§ MR. HAVILAND-BURKEsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether there is any objection to lay upon the Table of the House a Copy of the Despatch forwarded by the Court of Directors of the late East India Company to the Governor of 2058 Calcutta, Mr. Cartier, dated the 20th of April, 1771, as also a Copy of Mr. Cartier's Letter to which the above Despatch was a reply; and if he will inform the House of the date of the receipt by Her Majesty's Secretary of State for India of the Nawab Nazim's Memorial of the 28th July 1869, as also of the dates of the same being forwarded to and received by the Governor General of India?
MR. GRANT DUFFreplied, that the despatch for which his hon. Friend asked was a very long document, dealing with almost every subject connected with the affairs of the East India Company in Bengal, as they stood in the spring of the year 1771. Nine-tenths of it could be of no interest to his hon. Friend or to the House; but there was no objection to laying on the Table that portion of it which related to the family of Mir Jaffier, if his hon. Friend would move for the extracts from the despatch in question which had reference to that subject. The Nawab Nazim's Memorial of the 28th of July, 1869, was received at the India Office on the following day, and, as a special act of favour, was forwarded to the Government of India by the Secretary of State in Council. It went by the mail of the 28th of October, that date being selected with a view to the Memorial coming into the hands of the Governor General and his Advisers when, on their return from Simla to Calcutta, they were in a position to examine the Bengal records connected with the Nawab's affairs, records which, he need hardly say, did not accompany the Government to the hill station where it passed the hot months.