ents might be brought to stated and fixed sums, they reduced it to
90,000_l._,--an allowance which they thought was not more than
sufficient to preserve the state of so great a magistrate, and a man of
such rank, exercising such great employments. The whole revenue of the
Company depended upon his talents and fidelity; and you will find, that,
on the day in which he surrendered the revenues into our hands, the
dewanny, under his management, was a million more than it produced on
the day Mr. Hastings left it. For the truth of this I refer your
Lordships to a letter of the Company sent to the Board of Control. This
letter is not in evidence before your Lordships, and what I am stating
is merely historical. But I state the facts, and with the power of
referring for their proof to documents as authentic as if they were
absolutely in evidence before you. Assuming, therefore, that all these
facts may be verified by the records of the Company, I have now to state
that this man, by some rumors true or false, was supposed to have
misconducted himself in a time of great calamity in that country. A
great famine had about this time grievously afflicted the whole province
of Bengal.--I must remark by the way, that these countries are liable to
this calamity; but it is greatly blessed by Nature with resources which
afford the means of speedy recovery, if their government does not
counteract them. Nature, that inflicts the calamity, soon heals the
wound; it is in ordinary seasons the most fertile country, inhabited by
the most industrious people, and the most disposed to marriage and
settlement, probably, that exists in the whole world; so that population
and fertility are soon restored, and the inhabitants quickly resume
their former industrious occupations.

During the agitation excited in the country by the calamity I have just
mentioned, Mahomed Reza Khan, through the intrigues of Rajah Nundcomar,
one of his political rivals, and of some English faction that supported
him, was accused of being one of the causes of the famine. In answer to
this charge, he alleged, what was certainly a sufficient justification,
that he had acted under the direction of the English board, to which his
conduct throughout this business was fully known. The Company, however,
sent an order from England to have him tried; but though he frequently
supplicated the government at Calcutta that his trial should be
proceeded in, in order that he might be either a