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This debt amounted to eight hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling, and was claimed, for the greater part, by English gentlemen residing at Madras. This grand capital, settled at length by order at ten per cent., afforded an annuity of eighty-eight thousand pounds.

circumstances. In most of the capital changes grew more noisy, and attracted more notice.9 that are recorded in the principles and system The pecuniary discussions caused by an accuof any government, a public benefit of some kind mulation of part of the fortunes of their servants or other has been pretended. The revolution in a debt from the Nabob of Arcot, was the first commenced in something plausible, in something thing which very particularly called for, and long which carried the appearance at least of punish-engaged, the attention of the court of Directors ment of delinquency, or correction of abuse. But here, in the very moment of the conversion of a department of British government into an Indian mystery, and in the very act in which the change commences, a corrupt private interest is set up in direct opposition to the necessities of the nation. A diversion is made of millions of the public money from the public treasury to a private purse. It is not into secret negotiations for war, peace, or alliance, that the House of Commons is forbidden to inquire. It is a matter of account; it is a pecuniary transaction; it is the demand of a suspected steward upon ruined tenants and an embarrassed master, that the Commons of Great Britain are commanded not to inspect. The whole tenor of the right honorable gentleman's argument is consonant to the nature of his policy. The system of concealment is fostered by a system of falsehood. False facts, false colors, false names of persons and things, are its whole support.

While the Directors were digesting their astonishment at this information, a memorial was presented to them from three gentlemen, informing them that their friends had lent likewise to merchants of Canton, in China, a sum of not more than one million sterling. In this memorial they called upon the Company for their assistance and interposition with the Chinese government for the recovery of the debt. This sum, lent to Chinese merchants, was at twenty-four per cent., which would yield, if paid, an annuity of two hundred and forty thousand pounds.10

Perplexed as the Directors were with these demands, you may conceive, sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed Sir, I mean to follow the right honorable gen- by being made acquainted that they must again tleman over that field of deception, clearing what exert their influence for a new reserve of the he has purposely obscured, and fairly stating what happy parsimony of their servants, collected into it was necessary for him to misrepresent. For a second debt from the Nabob of Arcot, amountthis purpose, it is necessary you should know, ing to two millions four hundred thousand pounds, with some degree of distinctness, a little of the settled at an interest of twelve per cent. locality, the nature, the circumstances, the mag- is known by the name of the Consolidation of nitude of the pretended debts on which this mar-1777, as the former of the Nabob's debts was velous donation is founded, as well as of the persons from whom and by whom it is claimed.

III. Madras, with its dependencies, is the secHistory of ond (but with a long interval, the secthe debts. ond) member of the British empire in the East. The trade of that city and of the adjacent territory was, not very long ago, among the most flourishing in Asia. But since the establishment of the British power, it has wasted away under a uniform, gradual decline, insomuch that in the year 1779 not one merchant of eminence was to be found in the whole country. During this period of decay, about six hundred thousand sterling pounds a year have been drawn off by English gentlemen, on their private account, by the way of China alone. If we add four hundred thousand as probably remitted through other channels and in other mediums, that is, in jewels, gold, and silver, directly brought to Europe, and in bills upon the British and foreign companies, you will scarcely think the matter overrated. If we fix the commencement of this extraction of money from the Carnatic at a period no earlier than the year 1760, and close it in the year 1780, it probably will not amount to a great deal less than twenty millions of money.

During the deep, silent flow of this steady stream of wealth, which set from India into Europe, it generally passed on with no adequate observation; but happening at some periods to meet rifts of rocks that checked its course, it

This

by the title of the Consolidation of 1767. To this was added, in a separate parcel, a little reserve called the Cavalry debt, of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, at the same interest. The whole of these four capitals, amounting to four millions four hundred and forty thousand pounds, produced, at their several rates, annuities amounting to six hundred and twenty three thousand pounds a year; a good deal more than one third of the clear land tax of England at four shillings in the pound; a good deal more than double the whole annual dividend of the East India Company, the nominal masters to the proprietors in these funds. Of this interest, three hundred and eighty three thousand two hundred

It may be doubted whether this image is not run out too far, so as to turn off the attention from the idea to be enforced to the picture here presented.

10 These claims on China merchants are not men

tioned as having any direct connection with the debts of the Nabob of Arcot; they are enumerated merely as part of the twenty millions abstracted from the Carnatic by English residents, and as having been urged upon the East India Company for aid in their collection. In this view alone are they brought into the sum total of £4,440,000 mentioned below. The China debts are then deducted, leaving,

as will be seen at the close of the statement, the debts of the Nabob of Arcot with "an interest of £383,200 a year, chargeable on the public revenues of the Carnatic."

pounds a year stood chargeable on the public | set of men whose names, with few exceptions, revenues of the Carnatic. are either buried in the obscurity of their origin. and talents, or dragged into light by the enormity of their crimes.12

These debts черния from their maguitude alone.

justified by the

Sir, at this moment, it will not be necessary to consider the various operations which the capital and interest of this debt In my opinion, the courage of the minister have successively undergone. I shall was the most wonderful part of the These suspicions speak to these operations when I come transaction, especially as he must Nabob of Arcot's particularly to answer the right honorable gen- have read, or rather the right hon- declarations. tleman on each of the heads, as he has thought orable gentleman says he has read for him, whole proper to divide them. But this was the exact volumes upon the subject. The volumes, by-theview in which these debts first appeared to way, are not one tenth part so numerous as the the court of Directors and to the world. It va- right honorable gentleman has thought proper ried afterward; but it never appeared in any to pretend, in order to frighten you from inquiry; other than a most questionable shape. When but in these volumes, such as they are, the minthis gigantic phantom of debt first appeared ister must have found a full authority for a susbefore a young minister, it naturally would have picion (at the very least) of every thing relative justified some degree of doubt and apprehen- to the great fortunes made at Madras. What is sion. Such a prodigy would have filled any that authority? Why, no other than the standcommon man with superstitious fears. He ing authority for all the claims which the miniswould exorcise that shapeless, nameless form, try has thought fit to provide for-the grand and by every thing sacred would have adjured debtor-the Nabob of Arcot himself. Hear that it to tell by what means a small number of slight prince, in the letter written to the court of Diindividuals, of no consequence or situation, pos-rectors, at the precise period while the main body sessed of no lucrative offices, without the com- of these debts were contracting. In his letter mand of armies, or the known administration of he states himself to be, what undoubtedly he is, revenues, without profession of any kind, with- a most competent witness to this point. After out any sort of trade sufficient to employ a ped- speaking of the war with Hyder Ali in 1768 dler, could have, in a few years (as to some even and 1769, and of other measures which he cenin a few months), amassed treasures equal to the sures (whether right or wrong, it signifies nothrevenues of a respectable kingdom. Was it not ing), and into which he says he had been led enough to put these gentlemen, in the novitiate by the Company's servants, he proceeds in this of their administration, on their guard, and to call | manner: "If all these things were against the upon them for a strict inquiry (if not to justify | real interests of the Company, they are ten thouthem in a reprobation of those demands without any inquiry at all), that when all England, Scotland, and Ireland had for years been witness to the immense sums laid out by the servants of the Company in stocks of all denominations, in the purchase of lands, in the buying and building of houses, in the securing quiet seats in Parliament, or in the tumultuous riot of contested elections, in wandering throughout the whole range of those variegated modes of inventive prodigality, which sometimes have excited our wonder, sometimes roused our indignation, that after all India was four millions still in debt to them? India in debt to them! For what? Every debt for which an equivalent of some kind or other is not given, is, on the face of it, a fraud. What is the equivalent they have given? What equivalent had they to give? What are the articles of commerce or the branches of manufacture which those gentlemen have carried hence to enrich India? What are the sciences they beamed out to enlighten it? What are the arts they introduced to cheer and to adorn it? What are the religious, what the moral institutions they have taught among that people as a guide to life, or as a consolation when life is to be no more, that there is an eternal debt-a debt "still paying, still to owe,' which must be bound on the present generation in India, and entailed on their mortgaged posterity forever ?11 A debt of millions, in favor of a

The debt immense of endless gratitude; -still paying, still to owe.-Milton.

sand times more against mine, and against the prosperity of my country, and the happiness of my people, for your interests and mine are the same. What were they owing to, then? To the private views of a few individuals, who have enriched themselves at the expense of your influence and of my country; for your servants have no trade in this country; neither do you pay them high wages, yet in a few years they return to England with many lacs of pagodas. How can you or I account for such immense fortunes, acquired in so short a time, without any visible means of getting them ?"

When he asked this question, which involves its answer, it is extraordinary that curiosity did not prompt the Chancellor of the Exchequer to that inquiry, which might come in vain recommended to him by his own act of Parliament. Does not the Nabob of Arcot tell us, in so many words, that there was no fair way of making the enormous sums sent by the Company's servants to England? And do you imagine that there was or could be more honesty and good faith in

12 It is unnecessary to remark on the beauty of this amplification, which has all the force of the severest logic, since it enumerates the only proper have been entailed upon a people. The passage is and legitimate means by which such a debt could peculiarly characteristic of Mr. Burke's genius. It was dictated by that penetrating philosophy of his which was always searching into the causes of things, and thus furnishing the materials of profound remark and exuberant illustration.

13

of the debts.

IV. The great patron of these creditors (to whose honor they ought to erect stat- Examination ues), the right honorable gentleman [Mr. Dundas], in stating the merits which recommended them to his favor, has ranked them under three grand divisions-the first, the creditors of 1767; then the creditors of the cavalry

the demands for what remained behind in India? | under the false names of debtors and creditors Of what nature were the transactions with him- of state." self? If you follow the train of his information, you must see that, if these great sums were at all lent, it was not property, but spoil that was lent; if not lent, the transaction was not a contract, but a fraud. Either way, if light enough could not be furnished to authorize a full condemnation of these demands, they ought to have been left to the parties who best knew and un-loan; and, lastly, the creditors of the loan in derstood each other's proceedings. It is not necessary that the authority of government should interpose in favor of claims whose very foundation was a defiance of that authority, and whose object and end was its entire subversion.

It may be said that this letter was written by the Nabob of Arcot in a moody humor, under the influence of some chagrin. Certainly it was; but it is in such humors that truth comes out; and when he tells you, from his own knowledge, what every one must presume, from the extreme probability of the thing, whether he told it or not, one such testimony is worth a thousand that contradict that probability, when the parties have a better understanding with each other, and when they have a point to carry that may unite them in a common deceit.

These debts

1777. Let us examine them, one by one, as they pass in review before us.

(1.) The first of these loans, that of 1767, he insists, had an indisputable claim upon Consolida the public justice. The creditors, hetion of 1767. affirms, lent their money publicly; they advanced it with the express knowledge and approbation of the Company; and it was contracted at the moderate interest of ten per cent. this loan the demand is, according to him, not only just, but meritorious in a very high degree; and one would be inclined to believe he thought so, because he has put it last in the provision he has made for these claims!

In

I readily admit this debt to stand the fairest of the whole; for, whatever may be my suspicions concerning a part of it, I can convict it of If this body of private claims of debt, real or nothing worse than the most enormous usury. devised, were a question, as it is false-But I can convict, upon the spot, the right honorable gentleman of the most daring misrepresentation in every one fact, without any exception, that he has alleged in defense of this loan, and of his own conduct with regard to it. I will show you that this debt was never contracted with the knowledge of the Company; that it had not their approbation; that they received the first intelligence of it with the utmost possible surprise, indignation, and alarm.

Company.

not to be paid ly pretended, between the Nabob of by the Nabob. Arcot as debtor, and Paul Benfield and his associates as creditors, I am sure I should give myself but little trouble about it. If the hoards of oppression were the fund for satisfying the claims of bribery and peculation, who would wish to interfere between such litigants? If the demands were confined to what might be drawn from the treasures which the Company's records uniformly assert that the Nabob is in possession So far from being previously apprised of the of, or if he had mines of gold, or silver, or dia- transaction from its origin, it was two Concealed monds (as we know that he has none), these gen-years before the court of Directors ob- from the tlemen might break open his hoards, or dig in his tained any official intelligence of it. mines, without any disturbance from me. But "The dealings of the servants with the Nabob the gentlemen on the other side of the House were concealed, from the first, until they were know as well as I do, and they dare not contra- found out" (says Mr. Sayer, the Company's dict me, that the Nabob of Arcot and his cred-counsel) "by the report of the country." The itors are not adversaries, but collusive parties, and that the whole transaction is under a false color and false names. The litigation is not, nor ever has been, between their rapacity and his hoarded riches. No! It is between him and them combining and confederating on one side, and the public revenues and the miserable inhabitants of a ruined country on the other. These are the real plaintiffs and the real defendants in the suit. Refusing a shilling from his hoards for the satisfaction of any demand, the Nabob of Arcot is always ready-nay, he earnestly, and with eagerness and passion, contends for delivering up to these pretended creditors his territory and his subjects. It is, therefore, not from treasuries and mines, but from the food of your unpaid armies, from the blood withheld from the veins and whipped out of the backs of the most miserable of men, that we are to pamper extortion, usury, and peculation,

presidency, however, at last thought proper to send an official account. On this the Directors tell them, " To your great reproach, it has been concealed from us. We can not but suspect this debt to have had its weight in your proposed aggrandizement of Mohammed Ali [the Nabob of Arcot]; but whether it has or has not, certain it is, you are guilty of a high breach of duty in concealing it from us."

13 The ascendency gained by Mr. Benfield over the Nabob of Arcot was represented, by a select committee at Madras in 1783, to have been of the most absolute kind. They say that, to secure the permanency of his power and profit, he kept the Nabob that he kept the accounts and correspondence in an entire stranger to the state of his own affairs; the English language, which neither the Nabob nor his son could read; that he had surrounded the Nabob on every side, “making him believe what was not true, and subscribe to what he did not understand."

1785.]

NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.

These expressions concerning the ground of the transaction, its effect, and its clandestine nature, are in the letters bearing date March 17, 1769. After receiving a more full account on the 23d of March, 1770, they state that "Messrs. John Pybus, John Call, and James Bourchier, as trustees for themselves and others of the Nabob's private creditors, had proved a deed of assignment upon the Nabob and his son of fifteen districts of the Nabob's country, the revenues of which yielded, in time of peace, eight lacs of pagodas (£320,000 sterling) annually; and likewise an assignment of the yearly tribute paid the Nabob from the Rajah of Tanjore, amounting to four lacs of rupees (£40,000)." The territorial revenue at that time possessed by these gentlemen, without the knowledge or consent of their masters, amounted to three hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling annually. They were making rapid strides to the entire possession of the country, when the Directors, whom the right honorable gentleman states as having authorized these proceedings, were kept in such profound ignorance of this royal acquisition of territorial revenue by their servants, that in the same letter they say, "This assignment was obtained by three of the members of your board in January, 1767, yet we do not find the least trace of it upon your consultations until August, 1768, nor do any of your letters to us afford any information relative to such transactions till the 1st of November, 1768. By your last letters of the 8th of May, 1769, you bring the whole proceedings to light in one view."

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dividuals, while the interest of the Company is almost wholly neglected, and payment to us rendered extremely precarious." Here, then, is the rock of approbation of the court of Directors, on which the right honorable gentleman says this debt was founded. Any member, Mr. Speaker, who should come into the House, on my reading this sentence of condemnation of the court of Directors against their unfaithful servants, might well imagine that he had heard a harsh, severe, unqualified invective against the present ministerial Board of Control. So exactly do the proceedings of the patrons of this abuse tally with those of the actors in it, that the expressions used in the condemnation of the one may serve for the reprobation of the other, without the change of a word.

To read you all the expressions of wrath and indignation fulminated in this dispatch against the meritorious creditors of the right honorable gentleman, who, according to him, have been so fully approved by the Company, would be to read the whole.

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The right honorable gentleman, with an address peculiar to himself, every now Action of the and then slides in the "Presidency of Pride of Madras," as synonymous to the Com- ferent thing. pany. That the presidency did approve the debt is certain. But the right honorable gentleman, as prudent in suppressing as skillful in bringing forward his matter, has not chosen to tell you that the presidency were the very persons guilty of contracting this loan; creditors themselves, and agents and trustees for all the other creditors. For this, the court of Directors accuse them of breach of trust; and for this, the right honorable gentleman considers them as perfectly good authority for those claims. It is pleasant to hear a gentleman of the law quote the approbation of creditors as an authority for their own debt!

How they came to contract the debt to themselves; how they came to act as agents for those whom they ought to have controlled, is for your inquiry. The policy of this debt was announced to the court of Directors by the very persons concerned in creating it. "Till very lately" (say the presidency), "the Nabob placed his dependence on the Company. Now 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 [Benfield, &c.] instantly qualified a vast number of votes; and having made themselves masters of the court The Directors of Proprietors, as well as extending the debts thus 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 servThe court of Directors, establishing the ants. debt which they had reprobated as a breach of

overruled, and

sanctioned.

trust, and which was planned for the subversion | and there it found its rest. During the whole of their authority, settled its payments on a par with those of the public; 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 prolific sport, and it soon produced a swarm of sons and daughters not in the least degenerated from the virtue of their parents.

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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 thunder-clap on the Nabob. From that moment the authority of the court He considered his political credit as ruined; but, of Directors expired in the Carnatic, and every to find a remedy to this unexpected evil, be where else. Every man," says the presiden- again added to the old principal twenty per су, who opposes the government and its meas- cent. interest accruing for the last year. Thus ures, finds an immediate countenance from the a new fund was formed; and it was on that acNabob; even our discarded officers, however un-cumulation of various principals, and interests worthy, are received into the Nabob's service. heaped upon interests, not on the sum originally It was, indeed, a matter of no wonderful sagacity | lent, as the right honorable gentleman would to determine whether the court of Directors, make you believe, that ten per cent. was settled with their miserable salaries to their servants of on the whole. 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 scantily for obedience, and the other to bribe high for rebellion and revolt."

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The debt run up by enormous interest.

The next thing which recommends this particular debt to the right honorable gentleman is, it seems, the moderate interest of ten per cent. It would be lost labor to observe on this assertion. The Nabob, in a long apologetic 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; 14 Soon after the concessions thus forcibly extorted

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 skeptical if I should doubt whether for this debt of £880,000 the Nabob ever saw £100,000 in real money. The right honorable 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 honorable gentleman knows as well as I do that General Smith was thority of the Company. He was immediately met very far from looking on himself as partially with new demands from Mr. Benfield to an enor treated in the arrangements of that time; inmous amount. He hesitated to admit them; and deed, what man dared to hope for private parimmediately a majority of the council, who were in tiality in that sacred plan for relief to nations? Mr. Benfield's interest, turned against Lord Pigot. It is not necessary that the right honorable He endeavored to maintain his power by impeach-gentleman should sarcastically call that time ing two of the majority, and thus excluding them [Mr. Fox's East India Bill] to our recollection. from the council. This produced a breach in the council, as stated by Mr. Burke, one part adhering Well do I remember every circumstance of that to Lord Pigot, and the other (being the majority) de- memorable period. God forbid I should forget nying and resisting his power. The latter determ-it. O, illustrious disgrace! O, victorious defeat! ined at last to proceed to extremities. Having met and declared themselves vested with the government, they actually arrested their own governor in 1776, held him in close confinement, and assumed supreme authority. This outrage awakened great indignation in Great Britain. Orders were immediately sent out for his release and return to England, that the facts might be investigated; but be

from the Directors, Lord Pigot was sent out as Governor to Madras, with instructions to restore the au

fore these orders could reach India he was dead. He sunk under the effect of anxiety and prolonged imprisonment.

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 canceled 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 honor, in the cause of our country, in the cause of human nature itself! But if fortune should be as powerful over

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