complete the balance of the sircar from the jaidads of the balances:  right or wrong, he is resolved to destroy our lives.  As we have no asylum or hope except from your Highness, and as the Almighty has formed your mind to be a distributor of justice in these times, I therefore hope from the benignity of your Highness, that you will inquire and do justice in this matter, and that an aumeen may be appointed from the presence, that, having discovered the crimes or innocence of Baboo Durbege Sing, he may report to the presence.  Further particulars will be made known to your Highness by the arzee of my son Rajah Mehip Narrain Bahadur.”

    Arzee from Rajah Mehip Narrain Bahadur.  Received 15th December,
    1782.

“I before this had the honor of addressing several arzees to your presence; but, from my unfortunate state, not one of them has been perused by your Highness, that my situation might be fully learnt by you.  The case is this.  Mr. Markham, from the advice of my enemies, having occasioned several kinds of losses, and given protection to those who owed balances, prevented the balance from being collected,—­for this reason, that, the money not being paid in time, the Baboo might be convicted of inability.  From this reason, all the owers of balances refused to pay the malwajib of the sircar.  Before this, the Baboo had frequently desired that gentleman to show his resentment against the persons who owed the balances, that the balances might be paid, and that his mind might be at ease for the present year, so that the bundobust of the present year might be completed,—­adding, that, if, next year, such kinds of injuries, and protection of the farmers, were to happen, he should not be able to support it.”

I am here to remark to your Lordships, that the last of these petitions begins by stating, “I before this have had the honor of addressing several arzees to your presence; but, from my unfortunate state, not one of them has been perused by your Highness.”  My Lords, if there is any one right secured to the subject, it is that of presenting a petition and having that petition noticed.  This right grows in importance in proportion to the power and despotic nature of the governments to which the petitioner is subject:  for where there is no sort of remedy from any fixed laws, nothing remains but complaint, and prayers, and petitions.  This was the case in Benares:  for Mr. Hastings had destroyed every trace of law, leaving only the police of the single city of Benares.  Still we find this complaint, prayer, and petition was not the first, but only one of many, which Mr. Hastings took no notice of, entirely despised, and never would suffer to be produced to the Council; which never knew anything, until this bundle of papers came before them, of the complaint of Mr. Markham against Durbege Sing, or of the complaint of Durbege Sing against Mr. Markham.