however, they hope for relief from their present distress_, which, their
near connection with the Vizier considered, is both shameful and
unprecedented. That no regular courts of justice have been established
in this country is particularly pointed at in my instructions, as the
most disreputable defect in his Highness's government; yet the minister
seems determined on abolishing even the shadow of so necessary an
institution. The office of Chief Justice, as held by Moulavy Morobine,
was ever nugatory, but now it is sunk into the lowest contempt. The
original establishment, inadequate as it was, is mouldering away, and
the officers now attached to it are literally starving, as no part of
their allowance has been paid for above six months past. He himself has
proposed to resign his appointment, being every way precluded from a
possibility of exercising the duties of it."

XLVI. That it appears by the said letter, and the papers therewith
transmitted, as well as other documents in the said correspondence,
that, in consequence of the distress brought upon the Nabob's finances,
certain of the princes, his brethren, the children of Sujah ul Dowlah,
the late sovereign of the country, were put upon pensions unsuitable to
their birth and rank, and by the mismanagement of the minister
aforesaid, (appointed by the said Warren Hastings,) for two years
together no considerable part of the said inadequate pension was paid;
and not being able to maintain the attendants necessary for their
protection in a city in which all magistracy and justice was abolished,
they were not only liable to suffer the greatest extremities of penury,
but their lives were exposed to the attempts of assassins: the condition
of one of the said princes, called the Nabob Bahadur, being by himself
strongly expressed in three letters to the said Resident Bristow,--the
first dated the 28th of December, 1783; the second, the 7th of January,
1784; and the third, the 15th of January, 1784,--which letters were