entirely ignorant of the correspondence, as he was applied to on no occasion, except for a few papers sometimes sent to him by the secretaries, which he always returned to them as soon as translated.

“The Persian Translator has received from Mr. Scott, since the late Governor-General’s departure, a trunk containing English draughts and translations and the Persian originals of letters and papers, with three books in the Persian language containing copies of letters written between August, 1782, and January, 1785; and if the Board should please to order the secretaries of the general department to furnish him with copies of all translations and draughts recorded in their Consultations between the 1st of January, 1782, and the 31st of January, 1785, he thinks that he should be able, with what he has found in Captain Scott’s trunk, to make up the correspondence for that period.

(Signed) “EDWARD COLEBROOKE,
“Persian Translator.”

Hear, then, my Lords, what becomes of the records of the Company, which were to be the vouchers for every public act,—­which were to show whether, in the Company’s transactions, agreements, and treaties with the native powers, the public faith was kept or not.  You see them all crammed into Mr. Scott’s trunk:  a trunk into which they put what they please, take out what they please, suppress what they please, or thrust in whatever will answer their purpose.  The records of the Governor-General and Council of Bengal are kept in Captain Jonathan Scott’s trunk; this trunk is to be considered as the real and true channel of intelligence between the Company and the country powers.  But even this channel was not open to any member of the Council, except Mr. Hastings; and when the Council, for the first time, daring to think for themselves, call upon the Persian Translator, he knows nothing about it.  We find that it is given into the hands of a person nominated by Mr. Hastings,—­Major Davy.  What do the Company know of him?  Why, he was Mr. Hastings’s private secretary.  In this manner the Council have been annihilated during all these transactions, and have no other knowledge of them than just what Mr. Hastings and his trunk-keeper thought proper to give them.  All, then, that we know of these transactions is from the miserable, imperfect, garbled correspondence.

But even if these papers contained a full and faithful account of the correspondence, what we charge is its not being delivered to the Council as it occurred from time to time.  Mr. Hastings kept the whole government of Oude in his own hands; so that the Council had no power of judging his acts, of checking, controlling, advising, or remonstrating.  It was totally annihilated by him; and we charge, as an act of treason and rebellion against the act of Parliament by which he held his office, his depriving the Council of their legitimate authority, by shutting them out from the knowledge of all affairs,—­except, indeed, when he thought it expedient, for his own justification, to have their nominal concurrence or subsequent acquiescence in any of his more violent measures.