uthority of the Supreme Council.
The weakness of the Nabob, as Sir Eyre Coote tells you, could not have
been alone the cause of these evils, and that our influence over him, if
not actually the cause of the utter ruin, desolation, and anarchy of
that country, might have been successfully exerted in preventing.

When your Lordships shall proceed to judgment upon these accumulated
wrongs, arising out of the usurped power of the prisoner at your bar,
and redressed by him in no one instance whatever, let not the usurpation
itself of the Nabob's power be considered as a trivial matter. When any
prince at the head of a great country is entirely stripped of everything
in his government, civil or military, by which his rank may be
distinguished or his virtues exercised, he is in danger of becoming a
mere animal, and of abandoning himself wholly to sensual gratifications.
Feeling no personal interest in the institutions or in the general
welfare of the country, he suffers the former (and many wise and
laudable institutions existed in the provinces of the Nabob, for their
good order and government) to fall into disuse, and he leaves the
country itself to persons in inferior situations, to be wasted and
destroyed by them. You find that in Oude, the very appearance of justice
had been banished out of it, and that every aumil exercised an arbitrary
power over the lives and fortunes of the people. My Lords, we have the
proofs of all these facts in our hands; they are in your Lordships'
minutes; and though we can state nothing stronger than is stated in the
papers themselves, yet we do not so far forget our duty as not to point
out to your Lordships such observations as arise out of them.

To close the whole, your Lordships shall how hear read an extract from a
most curious and extraordinary letter, sent by him to the Court of
Directors, preparatory to his return to England.

"My only remaining fear is, that the members of the Council, seeing
affairs through a different medium from that through which I view
them, may be disposed, if not to counteract the system which I have
formed, to withhold from it their countenance and active support.
While I myself remain, it will be sufficient if they permit it to
operate without interruption; and I almost hope, in the event of a
new administration of your affairs which shall confine itself to
the same forbearance, and manifest no symptoms of intended