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The Tanjore debt of £400,000 ut

The subsidy from Tanjore, on the arrear of which this pretended debt (if any there be) has accrued to the Company, is not, terly without like that paid by the Nabob of Arcot, foundation. a compensation for vast countries obtained, augmented, and preserved for him; not the price of pillaged treasuries, ransacked houses, and plundered territories. It is a large grant from a small kingdom not obtained by our arms; robbed, not protected by our power; a grant for which no equivalent was ever given, or pretended to be given. The right honorable gentleman [Mr. Dundas], however, bears witness in his reports to the punctuality of the payments of this grant of bounty, or, if you please, of fear. It amounts to one hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling net annual subsidy. He bears witness to a farther grant of a town and port, with an annexed district of thirty thousand pounds a year, surrendered to the Company since the first donation. He has not borne witness, but the fact is (he will not deny it), that, in the midst of war, and during the ruin and desolation of a considerable part of his territories, this prince made many very large payments. Notwithstanding these merits and services, the first regulation of ministry is to force from him a territory of an extent which they have not yet thought proper to ascertain for a military peace establishment, the particulars of which they have not yet been pleased to settle.

The next part of their arrangement is with Penalty against regard to war. As confessedly this the Rajah if en prince had no share in stirring up any gaged in war. of the former wars, so all future wars are completely out of his power; for he has no troops whatever, and is under a stipulation not so much as to correspond with any foreign state, except through the Company. Yet, in case the Company's servants should be again involved in war, or should think proper again to provoke any enemy, as in times past they have wantonly prohave done the Rajah great injury; we have no intention of doing him right. This constitutes a full and sufficient reason for going on to his destruction." Such was the doctrine! As Tanjore was thus seized without any authority from the Directors at London, the presidency at Madras was ordered to restore it; and Lord Pigot was sent out to carry the restora tion into effect. A statement has already been giv en of the violence which ensued, and the imprison ment of Lord Pigot by the majority of the Council, who were in the interest of Benfield and his parti

sans. When the restoration was at last effected,

it was only partial; some of the territory was withheld; and no part of the goods, money, or revenues, so unjustly taken from the Rajah, were restored. The Directors of the East India Company were ordered, in Mr. Pitt's East India Bill, to examine into the subject, and came to the conclusion that certain portions of territory should be restored to the Rajah. The Board of Control overruled this decision, and, though Tanjore had been repeatedly

plundered, and reduced to a state of extreme destitution, levied upon the country about £400,000 as a pretended debt for arrearage of tribute. Other wrongs inflicted on Tanjore are enumerated by Mr.

Burke.

But

voked all India, he is to be subjected to a new penalty. To what penalty? Why, to no less than the confiscation of all his revenues. this is to end with the war, and they are to be faithfully returned? Oh, no; nothing like it. The country is to remain under confiscation until all the debt which the Company shall think fit to incur in such war shall be discharged; that is to say, forever. His sole comfort is to find his old enemy, the Nabob of Arcot, placed in the very same condition.

The revenues of that miserable country were, before the invasion of Hyder, reduced to Revenues a gross annual receipt of three hundred of Tanjore. and sixty thousand pounds. From this receipt the subsidy I have just stated is taken. This again, by payments in advance, by extorting deposits of additional sums to a vast amount for the benefit of their soucars, and by an endless variety of other extortions, public and private, is loaded with a debt, the amount of which I never could ascertain, but which is large undoubtedly, generating a usury the most completely ruinous that probably was ever heard of; that is, fortyeight per cent., payable monthly, with compound interest!

pelled to pay

to the Nabob

Such is the state to which the Company's servants have reduced that country. Tanjore com Now come the reformers, restorers, an annual triband comforters of India. What have ute of £40,000 they done? In addition to all these of Arcot tyrannous exactions, with all these ruinous debts in their train, looking to one side of an agreement while they willfully shut their eyes to the other, they withdraw from Tanjore all the benefits of the treaty of 1762, and they subject that nation to a perpetual tribute of forty thousand a year to the Nabob of Arcot-a tribute never due, or pretended to be due to him, even when he appeared to be something-a tribute, as things now stand, not to a real potentate, but to a shadow, a dream, an incubus of oppression. After the Company has accepted in subsidy, in grant of territory, in remission of rent, as a compensation for their own protection, at least two hundred thousand pounds a year, without discounting a shilling for that receipt, the ministers condemn this harassed nation to be tributary to a person [the Nabob of Arcot] who is himself, by their own arrangement, deprived of the right of war or peace; deprived of the power of the sword; forbid to keep up a single regiment of soldiers; and is, therefore, wholly disabled from all protection of the country which is the object of the pretended tribute. Tribute hangs on the sword. It is an incident inseparable from real sovereign power. In the present case, to suppose its existence is as absurd as it is cruel and oppressive. And here, Mr. Speaker, you have a clear exemplification of the use of those false names and false colors which

the gentlemen who have lately taken possession of India choose to lay on for the purpose of disguising their plan of oppression. The Nabob of Arcot and Rajah of Tanjore have, in truth and substance, no more than a merely civil authority, held in the most entire dependence on the Co....

pany. The Nabob, without military, without federal capacity, is extinguished as a potentate; but then he is carefully kept alive as an independent and sovereign power, for the purpose of rapine and extortion; for the purpose of perpetuating the old intrigues, animosities, usuries, and corruptions.

It was not enough that this mockery of tribute was to be continued without the correspondent protection, or any of the stipulated equivalents, but ten years of arrear, to the amount of £400,000 sterling, is added to all the debts to the Company and to individuals, in order to create a new debt, to be paid (if at all possible, to be paid in whole or in part) only by new usuries; and all this for the Nabob of Arcot, or, rather, for Mr. Benfield and the corps of the Nabob's creditors and their soucars. Thus these miserable Indian princes are continued in their seats, for no other purpose than to render them, in the first instance, objects of every species of extortion, and, in the second, to force them to become, for the sake of a momentary shadow of reduced authority, a sort of subordinate tyrants, the ruin and calamity, not the fathers and cherishers of their people.

Cruel arrange

ing the means of irrigating Tanjore.

But take this tribute only as a mere charge (without title, cause, or equivalent) | ment respect on this people; what one step has been taken to furnish grounds for a just calculation and estimate of the proportion of the burden and the ability? None; not an attempt at it. They do not adapt the burden to the strength, but they estimate the strength of the bearers by the burden they impose. Then what care is taken to leave a fund sufficient to the future reproduction of the revenues that are to bear all these loads? Every one but tolerably conversant in Indian affairs must know that the existence of this little kingdom depends on its control over the River Cavery.39 The benefits of Heaven to any community ought never to be connected with political arrangements, or made to depend on the personal conduct of princes, in which the mistake, or error, or neglect, or distress, or passion of a moment on either side may bring famine on millions, and ruin an innocent nation perhaps for ages. The means of the subsistence of mankind should be as immutable as the laws of nature, let power and dominion take what course they may. Observe what has been done with regard to this important concern. The use of this river is indeed at length given to the Rajah, and a power provided for its enjoyment at his own charge; but the means of furnishing that charge (and a mighty one it is) are wholly cut off. This use of the water, which ought to have no more connection than clouds, and rains, and sunshine, with the politics of the Rajah, the Nabob, or the Company, is expressly contrived as a means of enforcing demands and arrears of 39 This river rises in a chain of mountains called the Ghauts, near the Malibar coast, and, after a course of four hundred and fifty miles, flows into the sea through Tanjore. The vast rice plains of that country are dependent for their products on the waters of this river, which are turned upon the fields by means of embankments and canals.

tribute.40 This horrid and unnatural instrument of extortion had been a distinguishing feature in the enormities of the Carnatic politics that loudly called for reformation. But the food of a whole people is by the reformers of India conditioned on payments from its prince at a moment that he is overpowered with a swarm of their demands, without regard to the ability of either prince or people. In fine, by opening an avenue to the irruption of the Nabob of Arcot's creditors and soucars, whom every man who did not fall in love with oppression and corruption, on an experience of the calamities they produced, would have raised wall before wall, and mound before mound, to keep from a possibility of entrance, a more destructive enemy than Hyder Ali is introduced into that kingdom. By this part of their arrangement, in which they establish a debt to the Nabob of Arcot, in effect and substance they deliver over Tanjore, bound hand and foot, to Paul Benfield, the old betrayer, insulter, oppressor, and scourge of a country which has for years been an object of an unremitted, but, unhappily, an unequal struggle, between the bounties of Providence to renovate and the wickedness of mankind to destroy.

Injustice of Mr.

Dundas in deciding between the

Raja of Tan

jore and the Na

The right honorable gentleman talks of his fairness in determining the territorial dispute between the Nabob of Arcot and the prince of that country, when he superseded the determ- bob of Arcot. ination of the Directors, in whom the law had vested the decision of that controversy. He is in this just as feeble as he is in every other part. But it is not necessary to say a word in refutation of any part of his argument. The mode of the proceeding sufficiently speaks the spirit of it. It is enough to fix his character as a judge, that he never heard the Directors in defense of their adjudication, nor either of the parties in support of their respective claims. It is sufficient for me that he takes from the Rajah of Tanjore by this pretended adjudication, or, rather, from his unhappy subjects, £40,000 a year of his and their revenue, and leaves upon his and their shoulders all the charges that can be made on the part of the Nabob, on the part of his creditors, and on the part of the Company, without so much as hearing him as to right or to ability. But what principally induces me to leave the affair of the territorial dispute between the Nabob and the Rajah to another day is this, that both the parties being stripped of their all, it little signifies under which of their names the unhappy, undone people are delivered over to the merciless soucars, the allies of that right honorable gentleman and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In them ends the account of this long dispute of the Nabob of Arcot and the Rajah of Tanjore.

The right honorable gentleman is of opinion 40 This refers to the instructions of the Board of Control, which expressly provide that the use of water from the Cavery for the irrigation of his ter ritory shall be enjoyed by the Rajah "only while he shall be punctual in paying his annual tribute to the Nabob."

Attack on Mr.

to his insinua

Burke.

that his judgment in this case can be censured by none but those who seem to act as if Dundas in reply they were paid agents to one of the tions against Mr. parties." What does he think of his court of Directors? If they are paid by either the parties, by which of them does he think they are paid? He knows that their decision has been directly contrary to his. Shall I believe that it does not enter into his heart to conceive that any person can steadily and actively interest himself in the protection of the injured and oppressed without being well paid for his service? I have taken notice of this sort of discourse some days ago, so far as it may be supposed to relate to me. I then contented myself, as I shall now do, with giving it a cold, though a very direct contradiction. Thus much I do from respect to truth. If I did more, it might be supposed, by my anxiety to clear myself, that I had imbibed the ideas which, for obvious reasons, the right honorable gentleman wishes to have received concerning all attempts to plead the cause of the natives of India, as if it were a disreputable employment. If he had not forgot, in his present occupation, every principle which ought to have guided him, and, I hope, did guide him, in his late profession [the law], he would have known that he who takes a fee for pleading the cause of distress against power, and manfully performs the duty he has assumed, receives an honorable recompense for a virtuous service. But if the right honorable gentleman will have no regard to fact in his insinuations or to reason in his opinions, I wish him at least to consider that if taking an earnest part with regard to the oppressions exercised in India, and with regard to this most oppressive case of Tanjore in particular, can ground a presumption of interested motives, he is himself the most mercenary man I know. His conduct, indeed, is such that he is on all occasions the standing testimony against himself. He it was that first called to that case the attention of the House. The reports of his own committee are ample and aflecting upon that subject; and as many of us as have escaped his massacre must remember the very pathetic picture he made of the sufferings of the Tanjore country on the day when he moved the unwieldy code of his Indian resolutions.42 Has he not stated over and over again,

41 This refers to an insinuation thrown out by Mr. Dundas, some days previous, that Mr. Burke was a

paid agent of the Rajah of Tanjore. Nothing could be more false, and the only pretense for it was that William Burke, brother of Edmund, was in the Rajah's service. At that time, Mr. Burke simply repelled the insinuation. He now turns back Mr. Dundas' attack upon himself.

42 Mr. Dundas was chairman of the Committee of Secrecy on Indian Affairs. In 1782 he made a number of voluminous reports on the subject, and intro

duced nearly a hundred resolutions to carry out his views. The "massacre" to which Mr. Burke sport

ively alludes, seems to have been the defeat of the Coalition Ministry in respect to their East India Bill, in accomplishing which Mr. Dundas bore a very act ive part.

in his reports, the ill treatment of the Rajah of Tanjore (a branch of the royal house of the Mahrattas, every injury to whom the Mahrattas felt as offered to themselves) as a main cause of the alienation of that people from the British power? And does he now think that, to betray his principles, to contradict his declarations, and to become himself an active instrument in those oppressions which he had so tragically lamented, is the way to clear himself of having been actuated by a pecuniary interest at the time when he chose to appear full of tenderness to that ruined nation?

led to the pay

VIII. The right honorable gentleman is fond of parading on the motives of others, Motives which and on his own. As to himself, he ment of these despises the imputations of those who debts. suppose that any thing corrupt could influence him in this his unexampled liberality of the public treasure. I do not know that I am obliged to speak to the motives of the ministry in the arrangements they have made of the pretended debts of Arcot and Tanjore. If I prove fraud and collusion with regard to public money on those right honorable gentlemen, I am not obliged to assign their motives, because no good motives can be pleaded in favor of their conduct. Upon that case I stand; we are at issue, and I desire to go to trial. This, I am sure, is not loose railing or mean insinuation, according to their low and degenerate fashion when they make attacks on the measures of their adversaries. It is a regular and juridical course and, unless I choose it, nothing can compel me to go farther.

But since these unhappy gentlemen have dared to hold a lofty tone about their motives, and affect to despise suspicion, instead of being careful not to give cause for it, I shall beg leave to lay before you some general observations on what I conceive was their duty in so delicate a business.

suspicion.

If I were worthy to suggest any line of prudence to that right honorable gentle- Way for min. man, I would tell him that the way to isters to avoid avoid suspicion in the settlement of pecuniary transactions, in which great frauds have been very strongly presumed, is to attend to these few plain principles: First, to hear all parties equally, and not the managers for the suspected claimants only; not to proceed in the dark, but to act with as much publicity as possible; not to precipitate decision; to be religious in following the rules prescribed in the commission under which we act; and lastly, and above all, not to be fond of straining constructions to force a jurisdiction, and to draw to ourselves the management of a trust in its nature invidious and obnoxious to suspicion, where the plainest letter of the law does not compel it. If these few plain rules are observed, no corruption ought to be sus

pected; if any of them are violated, suspicion will attach in proportion. If all of them are violated, a corrupt motive of some kind or other will not only be suspected, but must be violently presumed.

The persons in whose favor all these rules

generous design of bestowing Old Sarum on the Bank of England, Mr. Benfield has thrown in the borough of Cricklade to re-enforce the county representation! Not content with this, in order to station a steady phalanx for all future reforms, this public-spirited usurer, amid his charitable toils for the relief of India, did not forget the poor, rotten Constitution of his native country. For her, he did not disdain to stoop to the trade of a wholesale upholsterer for this House, to furnish it, not with the faded tapestry figures of antiquated merit, such as decorate, and may reproach some other houses, but with real, solid, living patterns of true modern virtue. Paul Benfield made (reckoning himself) no fewer than eight members in the last Parliament. What copious streams of pure blood must he not have transfused into the veins of the present!

have been violated, and the conduct of ministers The payment of toward them, will naturally call for these debts owing to the parlament your consideration, and will serve to ary influence of lead you through a series and comPaul Benfield, the principal creditor. bination of facts and characters, if I do not mistake, into the very inmost recesses of this mysterious business. You will then be in possession of all the materials on which the principles of sound jurisprudence will found, or will reject the presumption of corrupt motives; or, if such motives are indicated, will point out to you of what particular nature the corruption is. Our wonderful minister [Mr. Pitt], as you all know, formed a new plan, a plan insigne, recens, alio indictum ore,43 a plan for supporting the freedom of our Constitution by court intrigues, and for removing its corruptions by Indian delinquency! To carry that bold paradoxical design into execution, sufficient funds and apt But what is even more striking than the real instruments became necessary. You are per- services of this new-imported patriot Benfield did not fectly sensible that a parliamentary reform occu- is his modesty. As soon as he had take his seat in pies his thoughts day and night, as an essential conferred this benefit on the Consti- went to Madras. member of this extraordinary project. In his tution, he withdrew himself from our applause. anxious researches upon this subject, natural in- He conceived that the duties of a member of stinct, as well as sound policy, would direct his Parliament (which, with the elect faithful, the eyes, and settle his choice on Paul Benfield. true believers, the Islam of parliamentary reform, Paul Benfield is the grand parliamentary reform- are of little or no merit, perhaps not much beter, the reformer to whom the whole choir of ter than specious sins) might be as well attendreformers bow, and to whom even the right hon-ed to in India as in England, and the means of orable gentleman himself must yield the palm; for what region in the empire, what city, what borough, what county, what tribunal, in this kingdom, is not full of his labors ?45 Others have been only speculators; he is the grand practical reformer; and while the Chancellor of the Exchequer pledges in vain the man and the minister to increase the provincial members, Mr. Benfield has auspiciously and practically begun it. Leaving far behind him even Lord Camelford's

43 Extraordinary and new, uttered by no other

mouth.

There is great keenness in this attack on Mr.
Pitt as a parliamentary reformer. His "
"supporting
the freedom of our Constitution by court intrigues"
refers to his defeating Mr. Fox's East India Bill in
the House of Lords by appealing secretly to the
King, through Lord Temple, and obtaining a decla-
ration that "whoever voted for the India Bill were
not only not his friends [the King's], but that he
should consider them his enemies." This use of the
powerful influence of the sovereign to overrule the
decisions of Parliament was considered by Mr.

Burke and his friends as a direct blow at the "
"free-
dom of the Constitution." It was also a mode of

"removing its corruptions by Indian delinquency,"

because Mr. Pitt was united with Paul Benfield

and other Indian delinquents in opposing Mr. Fox's bill, and these men operated chiefly through the purchase of rotten boroughs, which Mr. Pitt had always treated as the great source of corruption to the Constitution. It was known that Mr. Pitt, out of an avowed regard to his former principles, intended to bring forward some plan of parliamentary reform this session. This called forth the terrible irony and sarcasm of this passage. After his failure in that plan. Mr. Pitt never again attempted parlia

mentary reform.

45 Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ?

Parliament, but

We

reformation to Parliament itself be far better
provided. Mr. Benfield was, therefore, no soon-
er elected, than he set off for Madras, and de-
frauded the longing eyes of Parliament.
have never enjoyed in this House the luxury of
beholding that minion of the human race, and
contemplating that visage, which has so long re-
flected the happiness of nations.

It was, therefore, not possible for the minister
to consult personally with this great man. What,
then, was he to do? Through a sagacity that
never failed him in these pursuits, he found out
in Mr. Benfield's representative his exact re-
semblance.
A specific attraction, by which he
gravitates toward all such characters, soon
brought our minister into a close connection
with Mr. Benfield's agent and attorney, that is,
with the grand contractor (whom I name to
honor), Mr. Richard Atkinson; a name that
will be well remembered as long as the records
of this House, as long as the records of the Brit-
ish treasury, as long as the monumental debt of
England shall endure.

his agent, active

This gentleman, sir, acts as attorney for Mr. Paul Benfield. Every one who hears Mr. Atkinson, me is well acquainted with the sa- in framing Mr. cred friendship, and the steady, mu- Pitt's India Bill. tual attachment, that subsists between him and the present minister. As many members as chose to attend in the first session of this Parliament can best tell their own feelings at the scenes which were then acted. How much that

honorable gentleman was consulted in the orig. inal frame and fabric of the bill, commonly called Mr. Pitt's India Bill, is matter only of conjec

46 Quem gratia honoris nomino.

name of Benfield might have stood before those frightful figures. But my best information goes to fix his share no higher than four hundred thousand pounds. By the scheme of the present ministry for adding to the principal twelve per cent. from the year 1777 to the year 1781, four hundred thousand pounds, that smallest of the sums ever mentioned for Mr. Benfield, will form a capital of £592,000 at six per cent. Thus, besides the arrears of three years, amounting to £106,500 (which, as fast as received, may be legally lent out at twelve per cent.), Benfield has received, by the ministerial grant before you, an annuity of £35,520 a year, charged on the public revenues.

ture, though by no means difficult to divine. But the public was an indignant witness of the ostentation with which that measure was made his own, and the authority with which he brought up clause after clause, to stuff and fatten the rankness of that corrupt act. As fast as the clauses were brought up to the table, they were accepted. No hesitation-no discussion. They were received by the new minister, not with approbation, but with implicit submission. The reformation may be estimated by seeing who was the reformer. Paul Benfield's associate and agent was held up to the world as legislator of Hindostan! But it was necessary to authenticate the coalition between the men of intrigue in India and the minister of intrigue in England, by a studied display of the power of this their connecting link. Every trust, every honor, every distinction was to be heaped upon him. He was at once made a director of the India Company; made an alderman of London; and to be made, if ministry could prevail (and I am sorry to say how near, how very near they were prevailing), representative of the capital of this kingdom. But, to secure his services against all risk, he was brought in for a ministerial borough. On his part, he was not wanting in zeal for the common cause. His advertisements show his motives, and the merits upon which he stood. For your minister, this worn-out veteran submitted to enter into the dusty field of the London contest; and you all remember, that in the same virtuous cause he submitted to keep a sort of public office or counting-house, where the whole business of the last general election was manHis activity in aged. It was openly managed by the Mr. Pitt's favor direct agent and attorney of Benfield. tion of 1784, and It was managed upon Indian princi- Here is a specimen of the new and pure arisples, and for an Indian interest. This tocracy created by the right honorable gentlewas the golden cup of abominations; this the man [Mr. Pitt], as the support of the Crown and chalice of fornications of rapine, usury, and op- Constitution, against the old, corrupt, refractory, pression, which was held out by the gorgeous natural interests of this kingdom; and this is Eastern harlot; which so many of the people, the grand counterpoise against all odious coaliso many of the nobles of this land, had drained tions of these interests.47 A single Benfield outto the very dregs. Do you think that no reck- weighs them all. A criminal, who long since oning was to follow this lewd debauch? that no ought to have fattened the region kites with his payment was to be demanded for this riot of offal, is, by his Majesty's ministers, enthroned public drunkenness and national prostitution? in the government of a great kingdom, and enHere! you have it here before you. The prin- feoffed with an estate which, in the comparison, cipal of the grand election manager must be in-effaces the splendor of all the nobility of Europe. demnified; accordingly, the claims of Benfield and his crew must be put above all inquiry!

during the elec

its reward.

Amount of Ben

these claims.

For several years, Benfield appeared as the chief proprietor, as well as the chief agent, director, and controller of this system of debt. The worthy chairman of the Compafield's interest in ny has stated the claims of this single gentleman on the Nabob of Arcot as amounting to five hundred thousand pounds. Possibly, at the time of the chairman's statement, they might have been as high. Eight hundred thousand pounds had been mentioned some time before; and, according to the practice of shifting the names of creditors in these transactions, and reducing or raising the debt itself at pleasure, I think it not impossible that at one period the

Our mirror of ministers of finance did not think this enough for the services of such a friend as Benfield. He found that Lord Macartney, in order to frighten the court of Directors from the object of obliging the Nabob to give soucar security for his debt, assured them that, if they should take that step, Benfield would infallibly be the soucar, and would thereby become the entire master of the Carnatic. What Lord Macartney thought sufficient to deter the very agents and partakers with Benfield in his iniquities was the inducement to the two right honorable gentlemen to order this very soucar security to be given, and to recall Benfield to the city of Madras, from the sort of decent exile into which he had been relegated by Lord Macartney. You must, therefore, consider Benfield as soucar security for £480,000 a year, which, at twenty-four per cent. (supposing him contented with that profit), will, with the interest of his old debt, produce an annual income of £149,520 a year.

To bring a little more distinctly into view the true secret of this dark transaction, I beg you particularly to advert to the circumstances which | I am going to place before you.

Temporary with

field's name from

ors.

The general corps of creditors, as well as Mr. Benfield himself, not looking well into futurity, nor presaging the min- drawal of Ben. ister of this day, thought it not ex- the list of creditpedient for their common interest that such a name as his should stand at the head of their list. It was therefore agreed among them that Mr. Benfield should disappear by making over his debt to Messrs. Taylor, Majendie,

47 This sneer refers to the attacks made by Mr. Pitt on Mr. Fox's coalition with Lord North.

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