We have now done with this business:  a business as atrocious as any that is known in the history of mankind; a business that has stained, throughout all Asia, the British character, and by which our fame for honor, integrity, and public faith has been forfeited; a business which has introduced us throughout that country as breakers of faith, destroyers of treaties, plunderers of the weak and unprotected, and has dishonored and will forever dishonor the British name.  Your Lordships have had all this in evidence.  You have seen in what manner the Nabob, his country, his revenues, his subjects, his mother, his family, his nobility, and all their fortunes, real and personal, have been disposed of by the prisoner at your bar; and having seen this, you will by the impatience of this criminal estimate the patience of the unfortunate women into whose injuries he refused to inquire.  What he would not do the Commons have done.  They know that you have a feeling different from that which he manifested on this occasion; they do not approach you suppliantly, but demand justice; they insist, that, as the Commons have done their part, your Lordships will perform yours.

* * * * *

We shall next proceed to show your Lordships how he acted towards another set of women, the women of the late Sujah Dowlah, and for whom the Directors had ordered a maintenance to be secured by an express treaty.  You will see that he is cruel towards the weak sex, and to all others in proportion as they are weak and powerless to resist him.  You will see, I say, when he had usurped the whole government of Oude, and brought it into a servile dependence on himself, how these women fared; and then your Lordships will judge whether or not, and in what degree, he is criminal.

SPEECH

IN

GENERAL REPLY.

SEVENTH DAY.  THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1794.

My Lords,—­When I had last the honor of addressing your Lordships from this place, my observations were principally directed to the unjust confiscation and seizure of the jaghires and treasures of the Begums, without previous accusation, or trial, or subsequent inquiry into their conduct, in violation of a treaty made with them and guarantied by the East India Company,—­to the long imprisonment and cruel treatment of their ministers, and to the false pretences and abominable principles by which the prisoner at your bar has attempted to justify his conduct.  The several acts of violence and of oppression were, as we have shown your Lordships, committed with circumstances of aggravated atrocity highly disgraceful to the British name and character,—­and particularly by his forcing the Nabob to become the means and instrument of reducing his mother and grandmother and their families to absolute want and distress.