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 abominable transaction, in which a prince was compelled by his cruel necessities and the grinding exactions and threats of the English to pillage forcibly his near relatives, a tale of treason was hatched against these poor women. When they refused to give up their money, the chief eunuchs were put to the torture till the ladies in compassion gave way: 550,000l. sterling were thus forced from them: the torture was still continued, in hope of extracting more; the women of the Zenana were deprived of food at various times till they were on the point of perishing for want; and every expedient was tried that the most devilish invention could suggest, till it was found that they had really drawn the last doit from them. But what more than all moves one's indignation against this base English Inquisitor, was, that he received as his share of these spoils the sum of ten lacs, or 100,000l.!—and that notwithstanding the law of the Company against the receipt of presents; its avowed distress for want of money; and the poverty of the kingdom of Oude, which was thus plundered and disgraced from the very inability to pay its debts, if debts such shameful exactions can be called. Hastings did not hesitate to apprise the council of what he had received, and requested their permission to retain it for himself.

Of the numerous transactions of a most wicked character connected with these affairs; of the repugnance of the Nabob to do the dirty work of Hastings on his relatives, the Begums; of the haughty insolence by which his tyrant compelled him to the compact; of the restoration of the jaghires, but not the moneys to the Begums; of the misery and desolation which forced itself even upon the horny eyes of Hastings as