I must here request your Lordships to consider the order of these proceedings.  Mr. Hastings, having determined upon the utter ruin and destruction of this unfortunate prince, endeavored, by the arrest of his person, by a contemptuous disregard to his submissive applications, by the appointment of a deputy who was personally odious to him, and by the terror of still greater insults, he endeavored, I say, to goad him on to the commission of some acts of resistance sufficient to give a color of justice to that last dreadful extremity to which he had resolved to carry his malignant rapacity.  Failing in this wicked project, and studiously avoiding the declaration of any terms upon which the Rajah might redeem himself from these violent proceedings, he next declared his intention of seizing his forts, the depository of his victim’s honor, and of the means of his subsistence.  He required him to deliver up his accounts and accountants, together with all persons who were acquainted with the particulars of his effects and treasures, for the purpose of transferring those effects to such persons as he (Mr. Hastings) chose to nominate.

It was at this crisis of aggravated insult and brutality that the indignation which these proceedings had occasioned in the breasts of the Rajah’s subjects burst out into an open flame.  The Rajah had retired to the last refuge of the afflicted, to offer up prayers to his God and our God, when a vile chubdar, or tipstaff, came to interrupt and insult him.  His alarmed and loyal subjects felt for a beloved sovereign that deep interest which we should all feel, if our sovereign were so treated.  What man with a spark of loyalty in his breast, what man regardful of the honor of his country, when he saw his sovereign imprisoned, and so notorious a wretch appointed his deputy, could be a patient witness of such wrongs?  The subjects of this unfortunate prince did what we should have done,—­what all who love their country, who love their liberty, who love their laws, who love their property, who love their sovereign, would have done on such an occasion.  They looked upon him as their sovereign, although degraded.  They were unacquainted with any authority superior to his, and the phantom of tyranny which performed these oppressive acts was unaccompanied by that force which justifies submission by affording the plea of necessity.  An unseen tyrant and four miserable companies of sepoys executed all the horrible things that we have mentioned.  The spirit of the Rajah’s subjects was roused by their wrongs, and encouraged by the contemptible weakness of their oppressors.  The whole country rose up in rebellion, and surely in justifiable rebellion.  Every writer on the Law of Nations, every man that has written, thought, or felt upon the affairs of government, must write, know, think, and feel, that a people so cruelly scourged and oppressed, both in the person of their chief and in their own persons, were justified in their resistance.  They were roused to vengeance, and a short, but most bloody war followed.