To this petition your Committee find two accounts annexed, in which the sums said to be paid to or taken by Mr. Barwell, and the respective dates of the several payments, are specified; and they find that the account of particulars agrees with and makes up the gross sum charged in the petition.

Mr. Barwell’s immediate answer to the preceding charge is contained in two letters to the board, dated 23rd and 24th of March, 1775.  The answer is remarkable.  He asserts, that “the whole of Kaworke’s relation is a gross misrepresentation of facts;—­that the simple fact was, that in January, 1774, the salt mahls of Savagepoor and Selimabad became his, and were re-let by him to this man, in the names of Bussunt Roy and Kissen Deb, on condition that he should account with him [Mr. Barwell] for profits to a certain sum, and that he [Mr. Barwell] engaged for Savagepoor in the persuasion of its being a very profitable farm”; and he concludes with saying, “If I am mistaken in my reasoning, and the wish to add to my fortune has warped my judgment, in a transaction that may appear to the board in a light different to what I view it in, it is past,—­I cannot recall it,—­and I rather choose to admit an error than deny a fact.”  In his second letter he says, “To the Honorable Court of Directors I will submit all my rights in the salt contracts I engaged in; and if in their opinion those rights vest in the Company, I will account to them for the last shilling I have received from such contracts, my intentions being upright; and as I never did wish to profit myself to the prejudice of my employers, by their judgment I will be implicitly directed.”

The majority of the board desired that Kaworke’s petition should be transmitted to England by the ship then under dispatch; and it was accordingly sent with Mr. Barwell’s replies.  Mr. Barwell moved that a committee should be appointed to take into consideration what he had to offer on the subject of Kaworke’s petition; and a committee was accordingly appointed, consisting of all the members of the Council except the Governor-General.

The committee opened their proceedings with reading a second petition from Kaworke, containing corrected accounts of cash said to be forcibly taken, and of the extraordinary and unwarrantable profits taken or received from him by Richard Barwell, Esquire; all which are inserted at large in the Appendix.  By these accounts Mr. Barwell is charged with a balance or debt of 22,421 rupees to Kaworke.  The principal difference between him and Mr. Barwell arises from a different mode of stating the accounts acknowledged to exist between them.  In the account current signed by Mr. Barwell, he gives Kaworke credit for the receipt of 98,426 rupees, and charges him with a balance of 27,073 rupees.