The history of the Munny Begum is this.  “At a village called Balkonda, near Sekundra, there lived a widow, who, from her great poverty, not being able to bring up her daughter Munny, gave her to a slave-girl belonging to Summin Ali Khan, whose name was Bissoo.  During the space of five years she lived at Shahjehanabad, and was educated by Bissoo after the manner of a dancing-girl.  Afterwards the Nabob Shamut Jung, upon the marriage of Ikram ul Dowlah, brother to the Nabob Surajah ul Dowlah, sent for Bissoo Beg’s set of dancing-girls from Shahjehanabad, of which Munny Begum was one, and allowed them ten thousand rupees for their expenses, to dance at the wedding.  While the ceremony was celebrating, they were kept by the Nabob; but some months afterwards he dismissed them, and they took up their residence in this city.  Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khan then took them into keeping, and allowed Munny and her set five hundred rupees per month, till at length, finding that Munny was pregnant, he took her into his own house.  She gave birth to the Nabob Nujim ul Dowlah, and in this manner has she remained in the Nabob’s family ever since.”

Now it required a very peculiar mode of selection to take such a woman, so circumstanced, (resembling whom there was not just such another,) to depose the Nabob’s own mother from the superiority of the household, and to substitute this woman.  It would have been an abominable abuse, and would have implied corruption in the grossest degree, if Mr. Hastings had stopped there.  He not only did this, but he put her, this woman, in the very place of Mahomed Reza Khan:  he made her guardian, he made her regent, he made her viceroy, he made her the representative of the native government of the country in the eyes of strangers.  There was not a trust, not a dignity in the country, which he did not put, during the minority of this unhappy person, her step-son, into the hands of this woman.

Reject, if you please, the strong presumption of corruption in disobeying the order of the Company directing him to select a man fit to supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khan, to exercise all the great and arduous functions of government and of justice, as well as the regulation of the Nabob’s household; and then I will venture to say, that neither your Lordships, nor any man living, when he hears of this appointment, does or can hesitate a moment in concluding that it is the result of corruption, and that you only want to be informed what the corruption was.  Here is such an arrangement as I believe never was before heard of:  a secluded woman in the place of a man of the world; a fantastic dancing-girl in the place of a grave magistrate; a slave in the place of a woman of quality; a common prostitute made to superintend the education of a young prince; and a step-mother, a name of horror in all countries, made to supersede the natural mother from whose body the Nabob had sprung.