When we thus undertook the government of the country, conscious that we had undertaken a task which by any personal exertion of our own we were unable to perform in any proper or rational way, the Company appointed a native of the country, Mahomed Reza Khan, who stands upon the records of the Company, I venture to say, with such a character as no man perhaps ever did stand, to execute the duties of both offices.  Upon the expulsion of Cossim Ali Khan, the Nabob of Bengal, all his children were left in a young, feeble, and unprotected state; and in that state of things, Lord Clive, Mr. Sumner, who sits near Mr. Hastings, and the rest of the Council, wisely appointed Mahomed Reza Khan to fulfil the two offices of deputy-viceroy and deputy-dewan, for which he had immense allowances, and great jaghires and revenues, I allow.  He was a man of that dignity, rank, and consideration, added to his knowledge of law and experience in business, that Lord Clive and Mr. Sumner, who examined strictly his conduct at that time, did not think that 112,000_l._ a year, the amount of the emoluments which had been allowed him, was a great deal too much; but at his own desire, and in order that these emoluments might be brought to stated and fixed sums, they reduced it to 90,000_l._,—­an allowance which they thought was not more than sufficient to preserve the state of so great a magistrate, and a man of such rank, exercising such great employments.  The whole revenue of the Company depended upon his talents and fidelity; and you will find, that, on the day in which he surrendered the revenues into our hands, the dewanny, under his management, was a million more than it produced on the day Mr. Hastings left it.  For the truth of this I refer your Lordships to a letter of the Company sent to the Board of Control.  This letter is not in evidence before your Lordships, and what I am stating is merely historical.  But I state the facts, and with the power of referring for their proof to documents as authentic as if they were absolutely in evidence before you.  Assuming, therefore, that all these facts may be verified by the records of the Company, I have now to state that this man, by some rumors true or false, was supposed to have misconducted himself in a time of great calamity in that country.  A great famine had about this time grievously afflicted the whole province of Bengal.—­I must remark by the way, that these countries are liable to this calamity; but it is greatly blessed by Nature with resources which afford the means of speedy recovery, if their government does not counteract them.  Nature, that inflicts the calamity, soon heals the wound; it is in ordinary seasons the most fertile country, inhabited by the most industrious people, and the most disposed to marriage and settlement, probably, that exists in the whole world; so that population and fertility are soon restored, and the inhabitants quickly resume their former industrious occupations.