ere
else, we look for the justification of his conduct to laws,--the Law of
Nations, the laws of this country, and the laws of the country he was
sent to govern.

The government of that country, by the ancient constitution of the Mogul
empire, besides the numberless individual checks and counter-checks in
the inferior officers [offices?], is divided into the viceroyal part and
the subahdarry part. The viceroyal part takes in all criminal justice
and political government. Mr. Hastings found the country under a
viceroy, governing according to law, acting by proper judges and
magistrates under him: he himself not being the judicial, but executive
power of the country,--that which sets the other in action, and does not
supersede it or supply its place. The other, the subahdarry power, which
was by the grant of the dewanny conferred upon the Company, had under
its care the revenues, as much of the civil government as is concerned
with the revenues, and many other matters growing out of it. These two
offices are cooerdinate and dependent on each other. The Company, after
contracting to maintain the army out of it, got the whole revenue into
their power. The army being thus within their power, the subahdar by
degrees vanished into an empty name.

When we thus undertook the government of the country, conscious that we
had undertaken a task which by any personal exertion of our own we were
unable to perform in any proper or rational way, the Company appointed a
native of the country, Mahomed Reza Khan, who stands upon the records of
the Company, I venture to say, with such a character as no man perhaps
ever did stand, to execute the duties of both offices. Upon the
expulsion of Cossim Ali Khan, the Nabob of Bengal, all his children were
left in a young, feeble, and unprotected state; and in that state of
things, Lord Clive, Mr. Sumner, who sits near Mr. Hastings, and the rest
of the Council, wisely appointed Mahomed Reza Khan to fulfil the two
offices of deputy-viceroy and deputy-dewan, for which he had immense
allowances, and great jaghires and revenues, I allow. He was a man of
that dignity, rank, and consideration, added to his knowledge of law and
experience in business, that Lord Clive and Mr. Sumner, who examined
strictly his conduct at that time, did not think that 112,000_l._ a
year, the amount of the emoluments which had been allowed him, was a
great deal too much; but at his own desire, and in order that these
emolum