wledged nobility among Mussulmen,
would be by that circumstance excluded, by the known laws of the Mogul
empire, from being Subahdar in any of the Mogul provinces, in case the
revival of the constitution of that empire should ever again take place.

An auction was now opened before the English Council at Calcutta.
Mahomed Reza Khan bid largely; Nundcomar bid largely. The circumstances
of these two rivals at the Nabob court were equally favorable to the
pretensions of each. But the preponderating merits of Mahomed Reza Khan,
arising from the subjection in which he was likely to keep the Nabob,
and make him fitter for the purpose of continued exactions, induced the
Council to take his money, which amounted to about 220,000_l._ Be the
sum paid what it may, it was certainly a large one; in consequence of
which the Council attempted to invest Mahomed Reza Khan with the office
of Naib Subah, or Deputy Viceroy. As to Nundcomar, they fell upon him
with a vengeful fury. He fought his battle as well as he could; he
opposed bribe to bribe, eagle to eagle; but at length he was driven to
the wall. Some received his money, but did him no service in return;
others, more conscientious, refused to receive it; and in this battle of
bribes he was vanquished. A deputation was sent from Calcutta to the
miserable Nabob, to tear Nundcomar, his only support, from his side, and
to put the object of all his terrors, Mahomed Reza Khan, in his place.

Thus began a new division that split the Presidency into violent
factions; but the faction which adhered to Nundcomar was undoubtedly the
weakest. That most miserable of men, Mir Jaffier Ali Khan, clinging, as
to the last pillar, to Nundcomar, trembling at Mahomed Reza Khan, died
in the struggle, a miserable victim to all the revolutions, to all the
successive changes and versatile politics at Calcutta. Like all the rest
of the great personages whom we have degraded and brutalized by insult
and oppression, he betook himself to the usual destructive resources of
unprincipled misery,--sensuality, opium, and wine. His gigantic frame of
constitution soon gave way under the oppression of this relief, and he
died, leaving children and grandchildren by wives and concubines. On the
old Nabob's death, Mahomed Reza Khan was acknowledged Deputy Nabob, the
money paid, and this revolution completed.

Here, my Lords, opened a new source of plunder, peculation, and bribery,
which was not neglected. Revolutions wer