Your Lordships will find in the evidence before you that the inhabitants
of the country were not only harassed in their fortunes, but cruelly
treated in their persons. You have it upon Mr. Halhed's evidence, and it
is not attempted, that I know of, to be contradicted, that the people
were confined in open cages, exposed to the scorching heat of the sun,
for pretended or real arrears of rent: it is indifferent which, because
I consider all confinement of the person to support an arbitrary
exaction to be an abomination not to be tolerated. They have endeavored,
indeed, to weaken this evidence by an attempt to prove that a man day
and night in confinement in an open cage suffers no inconvenience. And
here I must beg your Lordships to observe the extreme unwillingness that
appears in these witnesses. Their testimony is drawn from them drop by
drop, their answers to our questions are never more than yes or no; but
when they are examined by the counsel on the other side, it flows as
freely as if drawn from a perennial spring: and such a spring we have in
Indian corruption. We have, however, proved that in these cages the
renters were confined till they could be lodged in the dungeons or mud
forts. We have proved that some of them were obliged to sell their
children, that others fled the country, and that these practices were
carried to such an awful extent that Colonel Hannay was under the
necessity of issuing orders against the unnatural sale and flight which
his rapacity had occasioned.
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