He says,—­“Begums are the ladies of an Eastern prince; but these women are also styled the ladies of the late Vizier, and their sufferings are painted in such strong colors that the unsuspecting reader is led to mix the subjects together, and to suppose that these latter, too, were princesses of Oude, that all their sufferings proceeded from some act of mine, or had the sanction of my authority or permission.  The fact is, that the persons of the Khord Mohul (or Little Seraglio) were young creatures picked up wherever youth and beauty could be found, and mostly purchased from amongst the most necessitous and meanest ranks of the people, for the Nabob’s pleasures.”  In the in-door defence, he says, “The said women, who were mostly persons of low condition, and the said children, if any such there were, lived in the Khord Mohul, on an establishment entirely distinct from the said Begums’.”

My Lords, you have seen what was the opinion of the Nabob, who ought to know the nature and circumstances of his father’s palace, respecting these women; you hear what Mr. Hastings’s opinion is:  and now the question is, whether your Lordships will consider these women in the same light in which the person does who is most nearly connected with them and most likely to know them, or in the way in which Mr. Hastings has thought proper, within doors and without doors, to describe them.  Your Lordships will be pleased to observe that he has brought no proof whatever of facts which are so boldly asserted by him in defiance of proof to the contrary, totally at variance with the letter of the son of the man to whom these women belonged.  Your Lordships, I say, will remark that he has produced not one word of evidence, either within the House of Commons or the House of Peers, or in the lobby, or anywhere else, to verify any one word he has said.  He slanders these women in order to lessen that compassion which your Lordships might have for the sufferings he inflicted upon them.  But admitting that some of these women were of a meaner condition, and that they derived nothing from their connection with the dignity of the person by whom they had children, (and we know that in the whole they amounted to about fourscore children, the Nabob having a race like the patriarchs of old, as many great persons in that part of the world still have,)—­supposing, I say, all this to be true, yet, when persons are reduced from ease and affluence to misery and distress, they naturally excite in the mind a greater degree of compassion by comparing the circumstances in which they once stood with those into which they are fallen:  for famine, degradation, and oppression were famine, degradation, and oppression to those persons, even though they were as mean as Mr. Hastings chooses to represent them.  But I hope, as you will sympathize with the great on account of their condition, that you will sympathize with all mankind on the ground of the common condition of humanity which belongs to us all; therefore I hope your Lordships will not consider the calumny of Mr. Hastings against those women as any other than as an aggravation of his offence against them.  That is the light in which the House of Commons considered it; for they had heard both his in-door and out-door defence, and they still persevered in making the charge, and do persevere in making it still.