We have now gone through the first stage of Mr. Hastings’s confiscation of the estates of these unhappy people.  When it came to be put in execution, Mr. Middleton finds the Nabob reluctant in the greatest degree to make this sacrifice of his family and of all his nobility.  It touched him in every way in which shame and sympathy can affect a man.  He falls at the feet of Mr. Middleton; he says, “I signed the treaty of Chunar upon an assurance that it was never meant to be put in force.”  Mr. Middleton nevertheless proceeds; he sends the family of the Nabob out of the country; but he entertains fears of a general revolt as the consequence of this tyrannical act, and refers the case back to Mr. Hastings, who insists upon its being executed in its utmost extent.  The Nabob again remonstrates in the strongest manner; he begs, he prays, he dissembles, he delays.  One day he pretends to be willing to submit, the next he hangs back, just as the violence of Mr. Hastings or his own natural feelings and principles of justice dragged him one way or dragged him another.  Mr. Middleton, trembling, and under the awe of that dreadful responsibility under which your Lordships may remember Mr. Hastings had expressly laid him upon that occasion, ventures at once to usurp the Nabob’s government.  He usurped it openly and avowedly.  He declared that he himself would issue his purwannahs as governor of the country, for the purpose of executing this abominable confiscation.  He assumed, I say, to himself the government of the country, and Mr. Hastings had armed him with a strong military force for that purpose; he declared he would order those troops to march for his support; he at last got this reluctant, struggling Nabob to consent in the manner we have described.

I shall now read to your Lordships Mr. Middleton’s letters, that you may hear these men with their own mouths describing their own acts, and that your Lordships may then judge whether the highest tone and language of crimination comes up to their own description of their own proceedings.

        “Lucknow, the 6th of Dec., 1781.

“Finding the Nabob wavering in his determination about the resumption of the jaghires, I this day, in presence of, and with the minister’s concurrence, ordered the necessary purwannahs to be written to the several aumils for that purpose, and it was my firm resolution to have dispatched them this evening, with proper people to see them punctually and implicitly carried into execution; but before they were all transcribed, I received a message from the Nabob, who had been informed by the minister of the resolution I had taken, entreating that I would withhold the purwannahs till to-morrow morning, when he would attend me, and afford me satisfaction on this point.  As the loss of a few hours in the dispatch of the purwannahs appeared of little moment, and as it is possible the Nabob, seeing that the business will at all events be done, may make it an act