the Nabob
Nujim ul Dowlah, and in this manner has she remained in the Nabob's
family ever since."

Now it required a very peculiar mode of selection to take such a woman,
so circumstanced, (resembling whom there was not just such another,) to
depose the Nabob's own mother from the superiority of the household, and
to substitute this woman. It would have been an abominable abuse, and
would have implied corruption in the grossest degree, if Mr. Hastings
had stopped there. He not only did this, but he put _her_, this woman,
in the very place of Mahomed Reza Khan: he made her guardian, he made
her regent, he made her viceroy, he made her the representative of the
native government of the country in the eyes of strangers. There was not
a trust, not a dignity in the country, which he did not put, during the
minority of this unhappy person, her step-son, into the hands of this
woman.

Reject, if you please, the strong presumption of corruption in
disobeying the order of the Company directing him to select a _man_ fit
to supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khan, to exercise all the great and
arduous functions of government and of justice, as well as the
regulation of the Nabob's household; and then I will venture to say,
that neither your Lordships, nor any man living, when he hears of this
appointment, does or can hesitate a moment in concluding that it is the
result of corruption, and that you only want to be informed what the
corruption was. Here is such an arrangement as I believe never was
before heard of: a secluded woman in the place of a man of the world; a
fantastic dancing-girl in the place of a grave magistrate; a slave in
the place of a woman of quality; a common prostitute made to superintend
the education of a young prince; and a step-mother, a name of horror in
all countries, made to supersede the natural mother from whose body the
Nabob had sprung.

These are circumstances that leave no doubt of the grossest and most
flagrant corruption. But was there no application made to Mr. Hastings
upon that occasion? The Nabob's uncle, whom Mr. Hastings declares to be
a man of no dangerous ambition, no alarming parts, no one quality that
could possibly exclude him from that situation, makes an application to
Mr. Hastings for that place, and was by Mr. Hastings rejected. The
reason he gives for his rejection is, because he cannot put any man in
it without danger to the Company, who had ordered him to put a man into
it. One