whose feelings, and whose habits made them the natural protectors of the
people.

My Lords, we here see a body of usurers put into possession of all the
estates of the nobility: let us now see if this act was necessary, even
for the avowed purposes of its agents,--the relief of the Nabob's
financial difficulties, and the payment of his debts to the Company. Mr.
Middleton has told your Lordships that these jaghires would pay the
Company's debt completely in two years. Then would it not have been
better to have left these estates in the hands of their owners, and to
have oppressed them in some moderate, decent way? Might they not have
left the jaghiredars to raise the sums required by some settlement with
the bankers of Benares, in which the repayment of the money within five
or six years might have been secured, and the jaghiredars have had in
the mean time something to subsist upon? Oh, no! these victims must have
nothing to live upon. They must be turned out. And why? Mr. Hastings
commands it.

Here I must come in aid of Mr. Middleton a little; for one cannot but
pity the miserable instruments that have to act under Mr. Hastings. I do
not mean to apologize for Mr. Middleton, but to pity the situation of
persons who, being servants of the Company, were converted, by the
usurpation of this man, into his subjects and his slaves. The mind of
Mr. Middleton revolts. You see him reluctant to proceed. The Nabob begs
a respite. You find in the Resident a willingness to comply. Even Mr.
Middleton is placable. Mr. Hastings alone is obdurate. His resolution to
rob and to destroy was not to be moved, and the estates of the whole
Mahometan nobility of a great kingdom were confiscated in a moment. Your
Lordships will observe that his orders to Mr. Middleton allow no
forbearance. He writes thus to him.