Now it required a very peculiar mode of selection to take such a woman, so circumstanced, (resembling whom there was not just such another,) to depose the Nabob's own mother from the superiority of the household, and to substitute this woman. It would have been an abominable abuse, and would have implied corruption in the grossest degree, if Mr. Hastings had stopped there. He not only did this, but he put _her_, this woman, in the very place of Mahomed Reza Khan: he made her guardian, he made her regent, he made her viceroy, he made her the representative of the native government of the country in the eyes of strangers. There was not a trust, not a dignity in the country, which he did not put, during the minority of this unhappy person, her step-son, into the hands of this woman. Reject, if you please, the strong presumption of corruption in disobeying the order of the Company directing him to select a _man_ fit to supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khan, to exercise all the great and arduous functions of government and of justice, as well as the regulation of the Nabob's household; and then I will venture to say, that neither your Lordships, nor any man living, when he hears of this appointment, does or can hesitate a moment in concluding that it is the result of corruption, and that you only want to be informed what the corruption was. Here is such an arrangement as I believe never was before heard of: a secluded woman in the place of a man of the world; a fantastic dancing-girl in the place of a grave magistrate; a slave in the place of a woman of quality; a common prostitute made to superintend the education of a young prince; and a step-mother, a name of horror in all countries, made to supersede the natural mother from whose body the Nabob had sprung.