Mahomed
Reza Khan, because he looked upon it as a supersession of the rights and
authority of the Nabob. He is now an absolute dependant and subject of
the Company, on whose favor he must rest all his hopes of future
advancement."

The character here given of him is that of an excellent patriot, a
character which all your Lordships, in the several situations which you
enjoy or to which you may be called, will envy,--the character of a
servant who stuck to his master against all foreign encroachments, who
stuck to him to the last hour of his life, and had the dying testimony
of his master to his services.

Could Sir John Clavering, could Colonel Monson, could Mr. Francis know
that this man, of whom Mr. Hastings had given that exalted character
upon the records of the Company, was the basest and vilest of mankind?
No, they ought to have esteemed him the contrary: they knew him to be a
man of rank, they knew him to be a man perhaps of the first capacity in
the world, and they knew that Mr. Hastings had given this honorable
testimony of him on the records of the Company but a very little time
before; and there was no reason why they should think or know, as he
expresses it, that he was the basest and vilest of mankind. From the
account, therefore, of Mr. Hastings himself, he was a person competent
to accuse, a witness fit to be heard; and that is all I contend for. Mr.
Hastings would not hear him, he would not suffer the charge he had
produced to be examined into.

It has been shown to your Lordships that Mr. Hastings employed Nundcomar
to inquire into the conduct and to be the principal manager of a
prosecution against Mahomed Reza Khan. Will you suffer this man to
qualify and disqualify witnesses and prosecutors agreeably to the
purposes which his own vengeance and corruption may dictate in one case,
and which the defence of those corruptions may dictate in another? Was
Nundcomar a person fit to be employed in the greatest and most sacred
trusts in the country, and yet not fit to be a witness to the sums of
money which he paid Mr. Hastings for those trusts? Was Nundcomar a fit
witness to be employed and a fit person to be used in the prosecution of
Mahomed Reza Khan, and yet not fit to be employed against Mr. Hastings,
who himself had employed him in the very prosecution of Mahomed Reza
Khan?

If Nundcomar was an enemy to Mr. Hastings, he was an enemy to Mahomed
Reza Khan; and Mr. Hastings employed him, avowedly and