the shadow of so necessary an institution.  The office of Chief Justice, as held by Moulavy Morobine, was ever nugatory, but now it is sunk into the lowest contempt.  The original establishment, inadequate as it was, is mouldering away, and the officers now attached to it are literally starving, as no part of their allowance has been paid for above six months past.  He himself has proposed to resign his appointment, being every way precluded from a possibility of exercising the duties of it.”

XLVI.  That it appears by the said letter, and the papers therewith transmitted, as well as other documents in the said correspondence, that, in consequence of the distress brought upon the Nabob’s finances, certain of the princes, his brethren, the children of Sujah ul Dowlah, the late sovereign of the country, were put upon pensions unsuitable to their birth and rank, and by the mismanagement of the minister aforesaid, (appointed by the said Warren Hastings,) for two years together no considerable part of the said inadequate pension was paid; and not being able to maintain the attendants necessary for their protection in a city in which all magistracy and justice was abolished, they were not only liable to suffer the greatest extremities of penury, but their lives were exposed to the attempts of assassins:  the condition of one of the said princes, called the Nabob Bahadur, being by himself strongly expressed in three letters to the said Resident Bristow,—­the first dated the 28th of December, 1783; the second, the 7th of January, 1784; and the third, the 15th of January, 1784,—­which letters were duly transmitted, in the dispatch of the 29th of the same month, to Warren Hastings, Esquire, and are as follow.

“Your own servant carried you the account of what he himself was an eye-witness to, after the affair of last night.  These are the particulars.  About midnight my aunt received twelve wounds from a ruffian, of which she died.  I also received six successive stabs, which alarmed the people of the house, who set up a shouting:  whereupon the assassin run off.  Besides being without food or the means of providing any, this misfortune has befallen me. I am desirous of sending the coffin to your door.  It is your duty, both for the sake of God and of Christ, to execute justice, and to inquire what harm I have done to the murderer sufficient to deserve assassination, or even injury. You now stand in the place of his Excellency the Vizier.  I request you will do me justice.  What more can I say?

“P.S.  I am also desirous to show you my wounds.”

* * * * *

From the same, 29th [7th?] January, 1784.