ut demand justice; they insist, that, as the Commons have
done their part, your Lordships will perform yours.

* * * * *

We shall next proceed to show your Lordships how he acted towards
another set of women, the women of the late Sujah Dowlah, and for whom
the Directors had ordered a maintenance to be secured by an express
treaty. You will see that he is cruel towards the weak sex, and to all
others in proportion as they are weak and powerless to resist him. You
will see, I say, when he had usurped the whole government of Oude, and
brought it into a servile dependence on himself, how these women fared;
and then your Lordships will judge whether or not, and in what degree,
he is criminal.

SPEECH

IN

GENERAL REPLY.

SEVENTH DAY. THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1794.

My Lords,--When I had last the honor of addressing your Lordships from
this place, my observations were principally directed to the unjust
confiscation and seizure of the jaghires and treasures of the Begums,
without previous accusation, or trial, or subsequent inquiry into their
conduct, in violation of a treaty made with them and guarantied by the
East India Company,--to the long imprisonment and cruel treatment of
their ministers, and to the false pretences and abominable principles by
which the prisoner at your bar has attempted to justify his conduct. The
several acts of violence and of oppression were, as we have shown your
Lordships, committed with circumstances of aggravated atrocity highly
disgraceful to the British name and character,--and particularly by his
forcing the Nabob to become the means and instrument of reducing his
mother and grandmother and their families to absolute want and distress.

I have now to call your attention to his treatment of another branch of
this miserable family,--the women and children of the late Nabob Sujah
ul Dowlah. These persons were dependent upon the Begums, and by the
confiscation of their property, and by the ruin of various persons who
would otherwise have contributed to their maintenance, were reduced to
the last extremity of indigence and want. Being left without the common
necessaries of life, they were driven to the necessity of breaking
through all those local principles of decorum which constitute the
character of the female sex in that part of the world; and after
fruitless supplications and shrieks of famine, they endeavored to break
the inclosure of the palace,