The prisoner's counsel have thought proper to entertain your Lordships,
and to defend their client, by comparing him with the men who are said
to have erected a pyramid of ninety thousand human heads. Now look back,
my Lords, to Benares; consider the extent of country laid waste and
desolated, and its immense population; and then see whether famine may
not destroy as well as the sword, and whether this man is not as well
entitled to erect his pyramid of ninety thousand heads as any terrific
tyrant of the East. We follow him now to another theatre, the
territories of the Nabob of Oude.
My Lords, Oude, (together with the additions made to it by Sujah
Dowlah,) in point of geographical extent, is about the size of England.
Sujah Dowlah, who possessed this country as Nabob, was a prince of a
haughty character,--ferocious in a high degree towards his enemies, and
towards all those who resisted his will. He was magnificent in his
expenses, yet economical with regard to his resources,--maintaining his
court in a pomp and splendor which is perhaps unknown to the sovereigns
of Europe. At the same time he was such an economist, that from an
inconsiderable revenue, at the beginning of his reign, he was annually
enabled to make great savings.
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