As soon as the Nabob’s requisition was communicated to the board, it was moved and resolved that Mahomed Reza Khan should be divested of his office; and the House have seen in what manner it was disposed of.  The Nabob had stated various complaints against him:—­that he had dismissed the old established servants of the Nizamut, and filled their places with his own dependants;—­that he had regularly received the stipend of the Nizamut from the Company, yet had kept the Nabob involved in debt and distress, and exposed to the clamors of his creditors, and sometimes even in want of a dinner.  All these complaints were recorded at large in the proceedings of the Council; but it does not appear that they were ever communicated to Mahomed Reza Khan, or that he was ever called upon, in any shape, to answer them.  This circumstance inclines your Committee to believe that all of these charges were groundless,—­especially as it appears on the face of the proceedings, that the chief of them were not well founded.  Mr. Hastings, in his letter to Mr. Wheler, urges the absolute necessity of the monthly payment of the Nabob’s stipend being regularly made, and says, that, to relieve the Nabob’s present wants, he had directed the Resident to raise an immediate supply on the credit of the Company, to be repaid from the first receipts.  From hence your Committee conclude that the monthly payments had not been regularly made, and that whatever distresses the Nabob might have suffered must have been owing to the Governor-General and Council, not to Mahomed Reza Khan, who, for aught that appears to the contrary, paid away the stipend as fast as he received it.  Had it been otherwise, that is, if Mahomed Reza Khan had reserved a balance of the Nabob’s money in his hands, he should, and undoubtedly he would, have been called upon to pay it in; and then there would have been no necessity for raising an immediate supply by other means.

The transaction, on the whole, speaks very sufficiently for itself.  It is a gross instance of repeated disobedience to repeated orders; and it is rendered particularly offensive to the authority of the Court of Directors by the frivolous and contradictory reasons assigned for it.  But whether the Nabob’s requisition was reasonable or not, the Governor-General and Council were precluded by a special instruction from complying with it.  The Directors, in their letter of the 14th of February, 1779, declare, that a resolution of Council, (taken by Mr. Francis and Mr. Wheler, in the absence of Mr. Barwell,) viz., “that the Nabob’s letter should be referred to them for their decision, and that no resolution should be taken in Bengal on his requisitions without their special orders and instructions,” was very proper.  They prudently reserved to themselves the right of deciding on such questions; but they reserved it to no purpose.  In England the authority is purely formal.  In Bengal the power is positive and real.  When they clash, their opposition serves only to degrade the authority that ought to predominate, and to exalt the power that ought to be dependent.