The whole transaction, my Lords, was an act of gross violence, ushered in by a gross fraud.  It appears that no pensions were ever intended to be paid; and this you will naturally guess would be the event, when such a strange metamorphosis was to be made as that of turning a great landed interest into a pensionary payment.  As it could answer no other purpose, so it could be intended for no other, than that of getting possession of these jaghires by fraud.  This man, my Lords, cannot commit a robbery without indulging himself at the same time in the practice of his favorite arts of fraud and falsehood.

And here I must again remind your Lordships, that at the time of the treaty of Chunar the jaghires were held in the following manner.  Of the 285,000_l._ a year which was to be confiscated, the old grants of Sujah Dowlah, [and?] the grandfather of the Nabob, amounted to near two thirds of the whole, as you will find in the paper to which we refer you.  By this confiscation, therefore, the Nabob was authorized to resume grants of which he had not been the grantor.

    [Mr. Burke here read the list of the jaghires.]

Now, my Lords, you see that all these estates, except 25,782_l._ a year, were either jaghires for the Nabob’s own immediate family, settled by his father upon his mother, and by his father’s father upon his grandmother, and upon Salar Jung, his uncle, or were the property of the most considerable nobility, to the gross amount of 285,000_l._ Mr. Hastings confesses that the Nabob reluctantly made the confiscation to the extent proposed.  Why?  “Because,” says he, “the orderlies, namely, certain persons so called, subservient to his debaucheries, were persons whom he wished to spare.”  Now I am to show you that this man, whatever faults he may have in his private morals, (with which we have nothing at all to do,) has been slandered throughout by Mr. Hastings.  Take his own account of the matter.  “The Nabob,” says he, “would have confiscated all the rest, except his orderlies, whom he would have spared; but I, finding where his partiality lay, compelled him to sacrifice the whole; for otherwise he would have sacrificed the good to save the bad:  whereas,” says Mr. Hastings, “in effect my principle was to sacrifice the good, and at the same time to punish the bad.”  Now compare the account he gives of the proceedings of Asoph ul Dowlah with his own.  Asoph ul Dowlah, to save some unworthy persons who had jaghires, would, if left to his own discretion, have confiscated those only of the deserving; while Mr. Hastings, to effect the inclusion of the worthless in the confiscation, confiscates the jaghires of the innocent and the virtuous men of high rank, and of those who had all the ties of Nature to plead for the Nabob’s forbearance, and reduced them to a state of dependency and degradation.