to an unlimited degree.  You will find in Chardin’s Travels, where he treats of the subject of marriage, that such is the custom of all the princes of the East.  The wives of this subordinate class, though they are in reality no better than concubines, and are subject to the power and caprices of their lords, are yet allowed, in the eye of the severest moralists, to have some excuse for their frailty and their weakness; and they accordingly always do find a degree of favor in this world, and become the object of particular protection.

We know that Sujah ul Dowlah was a man unquestionably in his manners very licentious with regard to women, that he had a great number of these women in his family, and that his women and the women attendant upon the persons of his favorites had increased to a very great number.  We know that his sons amounted to twenty,—­or, according to Mr. Hastings’s own account, to nineteen.  Montesquieu supposes that there are more females born in the East than in the West.  But he says this upon no good ground.  We know by better and more regular information concerning this matter, that the birth of males and females in that country is in the same proportion as it is here; and therefore, if you suppose that he had twenty sons, you may suppose he had about nineteen daughters.  By the customs of that country, all these sons and daughters were considered as persons of eminent distinction, though inferior to the legitimate children,—­assuming the rank of their father, without considering the rank which their mother held.  All these wives with their children, and all their female servants and attendants, amounting in the whole to about eight hundred persons, were shut up in what they call the Khord Mohul, or Lesser Palace.  This place is described by one of the witnesses to be about as large as St. James’s Square.  Your Lordships have been told, that, in other circumstances as well as this, these women were considered as objects of a great degree of respect, and of the greatest degree of protection.  I refer your Lordships to the treaty by which their maintenance was guarantied by the English government.

In order to let your Lordships see that I state nothing to you but what is supported not only by general history, which is enough to support an account of general manners, but by the particular and peculiar opinions of a person best informed of the nature of the case, I will refer you to the Nabob himself:  for, undoubtedly, the Nabob of Oude, the Vizier of the Empire, the Subahdar of the country, was most likely to be the best judge of what respect was due to the women of his father’s family.  I will therefore read to your Lordships, from his own letters, what the Nabob’s opinion was upon this subject.

     Extract of a Letter from the Vizier, received 23d of August,
     1782.