Volume XII Part 7 (1/2)
SEVENTH DAY. THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1794.
My Lords,--When I had last the honor of addressing your Lords.h.i.+ps from this place, my observations were princ.i.p.ally directed to the unjust confiscation and seizure of the jaghires and treasures of the Begums, without previous accusation, or trial, or subsequent inquiry into their conduct, in violation of a treaty made with them and guarantied by the East India Company,--to the long imprisonment and cruel treatment of their ministers, and to the false pretences and abominable principles by which the prisoner at your bar has attempted to justify his conduct. The several acts of violence and of oppression were, as we have shown your Lords.h.i.+ps, committed with circ.u.mstances of aggravated atrocity highly disgraceful to the British name and character,--and particularly by his forcing the Nabob to become the means and instrument of reducing his mother and grandmother and their families to absolute want and distress.
I have now to call your attention to his treatment of another branch of this miserable family,--the women and children of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah. These persons were dependent upon the Begums, and by the confiscation of their property, and by the ruin of various persons who would otherwise have contributed to their maintenance, were reduced to the last extremity of indigence and want. Being left without the common necessaries of life, they were driven to the necessity of breaking through all those local principles of decorum which const.i.tute the character of the female s.e.x in that part of the world; and after fruitless supplications and shrieks of famine, they endeavored to break the inclosure of the palace, and to force their way to the market-place, in order to beg for bread. When they had thus been forced to submit to the extremity of disgrace and degradation, by exposing themselves to public view with the starving children of their late sovereign, the brothers and sisters of the reigning prince, they were, in this attempt, attacked by the sepoys armed with bludgeons, and driven back by blows into the palace.
My Lords, we have first laid before you the sufferings and disgraces of women of the first distinction in Asia, protected by their rank, protected by their s.e.x, protected by their near relation to the prince of the country, protected by two guaranties of the representative of the British government in India. We now come to another cla.s.s of women, who suffered by the violent misappropriation of the revenues of the Nabob, by which their regular allowance was taken from them; and your Lords.h.i.+ps will find that this man's crimes, at every step we take, ripen in guilt, his acts of positive injustice are always aggravated by his conduct with regard to the consequences of them, and form but a small part in the ma.s.s of oppression and tyranny which we have brought before you.
My Lords, the unjust seizure of the jaghires and treasures of the Begums, out of which those women were maintained, reduced them to a state of indigence, and exposed them not only to the sufferings which belong to the physical nature of man, but also to the indignities which particularly affected their s.e.x and condition. But before I proceed, I will beg leave to restate to your Lords.h.i.+ps and recall to your memory who these women were.
The Nabob Sujah Dowlah had but one legitimate wife. Though the Mahometan law admits of this number's being extended in certain cases even to four, yet it is for the most part held disreputable, especially when a person is married to a woman of the first distinction, to have more than one legitimate wife. Upon looking into the Hedaya, your Lords.h.i.+ps will see with what extreme rigor fornication is forbidden; but we know that persons of high rank, by customs that supersede both religion and laws, add to the number of their wives, or subst.i.tute in their room wives of a subordinate description, and indulge themselves in this license to an unlimited degree. You will find in Chardin's Travels, where he treats of the subject of marriage, that such is the custom of all the princes of the East. The wives of this subordinate cla.s.s, though they are in reality no better than concubines, and are subject to the power and caprices of their lords, are yet allowed, in the eye of the severest moralists, to have some excuse for their frailty and their weakness; and they accordingly always do find a degree of favor in this world, and become the object of particular protection.
We know that Sujah ul Dowlah was a man unquestionably in his manners very licentious with regard to women, that he had a great number of these women in his family, and that his women and the women attendant upon the persons of his favorites had increased to a very great number.
We know that his sons amounted to twenty,--or, according to Mr.
Hastings's own account, to nineteen. Montesquieu supposes that there are more females born in the East than in the West. But he says this upon no good ground. We know by better and more regular information concerning this matter, that the birth of males and females in that country is in the same proportion as it is here; and therefore, if you suppose that he had twenty sons, you may suppose he had about nineteen daughters. By the customs of that country, all these sons and daughters were considered as persons of eminent distinction, though inferior to the legitimate children,--a.s.suming the rank of their father, without considering the rank which their mother held. All these wives with their children, and all their female servants and attendants, amounting in the whole to about eight hundred persons, were shut up in what they call the _Khord Mohul_, or Lesser Palace. This place is described by one of the witnesses to be about as large as St. James's Square. Your Lords.h.i.+ps have been told, that, in other circ.u.mstances as well as this, these women were considered as objects of a great degree of respect, and of the greatest degree of protection. I refer your Lords.h.i.+ps to the treaty by which their maintenance was guarantied by the English government.
In order to let your Lords.h.i.+ps see that I state nothing to you but what is supported not only by general history, which is enough to support an account of general manners, but by the particular and peculiar opinions of a person best informed of the nature of the case, I will refer you to the Nabob himself: for, undoubtedly, the Nabob of Oude, the Vizier of the Empire, the Subahdar of the country, was most likely to be the best judge of what respect was due to the women of his father's family. I will therefore read to your Lords.h.i.+ps, from his own letters, what the Nabob's opinion was upon this subject.
_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 Khan, 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 inc.u.mbent upon me to support them: accordingly I do it; and it is improper that they should be separated, nor do I approve it. By G.o.d'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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 a.s.sumes 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps' bar. The second defence, though delivered without name, to the members in the lobby of the House of Commons, has been proved at your Lords.h.i.+ps' bar to be written by himself. This lobby, this out-of-door defence, militates in some respects, as your Lords.h.i.+ps 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 circ.u.mstances of his father's palace, respecting these women; you hear what Mr. Hastings's opinion is: and now the question is, whether your Lords.h.i.+ps 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 Lords.h.i.+ps will be pleased to observe that he has brought no proof whatever of facts which are so boldly a.s.serted 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 Lords.h.i.+ps, 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 compa.s.sion which your Lords.h.i.+ps 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 compa.s.sion by comparing the circ.u.mstances 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 Lords.h.i.+ps 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._
”First, That, whenever the Begum shall choose to go to Mecca, she shall be permitted to go.
”Second, That, when the Nabob shall arrive, I [Mr. Middleton] will procure suitable allowances to be made to the ladies of the zenanah and the children of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah, and take care that they are paid.
”Third, That the festivals (_shadee_) and marriages of the children of the late Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah shall be at the disposal of the Begum: whenever she thinks proper, she shall marry them; and whatever money shall be necessary for these expenses shall be paid by the Nabob.
”Fourth, That the syer of Coda Gunge and Ali Gunge shall be retained by the Begum as heretofore.