Now your Lordships see Mr. Hastings appearing in his own character again,—­exercising the power he had pretended to abdicate, whilst the Nabob sinks and subsides under him.  He becomes the supporter of Sudder ul Huk Khan, now that the infamy of the treatment he received could no longer be concealed from the Council.  On the 1st of September, 1778, the Governor informs the Nabob, “that it is highly expedient that Sudder ul Huk Khan should have full control in all matters relative to his office, and the sole appointment and dismission of the sudder and mofussil officers; and that his seal and signature should be authentic to all papers having relation to the business intrusted to him:  I therefore intimate to you, that he should appoint and dismiss all the officers under him, and that your Excellency should not interfere in any one [way?].”

The Nabob, in a letter to the Governor, received the 3d of September, 1778, says,—­“Agreeably to your pleasure, I have relinquished all concern with the affairs of the foujdarry and adawlut, leaving the entire management in Sudder ul Huk Khan’s hands.”  Here you see the Nabob again reduced to his former state of subordination.  This chief-justiceship, which was declared to be his inherent right, he is obliged to submit to the control of Mr. Hastings, and to declare that he will not interfere at all in a matter which Mr. Hastings had declared to be his incommunicable attribute.  I do not say that Mr. Hastings interfered improperly.  Certainly it was not fit that the highest court of justice in all Bengal should be made the instrument of the rapacity of a set of villains with a prostitute at their head:  just as if a gang of thieves in England, with their prostitutes at their head, should seize the judge which ought to punish them, and endeavor to make use of his name in their iniquitous transactions.  But your Lordships will find that Mr. Hastings is here acting a merely ostensible part, and that he has always a means of defeating privately what he declares publicly to be his intention.  Your Lordships will see soon how this ended.  Mr. Hastings gets the Nabob to give up all his authority over the chief-justice; but he says not one word of Munny Begum, the person who had the real authority in her hands, and who was not forbidden to interfere with him.  Mr. Hastings’s order is dated the 1st September, 1778.  On the 3d of September, the Nabob is said to have relinquished all concern with Sudder ul Huk Khan.  In a letter received the 30th of September, (that is, about twenty-seven days after the date of Mr. Hastings’s order,) you will see how this pretended order was managed.  Sudder ul Huk Khan thus writes, in a letter received the 30th of September.