The bill in Chancery filed against Richard Barwell, John Shakespeare, and others, contains a minute specification of the various acts of personal cruelty said to be practised by Mr. Barwell's orders, to extort money from these people. Among other acts of a similar nature he is charged with having ordered the appraiser of the Company's cloths, who was an old man, and who asserts that he had faithfully served the Company above sixteen years without the least censure on his conduct, to be severely flogged without reason. In the _manner_ of confining the delals, with ten of their servants, it is charged on him, that, "when he first ordered them to be put into the stocks, it was at a time when the weather was exceedingly bad and the rain very heavy, without allowing them the least covering for their heads or any part of their body, or anything to raise them from the wet ground; in which condition they were continued for many hours, until the said Richard Barwell thought proper to remove them into a far worse state, if possible, as if studying to exercise the most cruel acts of barbarity on them, &c.; and that during their imprisonment they were frequently carried to and tortured in the stocks in the middle of the day, when the scorching heat of the sun was insupportable, notwithstanding which they were denied the least covering." These men assert that they had served the Company without blame for thirty years,--a period commencing long before the power of the Company in India. It was no slight aggravation of this severity, that the objects were not young, nor of the lowest of the people, who might, by the vigor of their constitutions, or by the habits of hardship, be enabled to bear up against treatment so full of rigor. They were aged persons; they were men of a reputable profession. The account given by these merchants of their first journey to Calcutta, in July, 1774, is circumstantial and remarkable. They say, "that, on their arrival, _to their astonishment, they soon learned that the Governor, who had formerly been violently enraged against the said Richard Barwell for different improprieties in his conduct, was now reconciled to him; and that ever since there was a certainty of his Majesty's appointments taking place in India, from being the most inveterate enemies they were now become the most intimate friends; and that this account soon taught them to believe they were not any nearer justice from their journey to Calcutta than they had been before at Dacca_." When this bill of complaint was, in 1776, laid before the Council, to be transmitted to the Court of Directors, Mr. Barwell complained of the introduction of such a paper, and asserted, _that he had answered to every particular of it on oath about eighteen months, and that during this long period no attempt had been made to controvert, refute, or even to reply to it_.