injunctions, that, until the arrival of your Highness’s letter requesting the appointment of Mr. Bristow, and your answer to this arzee, that I should keep the particulars of this conversation a profound secret; for that the communication of it to any person whatever would not only cause his displeasure, but would throw affairs at Lucknow into great confusion.

“The preceding is the substance of the Governor’s directions to me.  He afterwards went to Mr. Macpherson’s, and I attended him.  Mr. Bristow was there; the Governor took Mr. Bristow’s arzee from his hand and delivered it into mine, and thence proceeded to Council.  Mr. Bristow’s arzee, and the following particulars, I transmit and communicate by the Governor’s directions; and I request that I may be favored with the answer to the arzee and the letter to the Governor as soon as possible, as his injunctions to me were very particular on the subject.”

My Lords, I have to observe upon this very extraordinary transaction, that you will see many things in this letter that are curious, and worthy of being taken out of that abyss of secrets, Mr. Scott’s trunk, in which this arzee was found.  It contains, as far as the prisoner thinks proper to reveal it, the true secret of the transaction.

He confesses, first, the state of the Vizier’s country, as communicated to him in various accounts of the anarchy and confusion said to reign throughout his territories.  This was in the year 1782, during the time that the Oude correspondence was not communicated to the Council.

He next stated, that neither the Vizier, nor his minister, nor Mr. Middleton, nor Mr. Johnson, ever wrote to him on the state of affairs.  Here, then, are three or four persons, all nominated by himself, every one of them supposed to be in his strictest confidence,—­the Nabob and his vassal, Hyder Beg Khan, being, as we shall show afterwards, entirely his dependants,—­and yet Mr. Hastings declares, that not one of them had done their duty, or had written him one word concerning the state of the country, and the anarchy and confusion that prevailed in it, and that, when the Nabob did write, his assertions were contrary to the real state of things.  Now this irregular correspondence, which he carried on at Lucknow, and which gave him, as he pretends, this contradictory information, was, as your Lordships will see, nothing more or less than a complete fraud.

Your Lordships will next observe, that he tells the vakeel his reason for turning him out was, that he had been patronized by other gentlemen.  This was true:  but they had a right to patronize him; and they did not patronize him from private motives, but in direct obedience to the order of the Court of Directors.  He then adds the assurance which he had received from Mr. Bristow, that he would be perfectly obedient to him, Mr. Hastings, in future; and he goes on to tell the vakeel that he knew the Vizier was once well pleased with him, (Mr. Bristow,) and that his formal complaints against him were written at the instigation of Mr. Middleton.