My Lords, I do not mean to detain you long upon this part of the business, but I have thought it necessary to advert to these particulars. As to all the rest, the honorable and able Manager who preceded me has sufficiently impressed upon your Lordships' minds the monstrous nature of the deposing of the Nabob's mother from the guardianship of her son, for the purpose of placing this woman there at the head of all his family and of his domestic concerns in the seraglio within doors, and at the head of the state without, together with the disposal of the whole of the revenue that was allowed him. Mr. Hastings pretends, indeed, to have appointed at the same time a trusty mutsuddy to keep the accounts of the revenue; but he has since declared that no account had been kept, and that it was in vain to desire it or to call for it. This is the state of the case with respect to the appointment of Munny Begum.

With regard to the reappointment of Mahomed Reza Khân, you have heard from my worthy fellow Manager that he was acquitted of the charges that had been brought against him by Mr. Hastings, after a long and lingering trial. The Company was perfectly satisfied with the acquittal, and declared that he was not only acquitted, but honorably acquitted; and they also declared that he had a fair claim to a compensation for his sufferings. They not only declared him innocent, but meritorious. They gave orders that he should be considered as a person who was to be placed in office again upon the first occasion, and that he had entitled himself to this favor by his conduct in the place which he had before filled.

The Council of the year 1775, (whom I can never mention nor shall mention without honor,) who complied faithfully with the act of Parliament, who never disobeyed the orders of the Company, and to whom no man has imputed even the shadow of corruption, found that this Munny Begum had acted in the manner which my honorable fellow Manager has stated: that she had dissipated the revenue, that she had neglected the education of the Nabob, and had thrown the whole judicature of the country into confusion. They ordered that she should be removed from her situation; that the Nabob's own mother should be placed at the head of the seraglio, a situation to which she was entitled; and with regard to the rest of the offices, that Mahomed Reza Khân should be employed to fill them.

Mr. Hastings resisted these propositions with all his might; but they were by that happy momentary majority carried against him, and Mahomed Reza Khân was placed in his former situation. But Mr. Hastings, though thus defeated, was only waiting for what he considered to be the fortunate moment for returning again to his corrupt, vicious, tyrannical, and disobedient habits. The reappointment of Mahomed Reza Khân had met with the fullest approbation of the Company; and they directed, that, as long as his good behavior entitled him to it, he should continue in the office. Mr. Hastings, however, without alleging any ill behavior, and for no reason that can be assigned, but his corrupt engagement with Munny Begum, overturned (upon the pretence of restoring the Nabob to his rights) the whole of the Company's arrangement, as settled by the late majority, and approved by the Court of Directors.

I have now to show you what sort of a man the Nabob was, who was thus set up in defiance of the Company's authority; what Mr. Hastings himself thought of him; what the judges thought of him; and what all the world thought of him.

I must first make your Lordships acquainted with a little preliminary matter. A man named Roy Rada Churn had been appointed vakeel, or agent, to manage the Nabob's affairs at Calcutta. One of this man's creditors attached him there. Roy Rada Churn pleaded his privilege as the vakeel or representative of a sovereign prince. The question came to be tried in the Supreme Court, and the issue was, Whether the Nabob was a sovereign prince or not. I think the court did exceedingly wrong in entertaining such a question; because, in my opinion, whether he was or was not a sovereign prince, any person representing him ought to be left free, and to have a proper and secure means of concerting his affairs with the Council. It was, however, taken otherwise; the question was brought to trial, whether the Nabob was a sovereign prince sufficient to appoint and protect a person to manage his affairs, under the name of an ambassador. In that cause did Mr. Hastings come forward to prove, by a voluntary affidavit, that he had no pretensions, no power, no authority at all,—that he was a mere pageant, a thing of straw,—and that the Company exercised every species of authority over him, in every particular, and in every respect; and that, therefore, to talk of him as an efficient person was an affront to the common sense of mankind: and this you will find the judges afterwards declared to be their opinion.

I will here press again one remark, which perhaps you may recollect that I have made before, that the chief and most usual mode in which all the villanies perpetrated in India, by Mr. Hastings and his co-partners in iniquity, has been through the medium and instrumentality of persons whom they pretended to have rights of their own, and to be acting for themselves; whereas such persons were, in fact, totally dependent upon him, Mr. Hastings, and did no one act that was not prescribed by him. In order, therefore, to let you see the utter falsehood, fraud, prevarication, and deceit of the pretences by which the native powers of India are represented to be independent, and are held up as the instruments of defying the laws of this kingdom, under pretext of their being absolute princes, I will read the affidavit of Warren Hastings, Esquire, Governor-General of Bengal, made the 31st July, 1775.

My Lords, we need not go through all the circumstances of this affidavit, which is in your minutes, and, to save time, I will refer your Lordships to them. This affidavit, as I have already said, was put into the court to prove that the Nabob had no power or authority at all; but what is very singular in it, and which I recommend to the particular notice of your Lordships, when you are scrutinizing this matter, is, that there is not a single point stated, to prove the nullity of this Nabob's authority, that was not Mr. Hastings's on particular act. Well, the Governor-General swears; the judge of the court refers to him in his decision; he builds and bottoms it upon the Governor-General's affidavit;—he swears, I say, that the Council, by their own authority, appointed Munny Begum to be guardian to the Nabob.

"By what authority," the Governor-General asks, "did the Council erect courts of law and superintend the administration of justice, without any communication with the Nabob? Had the Nabob himself any idea that he was a sovereign? Does he complain of the reduction of his stipend or the infringement of treaties? No; he appears to consider himself to be, what in fact he really is, absolutely dependent on the Company, and to be willing to accept any pittance they would allow him for his maintenance: he claims no rights. Does he complain that the administration of justice is taken into the hands of the Company? No: by the treaty, the protection of his subjects is delivered up to the Company; and he well knew, that, whoever may be held up as the ostensible prince, the administration of justice must be in the hands of those who have power to enforce it." He goes on,—"The Governor-General, who, I suppose, had a delicacy to state more than what had before been made public, closes his affidavit with saying that all he has deposed to he believes to be publicly known, as it is particularly set forth in the printed book entitled 'Reports of the Committee of the House of Commons.' I knew," he adds, "it was there, and was therefore surprised at this application; it is so notorious, that everybody in the settlement must have known it: when I say everybody, I mean with an exception to the gentlemen who have applied to the court. The only reason I can give for their applying is the little time they have been in the country." The judge (I think it is Chief-Justice Impey) then goes on,—"Perhaps this question might have been determined merely on the dates of the letters to the Governor-General; but as the Council have made the other a serious question, I should not have thought that I had done my duty, if I had not given a full and determinate opinion upon it: I should have been sorry, if I had left it doubtful whether the empty name of a Nabob should be thrust between a delinquent and the laws, so as effectually to protect him from the hand of justice."

My Lords, the court, as you see, bottoms its determination on what we stand upon here, Mr. Hastings's evidence, that the empty name of a pretended sovereign should not be thrust forth between a delinquent and justice.

What does Mr. Le Maistre, the other judge, say upon this occasion? "With regard to this phantom, that man of straw, Mobarek ul Dowlah, it is an insult on the understanding of the court to have made the question of his sovereignty. But as it came from the Governor-General and Council, I have too much respect for that body to treat it ludicrously, and I confess I cannot consider it seriously, and we always shall consider a letter of business from the Nabob the same as a letter from the Governor-General and Council."

This is the unanimous opinion of all the judges concerning the state and condition of the Nabob. We have thus established the point we mean to establish: that any use which shall be made of the Nabob's name for the purpose of justifying any disobedience to the orders of the Company, or of bringing forward corrupt and unfit persons for the government, could be considered as no other than the act of the persons who shall make such a use of it; and that no letter that the Nabob writes to any one in power was or could be considered as any other than the letter of that person himself. This we wish to impress upon your Lordships, because, as you have before seen the use that has been made in this way of the Nabob of Oude, you may judge of the use that has been made of the name of Hyder Beg Khân, and of the names of all the eminent persons of the country.

One word more and I have done. If, whilst you remark the use that is made of this man's name, your Lordships shall find that this use has ever been made of his name for his benefit, or for the purpose of giving him any useful or substantial authority, or of meliorating his condition in any way whatever; forgive the fraud, forgive the disobedience. But if we have shown your Lordships that it was for no other purpose than to disobey the orders of the Company, to trample upon the laws of his country, to introduce back again, and to force into power, those very corrupt and wicked instruments which had formerly done so much mischief, and for which mischief they were removed, then we shall not have passed our time in vain, in endeavoring to prove that this man, in the opinion of a court of justice, and by public notoriety, and by Mr. Hastings's own opinion, was held to be fit for nothing but to be made a tool in his hands.

Having stated to your Lordships generally the effects produced upon the Mahometan interest of Bengal by the misconduct of the prisoner at your bar with respect to the appointment of the guardian of the Nabob or Subahdar of that province, and of the ministers of his government, I shall have the honor of attending your Lordships another day, and shall show you the use that has been made of this government and of the authority of the Nabob, who, as your Lordships have seen, was the mere phantom of power; and I shall show how much a phantom he was for every good purpose, and how effectual an instrument he was made for every bad one.

SPEECH

IN

GENERAL REPLY.

EIGHTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 1794.

My Lords,—Your Lordships heard, upon the last day of the meeting of this high court, the distribution of the several matters which I should have occasion to lay before you, and by which I resolved to guide myself in the examination of the conduct of Mr. Hastings with regard to Bengal. I stated that I should first show the manner in which he comported himself with regard to the people who were found in possession of the government when we first entered into Bengal. We have shown to your Lordships the progressive steps by which the native government was brought into a state of annihilation. We have stated the manner in which that government was solemnly declared by a court of justice to be depraved, and incompetent to act, and dead in law. We have shown to your Lordships (and we have referred you to the document) that its death was declared upon a certificate of the principal attending physician of the state, namely, Mr. Warren Hastings himself. This was declared in an affidavit made by him, wherein he has gone through all the powers of government, of which he had regularly despoiled the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah, part by part, exactly according to the ancient formula by which a degraded knight was despoiled of his knighthood: they took, I say, from him all the powers of government, article by article,—his helmet, his shield, his cuirass; at last they hacked off his spurs, and left him nothing. Mr. Hastings laid down all the premises, and left the judges to draw the conclusion.

Your Lordships will remark (for you will find it on your minutes) that the judges have declared this affidavit of Mr. Hastings to be a delicate affidavit. We have heard of affidavits that were true; we have heard of affidavits that were perjured; but this is the first instance that has come to our knowledge (and we receive it as a proof of Indian refinement) of a delicate affidavit. This affidavit of Mr. Hastings we shall show to your Lordships is not entitled to the description of a good affidavit, however it might be entitled, in the opinion of those judges, to the description of a delicate affidavit,—a phrase by which they appear to have meant that he had furnished all the proofs of the Nabob's deposition, but had delicately avoided to declare him expressly deposed. The judges drew, however, this indelicate conclusion; the conclusion they drew was founded upon the premises; it was very just and logical; for they declared that he was a mere cipher. They commended Mr. Hastings's delicacy, though they did not imitate it; but they pronounced sentence of deposition upon the said Nabob, and they declared that any letter or paper that was produced from him could not be considered as an act of government. So effectually was he removed by the judges out of the way, that no minority, no insanity, no physical circumstances, not even death itself, could put a man more completely out of sight. They declare that they would consider his letters in no other light than as the letters of the Company, represented by the Governor-General and Council. Thus, then, we find the Nabob legally dead.

We find next, that he was politically dead. Mr. Hastings, not satisfied with the affidavit he made in court, has thought proper upon record to inform the Company and the world of what he considered him to be civilly and politically.

Now, my Lords, the delicacy of the affidavit is no more; the great arcanum of the state is avowed: it is avowed that the government is ours,—that the Nabob is nothing. It is avowed to foreign nations; and the disguise which we have put on, Mr. Hastings states, in his opinion, to be hurtful to the affairs of the Company. Here we perceive the exact and the perfect agreement between his character as a delicate affidavit-maker in a court of justice and his indelicate declarations upon the records of the Company for the information of the whole world concerning the real arcanum of the Bengal government.

Now I cannot help praising his consistency upon this occasion, whether his policy was right or wrong. Hitherto we find the whole consistent, we find the affidavit perfectly supported. The inferences which delicacy at first prevented him from producing better recollection and more perfect policy made him here avow. In this state things continued. The Nabob, your Lordships see, is dead,—dead in law, dead in politics, dead in a court of justice, dead upon the records of the Company. Except in mere animal existence, it is all over with him.

I have now to state to your Lordships, that Mr. Hastings, who has the power of putting even to death in this way, possesses likewise the art of restoring to life. But what is the medicine that revives them? Your Lordships, I am sure, will be glad to know what nostrum, not hitherto pretended to by quacks in physic, by quacks in politics, nor by quacks in law, will serve to revive this man, to cover his dead bones with flesh, and to give him life, activity, and vigor. My Lords, I am about to tell you an instance of a recipe of such infallible efficacy as was never before discovered. His cure for all disorders is disobedience to the commands of his lawful superiors. When the orders of the Court of Directors are contrary to his own opinions, he forgets them all. Let the Court of Directors but declare in favor of his own system and his own positions, and that very moment, merely for the purpose of declaring his right of rebellion against the laws of his country, he counteracts them. Then these dead bones arise,—or, to use a language more suitable to the dignity of the thing, Bayes's men are all revived. "Are these men dead?" asks Mr. Bayes's friend. "No," says he, "they shall all get up and dance immediately." But in this ludicrous view of Mr. Hastings's conduct, your Lordships must not lose sight of its great importance. You cannot have in an abstract, as it were, any one thing that better develops the principles of the man, that more fully develops all the sources of his conduct, and of all the frauds and iniquities which he has committed, in order at one and the same time to evade his duty to the Court of Directors, that is to say, to the laws of his country, and to oppress, crush, rob, and ill-treat the people that are under him.

My Lords, you have had an account of the person who represented the Nabob's dignity, Mahomed Reza Khân; you have heard of the rank he bore, the sufferings that he went through, his trial and honorable acquittal, and the Company's order that the first opportunity should be taken to appoint him Naib Subah, or deputy of the Nabob, and more especially to represent him in the administering of justice. Your Lordships are also acquainted with what was done in consequence of those orders by the Council-General, in the restoration and reëstablishment of the executive power in this person,—not in the poor Nabob, a poor, helpless, ill-bred, ill-educated boy, but in the first Mussulman of the country, who had before exercised the office of Naib Subah, or deputy viceroy,—in order to give some degree of support to the expiring honor and justice of that country. The majority, namely, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, whose names, as I have before said, will, for obedience to the Company, fidelity to the laws, honor to themselves, and a purity untouched and unimpeached, stand distinguished and honored, in spite of all the corrupt and barking virulence of India against them,—these men, I say, obeyed the Company: they had no secret or fraudulent connection with Mahomed Reza Khân; but they reinstated him in his office.

The moment that real death had carried away two of the most virtuous of this community, and that Mr. Hastings was thereby reëstablished in his power, he returned to his former state of rebellion to the Company, and of fraud and oppression upon the people. And here we come to the revivificating medicine. I forgot to tell your Lordships, that this Nabob, whose letters were declared by a court of law, with his own approbation, to be in effect letters of the Governor-General and Council, concludes a formal application transmitted to them, and dated 17th November, 1777, with a demand of the restoration of his rights. Mr. Hastings upon this enters the following minute:—

My Lords, you have heard his affidavit, you have heard his avowed and recorded opinion. In direct defiance of both, because he wishes to make doubtful the orders of the Company and to evade his duty, he here makes without any delicacy a declaration, which if it be true, the affidavit is a gross perjury, let it be managed with what delicacy he pleases. The word nizamut, which he uses, may be unfamiliar to your Lordships. In India it signifies the whole executive government, though the word strictly means viceroyalty: all the princes of that country holding their dominions as representatives of the Mogul, the great nominal sovereign of the empire. To convince you that it does so, take his own explanation of it.

I beg of your Lordships to recollect, when you take into your consideration the charges of the House of Commons, that the person they accuse, and persons suborned by him, have never scrupled to be guilty, without sense of shame, of the most notorious falsehoods, the most glaring inconsistencies, and even of perjury itself; and that it is thus they make the power of the Company dead or alive, as best suits their own wicked, clandestine, and fraudulent purposes, and the great end of all their actions and all their politics plunder and peculation.

I must here refer your Lordships to a minute of Mr. Francis's, which I recommend to your reading at large, and to your very serious recollection, in page 1086; because it contains a complete history of Mr. Hastings's conduct, and of its effects upon this occasion.

And now to proceed.—The Nabob, in a subsequent application to the Company's government at Calcutta, desires that Munny Begum may be allowed to take on herself the whole administration of the affairs of the nizamut, (not the superiority in the administration of the affairs of the seraglio only, though this would have been a tyrannical usurpation of the power belonging to the legitimate mother of the Nabob,) without the interference of any person whatever; and he adds, that by this the Governor will give him complete satisfaction. In all fraudulent correspondence you are sure to find the true secret of it at last. It has been said by somebody, that the true sense of a letter is to be learnt from its postscript. But this matter is so clumsily managed, that, in contempt of all decency, the first thing the Nabob does is to desire he may be put into the hands of Munny Begum, and that without the interference of anybody whatever.

The next letter, immediately following on the heels of the former, was received by the Council on the 12th of February, 1778. In this letter he desires that Mahomed Reza Khân may be removed from his office in the government; and he expresses his hopes, that, as he himself is now come to years of maturity, and by the blessing of God is not so devoid of understanding as to be incapable of conducting his affairs, he says, "I am therefore hopeful, from your favor and regard to justice, that you will deliver me from the authority of the aforesaid Mahomed Reza Khân, and give your permission that I take on myself the management of the adawlut and foujdarry." There is no doubt of this latter application, in contradiction to the former, having arisen from a suspicion that the appointment of Munny Begum would be too gross, and would shock the Council; and Mr. Hastings therefore orders the second letter to be written from the Nabob, in which he claims the powers of government for himself. Then follows a letter from the Governor-General, informing the Nabob that it had been agreed, that, his Excellency being now arrived at years of maturity, the control of his own household, and the courts dependent on the nizamut and foujdarry, should be placed in his hands; and Mahomed Reza Khân was directed at the same time to resign his authority to the Nabob.

Here your Lordships see Munny Begum in effect completely invested with, and you will see how she has used her power: for I suppose your Lordships are sick of the name of Nabob, as a real actor in the government. You now see the true parties in the transaction,—namely, the lover, Warren Hastings, Esquire, and Munny Begum, the object of his passion and flame, to which he sacrifices as much as Antony ever did to Cleopatra. You see the object of his love and affection placed in the administration of the viceroyalty; you see placed at her disposal the administration of the civil judicature, and of the executory justice,—together with the salary which was intended for Mahomed Reza Khân.

Your Lordships will be pleased to remember that this distribution of the Nabob's government was made in direct defiance of the orders of the Company. And as a further proof of this defiance, it will not escape your Lordships, that, before this measure was carried into execution, Mr. Barwell being one day absent from the Council, Mr. Hastings fell into a minority; and it was agreed, upon that occasion, that the whole affair should be referred home to the Court of Directors, and that no arrangement should be made till the Directors had given their opinion. Mr. Hastings, the very moment after Mr. Barwell's return to his seat in the Council, rescinds this resolution, which subjected the orders of the Court of Directors to their own reconsideration; and he hurries headlong and precipitately into the execution of his first determination. Your Lordships will also see in this act what sort of use Mr. Hastings made of the Council; and I have therefore insisted upon all these practices of the prisoner at your bar, because there is not one of them in which some principle of government is not wounded, if not mortally wounded.

My Lords, we have laid before you the consequences of this proceeding. We have shown what passed within the walls of the seraglio, and what tyranny was exercised by this woman over the multitude of women there. I shall now show your Lordships in what manner she made use of her power over the supreme judicature, to peculate, and to destroy the country; and I shall adduce, as proofs of this abuse of her authority, the facts I am about to relate, and of which there is evidence before your Lordships.

There was an ostensible man, named Sudder ul Huk Khân, placed there at the head of the administration of justice, with a salary of seven thousand pounds a year of the Company's money. This man, in a letter to the Governor-General and Council, received the 1st of September, 1778, says,—"His Highness himself [the Nabob] is not deficient in regard for me, but certain bad men have gained an ascendency over his temper, by whose instigation he acts." You will see, my Lords, how this poor man was crippled in the execution of his duty, and dishonored by the corruption of this woman and her eunuchs, to whom Mr. Hastings had given the supreme government, and with it an uncontrolled influence over all the dependent parts. After thus complaining of the slights he receives from the Nabob, he adds,—"Thus they cause the Nabob to treat me, sometimes with indignity, at others with kindness, just as they think proper to advise him: their view is, that, by compelling me to displeasure at such unworthy treatment, they may force me either to relinquish my station, or to join with them and act with their advice, and appoint creatures of their recommendation to the different offices, from which they might draw profit to themselves." In a subsequent letter to the Governor, Sudder ul Huk Khân says,—"The Begum's ministers, before my arrival, with the advice of their counsellors, caused the Nabob to sign a receipt, in consequence of which they received, at two different times, near fifty thousand rupees, in the name of the officers of the adawlut, foujdarry, &c., from the Company's sircar; and having drawn up an account current in the manner they wished, they got the Nabob to sign it, and then sent it to me." In the same letter he asserts that these people have the Nabob entirely in their power.

Now I have only to remark to your Lordships, that the first and immediate operation of Mr. Hastings's regulation, which put everything into the hands of this wicked woman for her corrupt purposes, was, that the office of chief-justice was trampled upon and depraved, and made use of to plunder the Company of money, which was appropriated to their own uses,—and that the person ostensibly holding this office was forced to become the instrument in the hands of this wicked woman and her two wicked eunuchs. This, then, was the representation which the chief-justice made to Mr. Hastings, as one of the very first fruits of his new arrangement. I am now to tell you what his next step was. This same Mr. Hastings, who had made the Nabob master of everything and placed everything at his disposal, who had maintained that the Nabob was not to act a secondary part and to be a mere instrument in the hands of the Company, who had, as you have seen, revived the Nabob, now puts him to death again. He pretends to be shocked at these proceedings of the Nabob, and, not being able to prevent their coming before the Council of the Directors at home, he immediately took Sudder ul Huk Khân under his protection.

Now your Lordships see Mr. Hastings appearing in his own character again,—exercising the power he had pretended to abdicate, whilst the Nabob sinks and subsides under him. He becomes the supporter of Sudder ul Huk Khân, now that the infamy of the treatment he received could no longer be concealed from the Council. On the 1st of September, 1778, the Governor informs the Nabob, "that it is highly expedient that Sudder ul Huk Khân should have full control in all matters relative to his office, and the sole appointment and dismission of the sudder and mofussil officers; and that his seal and signature should be authentic to all papers having relation to the business intrusted to him: I therefore intimate to you, that he should appoint and dismiss all the officers under him, and that your Excellency should not interfere in any one [way?]."

The Nabob, in a letter to the Governor, received the 3d of September, 1778, says,—"Agreeably to your pleasure, I have relinquished all concern with the affairs of the foujdarry and adawlut, leaving the entire management in Sudder ul Huk Khân's hands." Here you see the Nabob again reduced to his former state of subordination. This chief-justiceship, which was declared to be his inherent right, he is obliged to submit to the control of Mr. Hastings, and to declare that he will not interfere at all in a matter which Mr. Hastings had declared to be his incommunicable attribute. I do not say that Mr. Hastings interfered improperly. Certainly it was not fit that the highest court of justice in all Bengal should be made the instrument of the rapacity of a set of villains with a prostitute at their head: just as if a gang of thieves in England, with their prostitutes at their head, should seize the judge which ought to punish them, and endeavor to make use of his name in their iniquitous transactions. But your Lordships will find that Mr. Hastings is here acting a merely ostensible part, and that he has always a means of defeating privately what he declares publicly to be his intention. Your Lordships will see soon how this ended. Mr. Hastings gets the Nabob to give up all his authority over the chief-justice; but he says not one word of Munny Begum, the person who had the real authority in her hands, and who was not forbidden to interfere with him. Mr. Hastings's order is dated the 1st September, 1778. On the 3d of September, the Nabob is said to have relinquished all concern with Sudder ul Huk Khân. In a letter received the 30th of September, (that is, about twenty-seven days after the date of Mr. Hastings's order,) you will see how this pretended order was managed. Sudder ul Huk Khân thus writes, in a letter received the 30th of September.

My Lords, you see again how Mr. Hastings's pretended orders were obeyed. They were orders addressed to the Nabob, whom he knew to be nothing, and who could neither control or take the least share in the execution of them; but he leaves the thing loose as to Manny Begum and her eunuchs, who he knew could alone carry them into effect. Your Lordships see that the first use made of the restored authority of the Nabob was, under various pretences, to leave the salaries of the officers of government unprovided for, to rob the public treasury, and to give the Company's money to the eunuchs, who were acting in the manner I have stated to you.

Information of these proceedings reaches Calcutta; a regular complaint from a person in the highest situation in the government is made, and the Governor-General is obliged again to take up the matter; and I shall now read to your Lordships a letter of the 10th of October, 1778, which contains a representation so pointed and so very just of the fatal effects which his interference in the administration of justice had produced as not to stand in need of any comment from me. It speaks too plainly to require any.

My Lords, I think I have read enough to you for our present purpose,—referring your Lordships for fuller information to your Minutes, page 1086, which I beg you to read with the greatest attention.

I must again beg your Lordships to remark, that, though Mr. Hastings has the impudence still to pretend that he wishes for the restoration of order and justice in the country, yet, instead of writing to Munny Begum upon the business, whom he knew to be the very object complained of, and whose eunuchs are expressly mentioned in the complaint, he writes to the Nabob, whom he knew to be a pageant in his own court and government, and whose name was not even mentioned in this last complaint. Not one word is said, even in this letter to the Nabob, of Munny Begum or of her eunuchs. My Lords, when you consider his tacit support of the authors of the grievance, and his ostensible application for redress to the man who he knew never authorized and could not redress the grievance, you must conclude that he meant to keep the country in the same state for his own corrupt purposes. In this state the country in fact continued; Munny Begum and her eunuchs continued to administer and squander the Company's money, as well as the Nabob's; robberies and murders continued to prevail throughout the country. No appearance was left of order, law, or justice, from one end of Bengal to the other.

The account of this state of things was received by the Court of Directors with horror and indignation. On the 27th of May, 1779, they write, as you will find in page 1063 of your printed Minutes, a letter to their government at Calcutta, condemning their proceedings and the removal of Mahomed Reza Khân, and they order that Munny Begum shall be displaced, and Mahomed Reza Khân restored again to the seat of justice.

Mr. Francis, upon the arrival of these reiterated orders, moved in Council for an obedience to them. Mr. Hastings, notwithstanding he had before his eyes all the horrible consequences that attended his new arrangement, still resists that proposition. By his casting voice in the Council he counter-orders the orders of the Court of Directors, and sanctions a direct disobedience to their authority, by a resolution that Mahomed Reza Khân should not be restored to his employment, but that this Sudder ul Huk Khân, who still continued in the condition already described, should remain in the possession of his office. I say nothing of Sudder ul Huk Khân; he seems to be very well disposed to do his duty, if Mr. Hastings's arrangements had suffered him to do it; and indeed, if Mahomed Reza Khân had been reinstated, and no better supported by Mr. Hastings than Sudder ul Huk Khân, he could probably have kept the country in no better order, though, perhaps, his name, and the authority and weight which still adhered to him in some degree, might have had some influence.

My Lords, you have seen his defiance of the Company; you have seen his defiance of all decency; you see his open protection of prostitutes and robbers of every kind ravaging Bengal; you have seen this defiance of the authority of the Court of Directors flatly, directly, and peremptorily persisted in to the last. Order after order was reiterated, but his disobedience arose with an elastic spring in proportion to the pressure that was upon it.

My Lords, here there was a pause. The Directors had been disobeyed; and you might suppose that he would have been satisfied with this act of disobedience. My Lords, he was resolved to let the native governments of the country know that he despised the orders of the Court of Directors, and that, whenever he pretended to obey them, in reality he was resolved upon the most actual disobedience. An event now happened, the particulars of which we are not to repeat here. Disputes, conducted, on Mr. Francis's side, upon no other principle, that we can discover, but a desire to obey the Company's orders, and to execute his duty with fidelity and disinterestedness, had arisen between him and Mr. Hastings. Mr. Francis, about the time we have been speaking of, finding resistance was vain, reconciles himself to him,—but on the most honorable terms as a public man, namely, that he should continue to follow and obey the laws, and to respect the authority of the Court of Directors. Upon this reconciliation, it was agreed that Mahomed Reza Khân should be restored to his office. For this purpose Mr. Hastings enters a minute, and writes to the Nabob an ostensible letter. But your Lordships will here see an instance of what I said respecting a double current in all Mr. Hastings's proceedings. Even when he obeys or pretends to obey the Company's orders, there is always a private channel through which he defeats them all.