made three defences,--one in the House of Commons,
another in the lobby of the House of Commons, and a third at your
Lordships' bar. The second defence, though delivered without name, to
the members in the lobby of the House of Commons, has been proved at
your Lordships' bar to be written by himself. This lobby, this
out-of-door defence, militates in some respects, as your Lordships will
find, with the in-door defence; but it probably contains the real
sentiments of Mr. Hastings himself, delivered with a little more
freeness when he gets into the open air,--like the man who was so vain
of some silly plot he had hatched, that he told it to the
hackney-coachman, and every man he met in the streets.

He says,--"Begums are the ladies of an Eastern prince; but these women
are also styled the ladies of the late Vizier, and their sufferings are
painted in such strong colors that the unsuspecting reader is led to mix
the subjects together, and to suppose that these latter, too, were
princesses of Oude, that all their sufferings proceeded from some act of
mine, or had the sanction of my authority or permission. The fact is,
that the persons of the Khord Mohul (or Little Seraglio) were young
creatures picked up wherever youth and beauty could be found, and mostly
purchased from amongst the most necessitous and meanest ranks of the
people, for the Nabob's pleasures." In the in-door defence, he says,
"The said women, who were mostly persons of low condition, and the said
children, if any such there were, lived in the Khord Mohul, on an
establishment entirely distinct from the said Begums'."

My Lords, you have seen what was the opinion of the Nabob, who ought to
know the nature and circumstances of his father's palace, respecting
these women; you hear what Mr. Hastings's opinion is: and now the
question is, whether your Lordships will consider these women in the
same light in which the person does who is most nearly connected with
them and most likely to know them, or in the way in which Mr. Hastings
has thought proper, within doors and without doors, to describe them.
Your Lordships will be pleased to observe that he has brought no proof
whatever of facts which are so boldly asserted by him in defiance of
proof to the contrary, totally at variance with the letter of the son of
the man to whom these women belonged. Your Lordships, I say, will remark
that he has produced not one word of evidence, either within the House
of Commons