ntities that their female attendants
were in danger of perishing with hunger. Month after month this cruelty
continued, till at length, after twelve hundred thousand pounds had been
wrung out of the Princesses, Hastings began to think that he had really
got to the bottom of their coffers, and that no rigor could extort more.
Then at length the wretched men who were detained at Lucknow regained
their liberty. When their irons were knocked off and the doors of their
prison opened, their quivering lips, the tears which ran down their
cheeks, and the thanksgivings which they poured forth to the common
Father of Mussulmans and Christians, melted even the stout hearts of the
English warriors who stood by.

But we must not forget to do justice to Sir Elijah Impey's conduct on
this occasion. It was not indeed easy for him to intrude himself into a
business so entirely alien from all his official duties. But there was
something inexpressibly alluring, we must suppose, in the peculiar
rankness of the infamy which was then to be got at Lucknow. He hurried
thither as fast as relays of palanquin-bearers could carry him. A crowd
of people came before him with affidavits against the Begums, ready
drawn in their hands. Those affidavits he did not read. Some of them,
indeed, he could not read; for they were in the dialects of Northern
India, and no interpreter was employed. He administered the oath to the
deponents, with all possible expedition, and asked not a single
question, not even whether they had perused the statements to which they
swore. This work performed, he got again into his palanquin, and posted
back to Calcutta, to be in time for the opening of term. The cause was
one which, by his own confession, lay altogether out of his
jurisdiction. Under the charter of justice, he had no more right to
inquire into crimes committed by Asiatics in Oude than the Lord
President of the Court of Session of Scotland to hold an assize at
Exeter. He had no right to try the Begums, nor did he pretend to try
them. With what object, then, did he undertake so long a journey?
Evidently in order that he might give, in an irregular manner, that
sanction which in a regular manner he could not give, to the crimes of
those who had recently hired him; and in order that a confused mass of
testimony which he did not sift, which he did not even read, might
acquire an authority not properly belonging to it, from the signature of
the highest judicial functi