I have now to state to your Lordships a transaction which is worse than his wantonly playing with the safety of the Company, worse than his exacting sums of money by fraud and violence.  My Lords, the history of this transaction must be prefaced by describing to your Lordships the duty and privileges attached to the office of Naib.  A Naib is an officer well known in India, as the administrator of the affairs of any government, whenever the authority of the regular holder is suspended.  But, although the Naib acts only as a deputy, yet, when the power of the principal is totally superseded, as by imprisonment or otherwise, and that of the Naib is substituted, he becomes the actual sovereign, and the principal is reduced to a mere pensioner.  I am now to show your Lordships whom Mr. Hastings appointed as Naib to the government of the country, after he had imprisoned the Rajah.

Cheyt Sing had given him to understand through Mr. Markham, that he was aware of the design of suspending him, and of placing his government in the hands of a Naib whom he greatly dreaded.  This person was called Ussaun Sing; he was a remote relation of the family, and an object of their peculiar suspicion and terror.  The moment Cheyt Sing was arrested, he found that his prophetic soul spoke truly; for Mr. Hastings actually appointed this very man to be his master.  And who was this man?  We are told by Mr. Markham, in his evidence here, that he was a man who had dishonored his family,—­he was the disgrace of his house,—­that he was a person who could not be trusted; and Mr. Hastings, in giving Mr. Markham full power afterwards to appoint Naibs, expressly excepted this Ussaun Sing from all trust whatever, as a person totally unworthy of it.  Yet this Ussaun Sing, the disgrace and calamity of his family, an incestuous adulterer, and a supposed issue of a guilty connection, was declared Naib.  Yes, my Lords, this degraded, this wicked and flagitious character, the Rajah’s avowed enemy, was, in order to heighten the Rajah’s disgrace, to embitter his ruin, to make destruction itself dishonorable as well as destructive, appointed this [his?] Naib.  Thus, when Mr. Hastings had imprisoned the Rajah, in the face of his subjects, and in the face of all India, without fixing any term for the duration of his imprisonment, he delivered up the country to a man whom he knew to be utterly undeserving, a man whom he kept in view for the purpose of frightening the Rajah, and whom he was obliged to depose on account of his misconduct almost as soon as he had named him, and to exclude specially from all kind of trust.  We have heard of much tyranny, avarice, and insult in the world; but such an instance of tyranny, avarice, and insult combined has never before been exhibited.

We are now come to the last scene of this flagitious transaction.  When Mr. Hastings imprisoned the Rajah, he did not renew his demand for the 500,000_l._, but he exhibited a regular charge of various pretended delinquencies against him, digested into heads, and he called on him, in a dilatory, irregular way of proceeding, for an answer.  The man, under every difficulty and every distress, gave an answer to every particular of the charge, as exact and punctilious as could have been made to articles of impeachment in this House.