nd of satisfaction. Should it be true, be so
kind as to inform me of it, that the person may be made to answer for
it."

My Lords, here is a very proper demand. The Nabob is astonished at the
suspicion, that such a woman as Munny Begum, whose trade in youth had
been delusion, should be capable of deluding anybody. Astonishing it
certainly was, that a woman who had been a deluder in youth should be
suspected to be the same in old age, and that he, a young man, should be
subject to her artifices. "They must suspect me to be a great
blockhead," he says, "if a man of my rank is to be deluded." There he
forgot that it is the unhappy privilege of great men to be cheated, to
be deluded, much more than other persons; but he thought it so
impossible in the case of Munny Begum, that he says, "Produce me the
traitor that could suppose it possible for me to be deluded, when I call
for this woman as the governor of the country. I demand satisfaction." I
rather wonder that Mr. Hastings did not inform him who it was that had
reported so gross and improbable a tale, and deliver him up to the fury
of the Nabob.

Mr. Hastings is absolutely besieged by him; for he receives another
letter upon the 3d of September. Here are four letters following one
another quick as post expresses with horns sounding before them. "Oh, I
die, I perish, I sink, if Munny Begum is not put into the government of
the country!--I therefore desire to have her put into the government of
the country, and that you will not keep me longer in this painful
suspense, but will be kindly pleased to write immediately to the Munny
Begum, that she take on herself the administration of the affairs of the
nizamut, which is, in fact, her own family, without the interference of
any other person whatever: by this you will give me complete
satisfaction." Here is a correspondence more like an amorous than a
state correspondence. What is this man so eager about, what in such a
rage about, that he cannot endure the smallest delay of the post with
common patience? Why, lest this old woman (who is not his mother, and
with whom he had no other tie of blood) should not be made mistress of
himself and the whole country! However, in a very few months afterwards
he himself is appointed by Mr. Hastings to the government; and you may
easily judge by the preceding letters who was to govern. It would be an
affront to your Lordships' judgment to attempt to prove who was to
govern, after he had