But Mr. Hastings had other maxims and other principles. You
are weak, he says, and therefore you ought never to forgive. Indeed, Mr.
Hastings never does forgive. The Rajah was weak, and he persecuted him;
Mr. Hastings was weak, and he lost his prey. He went up the country with
the rapacity, but not with the talons and beak, of a vulture. He went to
look for plunder; but he was himself plundered, the country was ravaged,
and the prey escaped.
After the escape of Cheyt Sing, there still existed in one corner of the
country some further food for Mr. Hastings's rapacity. There was a place
called Bidjegur, one of those forts which Mr. Hastings declared could
not be safely left in the possession of the Rajah; measures were
therefore taken to obtain possession of this place, soon after the
flight of its unfortunate proprietor. And what did he find in it? A
great and powerful garrison? No, my Lords: he found in it the wives and
family of the Rajah; he found it inhabited by two hundred women, and
defended by a garrison of eunuchs and a few feeble militia-men. This
fortress was supposed by him to contain some money, which he hoped to
lay hold of when all other means of rapacity had escaped him. He first
sends (and you have it on your minutes) a most cruel, most atrocious,
and most insulting message to these unfortunate women; one of whom, a
principal personage of the family, we find him in the subsequent
negotiation scandalizing in one minute, and declaring to be a woman of
respectable character in the next,--treating her by turns as a
prostitute and as an amiable woman, as best suited the purposes of the
hour.
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