of his people? No: you see here a monarch deposed, in effect, by persons
pretending to be his allies, and assigning what are pretended to be his
wishes as the motive for using his usurped authority in the execution of
these acts of violence against his own family and his subjects. You see
him struggling against this violent prostitution of his authority. He
refuses the sanction of his name, which before he had given up to Mr.
Hastings to be used as he pleased, and only begs not to be made an
instrument of wrong which his soul abhors, and which would make him
infamous throughout the world. Mr. Middleton, however, assumes the
sovereignty of the country. "I," he says, "am Nabob of Oude: the
jaghires shall be confiscated: I have given my orders, and they shall be
supported by a military force."

I am ashamed to have so far distrusted your Lordships' honorable and
generous feelings as to have offered you, upon this occasion, any
remarks which you must have run before me in making. Those feelings
which you have, and ought to have, feelings born in the breasts of all
men, and much more in men of your Lordships' elevated rank, render my
remarks unnecessary. I need not, therefore, ask what you feel, when a
foreign resident at a prince's court takes upon himself to force that
prince to act the part of a tyrant, and, upon his resistance, openly and
avowedly assumes the sovereignty of the country. You have it in proof
that Mr. Middleton did this. He not only put his own name to the orders
for this horrible confiscation, but he actually proceeded to dispossess
the jaghiredars of their lands, and to send them out of the country. And
whom does he send, in the place of this plundered body of nobility, to
take possession of the country? Why, the usurers of Benares. Yes, my
Lords, he immediately mortgages the whole country to the usurers of
Benares, for the purpose of raising money upon it: giving it up to those
bloodsuckers, dispossessed of that nobility, whose interest, whose duty,