ers, and these
treasures could not be come at but by the destruction of the Begums.

But, my Lords, there are other affidavits, or whatever your Lordships
may call them, that go much further. In order to give a color to the
accusation, and make it less improbable, they say that the Nabob himself
was at the bottom of it, and that he joined with his brother and his
mother to extirpate out of his dominions that horrible grievance, the
English brigade officers,--those English officers who were the
farmers-general, and who, as we have proved by Mr. Hastings's own
evidence, had ruined the country. Nothing is more natural than that a
man, sensible of his duty to himself and his subjects, should form a
scheme to get rid of a band of robbers that were destroying his country
and degrading and ruining his family. Thus you see a family compact
naturally accounted for: the Nabob at the head of it, his mother joining
her own son, and a natural brother joining in the general interests of
the family. This is a possible case. But is this the case pressed by
them? No: they pass lightly over the legitimate son; they scarcely touch
upon Saadut Ali Khan; they sink the only two persons that could give
probability or possibility to this business, and endeavor to throw the
whole design upon these two unfortunate women.

Your Lordships see the wickedness and baseness of the contrivance. They
first, in order to keep the whole family in terror, accuse the whole
family; then, having possessed themselves of the treasures of the Begums
upon another pretence, they endeavor to fix upon them that improbable
guilt which they had with some degree of probability charged upon the
whole family, as a farther justification of that spoliation. Your
Lordships will see what an insult is offered to the Peers of Great
Britain, in producing before you, by way of defence, such gross,
scandalous, and fraudulent proceedings.

Who the first set of witnesses were which they produced before their
knight-errant chief-justice, Sir Elijah Impey, who wandered in search of
a law adventure, I have laid open to your Lordships. You have now had
an account of the scandalous manufacture of that batch of affidavits
which was in the budget of Sir Elijah Impey,--that Pandora's box which I
have opened, and out of which has issued every kind of evil. This
chief-justice went up there with the death-warrant of the Begums'
treasures, and, for aught he knew, the death-warrant of their pe