To bring your Lordships to the end of this business, which I hope will lead me very near to the end of what I have to trouble your Lordships with, I will now state the conduct of the Council, and the resolution about Gunga Govind Sing.  I am to inform your Lordships that there was a reference made by the Council to the Committee of Revenue, namely, to Gunga Govind Sing himself,—­a reference with regard to the right, title, mode, and proceeding, and many other circumstances; upon which the Committee, being such as I have described, very naturally were silent.  Gunga Govind Sing loquitur solus,—­in the manner you have just heard; the Committee were the chorus,—­they sometimes talk, fill up a vacant part,—­but Gunga Govind Sing was the great actor, the sole one.  The report of this Committee being laid before the Council, Mr. Stables, one of the board, entered the following minute on the 15th of May, 1785.

“I have perused the several papers upon this subject, and am sorry to observe that the Committee of Revenue are totally silent on the most material points therein, and sending the petition to them has only been so much time thrown away:  I mean, on the actual value of the lands in question, what the amount derived from them has been in the last year, and what advantages or disadvantages to government by the sale, and whether, in their opinion, the supposed sale was compulsive or not.  But it is not necessary for the discussion of the question respecting the regularity or irregularity of the pretended sale of Salbarry to Gunga Govind Sing, the dewan, to enter into the particular assertions of each party.

“The representations of the Rajah’s agent, confirmed by the petitions of his principal, positively assert the sale to have been compulsive and violent; and the dewan as positively denies it, though the fears he expresses, ’that their common enemies would set aside the act before it was complete,’ show clearly that they were sensible the act was unjustifiable, if they do not tend to falsify his denial.

“But it is clearly established and admitted by the language and writings of both parties, that there has been a most unwarrantable collusion in endeavoring to alienate the rights of government, contrary to the most positive original laws of the constitution of these provinces, ’that no zemindar and other landholder, paying revenue to government, shall be permitted to alienate his lands without the express authority of that government.’

“The defence set up by Gunga Govind Sing does not go to disavow the transaction; for, if it did, the deed of sale, &c., produced by himself, and the petition to the board for its confirmation, would detect him:  on the contrary, he openly admits its existence, and only strives to show that it was a voluntary one on the part of the Ranny and the servants of the Rajah.  Whether voluntary or not, it was equally criminal in Gunga Govind Sing, as the public officer of government: