The facts stated or admitted by Mr. Barwell are as follow:  that the salt farms of Selimabad and Savagepoor were his, and re-let by him to the two Armenian merchants, Michael and Kaworke, on condition of their paying him 1,25,000 rupees, exclusive of their engagements to the Company; that the engagement was written in the name of Bussunt Roy and Kissen Deb Sing; and Mr. Barwell says, that the reason of its being “in these people’s names was because it was not thought consistent with the public regulations that the names of any Europeans should appear.”

It is remarkable that this policy was carried to still greater length.  Means were used to remove such an obnoxious proceeding, as far as possible, from the public eye; and they were such as will strongly impress the House with the facility of abuse and the extreme difficulty of detection in everything which relates to the Indian administration.  For these substituted persons were again represented by the further substitution of another name, viz., Rada Churn Dey, whom Mr. Barwell asserts to be a real person living at Dacca, and who stood for the factory of Dacca; whereas the Armenian affirms that there was no such person as Rada Churn, and that it was a fictitious name.

Mr. Barwell, in his justification, proceeds to affirm, that Coja Kaworke never had the management of the salt mahls, “but on condition of accounting to the former Chief, and to Mr. Barwell, for a specified advantage arising from them,—­that Mr. Barwell determined, without he could reconcile the interests of the public with his own private emoluments, that he would not engage in this concern,—­and that, when he took an interest in it, it was for specified benefit in money, and every condition in the public engagement to be answered.”

Your Committee have stated the preceding facts in the same terms in which they are stated by Mr. Barwell.  The House is to judge how far they amount to a defence against the charges contained in Kaworke’s petition, or to an admission of the truth of the principal part of it.  Mr. Barwell does not allow that compulsion was used to extort the money which he received from the petitioner, or that the latter was dispossessed of the farms in consequence of an offer made to Mr. Barwell by another person (Ramsunder Paulet) to pay him a lac of rupees more for them.  The truth of these charges has not been ascertained.  They were declared by Mr. Barwell to be false, but no attempt was made by him to invalidate or confute them, though it concerned his reputation, and it was his duty, in the station wherein he was placed, that charges of such a nature should have been disproved,—­at least, the accuser should have been pushed to the proof of them.  Nothing of this kind appears to have been done, or even attempted.

The transaction itself, as it stands, is clearly collusive; the form in which it is conducted is clandestine and mysterious in an extraordinary degree; and the acknowledged object of it a great illicit profit, to be gained by an agent and trustee of the Company at the expense of his employers, and of which he confesses he has received a considerable part.