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Updated: June 5, 2025
Sheridan was universally considered to have made the most splendid speech of his day. Yet the speech on the Begums as given by Moore does not cast Webster's best work at all into the shade. Webster did not have Sheridan's brilliant wit, but on the other hand he was never forced, never involved, never guilty of ornament, which fastidious judges would now pronounce tawdry.
Or is the last all ultramarine? What do we know of sapphire, amethyst, emerald, ruby, amber, and the like, most of us who take these names in vain? Leave these precious words to cabinet-keepers, virtuosos, and maids-of-honor, to the Nabobs, Begums, and Chobdars of Hindostan, or wherever else.
The produce of the robbing of the Begums, in the manner your Lordships have heard, was all dissipated to pay the arrears of the armies: there was no fund left. He felt himself agitated and full of dread, knowing that he had been threatened with having his place taken from him several times, and that he might be called home to render an account.
Indeed, it may be remarked that the very persons who called him a mischievous maniac, for condemning in burning words the Rohilla war and the spoliation of the Begums, exalted him into a prophet as soon as he began to declaim, with greater vehemence, and not with greater reason, against the taking of the Bastile and the insults offered to Marie Antoinette.
Khem Singh would sit on his own cushion at the Subaltern's feet, drinking heavy, scented anise-seed brandy in great gulps, and telling strange stories of Fort Amara, which had been a palace in the old days, of Begums and Ranees tortured to death aye, in the very vaulted chamber that now served as a Mess-room; would tell stories of Sobraon that made the Subaltern's cheeks flush and tingle with pride of race, and of the Kuka rising from which so much was expected and the foreknowledge of which was shared by a hundred thousand souls.
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.
He has taken me by the shoulders, and is turning me round to face the others. "Allow me!" he says, bowing, and making me bow, too, "to introduce you to the future legatee! Barbara, my child, you and I are nowhere. This depraved old man has clearly no feeling for symmetry of form or face; a long career of Begums has utterly vitiated his taste.
The Emperor would haggle for the value of an anna, and the ladies would feign indignation, scold his Majesty roundly, and tell him to go where he could suit himself better. "The Begums betray, if possible, a still greater anxiety to be served cheaply; high words are heard on every side, and the loud and scurrilous quarrels of the buyers and sellers create a complete farce.
In half an hour she had purchased a small box of paints, a supply of drawing-paper and pencils, and returned home, happier and prouder than many an empress, whose jewels have equalled those of the Begums of Oude. She had cleared Russell's character, and her hands were pressed over her heart to still its rapturous throbbing. Many days elapsed before Mr. Turner's answer arrived.
And yet, my Lords, I am asked to prove why these people arose in such concert: 'there must have been machinations, forsooth, and the Begums' machinations, to produce all this! Why did they rise!
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