er of complaint against government, and whose cause the
Court of Directors appear to espouse, in a country where the authority
of the Court of Directors has seldom been exerted but to be despised,
where the operation of laws is but very imperfectly understood, but
where men are acute, sagacious, and even suspicious of the effect of all
personal connections. Their suspicions, though perhaps not rightly
applied to every individual, will induce them to take indications from
the situations and connections of the prosecuting parties, as well as of
the judges. It cannot fail to be observed, that Mr. Naylor, the
Company's attorney, lived in Mr. Barwell's house; the late Mr. Bogle,
the Company's commissioner of lawsuits, owed his place to the patronage
of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell, by whom the office was created for him;
and Sir John Day, the Company's advocate, who arrived in Bengal in
February, 1779, had not been four months in Calcutta, when Mr. Hastings,
Mr. Barwell, and Sir Eyre Coote doubled his salary, contrary to the
opinion of Mr. Francis and Mr. Wheler.

If the Directors are known to devolve the whole cognizance of the
offences charged on their servants so highly situated upon the Supreme
Court, an excuse will be furnished, if already it has not been
furnished, to the Directors for declining the use of their own proper
political power and authority in examining into and animadverting on the
conduct of their servants. Their true character, as strict masters and
vigilant governors, will merge in that of prosecutors. Their force and
energy will evaporate in tedious and intricate processes,--in lawsuits
which can never end, and which are to be carried on by the very
dependants of those who are under prosecution. On their part, these
servants will decline giving satisfaction to their masters, because they
are already before another tribunal; and thus, by shifting
responsibility from hand to hand, a confederacy to defeat the whole
spirit of the law, and to remove all real restraints on their actions,
may be in time formed between the servants, Directors, prosecutors, and
court. Of this great danger your Committee will take farther notice in
another place.

No notice whatever appears to have been taken of the Company's orders in
Bengal till the 11th of January, 1779, when Mr. Barwell moved, _that the
claim made upon him by the Court of Directors should be submitted to the
Company's lawyers, and that they should be perfec