I beg leave to state one thing that escaped me:  that the Nabob, who was one of the parties to the design, was, at the time of the inquiry, a sort of prisoner or an exile at Calcutta; that his moonshee was there, or might have been had; and that his spy was likewise there; and that they, though parties to this transaction, were never called to account for it in any sense or in any degree, or to show how far it was necessary to quiet the Nabob’s mind.

The accomplices, by acquitting him upon their testimony to his conscience, did their business nobly.  But the good Court of Directors, who were so easily satisfied, so ready to condemn at the first proposition and so ready afterwards to acquit, put the last finishing hand of a master to it.  For the accomplices acquit him of evil intentions and excuse his act.  The Court of Directors, disapproving indeed the measure, but receiving the testimony of his conscience in justification of his conduct, and taking up the whole ground, honorably acquit him, and commend this action as an instance of heroic zeal in their service.

The great end and purpose for which I produce this to your Lordships is to show you the necessity there is for other inquiries, other trials, other acquittals of parties, than those made by a collusive clan abroad, or by the Directors at home, who had required the parties to inquire of themselves, and to take the testimony of the judges at second-hand, as to the conscience of the party accused, respecting acts which neither they nor any man living can look upon but with horror.

I have troubled your Lordships with the story of the Three Seals, as a specimen of the then state of the service, and the politics of the servants, civil and military, in the horrid abuses which then prevailed, and which render at length the most rigorous reformation necessary.  I close this episode to resume the proceedings at the second revolution.

This affair of the three seals was, we have seen, to quiet the fears of the Nabob.  His fears it was indeed necessary to quiet; for your Lordships will see that the man whose fears were to be set asleep by Major Calliaud’s offering him, in a scheme for murdering his sovereign, an odd sort of opiate, made up of blood and treason, was now in a fair way of being murdered himself by the machinations of him whose seal was set to his murderous security of peace, and by those his accomplices, Holwell and Hastings:  at least they resolved to put him in a situation in which his murder was in a manner inevitable, as you will see in the sequel of the transaction.  Now the plan proceeds.  The parties continued in the camp; but there was another remora.  To remove a nabob and to create a revolution is not easy:  houses are strong who have sons grown up with vigor and fitness for the command of armies.  They are not easily overturned by removing the principal, unless the secondary is got rid of:  and if this remora could be removed, everything was going on in a happy way in the business.  This plan, which now (that is, about the month of July) began to get into great ripeness and forwardness, Mr. Holwell urged forward, Mr. Vansittart being hourly expected.