The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

malversation or negligence, in any manner or degree, in his said office.

XVIII. That in March, 1778, the said Warren Hastings, under color that the Nabob had
completed his twentieth year, and had desired to be placed in the entire and uncontrolled
management of his own affairs, and that Mahomed Reza Khân should be removed from his
office, and that Munny Begum, his step-mother, the dancing-girl aforesaid, "should take on
herself the management of the nizamut [the government and general superintendency of
criminal justice] without the interference of any person whatsoever," and notwithstanding
the contradictions in the pretended applications from the Nabob, with whose incapacity for
all affairs he was well acquainted, did, in defiance of the orders of the Court of Directors,
and without regard to the infamy of an arrangement made for the evident and declared
purpose of delivering not only the family with the prince, but the government and justice of
a great kingdom, into such insufficient, corrupt, and scandalous hands, and though he has
declared his opinion "that our national character is concerned in the character which the
Nabob may obtain in the public opinion," on obtaining a majority in Council, without any
complaint, real or pretended, remove the said Mahomed Reza from all his offices, and did
partition his salary as a spoil in the following manner: to Munny Begum, the dancing-girl
aforesaid, an additional allowance of 72,000 rupees (7,200l.) a year; to the Nabob's own
mother but half that sum, that is to say, 36,000 rupees (3,600l.) a year; to Rajah Gourdas,
son of Nundcomar, (whom he had described as a weak young man,) 72,000 rupees (7,200l.)
a year, as controller of the household; and to a magistrate called Sudder ul Hock, who, in
real subserviency to the said Munny Begum, was nominally to act in the department of
criminal justice, 78,000 rupees (7,800l.) a year: the total of which allowances exceeding the
salary of Mahomed Reza Khân by 18,000 rupees (1,800l.) yearly, he did, for the corrupt
and scandalous purposes aforesaid, order the same to be made up from the Company's

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