The records of the
Governor-General and Council of Bengal are kept in Captain Jonathan
Scott's trunk; this trunk is to be considered as the real and true
channel of intelligence between the Company and the country powers. But
even this channel was not open to any member of the Council, except Mr.
Hastings; and when the Council, for the first time, daring to think for
themselves, call upon the Persian Translator, he knows nothing about it.
We find that it is given into the hands of a person nominated by Mr.
Hastings,--Major Davy. What do the Company know of him? Why, he was Mr.
Hastings's private secretary. In this manner the Council have been
annihilated during all these transactions, and have no other knowledge
of them than just what Mr. Hastings and his trunk-keeper thought proper
to give them. All, then, that we know of these transactions is from the
miserable, imperfect, garbled correspondence.
But even if these papers contained a full and faithful account of the
correspondence, what we charge is its not being delivered to the Council
as it occurred from time to time. Mr. Hastings kept the whole government
of Oude in his own hands; so that the Council had no power of judging
his acts, of checking, controlling, advising, or remonstrating.
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