On the whole, your Committee conceive that all the parts of the transaction, as they appear in the Company’s records, are consistent, and mutually throw light on each other.

The Court of Directors order the President and Council to appoint a minister to transact the political affairs of the government, and to select for that purpose some person well qualified for the affairs of government, and to be the minister of government.  Mr. Hastings selects for the minister so described and so qualified a woman locked up in a seraglio.  He is ordered to appoint a guardian to the Nabob’s minority.  Mr. Hastings passes by his natural parent, and appoints another woman.  These acts would of themselves have been liable to suspicion.  But a great deficiency or embezzlement soon appears in this woman’s account.  To exculpate herself, she voluntarily declares that she gave a considerable sum to Mr. Hastings, who never once denies the receipt.  The account given by the principal living witness of the transaction in his evidence is perfectly coherent, and consistent with the recorded part.  The original accounts, alleged to be delivered by the lady in question, were produced by him, properly sealed and authenticated.  Nothing is opposed to all this but a paper without signature, and therefore of no authority, attended with a translation of a very extraordinary appearance; and this paper, in apologizing for it, confirms the facts beyond a doubt.

Finally, your Committee examined the principal living witness of the transaction, and find his evidence consistent with the record.  Your Committee received the original accounts, alleged to be delivered by the lady in question, properly sealed and authenticated, and find opposed to them nothing but a paper without signature, and therefore of no authority, attended with a translation of a very extraordinary appearance.

In Europe the Directors ordered opinions to be taken on a prosecution:  they received one doubtful, and three positively for it.

They write, in their letter of 5th February, 1777, paragraphs 32 and 33:—­

“Although it is rather our wish to prevent evils in future than to enter into a severe retrospection of the past, and, where facts are doubtful, or attended with alleviating circumstances, to proceed with lenity, rather than to prosecute with rigor,—­yet some of the cases are so flagrantly corrupt, and others attended with circumstances so oppressive to the inhabitants, that it would be unjust to suffer the delinquents to go unpunished.  The principal facts[56] have been communicated to our solicitor, whose report, confirmed by our standing counsel, we send you by the present conveyance,—­authorizing you, at the same time, to take such steps as shall appear proper to be pursued.

“If we find it necessary, we shall return you the original covenants of such of our servants as remain in India, and have been anyways concerned in the undue receipt of money, in order to enable you to recover the same for the use of the Company by a suit or suits at law, to be instituted in the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal.”