you say the elder Begum was in a constant state of rebellion?—­A. I always understood her to be disaffected to the English government:  it might not be a proper expression of mine, the word rebellion.—­Q. Do you know of any act by the elder Begum against the Vizier?—­A. I cannot state any.—­Q. Do you know of any act which you call rebellion, committed by the elder Begum against the Company?—­A. I do not know of any particular circumstance, only it was generally supposed that she was disaffected to the Company.—­Q. What acts of disaffection or hostility towards the English do you allude to, when you speak of the conversation of the world at the time?—­A. I have answered that question as fully as I can,—­that it was nothing but conversation,—­that I knew of no particular act or deed myself.”

This man, then, declares, as your Lordships have heard, that, upon cool, deliberate inquiry made at Fyzabad from all the inhabitants, he did not believe in the existence of any rebellion;—­that as to the Bhow Begum, the grandmother, who was a person that could only be charged with it in a secondary degree, and as conspiring with the other, he says he knows no facts against her, except that at the battle of Buxar, in the year 1764, she had used some odd expressions concerning the English, who were then at war with her son Sujah Dowlah.  This was long before we had any empire or pretence to empire in that part of India:  therefore the expression of a rebellion, which he had used with regard to her, was, he acknowledged, improper, and that he only meant he had formed some opinion of her disaffection to the English.

As to the Begum, he positively acquits her of any rebellion.  If he, therefore, did not know it, who was an active officer in the very centre of the alleged rebellion, and who was in possession of all the persons from whom information was to be got, who had the eunuchs in prison, and might have charged them with this rebellion, and might have examined and cross-examined them at his pleasure,—­if this man knew nothing about it, your Lordships will judge of the falsehood of this wicked rumor, spread about from hand to hand, and which was circulated by persons who at the same time have declared that they never heard of it before Sir Elijah Impey went up into the country, the messenger of Mr. Hastings’s orders to seize the treasures of the Begums, and commissioned to procure evidence in justification of that violence and robbery.

I now go to another part of this evidence.  There is a person they call Hoolas Roy,—­a man in the employment of the Resident, Mr. Middleton.  The gentlemen who are counsel for the prisoner have exclaimed, “Oh! he was nothing but a news-writer.  What! do you take any notice of him?” Your Lordships would imagine that the man whom they treat in this manner, and whose negative evidence they think fit to despise, was no better than the writers of those scandalous paragraphs which are published in our daily papers, to misrepresent the proceedings of this court to the public.  But who in fact is this Hoolas Roy, whom they represent, for the convenience of the day, to be nothing but a news-writer?  I will read to your Lordships a letter from Major Naylor to Colonel Jaques, commanding the second battalion, twentieth regiment.