request was overruled, on a plea of saving the board's
time, which we can by no means admit as a sufficient objection. The
Nabob's letters of the 25th and 30th August, of the 3d September and
17th November, leave us no doubt of the true design of this
extraordinary business being to bring forward Munny Begum, and again to
invest her with improper power and influence, notwithstanding our former
declaration, that so great a part of the Nabob's allowance had been
embezzled or misapplied under her superintendence."

At present I do not think it necessary, because it would be doing more
than enough, it would be slaying the slain, to show your Lordships what
Mr. Hastings's motives were in acting against the sense of the East
India Company, appointed by an act of Parliament to control him,--that
he did it for a corrupt purpose, that all his pretences were false and
fraudulent, and that he had his own corrupt views in the whole of the
proceeding. But in the statement which I have given of this matter, I
beg your Lordships to observe the instruments with which Mr. Hastings
acts. The great men of that country, and particularly the Subahdar
himself, the Nabob, are and is in so equivocal a situation, that it
afforded him two bolting-holes, by which he is enabled to resist the
authority of the Company, and exercise an arbitrary authority of his
own: for, though the Nabob has the titles of high sovereignty, he is the
lowest of all dependants; he appears to be the master of the
country,--he is a pensioner of the Company's government.

When Mr. Hastings wants him to obey and answer his corrupt purposes, he
finds him in the character of a pensioner: when he wants his authority
to support him in opposition to the authority of the Company,
immediately he invests him with high sovereign powers, and he dare not
execute the orders of the Company for fear of doing some act that will
make him odious in the eyes of God and man. We see how he appointed all
officers for him, and forbade his interference in all affairs. When the
Company see the impropriety and the guilt of these acts, and order him
to rescind them, and appoint again Mahomed Reza Khan, he declares he
will not, that he cannot do it in justice, but that he will consent to
send him the order of the Company, but without backing it with any order
of the board: which, supposing even there had been no private
communication, was, in other words, commanding him to disobey it. So
this poor