The Secretary to the Court of Directors has informed your Committee that no copy of the answer is to be found in the India House; nor has your Committee been able to discover that any has been transmitted.  On this failure, your Committee ordered an application to be made to Mr. Barwell for a copy of his answer to the bill, and any other information with which he might be furnished with regard to that subject.

Mr. Barwell, after reciting the above letter, returned in answer what follows.

“Whether the records of the Supreme Court of Judicature are lodged at the India House I am ignorant, but on those records my answer is certainly to be found.  At this distance of time I am sorry I cannot from memory recover the circumstances of this affair; but this I know, that the bill did receive a complete answer, and the people the fullest satisfaction:  nor is it necessary for me to remark, that [in?] the state of parties at that time in Bengal, could party have brought forward any particle of that bill supported by any verified fact, the principle that introduced it in the proceedings of the Governor-General and Council would likewise have given the verification of that one circumstance, whatever that might have been.  As I generally attend in my place in the House, I shall with pleasure answer any invitation of the gentlemen of the Committee to attend their investigations up stairs with every information and light in my power to give them.

“St. James’s Square, 15th April, 1783.”

Your Committee considered, that, with regard to the matter charged in the several petitions to the board, no sort of specific answer had been given at the time and place where they were made, and when and where the parties might be examined and confronted.  It was considered also, that the bill had been transmitted, with other papers relating to the same matter, to the Court of Directors, with the knowledge and consent of Mr. Barwell,—­and that he states that his answer had been filed, and no proceedings had upon it for eighteen months.  In that situation it was thought something extraordinary that no care was taken by him to transmit so essential a paper as his answer, and that he had no copy of it in his hands.

Your Committee, in this difficulty, thought themselves obliged to decline any verbal explanation from the person who is defendant in the suit, relative to matters which on the part of the complainant appear upon record, and to leave the whole matter, as it is charged, to the judgment of the House to determine how far it may be worthy of a further inquiry, or how far they may admit such allegations as your Committee could not think themselves justified in receiving.  To this effect your Committee ordered a letter to be written Mr. Barwell; from whom they received the following answer.