Part 2

Nor can Major Hart forget where Major-General Macaulay states, "Report--to which, however, I can scarce give credit--assigns this disgraceful production to the pen of a noted Barrister. Be that as it may, Major Hart stands fully (be this as it may, equally fully) responsible." Major-General Macaulay's _official_ statement is, "Major Hart addressed a letter to the Court of Directors, dated the 22d of last month: that libellous letter has not yet been printed, by order of the Court of Directors, for the use of the Proprietors; but Major Hart has thought fit to print and widely to send it into circulation. I am sorry that it is not inserted in the Papers respecting the _Mandamus_; the reason may be, that the Court of Directors, possibly viewing it in the light I do, could not have thought it proper to make themselves accessaries to the circulation of a defamatory document, unaccompanied by explanations from me. To that letter from Major Hart was appended a declaration, under the signature of three General Officers; Gen. Sir John Floyd (Bart. omitted), Lieut.-Gen. Brown, and Lieut.-Gen. Bridges, on what these officers are pleased to term _some important points connected with_ Major Hart's case. The words in Italics are so printed in the original."

Proprietors!--Have you never heard of a "Review of _some important passages_ in the Administration of Sir George Barlow, Bart. by Charles Marsh, Esq. M.P.?" have you never heard that this "noted Barrister" is the probable author of an anonymous Report of Mr. Sherson's case, if not of his trial itself, or will you not hear your own Directors?

"The two following Papers, _although private_, having already appeared in print, are here (the Records of the Company) inserted for the information of the Proprietors; but it _does not_ appear from (here) the Records of the Company, that they were ever (during 16 long years) _officially_ communicated to the Court of Directors." The two Papers are, "A Letter from the Right Hon. Henry Dundas to David Scott, Esq." a deceased Director; and an enclosure in the foregoing, signed "William Dundas," and "T. Wallace;" which last paper has actually been called by some _A Report of the Board of Controul_. On the other hand, the deceased Mr. David Scott's authority to correspond and correspondence do not appear.

So, in Mr. Sherson's case, there has been published an unsigned or anonymous Report of it, by a Mr. Halhed, one of the clerks in the India-House, whose error "was not his first" of the kind, yet whose Report was ordered, it has confidently been asserted, by only some one or two of the whole Court of Directors. In Mr. Sherson's case again the Board of Controul has compelled the erasure, from a despatch of the Court of Directors, of a paragraph recommendatory of an investigation into the conduct (on this Mr. Sherson's trial) of no less a person than Sir Francis Macnaghten, the _second_ of three Judges, of whom the _third_ is almost as much concerned as Sir Francis himself.

Nor let these parallels be thought to beg the question, since they might readily have been extended; and since Major Hart's case would prove itself in Courts of Law, whether by artful confessions, or by other and better description of testimony. Unhappily, however, the period for this is expired.

W. H. INGLIS. 3, Mincing-lane.

THE END.

MARCHANT, Printer, Ingram-Court, Fenchurch-Street.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Footnotes have been moved from the middle of the text to the end of the paragraph referring to those footnotes. Apart from that, no other changes have been made for this e-text version.