There was an ostensible man, named Sudder ul Huk Khan, placed there at the head of the administration of justice, with a salary of seven thousand pounds a year of the Company’s money.  This man, in a letter to the Governor-General and Council, received the 1st of September, 1778, says,—­“His Highness himself [the Nabob] is not deficient in regard for me, but certain bad men have gained an ascendency over his temper, by whose instigation he acts.”  You will see, my Lords, how this poor man was crippled in the execution of his duty, and dishonored by the corruption of this woman and her eunuchs, to whom Mr. Hastings had given the supreme government, and with it an uncontrolled influence over all the dependent parts.  After thus complaining of the slights he receives from the Nabob, he adds,—­“Thus they cause the Nabob to treat me, sometimes with indignity, at others with kindness, just as they think proper to advise him:  their view is, that, by compelling me to displeasure at such unworthy treatment, they may force me either to relinquish my station, or to join with them and act with their advice, and appoint creatures of their recommendation to the different offices, from which they might draw profit to themselves.”  In a subsequent letter to the Governor, Sudder ul Huk Khan says,—­“The Begum’s ministers, before my arrival, with the advice of their counsellors, caused the Nabob to sign a receipt, in consequence of which they received, at two different times, near fifty thousand rupees, in the name of the officers of the adawlut, foujdarry, &c., from the Company’s sircar; and having drawn up an account current in the manner they wished, they got the Nabob to sign it, and then sent it to me.”  In the same letter he asserts that these people have the Nabob entirely in their power.

Now I have only to remark to your Lordships, that the first and immediate operation of Mr. Hastings’s regulation, which put everything into the hands of this wicked woman for her corrupt purposes, was, that the office of chief-justice was trampled upon and depraved, and made use of to plunder the Company of money, which was appropriated to their own uses,—­and that the person ostensibly holding this office was forced to become the instrument in the hands of this wicked woman and her two wicked eunuchs.  This, then, was the representation which the chief-justice made to Mr. Hastings, as one of the very first fruits of his new arrangement.  I am now to tell you what his next step was.  This same Mr. Hastings, who had made the Nabob master of everything and placed everything at his disposal, who had maintained that the Nabob was not to act a secondary part and to be a mere instrument in the hands of the Company, who had, as you have seen, revived the Nabob, now puts him to death again.  He pretends to be shocked at these proceedings of the Nabob, and, not being able to prevent their coming before the Council of the Directors at home, he immediately took Sudder ul Huk Khan under his protection.