From this view of the whole matter your Lordships will form an estimate of the spirit of Indian government and Indian justice.  But to blow away and to put an end to all their false pretences, their hearsays, and talk of nudjeeves, and wounds, and the like, I ask, Who is the first witness that we have produced upon this occasion?  It is the Nabob himself, negativing all these pretences.  Did he believe them?  Not a word from him of any rebellion, actual or suspected.  Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, said that he was obliged to wheel round, and to avoid that dangerous place, Fyzabad.  His friends urged him to this.  “For God’s sake,” say they, “have a reverend care of your sacred person!  What will become of the justice of India, what will become of the natives, if you, their legitimate protector, should fall into the hands of these wicked, rebellious women at Fyzabad?” But although the Chief-Justice does this, the Nabob, whose deposition is said to be the first object of this rebellion, takes leave of Mr. Hastings at the very moment when it is raging in the highest possible degree, and gallops into its very focus.

And under what circumstances does he do this?  He had brought some considerable forces with him.  No man of his rank in that country ever goes without them.  He left a part of these forces with Mr. Hastings, notwithstanding he was going into the centre of the rebellion.  He then went on with a corps of about a thousand horse.  He even left a part of these with Mr. Middleton, and galloped, attended by a few horse, into the very capital, where the Begums, we are told, had ten thousand armed men.  He put himself into their power, and, not satisfied with this, the very first thing we hear of him after his arrival is, that he paid his mother a friendly visit,—­thus rushing into the den of a lioness who was going to destroy her own whelp.  Is it to be credited, my Lords, that a prince would act thus who believed that a conspiracy was formed against him by his own mother?  Is it to be credited that any man would trust a mother who, contrary to all the rules of Nature and policy, had conspired to destroy her own son?

Upon this matter your Lordships have the evidence of Captain Edwards, who was aide-de-camp to the Nabob, who was about his person, his attendant at Chunar, and his attendant back again.  I am not producing this to exculpate the Begums,—­for I say you cannot try them here, you have not the parties before you, they ought to have been tried on the spot,—­but I am going to demonstrate the iniquity of this abominable plot beyond all doubt:  for it is necessary your Lordships should know the length, breadth, and depth of this mystery of iniquity.