Extract of a Letter from the Vizier, received 23d of August, 1782.
"I never found resource equal to the necessary expenses. Every year, by taking from the ministers, and selling the articles of my harkhanna, I with great distress transacted the business. But I could not take care of my dependants: so that some of my brothers, from their difficulties, arose and departed; and the people of the Khord Mohul of the late Nabob, who are all my mothers, from their distresses are reduced to poverty and involved in difficulties. No man of rank is deficient in the care of his dependants, in proportion to his ability."
Another Letter from the Vizier, received the 31st July, 1784.
"My brother, dear as life, Saadut Ali Khân, has requested that I would permit his mother to go and reside with him. My friend, all the mothers of my brothers, and the women of the late Nabob, whom I respect as my own mothers, are here, and it is incumbent upon me to support them: accordingly I do it; and it is improper that they should be separated, nor do I approve it. By God's blessing and your kindness, I hope that all the women of the late Nabob may remain here; it is the wish also of my grandmother and my mother that they should."
Your Lordships now see in what degree of estimation the Nabob held these women. He regarded the wives of his father as his honorary mothers; he considers their children as his brethren; he thinks it would be highly dishonorable to his government, if one of them was taken out of the sanctuary in which they are placed, and in which, he says, the great of the country are obliged to maintain their dependants. This is the account given by the person best acquainted with the usages of the country, best acquainted with his own duties, best acquainted with his own wishes.
Now, my Lords, you will see in what light another person, the agent of a trading company, who designates himself under the name of Majesty, and assumes other great distinctions, presumes also to consider these persons,—and in what contempt he is pleased to hold what is respected and what is held sacred in that country. What I am now going to quote is from the prisoner's second defence. For I must remind your Lordships that Mr. Hastings has 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 or the House of Peers, or in the lobby, or anywhere else, to verify any one word he has said. He slanders these women in order to lessen that compassion which your Lordships might have for the sufferings he inflicted upon them. But admitting that some of these women were of a meaner condition, and that they derived nothing from their connection with the dignity of the person by whom they had children, (and we know that in the whole they amounted to about fourscore children, the Nabob having a race like the patriarchs of old, as many great persons in that part of the world still have,)—supposing, I say, all this to be true, yet, when persons are reduced from ease and affluence to misery and distress, they naturally excite in the mind a greater degree of compassion by comparing the circumstances in which they once stood with those into which they are fallen: for famine, degradation, and oppression were famine, degradation, and oppression to those persons, even though they were as mean as Mr. Hastings chooses to represent them. But I hope, as you will sympathize with the great on account of their condition, that you will sympathize with all mankind on the ground of the common condition of humanity which belongs to us all; therefore I hope your Lordships will not consider the calumny of Mr. Hastings against those women as any other than as an aggravation of his offence against them. That is the light in which the House of Commons considered it; for they had heard both his in-door and out-door defence, and they still persevered in making the charge, and do persevere in making it still.
We have first stated what these women were,—in what light they stood with the Nabob,—in what light they stood with the country at large. I have now to state in what light they stood with the British government, previous to this invasion of their rights; and we will prove they were the actual subjects of a guaranty by the Company.
Extract from an Agreement made by Mr. Middleton, to all the Particulars of which he engages to procure a Treaty from the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah, after his Arrival, and that he will also sign it, as follows.