do you use it?--_A._ In raising troops, and in other acts
of rebellion, in the common acceptation of the word.--_Q._ Against
whom?--_A._ Against the Nabob's government and the British government
jointly: but I beg to know the particular time and circumstance the
question alludes to.--_Q._ I understand you to have said you understood
the elder Begum was in a constant state of rebellion. In what sense do
you use the word rebellion? Did you say the elder Begum was in a
constant state of rebellion?--_A._ I always understood her to be
disaffected to the English government: it might not be a proper
expression of mine, the word rebellion.--_Q._ Do you know of any act by
the elder Begum against the Vizier?--_A._ I cannot state any.--_Q._ Do
you know of any act which you call rebellion, committed by the elder
Begum against the Company?--_A._ I do not know of any particular
circumstance, only it was generally supposed that she was disaffected to
the Company.--_Q._ What acts of disaffection or hostility towards the
English do you allude to, when you speak of the conversation of the
world at the time?--_A._ I have answered that question as fully as I
can,--that it was nothing but conversation,--that I knew of no
particular act or deed myself."

This man, then, declares, as your Lordships have heard, that, upon cool,
deliberate inquiry made at Fyzabad from all the inhabitants, he did not
believe in the existence of any rebellion;--that as to the Bhow Begum,
the grandmother, who was a person that could only be charged with it in
a secondary degree, and as conspiring with the other, he says he knows
no facts against her, except that at the battle of Buxar, in the year
1764, she had used some odd expressions concerning the English, who were
then at war with her son Sujah Dowlah. This was long before we had any
empire or pretence to empire in that part of India: therefore the
expression of a rebellion, which he had used with regard to her, was, he
acknowledged, improper, and that he only meant he had formed some
opinion of her disaffection to the English.

As to the Begum, he positively acquits her of any rebellion. If he,
therefore, did not know it, who was an active officer in the very centre
of the alleged rebellion, and who was in possession of all the persons
from whom information was to be got, who had the eunuchs in prison, and
might have charged them with this rebellion, and might have examined and
cross-examined them at his p