditary nobility of the country:  these are mostly Gentoos.  The Mahometans form the other part, whose whole interest in the land consists in the jaghires:  for very few indeed of them are zemindars anywhere, in some of the provinces none of them are so; the whole of them are jaghiredars.

We have heard, my Lords, much discussion about jaghires.  It is in proof before your Lordships that they are of two sorts:  that a jaghire signifies exactly what the word fee does in the English language, or feodum in the barbarous Latin of the Feudists; that it is a word which signifies a salary or a maintenance, as did originally the English word fee, derived from the word feod and feodum.  These