Your Lordships will distinguish between a Zemindar, who is a perpetual
landholder, the hereditary proprietor of an estate, and a Subahdar, who
derives from his master's will and pleasure all his employments, and
who, instead of having the jaghiredars subject to his supposed arbitrary
will, is himself a subject, and must have his sovereign's patent for
his place. Therefore, strictly and properly speaking, there is no
succession in the office of Subahdar. At this time the Company, who
alone could obtain the _sunnuds_ [_sunnud?_], or patent, from the Great
Mogul, upon account of the power they possessed in India, thought, and
thought rightly, that with an officer who had no hereditary power there
could be no hereditary engagements,--and that in their treaty with Asoph
ul Dowlah, for whom they had procured the sunnud from the Great Mogul,
they were at liberty to propose their own terms, which, if honorable and
mutually advantageous to the new Subahdar and to the Company, they had a
right to insist upon. A treaty was therefore concluded between the
Company and Asoph ul Dowlah, in which the latter stipulated to pay a
fixed subsidy for the maintenance of a certain number of troops, by
which the Company's finances were greatly relieved and their military
strength greatly increased.
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