s proof that the
Begums had joined the Rajahs, and had joined them in a rebellion, for
the purpose of exterminating their son, in the first instance, and the
English afterwards.

There is another circumstance which makes their own acts the refutation
of their false pretences. This letter says that the country is
disaffected, and it mentions the ill-disposed parts of the country. Now
we all know that the country was ill-disposed; and we may therefore
conclude this paper was written by, and addressed to, some person who
was employed against the persons so ill-disposed,--namely, the very
Rajahs so mentioned before. The prisoner's counsel, after producing this
paper, had the candor to declare that they did not see what use could be
made of it. No, to be sure, they do not see what use can be made of it
for their cause; but I see the use that can be made of it against their
cause. I say that the lost papers, upon which they do so much insist,
deserve no consideration, when the only paper that they have preserved
operates directly against them; and that therefore we may safely infer,
that, if we had the rest of the contents of this trunk, we should
probably find them make as strongly against them as this paper does. You
have no reason to judge of them otherwise than by the specimen: for how
can you judge of what is lost but from what remains?

The man who hid these papers in his trunk never understood one word of
the Persian language, and consequently was liable to every kind of
mistake, even though he meant well. But who is this man? Why, it is
Captain Williams,--the man who in his affidavits never mentioned the
Begums without mentioning Saadut Ali. It is Captain Williams,--whom we
charge to have murdered a principal man of the country by his own hand,
without law or legal process. It is Captain Williams,--one of those
British officers whom Mr. Hastings states to be the pests of the
country. This is the man who comes here as evidence against these women,
and produces this monstrous paper.

All the evidence they had produced to you amounts to no more than that
such a man _believes_ such a man _heard of something_; and to close the
whole of this hearsay account, Sir Elijah Impey, who always comes in as
a supplement, declares that no man doubted of the existence of this
rebellion, and of the guilt of the Begums, any more than of the
rebellion of 1745: a comparison which, I must say, is, by way of
evidence, a little indecorous