XVII. That the Council-General, established by act of Parliament in the year 1773, did restore the said Mahomed Reza Khân, with the consent and approbation of the Nabob, (but under a protest from the said Warren Hastings,) to his liberty and to his offices, according to the spirit of the orders given by the Court of Directors as aforesaid; and the Court of Directors did approve of the said appointment, and did assure the said Mahomed Reza Khân of their favor and protection as long as his conduct should merit the same, in the following terms. "As the abilities of Mahomed Reza Khân have been sufficiently manifested, as official experience qualifies him for so high a station in a more eminent degree than any other native with whom the Company has been connected, and as no proofs of maladministration have been established
against him, either during the strict investigation of his conduct or since his retirement, we cannot under all circumstances but approve your recommendation of him to the Nabob to constitute him his Naib. We are well pleased that he has received that appointment, and authorize you to assure him of our favor, so long as a firm attachment to the interest of the Company and a proper discharge of the duties of his station shall render him worthy of our protection." And the said Mahomed Reza Khân did continue to execute the same without any complaint whatsoever of malversation or negligence, in any manner or degree, in his said office.
XVIII. That in March, 1778, the said Warren Hastings, under color that the Nabob had completed his twentieth year, and had desired to be placed in the entire and uncontrolled management of his own affairs, and that Mahomed Reza Khân should be removed from his office, and that Munny Begum, his step-mother, the dancing-girl aforesaid, "should take on herself the management of the nizamut [the government and general superintendency of criminal justice] without the interference of any person whatsoever," and notwithstanding the contradictions in the pretended applications from the Nabob, with whose incapacity for all affairs he was well acquainted, did, in defiance of the orders of the Court of Directors, and without regard to the infamy of an arrangement made for the evident and declared purpose of delivering not only the family with the prince, but the government and justice of a great kingdom, into such insufficient, corrupt, and scandalous hands, and though he has declared his opinion "that our na
tional character is concerned in the character which the Nabob may obtain in the public opinion," on obtaining a majority in Council, without any complaint, real or pretended, remove the said Mahomed Reza from all his offices, and did partition his salary as a spoil in the following manner: to Munny Begum, the dancing-girl aforesaid, an additional allowance of 72,000 rupees (7,200l.) a year; to the Nabob's own mother but half that sum, that is to say, 36,000 rupees (3,600l.) a year; to Rajah Gourdas, son of Nundcomar, (whom he had described as a weak young man,) 72,000 rupees (7,200l.) a year, as controller of the household; and to a magistrate called Sudder ul Hock, who, in real subserviency to the said Munny Begum, was nominally to act in the department of criminal justice, 78,000 rupees (7,800l.) a year: the total of which allowances exceeding the salary of Mahomed Reza Khân by 18,000 rupees (1,800l.) yearly, he did, for the corrupt and scandalous purposes aforesaid, order the same to be made up from the Company's treasury.
XIX. That Mr. Francis and Mr. Wheler having moved that the execution of the aforesaid arrangement, the whole expense of which, ordinary and extraordinary, was charged upon the Company's treasury, and therefore could not be even colorably disposed of at the pretended will of the said Nabob, might be suspended until the pleasure of the Court of Directors thereon should be known, and the same being resolved agreeably to law by a majority of the Council then present, the said Hastings, urging on violently the immediate execution of his corrupt project, and having obtained, by the return of Richard Barwell,
Esquire, a majority in Council in his own casting vote, did rescind the aforesaid resolution, and did carry into immediate execution the aforesaid most unwarrantable, mischievous, and scandalous design.
XX. That the consequences which might be expected from such a plan of administration did almost instantly flow from it. For the person appointed to execute one of the offices which had been filled by Mahomed Reza Khân did soon find that the eunuchs of Munny Begum began to employ their power with great superiority and insolence in all the concerns of government and the administration of justice, and did endeavor to dispose of the offices relative to the same for their corrupt purposes, and to rob the Nabob's servants of their due allowances; and in his letter of the 1st September, 1778, he sent a complaint to the board, stating, "that certain bad men had gained an ascendency over the Nabob's temper, by whose instigation he acts"; and after complaining of the slights he received 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 most unworthy treatment, they may force me either to relinquish my station, or to join with them, and act by their advice, and appoint creatures of their recommendation to the different offices, from which they might draw profit to themselves."
XXI. That, in a subsequent letter to the Governor, the said Superintendent of Justice did inform him, the said Warren Hastings, of the audacious and
corrupt manner in which, by violence, fraud, and forgery, the eunuchs of Munny Begum had abused the Nabob's name, to deprive the judicial and executory officers of justice of the salaries which they ought to have drawn from the Company's treasury, in the following words: "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 50,000 rupees [5,000l.], in the name of the officers of the Adawlut, Phousdary, &c., from the Company's sircars; and having drawn up an account-current in the manner they wished, they had got the Nabob to sign it, and sent it to me." And in the same letter he asserts, "that these people had the Nabob entirely in their power."
XXII. That the said Warren Hastings, upon this representation, did, notwithstanding his late pretended opinion of the fitness and the right of the Nabob to the sole administration of his own affairs, authoritatively forbid him from any interference therein, and ordered that the whole should be left to the magistrate aforesaid; to which the Nabob did, notwithstanding his pretended independence, yield an immediate and unreserved submission: for the said Hastings's order being given on the 1st of September at Calcutta, he received an answer from Moorshedabad on the 3d, in the following terms: "Agreeably to your pleasure, I have relinquished all concern with the affairs of the Phousdary and Adawlut, leaving the entire management in Sudder ul Hock's hands." Which said circumstance, as well as many others, abundantly proves that all the Nabob's actions were in truth and fact en