take Major Naylor for a colonel, (for he was the superior officer to Captain Gordon,) and think him the Colonel Saib?  For errors of that kind may be committed in our own country.  Every day we may take a major for a lieutenant-colonel.  This was an error that might easily have happened in such a case.  He was in as high rank as Colonel Hannay; for Colonel Hannay at that time was only a major.  I do not believe either of them was properly entitled to the name of Colonel Saib.  I am ashamed, my Lords, to be obliged to remark upon this prevarication.  Their own endeavors to get rid of their own written acts by contradictory evidence and false constructions sufficiently clear these women of the crimes of which they were accused; and I may now ask the prisoner at your bar how he dares to produce Captain Gordon here, how he dares thus to insult the Peers, how he dares thus to insult the public justice of his country, after not having dared to inquire, upon the spot, of this man, to whom he was referred by the Begums for an account of this very transaction?

I hope your Lordships have got enough of this kind of evidence.  All the rest is of the same batch, and of the same description,—­made up of nothing but hearsays, except in one particular only.  This I shall now mention to your Lordships.  Colonel Popham and another gentleman have told you, that, in a battle with Cheyt Sing’s forces, they took prisoners two wounded nudjeeves or swordsmen, and that these men told them that they were sent there by the Begums,—­that they had got two rupees and two wounds, but that they thought two rupees a bad compensation for two wounds.  These two men, with their two wounds and two rupees, had, however, been dismissed.  It does not appear that this accident was considered by these officers to be of consequence enough to make them ever tell one word of it to Mr. Hastings, though they knew he was collecting evidence of the disaffection of the Begums, of all kinds, good, bad, and indifferent, from all sorts of persons.

My Lords, I must beg leave to say a few words upon this matter; because I consider it as one of the most outrageous violations of your Lordships’ dignity, and the greatest insult that was ever offered to a court of justice.  A nudjeeve is a soldier armed with a sword.  It appears in evidence that the Nabob had several corps of nudjeeves in his service; that the Begums had some nudjeeves; and that Colonel Hannay had a corps of nudjeeves.  It is well known that every prince in Hindostan has soldiers of that description,—­in like manner, probably, as the princes of Europe have their guards.  The whole, then, amounts to this:  that a story told by two men who were wounded in an action far from the place from which they were supposed to come, who were not regularly examined, not cross-examined, not even kept for examination, and whose evidence was never reported, is to be a reason why you are to believe that these Begums were concerned in a rebellion against their son, and deserved to forfeit all their lands and goods, and to suffer the indignities that we have stated.