“I never found resource equal to the necessary expenses.  Every year, by taking from the ministers, and selling the articles of my harkhanna, I with great distress transacted the business.  But I could not take care of my dependants:  so that some of my brothers, from their difficulties, arose and departed; and the people of the Khord Mohul of the late Nabob, who are all my mothers, from their distresses are reduced to poverty and involved in difficulties.  No man of rank is deficient in the care of his dependants, in proportion to his ability.”

     Another Letter from the Vizier, received the 31st July, 1784.

“My brother, dear as life, Saadut Ali Khan, has requested that I would permit his mother to go and reside with him.  My friend, all the mothers of my brothers, and the women of the late Nabob, whom I respect as my own mothers, are here, and it is incumbent upon me to support them:  accordingly I do it; and it is improper that they should be separated, nor do I approve it.  By God’s blessing and your kindness, I hope that all the women of the late Nabob may remain here; it is the wish also of my grandmother and my mother that they should.”

Your Lordships now see in what degree of estimation the Nabob held these women.  He regarded the wives of his father as his honorary mothers; he considers their children as his brethren; he thinks it would be highly dishonorable to his government, if one of them was taken out of the sanctuary in which they are placed, and in which, he says, the great of the country are obliged to maintain their dependants.  This is the account given by the person best acquainted with the usages of the country, best acquainted with his own duties, best acquainted with his own wishes.

Now, my Lords, you will see in what light another person, the agent of a trading company, who designates himself under the name of Majesty, and assumes other great distinctions, presumes also to consider these persons,—­and in what contempt he is pleased to hold what is respected and what is held sacred in that country.  What I am now going to quote is from the prisoner’s second defence.  For I must remind your Lordships that Mr. Hastings has made three defences,—­one in the House of Commons, another in the lobby of the House of Commons, and a third at your Lordships’ bar.  The second defence, though delivered without name, to the members in the lobby of the House of Commons, has been proved at your Lordships’ bar to be written by himself.  This lobby, this out-of-door defence, militates in some respects, as your Lordships will find, with the in-door defence; but it probably contains the real sentiments of Mr. Hastings himself, delivered with a little more freeness when he gets into the open air,—­like the man who was so vain of some silly plot he had hatched, that he told it to the hackney-coachman, and every man he met in the streets.