minister and actual servant of a master whose interest naturally suggested that kind of policy which sought, by foreign aids, and the diminution of the power of the Company, to raise his own consequence, and to reestablish his authority.  He has never been charged with any instance of infidelity to the Nabob Mir Jaffier, the constant tenor of whose politics, from his first accession to the nizamut till his death, corresponded in all points so exactly with the artifices which were detected in his minister that they may be as fairly ascribed to the one as to the other:  their immediate object was beyond question the aggrandizement of the former, though the latter had ultimately an equal interest in their success.  The opinion which the Nabob himself entertained of the services and of the fidelity of Nundcomar evidently appeared in the distinguished marks which he continued to show him of his favor and confidence to the latest hour of his life.

“His conduct in the succeeding administration appears not only to have been dictated by the same principles, but, if we may be allowed to speak favorably of any measures which opposed the views of our own government and aimed at the support of an adverse interest, surely it was not only not culpable, but even praiseworthy.  He endeavored, as appears by the abstracts before us, to give consequence to his master, and to pave the way to his independence, by obtaining a firman from the king for his appointment to the subahship; and he opposed the promotion of Mahomed Reza Khan, because he looked upon it as a supersession of the rights and authority of the Nabob.  He is now an absolute dependant and subject of the Company, on whose favor he must rest all his hopes of future advancement.”

The character here given of him is that of an excellent patriot, a character which all your Lordships, in the several situations which you enjoy or to which you may be called, will envy,—­the character of a servant who stuck to his master against all foreign encroachments, who stuck to him to the last hour of his life, and had the dying testimony of his master to his services.

Could Sir John Clavering, could Colonel Monson, could Mr. Francis know that this man, of whom Mr. Hastings had given that exalted character upon the records of the Company, was the basest and vilest of mankind?  No, they ought to have esteemed him the contrary:  they knew him to be a man of rank, they knew him to be a man perhaps of the first capacity in the world, and they knew that Mr. Hastings had given this honorable testimony of him on the records of the Company but a very little time before; and there was no reason why they should think or know, as he expresses it, that he was the basest and vilest of mankind.  From the account, therefore, of Mr. Hastings himself, he was a person competent to accuse, a witness fit to be heard; and that is all I contend for.  Mr. Hastings would not hear him, he would not suffer the charge he had produced to be examined into.