"The two following Papers, although private, having already appeared in print, are here (the Records of the Company) inserted for the information of the Proprietors; but it does not appear from (here) the Records of the Company, that they were ever (during 16 long years) officially communicated to the Court of Directors." The two Papers are, "A Letter from the Right Hon. Henry Dundas to David Scott, Esq." a deceased Director; and an enclosure in the foregoing, signed "William Dundas," and "T. Wallace;" which last paper has actually been called by some A Report of the Board of Controul. On the other hand, the deceased Mr. David Scott's authority to correspond and correspondence do not appear.
So, in Mr. Sherson's case, there has been published an unsigned or anonymous Report of it, by a Mr. Halhed, one of the clerks in the India-House, whose error "was not his first" of the kind, yet whose Report was ordered, it has confidently been asserted, by only some one or two of the whole Court of Directors. In Mr. Sherson's case again the Board of Controul has compelled the erasure, from a despatch of the Court of Directors, of a paragraph recommendatory of an investigation into the conduct (on this Mr. Sherson's trial) of no less a person than Sir Francis Macnaghten, the second of three Judges, of whom the third is almost as much concerned as Sir Francis himself.
Nor let these parallels be thought to beg the question, since they might readily have been extended; and since Major Hart's case would prove itself in Courts of Law, whether by artful confessions, or by other and better description of testimony. Unhappily, however, the period for this is expired.
W. H. INGLIS.
3, Mincing-lane.