"6. This scene of corruption was first disclosed at a visit the Nabob paid to Lord Clive and the gentlemen of the Committee a few days after our arrival. He there delivered to his Lordship a letter filled with bitter complaints of the insults and indignity he had been exposed to, and the embezzlement of near twenty lacs of rupees issued from his treasury for purposes unknown during the late negotiations. So public a complaint could not be disregarded, and it soon produced an inquiry. We referred the letter to the board in expectation of obtaining a satisfactory account of the application of this money, and were answered only by a warm remonstrance entered by Mr. Leycester against that very Nabob in whose elevation he boasts of having been a principal agent.
"7. Mahomed Reza Khân, the naib subah, was then called upon to account for this large disbursement from the treasury; and he soon delivered to the Committee the very extraordinary narrative entered in our Proceedings the 6th of June, wherein he specifies the several names and sums, by whom paid, and to whom, whether in cash, bills, or obligations. So precise, so accurate an account as this of money for secret and venal services was never, we believe, before this period, exhibited to the Honorable Court of Directors, at least never vouched by undeniable testimony and authentic documents: by Juggut Seet, who himself was obliged to contribute largely to the sums demanded; by Muley Ram, who was employed by Mr. Johnstone in all these pecuniary transactions; by the Nabob and Mahomed Reza Khân, who were the heaviest sufferers; and, lastly, by the confession of the gentlemen themselves whose names are specified in the distribution list.
"8. Juggut Seet expressly declared in his narrative, that the sum which he agreed to pay the deputation, amounting to 125,000 rupees, was extorted by menaces; and since the close of our inquiry, and the opinions we delivered in the Proceedings of the 21st of June, it fully appears that the presents from the Nabob and Mahomed Reza Khân, exceeding the immense sum of seventeen lacs, were not the voluntary offerings of gratitude, but contributions levied on the weakness of the government, and violently exacted from the dependent state and timid disposition of the minister. The charge, indeed, is denied on the one hand, as well as affirmed on the other. Your honorable board must therefore determine how far the circumstance of extortion may aggravate the crime of disobedience to your positive orders,—the exposing the government in a manner to sale, and receiving the infamous wages of corruption from opposite parties and contending interests. We speak with boldness, because we speak from conviction founded upon indubitable evidence, that, besides the above sums specified in the distribution account, to the amount of 228,125l. sterling, there was likewise to the value of several lacs of rupees procured from Nundcomar and Roy Dullub, each of whom aspired at and obtained a promise of that very employment it was predetermined to bestow on Mahomed Reza Khân.
(Signed at the end,)
"CLIVE.
WM B. SUMNER.
JOHN CARNAC.
H. VERELST.
FRAS SYKES."
My Lords, the persons who sign this letter are mostly the friends, and one of them is the gentleman who is bail for and sits near Mr. Hastings. They state to you this horrible and venal transaction, by which the government was set to sale, by which a bastard son was elevated to the wrong of the natural and legitimate heir, and in which a prostitute, his mother, was put in the place of the honorable and legitimate mother of the representative of the family.
Now, if there was one thing more than another under heaven, which Mr. Hastings ought to have shunned, it was the suspicion of being concerned in any such infamous transaction as that which is here recorded to be so,—a transaction in which the country government had before been sold to this very woman and her offspring, and in which two great candidates for power in that country fought against each other, and perhaps the largest offerer carried it.
When a Governor-General sees the traces of corruption in the conduct of his predecessors, the traces of injustice following that corruption, the traces of notorious irregularity in setting aside the just claimants in favor of those that have no claim at all, he has that before his eyes which ought to have made him the more scrupulously avoid, and to keep at the farthest distance possible from, the contagion and even the suspicion of being corrupted by it. Moreover, my Lords, it was in consequence of these very transactions that the new covenants were made, which bind the servants of the Company never to take a present of above two hundred pounds, or some such sum of money, from any native in circumstances there described. This covenant I shall reserve for consideration in another part of this business. It was in pursuance of this idea, and to prevent the abuse of the prevailing custom of visiting the governing powers of that country with a view of receiving presents from them, that the House of Commons afterwards, in its inquiries, took up this matter and passed the Regulating Act in 1773.
But to return to Munny Begum.—This very person, that had got into power by the means already mentioned, did Mr. Hastings resort to, knowing her to be well skilled in the trade of bribery,—knowing her skilful practice in business of this sort,—knowing the fitness of her eunuchs, instruments, and agents, to be dealers in this kind of traffic. This very woman did Mr. Hastings select, stigmatized as she was in the Company's record, stigmatized by the very gentleman who sits next to him, and whose name you have heard read to you as one of those members of the Council that reprobated the horrible iniquity of the transaction in which this woman was a principal agent. For though neither the young Nabob nor his mother ought to have been raised to the stations in which they were placed, and were placed there for the purpose of facilitating the receipt of bribes, yet the order of Nature was preserved, and the mother was made the guardian of her own son: for though she was a prostitute and he a bastard, yet still she was a mother and he a son; and both Nature and legitimate disposition with regard to the guardianship of a son went together.
But what did Mr. Hastings do? Improving upon the preceding transaction, improving on it by a kind of refinement in corruption, he drives away the lawful mother from her lawful guardianship; the mother of nature he turns out, and he delivers her son to the stepmother to be the guardian of his person. That your Lordships may see who this woman was, we shall read to you a paper from your Lordships' minutes, produced before Mr. Hastings's face, and never contradicted by him from that day to this.
At a Consultation, 24th July, 1775.—"Shah Chanim, deceased, was sister to the Nabob Mahub ul Jung by the same father, but different mothers; she married Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khân, by whom she had a son and a daughter; the name of the former was Mir Mahomed Sadduc Ali Khân, and the latter was married to Mir Mahomed Cossim Khân Sadduc. Ali Khân had two sons and two daughters; the sons' names are Mir Sydoc and Mir Sobeem, who are now living; the daughters were married to Sultan Mirza Daood.