This avaricious bankrupt tyrant,
who had beggared and destroyed his own subjects, and could not pay his
debts to the English government, was the man with whom Mr. Hastings was
in treaty to deliver up Cheyt Sing and his country, under pretence of
his not having paid regularly to the Company those customary payments
which the tyrant would probably have never paid at all, if he had been
put in possession of the country. This I mention to illustrate Mr.
Hastings's plans of economy and finance, without considering the
injustice and cruelty of delivering up a man to the hereditary enemy of
his family.
It is known, my Lords, that Mr. Hastings, besides having received
proposals for delivering up the beautiful country of Benares, that
garden of God, as it is styled in India, to that monster, that rapacious
tyrant, Asoph ul Dowlah, who with his gang of mercenary troops had
desolated his own country like a swarm of locusts, had purposed likewise
to seize Cheyt Sing's own patrimonial forts, which was nothing less than
to take from him the residence of his women and his children, the seat
of his honor, the place in which the remaining treasures and last hopes
of his family were centred. By the Gentoo law, every lord or supreme
magistrate is bound to construct and to live in such a fort.
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