as the substance of the whole criminal justice of a great country.  A good education, conformably to the maxims of his religion and the manners of his people, was necessary to enable him to fill that delicate place with reputation either to the Mahometan government or to ours.  He had still to manage a revenue not inconsiderable, which remained as the sole resource for the languishing dignity of persons any way distinguished in rank among Mussulmen, who were all attached and clung to him.  These considerations rendered it necessary to put his person and affairs into proper hands.  They ought to have been men who were able by the gravity of their rank and character to preserve his morals from the contagion of low and vicious company,—­men who by their integrity and firmness might be enabled to resist in some degree the rapacity of Europeans, as well as to secure the remaining fragments of his property from the attempts of the natives themselves, who must lie under strong temptation of taking their share in the last pillage of a decaying house.

The Directors were fully impressed with the necessity of such an arrangement.  Your Committee find, that, on the 26th of August, 1771, they gave instructions to the President and Council to appoint “a minister to transact the political affairs of the circar [government],—­and to select for that purpose some person well qualified for the affairs of government to be the minister of the government, and guardian of the Nabob’s minority.”

The order was so distinct as not to admit of a mistake; it was (for its matter) provident and well considered; and the trust which devolved on Mr. Hastings was of such a nature as might well stimulate a man sensible to reputation to fulfil it in a manner agreeably to the directions he had received, and not only above just cause of exception, but out of the reach of suspicion and malice.  In that situation it was natural to suppose he would cast his eyes upon men of the first repute and consideration among the Mussulmen of high rank.

Mr. Hastings, instead of directing his eyes to the durbar, employed his researches in the seraglio.  In the inmost recesses of that place he discovered a woman secluded from the intercourse and shut up from the eyes of men, whom he found to correspond with the orders he had received from the Directors, as a person well “qualified for the affairs of government, fit to be a minister of government and the guardian of the Nabob’s minority.”  This woman he solemnly invests with these functions.  He appoints Rajah Gourdas, whom some time after he himself qualified with a description of a young man of mean abilities, to be her duan, or steward of the household.  The rest of the arrangement was correspondent to this disposition of the principal offices.