time announce to them the orders of our superiors, which more than indicate the reverse.”  Now, my Lords, to what does all this amount?  “First,” says he, “I will not do them justice,—­I will not enter upon an inquiry into their wrongs.”  Why?  “Because they charge us with having inflicted them.”  Then, surely, for that reason, you ought to commence an inquiry.  “No,” says he, “that would be telling them that our superiors suspect we are in the wrong.”  But when his superiors more than indicated suspicions, was he not bound tenfold to make that inquiry, for his honor and for their satisfaction, which they direct him to make?  No, he will not do it, “because,” says he, “the Begums would either accept the offer of an asylum in the Company’s territories, to the proclaimed scandal of the Vizier, which would not add to the credit of our government, or they would remain in his dominions, but not under his authority, to add to his vexations, and the disorders of the country, by continual intrigues and seditions.”

You see, my Lords, this man is constantly thrusting this peaceable Nabob before him; goading and pushing him on, as if with a bayonet behind, to the commission of everything that is base and dishonorable.  You have him here declaring that he will not satisfy the Directors, his masters, in their inquiries about those acts, for fear of the Nabob’s taking umbrage, and getting into a flame with his mother,—­and for fear the mother, supported by the opinion of the Directors, should be induced to resent her wrongs.  What, I say, does all this amount to?  It amounts to this:—­“The Begums accuse me of doing them injustice; the Directors indicate a suspicion that they have been injured; therefore I will not inquire into the matter.”  Why?  “Because it may raise disturbances.”  But what disturbance could it raise?  The mother is disarmed, and could not hurt the Nabob.  All her landed estates he knew were confiscated; he knew all her money was in his own possession; he knew she had not the means, if she had been disposed, to create intrigues and cabals;—­what disturbance, then, could be created by his sending a letter to know what she had to say upon the subject of her wrongs?

“If” says he, “the Begums think themselves aggrieved.” Observe, my Lords, that the institution of an inquiry is no measure of the Begums; it is an order of the Court of Directors, made by them upon his own representation of his own case, and upon nothing else.  The Begums did not dare to murmur; they did not dare to ask for redress, God knows the poor creatures were, at or about the time, his prisoners,—­robbed,—­stripped of everything,—­without hope and without resource.  But the Directors, doing their duty upon that occasion, did condemn him upon his own false representations contained in that bundle of affidavits upon which his counsel now contend that your Lordships should acquit him.—­“But,” says he, “are they to appeal to a foreign jurisdiction?”