rebellion had its rise in
some wicked act of this man, who had offended these women, and made
them, as he says, his mortal enemies, you will then see that you never
can go so deep with this prisoner that you do not find in every criminal
act of his some other criminal act. In the lowest deep there is still a
lower deep. In every act of his cruelty there is some hidden, dark
motive, worse than the act itself, of which he just gives you a hint,
without exposing it to that open light which truth courts and falsehood
basely slinks from.

But cruelly as they have suffered, dreadfully as they have been robbed,
insulted as they have been, in every mode of insult that could be
offered to women of their rank, all this must have been highly
aggravated by coming from such a man as Mr. Middleton. You have heard the
audacious and insulting language he has held to them, his declining to
correspond with them, and the mode of his doing it. There are, my Lords,
things that embitter the bitterness of oppression itself: contumelious
acts and language, coming from persons who the other day would have
licked the dust under the feet of the lowest servants of these ladies,
must have embittered their wrongs, and poisoned the very cup of malice
itself.

Oh! but they deserved it. They were concerned in a wicked, outrageous
rebellion: first, for expelling their own son from his dominions; and,
secondly, for expelling and extirpating the English nation out of
India.--Good God Almighty! my Lords, do you hear this? Do you understand
that the English nation had made themselves so odious, so particularly
hateful, even to women the most secluded from the world, that there was
no crime, no mischief, no family destruction, through which they would
not wade, for our extermination? Is this a pleasant thing to hear of?
Rebellion is, in all parts of the world, undoubtedly considered as a
great misfortune: in some countries it must be considered as a
presumption of some fault in government: _nowhere is it boasted of as
supplying the means of justifying acts of cruelty and insult, but with
us_.

We have, indeed, seen that a rebellion did exist in Baraitch and
Goruckpore. It was an universal insurrection of the people: an
insurrection for the very extermination of Englishmen,--for the
extermination of Colonel Hannay,--for the extermination of Captain
Gordon,--for the extermination of Captain Williams, and of all the other
captains and colonels exercising t