However, lest any one should so far mistrust their understanding as to conceive them the dupes of this pretext, they who had disobeyed the Company’s orders under color that no deputy was necessary immediately appoint another deputy.  This independent prince, who, as Mr. Hastings said, “had an incontestable right to his situation, and that it was his by inheritance,” suddenly shrunk into his old state of insignificance, and was even looked upon in so low a light as to receive a severe reprimand from Mr. Hastings for interposing in the duties of his (the deputy’s) office.

The Company’s orders, censuring this transaction in the strongest terms, and ordering Mahomed Reza Khan to be immediately restored to the office of Naib Subahdar, were received in Calcutta in November, 1779.  Mr. Hastings acted on this with the firmness which he had shown on other occasions; but in his principles he went further.  Thinking himself assured of some extraordinary support, suitable to the open and determined defiance with which he was resolved to oppose the lawful authority of his superiors, and to exercise a despotic power, he no longer adhered to Mr. Barwell’s distinction of the orders which had a tendency to bring his government into disrepute.  This distinction afforded sufficient latitude to disobedience; but here he disdained all sorts of colors and distinctions.  He directly set up an independent right to administer the government according to his pleasure; and he went so far as to bottom his claim to act independently of the Court of Directors on the very statute which commanded his obedience to them.

He declared roundly, “that he should not yield to the authority of the Court of Directors in any instance in which it should require his concession of the rights which he held under an act of Parliament.”  It is too clear to stand in need of proof, that he neither did or could hold any authority that was not subject, in every particle of it, and in every instance in which it could be exercised, to the orders of the Court of Directors.

He therefore refused to back the Company’s orders with any requisition from himself to the Nabob, but merely suffered them to be transmitted to him, leaving it to him to do just as he thought proper.  The Nabob, who called Mr. Hastings “his patron, and declared he would never do anything without his consent and approbation,” perfectly understood this kind of signification.  For the second time the Nabob recovered from his trance of pageantry and insignificance, and collected courage enough to write to the Council in these terms:  “I administer the affairs of the Nizamut, (the government,) which are the affairs of my own family, by my own authority, and shall do so; and I never can on any account agree to the appointment of the Nabob Mahomed Reza Khan to the Naib Subahship.”  Here was a second independent power in Bengal.  This answer from that power proved as satisfactory as it was resolute.  No further notice was taken of the orders of the Court of Directors, and Mahomed Reza Khan found their protection much more of a shadow than the pageant of power of which he aspired to be the representative.