disposed of them so corruptly and prodigally that he thought they could hardly be redeemed at too high a price.  What explanation of this matter has been attempted?  There is no explanation given of it at all.  It stands clear, full, bare in all its nakedness before you.  They have not attempted to produce the least evidence against it.  Therefore in that state I leave it with you; and I shall only add, that Mr. Hastings continued to make Munny Begum the first object of his attention, and that, though he could not entirely remove Mahomed Reza Khan from the seat of justice, he was made a cipher in it.  All his other offices were taken out of his hands and put into the hands of Sir John D’Oyly, directly contrary to the orders of the Company, which certainly implied the restitution of Mahomed Reza Khan to all the offices which he had before held.  He was stripped of everything but a feeble administration of justice, which, I take for granted, could not, under the circumstances, have been much better in his hands than it had been in Sudder ul Huk Khan’s.

Mr. Hastings’s protection of this woman continued to the last; and when he was going away, on the 3d of November, 1783, he wrote a sentimental letter to the Court of Directors in her praise.  This letter was transmitted without having been communicated to the Council.  You have heard of delicate affidavits; here you have a sentimental official despatch:  your Lordships will find it in page 1092 and 1093 of your printed Minutes.  He writes in such a delicate, sentimental strain of this woman, that I will venture to say you will not find in all the “Arcadia,” in all the novels and romances that ever were published, an instance of a greater, a more constant, and more ardent affection, defying time, ugliness, and old age, did ever exist, than existed in Mr. Hastings towards this old woman, Munny Begum.  As cases of this kind, cases of gallantry abounding in sentimental expressions, are rare in the Company’s records, I recommend it as a curiosity to your Lordships’ reading, as well as a proof of what is the great spring and movement of all the prisoner’s actions.  On this occasion he thus speaks of Munny Begum.

“She, too, became the victim of your policy, and of the resentments which succeeded.  Something, too, she owed of the source of her misfortunes to the belief of the personal gratitude which she might entertain for the public attention which I had shown to her.  Yet, exposed as she was to a treatment which a ruffian would have shuddered at committing, and which no recollection of past enmities shall compel me to believe, even for a moment, proceeded from any commission of authority, she still maintained the decorum of her character; nor even then, nor before, nor since that period, has the malice of calumny ever dared to breathe on her reputation.”—­Delicate! sentimental!—­“Pardon, honorable Sirs, this freedom of expostulation.  I must in honest truth repeat, that your commands laid