knowing that the proof stood so.  Here he asserts that there are records before the House of Commons, and on the Company’s Proceedings and Consultations, proving Nundcomar to have been guilty of these two forgeries.  Turn over the next page of his printed defence, and you find a very extraordinary thing.  You would have imagined that this forgery of a letter from Munny Begum, which, he says, is recognized and proved on the Journals, was a forgery charged by Munny Begum herself, or by somebody on her part, or some person concerned in this business.  There is no other charge of it whatever, but the charge of Warren Hastings himself.  He wants you to discredit a man for forgery upon no evidence under heaven but that of his own, who thinks proper, without any sort of authority, without any sort of reference, without any sort of collateral evidence, to charge a man with that very direct forgery.  “You are,” he says, “well informed of the reasons which first induced me to give any share of my confidence to Nundcomar, with whose character I was acquainted by an experience of many years.  The means which he himself took to acquire it were peculiar to himself.  He sent a messenger to me at Madras, on the first news of my appointment to this Presidency, with pretended letters from Munny Begum and the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah, the brother of the Nabob Jaffier Ali Khan, filled with bitter invectives against Mahomed Reza Khan, and of as warm recommendations, as I recollect, of Nundcomar.  I have been since informed by the Begum that the letter which bore her seal was a complete forgery, and that she was totally unacquainted with the use which had been made of her name till I informed her of it.  Juggut Chund, Nundcomar’s son-in-law, was sent to her expressly to entreat her not to divulge it.  Mr. Middleton, whom she consulted on the occasion, can attest the truth of this story.”

Mr. Middleton is dead, my Lords.  This is not the Mr. Middleton whom your Lordships have heard and know well in this House, but a brother of that Mr. Middleton, who is since dead.  Your Lordships find, when we refer to the records of the Company for the proof of this forgery, that there is no other than the unsupported assertion of Mr. Hastings himself that he was guilty of it.  Now that was bad enough; but then hear the rest.  Mr. Hastings has charged this unhappy man, whom we must not defend, with another forgery; he has charged him with a forgery of a letter from Yeteram ul Dowlah to Mr. Hastings.  Now you would imagine that he would have given his own authority at least for that assertion, which he says was proved.  He goes on and says, “I have not yet had the curiosity to inquire of the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah whether his letter was of the same stamp; but I cannot doubt it.”