Revenues of erroneously justified by Lord Macartney himself, who, in a subsequent letter, informs the court that his sketch is a matter of speculation; it supposes the country restored to its ancient prosperity, and the revenue to be in a course of effective and honest collection. If, therefore, the minis and a civil establishment, would have been impossible; therefore the ministers are the Carnatic: silent on that head, and rest themestimated by selves on the authority of Lord Mathe ministry. cartney, who, in a letter to the court of Directors, written in the year 1781, speculating on what might be the result of a wise manage-ters have gone wrong, they were not deceived ment of the countries assigned by the Nabob of by Lord Macartney; they were deceived by no Arcot, rates the revenue as in time of peace at man. The estimate of the Directors is nearly twelve hundred thousand pounds a year, as he the very estimate furnished by the right honordoes those of the King of Tanjore (which had not able gentleman himself [Mr. Dundas], and pubbeen assigned) at four hundred and fifty.31 On lished to the world in one of the printed reports this Lord Macartney grounds his calculations, and of his own committee; but as soon as he obon this they choose to ground theirs. It was on tained his power, he chose to abandon his acthis calculation that the ministry, in direct oppo- count. No part of his official conduct can be sition to the remonstrances of the court of Direct- defended on the ground of his parliamentary inors, have compelled that miserable, enslaved body formation. to put their hands to an order for appropriating the enormous sum of £480,000 annually as a fund for paying to their rebellious servants a debt contracted in defiance of their clearest and most positive injunctions. made in a dif the country. 31 circumstances, ed a decision. In this clashing of accounts and estimates, ought not the ministry, if they wished The ministry to preserve even appearances, to have ought, in these waited for information of the actual to have delayresult of these speculations, before they laid a charge, and such a charge, not conditionally and eventually, but positively and authoritatively, upon a country which they all knew, and which one of them had registered on the records of this House, to be wasted beyond all example, by every oppression of an abusive war. But that you may discern in what manner they use the correspondence of office, and that thereby you may enter into the true spirit of the ministerial Board of Control, I desire you, Mr. Speaker, to remark, that through their whole controversy with the court of Directors, they do not so much as hint at their ever having seen any other paper from Lord Macartney, or any other estimate of revenue, than this of 1781. To this they hold. Here they take post; here they intrench themselves. The authority and information of Lord MaLord Macart cartney is held high on this occasion, ney's estimate though it is totally rejected in every ferent state of other particular of this business. I believe I have the honor of being almost as old an acquaintance as any Lord Macartney has. A constant and unbroken friend-government, and every ravage of a desolating ship has subsisted between us from a very early period; and I trust he thinks that, as I respect his character, and in general admire his conduct, I am one of those who feel no common interest in his reputation; yet I do not hesitate wholly to disallow the calculation of 1781, without any apprehension that I shall appear to distrust his veracity or his judgment. This peace estimate of revenue was not grounded on the state of the Carnatic as it then, or as it had recently stood. It was a statement of former and better times. There is no doubt that a period did exist, when the large portion of the Carnatic held by the Nabob of Arcot might be fairly held to produce a revenue to that, or to a greater amount; but the whole had so melted away by the slow and silent hostility of oppression and mismanagement, that the revenues, sinking with the prosperity of the country, had fallen to about £800,000 a year, even before an enemy's horse had imprinted his hoof on the soil of the Carnatic.32 From that view, and independently of the decisive effects of the war which ensued, Sir Eyre Coote conceived that years must pass before the country could be restored to its former prosperity and production. It was that state of revenue (namely, the actual state before the war) which the Directors have opposed to Lord Macartney's speculation. They The estimate of refused to take the revenues for more the Directore. than £800,000. In this they are Lord Macartney was at that time Governor of Madras. "The manner in which Mr. Burke here individu. alizes, by mentioning the horse's hoof, is peculiarly appropriate and beautiful, after the description given above of the "whirlwind of cavalry" which had swept over the Carnatic. But they sup pressed the estimate, that most reliable of the Madras When I first read this curious controversy between the ministerial board and the court of Directors,33 common candor obliged me to attribute their tenacious adherence to the estimate of 1781 to committee. a total ignorance of what had appeared upon the records. But the right honorable gentleman has chosen to come forward with an uncalled-for declaration; he boastingly tells you that he has seen, read, digested, compared every thing, and that, if he has sinned, he has sinned with his eyes broad open. Since, then, the ministers will obstinately "shut the gates of mercy" on themselves, let them add to their crimes what aggravations they please. They have, then (since it must be so), willfully and corruptly suppressed the information which they ought to have produced, and, for the support of peculation, have made themselves guilty of spoliation and suppression of evidence. The paper I hold in my hand, which totally overturns (for the present, at least) the estimate of 1781, they have no more taken notice of in their controversy with the court of Directors than if it had 33 This controversy arose out of the resistance made by the Directors to the order of the Board of Control for the payment of these debts. no existence. It is the report made by a com- | putable fact before them, what has been done by mittee appointed at Madras to manage the whole the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his accomof the six countries assigned to the Company by plices? Shall I be believed? They have dethe Nabob of Arcot. This committee was wise- livered over those very territories, on the keeply instituted by Lord Macartney, to remove from ing of which in the hands of the committee the himself the suspicion of all improper manage- defense of our dominions, and, what was more ment in so invidious a trust, and it seems to have dear to them, possibly, their own job, depended; been well chosen. This committee has made a they have delivered back again, without condicomparative estimate of the only six districts tion, without arrangement, without stipulation which were in a condition to be let to farm. In of any sort for the natives of any rank, the whole one set of columns they state the gross and net of those vast countries, to many of which he had produce of the districts as let by the Nabob. To no just claim, into the ruinous mismanagement that statement they oppose the terms on which of the Nabob of Arcot! To crown all, accordthe same districts were rented for five years un- ing to their miserable practice whenever they do der their authority. Under the Nabob, the gross any thing transcendently absurd, they preface farm was so high as £570,000 sterling. What this their abdication of their trust by a solemn was the clear produce? Why, no more than declaration, that they were not obliged to it by about £250,000; and this was the whole profit any principle of policy, or any demand of justice to the Nabob's treasury, under his own manage- whatsoever. ment, of all the districts which were in a condi- I have stated to you the estimated produce of tion to be let to farm on the 27th of May, 1782. the territories of the Carnatic, in a con- Subsequent Lord Macartney's leases stipulated a gross prod-dition to be farmed in 1782, according uce of no more than about £530,000, but then the estimated net amount was nearly double the Nabob's. It, however, did not then exceed £480,000; and Lord Macartney's commissioners take credit for an annual revenue amounting to this clear sum. Here is no speculation; here is no inaccurate account clandestinely obtained from those who might wish, and were enabled to deceive. It is the authorized, recorded state of a real recent transaction. Here is not twelve hundred thousand pounds-not eight hundred. The whole revenue of the Carnatic yielded no more in May, 1782, than four hundred and eighty thousand pounds; nearly the very precise sum which your minister, who is so careful of the public security, has carried from all descriptions of establishment, to form a fund for the private emolument of his creatures.34 In this estimate we see, as I have just observed, the Nabob's farms rated so high as £570,000. Hitherto all is well; but follow on to the effect ive net revenue-there the illusion vanishes; and you will not find nearly so much as half the produce. It is with reason, therefore, Lord Macartney invariably, throughout the whole correspondence, qualifies all his views and expectations of revenue, and all his plans for its application, with this indispensable condition, that the management is not in the hands of the Nabob of Arcot. Should that fatal measure take place, he has over and over again told you that he has no prospect of realizing any thing whatsoever for any public purpose. With these weighty declarations, confirmed by such a state of indis 34 The Company were, of course, unable to pay the Nabob's debts at once, and the Board of Control therefore exacted from the Directors a paper setting apart for this purpose twelve lacs of pagodas, or about £480,000 a year. It appears, from the above computation, that the entire revenue of the Carnatic would be absorbed by this assignment. Nothing remained for its government and defense. This was left to come out of the other means of the Company, and if these failed, from the public treasury at home. estunates. After some sharp to the different managements into which they The second account received is the letting of the wasted provinces of the Carnatic. This, I understand, is at a growing rent, which may or may not realize what it promises; but if it should answer, it will raise the whole, at some future time, to £1,200,000. You must here remark, Mr. Speaker, that this revenue is the produce of all the Nabob's dominions. During the assignment the Nabob paid nothing, because the Company had all. Supposing the whole of the lately-assigned territory to yield up to the most sanguine expectations of the right honorable gentleman; and suppose £1,200,000 to be annually realized (of which we actually know of no more than the realizing of six hundred thousand), out of this you must deduct the subsidy and rent which the Nabob | dia Company, which, after the provision for the paid before the assignment, namely, £340,000 cavalry and the consolidation of 1777, was to a year. This reduces back the revenue, appli- divide the residue of the fund of £480,000 a cable to the new distribution made by his Majes- year with the lenders of 1767. This debt the ty's ministers, to about £800,000. Of that sum, worthy chairman, who sits opposite to me, con five eighths are by them surrendered to the tends to be three millions sterling. Lord Madebts. The remaining three are the only fund cartney's account of 1781 states it to be, at that left for all the purposes so magnificently dis- period, £1,200,000. The first account of the played in the letter of the Board of Control; that court of Directors makes it £900,000. This, is, for the new-cast peace establishment; a new like the private debt, being without any solid fund for ordnance and fortifications; and a large existence, is incapable of any distinct limits. allowance for what they call "the splendor of Whatever its amount or its validity may be, one the Durbar" [Court of the Nabob]. thing is clear; it is of the nature and quality of a public debt. In that light, nothing is provided for it but an eventual surplus to be divided with one class of the private demands, after satisfying the two first classes. Never was a more shameful postponing a public demand, which, by the reason of the thing, and the uniform practice of all nations, supersedes every private claim.36 Those who gave this preference to private claims consider the Company's as a lawful demand; else, why did they pretend to provide for it? On their own principles they are condemned. ed on the reve nues of the Car natic. You have heard the account of these territories as they stood in 1782. You have seen the actual receipt since the assignment in 1781, of which I reckon about two years and a quarter productive. I have stated to you the expectation from the wasted part. For realizing all this, you may value yourselves on the vigor and diligence of a governor and committee that have done so much. If these hopes from the committee are rational, remember that the committee is no more. Your ministers, who have formed their fund for these debts on the presumed effect But I, sir, who profess to speak to your underof the committee's management, have put a com- standing and to your conscience, and This debt ought plete end to that committee. Their acts are to brush away from this business all not to be charg rescinded; their leases are broken; their rent- false colors, all false appellations, as ers are dispersed. Your ministers knew, when well as false facts, do positively deny they signed the death-warrant of the Carnatic, that the Carnatic owes a shilling to the Compathat the Nabob would not only turn all these un-ny, whatever the Company may be indebted to fortunate farmers of revenue out of employment, but that he has denounced his severest vengeance against them for acting under British authority. With a knowledge of this disposition, a British Chancellor of the Exchequer and Treasurer of the Navy, incited by no public advantage, impelled by no public necessity, in a strain of the most wanton perfidy which has ever stained the annals of mankind, have delivered over to plunder, imprisonment, exile, and death itself, according to the mercy of such execrable tyrants as Amir ul Omra and Paul Benfield, the unhappy and deluded souls who, untaught by uniform example, were still weak enough to put their trust in English faith. They have gone farther; they have thought proper to mock and outrage their misery by ordering them protection and compensation. From what power is this protection to be derived? And from what fund is this compensation to arise? The revenues are delivered over to their oppressor; the territorial jurisdiction, from whence that revenue is to arise, and under which they live, is surrendered to the same iron hands; and that they shall be deprived of all refuge and all hope, the minister has made a solemn, voluntary declaration that he never will interfere with the Nabob's internal government. VI. The last thing considered by the Board The Compa of Control, among the debts of the Car ny's Debt natic, was that arising to the East In35 The favorite son of the Nabob, Amir ul Omra, was so vicious and cruel, that, although destined to succeed his father, the Company set him aside on the death of the Nabob in 1795, and gave the government to his brother. that undone country. It owes nothing to the Company, for this plain and simple reason: The territory charged with the debt is their own! To say that their revenues fall short, and owe them money, is to say they are in debt to themselves, which is only talking nonsense. The fact is, that by the invasion of an enemy, and the ruin of the country, the Company, either in its own name or in the names of the Nabob of Arcot and Rajah of Tanjore, has lost for several years what it might have looked to receive from its own estate. If men were allowed to credit themselves, upon such principles any one might soon grow rich by this mode of accounting. A flood comes down upon a man's estate in the Bedford level of a thousand pounds a year, and drowns his rents for ten years. The chancellor would put that man into the hands of a trustee, who would gravely make up his books, and for this loss credit the charge of its revenues, had been taken from the 36 The civil and military government of India, and Company by Mr. Pitt's bill, and placed in the hands of the British government. All debts due to the Company had, therefore, become public debts; and if brought into the account at all, ought, on established principles, to have taken the precedence of every other. Instead of this, they had been put after most of the others! Mr. Burke, however, contends that they ought not to be brought into the account at all. The Company were now masters of the country; and whatever sums they had expended in thus adding to their dominions ought to be carried to the account of "profit and loss." They ought not to be brought in as debts, to squeeze more revenue out of the natives, or to be saddled on the public, if that revenue should fail. are soucars who will supply you on the mortgage of your territories. Then steps forward some Paul Benfield, and from his grateful compassion to the Nabob, and his filial regard to the Company, he unlocks the treasures of his virtuous industry, and for a consideration of twenty-four or thirty-six per cent. on a mortgage of the territorial revenue, becomes security to the Company for the Nabob's arrear. All this intermediate usury thus becomes sanctified by the ultimate view to the Company's himself in his account for a debt due to him of £10,000. It is, however, on this principle the Company makes up its demands on the Carnatic. In peace they go the full length, and indeed more than the full length, of what the people can bear for current establishments; then they are absurd enough to consolidate all the calamities of war into debts; to metamorphose the devastations of the country into demands upon its future production. What is this but to avow a resolution utterly to destroy their own country, and to force the people to pay for their sufferings, to a gov-payment. In this case, would not a plain man ernment which has proved unable to protect ei- ask this plain question of the Company: If you ther the share of the husbandman or their own? know that the Nabob must annually mortgage In every lease of a farm, the invasion of an ene- his territories to your servants to pay his annual my, instead of forming a demand for arrear, is a arrear to you, why is not the assignment or mortrelease of rent; nor for that release is it at all nec-gage made directly to the Company itself? By essary to show that the invasion has left nothing this simple, obvious operation, the Company to the occupier of the soil, though in the present would be relieved and the debt paid, without case it would be too easy to prove that melan- the charge of a shilling interest to that prince. choly fact. I therefore applaud my right hon-But if that course should be thought too indulgorable friend, who, when he canvassed the Com-ent, why do they not take that assignment with pany's accounts, as a preliminary to a bill that ought not to stand on falsehood of any kind, fixed his discerning eye and his deciding hand on these debts of the Company, from the Nabob of Arcot and Rajah of Tanjore, and at one stroke ex-pany lend their own credit to the Nabob for their punged them all, as utterly irrecoverable; he might have added, as utterly unfounded. On these grounds I do not blame the arrangement this day in question, as a preference given to the debt of individuals over the Company's debt. In my eye, it is no more than the preference of a fiction over a chimera; but I blame the preference given to those fictitious private debts over the standing defense and the standing government. It is there the public is robbed. It is robbed in its army; it is robbed in its civil administration; it is robbed in its credit; it is robbed in its investment, which forms the commercial connection between that country and Europe. There is the robbery. others of the ble nature. such interest to themselves as they pay to others; that is, eight per cent.? Or, if it were thought more advisable (why it should I know not) that he must borrow, why do not the Com own payment? That credit would not be weakened by the collateral security of his territorial mortgage. The money might still be had at eight per cent. Instead of any of these honest and obvious methods, the Company has for years kept up a show of disinterestedness and moderation, by suffering a debt to accumulate to them from the country powers, without any interest at all; and at the same time have seen before their eyes, on a pretext of borrowing to pay that debt, the revenues of the country charged with a usury of twenty, twenty-four, thirty-six, and even eight-and-forty per cent., with compound interest, for the benefit of their servants! All this time they know that by having a debt subsisting But my principal objection lies a good deal without any interest, which is to be paid by conThis debt made deeper. That debt to the Company tracting a debt on the highest interest, they manthe pretext for is the pretext under which all the ifestly render it necessary to the Nabob of Arcot most unjustifia other debts lurk and cover them- to give the private demand a preference to the selves. That debt forms the foul, public; and, by binding him and their servants putrid mucus, in which are engendered the together in a common cause, they enable him to whole brood of creeping ascarides, all the end- form a party to the utter ruin of their own auless involutions, the eternal knot, added to a knot thority and their own affairs. Thus their false of those inexpugnable tape-worms which devour moderation and their affected purity, by the natthe nutriment, and eat up the bowels of India. ural operation of every thing false and every It is necessary, sir, you should recollect two thing affected, becomes pander and bawd to the things: first, that the Nabob's debt to the Com-unbridled debauchery and licentious lewdness of pany carries no interest. In the next place you usury and extortion. will observe, that whenever the Company has occasion to borrow, she has always commanded whatever she thought fit at eight per cent. Carrying in your mind these two facts, attend to the process with regard to the public and private debt, and with what little appearance of decency they play into each other's hands a game of utter perdition to the unhappy natives of India. The Nabob falls into an arrear to the Company. The presidency presses for payment. The Nabob's answer, I have no money. Good! But there the natives ry result In consequence of this double game, all the territorial revenues have, at one time Extreme of or other, been covered by those locusts, pression of the English soucars. Not one single the necessa foot of the Carnatic has escaped them; a territory as large England! During these operations, what a scene has that country presented! The usurious European assignee supersedes the Nabob's native farmer of the revenue; the farmer flies to the Nabob's presence to claim his bargain; while his servants murmur for wages, 37 and his soldiers mutiny for pay. The mortgage these soucars are no other than the creditors themselves. The minister, not content with authorizing these transactions in a manner and to an extent unhoped for by the rapacious expectations of usury itself, loads the broken back of the Indian revenues, in favor of his worthy friends the soucars, with an additional twenty-four per cent. for being security to themselves for their own claims; for condescending to take the country in mortgage to pay to themselves the fruits of their extortions! The interest to be paid for this security, according to the most moderate strain of soucar demand, comes to one hundred and eighteen thousand pounds a year, which, added to the £480,000 on which it is to accrue, will make the whole charge on account of these debts on the Carnatic revenues amount to £598,000 a year, as much as even a long peace will enable those revenues to produce. Can any one reflect for a moment on all those claims of debt, which the minister exhausts himself in contrivances to augment with new uşuries, without lifting up his hands and eyes in astonishment of the impudence both of the claim and of the adjudication? Services of some kind or other these servants of the Company must have done, so great and eminent, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer can not think that all they have brought home is half enough. He halloos after them, "Gentlemen, you have forgot a large packet behind you, in your hurry; you have not sufficiently recovered yourselves; you ought to have, and you Your worthy ministers, supporting what they shall have, interest upon interest, upon a prohibare obliged to condemn, have thought fit to re-ited debt that is made up of interest upon internew the Company's old order against contracting private debts in future. They begin by rewarding the violation of the ancient law; and then they gravely re-enact provisions, of which they have given bounties for the breach. This inconsistency has been well exposed by Mr. Fox. But what will you say to their having gone the length of giving positive directions for contracting the debt which they positively forbid ? new debts neces mous rate of m terest. I will explain myself. They order the Nabob, The orders of the out of the revenues of the Carnatic, ministry render to allot four hundred and eighty sary, at an enor thousand pounds a year as a fund for the debts before us. For the punctual payment of this annuity, they order him to give soucar security. When a soucar, that is, a money-dealer, becomes security for any native prince, the course is, for the native prince to counter-secure the money-dealer by making over to him in mortgage a portion of his territory equal to the sum annually to be paid, with an interest of at least twenty-four per cent. The point fit for the House to know is, who are these soucars to whom this security on the revenues in favor of the Nabob's creditors is to be given? The majority of the House, unaccustomed to these transactions, will hear with astonishment that The books of the Company, in 1781, show that the Nabob's farmers of revenue rarely continued in office three months. What must have been the state of the country under such a system of exaction! Z est. Even this is too little; I have thought of another character for you, by which you may add something to your gains; you shall be security to yourselves; and hence will arise a new usury, which shall efface the memory of all the usuries suggested to you by your own dull inventions." VII. I have done with the arrangement relative to the Carnatic. After this, it is to Treatment little purpose to observe on what the of Tanjore. ministers have done to Tanjore. Your ministers have not observed even form and ceremony in their outrageous and insulting robbery of that country, whose only crime has been its early and constant adherence to the power of this, and the suffering of a uniform pillage in consequence of it. The debt of the Company from the Rajah of Tanjore is just of the same stuff with that of the Nabob of Arcot.38 38 Tanjore was a small kingdom on the southeastern coast of India, bordering on the Carnatic. Hyder Ali was eager to bring it into subjection to himself; and the presidency at Madras (then under the control of Benfield and his associates) united in the design, and sent an army for this purpose. At a other army to seize and hold it for the Company. later period they changed their policy, and sent an"Never," says Mill, "was the resolution taken to make war upon a lawful sovereign with a view of stripping him of his dominions, and either putting him and his family to death, or making them prisoners for life, on a more accommodating principle. We |