The drift of these contradictions is sufficiently apparent.  Mahomed Reza Khan was to be divested of his office at all events, and the management of the Nabob’s stipend committed to other hands.  To accomplish the first, the Nabob is said to be “now arrived at that time of life when a man may be supposed capable, if ever, of managing his own concerns.”  When this principle has answered the momentary purpose for which it was produced, we find it immediately discarded, and an opposite resolution formed on an opposite principle, viz., that he shall not have the management of his own concerns, in consideration of his want of experience.

Mr. Hastings, on his arrival at Moorshedabad, gives Mr. Wheler an account of his interview with the Nabob, and of the Nabob’s implicit submission to his advice.  The principal, if not the sole, object of the whole operation appears from the result of it.  Sir John D’Oyly, a gentleman in whom Mr. Hastings places particular confidence, succeeds to the office of Mahomed Reza Khan, and to the same control over the Nabob’s expenses.  Into the hands of this gentleman the Nabob’s stipend was to be immediately paid, as every intermediate channel would be an unavoidable cause of delay; and to his advice the Nabob was required to give the same attention as if it were given by Mr. Hastings himself.  One of the conditions prescribed to the Nabob was, that he should admit no Englishman to his presence without previously consulting Sir John D’Oyly; and he must forbid any person of that nation to be intruded without his introduction.  On these arrangements it need only be observed, that a measure which sets out with professing to relieve the Nabob from a state of perpetual pupilage concludes with delivering not only his fortune, but his person, to the custody of a particular friend of Mr. Hastings.

The instructions given to the Nabob contain other passages that merit attention.  In one place Mr. Hastings tells him, “You have offered to give up the sum of four lacs of rupees to be allowed the free use of the remainder; but this we have refused.”  In another he says, that, “as many matters will occur which cannot be so easily explained by letter as by conversation, I desire that you will on such occasions give your orders to Sir John D’Oyly respecting such points as you may desire to have imparted to me.”  The offer alluded to in the first passage does not appear in the Nabob’s letters, therefore must have been in conversation, and declined by Mr. Hastings without consulting his colleague.  A refusal of it might have been proper; but it supposes a degree of incapacity in the Nabob not to be reconciled to the principles on which Mahomed Reza Khan was removed from the management of his affairs.  Of the matters alluded to in the second, and which, it is said, could not be so easily explained by letters as in conversation, no explanation is given.  Your Committee will therefore leave them, as Mr. Hastings has done, to the opinion of the House.