this as a proof of the sincerity of the above arrangements which have been recommended to you, and of their expediency to your real interests; and your attention to them will be a means of reconciling the Company to the resolution which we have taken, and which will be reported to them in a light very hurtful both to you and to us, if an improper effect should attend it.  These I have ordered Sir John D’Oyly to read in your presence, and to explain them to you, that no part of them may escape your notice; and he has my positive orders to remonstrate to you against every departure from them.  Upon all these occasions, I hope and expect that you will give him a particular and cordial attention, and regard what he shall say as if said by myself; for I know him to be a person of the strictest honor and integrity.  I have a perfect reliance on him; and you cannot have a more attached or more disinterested counsellor.  Although I desire to receive your letters frequently, yet, as many matters will occur which cannot so easily be explained by letter as by conversation, I desire that you will on such occasions give your orders to him respecting such points as you may desire to have imparted to me; and I, postponing every other concern, will give you an immediate and the most satisfactory reply concerning them.”

My Lords, here is a man who is to administer his own affairs, who has arrived at sufficient age to supersede the counsel and advice of the great Mahometan doctors and the great nobility of the country, and he is put under the most absolute guardianship of Sir John D’Oyly.  But Mr. Hastings has given Sir John D’Oyly a great character.  I cannot confirm it, because I can confirm the character of none of Mr. Hastings’s instruments.  They must stand forth here, and defend their own character before you.

Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to another circumstance in this transaction.  You see here 40,000_l._ a year offered by this man for his redemption.  “I will give you,” he says, “40,000_l._ a year to have the management of my own affairs.”  Good heavens!  Here is a man, who, according to Mr. Hastings’s assertion, had an indisputable right to the management of his own affairs, but at the same time was notoriously so little fit to have the management of them as to be always under some corrupt tyranny or other, offers 40,000_l._ a year out of his own revenues to be left his own master, and to be permitted to have the disposal of the remainder.  Judge you of the bribery, rapine, and peculation which here stare you in the face.  Judge of the nature and character of that government for the management of which 40,000_l._, out of 160,000_l._ a year of its revenue, is offered by a subordinate to the supreme authority of the country.  This offer shows that at this time the Nabob had it not himself.  Who had it?  Sir John D’Oyly; he is brought forward as the person to whom is given the management of the whole.  Munny Begum had the management before.  But, whether it be an Englishman, a Mussulman, a white man or a black man, a white woman or a black woman, it is all Warren Hastings.