XIX.  That Mr. Francis and Mr. Wheler having moved that the execution of the aforesaid arrangement, the whole expense of which, ordinary and extraordinary, was charged upon the Company’s treasury, and therefore could not be even colorably disposed of at the pretended will of the said Nabob, might be suspended until the pleasure of the Court of Directors thereon should be known, and the same being resolved agreeably to law by a majority of the Council then present, the said Hastings, urging on violently the immediate execution of his corrupt project, and having obtained, by the return of Richard Barwell, Esquire, a majority in Council in his own casting vote, did rescind the aforesaid resolution, and did carry into immediate execution the aforesaid most unwarrantable, mischievous, and scandalous design.

XX.  That the consequences which might be expected from such a plan of administration did almost instantly flow from it.  For the person appointed to execute one of the offices which had been filled by Mahomed Reza Khan did soon find that the eunuchs of Munny Begum began to employ their power with great superiority and insolence in all the concerns of government and the administration of justice, and did endeavor to dispose of the offices relative to the same for their corrupt purposes, and to rob the Nabob’s servants of their due allowances; and in his letter of the 1st September, 1778, he sent a complaint to the board, stating, “that certain bad men had gained an ascendency over the Nabob’s temper, by whose instigation he acts”; and after complaining of the slights he received from the Nabob, he adds:  “Thus they cause the Nabob to treat me, sometimes with indignity, at others with kindness, just as they think proper to advise him; their view is, that, by compelling me to displeasure at most unworthy treatment, they may force me either to relinquish my station, or to join with them, and act by their advice, and appoint creatures of their recommendation to the different offices, from which they might draw profit to themselves.”

XXI.  That, in a subsequent letter to the Governor, the said Superintendent of Justice did inform him, the said Warren Hastings, of the audacious and corrupt manner in which, by violence, fraud, and forgery, the eunuchs of Munny Begum had abused the Nabob’s name, to deprive the judicial and executory officers of justice of the salaries which they ought to have drawn from the Company’s treasury, in the following words:  “The Begum’s ministers, before my arrival, with the advice of their counsellors, caused the Nabob to sign a receipt, in consequence of which they received, at two different times, near 50,000 rupees [5,000_l._], in the name of the officers of the Adawlut, Phousdary, &c., from the Company’s sircars; and having drawn up an account-current in the manner they wished, they had got the Nabob to sign it, and sent it to me.”  And in the same letter he asserts, “that these people had the Nabob entirely in their power.”