following terms.  “As the abilities of Mahomed Reza Khan have been sufficiently manifested, as official experience qualifies him for so high a station in a more eminent degree than any other native with whom the Company has been connected, and as no proofs of maladministration have been established against him, either during the strict investigation of his conduct or since his retirement, we cannot under all circumstances but approve your recommendation of him to the Nabob to constitute him his Naib.  We are well pleased that he has received that appointment, and authorize you to assure him of our favor, so long as a firm attachment to the interest of the Company and a proper discharge of the duties of his station shall render him worthy of our protection.”  And the said Mahomed Reza Khan did continue to execute the same without any complaint whatsoever of malversation or negligence, in any manner or degree, in his said office.

XVIII.  That in March, 1778, the said Warren Hastings, under color that the Nabob had completed his twentieth year, and had desired to be placed in the entire and uncontrolled management of his own affairs, and that Mahomed Reza Khan should be removed from his office, and that Munny Begum, his step-mother, the dancing-girl aforesaid, “should take on herself the management of the nizamut [the government and general superintendency of criminal justice] without the interference of any person whatsoever,” and notwithstanding the contradictions in the pretended applications from the Nabob, with whose incapacity for all affairs he was well acquainted, did, in defiance of the orders of the Court of Directors, and without regard to the infamy of an arrangement made for the evident and declared purpose of delivering not only the family with the prince, but the government and justice of a great kingdom, into such insufficient, corrupt, and scandalous hands, and though he has declared his opinion “that our national character is concerned in the character which the Nabob may obtain in the public opinion,” on obtaining a majority in Council, without any complaint, real or pretended, remove the said Mahomed Reza from all his offices, and did partition his salary as a spoil in the following manner:  to Munny Begum, the dancing-girl aforesaid, an additional allowance of 72,000 rupees (7,200_l._) a year; to the Nabob’s own mother but half that sum, that is to say, 36,000 rupees (3,600_l._) a year; to Rajah Gourdas, son of Nundcomar, (whom he had described as a weak young man,) 72,000 rupees (7,200_l._) a year, as controller of the household; and to a magistrate called Sudder ul Hock, who, in real subserviency to the said Munny Begum, was nominally to act in the department of criminal justice, 78,000 rupees (7,800_l._) a year:  the total of which allowances exceeding the salary of Mahomed Reza Khan by 18,000 rupees (1,800_l._) yearly, he did, for the corrupt and scandalous purposes aforesaid, order the same to be made up from the Company’s treasury.