APPENDIX.
Reading edition
To the Proprietors of East-India Stock.
Major Hart, in his advertisement, (Times, 24th of April,) says "I fear that I shall have no alternative but to appeal against such daily slander to the laws of my country." In other words, he, who sought to fight a duel with Major-Gen. Macaulay, fears. And may he fear!
But Major Hart dares not appeal to the laws of his country, were he even slandered after the daily manner of his own advertisement. Major Hart was too old a soldier to have to learn, that
He who fights and runs away, Lives to fight another day.
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.