will ensue, and very disagreeable inferences will be drawn by the public concerning it.  You will forgive, and we know how to forgive, the ravings of people smarting under a conscious sense of their guilt.  But when we are reading documents given in evidence, and are commenting upon them, the use of this kind of language really deserves your Lordships’ consideration.  As for us, we regard it no more than we should other noise and brawlings of criminals who in irons may be led through the streets, raving at the magistrate that has committed them.  We consider him as a poor, miserable man, railing at his accusers:  it is natural he should fall into all these frantic ravings, but it is not fit or natural that the Court should indulge him in them.  Your Lordships shall now hear in what sense Mr. Wheler and Mr. Stables, two other members of the Council, understood this letter.

Mr. Wheler thus writes.—­“It always has been and always will be my wish to conform implicitly to the orders of the Court of Directors, and I trust that the opinion which I shall give upon that part of the Court’s letter which is now before us will not be taken up against its meaning, as going to a breach of them.  The orders at present under the board’s consideration are entirely provisional.  Nothing has passed since the conclusion of the agreement made by the Governor-General with the Vizier at Chunar which induces me to alter the opinion which I before held, as well from the Governor-General’s reports to this board as the opinions which I have heard of many individuals totally unconcerned in the subject, that the Begums at Fyzabad did take a hostile part against the Company during the disturbances in Benares; and I am impressed with a conviction that the conduct of the Begums did not proceed entirely from motives of self-defence.  But as the Court of Directors appear to be of a different opinion, and conceive that there ought to be stronger proofs of the defection of the Begums than have been laid before them, I think, that, before we decide on their orders, the late and present Resident at the Vizier’s court, and the commanding officers in the Vizier’s country, ought to be required to collect and lay before the board all the information they can obtain with respect to the defection of the Begums during the troubles in Benares, and their present disposition to the Company.”

Mr. Stables, September 9th, 1783, writes thus.—­“The Court of Directors, by their letter of the 14th February, 1783, seem not to be satisfied that the disaffection of the Begums to this government is sufficiently proved by the evidence before them.  I therefore think that the late and present Resident and commanding officers in the Vizier’s country at the time should be called upon to collect what further information they can on this subject, in which the honor and dignity of this government is so materially concerned, that such information may be immediately transmitted to the Court of Directors.”