dering him to do it. He had so great an aversion to the
least subtraction of the Nabob's right, that, though expressly commanded
by the Court of Directors, he would not suffer Mahomed Reza Khan to be
invested with his office under the Company's authority. The Nabob was
too sovereign, too supreme, for him to do it. But such is the fate of
human grandeur, that a whimsical event reduced the Nabob to his state of
pageant again, and made him the mere subject of--you will see whom. Mr.
Hastings found he was so embarrassed by his disobedience to the spirit
of the orders of the Company, and by the various wild projects he had
formed, as to make it necessary for him, even though he had a majority
in the Council, to gain over at any price Mr. Francis. Mr. Francis,
frightened by the same miserable situation of affairs, (for this
happened at a most dangerous period,--the height of the Mahratta war,)
was willing likewise to give up his opposition to Mr. Hastings, to
suspend the execution of many rightful things, and to concede them to
the public necessity. Accordingly he agreed to terms with Mr. Hastings.
But what was the price of that concession? Any base purpose, any
desertion of public duty? No: all that he desired of Mr. Hastings was,
that he should obey the orders of the Company; and among other acts of
the obedience required was this, that Mahomed Reza Khan should be put
into his office.

You have heard how Mr. Hastings opposed the order of the Company, and on
what account he opposed it. On the 1st of September he sent an order to
the Nabob, now become his subject, to give up this office to Mahomed
Reza Khan: an act which he had before represented as a dethroning of the
Nabob. The order went on the 1st of September, and on the 3d this great
and mighty prince, whom all earth could not move from the assertion of
his rights, gives them all up, and Mahomed Reza Khan is invested with
them. So there all his pretences were gone. It is plain that what had
been done before was for Munny Begum, and that what he now gave up was
from necessity: and it shows that the Nabob was the meanest of his
servants; for in truth he ate his daily bread out of the hands of Mr.
Hastings, through Munny Begum.

Mahomed Reza Khan was now invested again with his office; but such was
the treachery of Mr. Hastings, that, though he wrote to the Nabob that
this was done in consequence of the orders of the Company, he did
clandestinely, according to his usual m