he has been taught by ill advisers, that an interest out of doors may stand him in good stead. He has been made to believe that his private creditors have power and interest to overrule the court of directors." The nabob was not misinformed. The private creditors instantly qualified a vast number of votes; and having made themselves masters of the court of proprietors, as well as extending a powerful cabal in other places as important, they so completely overturned the authority of the court of directors at home and abroad, that this poor baffled government was soon obliged to lower its tone. It was glad to be admitted into partnership with its own servants. The court of directors establishing the debt which they had reprobated as a breach of trust, and which was planned for the subversion of their authority, settled its payments on a par with those of the publick; and even so, were not able to obtain peace or even equality in their demands. All the consequences lay in a regular and irresistible train. By employing their influence for the recovery of this debt, their orders, issued in the same breath, against creating new debts, only animated the strong desires of their servants to this prohibited prolifick sport, and it soon produced a swarm of sons and daughters, not in the least degenerated from the virtue of their parents.

From that moment, the authority of the court of directors expired in the Carnatick, and every where else. "Every man," says the presidency, "who opposes the government and its measures, finds an immediate countenance from the nabob; even our discarded officers, however unworthy, are received into the nabob's service." It was indeed a matter of no wonderful sagacity to determine whether the court of directors, with their miserable salaries to their servants, of four or five hundred pounds a year, or the distributor of millions, was most likely to be obeyed. It was an invention beyond the imagination of all the speculatists of our speculating age, to see a government quietly settled in one and the same town, composed of two distinct members; one to pay scan

tily for obedience, and the other to bribe high for rebellion and revolt.

The next thing which recommends this particular debt to the right honourable gentleman is, it seems, the moderate interest of ten per cent. It would be lost labour to observe on this assertion. The nabob, in a long apologetick letter for the transaction between him and the body of the creditors, states the fact, as I shall state it to you. In the accumulation of this debt, the first interest paid was from thirty to thirty-six per cent. it was then brought down to twenty-five per cent. at length it was reduced to twenty; and there it found its rest. During the whole process, as often as any of these monstrous interests fell into an arrear (into which they were continually falling) the arrear, formed into a new capital, was added to the old, and the same interest of twenty per cent. accrued upon both. The company, having got some scent of the enormous usury which prevailed at Madras, thought it necessary to interfere, and to order all interests to be lowered to ten per cent. This order, which contained no exception, though it by no means pointed particularly to this class of debts, came like a thunderclap on the nabob. He considered his political credit as ruined; but to find a remedy to this unexpected evil, he again added to the old principal twenty per cent. interest accruing for the last year. Thus a new fund was formed; and it was on that accumulation of various principals, and interests heaped upon interests, not on the sum originally lent, as the right honourable gentleman would make you believe, that ten per cent. was settled on the whole.

When you consider the enormity of the interest at which these debts were contracted, and the several interests added to the principal, I believe you will not think me so sceptical, if I should doubt, whether for this debt of 880,000l. the nabob ever saw 100,000%. in real money. The right honourable gentleman suspecting, with all his absolute dominion over fact, that he never will be able to defend even

this venerable patriarchal job, though sanctified by its numerous issue, and hoary with prescriptive years, has recourse to recrimination, the last resource of guilt. He says that this loan of 1767 was provided for in Mr. Fox's India bill; and judging of others by his own nature and principles, he more than insinuates, that this provision was made, not from any sense of merit in the claim, but from partiality to general Smith, a proprietor, and an agent for that debt. If partiality could have had any weight against justice and policy, with the then ministers and their friends, general Smith had titles to it. But the right honourable gentleman knows as well as I do, that general Smith was very far from looking on himself as partially treated in the arrangements of that time; indeed what man dared to hope for private partiality in that sacred plan for relief to nations?

It is not necessary that the right honourable gentleman should sarcastically call that time to our recollection. Well do I remember every circumstance of that memorable period. God forbid I should forget it. it. O illustrious disgrace! O victorious defeat ! may your memorial be fresh and new to the latest generations! May the day of that generous conflict be stamped in characters never to be cancelled or worn out from the records of time! Let no man hear of us, who shall not hear that in a struggle against the intrigues of courts, and the perfidious levity of the multitude, we fell in the cause of honour, in the cause of our country, in the cause of human nature itself! But if fortune should be as powerful over fame, as she has been prevalent over virtue, at least our conscience is beyond her jurisdiction. My poor share in the support of that great measure, no man shall ravish from me. It shall be safely lodged in the sanctuary of my heart; never, never to be torn from thence, but with those holds that grapple it to life.

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I say, I well remember that bill, and every one of its honest and its wise provisions. It is not true that this debt was ever protected or enforced, or

any revenue whatsoever set apart for it. It was left in that bill just where it stood; to be paid or not to be paid out of the nabob's private treasures, according to his own discretion. The company had actually given it their sanction; though always relying for its validity on the sole security of the faith of him who without their knowledge or consent entered into the original obligation. It had no other sanction; it ought to have had no other. So far was Mr. Fox's bill for providing funds for it, as this ministry have wickedly done for this, and for ten times worse transactions, out of the publick estate, that an express clause immediately preceded, positively forbidding any British subject from receiving assignments upon any part of the territorial revenue, on any pretence whatsoever.

You recollect, Mr. Speaker, that the chancellor of the exchequer strongly professed to retain every part of Mr. Fox's bill, which was intended to prevent abuse; but in his India bill, which (let me do justice) is as able and skilful a performance for its own purposes, as ever issued from the wit of man, premeditating this iniquity-hoc ipsum ut strueret Trojamque aperiret Achivis, expunged this essential clause, broke down the fence which was raised to cover the publick property against the rapacity of his partisans, and thus levelling every obstruction, he made a firm, broad highway for sin and death, for usury and oppression, to renew their ravages throughout the devoted revenues of the Carnatick.

The tenour, the policy, and the consequences of this debt of 1767, are, in the eyes of ministry, so excellent, that its merits are irresistible; and it takes the lead to give credit and countenance to all the rest. Along with this chosen body of heavy-armed infantry, and to support it, in the line, the right honourable gentleman has stationed his corps of black cavalry. If there be any advantage between this debt and that of 1769, according to him the cavalry debt has it. It is not a subject of defence; it is a theme of panegyrick. Listen to the right honourable gentleman, and you

will find it was contracted to save the country; to prevent mutiny in armies; to introduce economy in revenues; and for all these honourable purposes, it originated at the express desire, and by the representative authority of the company itself.

First, let me say a word to the authority. This debt was contracted not by the authority of the company, not by its representatives (as the right honourable gentleman has the unparalelled confidence to assert) but in the ever memorable period of 1777, by the usurped power of those who rebelliously, in conjunction with the nabob of Arcot, had overturned the lawful government of Madras. For that rebellion, this house unanimously directed a publick prosecution. The delinquents, after they had subverted government, in order to make themselves a party to support them in their power, are universally known to have dealt jobs about to the right and to the left, and to any who were willing to receive them. This usurpation, which the right honourable gentleman well knows, was brought about by and for the great mass of these pretended debts, is the authority which is set up by him to represent the company; to represent that company which, from the first moment of their hearing of this corrupt and fraudulent transaction to this hour, have uniformly disowned and disavowed it.

So much for the authority. As to the facts, partly true, and partly colourable, as they stand recorded, they are in substance these.-The nabob of Arcot, as soon as he had thrown off the superiority of this country by means of these creditors, kept up a great army which he never paid. Of course, his soldiers were generally in a state of mutiny. The usurping council say that they laboured hard with their master the nabob, to persuade him to reduce these mutinous and useless troops. He consented; but as usual, pleaded inability to pay them their arrears. Here was a difficulty. The nabob had no money; the company had no money; every publick supply was empty. But there was one resource which no season has ever yet dried up in that climate. The