But the reverse of that supposition is true. The scene of the Indian abuse is distant indeed; but we must not infer, that the value of our interest in it is decreased in proportion as it recedes from our view. In our politicks, as in our common conduct, we shall be worse than infants, if we do not put our senses under the tuition of our judgment, and effectually cure ourselves of that optical illusion which makes a briar at our nose of greater magnitude, than an oak at five hundred yards distance.

profitable credit for their exertion? It is nothing to him, whether the object on which he works under our eye be promising or not. If he does not obtain any publick benefit, he may make regulations without end. Those are sure to pay in present expectation, whilst the effect is at a distance, and may be the concern of other times, and other men. On these principles he chooses to suppose (for he does not pretend more than to suppose) a naked possibility, that he shall draw some resource out of crumbs dropped from the trenchers of pcI think I can trace all the calamities of this coun- nury; that something shall be laid in store from try to the single source of our not having had the short allowance of revenue officers, overladen steadily before our eyes a general, comprehensive, with duty, and famished for want of bread; by a well-connected, and well-proportioned view of the reduction from officers who are at this very hour whole of our dominions, and a just sense of their ready to batter the treasury with what breaks rue bearings and relations. After all its reduc- through stone walls, for an encrease of their apjons, the British empire is still vast and various. pointments. From the marrowless bones of these After all the reductions of the house of commons, skeleton establishments, by the use of every sort stripped as we are of our brightest ornaments, of cutting, and of every sort of fretting tool, he nd of our most important privileges,) enough are flatters himself that he may chip and rasp an emet left to furnish us, if we please, with means of pirical alimentary powder, to diet into some sihewing to the world, that we deserve the super-militude of health and substance the languishing tendence of as large an empire as this kingdom chimeras of fraudulent reformation. ver held, and the continuance of as ample priviges as the house of commons, in the plenitude of S power, had been habituated to assert. But if e make ourselves too little for the sphere of our aty; if, on the contrary, we do not stretch and pand our minds to the compass of their object; well assured, that every thing about us will windle by degrees, until at length our concerns e shrunk to the dimensions of our minds. It is it a predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred res, that will avert the consequences of a false timation of our interest, or prevent the shameful lapidation, into which a great empire must fall, mean reparations upon mighty ruins.

I confess I feel a degree of disgust, almost leadto despair, at the manner in which we are ting in the great exigencies of our country. ere is now a bill in this house, appointing a nd inquisition into the minutest detail of our ices at home. The collection of sixteen millions nually; a collection on which the publick greatss, safety, and credit have their reliance; the ole order of criminal jurisprudence, which ids together society itself, has at no time obliged to call forth such powers; no, nor any thing e them. There is not a principle of the law d constitution of this country that is not subted to favour the execution of that project.* d for what is all this apparatus of bustle and Tour? Is it because any thing substantial is excted from it? No. The stir and bustle itself is end proposed. The eye-servants of a shortted master will employ themselves, not on at is most essential to his affairs, but on what is rest to his ken. Great difficulties have given just value to economy; and our minister of the y must be an economist, whatever it may cost 1 But where is he to exert his talents? At me to be sure; for where else can he obtain a Appendix, No. 1.

Whilst he is thus employed according to his policy and to his taste, he has not leisure to enquire into those abuses in India that are drawing off money by millions from the treasures of this country, which are exhausting the vital juices from members of the state, where the publick inanition is far more sorely felt, than in the local exchequer of England. Not content with winking at these abuses, whilst he attempts to squeeze the laborious, ill-paid drudges of English revenue, he lavishes in one act of corrupt prodigality, upon those who never served the publick in any honest occupation at all, an annual income equal to two thirds of the whole collection of the revenues of this kingdom.

Actuated by the same principle of choice, he has now on the anvil another scheme, full of difficulty and desperate hazard, which totally alters the commercial relation of two kingdoms; and what end soever it shall have, may bequeath a legacy of heart-burning and discontent to one of the countries, perhaps to both, to be perpetuated to the latest posterity. This project is also undertaken on the hope of profit. It is provided, that out of some (I know not what) remains of the Irish hereditary revenue, a fund at some time, and of some sort, should be applied to the protection of the Irish trade. Here we are commanded again to task our faith, and to persuade ourselves, that out of the surplus of deficiency, out of the savings of habitual and systematick prodigality, the minister of wonders will provide support for this nation, sinking under the mountainous load of two hundred and thirty millions of debt. But whilst we look with pain at his desperate and laborious trifling; whilst we are apprehensive that he will break his back in stopping to pick up chaff and straws, he recovers himself at an elastick bound, and with a broad-cast swing of his arm, he squanders over his Indian field a sum far greater than

the clear produce of the whole hereditary revenue of the kingdom of Ireland.*

Strange as this scheme of conduct in ministry is, and inconsistent with all just policy, it is still true to itself, and faithful to its own perverted order. Those who are bountiful to crimes, will be rigid to merit, and penurious to service. Their penury is even held out as a blind and cover to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is, to furnish resources for the fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection to great crimes and great criminals, by being inexorable to the paltry frailties of little men; and these modern flagellants are sure, with a rigid fidelity, to whip their own enormities on the vicarious back of every small offender.

made of millions of the publick money from the publick treasury to a private purse. It is not into secret negociations for war, peace, or alliance, that the house of commons is forbidden to enquire. It is a matter of account; it is a pecuniary transac tion; it is the demand of a suspected steward upon ruined tenants and an embarrassed master, that the commons of Great Britain are commanded not to inspect. The whole tenour of the right honourable gentleman's argument is consonant to the nature of his policy. The system of conceal ment is fostered by a system of falsehood. False facts, false colours, false names of persons and things, are its whole support.

Sir, I mean to follow the right honourable gentleman over that field of deception, clearing what he has purposely obscured, and fairly stating what it was necessary for him to misrepresent. For the purpose, it is necessary you should know, w some degree of distinctness, a little of the locality, the nature, the circumstances, the magnitude of the pretended debts on which-this marvellous do nation is founded, as well as of the persons fr whom and by whom it is claimed.

Madras, with its dependencies, is the second (but with a long interval, the second) member the British empire in the east. The trade of th city, and of the adjacent territory, was, not ver long ago, among the most flourishing in Asia. Ba since the establishment of the British power, it wasted away under an uniform gradual decl insomuch that in the year 1779 not one mercha of eminence was to be found in the whole COLLtry.+ During this period of decay, about six br

It is to draw your attention to economy of quite another order, it is to animadvert on offences of a far different description, that my honourable friend has brought before you the motion of this day. It is to perpetuate the abuses which are subverting the fabrick of your empire, that the motion is opposed. It is therefore with reason (and if he has power to carry himself through, I commend his prudence) that the right honourable gentleman makes his stand at the very outset; and boldly refuses all parliamentary information. Let him admit but one step towards enquiry, and he is undone. You must be ignorant, or he cannot be safe. But before his curtain is let down, and the shades of eternal night shall veil our eastern dominions from our view, permit me, Sir, to avail myself of the means which were furnished in anxious and inquisitive times, to demonstrate out of this single act of the present minister, what advan-dred thousand sterling pounds a year have be tage you are to derive from permitting the greatest concern of this nation to be separated from the cognizance, and exempted even out of the competence, of parliament. The greatest body of your revenue, your most numerous armies, your most important commerce, the richest sources of your publick credit, (contrary to every idea of the known, settled policy of England,) are on the point of being converted into a mystery of state. You are going to have one half of the globe hid even from the common liberal curiosity of an English gentleman. Here a grand revolution commences. Mark the period, and mark the circumstances. In most of the capital changes that are recorded in the principles and system of any government, a publick benefit of some kind or other has been pretended. The revolution commenced in something plausible; in something which carried the appearance at least of punishment of delinquency, or correction of abuse. But here, in the very moment of the conversion of a department of British government into an Indian mystery, and in the very act in which the change commences, a corrupt, private interest is set up in direct opposition to the necessities of the nation. A diversion is

The whole of the net Irish hereditary revenue is, on a medium of the last seven years, about 330,000l. yearly. The revenues of all denominations fall short more than 150,000. yearly of the charges. On the present produce, if Mr. Pitt's scheme was to

drawn off by English gentlemen on their priva
account, by the way of China alone. If we s
four hundred thousand as probably rem
through other channels, and in other meds
that is, in jewels, gold, and silver, directly bro
to Europe, and in bills upon the British and
reign companies, you will scarcely think the man
over-rated. If we fix the commencement of t
extraction of money from the Carnatick at a pers
no earlier than the year 1760, and close it in
year 1780, it probably will not amount to a
deal less than twenty millions of money.

During the deep, silent flow of this steady str of wealth, which set from India into Europ generally passed on with no adequate observatio but happening at some periods to meet n rocks that checked its course, it grew mon and attracted more notice. The pecuniary dr sions caused by an accumulation of part fortunes of their servants in a debt from the na « of Arcot, was the first thing which very particu'." called for, and long engaged, the attention o court of directors. This debt amounted to es hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling, a was claimed, for the greater part, by English

tlemen, residing at Madras. This grand capital, | tion, possessed of no lucrative offices, without the settled at length by order at 10 per cent. afforded an annuity of eighty-eight thousand pounds.* Whilst the directors were digesting their astonishment at this information, a memorial was presented to them from three gentlemen, informing them that their friends had lent likewise, to merchants of Canton in China, a sum of not more than one million sterling. In this memorial they called upon the company for their assistance and interposition with the Chinese government for the recovery of the debt. This sum lent to Chinese merchants, was at 24 per cent. which would yield, if paid, an annuity of two hundred and forty thousand pounds. +

Perplexed as the directors were with these demands, you may conceive, Sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed by beng made acquainted that they must again exert heir influence for a new reserve of the happy parimony of their servants, collected into a second lebt from the nabob of Arcot, amounting to two nillions four hundred thousand pounds, settled at in interest of 12 per cent. This is known by the tame of the Consolidation of 1777, as the former of the nabob's debts was by the title of the Conolidation of 1767. To this was added, in a sepaate parcel, a little reserve called the Cavalry debt, f one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, at the ame interest. The whole of these four capitals, mounting to four millions four hundred and forty housand pounds, produced at their several rates, nnuities amounting to six hundred and twentyree thousand pounds a year; a good deal more an one-third of the clear land-tax of England, t four shillings in the pound; a good deal ore than double the whole annual dividend of the Cast-India company, the nominal masters of the roprietors in these funds. Of this interest, three undred and eighty-three thousand two hundred ounds a year stood chargeable on the publick venues of the Carnatick.

|

command of armies, or the known administration of revenues, without profession of any kind, without any sort of trade sufficient to employ a pedlar, could have, in a few years, (as to some, even in a few months,) amassed treasures equal to the revenues of a respectable kingdom? Was it not enough to put these gentlemen, in the noviciate of their administration, on their guard, and to call upon them for a strict enquiry (if not to justify them in a reprobation of those demands without any enquiry at all) that when all England, Scotland, and Ireland, had for years been witness to the immense sums laid out by the servants of the company in stocks of all denominations, in the purchase of lands, in the buying and building of houses, in the securing quiet seats in parliament, or in the tumultuous riot of contested elections, in wandering throughout the whole range of those variegated modes of inventive prodigality, which sometimes have excited our wonder, sometimes roused our indignation: that after all, India was four millions still in debt to them? India in debt to them! For what? Every debt for which an equivalent of some kind or other is not given, is, on the face of it, a fraud. What is the equivalent they have given? What equivalent had they to give? What are the articles of commerce, or the branches of manufacture, which those gentlemen have carried hence to enrich India? What are the sciences they beamed out to enlighten it? What are the arts they introduced to cheer and to adorn it? What are the religious, what the moral institutions they have taught among that people as a guide to life, or as a consolation when life is to be no more, that there is an eternal debt, a debt "still paying "still to owe," which must be bound on the present generation in India, and entailed on their mortgaged posterity for ever? A debt of millions, in favour of a set of men, whose names, with few exceptions, are either buried in the obscurity of their origin and talents, or dragged into light by the enormity of their crimes?

Sir, at this moment, it will not be necessary to onsider the various operations which the capital In my opinion the courage of the minister was nd interest of this debt have successively under- the most wonderful part of the transaction, espeone. I shall speak to these operations when I cially as he must have read, or rather, the right ome particularly to answer the right honourable honourable gentleman says, he has read for him, entleman on each of the heads, as he has thought whole volumes upon the subject. The volumes, by roper to divide them. But this was the exact the way, are not by one tenth part so numerous as iew in which these debts first appeared to the the right honourable gentleman has thought propurt of directors, and to the world. It varied per to pretend, in order to frighten you from enfterwards. But it never appeared in any other quiry; but in these volumes, such as they are, the han a most questionable shape. When this gigan- minister must have found a full authority for a susrk phantom of debt first appeared before a young picion (at the very least) of every thing relative to inister, it naturally would have justified some de- the great fortunes made at Madras. What is that Tee of doubt and apprehension. Such a prodigy authority? Why no other than the standing auould have filled any common man with supersti-thority for all the claims which the ministry has ous fears. He would exorcise that shapeless, namess form, and by every thing sacred would have jured it to tell by what means a small number f slight individuals, of no consequence or situa

Fourth report, Mr. Dundas's committee, p. 4.

thought fit to provide for-the grand debtor-the nabob of Arcot himself. Hear that prince, in the letter written to the court of directors, at the precise period, whilst the main body of these debts

that more had been given. The above is the account which

A witness examined before the committee of secresy says, Mr. B. received. at eighteen per cent. was the usual interest; but he had heard

were contracting. In his letter he states himself | Benfield and his associates as creditors, I am sure

So far from being previously apprized of the transaction from its origin, it was two years before the court of directors obtained any official intelli-vating their crimes, they add, "we order and direct gence of it." The dealings of the servants with "that you do examine, in the most impartial "the nabob were concealed from the first, until manner, all the above-mentioned transactions; "they were found out," (says Mr. Sayer, the "and that you punish by suspension, degradation, company's counsel,)" by the report of the coun- "dismission, or otherwise, as to you shall seem "try." The presidency, however, at last thought proper to send an official account. On this the directors tell them, "to your great reproach it has been concealed from us. We cannot but sus"pect this debt to have had its weight in your pro"posed aggrandizement of Mahomed Ali [the "nabob of Arcot]; but whether it has or has not, "certain it is you are guilty of an high breach of "duty in concealing it from us."