Your Committee have found many heavy charges of oppression against Mr. Barwell, whilst Factory Chief at Dacca; which oppressions are stated to have continued, and even to have been aggravated, on complaint at Calcutta. These complaints appear in several memorials presented to the Supreme Council of Calcutta, of which Mr. Barwell was a member. They appeared yet more fully and more strongly in a bill in Chancery filed in the Supreme Court, which was afterwards recorded before the Governor-General and Council, and transmitted to the Court of Directors. Your Committee, struck with the magnitude and importance of these charges, and finding that with regard to those before the Council no regular investigation has ever taken place, and finding also that Mr. Barwell had asserted in a Minute of Council that he had given a full answer to the allegations in that bill, ordered a copy of the answer to be laid before your Committee, that they might be enabled to state to the House how far it appeared to them to be full, how far the charges were denied as to the fact, or, where the facts might be admitted, what justification was set up. It appeared necessary, in order to determine on the true situation of the trade and the merchants of that great city and district. The Secretary to the Court of Directors has informed your Committee that no copy of the answer is to be found in the India House; nor has your Committee been able to discover that any has been transmitted. On this failure, your Committee ordered an application to be made to Mr. Barwell for a copy of his answer to the bill, and any other information with which he might be furnished with regard to that subject. Mr. Barwell, after reciting the above letter, returned in answer what follows. "Whether the records of the Supreme Court of Judicature are lodged at the India House I am ignorant, but on those records my answer is certainly to be found. At this distance of time I am sorry I cannot from memory recover the circumstances of this affair; but this I know, that the bill did receive a complete answer, and the people the fullest satisfaction: nor is it necessary for me to remark, that [in?] the state of parties at that time in Bengal, could party have brought forward any particle of that bill supported by any verified fact, the principle that introduced it in the proceedings of the Governor-General and Council would likewise have given the verification of that one circumstance, whatever that might have been. As I generally attend in my place in the House, I shall with pleasure answer any invitation of the gentlemen of the Committee to attend their investigations up stairs with every information and light in my power to give them. "St. James's Square, 15th April, 1783."