Life of R.B. Sheridan, vol 2 | Page 6

Hastings did, at the bar of the House of Commons, vouch for facts of which he was ignorant, and for arguments which he had never read.
"After such an attempt, we certainly are left in doubt to decide, to which set of his friends Mr. Hastings is least obliged, those who assisted him in making his defence, or those who advised him to deny it."
He thus describes the feelings of the people of the East with respect to the unapproachable sanctity of their Zenanas:--
"It is too much, I am afraid, the case, that persons, used to European manners, do not take up these sort of considerations at first with the seriousness that is necessary. For Your Lordships cannot even learn the right nature of those people's feelings and prejudices from any history of other Mahometan countries,--not even from that of the Turks, for they are a mean and degraded race in comparison with many of these great families, who, inheriting from their Persian ancestors, preserve a purer style of prejudice and a loftier superstition. Women there are not as in Turkey--they neither go to the mosque nor to the bath--it is not the thin veil alone that hides them--but in the inmost recesses of their Zenana they are kept from public view by those reverenced and protected walls, which, as Mr. Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey admit, are held sacred even by the ruffian hand of war or by the more uncourteous hand of the law. But, in this situation, they are not confined from a mean and selfish policy of man--not from a coarse and sensual jealousy--enshrined rather than immured, their habitation and retreat is a sanctuary, not a prison--their jealousy is their own--a jealousy of their own honor, that leads them to regard liberty as a degradation, and the gaze of even admiring eyes as inexpiable pollution to the purity of their fame and the sanctity of their honor.
"Such being the general opinion (or prejudices, let them be called) of this country, Your Lordships will find, that whatever treasures were given or lodged in a Zenana of this description must, upon the evidence of the thing itself, be placed beyond the reach of resumption. To dispute with the Counsel about the original right to those treasures--to talk of a title to them by the Mahometan law!--their title to them is the title of a Saint to the relics upon an altar, placed there by Piety, [Footnote: This metaphor was rather roughly handled afterwards (1794) by Mr. Law, one of the adverse Counsel, who asked, how could the Begum be considered as "a Saint," or how were the camels, which formed part of the treasure, to be "placed upon the altar?" Sheridan, in reply, said, "It was the first time in his life he had ever heard of special pleading on a _metaphor_, or a bill of indictment against a trope. But such was the turn of the learned Counsel's mind, that, when he attempted to be humorous, no jest could be found, and, when serious, no fact was visible."] guarded by holy Superstition, and to be snatched from thence only by Sacrilege."
In showing that the Nabob was driven to this robbery of his relatives by other considerations than those of the pretended rebellion, which was afterwards conjured up by Mr. Hastings to justify it, he says,--
"The fact is, that through all his defences--through all his various false suggestions--through all these various rebellions and disaffections, Mr. Hastings never once lets go this plea--of extinguishable right in the Nabob. He constantly represents the seizing the treasures as a resumption of a right which he could not part with;--as if there were literally something in the Koran, that made it criminal in a true Mussulman to keep his engagements with his relations, and impious in a son to abstain from plundering his mother. I do gravely assure your Lordships that there is no such doctrine in the Koran, and no such principle makes a part in the civil or municipal jurisprudence of that country. Even after these Princesses had been endeavoring to dethrone the Nabob and to extirpate the English, the only plea the Nabob ever makes, is his right under the Mahometan law; and the truth is, he appears never to have heard any other reason, and I pledge myself to make it appear to Your Lordships, however extraordinary it may be, that not only had the Nabob never heard of the rebellion till the moment of seizing the palace, but, still further, that he never heard of it at all--that this extraordinary rebellion, which was as notorious as the rebellion of 1745 in London, was carefully concealed from those two parties--the Begums who plotted it, and the Nabob who was to be the victim of it.
"The existence of this rebellion