I will here press again one remark, which perhaps you may recollect that I have made before, that the chief and most usual mode in which all the villanies perpetrated in India, by Mr. Hastings and his co-partners in iniquity, has been through the medium and instrumentality of persons whom they pretended to have rights of their own, and to be acting for themselves; whereas such persons were, in fact, totally dependent upon him, Mr. Hastings, and did no one act that was not prescribed by him.  In order, therefore, to let you see the utter falsehood, fraud, prevarication, and deceit of the pretences by which the native powers of India are represented to be independent, and are held up as the instruments of defying the laws of this kingdom, under pretext of their being absolute princes, I will read the affidavit of Warren Hastings, Esquire, Governor-General of Bengal, made the 31st July, 1775.

“This deponent maketh oath, and saith, That the late President and Council did, in or about the month of August, 1772, by their own authority appoint Munny Begum, relict of the late Nabob, Mir Jaffier Ali Khan, to be guardian to the present Nabob, Mobarek ul Dowlah, and Rajah Gourdas, son of Maha Rajah Nundcomar, to be dewan of the said Nabob’s household, allowing to the said Munny Begum a salary of 140,000 rupees per annum, and to the said Rajah Gourdas, for himself and officers, a salary of 100,000 rupees per annum:  That the said late President and Council did, in or about the month of August, 1772, plan and constitute regular and distinct courts of justice, civil and criminal, by their own authority, for administration of justice to the inhabitants throughout Bengal, without consulting the said Nabob or requiring his concurrence, and that the said civil courts were made solely dependent on the Presidency of Calcutta; and the said criminal courts were put under the inspection and control of the Company’s servants, although ostensibly under the name of the Nazim, as appears from the following extracts from the plan for the administration of justice, constituted by the President and Council as aforesaid.”

My Lords, we need not go through all the circumstances of this affidavit, which is in your minutes, and, to save time, I will refer your Lordships to them.  This affidavit, as I have already said, was put into the court to prove that the Nabob had no power or authority at all; but what is very singular in it, and which I recommend to the particular notice of your Lordships, when you are scrutinizing this matter, is, that there is not a single point stated, to prove the nullity of this Nabob’s authority, that was not Mr. Hastings’s on particular act.  Well, the Governor-General swears; the judge of the court refers to him in his decision; he builds and bottoms it upon the Governor-General’s affidavit;—­he swears, I say, that the Council, by their own authority, appointed Munny Begum to be guardian to the Nabob.