d their families,--as from the former they derive their
influence, authority, and the means of upholding their dignity. The
lands of the former description were immediately attached, sequestered,
and sold for the most trifling consideration. The rent-free lands, the
best and richest lands of the whole province, were sold,--sold for--what
do your Lordships think? They were sold for less than one year's
purchase,--at less than one year's purchase, at the most underrated
value; so that the fee-simple of an English acre of rent-free land sold
at the rate of seven or eight shillings. Such a sale, on such terms,
strongly indicated the purchaser. And how did it turn out in fact? The
purchaser was the very agent and instrument of Mr. Hastings, Debi Sing
himself. He made the exaction; he forced the sale; he reduced the rate;
and he became the purchaser at less than one year's purchase, and paid
with the very money which he had extorted from the miserable vendors.

When he had thus sold and separated these lands, he united the whole
body of them, amounting to about 7,000_l._ sterling a year (but,
according to the rate of money and living in that country, equivalent to
a rental in England of 30,000_l._ a year); and then having raised in the
new letting, as on the sale he had fraudulently reduced those lands, he
reserved them as an estate for himself, or to whomsoever resembling
himself Mr. Hastings should order them to be disposed.

The lands, thus sold for next to nothing, left of course the late
landholder still in debt. The failure of fund, the rigorous exaction of
debt, and the multiplication of new arbitrary taxes next carried off the
goods.

There is a circumstance attending this business which will call for
your Lordships' pity. Most of the landholders or zemindars in that
country happened at that time to be women. The sex there is in a state
certainly resembling imprisonment, but guarded as a sacred treasure with
all possible attention and respect. None of the coarse male hands of the
law can reach them; but they have a custom, very cautiously used in all
good governments there, of employing female bailiffs or sergeants in the
execution of the law, where that sex is concerned. Guards, therefore,
surrounded the houses; and then female sergeants and bailiffs entered
into the habitations of these female zemindars, and held their goods and
persons in execution,--nothing being left but what was daily threatened,
their life an