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Updated: June 11, 2025
V. That the Company had reason to be satisfied with the arrangement made, so far as it regarded him: the President and Council having informed them, in the following year, in their letter of the 9th of December, 1766, that "the large increase of the revenue must in a great measure be ascribed to Mr. Sykes's assiduity, and to Mahomed Reza Khân's profound knowledge in the finances."
When Hastings became Governor, Mahommed Reza Khan had held power seven years. An infant son of Meer Jaffier was now nabob; and the guardianship of the young prince's person had been confided to the minister. Nuncomar, stimulated at once by cupidity and malice, had been constantly attempting to hurt his successful rival. This was not difficult.
Hastings committed these acts of violence against Mahomed Reza Khân, when he proceeded to make arrangements in the Company's affairs of the same kind with those in which corruption had been before exercised, he was bound by a particular responsibility that there should be nothing mysterious in his own conduct, and that at least all the accounts should be well kept.
These absurd expectations were disappointed; and the directors, naturally enough, chose to attribute the disappointment rather to the mismanagement of Mahommed Reza Khan than to their own ignorance of the country entrusted to their care. They were confirmed in their error by the agents of Nuncomar; for Nuncomar had agents even in Leadenhall Street.
But the party opposite to Mahomed Reza Khân having continued to cabal against him, sundry accusations were framed relative to oppression at the time of the famine, and for a balance due during his employment of collector of the revenues; upon which the Directors did order him to be deprived of his office, and a strict inquiry to be made into his conduct.
And for a remedy of the inconveniencies which might arise from the excess of an accommodating temper, though attended with irreproachable integrity, the President and Council did send one of their own members, as their deputy, to the Nabob of Bengal, at his capital of Moorshedabad; and this measure appears to have been adopted for the support of Mahomed Reza Khân, in consequence of an inquiry made and advice given by Lord Clive, in his letter of the 3d of July, 1765, in which letter he expresses himself of the said Mahomed Reza Khân as follows: "It is with pleasure I can acquaint you, that, the more I see of Mahomed Reza Khân, the stronger is my conviction of his honor and moderation, but that, at the same time, I cannot help observing, that, either from timidity or an erroneous principle, he is too ready to submit to encroachments upon that proportion of power that has been allotted him."
Larkins states that this account was taken from a paper, of which three lines, and only three lines, were read to him by a Persian moonshee; and it is not pretended that this was the whole of it. The three lines read are as follows. From Hussein Reza Khân and Hyder Beg Khân to ditto, three lac 30,000 And ditto to Mrs. Hastings, one lac 10,000."
For that reason he was firmly attached to him; he might depend completely on his services; he was his against Mahomed Reza Khân, and against the whole world. There was, however, a flaw in the Nabob's title, which it was necessary should be hid. And perhaps it lay against Mahomed Reza Khân as well as him.
He was warned, but would not listen to reason; he was then arrested, and informed of the decision to deport him from Persia. On the day of his departure from Tehran under escort, he managed to make his escape, and took sanctuary in the same shrine of Shah Abdul Azim where the Shah was mortally wounded on May 1 by his follower, Mirza Mohamed Reza.
Hastings, who himself had employed him in the very prosecution of Mahomed Reza Khân? If Nundcomar was an enemy to Mr. Hastings, he was an enemy to Mahomed Reza Khân; and Mr. Hastings employed him, avowedly and professedly on the records of the Company, on account of the very qualification of that enmity. Was he a wretch, the basest of mankind, when opposed to Mr. Hastings?
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