XI. That the said Warren Hastings, then lately appointed to the Presidency, did, on the 1st of April, and on the 24th of September, 1772, write letters to the Court of Directors, informing them that on the very next day after he had received (as he asserts) their private orders, "addressed to himself alone," and not to the board, he did dispatch, by express messengers, his orders to Mr. Middleton, the Resident at
the Nabob's court at Moorshedabad, in a public character and trust with the Nabob, to arrest, in his capital, and at his court, and without any previous notice given of any charge, his principal minister, the aforesaid Mahomed Reza Khân, and to bring him down to Calcutta; and he did carefully conceal his said proceedings from the knowledge of the board, on pretext of his not being acquainted with their dispositions, and the influence which he thought that the said Mahomed Reza Khân had amongst them.
XII. That the said Warren Hastings, at the time he gave his orders as aforesaid for arresting the said Mahomed Reza Khân, did not take any measures to compel the appearance of any other persons as witnesses,—declaring it as his opinion, "that there would be little need of violence to obtain such intelligence as they could give against their former master, when his authority is taken from him"; but he did afterwards, in excuse for the long detention and imprisonment of the said Mahomed Reza Khân, without any proofs having been obtained of his guilt, or measures taken to bring him to a trial, assure the Directors, in direct contradiction to his former declaration, "that the influence of Mahomed Reza Khân still prevailed generally throughout the country, in the Nabob's household, and at the capital, and was scarcely affected by his present disgrace,"—notwithstanding, as he, the said Hastings, doth confess, he had used his utmost endeavors "to break that influence, by removing his dependants, and putting the direction of all the affairs that had been committed to his care into the hands of the most powerful or active of his enemies; that he depended on the activity of their hatred to
Mahomed Reza Khân, incited by the expectation of rewards, for investigating the conduct of the latter; that with this the institution of the new dewanny coincided; and that the same principle had guided him in the choice of Munny Begum and Rajah Gourdas,—the former for the chief administration, the latter" (the son of Nundcomar, and a mere instrument in the hands of his father) "for the dewanny of the Nabob's household,—both the declared enemies of Mahomed Reza Khân."
XIII. That, although it might be true that enemies will become the most active prosecutors, and as such may, though under much guard and many precautions, be used even as witnesses, and that it ought not to be an exception, supposing their character and capacity otherwise good, to the appointing them to power, yet to advance persons to power on the ground not of their honor and integrity, which might have produced the enmity of bad men, but merely for the enmity itself, without any reference whatsoever to a laudable cause, and even with a declared ill opinion of the morals of one of the party, such as was actually delivered in the said letter by him, the said Hastings, of Nundcomar, (and which time has shown he might also on good ground have conceived of others,) was, in the circumstances of a criminal inquiry, a motive highly disgraceful to the honor of government, and destructive of impartial justice, by holding out the greatest of all possible temptation to false accusation, to corrupt and factious conspiracies, to perjury, and to every species of injustice and oppression.
XIV. That, in consequence of the aforesaid mo
tives, and others pretended, which were by no means a sufficient justification to the said Warren Hastings, he did appoint the woman aforesaid, called Munny Begum, who had been of the lowest and most discreditable order in society, according to the ideas prevalent in India, but from whom he received several sums of money, to be guardian to the Nabob in preference to his own mother, and to administer the affairs of the government in the place of the said Mahomed Reza Khân, the second Mussulman in rank after the Nabob, and the first in knowledge, gravity, weight, and character among the Mussulmen of that province. And in order to try every method and to take every chance for his destruction, the said Warren Hastings did maliciously and oppressively keep him under confinement, for a part of the time without any inquiry, and afterwards with a slow and dilatory trial, for two years together.
XV. That, notwithstanding a total revolution in the power, in part avowedly made for his destruction, the persons appointed for his trial did, on full inquiry, completely acquit the said Mahomed Reza Khân of the criminal charges against him, on account of which he had been so long persecuted and confined, and suffered much in mind, body, and fortune: and the Court of Directors, in their letter of the 3d of March, 1775, testify their satisfaction in the conduct and result of the said inquiry, and did direct the restoration of the said Mahomed Reza Khân to liberty, and to the offices which he had lately held, which comprehended the management of the Nabob's household, and the general superintendency of the justice of Bengal; but, according to the orders of
the Court of Directors, his appointments were reduced to thirty thousand pounds a year, or thereabouts, of which he did make grievous complaint, on account of the expenses attendant on his station, and the heavy debts which he had been obliged to contract during his unjust persecution and imprisonment aforesaid.
XVI. That, on the removal of the said Mahomed Reza Khân from the superintendency of the criminal justice, and in consequence of letting the province of Bengal in farm by the said Warren Hastings, several dangerous and mischievous innovations were made by him, the said Warren Hastings, and the criminal justice of the country was almost wholly subverted, and great irregularities and disorders did actually ensue.