ay receive from the appointment of
such minister will depend on his readiness to promote our views and
advance our interest, we are willing to allow him so liberal a
gratification as may excite his zeal and insure his attachment to the
Company; we therefore empower you to grant to the person whom you shall
think worthy of this trust an annual allowance not exceeding three lacs
of rupees, which we consider not only as a munificent reward for any
services he shall render the Company, but sufficient to enable him to
support his station with suitable rank and dignity. And here we must
add, that, in the choice you shall make of a person to be the active
minister of the Nabob's government, we hope and trust that you will show
yourselves worthy of the confidence we have placed in you by being
actuated therein by no other motives than those of the public good and
the safety and interest of the Company."

My Lords, here they have given a reward, and they have described a
person fit to succeed in all capacities the man whom they had thought
fit to depose. Now, as we have seen how Mr. Hastings obeyed the
Company's orders in the manner of removing Mahomed Reza Khan from his
office, let us see how he obeyed their order for filling it up. Your
Lordships will naturally suppose that he made all the orders of
Mahometan and Hindoo princes to pass in strict review before him; that
he had considered their age, authority, dignity, the goodness of their
manners; and upon the collation of all these circumstances had chosen a
person fit to be a regent to guard the Nabob's minority from all
rapacity whatever, and fit to instruct him in everything. I will give
your Lordships Mr. Hastings's own idea of the person necessary to fill
such offices.

"That his rank ought to be such as at least ought not to wound the
Nabob's honor, or lessen his credit in the estimation of the people, by
the magisterial command which the new guardian must exercise over
him,--with abilities and vigor of mind equal to the support of that
authority; and the world will expect that the guardian be especially
qualified by his own acquired endowments to discharge the duties of that
relation in the education of his young pupil, to inspire him with
sentiments suitable to his birth, and to instruct him in the principles
of his religion."

This, upon another occasion, is Mr. Hastings's sense of the man who
ought to be placed in that situation of trust in which the Company
ord