any account, though their character and circumstances were such as made an account ten thousand times more necessary from them than from those from whom it had been in former times by the Company strictly exacted.  So that his not ordering any account to be given of the money that was to be expended leaves no doubt that the appointment of Munny Begum was in pursuance of his old system of bribery, and that he maintained her in office, to the subversion of public justice, for the purpose of robbing, and of continuing in the practice of robbing, the country.

But though this continued longer than was for the good of the country, yet it did not continue absolutely and relatively long; because the Court of Directors, as soon as they heard of this iniquitous appointment, which glared upon them in all the light of its infamy, immediately wrote the strongest, the most decided, and the most peremptory censure upon him, attributing his acts, every one of them, to the same causes to which I attribute them.  As a proof that the Court of Directors saw the thing in the very light in which I represent it to your Lordships, and indeed in which every one must see it, you will find that they reprobate all his idle excuses,—­that they reprobate all the actors in the scene,—­that they consider everything to have been done, not by the Nabob, but by himself,—­that the object of the appointment of Munny Begum was money, and that the consequence of that appointment was the robbery of the Nabob’s treasury.  “We by no means approve your late proceedings, on the application of the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah for the removal of the Naib Subahdar.  The requisition of Mobarek ul Dowlah was improper and unfriendly; because he must have known that the late appointment of Mahomed Reza Khan to the office of Naib Subahdar had been marked with the Company’s special approbation, and that the Court of Directors had assured him of their favor so long as a firm attachment to the Company’s interest and a proper discharge of the duties of his station should render him worthy of their protection.  We therefore repeat our declaration, that to require the dismission of a prime-minister thus circumstanced, without producing the smallest proof of his infidelity to the Company, or venturing to charge him with one instance of maladministration in the discharge of his public duty, was improper and inconsistent with the friendship subsisting between the Nabob of Bengal and the Company.”  And further on they say,—­“The Nabob having intimated that he had repeatedly stated the trouble and uneasiness which he had suffered from the naibship of the nizamut being vested in Mahomed Reza Khan, we observe one of the members of your board desired the Nabob’s repeated letters on the subject might be read, but this reasonable request was overruled, on a plea of saving the board’s time, which we can by no means admit as a sufficient objection.  The Nabob’s letters of the 25th and 30th August, of the 3d September and 17th November, leave us no doubt of the true design of this extraordinary business being to bring forward Munny Begum, and again to invest her with improper power and influence, notwithstanding our former declaration, that so great a part of the Nabob’s allowance had been embezzled or misapplied under her superintendence.”