My Lords, I am really ashamed to mention so scandalous a thing; but let us put a case:  let us suppose that we had accused Mr. Hastings of instigating the Rajah of Berar to fall upon some of the country powers, and that the evidence we produced at your bar to prove it was, that an officer had taken two nudjeeves, who declared they were instigated by Mr. Hastings to go into the service of that Rajah:  could you bear such a thing? would you suffer such evidence to be produced? or do you think that we should have so little regard for our own reputation as to venture to produce such evidence before you?  Again, we have charged Mr. Hastings with committing several acts of violence against the Begums.  Let us suppose our proof to be, that two persons who never appeared before nor since, that two grenadiers in English uniforms, (which would be a great deal stronger than the case of the nudjeeves, because they have no particular uniform belonging to them,) that two English grenadiers, I say, had been taken prisoners in some action and let go again, who said that Mr. Hastings had instigated them to make war upon the Begums:  would your Lordships suffer such evidence to be produced before you?  No.  And yet two of the first women in India are to be stripped of all they have in the world upon no better evidence than that which you would utterly reject.  You would not disgrace the British peerage, you would not disgrace this court of justice, you would not disgrace human reason itself, by confiscating, on such evidence, the meanest property of the meanest wretch.  You would not subject to the smallest fine for the smallest delinquency, upon such evidence.  I will venture to say, that, in an action of assault and battery, or in an action for the smallest sum, such evidence would be scouted as odious and contemptible, even supposing that a perfect reliance might be placed upon its truth.  And yet this is the sort of evidence upon which the property, the dignity, and the rank of some of the first persons in Asia are to be destroyed,—­by which a British guaranty, and the honor and dignity of the crown of Great Britain, and of the Parliament itself, which sent out this man, are to be forfeited.

Observe, besides, my Lords, that the two swordsmen said they were sent by the Begums.  Now they could not be sent by the Begums in their own person.  This was a thing in India impossible.  They might, indeed, have been sent by Jewar and Behar Ali Khan:  and then we ask again, How came these ministers not to be called to an account at the time?  Why were they not called upon for their muster-rolls of these nudjeeves?  No, these men and women suffer the penalty, but they never hear the accusation nor the evidence.