, all the memorials of their husbands and fathers,--all were
delivered up, and valued by merchants at 50,000_l._; and they also gave
up 5,000_l._ in money, or thereabouts: so that, in reality, only about
5,000_l._, a mere nothing, a sum not worth mentioning, even in the
calculations of extortion and usury, remained unpaid.

But, my Lords, what became of all this money? When you examine these
witnesses here, they tell you it was paid to Hyder Beg Khan. Now they
had themselves received the money in tale at their own assay-table. And
when an account is demanded of the produce of the goods, they shrink
from it, and say it was Hyder Beg Khan who received the things and sold
them. Where is Hyder Beg Khan's receipt? The Begums say (and the thing
speaks for itself) that even gold and jewels coming from them lost their
value; that part of the goods were spoilt, being kept long unsold in
damp and bad warehouses; and that the rest of the goods were sold, as
thieves sell their spoil, for little or nothing. In all this business
Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton were themselves the actors, chief actors;
but now, when they are called to account, they substitute Hyder Beg Khan
in their place, a man that is dead and gone, and you hear nothing more
of this part of the business.

But the sufferings of these eunuchs did not end here; they were, on
account of this odd 5,000_l._, confined for twelve months,--not
prisoners at large, like this prisoner who thrusts his sore leg into
your Lordships' faces every day, but in harsh and cruel confinement.
These are the persons that I feel for. It is their dungeon, it is their
unrevenged wrongs that move me. It is for these innocent, miserable,
unhappy men, who were guilty of no offence but fidelity to their
mistresses, in order to vex and torture whom (the first women in Asia)
in the persons of their ministers these cruelties were exercised,--these
are they for whom I feel, and not for the miserable sore leg or whining
cant of this prisoner. He has been the author of all these wrongs; and
if you transfer to him any of the sympathy you owe to these sufferers,
you do wrong, you violate compassion. Think of their irons. Has not this
criminal, who put on these irons, been without one iron? Has he been
threatened with torture? Has he been locked up without food and water?
Have his sufferings been aggravated as the sufferings of these poor men
were aggravated? What punishment has been inflicted, and what can