Now what does he recommend to the board?  That it will be pleased to confirm the appointment which Mr. Markham made in obedience to his individual orders, as well as the directions which he had given him to exact from Baboo Durbege Sing with the utmost rigor every rupee of the collections, and either to confine him at Benares or send him to Chunar and imprison him there until the whole of his arrears were paid up.  Here, then, my Lords, you have, what plainly appears in every act of Mr. Hastings, a feeling of resentment for some personal injury.  “I feel myself,” says he, “and may be allowed on such an occasion to acknowledge it, personally hurt at the ingratitude of this man, and the discredit which his ill conduct has thrown on my appointment of him.  The Rajah himself, scarcely arrived at the verge of manhood, was in understanding but little advanced beyond the term of childhood; and it had been the policy of Cheyt Sing to keep him equally secluded from the world and from business.”  This is the character Mr. Hastings gives of a man whom he appointed to govern the country.  He goes on to say of Durbege Sing,—­“As he was allowed a jaghire of a very liberal amount, to enable him to maintain a state and consequence suitable both to the relation in which he stood to the Rajah and the high office which had been assigned to him, and sufficient also to free him from the temptation of little and mean peculations, it is therefore my opinion, and I recommend, that Mr. Markham be ordered to divest him of his jaghire, and reunite it to the malguzaree, or the land paying its revenue through the Rajah to the Company.  The opposition made by the Rajah and the old Ranny, both equally incapable of judging for themselves, do certainly originate from some secret influence which ought to be checked by a decided and peremptory declaration of the authority of the board, and a denunciation of their displeasure at their presumption.  If they can be induced to yield the appearance of a cheerful acquiescence in the new arrangement, and to adopt it as a measure formed with their participation, it would be better than that it should be done by a declared act of compulsion; but at all events it ought to be done.”  My Lords, it had been already done:  the Naib was dismissed; he was imprisoned; his jaghire was confiscated:  all these things were done by Mr. Hastings’s orders.  He had resolved to take the whole upon himself; he had acted upon that resolution before he addressed this letter to the board.

Thus, my Lords, was this unhappy man punished without any previous trial, or any charges, except the complaints of Mr. Markham, and some other private information which Mr. Hastings said he had received.  Before the poor object of these complaints could make up his accounts, before a single step was taken, judicially or officially, to convict him of any crime, he was sent to prison, and his private estates confiscated.