far as a woman could take care of them, of her own son.  In this situation she had been placed before, during the administration of Mahomed Reza Khan, by the direct orders of the Governor, Sir John Cartier.  She had, I say, been put in possession of that trust which it was natural and proper to give to such a woman.  But what does Mr. Hastings do?  He deposes this woman.  He strips her of her authority with which he found her invested under the sanction of the English government.  He finds out a woman in the seraglio, called Munny Begum, who was bound to the Nabob by no tie whatever of natural affection.  He makes this woman the guardian of the young Nabob’s person.  She had a son who had been placed upon the musnud after the death of his father, Sujah Dowlah, and had been appointed his guardian.  This young Nabob died soon afterwards, and was succeeded by Nujim ul Dowlah, another natural son of Sujah Dowlah.  This prince being left without a mother, this woman was suffered to retain the guardianship of the Nabob till his death.  When Mobarek ul Dowlah, a legitimate son of Sujah Dowlah, succeeded him, Sir John Cartier did what his duty was:  he put the Nabob’s own mother into the place which she was naturally entitled to hold, the guardianship of her own son, and displaced Munny Begum.  The whole of the arrangement by which Munny Begum was appointed guardian of the two preceding Nabobs stands in the Company’s records stigmatized as a transaction base, wicked, and corrupt.  We will read to your Lordships an extract from a letter which has the signature of Mr. Sumner, the gentleman who sits here by the side of Mr. Hastings, and from which you will learn what the Company and the Council thought of the original nomination of Munny Begum and of her son.  You will find that they considered her as a great agent and instrument of all the corruption there; and that this whole transaction, by which the bastard son of Munny Begum was brought forward to the prejudice of the legitimate son of the Nabob, was considered to be, what it upon the very face of it speaks itself to be, corrupt and scandalous.

     Extract of a General Letter from the President and Council at
     Calcutta, Bengal, to the Select Committee of the Directors.

Paragraph 5.—­“At Fort St. George we received the first advices of the demise of Mir Jaffier, and of Sujah Dowlah’s defeat.  It was there firmly imagined that no definitive measures would be taken, either with respect to a peace or filling the vacancy in the nizamut, before our arrival,—­as the ‘Lapwing’ arrived in the month of January with your general letter, and the appointment of a committee with express powers to that purpose, for the successful exertion of which the happiest occasion now offered.  However, a contrary resolution prevailed in the Council.  The opportunity of acquiring immense fortunes was too inviting to be neglected, and the temptation too powerful to be resisted.  A treaty was hastily drawn