without an
ownership, but were lands in the hands of the Rajah, and were to be
severed from the zemindary, and given to Gunga Govind Sing. The manner
of obtaining them is something so shocking, and contains such a number
of enormities completed in one act, that one can scarce imagine how such
a compound could exist.

This man, besides his office of dewan to the Calcutta Committee, which
gave him the whole management and power of the revenue, was, as I have
stated, at the head of all the registers in the kingdom, whose duty it
was to be a control upon him as dewan. As Mr. Hastings destroyed every
other constitutional settlement of the country, so the office which was
to be a check upon Gunga Govind Sing, namely, the register of the
country, had been superseded, and revived in another shape, and given to
the own son of this very man. God forbid that a son should not be under
a certain and reasonable subordination! But though in this country we
know a son may possibly be free from the control of his father, yet the
meanest slave is not in a more abject condition of slavery than a son is
in that country to his father; for it extends to the power of a Roman
parent. The office of register is to take care that a full and fair rent
is secured to government; and above all, it is his business to take care
of the body of laws, the _Rawaj-ul-Mulk_, or custom of the country, of
which he is the guardian as the head of the law. It was his business to
secure that fundamental law of the government, and fundamental law of
the country, that a zemindary cannot be split, or any portion of it
separated, without the consent of the government. This man betrayed his
trust, and did privately, contrary to the duty of his office, get this
minor Rajah, who was but an infant, who was but nine years old at the
time, to make over to him a part of his zemindary, to a large amount,
under color of a fraudulent and fictitious sale. By the laws of that
country, by the common laws of Nature, the act of this child was void.
The act was void as against the government, by giving a zemindary
without the consent of the government to the very man who ought to have
prevented such an act. He has the same sacred guardianship of minors
that the Chancellor of England has. This man got to himself those lands
by a fraudulent, and probably forged deed,--for that is charged too; but
whether it was forged or not, this miserable minor was obliged to give
the lands to him: