We here leave to your Lordships’ judgment the consideration of the elevated rank of the persons aggrieved and degraded to the lowest state of dependence and actual distress,—­the consideration of the condition of the country gentlemen, who were obliged to hide their heads, wherever they could, from the plunderers and robbers established under his authority in every part of the country, and that of the miserable common people, who have been obliged to sell their children through want of food to feed them,—­the consideration, I say, of the manner in which this country, in the highest, in the middle, and in the lowest classes of its inhabitants, nay, in physical works of God, was desolated and destroyed by this man.

Having now done with the province of Oude, we will proceed to the province of Bengal, and consider what was the kind of government which he exercised there, and in what manner it affected the people that were subjected to it.

* * * * *

Bengal, like every part of India subject to the British empire, contains (as I have already had occasion to mention) three distinct classes of people, forming three distinct social systems.  The first is the Mahometans, which, about seven hundred years ago, obtained a footing in that country, and ever since has in a great degree retained its authority there.  For the Mahometans had settled there long before the foundation of the Bengal empire, which was overturned by Tamerlane:  so that this people, who are represented sometimes loosely as strangers, are people of ancient and considerable settlement in that country; and though, like Mahometan settlers in many other countries, they have fallen into decay, yet, being continually recruited from various parts of Tartary under the Mogul empire, and from various parts of Persia, they continue to be the leading and most powerful people throughout the peninsula; and so we found them there.  These people, for the most part, follow no trades or occupation, their religion and laws forbidding them in the strictest manner to take usury or profit arising from money that is in any way lent; they have, therefore, no other means for their support but what arises from their adherence to and connection with the Mogul government and its viceroys.  They enjoy under them various offices, civil and military,—­various employments in the courts of law, and stations in the army.  Accordingly a prodigious number of people, almost all of them persons of the most ancient and respectable families in the country, are dependent upon and cling to the subahdars or viceroys of the several provinces.  They, therefore, who oppress, plunder, and destroy the subahdars, oppress, rob, and destroy an immense mass of people.  It is true that a supervening government, established upon another, always reduces a certain portion of the dependants upon the latter to want.  You must distress, by the very nature of the circumstances of the case, a great number of