“Your gracious letter, in answer to the petition of your servant from Goondah, exalted me.  From the contents, I became unspeakably impressed with the honor it conferred.  May the Almighty protect that royal purity, and bestow happiness, increase of wealth, and prosperity!  The welfare of your servant is entirely owing to your favor and benevolence; a few days have elapsed since I arrived at Goondah, with the Colonel Saib.

“This is presented for your Highness’s information.  I cherish hopes from your generosity, that, considering me in the light of one of your servants, you will always continue to exalt and honor me with your gracious letters.  May the sun of prosperity continually shine!”

These acknowledgments of the Begum’s friendly disposition and services were concealed, when the charge was made against this woman at Lucknow before Sir Elijah Impey:  I wish to impress this upon your Lordships’ mind; and that before Mr. Hastings left Bengal, in the trunk of Major Scott, his private Persian interpreter, was this letter.  Did he make that inquiry of Captain Gordon?  No.  Did he make that inquiry of Colonel Hannay?  Did he make any inquiry into the matter, after his perusal of these letters?  Or did he give this poor woman any opportunity of obtaining justice against this Captain Gordon, who, after acknowledging that he owed his life to her favor, calumniates and traduces her to her utter destruction?  No, he never did; and therefore he is chargeable, and I charge him, with everything that is wrongful in Captain Gordon’s evidence.

These papers, which carry with them a clear refutation of all the charges against the Begum, are never once produced, though Captain Gordon was referred to expressly for inquiry and explanation of the whole transaction by the woman herself.  You hear nothing of them; there is no appearance of them in the affidavits; no such papers were laid before the Supreme Council; none were transmitted to the Court of Directors:  but at last the House of Commons having come at the truth of this matter, Mr. Hastings, not daring to deny the existence of these papers, brings Captain Gordon to be examined here, in order to prove that papers which he had himself written were false.  Is this to be tolerated?  What will your Lordships think of a man that comes to attest his own infamy,—­to declare that he has written papers containing falsehoods, and to invalidate the false testimony which he had before given?  Is he to be suffered, I say, to come here, and endeavor to prove the absolute falsity of his own deeds by his own evidence?