For feveral years, Benfield appeared as the chief proprietor, as well as the chief agent, director, and controller, of this fyftem of debt. The worthy chairman of the company has ftated the claims of this fingle gentleman on the nabob of Arcot, as amounting to five hundred thousand pounds*. Poffibly at the time of the chairman's ftate, they might have been as high. Eight hundred thoufand had been mentioned fome time before t; and according to the practice of fhifting the names of creditors in. these transactions, and reducing or raifing the debt itself at pleasure, I think it not impoffible, that at one period, the name of Benfield might have stood before those frightful figures. But my best information goes to fix his fhare no higher than four hundred. thoufand 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 thoufand pounds, that fmalleft of the fums ever mentioned for Mr. Benfield, will form a capital of £592,000, at fix per cent. Thus, befides the arrears of three years, amounting to £106,500 (which, as faft as received, may be legally lent out at 12 per cent.) Benfield has received, by the minifterial grant before you, an annuity of £35,520 a year, charged on the public revenues.

Our mirror of minifters of finance, did not think this enough for the fervices of fuch a friend as Benfield. He found that Lord Macartney, in order to frighten the court of directors from the project, of obliging the nabob to give foucar fecurity for his debt, affuring them, that if they should take that ftep, Benfield would infallibly be the foucar; and would thereby become the entire master of the Carnatic. What Lord Macartney thought fufficient to deter the very agents and partakers with Benfield

in his iniquities, was the inducement to the two right honourable gentlemen to order this very foucar fecurity to be given, and to recall Benfield to the city of Madras, from the fort of decent exile, into which he had been relegated by Lord Macartney. You muft therefore confider Benfield, as foucar fecurity for £480,000 a year, which at twenty-four per cent. (fuppofing him contented with that profit) will, with the intereft of his old debt, produce an annual income of £149,520 a year.

Here is a fpecimen of the new and pure ariftocracy created by the right honourable gentleman*, as the fupport of the crown and conftitution, against the old, corrupt, refractory, natural interefts of this kingdom; and this is the grand counterpoise against all odious coalitions of thefe interefts. A fingle Benfield outweighs them all; a criminal, who long fince ought to have fattened the region kites with his offal, is, by his majesty's minifters, enthroned in the go. vernment of a great kingdom, and enfeoffed with an eftate, which in the comparison effaces the fplendor of all the nobility of Europe. Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts.

BURKE, (RICHARD) ESQ.

HAD it pleafed God to continue to me the hopes of fucceffion, I fhould have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a fort of founder of a family; I fhould have left a fon, who, in all the points in which perfonal merit can be viewed, in fcience, in erudition, in genius, in tafte, in honour, in generofity, in humanity, in every liberal fentiment, and every liberal' accomplishment, would not have fhewn himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of thofe whom he traces in his line. His Grace very foon would have

* Right Honourable William Pitt,

wanted all plaufibility in his attack upon that provifion which belonged more to mine than to me. He would foon have fupplied every deficiency, and fymmetrized every difproportion. It would not have been for that fucceffor to refort to any ftagnant wafting refervoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a falient, living fpring, of generous and manly action. Every day he lived he would have re-purchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a public creature; and had no enjoyment whatever, but in the performance of fome duty. At this exigent moment, the lofs of a finifhed man is not eafily fupplied.

But a difpofer, whofe power we are little able to refift, and whofe wifdom It behoves us not at all to difpute, has ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might fuggeft) a far better. The ftorm has gone over me; and I lie like one of thofe old oaks which the late hurricane has

fcattered about me. I am ftripped of all my honours; I am torn up by the roots, and lie proftrate on the earth! There, and proftrate there, I moft unfeignedly recognize the divine juftice, and in fome degree fubmit to it.Letter to a noble Lord.

BRISSOT.

THIS Briffot had been in the loweft and bafeft employ under the depofed monarchy-a fort of thieftaker or spy of police, in which character he acted after the manner of perfons in that defcription. He had been employed by his mafter, the Lieutenant, de Police, for a confiderable time in London, in the fame or fome fuch honourable occupation. The revolution, which has brought forward all merit of that kind, raifed him, with others of a fimilar class and difpofition, to fame and eminence. On the revolution, he became a publifher of an infamous newfpaper, which he ftill continues. He is charged,

and I believe justly, as the first mover of the troubles in Hifpaniola. There is no wickednefs, if I am rightly informed, in which he is not verfed, and of which he is not perfectly capable. His quality of news-writer, now an employment of the firft dignity in France, and his practices and principles, procured his election into the affembly, where he is one of the leading members.--Memorial on the Affairs of France in 1793.

CONDORCET.

CONDORCET (though no marquis, as he ftyled himfeif before the revolution) is a man of another fort of birth, fafhion, and occupation from Briffot; but in every principle, and in, every difpofition to the lowest as well as the highest and most determined villainies, fully his equal. He feconds Briffot in the Affembly, and is at once his coadjutor and his rival in a newspaper, which in his own name, and as fucceffor to Mr. Garat, a member alfo of the affembly, he has just fet up in that Empire of Gazettes. Condorcet was chofen to draw the first declaration presented by the Affembly to the King, as a threat to the Elector of Treves, and the other princes on the Rhine. In that piece, in which both Feuillans and Jacobins concurred, they declared publicly, and moft proudly and infolently, the principle on which they mean to proceed in their future difputes with any of the Sovereigns in Europe, for they fay, "That it is not with fire and fword they mean to "attack their territories, but by what will be more "dreadful to them, the introduction of liberty."

The late Affembly, after the laft captivity of the King, had actually chofen this Condorcet by a majority on the ballot, for Preceptor to the Dauphin, who was to be taken out of the hands and direction of his parents, and to be delivered over to this fanatic Atheist, and furious democratic Republican. His

untractability to thefe leaders, and his figure in the Club of Jacobins, which at that time they wifhed to bring under, alone prevented that part of the arrangement, and others in the fame ftyle, from being carried into execution. Whilft he was candidate for this office, he produced his title to it by promulgating the following ideas of the title of his royal pupil to the crown. In a paper written by him, and publifhed with his name, against the re-eftablishment, even of the appearance of monarchy under any qualifications, He fays, " Jufqu'à ce moment "ils [l'Affemblée Nationale] n'ont rien prejugè en

core.

En fe refervant de nommer un Gouver"neur au Dauphin, ils n'ont pas prononcé que cet "enfant dût regner; mais feulement quil étoit poffible "que la Conftitution lui deftinât; ils ont voulu que "l'éducation, effaçant tout ce que les preftiges du "Trône ont pu lui infpirer de préjugés fur les droits "prétendus de fa naiffance, qu'elle lui fit connoître "de bonne heure, et l'Egalité naturelle des Hommes, "et la Souveraineté du peuple; qu'elle lui apprit à ne "pas oublier que c'eft du peuple qu'il tiendra le tître de Roi, et que le peuple n'a pas même le droit de "renoncer à celui de l'en depouiller.

"Ils ont voulu que cette éducation le rendit également digne, par fes lumières, et fes vertus, "de recevoir avec refignation, le fardeaux dangereux "d'une couronne, ou de la dépofer avec joie entre "les mains de ces frères, qu'il fentit que le devoir ❝et la gloire du Roi d'un peuple libre, eft de hâter "le moment de n'être plus qu'un citoyen ordinaire. "Ils ont voulu que l'inutilité d'un Roi, là néceffité de chercher les moyens de remplacer un pouvoir fondé fur les illufions, fut une des premières véri"tés offertes à fa raifon; l'obligation d'y concourir lui "même un des premières devoirs de fa morale; et le "defir, de n'être plus affranchi du joug de la loi, par "une injurieufe inviolabilité, le premier fentiment de