Mr. Hastings, in his letter to Mr. Wheler, urges the
absolute necessity of the monthly payment of the Nabob's stipend _being
regularly made_, and says, that, to relieve the Nabob's present wants,
he had directed the Resident to raise an immediate supply on the credit
of the Company, to be repaid from the first receipts. From hence your
Committee conclude that the monthly payments had _not_ been regularly
made, and that whatever distresses the Nabob might have suffered must
have been owing to the Governor-General and Council, not to Mahomed Reza
Khan, who, for aught that appears to the contrary, paid away the stipend
as fast as he received it. Had it been otherwise, that is, if Mahomed
Reza Khan had reserved a balance of the Nabob's money in his hands, he
should, and undoubtedly he would, have been called upon to pay it in;
and then there would have been no necessity for raising an immediate
supply by other means.
The transaction, on the whole, speaks very sufficiently for itself. It
is a gross instance of repeated disobedience to repeated orders; and it
is rendered particularly offensive to the authority of the Court of
Directors by the frivolous and contradictory reasons assigned for it.
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