ernment had been established, after Mr. Hastings had quitted that province, and had apparently wholly abandoned it; and when there was no reason whatever why the correspondence should not be public. This private correspondence of Mr. Markham's, now produced for the first time, is full of the bitterest complaints against Durbedgy Sing. These clandestine complaints, these underhand means of accomplishing the ruin of a man, without the knowledge of his true and proper judges, we produce to your lordships as a heavy aggravation of our charge, and as a proof of a wicked conspiracy to destroy the man. For if there was any danger of his falling into arrears when the heavy accumulated kists came upon him, the council ought to have known that danger; they ought to have known every particular of these complaints ; for Mr. Hastings had then carried into effect his own plans.

I ought to have particularly marked for your lordships' attention, this second era of clandestine correspondence between Mr. Hastings and Mr. Markham. It commenced after Mr. Hastings had quitted Benares, and had nothing to do with it but as governor-general: even after his extraordinary, and, as we contend, illegal power had completely expired, the same clandestine correspondence was carried on. He apparently considered Benares as his private property; and just as a man acts with his private steward about his private estate, so he acted with the resident at Benares. He receives from him, and answers letters containing a series of complaints against Durbedgy Sing, which began in April, and continued to the month of November, without making any public communication of them. He never laid one word of this correspondence before the council until the 29th of November, and he had then completely settled the fate of this Durbedgy Sing.

This clandestine correspondence we charge against him as an act of rebellion; for he was bound to lay before the council the whole of his correspondence relative to the revenue and all the other affairs of the country. We charge it

not only as rebellion against the orders of the company and the laws of the land, but as a wicked plot to destroy this man, by depriving him of any opportunity of defending himself before the council, his lawful judges. I wish to impress it strongly on your lordships' minds, that neither the complaints of Mr. Markham nor the exculpations of Durbedgy Sing were ever made known till Mr. Markham was examined in this hall.

The first intimation afforded the council of what had been going on at Benares, from April, 1782, at which time Mr. Markham says, the complaints against Durbedgy Sing had risen to serious importance, was in a letter dated the 27th of November following. This letter was sent to the council. from Nia Serai, in the Ganges, where Mr. Hastings had retired for the benefit of the air. During the whole time he was in Calcutta, it does not appear upon the records that he had ever held any communication with the council upon the subject. The letter is in the printed minutes, page 298, and is as follows: "The governor-general-I desire the secretary to lay the accompanying letters from Mr. Markham before the board, and request that orders may be immediately sent to him concerning the subjects contained in them. It may be necessary to inform the board, that on repeated information from Mr. Markham, which indeed was confirmed to me beyond a doubt, by other channels, and by private assurances which I could trust, that the affairs of that province were likely to fall into the greatest confusion from the misconduct of Baboo Durbedgy Sing, whom I had appointed the naib; fearing the dangerous consequences of a delay, and being at too great a distance to consult the members of the board, who I knew could repose that confidence in my local knowledge as to admit of this occasional exercise of my own separate authority, I wrote to Mr. Markham the letter to which he alludes, dated the 29th of September last, of which I now lay before the board a copy. The first of the accompanying letters from Mr. Markham arrived at a time, when a severe

return of my late illness obliged me, by the advice of my physicians, to leave Calcutta for the benefit of the country air, and prevented me from bringing it earlier before the notice of the board."

I have to remark upon this part of the letter, that he claims for himself an exercise of his own authority. He had now no delegation, and therefore no claim to separate authority. He was only a member of the board; obliged to do every thing according to the decision of the majority; and yet he speaks of his own separate authority; and after complimenting himself, he requests its confirmation. The complaints of Mr. Markham had been increasing, growing, and multiplying upon him, from the month of April preceding, and he had never given the least intimation of it to the board until he wrote this letter. This was at so late a period that he then says, the time won't wait for a remedy; I am obliged to use my own separate authority: although he had abundant time for laying the whole matter before the council.

He next goes on to say, "It had indeed been my intention, but for the same cause, to have requested the instructions of the board for the conduct of Mr. Markham, in the difficulties which he had to encounter immediately after the date of my letter to him; and to have recommended the substance of it, for an order to the board."

He seems to have promised Mr. Markham that, if the violent act which Mr. Markham proposed, and which he, Mr. Hastings, ordered, was carried into execution, an authority should be procured from the board. He, however, did not get Mr. Markham such an authority. Why? Because he was resolved, as he has told you, to act by his own separate authority; and because, as he has likewise told you, that he disobeys the orders of the court of directors, and defies the laws of his country, as a signal of his authority.

Now, what does he recommend to the board? That it will be pleased to confirm the appointment which Mr. Markham made in obedience to his individual orders, as well as the

directions which he had given him, to exact from Baboo Durbedgy Sing, with the utmost rigor, every rupee of the collections; and either to confine him at Benares, or send him to Chunar; and imprison him there, until the whole of his arrears were paid up. Here then, my lords, you have, what plainly appears in every act of Mr. Hastings, a feeling of resentment for some personal injury. "I feel myself," says he, "and may be allowed on such an occasion to acknowledge it, personally hurt at the ingratitude of this man, and the discredit which his ill conduct has thrown on my appointment of him. The rajah himself, scarcely arrived at the verge of manhood, was in understanding but little advanced beyond the term of childhood; and it had been the policy of Cheit Sing to keep him equally secluded from the world and from business." This is the character Mr. Hastings gives of a man, whom he appointed to govern the country. He goes on to say of Durbedgy Sing ;-" As he was allowed a jaghire of a very liberal amount, to enable him to maintain a state and consequence, suitable both to the relation in which he stood to the rajah, and the high office which had been assigned to him, and sufficient also to free him from the temptation of little and mean peculations, it is therefore my opinion, and I recommend that Mr. Markham be ordered to divest him of his jaghire, and reunite it to the malguzzary, or the land paying its revenue, through the rajah, to the company.

"The opposition made by the rajah, and the old rannee, both equally incapable of judging for themselves, do certainly originate from some secret influence, which ought to be checked by a decided and peremptory declaration of the authority of the board, and a denunciation of their displeasure at their presumption. If they can be induced to yield the appearance of a cheerful acquiescence in the new arrangement, and to adopt it as a measure formed with their participation, it would be better than that it should be done by a declared act of compulsion; but at all events it ought to be done."

My lords, it had been already done; the naib was dismissed; he was imprisoned; his jaghire was confiscated; all these things were done by Mr. Hastings's orders. He had resolved to take the whole upon himself; he had acted upon that resolution before he addressed this letter to the board.

Thus, my lords, was this unhappy man punished without any previous trial, or any charges, except the complaints of Mr. Markham, and some other private information which Mr. Hastings said he had received. Before the poor object of these complaints could make up his accounts, before a single step was taken, judicially or officially, to convict him of any crime, he was sent to prison, and his private estates confiscated.

My lords, the Commons of Great Britain claim from you, that no man shall be imprisoned till a regular charge is made against him, and the accused fairly heard in his defence. They claim from you, that no man shall be imprisoned on a matter of account, until the account is settled between the parties. And claiming this, we do say, that the prisoner's conduct towards Durbedgy Sing was illegal, unjust, violent, and oppressive. The imprisonment of this man was clearly illegal on the part of Mr. Hastings, as he acted without the authority of the council, and doubly oppressive, as the imprisoned man was thereby disabled from settling his account with the numberless sub-accountants, whom he had to deal with in the collection of the revenue.

Having now done with these wicked, flagitious, abandoned, and abominable acts, I shall proceed to the extraordinary powers given by Mr. Hastings to his instrument, Mr. Markham, who was employed in perpetrating these acts, and to the very extraordinary instructions which he gave this instrument for his conduct in the execution of the power entrusted to him. In a letter to Mr. Markham, he says, "I need not tell you, my dear sir, that I possess a very high opinion of your abilities, and that I repose the utmost confidence in your integrity." He might have had reason for both, but he