and to force their way to the market-place,
in order to beg for bread. When they had thus been forced to submit to
the extremity of disgrace and degradation, by exposing themselves to
public view with the starving children of their late sovereign, the
brothers and sisters of the reigning prince, they were, in this attempt,
attacked by the sepoys armed with bludgeons, and driven back by blows
into the palace.

My Lords, we have first laid before you the sufferings and disgraces of
women of the first distinction in Asia, protected by their rank,
protected by their sex, protected by their near relation to the prince
of the country, protected by two guaranties of the representative of the
British government in India. We now come to another class of women, who
suffered by the violent misappropriation of the revenues of the Nabob,
by which their regular allowance was taken from them; and your Lordships
will find that this man's crimes, at every step we take, ripen in guilt,
his acts of positive injustice are always aggravated by his conduct with
regard to the consequences of them, and form but a small part in the
mass of oppression and tyranny which we have brought before you.

My Lords, the unjust seizure of the jaghires and treasures of the
Begums, out of which those women were maintained, reduced them to a
state of indigence, and exposed them not only to the sufferings which
belong to the physical nature of man, but also to the indignities which
particularly affected their sex and condition. But before I proceed, I
will beg leave to restate to your Lordships and recall to your memory
who these women were.

The Nabob Sujah Dowlah had but one legitimate wife. Though the Mahometan
law admits of this number's being extended in certain cases even to
four, yet it is for the most part held disreputable, especially when a
person is married to a woman of the first distinction, to have more than
one legitimate wife. Upon looking into the Hedaya, your Lordships will
see with what extreme rigor fornication is forbidden; but we know that
persons of high rank, by customs that supersede both religion and laws,
add to the number of their wives, or substitute in their room wives of a
subordinate description, and indulge themselves in this license to an
unlimited degree. You will find in Chardin's Travels, where he treats of
the subject of marriage, that such is the custom of all the princes of
the East. The wives of this subordinate cla