United States or Turks and Caicos Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But the majority I have just named, who never endeavored by any base and delusive means to fly from their duty, or not to execute it at all, because they were desired to execute it in a way in which they could not execute it, followed the spirit of the order; and finding that Mahomed Reza Khân, before his imprisonment and trial, had been in possession of another employment, they followed the spirit of the instructions of the Directors and replaced him in that employment: by which means there was an end put to the government of Munny Begum, the country reverted to its natural state, and men of the first rank in the country were placed in the first situations in it.
Now when he uses a cruel and rigorous obedience in the case of Mahomed Reza Khân, when he breaks through the principles of his former conduct with regard to Nundcomar, when he gives him, Nundcomar, trust, whom he was cautioned not to trust, and when he gives him that reward before any service could be done, I say, when he does this, in violation of the Company's orders and his own principles, it is the strongest evidence that he now found them in the situation in which they were in 1765, when bribes were notoriously taken, and that each party was mutually sold to the other, and faith kept with neither.
"Juggut Seet expressly declared in his narrative, that the sum which he agreed to pay the deputation, amounting to 125,000 rupees, was extorted by menaces; and since the close of our inquiry, and the opinions we delivered in the Proceedings of the 21st June, it fully appears that the presents from the Nabob and Mahomed Reza Khân, exceeding the immense sum of seventeen lacs, were not the voluntary offerings of gratitude, but contributions levied on the weakness of the government, and violently exacted from the dependent state and timid disposition of the minister.
The administration of local affairs was still, at that date, intrusted to native officials. The whole internal regulation was in the hands of the famous Muhamad Reza Ehan. Hindu or Mussulman assessors pried into every barn and shrewdly estimated the probable dimensions of the crops on every field; and the courts, as well as the police, were still in native hands.
Hastings never trusted his colleagues in this proceeding; and what reason does he give? Why, he supposed that they must be bribed by Mahomed Reza Khân. "For," says he, "as I did not know their characters at that time, I did not know whether Mahomed Reza Khân had not secured them to his interest by the known ways in which great men in the East secure men to their interest."
Hastings opposed the order of the Company, and on what account he opposed it. On the 1st of September he sent an order to the Nabob, now become his subject, to give up this office to Mahomed Reza Khân: an act which he had before represented as a dethroning of the Nabob.
Accordingly he agreed to terms with Mr. Hastings. But what was the price of that concession? Any base purpose, any desertion of public duty? No: all that he desired of Mr. Hastings was, that he should obey the orders of the Company; and among other acts of the obedience required was this, that Mahomed Reza Khân should be put into his office. You have heard how Mr.
The third was to establish a general Council of Revenue at Moorshedabad, to superintend the great steward, Mahomed Reza Khân. In 1772 that Council by Mr. Hastings was overturned, and the whole management of the revenue brought to Calcutta.
The rash valor of Reza Kuli was crowned with a signal victory; and the career of the young hero was only arrested by a mandate from his father, who desired him to recross the Oxus.
Soon after, there came from Europe a letter expressing the satisfaction which the Court of Directors had received in the acquittal of Mahomed Reza Khân, expressing a regard for his character, an high opinion of his abilities, and a great disposition to make him some recompense for his extreme sufferings; and accordingly they ordered that he should be again employed.
Word Of The Day