ll its concerns as if it were his private demesne,--that the Nabob
dared not do a single act without him,--that he had a Resident there,
nominated by himself, and forced upon the Nabob, in defiance of the
Company's orders? Yet, notwithstanding all this, we do not find a trace
of anything done to relieve the aggravated distresses of these
unfortunate people.

These are some of the consequences of that abominable system which, in
defiance of the laws of his country, Mr. Hastings established in Oude.
He knew everything there; he had spies upon his regular agents, and
spies again upon them. We can prove, (indeed, he has himself proved,)
that, besides his correspondence with his avowed agents, Major Palmer
and Major Davy, he had secret correspondence with a whole host of agents
and pensioners, who did and must have informed him of every circumstance
of these affairs. But if he had never been informed of it at all, the
Commons contend, and very well and justly contend, that he who usurps
the government of a country, who extinguishes the authority of its
native sovereign, and places in it instruments of his own, and that in
defiance of those whose orders he was bound to obey, is responsible for
everything that was done in the country. We do charge him with these
acts of delinquencies and omissions, we declare him responsible for
them; and we call for your Lordships' judgment upon these outrages
against humanity, as cruel perhaps as ever were suffered in any country.

My Lords, if there is a spark of manhood, if there is in your breasts
the least feeling for our common humanity, and especially for the
sufferings and distresses of that part of human nature which is made by
its peculiar constitution more quick and sensible,--if, I say, there is
a trace of this in your breasts, if you are yet alive to such feelings,
it is impossible that you should not join with the Commons of Great
Britain in feeling the utmost degree of indignation against the man who
was the guilty cause of this accumulated distress. You see women, whom
we have proved to be of respectable rank and condition, exposed to what
is held to be the last of indignities in that country,--the view of a
base, insulting, ridiculing, or perhaps vainly pitying populace. You
have before you the first women in Asia, who consider their honor as
joined with that of these people, weeping and bewailing the calamities
of their house. You have seen that in this misery and distress t