1785.] NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. fame, as she has been prevalent over virtue, at I say, I well remember that bill, and every one of its honest and its wise proviprotected by sions. It is not true that this debt was This debt not their ravages throughout the devoted revenues Cavalry Debt. (2.) The tenor, the policy, and the consequences of this debt of 1767, are, in the eyes of the ministry, so excellent, that its merits are irresistible; and it takes the lead to give credit and countenance to all the Along with this chosen body of heavyrest. armed infantry, and to support it in the line, the right honorable gentleman has stationed his Mr. Fox's bill. ever protected or enforced, or any rev- corps of black cavalry. If there be any advantIt was left in age between this debt and that of 1769, accordIt is not a enue whatsoever set apart for it. that bill just where it stood, to be paid or noting to him the Cavalry Debt has it. to be paid out of the Nabob's private treasures, subject of defense; it is a theme of panegyric. according to his own discretion. The Company Listen to the right honorable gentleman, and had actually given it their sanction, though al- you will find it was contracted to save the counways relying for its validity on the sole security try; to prevent mutiny in armies; to introduce of the faith of him who, without their knowledge economy in revenues; and for all these honoror consent, entered into the original obligation. able purposes, it originated at the express deIt had no other sanction; it ought to have had sire, and by the representative authority of the no other. So far was Mr. Fox's bill from provid- Company itself. First, let me say a word to the authority. ing funds for it, as this ministry have wickedly done for this, and for ten times worse transac-This debt was contracted, not by Not authorized by tions, out of the public estate, that an express the authority of the Company, not by a faction which clause immediately preceded positively forbid- by its representatives (as the right bad usurped the ding any British subject from receiving assign- honorable gentleman has the un- Madras. ments upon any part of the territorial revenue, paralleled confidence to assert), but in the ever memorable period of 1777, by the usurped powon any pretense whatsoever.15 the Company, but government at You recollect, Mr. Speaker, that the Chancel-er of those who rebelliously, in conjunction with lor of the Exchequer [Mr. Pitt] 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 skillful a performance for its own purposes as ever issued from the wit of man, premeditating this iniquity" hoc ipsum ut strueret Trojamque aperiret Achivis"16 expunged this essential clause, broke down the fence which was raised to cover the public property against the rapacity of his partisans, and thus leveling every obstruction, he made a firm, broad highway for "Sin and Death," for usury and oppression, to renew 15 The following were the words of Mr. Fox's bill. "And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the Nabob of Arcot, the Rajah of Tanjore, or any other protected prince of India, shall not assign, mortgage, or pledge any territory or land whatsoever. or the revenue or produce thereof to any British subject whatsoever; nor shall it be lawful for any British subject whatsoever to take or receive any such assignment, mortgage, or pledge; and the same are hereby declared null and void. And all payments, or deliveries of produce or revenue under any such assignment, shall and may be recovered back by such native prince paying or delivering the same from the person or persons receiving the same, or from his or their representa tives." 16 The passage is taken from Virgil's Eneid, -qui se ignotum venientibus ultro, He offered himself unknown to them approaching, To the Greeks. the Nabob of Arcot, had overturned the lawful government of Madras.18 For that rebellion, this House unanimously directed a public prosecution. The delinquents, after they had subverted the 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 honorable 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 colorable, as they Real Crigin stand recorded, they are in substance of the debt. 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 labored hard with their master, the Nabob, to persuade him to reduce these mutinous and useless troops. He consent 17 The allusion here is to Satan's first passage to this earth, as described by Milton in his Paradise Lost, near the close of the second Book. Sin and Death amain 18 The circumstances of this usurpation have been already detailed in note 14, page 338. ed; 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 public supply was empty. But there was one resource which no season has ever yet dried up in that climate. The soucars [money lenders] were at hand; that is, private English moneyjobbers offered their assistance. Messrs. Taylor, Majendie, and Call proposed to advance the small sum of £160,000, to pay off the Nabob's black cavalry, provided the Company's authority was given for their loan. This was the great point of policy always aimed at and pursued through a hundred devices by the servants at Madras. The presidency, who themselves had no authority for the functions they presumed to exercise,19 very readily gave the sanction of the Company to those servants who knew that the Company (whose sanction was demanded) had positively prohibited all such transactions. However, so far as the reality of the dealing goes, all is hitherto fair and plausible; and here the right honorable gentleman concludes, with commendable prudence, his account of the busi I "Mr. Stratton [one of the members of the Document council at Madras] became acquainted ary proofs. with this, and got Mr. Taylor and others to lend me four lacs of pagodas toward discharging the arrears of pay of my troops. Upon this, I wrote a letter of thanks to Mr. Stratton; and, upon the faith of this money being paid immediately, I ordered many of my troops to be discharged by a certain day, and lessened the number of my servants. Mr. Taylor, &c., some time after acquainted me that they had no ready money, but they would grant teeps [notes of hand], payable in four months. This astonished me; for I did not know what might happen when the sepoys were dismissed from my service. begged of Mr. Taylor and the others to pay this sum to the officers of my regiments at the time they mentioned; and desired the officers, at the same time, to pacify and persuade the men belonging to them that their pay would be given to them at the end of four months; and that till those arrears were discharged their pay should be continued to them. Two years are nearly expired since that time, but Mr. Taylor has not yet entirely discharged the arrears of those troops, and I am obliged to continue their pay from that time till this. I hoped to have been able, by this expedient, to have lessened the number of my troops, and discharged the arrears due to them, 19 The acting presidency were the usurping ones who had imprisoned Lord Pigot. considering the trifle of interest to Mr. Taylor and the others as of no great matter; but instead of this, I am oppressed with the burden of pay due to those troops, and the interest which is going on to Mr. Taylor from the day the teeps were granted to him." What I have read to you is an extract of a letter from the Nabob of the Carnatic to Governor Rumbold, dated the 22d, and received the 24th of March, 1779. Suppose his Highness not to be well broken in to things of this kind, it must, indeed, surprise so known and established a bond vender as the Nabob of Arcot, one who keeps himself the largest bond warehouse in the world, to find that he was now to receive in kind; not to take money for his obligations, but to give his bond in exchange for the bond of Messrs. Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and to pay, beside, a good smart interest, legally 12 per cent. [in reality perhaps twenty or twenty-four per cent.], for this exchange of paper. But his troops were not to be so paid or so disbanded; they wanted bread, and could not live by cutting and shuffling of bonds. The Nabob still kept the troops in service, and was obliged to continue, as you have seen, the whole expense; to exonerate himself from which, he became indebted to the soucars. Had it stood here, the transaction would have been of the most audacious strain of fraud and usury perhaps ever before discovered, whatever might have been practiced and concealed. But the same authority (I mean the Nabob's) brings before you something, if possible, more striking. He states that, for this their paper, he immediately handed over to these gentlemen something very different from paper; that is, the receipt of a territorial revenue, of which it seems they continued as long in possession as the Nabob himself continued in possession of any thing. Their payments, therefore, not being to commence before the end of four months, and not being completed in two years, it must be presumed (unless they proved the contrary) that their payments to the Nabob were made out of the revenues they had received from his assignment. Thus they condescended to accumulate a debt of £160,000, with an interest of 12 per cent., in compensation for a lingering payment to the Nabob of £160,000 of his own money! Still we have not the whole. About two years after the assignment of those territorial revenues to these gentlemen, the Nabob receives a remonstrance from his chief manager, in a principal province, of which this is the tenor: "The entire revenue of those districts is by your Highness's order set apart to discharge the tunkaus [assignments] granted to the Europeans. The gomastahs [agents] of Mr. Taylor, to Mr. De Fries, are there in order to collect those tunkaws; and as they receive all the revenue that is collected, your Highness's troops have seven or eight months' pay due which they can not receive, and are thereby reduced to the greatest distress. In such times, it is highly necessary to provide for the sustenance of the troops, that they may be ready to exert themselves in the service | Mr. Paul Benfield, for instance, without property of your Highness." Here, sir, you see how these causes and effects act upon one another. One body of troops mutinies for want of pay; a debt is contracted to pay them, and they still remain unpaid. A territory destined to pay other troops is assigned for this debt, and these other troops fall into the same state of indigence and mutiny with the first. Bond is paid by bond; arrear is turned into new arrear; usury engenders new usury; mutiny suspended in one quarter, starts up in another; until all the revenues and all the establishments are entangled into one inextricable knot of confusion, from which they are only disengaged by being entirely destroyed. In that state of confusion, in a very few months after the date of the memorial I have just read to you, things were found, when the Nabob's troops, famished to feed English soucars, instead of defending the country, joined the invaders, and deserted in entire bodies to Hyder Ali.20 The manner in which this transaction was carried on shows that good examples are not easily forgot, especially by those who are bred in a great school. One of those splendid examples give me leave to mention at a somewhat more early period, because one fraud furnishes light to the discovery of another, and so on, until the whole secret of mysterious iniquity bursts upon you in a blaze of detection. The paper I shall read you is not on record. If you please, you may take it on my word. It is a letter written from one of undoubted information in Madras, to Sir John Clavering, describing the practice that prevailed there, while the Company's allies were under sale, during the time of Governor Winch's administration. "One mode," says Clavering's correspondent, "of amassing money at the Nabob's cost is curious. He is generally in arrears to the Company. Here the Governor, being cash-keeper, is generally on good terms with the banker, who manages matters thus: The Governor presses the Nabob for the balance due from him; the Nabob flies to his banker for relief; the banker engages to pay the money, and grants his notes accordingly, which he puts in the cash-book as ready money; the Nabob pays him an interest for it at two and three per cent. a month, till the tunkaws [assignments] he grants on the particular districts for it are paid. Matters in the mean time are so managed, that there is no call for this money for the Company's service, till the tunkaus become due. By this means not a cash is advanced by the banker, though he receives a heavy interest from the Nabob, which is divided as lawful spoil." Here, Mr. Speaker, you have the whole art and mystery, the true Free-mason secret of the upon which any one would lend to themselves a single shilling, are enabled at once to take provinces in mortgage, to make princes their debtors, and to become creditors for millions! pretense that the But it seems the right honorable gentleman's favorite soucar cavalry have proved Exposure of the the payment before the Mayor's debt had been Court at Madras! Have they so? proved in court. Why, then, defraud our anxiety and their characters of that proof? Is it not enough that the charges which I have laid before you have stood on record against these poor injured gentlemen for eight years? Is it not enough that they are in print by the orders of the East India Company for five years? After these gentlemen have borne all the odium of this publication, and all the indignation of the Directors, with such unexampled equanimity, now that they are at length stimulated into feeling, are you to deny them their just relief? But will the right honorable gentleman be pleased to tell us how they came not to give this satisfaction to the court of Directors, their lawful masters, during all the eight years of this litigated claim? Were they not bound, by every tie that can bind man, to give them this satisfaction? This day, for the first time, we hear of the proofs. But when were these proofs offered? In what cause? Who were the parties? Who inspected? Who contested this belated account? Let us see something to oppose to the body of record which appears against them. The Mayor's Court! The Mayor's Court? Pleasant! Does not the honorable gentleman know that the first corps of creditors [the creditors of 1767] stated it as a sort of hardship to them, that they could not have justice at Madras, from the impossibility of their supporting their claims in the Mayor's Court? Why? Because, say they, the members of that court were themselves creditors, and therefore could not sit as judges! Are we ripe to say that no creditor under similar circumstances was a 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.1 But his Majesty's ministers, indulgent enough to other scrutinies, have not been satisfied with 21 As to this pretended proof before the Mayor's Court at Madras, the fact turned out to be just as Mr. Burke supposed. It was wholly collusive. It consisted merely of an affidavit of the money-lenders themselves, who swore (what no one ever doubt profession of soucaring; by which a few inno-ed) that they had engaged, and agreed to pay (not cent, inexperienced young Englishmen, such as 20 This took place in 1780, during that terrible devastation of the Carnatic by Hyder Ali, which Mr. Burke so vividly describes toward the close of this speech. that they had actually paid), the sum of £160,000 to the Nabob of Arcot. This affidavit was made two years after the transaction, before George Proctor, mayor, who was also agent for some of the creditors. 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 favor 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 imagina ed in full 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 £160,000 to £294,000. 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. (3.) In this manner, and at such an interest, the ministers have thought proper to dispose oftions of a sanguine avarice, had not the Yet allow £294,000 of the public revenues, for what is confidence to propose, they have found a called the Cavalry Loan. After dispatching this, Chancellor of the Exchequer in England hardy Consolidation the right honorable gentleman leads to enough to undertake for them. He has cheered of 1777. battle his last grand division, the con- their drooping spirits. He has thanked the pecsolidated debt of 1777. But having exhausted ulators for not despairing of their commonall his panegyric on the two first, he has nothing wealth. He has told them they were too modat all to say in favor of the last. On the con- est. He has replaced the twenty-five per cent. Authorized trary, he admits that it was contracted which, in order to lighten themselves, they had by no one. in defiance of the Company's orders, abandoned in their conscious terror. Instead of without even the pretended sanction of any pre- cutting off the interest, as they had themselves tended representatives. Nobody, indeed, has yet consented to do, with one fourth of the capital, been found hardy enough to stand forth avowed- he has added the whole growth of four years' ly in its defense. But it is little to the credit of usury of twelve per cent. to the first overgrown the age, that what has not plausibility enough to principal, and has again grafted on this meliorafind an advocate, has influence enough to obtain ted stock a perpetual annuity of six per cent., to a protector. Could any man expect to find that take place from the year 1781. Let no man protector any where? But what must every hereafter talk of the decaying energies of naman think, when he finds that protector in the ture. All the acts and monuments in the recchairman of the Committee of Secrecy [Mr. Dun-ords of peculation; the consolidated corruption das], who had published to the 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 public 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? of ages, the patterns of exemplary plunder in the heroic times of Roman iniquity, never equaled the gigantic 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 honorable gentleman [Mr. Dundas] 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? ed for allowing If this were not enough, he has furnished you with other presumptions that are not contradictory to be shaken. It is one of the known reasons assignindications of guilt to stagger and pre- them. varicate in a story, and to vary in the motives that are assigned to conduct. Try these ministers by this rule. In their official dispatch, 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 honora 22-ne de republica desperandum sit. ble gentleman has this day thought fit totally to | burden of the proof on those who make the deabandon. In the first place, he rejects the au- mand? Ought not ministry to have said to the thority of the Nabob of Arcot. It would indeed creditors, "The person who admits your debt be pleasant to see him adhere to this exploded stands excepted as to evidence; he stands chargtestimony. He next, upon grounds equally solid, ed as a collusive party, to hand over the public abandons the benefits of that circulation, which revenues to you for sinister purposes? You say was to be produced by drawing out all the juices you have a demand of some millions on the Inof the body. Laying aside, or forgetting these dian treasury. Prove that you have acted by pretenses of his dispatch, he has just now as- lawful authority; prove, at least, that your monsumed a principle totally different, but to the ey has been bona fide advanced; entitle yourself full as extraordinary. He proceeds upon a sup-to my protection by the fairness and fullness of the position that many of the claims may be fictitious. communications you make." Did an honest credHe then finds that, in a case where many validitor ever refuse that reasonable and honest test? and many fraudulent claims are blended togeth- There is little doubt that several individuals er, the best course for their discrimination is in- have been seduced by the purveyors Undoubtedly discriminately to establish them all! He trusts to the Nabob of Arcot to put their some honest (I suppose), as there may not be a fund sufficient money (perhaps the whole of honest for every description of creditors, that the best and laborious earnings) into their hands, and that warranted claimants will exert themselves in such high interest, as, being condemned at law, bringing to light those debts which will not leaves them at the mercy of the great managers bear an inquiry. What he will not do himself, whom they trusted. These seduced creditors he is persuaded will be done by others; and for are probably persons of no power or interest, eithis purpose he leaves to any person a general ther in England or India, and may be just obpower of excepting to the debt. This total jects of compassion. By taking, in this archange of language and prevarication in princi- rangement, no measures for discrimination and ple is enough, if it stood alone, to fix the pre-discovery, the fraudulent and the fair are, in the sumption of unfair dealing. His dispatch assigns motives of policy, concord, trade, and circulation. His speech proclaims discord and litigations, and proposes, as the ultimate end, detec-ments of his corruption, whom he sees to be om tion. creditors. first instance, confounded in one mass. The subsequent selection and distribution is left to the Nabob! With him the agents and instru nipotent in England, and who may serve him in future, as they have done in times past, will have precedence, if not an exclusive preference. These leading interests domineer, and have always domineered, over the whole. By this arrangement the persons seduced are made dependent on their seducers; honesty (comparative honesty, at least) must become of the party of fraud, and must quit its proper character and its just claims, to entitle itself to the alms of bribery and peculation. of India. 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 honorable 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 practiced 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 But be these English creditors what they concurrence, what evidence can be had of the may, the creditors most certainly not But chieffraud of any, the smallest of these demands? fraudulent are the natives, who are nu- ly natives The ministers never authorized any person to merous and wretched indeed: by exenter into his exchequer and to search his rec- hausting the whole revenues of the Carnatic, ords. Why, then, this shameful and insulting nothing is left for them. They lent bona fide; mockery of a pretended contest? Already con- in all probability, they were even forced to lend, tests for a preference have arisen among these or to give goods and service for the Nabob's obrival bond creditors. Has not the Company it-ligations. They had no trust to carry to his self 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 specific 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 honorable 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 market. They had no faith of alliances to sell. They had no nations to betray to robbery and ruin. They had no lawful government seditiously to overturn; nor had they a governor, to whom it is owing that you exist in India, to deliver over to captivity and to death in a shameful prison.23 These were the merits of the principal part of the debt of 1777, and the universally conceived cause of its growth; and thus the unhappy natives are deprived of every hope of payment for their real debts, to make provision for the arrears of unsatisfied bribery and treason. You see in 23 For the circumstances attending the imprisonment and death of Lord Pigot, Governor of Madras, see note 14, page 338. |