was member of the court, when the payment which is the ground of this cavalry debt was put in proof? Nay, are we not in a manner compelled to conclude, that the court was so constituted, when we know there is scarcely a man in Madras, who has not some participation in these transactions? It is a shame to hear such proofs mentioned, instead of the honest, vigorous scrutiny which the circumstances of such an affair so indispensably call for.

But his majesty's ministers, indulgent enough to other scrutinies, have not been satisfied with authorizing the payment of this demand without such inquiry as the act has prescribed; but they have added the arrear of twelve per cent. interest, from the year 1777 to the year 1784, to make a new capital, raising thereby 160 to 294,000l. Then they charge a new twelve per cent. on the whole from that period, for a transaction, in which it will be a miracle if a single penny will be ever found really advanced from the private stock of the pretended creditors.

In this manner, and at such an interest, the ministers have thought proper to dispose of 294,000l. of the publick revenues, for what is called the cavalry loan. After despatching this, the right honourable gentleman leads to battle his last grand division, the consolidated debt of 1777. But having exhausted all his panegyrick on the two first, he has nothing at all to say in favour of the last. On the contrary, he admits that it was contracted in defiance of the company's orders, without even the pretended sanction of any pretended representatives. Nobody, indeed, has yet been found hardy enough to stand forth avowedly in its defence. But it is little to the credit of the age, that what has not plausibility enough to find an advocate, has influence enough to obtain a protector. Could any man expect to find that protector any where? But what must every man think, when he finds that protector in the chairman of the committee of secrecy, who had published to the

* Right honourable Henry Dundas.

house, and to the world, the facts that condemn these debts-the orders that forbid the incurring of them— the dreadful consequences which attended them. Even in his official letter, when he tramples on his parliamentary report, yet his general language is the same. Read the preface to this part of the ministerial arrangement, and you would imagine that this debt was to be crushed, with all the weight of indignation which could fall from a vigilant guardian of the publick treasury, upon those who attempted to rob it. What must be felt by every man who has feeling, when, after such a thundering preamble of condemnation, this debt is ordered to be paid without any sort of inquiry into its authenticity? without a single step taken to settle even the amount of the demand? without an attempt so much as to ascertain the real persons claiming a sum, which rises in the accounts from one million three hundred thousand pounds sterling to two millions four hundred thousand pounds principal money? without an attempt made to ascertain the proprietors, of whom no list has ever yet been laid before the court of directors; of proprietors who are known to be in a collusive shuffle, by which they never appear to be the same in any two lists, handed about for their own particular purposes?

My honourable friend who made you the motion, has sufficiently exposed the nature of this debt. He has stated to you that its own agents in the year 1781, in the arrangement they proposed to make at Calcutta, were satisfied to have twenty-five per cent. at once struck off from the capital of a great part of this debt; and prayed to have a provision made for this reduced principal, without any interest at all. This was an arrangement of their own, an arrangement made by those who best knew the true constitution of their own debt; who knew how little favour it merited, and how little hopes they had to find any persons in authority abandoned enough to support it as it stood.

But what corrupt men, in the fond imaginations of a sanguine avarice, had not the confidence to propose, they have found a chancellor of the exchequer in England hardy enough to undertake for them. He has cheered their drooping spirits. He has thanked the peculators for not despairing of their commonwealth. He has told them they were too modest. He has replaced the twenty-five per cent. which, in order to lighten themselves, they had abandoned in their conscious terrour. Instead of cutting off the interest, as they had themselves consented to do, with the fourth of the capital, he has added the whole growth of four years' usury of twelve per cent. to the first overgrown principal; and has again grafted on this meliorated stock a perpetual annuity of six per cent. to take place from the year 1781. Let no man hereafter talk of the decaying energies of nature. All the acts and monuments in the records of peculation; the consolidated corruption of ages; the patterns of exemplary plunder in the heroick times of Roman iniquity, never equalled the gigantick corruption of this single act. Never did Nero, in all the insolent prodigality of despotism, deal out to his pretorian guards a donation fit to be named with the largess showered down by the bounty of our chancellor of the exchequer on the faithful band of his Indian sepoys.

The right honourable gentleman* lets you freely and voluntarily into the whole transaction. So perfectly has his conduct confounded his understanding, that he fairly tells you, that through the course of the whole business he has never conferred with any but the agents of the pretended creditors. After this, do you want more to establish a secret understanding with the parties? to fix, beyond a doubt, their collusion and participation in a common fraud?

If this were not enough, he has furnished you with other presumptions that are not to be shaken. It is one of the known indications of guilt to stagger and prevaricate in a story; and to vary in the motives that

* Mr. Dundas.

are assigned to conduct. Try these ministers by this rule. In their official despatch, they tell the presidency of Madras, that they have established the debt for two reasons; first, because the nabob (the party indebted) does not dispute it; secondly, because it is mischievous to keep it longer afloat; and that the payment of the European creditors will promote circulation in the country. These two motives (for the plainest reasons in the world) the right honourable gentleman has this day thought fit totally to abandon. In the first place, he rejects the authority of the nabob of Arcot. It would indeed be pleasant to see him adhere to this exploded testimony. He next, upon grounds equally solid, abandons the benefits of that circulation, which was to be produced by drawing out all the juices of the body. Laying aside, or forgetting these pretences of his despatch, he has just now assumed a principle totally different, but to the full as extraordinary. He proceeds upon a supposition, that many of the claims may be fictitious. He then finds, that in a case where many valid and many fraudulent claims are blended together, the best course for their discrimination is indiscriminately to establish them all. He trusts (I suppose) as there may not be a fund sufficient for every description of creditors, that the best warranted claimants will exert themselves in bringing to light those debts which will not bear an inquiry. What he will not do himself, he is persuaded will be done by others; and for this purpose he leaves to any person a general power of excepting to the debt. This total change of language, and prevarication in principle, is enough, if it stood alone, to fix the presumption of unfair dealing. His despatch assigns motives of policy, concord, trade, and circulation. His speech proclaims discord and litigations; and proposes, as the ultimate end, detection.

But he may shift his reasons, and wind, and turn as he will, confusion waits him at all his doubles. Who will undertake this detection? Will the nabob? But the right honourable gentleman has himself this moment told us, that no prince of the country can by any

motive be prevailed upon to discover any fraud that is practised upon him by the company's servants. He says what (with the exception of the complaint against the cavalry loan) all the world knows to be true: and without that prince's concurrence, what evidence can be had of the fraud of any the smallest of these demands? The ministers never authorized any person to enter into his exchequer, and to search his records. Why then this shameful and insulting mockery of a pretended contest? Already contests for a preference have arisen among these rival bond creditors. Has not the company itself struggled for a preference for years, without any attempt at detection of the nature of those debts with which they contended? Well is the nabob of Arcot attended to in the only specifick complaint he has ever made. He complained of unfair dealing in the cavalry loan. It is fixed upon him with interest on interest; and this loan is excepted from all power of litigation.

This day, and not before, the right honourable gentleman thinks that the general establishment of all claims is the surest way of laying open the fraud of some of them. In India this is a reach of deep policy. But what would be thought of this mode of acting on a demand upon the treasury in England? Instead of all this cunning, is there not one plain way open, that is, to put the burthen of the proof on those who make the demand? Ought not ministry to have said to the creditors: "The person who admits your debt stands excepted to as evidence; he stands charged as a collusive party, to hand over the publick revenues to you for sinister purposes? You say, you have a demand of some millions on the Indian treasury; prove that you have acted by lawful authority; prove at least that your money has been bona fide advanced; entitle yourself to my protection, by the fairness and fulness of the communications you make." Did an honest creditor ever refuse that reasonable and honest test?

There is little doubt, that several individuals have been seduced by the purveyors to the nabob of Arcot to put their money (perhaps the whole of honest