The pretence was more insolent and shameless than the act.  Modesty does not long survive innocence.  He brings forward the miserable pageant of the Nabob, as he called him, to be the instrument of his own disgrace, and the scandal of his family and government.  He makes him to pass by his mother, and to petition us to appoint Munny Begum once more to the administration of the viceroyalty.  He distributed Mahomed Reza Khan’s salary as a spoil.

When the orders of the Court to restore Mahomed Reza Khan, with their opinion on the corrupt cause of his removal, and a second time to pledge to him the public faith for his continuance, were received, Mr. Hastings, who had been just before a pattern of obedience, when the despoiling, oppressing, imprisoning, and persecuting this man was the object, yet, when the order was of a beneficial nature, and pleasant to a well-formed mind, he at once loses all his old principles, he grows stubborn and refractory, and refuses obedience.  And in this sullen, uncomplying mood he continues, until, to gratify Mr. Francis, in an agreement on some of their differences, he consented to his proposition of obedience to the appointment of the Court of Directors.  He grants to his arrangement of convenience what he had refused to his duty, and replaces that magistrate.  But mark the double character of the man, never true to anything but fraud and duplicity.  At the same time that he publicly replaces this magistrate, pretending compliance with his colleague and obedience to his masters, he did, in defiance of his own and the public faith, privately send an assurance to the Nabob, that is, to Munny Begum,—­informs her that he was compelled by necessity to the present arrangement in favor of Mahomed Reza Khan, but that on the first opportunity he would certainly displace him again.  And he kept faith with his corruption; and to show how vainly any one sought protection in the lawful authority of this kingdom, he displaced Mahomed Reza Khan from the lieutenancy and controllership, leaving him only the judicial department miserably curtailed.

But does he adhere to his old pretence of freedom to the Nabob?  No such thing.  He appoints an absolute master to him under the name of Resident, a creature of his personal favor, Sir John D’Oyly, from whom there is not one syllable of correspondence and not one item of account.  How grievous this yoke was to that miserable captive appears by a paper of Mr. Hastings, in which he acknowledges that the Nabob had offered, out of the 160,000_l._ payable to him yearly, to give up to the Company no less than 40,000_l._ a year, in order to have the free disposal of the rest.  On this all comment is superfluous.  Your Lordships are furnished with a standard by which you may estimate his real receipt from the revenue assigned to him, the nature of the pretended Residency, and its predatory effects.  It will give full credit to what was generally rumored and believed, that substantially and beneficially the Nabob never received fifty out of the one hundred and sixty thousand pounds; which will account for his known poverty and wretchedness, and that of all about him.