❝him, and you cannot have a more attached

or more disinterested counsellor. Although "I desire to receive your letters frequently, yet "as many matters will occur which cannot so easily be explained by letter as by conversa❝tion, I desire that you will on such occasions give your orders to him respecting such points as you may desire to have imparted to and I, postponing every other concern, "will give you an immediate, and the most "satisfactory reply concerning them."

C

me;

My Lords, here is a man who is to administer his own affairs; who has arrived at sufficient age to supersede the counsel and advice of the great Mahometan doctors, and the great nobility of the country, and he is put under the most absolute guardianship of Sir John D'Oyley. But Mr. Hastings has given Sir John D'Oyley a great character. I cannot confirm it, because I can confirm the character of none of Mr. Hastings's instruments. They must stand forth here, and defend their own character before you.

Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to another circumstance in this transaction ; you see here 40,000l. a year, offered by this. man for his redemption. I will give you, he says, 40,000l. a year to have the management of my own affairs. Good heavens! Here is

such an offer. That such an offer was made, had been long published and long in print, with the remarks such as I have made upon it, in the Ninth Report of the Select Committee: that the Committee had so done was well known to Mr. Hastings and Sir John D'Oyley; not one word on the part of Mr. Hastings, not one word on the part of Sir John D'Oyley, was said to contradict it, until the appearance of the latter before the House of Commons. But, my Lords, there is something much more serious in this transaction. It is this, that the evidence produced by Mr. Hastings, is the evidence of witnesses who are mere phantoms; they are persons who could not, under Mr. Hastings's government, eat a bit of bread but upon his own terms, and they are brought forward to give such evidence as may answer his purposes.

You would naturally have imagined, that in the House of Commons, where clouds of witnesses had been before produced by the friends and agents of Mr. Hastings, he would then have brought forward Sir John to contradict this reported offer; but not a word from Sir John D'Oyley; at last he is examined before the Committee of Managers, he refuses to answer : Why? Because his answers might criminate himself. My Lords, every answer that most of them have been required to make, they are sen"sible

R 4

sible they cannot make, without danger of criminating themselves; being all involved in the crimes of the Prisoner. He has corrupted and ruined the whole service; there is not one of them that dares appear and give a fair and full answer, in any case, as you have seen in Mr. Middleton and many others, at your bar;-" I "will not answer this question," they say, "because it tends to criminate myself." How comes it that the Company's servants are not able to give evidence in the affairs of Mr. Hastings, without its tending to criminate themselves?

Well-Sir John D'Oyley is in England, why is he not called now? I have not the honour of being intimately acquainted with him, but he is a man of a reputable and honourable family. Why is he not called by Mr. Hastings to verify the assertion, and why do they suffer this black record to stand before your Lordships to be urged by us, and to press it as we do against him? If he knows that Sir John D'Oyley can acquit him of this part of our accusation, he would certainly bring him as a witness to your bar; but he knows he cannot. When therefore I see upon your records, that Sir John D'Oyley and Mr. Hastings received such an offer for the redemption of the Nabob's affairs out of their hands, I conclude first, that at the time of this

offer

offer the Nabob had not the disposal of his own affairs; and secondly, that those who had the disposal of them, disposed of them so corruptly and prodigally, that he thought they could hardly be redeemed at too high a price. What explanation of this matter has been attempted? There is no explanation given of it at all. It stands clear, full bare in all its nakedness before you. They have not attempted to produce the least evidence against it. Therefore, in that state I leave it with you, and I shall only add, that Mr. Hastings continued to make Munny Begum the first object of his attention; and that though he could not entirely remove Mahomed Reza Khan from the seat of justice, he was made a cypher in it. All his other offices were taken out of his hands and put into the hands of Sir John D'Oyley, directly contrary to the orders of the Company, which certainly implied the restitution of Mahomed Reza Khan to all the offices which he had before held. He was stripped of every thing but a feeble administration of justice, which, I take for granted, could not, under the circumstances, have been much better in his hands, than it had been in Sudder ul Hoe Khan's.

Mr. Hastings's protection of this woman continued to the last; and when he was going away, on the third of November 1783, he wrote a

sentimental