ing it.

The business I am going to enter into is commonly known by the name of
the Story of the Three Seals. It is to be found in the Appendix, No. 10,
to the First Report of the state and condition of the East India
Company, made in 1773. The word _Report_, my Lords, is sometimes a
little equivocal, and may signify sometimes, not what is made known, but
what remains in obscurity: the detail and evidence of many facts
referred to in the Report being usually thrown into the Appendix. Many
people, and I among the rest, (I take shame to myself for it,) may not
have fully examined that Appendix. I was not a member of either of the
India committees of 1773. It is not, indeed, till within this year that
I have been thoroughly acquainted with that memorable history of the
Three Seals.

The history is this. In the year 1760 the allies were in the course of
operations against the son of the Mogul, now the present Mogul, who, as
I have already stated, had made an irruption into the kingdom of Bahar,
in order to reduce the lower provinces to his obedience. The parties
opposing him were the Nabob of Bengal and the Company's troops under
Major Calliaud. It was whilst they faced the common enemy as one body,
this negotiation for the destruction of the Nabob of Bengal by his
faithful allies of the Company was going on with diligence. At that time
the Nabob's son, Meeran, a youth in the flower of his age, bold,
vigorous, active, full of the politics in which those who are versed in
usurpation are never wanting, commanded the army under his father, but
was in reality the efficient person in all things.

About the 15th of April, 1760, as I have it from Major Calliaud's letter
of that date, the Nabob came into his tent, and, with looks of the
utmost embarrassment, big with some design which swelled his bosom,
something that was too large and burdensome to conceal, and yet too
critical to be told, appeared to be in a state of great distraction. The
Major, seeing him in this condition, kindly, gently, like a fast and
sure friend, employed (to use his own expression) _some of those
assurances that tend to make men fully open their hearts_; and
accordingly, fortified by his assurances, and willing to disburden
himself of the secret that oppressed him, he opens his heart to the
commanding officer of his new friends, allies, and protectors. The
Nabob, thus assured, did open himself, and informed Major Calliaud that
he had just received a me