About twenty years ago, this house, by the permission of the British Government, assumed the royal title; but in the time of Warren Hastings such an assumption would have been considered by the Mahommedans of India as a monstrous impiety.  The Prince of Oude, though he held the power, did not venture to use the style of sovereignty.  To the appellation of Nabob or Viceroy, he added that of Vizier of the monarchy of Hindostan, just as in the last century the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, though independent of the Emperor, and often in arms against him, were proud to style themselves his Grand Chamberlain and Grand Marshal.  Sujah Dowlah, then Nabob Vizier, was on excellent terms with the English.  He had a large treasure.  Allahabad and Corah were so situated that they might be of use to him and could be of none to the Company.  The buyer and seller soon came to an understanding; and the provinces which had been torn from the Mogul were made over to the Government of Oude for about half a million sterling.

But there was another matter still more important to be settled by the Vizier and the Governor.  The fate of a brave people was to be decided.  It was decided in a manner which has left a lasting stain on the fame of Hastings and of England.

The people of Central Asia had always been to the inhabitants of India what the warriors of the German forests were to the subjects of the decaying monarchy of Rome.  The dark, slender, and timid Hindoo shrank from a conflict with the strong muscle and resolute spirit of the fair race which dwelt beyond the passes.  There is reason to believe that, at a period anterior to the dawn of regular history, the people who spoke the rich and flexible Sanskrit came from regions lying far beyond the Hyphasis and the Hystaspes, and imposed their yoke on the children of the soil.  It is certain that, during the last ten centuries, a succession of invaders descended from the west on Hindostan; nor was the course of conquest ever turned back towards the setting sun, till that memorable campaign in which the cross of Saint George was planted on the walls of Ghizni.

The Emperors of Hindostan themselves came from the other side of the great mountain ridge; and it had always been their practice to recruit their army from the hardy and valiant race from which their own illustrious house sprang.  Among the military adventurers who were allured to the Mogul standards from the neighbourhood of Cabul and Candahar, were conspicuous several gallant bands, known by the name of the Rohillas.  Their services had been rewarded with large tracts of land, fiefs of the spear, if we may use an expression drawn from an analogous state of things, in that fertile plain through which the Ramgunga flows from the snowy heights of Kumaon to join the Ganges.  In the general confusion which followed the death of Aurungzebe, the warlike colony became virtually independent.  The Rohillas were distinguished from the other inhabitants