The difficulty of getting rid of Meeran being thus removed, Mr. Vansittart comes upon the scene.  I verily believe he was a man of good intentions, and rather debauched by that amazing flood of iniquity which prevailed at that time, or hurried and carried away with it.  In a few days he sent for Major Calliaud.  All his objections vanish in an instant:  like that flash of lightning, everything is instant.  The Major agrees to perform his part.  They send for Cossim Ali Khan and Mr. Hastings; they open a treaty and conclude it with him, leaving the management of it to two persons, Mr. Holwell and another person, whom we have heard of, an Armenian, called Coja Petruse, who afterwards played his part in another illustrious scene.  By this Petruse and Mr. Holwell the matter is settled.  The moment Mr. Holwell is raised to be a Secretary of State, the revolution is accomplished.  By it Cossim Ali Khan is to have the lieutenancy at present, and the succession.  Everything is put into his hands, and he is to make for it large concessions, which you will hear of afterwards, to the Company.  Cossim Ali Khan proposed to Mr. Holwell, what would have been no bad supplement to the flash of lightning, the murder of the Nabob; but Mr. Holwell was a man of too much honor and conscience to suffer that.  He instantly flew out at it, and declared the whole business should stop, unless the affair of the murder was given up.  Accordingly things were so settled.  But if he gave the Nabob over to an intended murderer, and delivered his person, treasure, and everything into his hands, Cossim Ali Khan might have had no great reason to complain of being left to the execution of his own projects in his own way.  The treaty was made, and amounted to this,—­that the Company was to receive three great provinces:  for here, as we proceed, you will have an opportunity of observing, with the progress of these plots, one thing which has constantly and uniformly pervaded the whole of these projects, and which the persons concerned in them have avowed as a principle of their actions,—­that they were first to take care of the Company’s interest, then of their own; that is, first to secure to the Company an enormous bribe, and under the shadow of that bribe to take all the little emoluments they could to themselves.  Three great, rich, southern provinces, maritime, or nearly maritime, Burdwan, Midnapoor, and Chittagong, were to be dissevered from the Subah and to be ceded to the Company.  There were other minor stipulations, which it is not necessary at present to trouble you with, signed, sealed, and executed at Calcutta between these parties with the greatest possible secrecy.  The lieutenancy and the succession were secured to Cossim Ali, and he was likewise to give somewhere about the sum of 200,000_l._ to the gentlemen who were concerned, as a reward for serving him so effectually, and for serving their country so well.  Accordingly, these stipulations, actual or understood, (for they were eventually carried into