Not a shilling. No fewer than forty-nine petitions, mostly from the
widows of the greatest and most splendid houses of Bengal, came before
the Council, praying in the most deplorable manner for some sort of
relief out of the pittance assigned them. His colleagues, General
Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, men who, when England is
reproached for the government of India, will, I repeat it, as a shield
be held up between this nation and infamy, did, in conformity to the
strict orders of the Directors, appoint Mahomed Reza Khân to his old
offices, that is, to the general superintendency of the household and
the administration of justice, a person who by his authority might keep
some order in the ruling family and in the state. The Court of Directors
authorized them to assure those offices to him, with a salary reduced
indeed to 30,000_l._ a year, during his good behavior. But Mr. Hastings,
as soon as he obtained a majority by the death of the two best men ever
sent to India, notwithstanding the orders of the Court of Directors, in
spite of the public faith solemnly pledged to Mahomed Reza Khân, without
a shadow of complaint, had the audacity to dispossess him of all his
offices, and appoint his bribing patroness, the old dancing-girl, Munny
Begum, once more to the viceroyalty and all its attendant honors and
functions.

The pretence was more insolent and shameless than the act. Modesty does
not long survive innocence. He brings forward the miserable pageant of
the Nabob, as he called him, to be the instrument of his own disgrace,
and the scandal of his family and government. He makes him to pass by
his mother, and to petition us to appoint Munny Begum once more to the
administration of the viceroyalty. He distributed Mahomed Reza Khân's
salary as a spoil.

When the orders of the Court to restore Mahomed Reza Khân, with their