Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/759

Book XIII. than incapacity; and in August 1762, they petitioned the King to vindicate themselves juridically from the accusations of Mr. Lally; who some months after was confined in the Bastile. In June 1763, father Lavaur died; this Jesuit had composed in India two memoirs, the one a justification and panegyrick, the other a defamatory impeachment of every part of Mr. Lally's conduct. Arguments taken from this piece were occasionally supplied to propagate the public antipathy, but it had never been authentically published. As Lavaur was rated as an evidence, his papers were taken possession of by the officers of justice, and amongst them this libel was found. Lavaur, as if ruined by the loss of Pondicherry, had petitioned the government for a small pension of subsistence; and it was discovered that he died possessed of 60,000 pounds in gold, diamonds, and bills of exchange. This hypocrisy, with the frauds of another Jesuit, who managed the western missions, conduced not a little to the expulsion of the order; but full attention was given to the memoir of Lavaur, and from its documents the attorney general inserted the charge of high treason, which deprived Mr. Lally of the assistance of council. After he had been confined 18 months, the deponents in the process were brought before him, and he permitted to interrogate them before the recorder. The number of facts deposed against him amounted to one hundred and sixty, for every violent or unguarded expression during the course of his government and ill success was admitted. The number of witnesses must likewise have been many, for Mr. Lally opposed strong reproaches of incompetency to thirty-four of them. The recorder was the same who had given the most sanguinary judgment ever pronounced in France against a young man of family; and Mr. Lally, with his usual indiscretion and intemperance, aggravated the severity of his character, by treating him with haughtiness and contempt during the discharge of his office. Eighteen months passed in the confrontation and interrogatories, when the final decision was to be made by the whole parliament of Paris, which is composed of 120 members. It must be left to conjecture, how many of them went regularly through the immense volume