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Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of
12)

Author: Edmund Burke

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE EDMUND BURKE, VOL. 03 (OF 12) ***

THE WORKS

OF

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

EDMUND BURKE
IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME THE THIRD

London

JOHN C. NIMMO

14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.

MDCCCLXXXVII

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS,
February 28, 1785; with an Appendix 1
SUBSTANCE OF SPEECH ON THE ARMY
ESTIMATES, February 9, 1790 211
REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE
231

SPEECH

ON THE

MOTION MADE FOR PAPERS

RELATIVE TO THE

DIRECTIONS FOR CHARGING THE NABOB
OF ARCOT'S PRIVATE DEBTS TO
EUROPEANS ON THE REVENUES OF THE
CARNATIC,

FEBRUARY 28, 1785.

WITH AN APPENDIX,

CONTAINING SEVERAL DOCUMENTS.

Ἐνταῦθα τί πράττειν ἐχρῆν ἄνδρα τῶν Πλάτωνος καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους
ζηλωτὴν δογμάτων; ἆρα περιορᾶν ἀνθρώπους ἀθλίους τοῖς κλέπταις
ἐκδιδομένους, ἢ κατὰ δύναμιν αὐτοῖς ἀμύνειν, οἶμαι ὡς ἤδη τὸ
κύκνειον; ἐξᾴδουσι διὰ τὸ θεμισές ἐργαστήριον τῶν τοιούτων; Ἐμοὶ

μὲν οὖν αἰσχρὸν εἶναι δοκεῖ τοὺς μὲν χιλιάρχους, ὅταν λείπωσι τὴν
τάξιν, καταδικάζειν' ... τὴν δὲ ὑπέρ ἀθλίων ἀνθρώπων ἀπολείπειν
τάξιν, ὅταν δὲῃ πρὸς κλέπτας ἀγωνίζεσθαι τοιούτους, καὶ ταῦτα τοῦ
θεοῦ συμμαχοῦντος ἡμῖν, ὅσπερ οὖν ἔταξεν.

JULIANI Epist. 17.

ADVERTISEMENT.

That the least informed reader of this speech may be enabled to enter fully
into the spirit of the transaction on occasion of which it was delivered, it
may be proper to acquaint him, that, among the princes dependent on this
nation in the southern part of India, the most considerable at present is
commonly known by the title of the Nabob of Arcot.

This prince owed the establishment of his government, against the claims
of his elder brother, as well as those of other competitors, to the arms and
influence of the British East India Company. Being thus established in a
considerable part of the dominions he now possesses, he began, about the
year 1765, to form, at the instigation (as he asserts) of the servants of the
East India Company, a variety of designs for the further extension of his
territories. Some years after, he carried his views to certain objects of
interior arrangement, of a very pernicious nature. None of these designs
could be compassed without the aid of the Company's arms; nor could those
arms be employed consistently with an obedience to the Company's orders.
He was therefore advised to form a more secret, but an equally powerful,
interest among the servants of that Company, and among others both at
home and abroad. By engaging them in his interests, the use of the
Company's power might be obtained without their ostensible authority; the
power might even be employed in defiance of the authority, if the case
should require, as in truth it often did require, a proceeding of that degree of
boldness.

The Company had put him into possession of several great cities and
magnificent castles. The good order of his affairs, his sense of personal
dignity, his ideas of Oriental splendor, and the habits of an Asiatic life, (to
which, being a native of India, and a Mahometan, he had from his infancy
been inured,) would naturally have led him to fix the seat of his government
within his own dominions. Instead of this, he totally sequestered himself
from his country, and, abandoning all appearance of state, he took up his
residence in an ordinary house, which he purchased in the suburbs of the
Company's factory at Madras. In that place he has lived, without removing
one day from thence, for several years past. He has there continued a
constant cabal with the Company's servants, from the highest to the lowest,
—creating, out of the ruins of the country, brilliant fortunes for those who
will, and entirely destroying those who will not, be subservient to his
purposes.

An opinion prevailed, strongly confirmed by several passages in his own
letters, as well as by a combination of circumstances forming a body of
evidence which cannot be resisted, that very great sums have been by him
distributed, through a long course of years, to some of the Company's
servants. Besides these presumed payments in ready money, (of which,
from the nature of the thing, the direct proof is very difficult,) debts have at
several periods been acknowledged to those gentlemen, to an immense
amount,—that is, to some millions of sterling money. There is strong reason
to suspect that the body of these debts is wholly fictitious, and was never
created by money bonâ fide lent. But even on a supposition that this vast
sum was really advanced, it was impossible that the very reality of such an
astonishing transaction should not cause some degree of alarm and incite to
some sort of inquiry.

It was not at all seemly, at a moment when the Company itself was so
distressed as to require a suspension, by act of Parliament, of the payment

of bills drawn on them from India,—and also a direct tax upon every house
in England, in order to facilitate the vent of their goods, and to avoid instant
insolvency,—at that very moment, that their servants should appear in so
flourishing a condition, as, besides ten millions of other demands on their
masters, to be entitled to claim a debt of three or four millions more from
the territorial revenue of one of their dependent princes.

The ostensible pecuniary transactions of the Nabob of Arcot with very
private persons are so enormous, that they evidently set aside every
pretence of policy which might induce a prudent government in some
instances to wink at ordinary loose practice in ill-managed departments. No
caution could be too great in handling this matter, no scrutiny too exact. It
was evidently the interest, and as evidently at least in the power, of the
creditors, by admitting secret participation in this dark and undefined
concern, to spread corruption to the greatest and the most alarming extent.

These facts relative to the debts were so notorious, the opinion of their
being a principal source of the disorders of the British government in India
was so undisputed and universal, that there was no party, no description of
men in Parliament, who did not think themselves bound, if not in honor and
conscience, at least in common decency, to institute a vigorous inquiry into
the very bottom of the business, before they admitted any part of that vast
and suspicious charge to be laid upon an exhausted country. Every plan
concurred in directing such an inquiry, in order that whatever was
discovered to be corrupt, fraudulent, or oppressive should lead to a due
animadversion on the offenders, and, if anything fair and equitable in its
origin should be found, (nobody suspected that much, comparatively
speaking, would be so found,) it might be provided for,—in due
subordination, however, to the ease of the subject and the service of the
state.

These were the alleged grounds for an inquiry, settled in all the bills
brought into Parliament relative to India,—and there were, I think, no less
than four of them. By the bill commonly called Mr. Pitt's bill, the inquiry
was specially, and by express words, committed to the Court of Directors,
without any reserve for the interference of any other person or persons
whatsoever. It was ordered that they should make the inquiry into the origin
and justice of these debts, as far as the materials in their possession enabled
them to proceed; and where they found those materials deficient, they
should order the Presidency of Fort St. George (Madras) to complete the
inquiry.

The Court of Directors applied themselves to the execution of the trust
reposed in them. They first examined into the amount of the debt, which
they computed, at compound interest, to be 2,945,600l. sterling. Whether
their mode of computation, either of the original sums or the amount on
compound interest, was exact, that is, whether they took the interest too
high or the several capitals too low, is not material. On whatever principle
any of the calculations were made up, none of them found the debt to differ
from the recital of the act, which asserted that the sums claimed were "very
large." The last head of these debts the Directors compute at 2,465,680l.
sterling. Of the existence of this debt the Directors heard nothing until
1776, and they say, that, "although they had repeatedly written to the Nabob
of Arcot, and to their servants, respecting the debt, yet they had never been
able to trace the origin thereof, or to obtain any satisfactory information on
the subject."

The Court of Directors, after stating the circumstances under which the
debts appeared to them to have been contracted, add as follows:—"For
these reasons we should have thought it our duty to inquire very minutely
into those debts, even if the act of Parliament had been silent on the subject,
before we concurred in any measure for their payment. But with the

positive injunctions of the act before us to examine into their nature and
origin, we are indispensably bound to direct such an inquiry to be
instituted." They then order the President and Council of Madras to enter
into a full examination, &c., &c.

The Directors, having drawn up their order to the Presidency on these
principles, communicated the draught of the general letter in which those
orders were contained to the board of his Majesty's ministers, and other
servants lately constituted by Mr. Pitt's East India Act. These ministers, who
had just carried through Parliament the bill ordering a specific inquiry,
immediately drew up another letter, on a principle directly opposite to that
which was prescribed by the act of Parliament and followed by the
Directors. In these second orders, all idea of an inquiry into the justice and
origin of the pretended debts, particularly of the last, the greatest, and the
most obnoxious to suspicion, is abandoned. They are all admitted and
established without any investigation whatsoever, (except some private
conference with the agents of the claimants is to pass for an investigation,)
and a fund for their discharge is assigned and set apart out of the revenues
of the Carnatic. To this arrangement in favor of their servants, servants
suspected of corruption and convicted of disobedience, the Directors of the
East India Company were ordered to set their hands, asserting it to arise
from their own conviction and opinion, in flat contradiction to their
recorded sentiments, their strong remonstrance, and their declared sense of
their duty, as well under their general trust and their oath as Directors, as
under the express injunctions of an act of Parliament.

The principles upon which this summary proceeding was adopted by the
ministerial board are stated by themselves in a number in the appendix to
this speech.

By another section of the same act, the same Court of Directors were
ordered to take into consideration and to decide on the indeterminate rights
of the Rajah of Tanjore and the Nabob of Arcot; and in this, as in the former
case, no power of appeal, revision, or alteration was reserved to any other. It
was a jurisdiction, in a cause between party and party, given to the Court of
Directors specifically. It was known that the territories of the former of
these princes had been twice invaded and pillaged, and the prince deposed
and imprisoned, by the Company's servants, influenced by the intrigues of
the latter, and for the purpose of paying his pretended debts. The Company
had, in the year 1775, ordered a restoration of the Rajah to his government,
under certain conditions. The Rajah complained, that his territories had not
been completely restored to him, and that no part of his goods, money,
revenues, or records, unjustly taken and withheld from him, were ever
returned. The Nabob, on the other hand, never ceased to claim the country
itself, and carried on a continued train of negotiation, that it should again be
given up to him, in violation of the Company's public faith.

The Directors, in obedience to this part of the act, ordered an inquiry, and
came to a determination to restore certain of his territories to the Rajah. The
ministers, proceeding as in the former case, without hearing any party,
rescinded the decision of the Directors, refused the restitution of the
territory, and, without regard to the condition of the country of Tanjore,
which had been within a few years four times plundered, (twice by the
Nabob of Arcot, and twice by enemies brought upon it solely by the politics
of the same Nabob, the declared enemy of that people,) and without
discounting a shilling for their sufferings, they accumulate an arrear of
about four hundred thousand pounds of pretended tribute to this enemy; and
then they order the Directors to put their hands to a new adjudication,
directly contrary to a judgment in a judicial character and trust solemnly
given by them and entered on their records.

These proceedings naturally called for some inquiry. On the 28th of
February, 1785, Mr. Fox made the following motion in the House of
Commons, after moving that the clauses of the act should be read:—"That
the proper officer do lay before this House copies or extracts of all letters
and orders of the Court of Directors of the United East India Company, in
pursuance of the injunctions contained in the 37th and 38th clauses of the
said act"; and the question being put, it passed in the negative by a very
great majority.

The last speech in the debate was the following; which is given to the
public, not as being more worthy of its attention than others, (some of
which were of consummate ability,) but as entering more into the detail of
the subject.

SPEECH.

The times we live in, Mr. Speaker, have been distinguished by extraordinary
events. Habituated, however, as we are, to uncommon combinations of men
and of affairs, I believe nobody recollects anything more surprising than the
spectacle of this day. The right honorable gentleman[1] whose conduct is
now in question formerly stood forth in this House, the prosecutor of the
worthy baronet[2] who spoke after him. He charged him with several
grievous acts of malversation in office, with abuses of a public trust of a
great and heinous nature. In less than two years we see the situation of the
parties reversed; and a singular revolution puts the worthy baronet in a fair
way of returning the prosecution in a recriminatory bill of pains and
penalties, grounded on a breach of public trust relative to the government of
the very same part of India. If he should undertake a bill of that kind, he
will find no difficulty in conducting it with a degree of skill and vigor fully
equal to all that have been exerted against him.

But the change of relation between these two gentlemen is not so striking
as the total difference of their deportment under the same unhappy
circumstances. Whatever the merits of the worthy baronet's defence might
have been, he did not shrink from the charge. He met it with manliness of
spirit and decency of behavior. What would have been thought of him, if he
had held the present language of his old accuser? When articles were
exhibited against him by that right honorable gentleman, he did not think
proper to tell the House that we ought to institute no inquiry, to inspect no
paper, to examine no witness. He did not tell us (what at that time he might
have told us with some show of reason) that our concerns in India were

matters of delicacy, that to divulge anything relative to them would be
mischievous to the state. He did not tell us that those who would inquire
into his proceedings were disposed to dismember the empire. He had not
the presumption to say, that, for his part, having obtained, in his Indian
presidency, the ultimate object of his ambition, his honor was concerned in
executing with integrity the trust which had been legally committed to his
charge: that others, not having been so fortunate, could not be so
disinterested; and therefore their accusations could spring from no other
source than faction, and envy to his fortune.

Had he been frontless enough to hold such vain, vaporing language in the
face of a grave, a detailed, a specified matter of accusation, whilst he
violently resisted everything which could bring the merits of his cause to
the test,—had he been wild enough to anticipate the absurdities of this day,
—that is, had he inferred, as his late accuser has thought proper to do, that
he could not have been guilty of malversation in office, for this sole and
curious reason, that he had been in office,—had he argued the impossibility
of his abusing his power on this sole principle, that he had power to abuse,
—he would have left but one impression on the mind of every man who
heard him, and who believed him in his senses: that in the utmost extent he
was guilty of the charge.

But, Sir, leaving these two gentlemen to alternate as criminal and accuser
upon what principles they think expedient, it is for us to consider whether
the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasurer of the Navy, acting as a
Board of Control, are justified by law or policy in suspending the legal
arrangements made by the Court of Directors, in order to transfer the public
revenues to the private emolument of certain servants of the East India
Company, without the inquiry into the origin and justice of their claims
prescribed by an act of Parliament.

It is not contended that the act of Parliament did not expressly ordain an
inquiry. It is not asserted that this inquiry was not, with equal precision of
terms, specially committed, under particular regulations, to the Court of
Directors. I conceive, therefore, the Board of Control had no right
whatsoever to intermeddle in that business. There is nothing certain in the
principles of jurisprudence, if this be not undeniably true, that when, a
special authority is given to any persons by name to do some particular act,
that no others, by virtue of general powers, can obtain a legal title to intrude
themselves into that trust, and to exercise those special functions in their
place. I therefore consider the intermeddling of ministers in this affair as a
downright usurpation. But if the strained construction by which they have
forced themselves into a suspicious office (which every man delicate with
regard to character would rather have sought constructions to avoid) were
perfectly sound and perfectly legal, of this I am certain, that they cannot be
justified in declining the inquiry which had been prescribed to the Court of
Directors. If the Board of Control did lawfully possess the right of
executing the special trust given to that court, they must take it as they
found it, subject to the very same regulations which bound the Court of
Directors. It will be allowed that the Court of Directors had no authority to
dispense with either the substance or the mode of inquiry prescribed by the
act of Parliament. If they had not, where in the act did the Board of Control
acquire that capacity? Indeed, it was impossible they should acquire it.
What must we think of the fabric and texture of an act of Parliament which
should find it necessary to prescribe a strict inquisition, that should descend
into minute regulations for the conduct of that inquisition, that should
commit this trust to a particular description of men, and in the very same
breath should enable another body, at their own pleasure, to supersede all
the provisions the legislature had made, and to defeat the whole purpose,
end, and object of the law? This cannot be supposed even of an act of

Parliament conceived by the ministers themselves, and brought forth during
the delirium of the last session.

My honorable friend has told you in the speech which introduced his
motion, that fortunately this question is not a great deal involved in the
labyrinths of Indian detail. Certainly not. But if it were, I beg leave to
assure you that there is nothing in the Indian detail which is more difficult
than in the detail of any other business. I admit, because I have some
experience of the fact, that for the interior regulation of India a minute
knowledge of India is requisite. But on any specific matter of delinquency
in its government you are as capable of judging as if the same thing were
done at your door. Fraud, injustice, oppression, peculation, engendered in
India, are crimes of the same blood, family, and cast with those that are
born and bred in England. To go no farther than the case before us: you are
just as competent to judge whether the sum of four millions sterling ought
or ought not to be passed from the public treasury into a private pocket
without any title except the claim of the parties, when the issue of fact is
laid in Madras, as when it is laid in Westminster. Terms of art, indeed, are
different in different places; but they are generally understood in none. The
technical style of an Indian treasury is not one jot more remote than the
jargon of our own Exchequer from the train of our ordinary ideas or the
idiom of our common language. The difference, therefore, in the two cases
is not in the comparative difficulty or facility of the two subjects, but in our
attention to the one and our total neglect of the other. Had this attention and
neglect been regulated by the value of the several objects, there would be
nothing to complain of. 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 politics, 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 brier at our
nose of greater magnitude than an oak at five hundred yards' distance.

I think I can trace all the calamities of this country to the single source of
our not having had steadily before our eyes a general, comprehensive, well-
connected, and well-proportioned view of the whole of our dominions, and
a just sense of their true bearings and relations. After all its reductions, the
British empire is still vast and various. After all the reductions of the House
of Commons, (stripped as we are of our brightest ornaments and of our
most important privileges,) enough are yet left to furnish us, if we please,
with means of showing to the world that we deserve the superintendence of
as large an empire as this kingdom ever held, and the continuance of as
ample privileges as the House of Commons, in the plenitude of its power,
had been habituated to assert. But if we make ourselves too little for the
sphere of our duty, if, on the contrary, we do not stretch and expand our
minds to the compass of their object, be well assured that everything about
us will dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to the
dimensions of our minds. It is not a predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred
cares that will avert the consequences of a false estimation of our interest,
or prevent the shameful dilapidation into which a great empire must fall by
mean reparations upon mighty ruins.

I confess I feel a degree of disgust, almost leading to despair, at the
manner in which we are acting in the great exigencies of our country. There
is now a bill in this House appointing a rigid inquisition into the minutest
detail of our offices at home. The collection of sixteen millions annually, a
collection on which the public greatness, safety, and credit have their
reliance, the whole order of criminal jurisprudence, which holds together
society itself, have at no time obliged us to call forth such powers,—no, nor
anything like them. There is not a principle of the law and Constitution of
this country that is not subverted to favor the execution of that project.[3]

And for what is all this apparatus of bustle and terror? Is it because
anything substantial is expected from it? No. The stir and bustle itself is the
end proposed. The eye-servants of a short-sighted master will employ
themselves, not on what is most essential to his affairs, but on what is
nearest to his ken. Great difficulties have given a just value to economy;
and our minister of the day must be an economist, whatever it may cost us.
But where is he to exert his talents? At home, to be sure; for where else can
he obtain a 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 public 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 penury; that something shall be laid in store from the short
allowance of revenue-officers overloaded with duty and famished for want
of bread,—by a reduction from officers who are at this very hour ready to
batter the Treasury with what breaks through stone walls for an increase of
their appointments. From the marrowless bones of these skeleton
establishments, by the use of every sort of cutting and of every sort of
fretting tool, he flatters himself that he may chip and rasp an empirical
alimentary powder, to diet into some similitude of health and substance the
languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation.

Whilst he is thus employed according to his policy and to his taste, he has
not leisure to inquire 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 public 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 public 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 heartburning 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 systematic 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 stooping to pick up chaff and straws, he recovers himself at an
elastic bound, and with a broadcast 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.[4]

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.

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 honorable
friend has brought before you the motion of this day. It is to perpetuate the
abuses which are subverting the fabric 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 honorable gentleman
makes his stand at the very outset, and boldly refuses all Parliamentary
information. Let him admit but one step towards inquiry, 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 advantages 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 public 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 public 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 made of millions of the public
money from the public treasury to a private purse. It is not into secret
negotiations for war, peace, or alliance that the House of Commons is
forbidden to inquire. It is a matter of account; it is a pecuniary transaction;
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 tenor of the right honorable gentleman's argument is
consonant to the nature of his policy. The system of concealment is fostered
by a system of falsehood. False facts, false colors, false names of persons
and things, are its whole support.

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

Madras, with its dependencies, is the second (but with a long interval, the
second) member of the British empire in the East. The trade of that city, and
of the adjacent territory, was not very long ago among the most flourishing
in Asia. But since the establishment of the British power it has wasted away
under an uniform gradual decline, insomuch that in the year 1779 not one
merchant of eminence was to be found in the whole country.[5] During this
period of decay, about six hundred thousand sterling pounds a year have
been drawn off by English gentlemen on their private account, by the way
of China alone.[6] If we add four hundred thousand, as probably remitted
through other channels, and in other mediums, that is, in jewels, gold, and
silver, directly brought to Europe, and in bills upon the British and foreign
companies, you will scarcely think the matter overrated. If we fix the

commencement of this extraction of money from the Carnatic at a period no
earlier than the year 1760, and close it in the year 1780, it probably will not
amount to a great deal less than twenty millions of money.

During the deep, silent flow of this steady stream of wealth which set
from India into Europe, it generally passed on with no adequate
observation; but happening at some periods to meet rifts of rocks that
checked its course, it grew more noisy and attracted more notice. The
pecuniary discussions caused by an accumulation of part of the fortunes of
their servants in a debt from the Nabob of Arcot was the first thing which
very particularly called for, and long engaged, the attention of the Court of
Directors. This debt amounted to eight hundred and eighty thousand pounds
sterling, and was claimed, for the greater part, by English gentlemen
residing at Madras. This grand capital, settled at length by order at ten per
cent, afforded an annuity of eighty-eight thousand pounds.[7]

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 twenty-four per cent, which would yield, if paid, an
annuity of two hundred and forty thousand pounds.[8]

Perplexed as the Directors were with these demands, you may conceive,
Sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed by being
made acquainted that they must again exert their influence for a new
reserve of the happy parsimony of their servants, collected into a second
debt from the Nabob of Arcot, amounting to two millions four hundred
thousand pounds, settled at an interest of twelve per cent. This is known by

the name of the Consolidation of 1777, as the former of the Nabob's debts
was by the title of the Consolidation of 1767. To this was added, in a
separate parcel, a little reserve, called the Cavalry Debt, of one hundred and
sixty thousand pounds, at the same interest. The whole of these four
capitals, amounting to four millions four hundred and forty thousand
pounds, produced at their several rates, annuities amounting to six hundred
and twenty-three thousand pounds a year: a good deal more than one third
of the clear land-tax of England, at four shillings in the pound; a good deal
more than double the whole annual dividend of the East India Company, the
nominal masters to the proprietors in these funds. Of this interest, three
hundred and eighty-three thousand two hundred pounds a year stood
chargeable on the public revenues of the Carnatic.

Sir, at this moment, it will not be necessary to consider the various
operations which the capital and interest of this debt have successively
undergone. I shall speak to these operations when I come particularly to
answer the right honorable gentleman on each of the heads, as he has
thought proper to divide them. But this was the exact view in which these
debts first appeared to the Court of Directors, and to the world. It varied
afterwards. But it never appeared in any other than a most questionable
shape. When this gigantic phantom of debt first appeared before a young
minister, it naturally would have justified some degree of doubt and
apprehension. Such a prodigy would have filled any common man with
superstitious fears. He would exorcise that shapeless, nameless form, and
by everything sacred would have adjured it to tell by what means a small
number of slight individuals, of no consequence or situation, possessed of
no lucrative offices, without the command of armies or the known
administration of revenues, without profession of any kind, without any sort
of trade sufficient to employ a peddler, 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

novitiate of their administration, on their guard, and to call upon them for a
strict inquiry, (if not to justify them in a reprobation of those demands
without any inquiry 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 forever? A debt of millions, in favor 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!

In my opinion the courage of the minister was the most wonderful part of
the transaction, especially as he must have read, or rather the right
honorable gentleman says he has read for him, whole volumes upon the
subject. The volumes, by the way, are not by one tenth part so numerous as
the right honorable gentleman has thought proper to pretend, in order to
frighten you from inquiry; but in these volumes, such as they are, the
minister must have found a full authority for a suspicion (at the very least)

of everything relative to the great fortunes made at Madras. What is that
authority? Why, no other than the standing authority for all the claims
which the ministry has 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 were
contracting. In his letter he states himself to be, what undoubtedly he is, a
most competent witness to this point. After speaking of the war with Hyder
Ali in 1768 and 1769, and of other measures which he censures, (whether
right or wrong it signifies nothing,) and into which he says he had been led
by the Company's servants, he proceeds in this manner:—"If all these things
were against the real interests of the Company, they are ten thousand times
more against mine, and against the prosperity of my country and the
happiness of my people; for your interests and mine are the same. What
were they owing to, then? To the private views of a few individuals, who
have enriched themselves at the expense of your influence and of my
country: for your servants HAVE NO TRADE IN THIS COUNTRY, neither
do you pay them high wages; yet in a few years they return to England with
many lacs of pagodas. How can you or I account for such immense fortunes
acquired in so short a time, without any visible means of getting them?"

When he asked this question, which involves its answer, it is
extraordinary that curiosity did not prompt the Chancellor of the Exchequer
to that inquiry which might come in vain recommended to him by his own
act of Parliament. Does not the Nabob of Arcot tell us, in so many words,
that there was no fair way of making the enormous sums sent by the
Company's servants to England? And do you imagine that there was or
could be more honesty and good faith in the demands for what remained
behind in India? Of what nature were the transactions with himself? If you
follow the train of his information, you must see, that, if these great sums
were at all lent, it was not property, but spoil, that was lent; if not lent, the
transaction was not a contract, but a fraud. Either way, if light enough could

not be furnished to authorize a full condemnation of these demands, they
ought to have been left to the parties, who best knew and understood each
other's proceedings. It was not necessary that the authority of government
should interpose in favor of claims whose very foundation was a defiance
of that authority, and whose object and end was its entire subversion.

It may be said that this letter was written by the Nabob of Arcot in a
moody humor, under the influence of some chagrin. Certainly it was; but it
is in such humors that truth comes out. And when he tells you, from his own
knowledge, what every one must presume, from the extreme probability of
the thing, whether he told it or not, one such testimony is worth a thousand
that contradict that probability, when the parties have a better understanding
with each other, and when they have a point to carry that may unite them in
a common deceit.

If this body of private claims of debt, real or devised, were a question, as
it is falsely pretended, between the Nabob of Arcot, as debtor, and Paul
Benfield and his associates, as creditors, I am sure I should give myself but
little trouble about it. If the hoards of oppression were the fund for
satisfying the claims of bribery and peculation, who would wish to interfere
between such litigants? If the demands were confined to what might be
drawn from the treasures which the Company's records uniformly assert
that the Nabob is in possession of, or if he had mines of gold or silver or
diamonds, (as we know that he has none,) these gentlemen might break
open his hoards or dig in his mines without any disturbance from me. But
the gentlemen on the other side of the House know as well as I do, and they
dare not contradict me, that the Nabob of Arcot and his creditors are not
adversaries, but collusive parties, and that the whole transaction is under a
false color and false names. The litigation is not, nor ever has been, between
their rapacity and his hoarded riches. No: it is between him and them
combining and confederating, on one side, and the public revenues, and the

miserable inhabitants of a ruined country, on the other. These are the real
plaintiffs and the real defendants in the suit. Refusing a shilling from his
hoards for the satisfaction of any demand, the Nabob of Arcot is always
ready, nay, he earnestly, and with eagerness and passion, contends for
delivering up to these pretended creditors his territory and his subjects. It is,
therefore, not from treasuries and mines, but from the food of your unpaid
armies, from the blood withheld from the veins and whipped out of the
backs of the most miserable of men, that we are to pamper extortion, usury,
and peculation, under the false names of debtors and creditors of state.

The great patron of these creditors, (to whose honor they ought to erect
statues,) the right honorable gentleman,[9] in stating the merits which
recommended them to his favor, has ranked them under three grand
divisions. The first, the creditors of 1767; then the creditors of the cavalry
loan; and lastly, the creditors of the loan in 1777. Let us examine them, one
by one, as they pass in review before us.

The first of these loans, that of 1767, he insists, has an indisputable claim
upon the public justice. The creditors, he affirms, lent their money publicly;
they advanced it with the express knowledge and approbation of the
Company; and it was contracted at the moderate interest of ten per cent. In
this loan, the demand is, according to him, not only just, but meritorious in
a very high degree: and one would be inclined to believe he thought so,
because he has put it last in the provision he has made for these claims.

I readily admit this debt to stand the fairest of the whole; for, whatever
may be my suspicions concerning a part of it, I can convict it of nothing
worse than the most enormous usury. But I can convict, upon the spot, the
right honorable gentleman of the most daring misrepresentation in every
one fact, without any exception, that he has alleged in defence of this loan,
and of his own conduct with regard to it. I will show you that this debt was

never contracted with the knowledge of the Company; that it had not their
approbation; that they received the first intelligence of it with the utmost
possible surprise, indignation, and alarm.

So for from being previously apprised of the transaction from its origin, it
was two years before the Court of Directors obtained any official
intelligence of it. "The dealings of the servants with the Nabob were
concealed from the first, until they were found out" (says Mr. Sayer, the
Company's counsel) "by the report of the country." 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 suspect this debt to have had its weight in your proposed
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."

These expressions, concerning the ground of the transaction, its effect,
and its clandestine nature, are in the letters bearing date March 17, 1769.
After receiving a more full account, on the 23d March, 1770, they state, that
"Messrs. John Pybus, John Call, and James Bourchier, as trustees for
themselves and others of the Nabob's private creditors, had proved a deed of
assignment upon the Nabob and his son of FIFTEEN districts of the
Nabob's country, the revenues of which yielded, in time of peace, eight lacs
of pagodas [320,000l. sterling] annually; and likewise an assignment of the
yearly tribute paid the Nabob from the Rajah of Tanjore, amounting to four
lacs of rupees [40,000l.]." The territorial revenue at that time possessed by
these gentlemen, without the knowledge or consent of their masters,
amounted to three hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling annually.
They were making rapid strides to the entire possession of the country,
when the Directors, whom the right honorable gentleman states as having
authorized these proceedings, were kept in such profound ignorance of this

royal acquisition of territorial revenue by their servants, that in the same
letter they say, "This assignment was obtained by three of the members of
your board in January, 1767; yet we do not find the least trace of it upon
your Consultations until August, 1768, nor do any of your letters to us
afford any information relative to such transactions till the 1st of November,
1768. By your last letters of the 8th of May, 1769, you bring the whole
proceedings to light in one view."

As to the previous knowledge of the Company, and its sanction to the
debts, you see that this assertion of that knowledge is utterly unfounded.
But did the Directors approve of it, and ratify the transaction, when it was
known? The very reverse. On the same 3d of March, the Directors declare,
"upon an impartial examination of the whole conduct of our late Governor
and Council of Fort George [Madras], and on the fullest consideration, that
the said Governor and Council have, in notorious violation of the trust
reposed in them, manifestly preferred the interest of private individuals to
that of the Company, in permitting the assignment of the revenues of certain
valuable districts, to a very large amount, from the Nabob to individuals";
and then, highly aggravating their crimes, they add,—"We order and direct
that you do examine, in the most impartial manner, all the above-mentioned
transactions, and that you punish, by suspension, degradation, dismission,
or otherwise, as to you shall seem meet, all and every such servant or
servants of the Company who may by you be found guilty of any of the
above offences." "We had" (say the Directors) "the mortification to find that
the servants of the Company, who had been raised, supported, and owed
their present opulence to the advantages gained in such service, have in this
instance most unfaithfully betrayed their trust, abandoned the Company's
interest, and prostituted its influence to accomplish the purposes of
individuals, whilst the interest of the Company is almost wholly neglected,
and payment to us rendered extremely precarious." Here, then, is the rock
of approbation of the Court of Directors, on which the right honorable

gentleman says this debt was founded. Any member, Mr. Speaker, who
should come into the House, on my reading this sentence of condemnation
of the Court of Directors against their unfaithful servants, might well
imagine that he had heard an harsh, severe, unqualified invective against the
present ministerial Board of Control. So exactly do the proceedings of the
patrons of this abuse tally with those of the actors in it, that the expressions
used in the condemnation of the one may serve for the reprobation of the
other, without the change of a word.

To read you all the expressions of wrath and indignation fulminated in
this dispatch against the meritorious creditors of the right honorable
gentleman, who according to him have been so fully approved by the
Company, would be to read the whole.

The right honorable gentleman, with an address peculiar to himself,
every now and then slides in the Presidency of Madras, as synonymous to
the Company. That the Presidency did approve the debt is certain. But the
right honorable gentleman, as prudent in suppressing as skilful in bringing
forward his matter, has not chosen to tell you that the Presidency were the
very persons guilty of contracting this loan,—creditors themselves, and
agents and trustees for all the other creditors. For this the Court of Directors
accuse them of breach of trust; and for this the right honorable gentleman
considers them as perfectly good authority for those claims. It is pleasant to
hear a gentleman of the law quote the approbation of creditors as an
authority for their own debt.

How they came to contract the debt to themselves, how they came to act
as agents for those whom they ought to have controlled, is for your inquiry.
The policy of this debt was announced to the Court of Directors by the very
persons concerned in creating it. "Till very lately," say the Presidency, "the
Nabob placed his dependence on the Company. Now he has been taught by

ill advisers that an interest out of doors may stand him in good stead. He
has been made to believe that his private creditors have power and interest
to overrule the Court of Directors."[10] The Nabob was not misinformed.
The private creditors instantly qualified a vast number of votes; and having
made themselves masters of the Court of Proprietors, as well as extending a
powerful cabal in other places as important, they so completely overturned
the authority of the Court of Directors at home and abroad, that this poor,
baffled government was soon obliged to lower its tone. It was glad to be
admitted into partnership with its own servants. The Court of Directors,
establishing the debt which they had reprobated as a breach of trust, and
which was planned for the subversion of their authority, settled its payments
on a par with those of the public; and even so were not able to obtain peace,
or even equality in their demands. All the consequences lay in a regular and
irresistible train. By employing their influence for the recovery of this debt,
their orders, issued in the same breath, against creating new debts, only
animated the strong desires of their servants to this prohibited prolific sport,
and it soon produced a swarm of sons and daughters, not in the least
degenerated from the virtue of their parents.

From that moment the authority of the Court of Directors expired in the
Carnatic, and everywhere else. "Every man," says the Presidency, "who
opposes the government and its measures, finds an immediate countenance
from the Nabob; even our discarded officers, however unworthy, are
received into the Nabob's service."[11] It was, indeed, a matter of no
wonderful sagacity to determine whether the Court of Directors, with their
miserable salaries to their servants, of four or five hundred pounds a year, or
the distributor of millions, was most likely to be obeyed. It was an invention
beyond the imagination of all the speculatists of our speculating age, to see
a government quietly settled in one and the same town, composed of two
distinct members: one to pay scantily for obedience, and the other to bribe
high for rebellion and revolt.

The next thing which recommends this particular debt to the right
honorable gentleman is, it seems, the moderate interest of ten per cent. It
would be lost labor to observe on this assertion. The Nabob, in a long
apologetic letter[12] for the transaction between him and the body of the
creditors, states the fact as I shall state it to you. In the accumulation of this
debt, the first interest paid was from thirty to thirty-six per cent; it was then
brought down to twenty-five per cent; at length it was reduced to twenty;
and there it found its rest. During the whole process, as often as any of these
monstrous interests fell into an arrear, (into which they were continually
falling,) the arrear, formed into a new capital,[13] was added to the old, and
the same interest of twenty per cent accrued upon both. The Company,
having got some scent of the enormous usury which prevailed at Madras,
thought it necessary to interfere, and to order all interests to be lowered to
ten per cent. This order, which contained no exception, though it by no
means pointed particularly to this class of debts, came like a thunderclap on
the Nabob. He considered his political credit as ruined; but to find a remedy
to this unexpected evil, he again added to the old principal twenty per cent
interest accruing for the last year. Thus a new fund was formed; and it was
on that accumulation of various principals, and interests heaped upon
interests, not on the sum originally lent, as the right honorable gentleman
would make you believe, that ten per cent was settled on the whole.

When you consider the enormity of the interest at which these debts were
contracted, and the several interests added to the principal, I believe you
will not think me so skeptical, if I should doubt whether for this debt of
880,000l. the Nabob ever saw 100,000l. in real money. The right honorable
gentleman suspecting, with all his absolute dominion over fact, that he
never will be able to defend even this venerable patriarchal job, though
sanctified by its numerous issue, and hoary with prescriptive years, has
recourse to recrimination, the last resource of guilt. He says that this loan of
1767 was provided for in Mr. Fox's India bill; and judging of others by his

own nature and principles, he more than insinuates that this provision was
made, not from any sense of merit in the claim, but from partiality to
General Smith, a proprietor, and an agent for that debt. If partiality could
have had any weight against justice and policy with the then ministers and
their friends, General Smith had titles to it. But the right honorable
gentleman knows as well as I do, that General Smith was very far from
looking on himself as partially treated in the arrangements of that time;
indeed, what man dared to hope for private partiality in that sacred plan for
relief to nations?

It is not necessary that the right honorable gentleman should sarcastically
call that time to our recollection. Well do I remember every circumstance of
that memorable period. God forbid I should forget it! O illustrious disgrace!
O victorious defeat! May your memorial be fresh and new to the latest
generations! May the day of that generous conflict be stamped in characters
never to be cancelled or worn out from the records of time! Let no man hear
of us, who shall not hear, that, in a struggle against the intrigues of courts
and the perfidious levity of the multitude, we fell in the cause of honor, in
the cause of our country, in the cause of human nature itself! But if fortune
should be as powerful over fame as she has been prevalent over virtue, at
least our conscience is beyond her jurisdiction. My poor share in the
support of that great measure no man shall ravish from me. It shall be safely
lodged in the sanctuary of my heart,—never, never to be torn from thence,
but with those holds that grapple it to life.

I say, I well remember that bill, and every one of its honest and its wise
provisions. It is not true that this debt was ever protected or enforced, or
any revenue whatsoever set apart for it. It was left in that bill just where it
stood: to be paid or not to be paid out of the Nabob's private treasures,
according to his own discretion. The Company had actually given it their
sanction, though always relying for its validity on the sole security of the

faith of him[14] who without their knowledge or consent entered into the
original obligation. It had no other sanction; it ought to have had no other.
So far was Mr. Fox's bill from providing funds for it, as this ministry have
wickedly done for this, and for ten times worse transactions, out of the
public estate, that an express clause immediately preceded, positively
forbidding any British subject from receiving assignments upon any part of
the territorial revenue, on any pretence whatsoever.[15]

You recollect, Mr. Speaker, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer 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
skilful a performance, for its own purposes, as ever issued from the wit of
man, premeditating this iniquity,—

Hoc ipsum ut strueret, Trojamque aperiret Achivis,—

expunged this essential clause, broke down the fence which was raised to
cover the public property against the rapacity of his partisans, and thus
levelling every obstruction, he made a firm, broad highway for sin and
death, for usury and oppression, to renew their ravages throughout the
devoted revenues of the Carnatic.

The tenor, the policy, and the consequences of this debt of 1767 are in the
eyes of ministry so excellent, that its merits are irresistible; and it takes the
lead to give credit and countenance to all the rest. Along with this chosen
body of heavy-armed infantry, and to support it in the line, the right
honorable gentleman has stationed his corps of black cavalry. If there be
any advantage between this debt and that of 1769, according to him the
cavalry debt has it. It is not a subject of defence: it is a theme of panegyric.
Listen to the right honorable gentleman, and you will find it was contracted
to save the country,—to prevent mutiny in armies,—to introduce economy

in revenues; and for all these honorable purposes, it originated at the
express desire and by the representative authority of the Company itself.

First let me say a word to the authority. This debt was contracted, not by
the authority of the Company, not by its representatives, (as the right
honorable gentleman has the unparalleled confidence to assert,) but in the
ever-memorable period of 1777, by the usurped power of those who
rebelliously, in conjunction with the Nabob of Arcot, had overturned the
lawful government of Madras. For that rebellion this House unanimously
directed a public prosecution. The delinquents, after they had subverted
government, in order to make to 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 stand recorded, they are in substance 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.[16] The usurping Council say
that they labored hard with their master, the Nabob, to persuade him to
reduce these mutinous and useless troops. He consented; 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 were at hand: that is, private English money-
jobbers offered their assistance. Messieurs Taylor, Majendie, and Call

proposed to advance the small sum of 160,000l. 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, 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 business. But here it is I shall
beg leave to commence my supplement: for the gentleman's discreet
modesty has led him to cut the thread of the story somewhat abruptly. One
of the most essential parties is quite forgotten. Why should the episode of
the poor Nabob be omitted? When that prince chooses it, nobody can tell
his story better. Excuse me, if I apply again to my book, and give it you
from the first hand: from the Nabob himself.

"Mr. Stratton became acquainted with this, and got Mr. Taylor and others
to lend me four lacs of pagodas towards 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 payable in four months. This
astonished me; for I did not know what might happen, when the sepoys
were dismissed from my service. I 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, considering the trifle of interest to Mr.
Taylor and the others as 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.
[17]

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 Messieurs
Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and to pay, besides, a good, smart interest,
legally twelve 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 practised 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 anything. 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 prove 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 160,000l. with an interest of twelve per cent, in
compensation for a lingering payment to the Nabob of 160,000l. 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 tunkaws [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 cannot 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 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.[18]

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, whilst 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 per mensem, till the tunkaws 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 tunkaws 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 profession of soucaring; by which a few innocent,
inexperienced young Englishmen, such as Mr. Paul Benfield, for instance,
without property 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.

But it seems the right honorable gentleman's favorite soucar cavalry have
proved the payment before the Mayor's Court at Madras! Have they so?
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.[19] Are we ripe to say that no creditor under similar
circumstances was member of the court, when the payment which is the

ground of this cavalry debt was put in proof?[20] 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.

But his Majesty's ministers, indulgent enough to other scrutinies, have
not been satisfied with 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 to 294,000l. 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.

In this manner, and at such an interest, the ministers have thought proper
to dispose of 294,000l. of the public revenues, for what is called the
Cavalry Loan. After dispatching this, the right honorable gentleman leads to
battle his last grand division, the consolidated debt of 1777. But having
exhausted all his panegyric on the two first, he has nothing at all to say in
favor of the last. On the contrary, he admits that it was contracted in
defiance of the Company's orders, without even the pretended sanction of
any pretended representatives. Nobody, indeed, has yet been found hardy
enough to stand forth avowedly in its defence. But it is little to the credit of
the age, that what has not plausibility enough to find an advocate has
influence enough to obtain a protector. Could any man expect to find that
protector anywhere? But what must every man think, when he finds that
protector in the chairman of the Committee of Secrecy[21], 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 pound sterling to
two million four hundred thousand pound, principal money,[22]—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?

My honorable friend who made you the motion has sufficiently exposed
the nature of this debt. He has stated to you, that its own agents, in the year
1781, in the arrangement they proposed to make at Calcutta, were satisfied
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,[23] 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 imaginations of a sanguine avarice,
had not the confidence to propose, they have found a Chancellor of the
Exchequer in England hardy enough to undertake for them. He has cheered

their drooping spirits. He has thanked the peculators for not despairing of
their commonwealth. He has told them they were too modest. He has
replaced the twenty-five per cent which, in order to lighten themselves, they
had abandoned in their conscious terror. Instead of cutting off the interest,
as they had themselves consented to do, with the fourth of the capital, he
has added the whole growth of four years' usury of twelve per cent to the
first overgrown principal; and has again grafted on this meliorated stock a
perpetual annuity of six per cent, to take place from the year 1781. Let no
man hereafter talk of the decaying energies of Nature. All the acts and
monuments in the records of peculation, the consolidated corruption of
ages, the patterns of exemplary plunder in the heroic times of Roman
iniquity, never equalled the gigantic corruption of this single act. Never did
Nero, in all the insolent prodigality of despotism, deal out to his prætorian
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[24] 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?

If this were not enough, he has furnished you with other presumptions
that are not to be shaken. It is one of the known indications of guilt to
stagger and prevaricate 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
honorable gentleman has this day thought fit totally to abandon. In the first
place, he rejects the authority of the Nabob of Arcot. It would, indeed, be
pleasant to see him adhere to this exploded testimony. He next, upon
grounds equally solid, abandons the benefits of that circulation which was
to be produced by drawing out all the juices of the body. Laying aside, or
forgetting, these pretences of his dispatch, he has just now assumed a
principle totally different, but to the full as extraordinary. He proceeds upon
a supposition that many of the claims may be fictitious. He then finds, that,
in a case where many valid and many fraudulent claims are blended
together, the best course for their discrimination is indiscriminately to
establish them all. He trusts, (I suppose,) as there may not be a fund
sufficient for every description of creditors, that the best warranted
claimants will exert themselves in bringing to light those debts which will
not bear an inquiry. What he will not do himself he is persuaded will be
done by others; and for this purpose he leaves to any person a general
power of excepting to the debt. This total change of language and
prevarication in principle is enough, if it stood alone, to fix the presumption
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, detection.

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 practised 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 concurrence,

what evidence can be had of the fraud of any the smallest of these
demands? The ministers never authorized any person to enter into his
exchequer and to search his records. Why, then, this shameful and insulting
mockery of a pretended contest? Already contests for a preference have
arisen among these rival bond-creditors. Has not the Company itself
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 burden of the proof on those who make the demand? Ought
not ministry to have said to the creditors, "The person who admits your debt
stands excepted to as evidence; he stands charged as a collusive party, to
hand over the public revenues to you for sinister purposes. You say, you
have a demand of some millions on the Indian Treasury; prove that you
have acted by lawful authority; prove, at least, that your money has been
bonâ fide advanced; entitle yourself to my protection by the fairness and
fulness of the communications you make"? Did an honest creditor ever
refuse that reasonable and honest test?

There is little doubt that several individuals have been seduced by the
purveyors to the Nabob of Arcot to put their money (perhaps the whole of
honest and laborious earnings) into their hands, and that at such high
interest as, being condemned at law, leaves them at the mercy of the great
managers whom they trusted. These seduced creditors are probably persons

of no power or interest either in England or India, and may be just objects
of compassion. By taking, in this arrangement, no measures for
discrimination and discovery, the fraudulent and the fair are in the first
instance confounded in one mass. The subsequent selection and distribution
is left to the Nabob. With him the agents and instruments of his corruption,
whom he sees to be omnipotent 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.

But be these English creditors what they may, the creditors most certainly
not fraudulent are the natives, who are numerous and wretched indeed: by
exhausting the whole revenues of the Carnatic, nothing is left for them.
They lent bonâ fide; in all probability they were even forced to lend, or to
give goods and service for the Nabob's obligations. They had no trusts to
carry to his 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.[25]

These were the merits of the principal part of the debt of 1777, and the
universally conceived causes 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 this
instance that the presumption of guilt is not only no exception to the
demands on the public treasury, but with these ministers it is a necessary
condition to their support. But that you may not think this preference solely

owing to their known contempt of the natives, who ought with every
generous mind to claim their first charities, you will find the same rule
religiously observed with Europeans too. Attend, Sir, to this decisive case.
Since the beginning of the war, besides arrears of every kind, a bond-debt
has been contracted at Madras, uncertain in its amount, but represented
from four hundred thousand pound to a million sterling. It stands only at the
low interest of eight per cent. Of the legal authority on which this debt was
contracted, of its purposes for the very being of the state, of its publicity
and fairness, no doubt has been entertained for a moment. For this debt no
sort of provision whatever has been made. It is rejected as an outcast, whilst
the whole undissipated attention of the minister has been employed for the
discharge of claims entitled to his favor by the merits we have seen.

I have endeavored to find out, if possible, the amount of the whole of
those demands, in order to see how much, supposing the country in a
condition to furnish the fund, may remain to satisfy the public debt and the
necessary establishments. But I have been foiled in my attempt.

About one fourth, that is, about 220,000l., of the loan of 1767 remains
unpaid. How much interest is in arrear I could never discover: seven or
eight years' at least, which would make the whole of that debt about
396,000l. This stock, which the ministers in their instructions to the
Governor of Madras state as the least exceptionable, they have thought
proper to distinguish by a marked severity, leaving it the only one on which
the interest is not added to the principal to beget a new interest.

The Cavalry Loan, by the operation of the same authority, is made up to
294,000l.; and this 294,000l., made up of principal and interest, is crowned
with a new interest of twelve per cent.

What the grand loan, the bribery loan of 1777, may be is amongst the
deepest mysteries of state. It is probably the first debt ever assuming the

title of Consolidation that did not express what the amount of the sum
consolidated was. It is little less than a contradiction in terms. In the debt of
the year 1767 the sum was stated in the act of consolidation, and made to
amount to 880,000l. capital. When this consolidation of 1777 was first
announced at the Durbar, it was represented authentically at 2,400,000l. In
that, or rather in a higher state, Sir Thomas Rumbold found and condemned
it.[26] It afterwards fell into such a terror as to sweat away a million of its
weight at once; and it sunk to 1,400,000l.[27] However, it never was without
a resource for recruiting it to its old plumpness. There was a sort of floating
debt of about four or five hundred thousand pounds more ready to be added,
as occasion should require.

In short, when you pressed this sensitive-plant, it always contracted its
dimensions. When the rude hand of inquiry was withdrawn, it expanded in
all the luxuriant vigor of its original vegetation. In the treaty of 1781, the
whole of the Nabob's debt to private Europeans is by Mr. Sulivan, agent to
the Nabob and his creditors, stated at 2,800,000l., which, if the Cavalry
Loan and the remains of the debt of 1767 be subtracted, leaves it nearly at
the amount originally declared at the Durbar in 1777: but then there is a
private instruction to Mr. Sulivan, which, it seems, will reduce it again to
the lower standard of 1,400,000l.

Failing in all my attempts, by a direct account, to ascertain the extent of
the capital claimed, (where in all probability no capital was ever advanced,)
I endeavored, if possible, to discover it by the interest which was to be paid.
For that purpose, I looked to the several agreements for assigning the
territories of the Carnatic to secure the principal and interest of this debt. In
one of them,[28] I found, in a sort of postscript, by way of an additional
remark, (not in the body of the obligation,) the debt represented at
1,400,000l.: but when I computed the sums to be paid for interest by
instalments in another paper, I found they produced an interest of two

millions, at twelve per cent; and the assignment supposed, that, if these
instalments might exceed, they might also fall short of, the real provision
for that interest.[29] Another instalment-bond was afterwards granted: in that
bond the interest exactly tallies with a capital of 1,400,000l.:[30] but
pursuing this capital through the correspondence, I lost sight of it again, and
it was asserted that this instalment-bond was considerably short of the
interest that ought to be computed to the time mentioned.[31]

Here are, therefore, two statements of equal authority, differing at least a
million from each other; and as neither persons claiming, nor any special
sum as belonging to each particular claimant, is ascertained in the
instruments of consolidation, or in the installment-bonds, a large scope was
left to throw in any sums for any persons, as their merits in advancing the
interest of that loan might require; a power was also left for reduction, in
case a harder hand, or more scanty funds, might be found to require it.
Stronger grounds for a presumption of fraud never appeared in any
transaction. But the ministers, faithful to the plan of the interested persons,
whom alone they thought fit to confer with on this occasion, have ordered
the payment of the whole mass of these unknown, unliquidated sums,
without an attempt to ascertain them. On this conduct, Sir, I leave you to
make your own reflections.

It is impossible (at least I have found it impossible) to fix on the real
amount of the pretended debts with which your ministers have thought
proper to load the Carnatic. They are obscure; they shun inquiry; they are
enormous. That is all you know of them.

That you may judge what chance any honorable and useful end of
government has for a provision that comes in for the leavings of these
gluttonous demands, I must take it on myself to bring before you the real
condition of that abused, insulted, racked, and ruined country; though in

truth my mind revolts from it, though you will hear it with horror, and I
confess I tremble when I think on these awful and confounding
dispensations of Providence. I shall first trouble you with a few words as to
the cause.

The great fortunes made in India, in the beginnings of conquest, naturally
excited an emulation in all the parts and through the whole succession of
the Company's service. But in the Company it gave rise to other sentiments.
They did not find the new channels of acquisition flow with equal riches to
them. On the contrary, the high flood-tide of private emolument was
generally in the lowest ebb of their affairs. They began also to fear that the
fortune of war might take away what the fortune of war had given. Wars
were accordingly discouraged by repeated injunctions and menaces: and
that the servants might not be bribed into them by the native princes, they
were strictly forbidden to take any money whatsoever from their hands. But
vehement passion is ingenious in resources. The Company's servants were
not only stimulated, but better instructed by the prohibition. They soon fell
upon a contrivance which answered their purposes far better than the
methods which were forbidden: though in this also they violated an ancient,
but they thought, an abrogated order. They reversed their proceedings.
Instead of receiving presents, they made loans. Instead of carrying on wars
in their own name, they contrived an authority, at once irresistible and
irresponsible, in whose name they might ravage at pleasure; and being thus
freed from all restraint, they indulged themselves in the most extravagant
speculations of plunder. The cabal of creditors who have been the object of
the late bountiful grant from his Majesty's ministers, in order to possess
themselves, under the name of creditors and assignees, of every country in
India, as fast as it should be conquered, inspired into the mind of the Nabob
of Arcot (then a dependant on the Company of the humblest order) a
scheme of the most wild and desperate ambition that I believe ever was
admitted into the thoughts of a man so situated.[32] First, they persuaded

him to consider himself as a principal member in the political system of
Europe. In the next place, they held out to him, and he readily imbibed, the
idea of the general empire of Hindostan. As a preliminary to this
undertaking, they prevailed on him to propose a tripartite division of that
vast country: one part to the Company; another to the Mahrattas; and the
third to himself. To himself he reserved all the southern part of the great
peninsula, comprehended under the general name of the Deccan.

On this scheme of their servants, the Company was to appear in the
Carnatic in no other light than as a contractor for the provision of armies,
and the hire of mercenaries for his use and under his direction. This
disposition was to be secured by the Nabob's putting himself under the
guaranty of France, and, by the means of that rival nation, preventing the
English forever from assuming an equality, much less a superiority, in the
Carnatic. In pursuance of this treasonable project, (treasonable on the part
of the English,) they extinguished the Company as a sovereign power in
that part of India; they withdrew the Company's garrisons out of all the forts
and strongholds of the Carnatic; they declined to receive the ambassadors
from foreign courts, and remitted them to the Nabob of Arcot; they fell
upon, and totally destroyed, the oldest ally of the Company, the king of
Tanjore, and plundered the country to the amount of near five millions
sterling; one after another, in the Nabob's name, but with English force,
they brought into a miserable servitude all the princes and great
independent nobility of a vast country.[33] In proportion to these treasons
and violences, which ruined the people, the fund of the Nabob's debt grew
and flourished.

Among the victims to this magnificent plan of universal plunder, worthy
of the heroic avarice of the projectors, you have all heard (and he has made
himself to be well remembered) of an Indian chief called Hyder Ali Khan.
This man possessed the western, as the Company, under the name of the

Nabob of Arcot, does the eastern division of the Carnatic. It was among the
leading measures in the design of this cabal (according to their own
emphatic language) to extirpate this Hyder Ali.[34] They declared the Nabob
of Arcot to be his sovereign, and himself to be a rebel, and publicly invested
their instrument with the sovereignty of the kingdom of Mysore. But their
victim was not of the passive kind. They were soon obliged to conclude a
treaty of peace and close alliance with this rebel, at the gates of Madras.
Both before and since that treaty, every principle of policy pointed out this
power as a natural alliance; and on his part it was courted by every sort of
amicable office. But the cabinet council of English creditors would not
suffer their Nabob of Arcot to sign the treaty, nor even to give to a prince at
least his equal the ordinary titles of respect and courtesy.[35] From that time
forward, a continued plot was carried on within the divan, black and white,
of the Nabob of Arcot, for the destruction of Hyder Ali. As to the outward
members of the double, or rather treble government of Madras, which had
signed the treaty, they were always prevented by some overruling influence
(which they do not describe, but which cannot be misunderstood) from
performing what justice and interest combined so evidently to enforce.[36]

When at length Hyder Ali found that he had to do with men who either
would sign no convention, or whom no treaty and no signature could bind,
and who were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he
decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible and
predestinated criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved, in
the gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to leave the whole
Carnatic an everlasting monument of vengeance, and to put perpetual
desolation as a barrier between him and those against whom the faith which
holds the moral elements of the world together was no protection. He
became at length so confident of his force, so collected in his might, that he
made no secret whatsoever of his dreadful resolution. Having terminated his
disputes with every enemy and every rival, who buried their mutual

animosities in their common detestation against the creditors of the Nabob
of Arcot, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add
to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and compounding all the
materials of fury, havoc, and desolation into one black cloud, he hung for a
while on the declivities of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these
evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which
blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole
of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of woe,
the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue
can adequately tell. All the horrors of war before known or heard of were
mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field,
consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants,
flying from their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered; others, without
regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank or sacredness of function, fathers
torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of
cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers, and the trampling of
pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an unknown and hostile land.
Those who were able to evade this tempest fled to the walled cities; but
escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine.

The alms of the settlement, in this dreadful exigency, were certainly
liberal; and all was done by charity that private charity could do: but it was
a people in beggary; it was a nation which stretched out its hands for food.
For months together, these creatures of sufferance, whose very excess and
luxury in their most plenteous days had fallen short of the allowance of our
austerest fasts, silent, patient, resigned, without sedition or disturbance,
almost without complaint, perished by an hundred a day in the streets of
Madras; every day seventy at least laid their bodies in the streets or on the
glacis of Tanjore, and expired of famine in the granary of India. I was going
to awake your justice towards this unhappy part of our fellow-citizens, by
bringing before you some of the circumstances of this plague of hunger: of

all the calamities which beset and waylay the life of man, this comes the
nearest to our heart, and is that wherein the proudest of us all feels himself
to be nothing more than he is: but I find myself unable to manage it with
decorum; these details are of a species of horror so nauseous and disgusting,
they are so degrading to the sufferers and to the hearers, they are so
humiliating to human nature itself, that, on better thoughts, I find it more
advisable to throw a pall over this hideous object, and to leave it to your
general conceptions.

For eighteen months,[37] without intermission, this destruction raged from
the gates of Madras to the gates of Tanjore; and so completely did these
masters in their art, Hyder Ali and his more ferocious son, absolve
themselves of their impious vow, that, when the British armies traversed, as
they did, the Carnatic for hundreds of miles in all directions, through the
whole line of their march they did not see one man, not one woman, not one
child, not one four-footed beast of any description whatever. One dead,
uniform silence reigned over the whole region. With the inconsiderable
exceptions of the narrow vicinage of some few forts, I wish to be
understood as speaking literally. I mean to produce to you more than three
witnesses, above all exception, who will support this assertion in its full
extent. That hurricane of war passed through every part of the central
provinces of the Carnatic. Six or seven districts to the north and to the south
(and these not wholly untouched) escaped the general ravage.

The Carnatic is a country not much inferior in extent to England. Figure
to yourself, Mr. Speaker, the land in whose representative chair you sit;
figure to yourself the form and fashion of your sweet and cheerful country
from Thames to Trent, north and south, and from the Irish to the German
Sea, east and west, emptied and embowelled (may God avert the omen of
our crimes!) by so accomplished a desolation. Extend your imagination a
little further, and then suppose your ministers taking a survey of this scene

of waste and desolation. What would be your thoughts, if you should be
informed that they were computing how much had been the amount of the
excises, how much the customs, how much the land and malt tax, in order
that they should charge (take it in the most favorable light) for public
service, upon the relics of the satiated vengeance of relentless enemies, the
whole of what England had yielded in the most exuberant seasons of peace
and abundance? What would you call it? To call it tyranny sublimed into
madness would be too faint an image; yet this very madness is the principle
upon which the ministers at your right hand have proceeded in their
estimate of the revenues of the Carnatic, when they were providing, not
supply for the establishments of its protection, but rewards for the authors
of its ruin.

Every day you are fatigued and disgusted with this cant, "The Carnatic is
a country that will soon recover, and become instantly as prosperous as
ever." They think they are talking to innocents, who will believe, that, by
sowing of dragons' teeth, men may come up ready grown and ready armed.
They who will give themselves the trouble of considering (for it requires no
great reach of thought, no very profound knowledge) the manner in which
mankind are increased, and countries cultivated, will regard all this raving
as it ought to be regarded. In order that the people, after a long period of
vexation and plunder, may be in a condition to maintain government,
government must begin by maintaining them. Here the road to economy lies
not through receipt, but through expense; and in that country Nature has
given no short cut to your object. Men must propagate, like other animals,
by the mouth. Never did oppression light the nuptial torch; never did
extortion and usury spread out the genial bed. Does any of you think that
England, so wasted, would, under such a nursing attendance, so rapidly and
cheaply recover? But he is meanly acquainted with either England or India
who does not know that England would a thousand times sooner resume

population, fertility, and what ought to be the ultimate secretion from both,
revenue, than such a country as the Carnatic.

The Carnatic is not by the bounty of Nature a fertile soil. The general size
of its cattle is proof enough that it is much otherwise. It is some days since I
moved that a curious and interesting map, kept in the India House, should
be laid before you.[38] The India House is not yet in readiness to send it; I
have therefore brought down my own copy, and there it lies for the use of
any gentleman who may think such a matter worthy of his attention. It is,
indeed, a noble map, and of noble things; but it is decisive against the
golden dreams and sanguine speculations of avarice run mad. In addition to
what you know must be the case in every part of the world, (the necessity of
a previous provision of habitation, seed, stock, capital,) that map will show
you that the uses of the influences of Heaven itself are in that country a
work of art. The Carnatic is refreshed by few or no living brooks or running
streams, and it has rain only at a season; but its product of rice exacts the
use of water subject to perpetual command. This is the national bank of the
Carnatic, on which it must have a perpetual credit, or it perishes
irretrievably. For that reason, in the happier times of India, a number,
almost incredible, of reservoirs have been made in chosen places
throughout the whole country: they are formed, for the greater part, of
mounds of earth and stones, with sluices of solid masonry; the whole
constructed with admirable skill and labor, and maintained at a mighty
charge. In the territory contained in that map alone, I have been at the
trouble of reckoning the reservoirs, and they amount to upwards of eleven
hundred, from the extent of two or three acres to five miles in circuit. From
these reservoirs currents are occasionally drawn over the fields, and these
watercourses again call for a considerable expense to keep them properly
scoured and duly levelled. Taking the district in that map as a measure,
there cannot be in the Carnatic and Tanjore fewer than ten thousand of these
reservoirs of the larger and middling dimensions, to say nothing of those for

domestic services, and the use of religious purification. These are not the
enterprises of your power, nor in a style of magnificence suited to the taste
of your minister. These are the monuments of real kings, who were the
fathers of their people,—testators to a posterity which they embraced as
their own. These are the grand sepulchres built by ambition,—but by the
ambition of an insatiable benevolence, which, not contented with reigning
in the dispensation of happiness during the contracted term of human life,
had strained, with all the reachings and graspings of a vivacious mind, to
extend the dominion of their bounty beyond the limits of Nature, and to
perpetuate themselves through generations of generations, the guardians,
the protectors, the nourishers of mankind.

Long before the late invasion, the persons who are objects of the grant of
public money now before you had so diverted the supply of the pious funds
of culture and population, that everywhere the reservoirs were fallen into a
miserable decay.[39] But after those domestic enemies had provoked the
entry of a cruel foreign foe into the country, he did not leave it, until his
revenge had completed the destruction begun by their avarice. Few, very
few indeed, of these magazines of water that are not either totally
destroyed, or cut through with such gaps as to require a serious attention
and much cost to reëstablish them, as the means of present subsistence to
the people and of future revenue to the state.

What, Sir, would a virtuous and enlightened ministry do, on the view of
the ruins of such works before them?—on the view of such a chasm of
desolation as that which yawned in the midst of those countries, to the north
and south, which still bore some vestiges of cultivation? They would have
reduced all their most necessary establishments; they would have suspended
the justest payments; they would have employed every shilling derived
from the producing to reanimate the powers of the unproductive parts.
While they were performing this fundamental duty, whilst they were

celebrating these mysteries of justice and humanity, they would have told
the corps of fictitious creditors, whose crimes were their claims, that they
must keep an awful distance,—that they must silence their inauspicious
tongues,—that they must hold off their profane, unhallowed paws from this
holy work; they would have proclaimed, with a voice that should make
itself heard, that on every country the first creditor is the plough,—that this
original, indefeasible claim supersedes every other demand.

This is what a wise and virtuous ministry would have done and said.
This, therefore, is what our minister could never think of saying or doing. A
ministry of another kind would have first improved the country, and have
thus laid a solid foundation for future opulence and future force. But on this
grand point of the restoration of the country there is not one syllable to be
found in the correspondence of our ministers, from the first to the last; they
felt nothing for a land desolated by fire, sword, and famine: their
sympathies took another direction; they were touched with pity for bribery,
so long tormented with a fruitless itching of its palms; their bowels yearned
for usury, that had long missed the harvest of its returning months;[40] they
felt for peculation, which had been for so many years raking in the dust of
an empty treasury; they were melted into compassion for rapine and
oppression, licking their dry, parched, unbloody jaws. These were the
objects of their solicitude. These were the necessities for which they were
studious to provide.

To state the country and its revenues in their real condition, and to
provide for those fictitious claims, consistently with the support of an army
and a civil establishment, would have been impossible; therefore the
ministers are silent on that head, and rest themselves on the authority of
Lord Macartney, who, in a letter to the Court of Directors, written in the
year 1781, speculating on what might be the result of a wise management of
the countries assigned by the Nabob of Arcot, rates the revenue, as in time

of peace, at twelve hundred thousand pounds a year, as he does those of the
king of Tanjore (which had not been assigned) at four hundred and fifty. On
this Lord Macartney grounds his calculations, and on this they choose to
ground theirs. It was on this calculation that the ministry, in direct
opposition to the remonstrances of the Court of Directors, have compelled
that miserable enslaved body to put their hands to an order for appropriating
the enormous sum of 480,000l. annually, as a fund for paying to their
rebellious servants a debt contracted in defiance of their clearest and most
positive injunctions.

The authority and information of Lord Macartney is held high on this
occasion, though it is totally rejected in every 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 friendship 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 reputed 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 800,000l. a
year, even before an enemy's horse had imprinted his hoof on the soil of the
Carnatic. 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 refused to
take the revenues for more than 800,000l. In this they are 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 ministers have gone wrong, they were not
deceived by Lord Macartney: they were deceived by no man. The estimate
of the Directors is nearly the very estimate furnished by the right honorable
gentleman himself, and published to the world in one of the printed reports
of his own committee;[41] but as soon as he obtained his power, he chose to
abandon his account. No part of his official conduct can be defended on the
ground of his Parliamentary information.

In this clashing of accounts and estimates, ought not the ministry, if they
wished to preserve even appearances, to have waited for information of the
actual result 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 government, and every ravage of a desolating
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.

When I first read this curious controversy between the ministerial board
and the Court of Directors, common candor obliged me to attribute their
tenacious adherence to the estimate of 1781 to 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 everything,—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,) wilfully 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.[42] 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 no existence. It is the report made by a committee
appointed at Madras to manage the whole of the six countries assigned to
the Company by the Nabob of Arcot. This committee was wisely instituted
by Lord Macartney, to remove from himself the suspicion of all improper
management in so invidious a trust; and it seems to have been well chosen.
This committee has made a comparative estimate of the only six districts
which were in a condition to be let to farm. In one set of columns they state
the gross and net produce of the districts as let by the Nabob. To that
statement they oppose the terms on which the same districts were rented for
five years under their authority. Under the Nabob, the gross farm was so
high as 570,000l. sterling. What was the clear produce? Why, no more than
about 250,000l.; and this was the whole profit of the Nabob's treasury,
under his own management of all the districts which were in a condition to
be let to farm on the 27th of May, 1782. Lord Macartney's leases stipulated
a gross produce of no more than about 530,000l.; but then the estimated net
amount was nearly double the Nabob's. It, however, did not then exceed
480,000l.; 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 pound,—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.

In this estimate, we see, as I have just observed, the Nabob's farms rated
so high as 570,000l. Hitherto all is well: but follow on to the effective 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 anything whatsoever for
any public purpose. With these weighty declarations, confirmed by such a
state of indisputable fact before them, what has been done by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and his accomplices? Shall I be believed?
They have delivered over those very territories, on the keeping of which in
the hands of the committee the defence of our dominions, and, what was
more dear to them, possibly, their own job, depended,—they have delivered
back again, without condition, without arrangement, without stipulation of
any sort for the natives of any rank, the whole of those vast countries, to
many of which he had no just claim, into the ruinous mismanagement of the
Nabob of Arcot. To crown all, according to their miserable practice,
whenever they do anything transcendently absurd, they preface this their
abdication of their trust by a solemn declaration that they were not obliged
to it by any principle of policy or any demand of justice whatsoever.

I have stated to you the estimated produce of the territories of the
Carnatic in a condition to be farmed in 1782, according to the different
managements into which they might fall; and this estimate the ministers
have thought proper to suppress. Since that, two other accounts have been
received. The first informs us, that there has been a recovery of what is
called arrear, as well as of an improvement of the revenue of one of the six
provinces which were let in 1782.[43] It was brought about by making a new
war. After some sharp actions, by the resolution and skill of Colonel
Fullarton several of the petty princes of the most southerly of the unwasted
provinces were compelled to pay very heavy rents and tributes, who for a
long time before had not paid any acknowledgment. After this reduction, by
the care of Mr. Irwin, one of the committee, that province was divided into
twelve farms. This operation raised the income of that particular province;
the others remain as they were first farmed. So that, instead of producing
only their original rent of 480,000l., they netted, in about two years and a
quarter, 1,320,000l. sterling, which would be about 660,000l. a year, if the
recovered arrear was not included. What deduction is to be made on
account of that arrear I cannot determine, but certainly what would reduce
the annual income considerably below the rate I have allowed.

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 1,200,000l.

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 1,200,000l. 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 paid before
the assignment,—namely, 340,000l. a year. This reduces back the revenue
applicable to the new distribution made by his Majesty's ministers to about
800,000l. Of that sum five eighths are by them surrendered to the debts. The
remaining three are the only fund left for all the purposes so magnificently
displayed in the letter of the Board of Control: that is, for a new-cast peace
establishment, a now fund for ordnance and fortifications, and a large
allowance for what they call "the splendor of the Durbar."

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 of the committee's
management, have put a complete end to that committee. Their acts are
rescinded; their leases are broken; their renters are dispersed. Your ministers
knew, when they signed the death-warrant of the Carnatic, that the Nabob
would not only turn all these unfortunate 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-Omrah
and Paul Benfield, the unhappy and deluded souls who, untaught by
uniform example, were still weak enough to put their trust in English faith.
[44] 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.[45]

The last thing considered by the Board of Control among the debts of the
Carnatic was that arising to the East India Company, which, after the
provision for the cavalry, and the consolidation of 1777, was to divide the
residue of the fund of 480,000l. a year with the lenders of 1767. This debt
the worthy chairman, who sits opposite to me, contends to be three millions
sterling. Lord Macartney's account of 1781 states it to be at that period
1,200,000l. The first account of the Court of Directors makes it 900,000l.
This, like the private debt, being without any solid existence, is incapable of
any distinct limits. Whatever its amount or its validity may be, one 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.

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.

But I, Sir, who profess to speak to your understanding and to your
conscience, and to brush away from this business all false colors, all false
appellations, as well as false facts, do positively deny that the Carnatic

owes a shilling to the Company,—whatever the Company may be indebted
to 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 himself in his account for a debt due to him of 10,000l. 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 government which has
proved unable to protect either the share of the husbandman or their own?
In every lease of a farm, the invasion of an enemy, instead of forming a
demand for arrear, is a release of rent: nor for that release is it at all
necessary to show that the invasion has left nothing to the occupier of the
soil; though in the present case it would be too easy to prove that
melancholy fact.[46] I therefore applauded my right honorable friend, who,
when he canvassed the Company'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 expunged 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 defence 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.

But my principal objection lies a good deal deeper. That debt to the
Company is the pretext under which all the other debts lurk and cover
themselves. That debt forms the foul, putrid mucus in which are engendered
the whole brood of creeping ascarides, all the endless involutions, the
eternal knot, added to a knot of those inexpugnable tape-worms which
devour the nutriment and eat up the bowels of India.[47] It is necessary, Sir,
you should recollect two things. First, that the Nabob's debt to the Company
carries no interest. In the next place, you 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 is,
"I have no money." Good! But there 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 payment. In this case, would not a plain man ask this
plain question of the Company: If you know that the Nabob must annually
mortgage his territories to your servants to pay his annual arrear to you,
why is not the assignment or mortgage made directly to the Company
itself? By this simple, obvious operation, the Company would be relieved
and the debt paid, without the charge of a shilling interest to that prince. But
if that course should be thought too indulgent, why do they not take that
assignment with 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 Company lend their own credit to
the Nabob for their 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 an usury of twenty, twenty-four, thirty-six, and even
eight-and-forty per cent, with compound interest,[48] for the benefit of their
servants. All this time they know that by having a debt subsisting without
any interest, which is to be paid by contracting a debt on the highest
interest, they manifestly render it necessary to the Nabob of Arcot to give
the private demand a preference to the public; and, by binding him and their
servants together in a common cause, they enable him to form a party to the
utter ruin of their own authority and their own affairs. Thus their false
moderation, and their affected purity, by the natural operation of everything

false and everything affected, becomes pander and bawd to the unbridled
debauchery and licentious lewdness of usury and extortion.

In consequence of this double game, all the territorial revenues have at
one time or other been covered by those locusts, the English soucars. Not
one single foot of the Carnatic has escaped them: a territory as large as
England. During these operations what a scene has that country presented!
[49] 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;
whilst his servants murmur for wages, and his soldiers mutiny for pay. The
mortgage to the European assignee is then resumed, and the native farmer
replaced,—replaced, again to be removed on the new clamor of the
European assignee.[50] Every man of rank and landed fortune being long
since extinguished, the remaining miserable last cultivator, who grows to
the soil, after having his back scored by the farmer, has it again flayed by
the whip of the assignee, and is thus, by a ravenous, because a short-lived
succession of claimants, lashed from oppressor to oppressor, whilst a single
drop of blood is left as the means of extorting a single grain of corn. Do not
think I paint. Far, very far, from it: I do not reach the fact, nor approach to
it. Men of respectable condition, men equal to your substantial English
yeomen, are daily tied up and scourged to answer the multiplied demands of
various contending and contradictory titles, all issuing from one and the
same source. Tyrannous exaction brings on servile concealment; and that
again calls forth tyrannous coercion. They move in a circle, mutually
producing and produced; till at length nothing of humanity is left in the
government, no trace of integrity, spirit, or manliness in the people, who
drag out a precarious and degraded existence under this system of outrage
upon human nature. Such is the effect of the establishment of a debt to the
Company, as it has hitherto been managed, and as it ever will remain, until
ideas are adopted totally different from those which prevail at this time.

Your worthy ministers, supporting what they are obliged to condemn,
have thought fit to renew 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 reenact provisions, of which they have given
bounties for the breach. This inconsistency has been well exposed.[51] But
what will you say to their having gone the length of giving positive
directions for contracting the debt which they positively forbid?

I will explain myself. They order the Nabob, out of the revenues of the
Carnatic, to allot four hundred and eighty 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.[52] 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 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 own extortions.

The interest to be paid for this security, according to the most moderate
strain of soucar demand, comes to 118,000l. a year, which, added to the
480,000l. on which it is to accrue, will make the whole charge amount to
598,000l. 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
usuries, without lifting up his hands and eyes in astonishment at 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 cannot think that all they have
brought home is half enough. He hallooes 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 shall have, interest upon
interest upon a prohibited debt that is made up of interest upon interest.
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."

I have done with the arrangement relative to the Carnatic. After this it is
to little purpose to observe on what the 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 an 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.

The subsidy from Tanjore, on the arrear of which this pretended debt (if
any there be) has accrued to the Company, is not, like that paid by the
Nabob of Arcot, 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, 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 further grant of a town and port, with an
annexed district of thirty thousand pound 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,[53] 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 regard to war. As confessedly
this prince had no share in stirring up any 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 provoked 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. But 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 a gross annual receipt of three hundred and sixty
thousand pound.[54] 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 an usury the most completely ruinous that probably was ever
heard of: that is, forty-eight per cent, payable monthly, with compound
interest.[55]

Such is the state to which the Company's servants have reduced that
country. Now come the reformers, restorers, and comforters of India. What
have they done? In addition to all these tyrannous exactions, with all these
ruinous debts in their train, looking to one side of an agreement whilst they
wilfully 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 pound a year, without
discounting a shilling for that receipt, the ministers condemn this harassed
nation to be tributary to a person 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 Company. 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 400,000l. 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.

But take this tribute only as a mere charge (without title, cause, or
equivalent) 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. 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 out 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 tribute.
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.

The right honorable gentleman[56] talks of his fairness in determining the
territorial dispute between the Nabob of Arcot and the prince of that

country, when he superseded the determination 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 defence 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, 40,000l. 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 that his judgment in this
case can be censured by none but those who seem to act as if they were paid
agents to one of the parties. What does he think of his Court of Directors? If
they are paid by either of 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, 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 affecting upon that
subject;[57] 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. Has
he not stated over and over again, 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?

The right honorable gentleman is fond of parading on the motives of
others, and on his own. As to himself, he despises the imputations of those
who suppose that anything 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 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 further.

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.

If I were worthy to suggest any line of prudence to that right honorable
gentleman, I would tell him that the way to 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 suspected; 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 have been violated, and the
conduct of ministers towards them, will naturally call for your
consideration, and will serve to lead you through a series and combination
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, as you all know, formed a new plan, a plan
insigne, recens, indictum ore alio, 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 instruments became necessary. You are perfectly
sensible that a Parliamentary reform occupies his thoughts day and night, as
an essential member in this extraordinary project. In his anxious researches
upon this subject, natural instinct, as well as sound policy, would direct his
eyes and settle his choice on Paul Benfield. Paul Benfield is the grand
Parliamentary reformer, the reformer to whom the whole choir of reformers
bow, and to whom even the right honorable 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? Others have
been only speculators; he is the grand practical reformer; and whilst 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
generous design of bestowing Old Sarum on the Bank of England, Mr.

Benfield has thrown in the borough of Cricklade to reinforce the county
representation. Not content with this, in order to station a steady phalanx for
all future reforms, this public-spirited usurer, amidst 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!

But what is even more striking than the real services of this new-
imported patriot is his modesty. As soon as he had conferred this benefit on
the Constitution, he withdrew himself from our applause. He conceived that
the duties of a member of Parliament (which with the elect faithful, the true
believers, the Islam of Parliamentary reform, are of little or no merit,
perhaps not much better than specious sins) might he as well attended to in
India as in England, and the means of reformation to Parliament itself be far
better provided. Mr. Benfield was therefore no sooner elected than he set off
for Madras, and defrauded the longing eyes of Parliament. We have never
enjoyed in this House the luxury of beholding that minion of the human
race, and contemplating that visage which has so long reflected 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 resemblance. A specific attraction, by which he gravitates towards
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 British Treasury, as long as the monumental debt of England, shall
endure.

This gentleman, Sir, acts as attorney for Mr. Paul Benfield. Every one
who hears me is well acquainted with the sacred friendship and the steady
mutual 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 original frame and fabric of
the bill, commonly called Mr. Pitt's India Bill, is matter only of conjecture,
though by no means difficult to divine. But the public was an indignant
witness of the ostentation with which the 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
managed. It was openly managed by the direct agent and attorney of
Benfield. It was managed upon Indian principles and for an Indian interest.
This was the golden cup of abominations,—this the chalice of the
fornications of rapine, usury, and oppression, which was held out by the
gorgeous Eastern harlot,—which so many of the people, so many of the
nobles of this land had drained to the very dregs. Do you think that no
reckoning was to follow this lewd debauch? that no payment was to be
demanded for this riot of public drunkenness and national prostitution?
Here, you have it here before you! The principal of the grand election-
manager must be indemnified; accordingly, the claims of Benfield and his
crew must be put above all inquiry.

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 Company has stated the claims of this single gentleman on
the Nabob of Arcot as amounting to five hundred thousand pound.[58]
Possibly at the time of the chairman's state they might have been as high.
Eight hundred thousand pound had been mentioned some time before;[59]
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 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 592,000l. at six per cent.
Thus, besides the arrears of three years, amounting to 106,500l., (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 35,520l. a year,
charged on the public revenues.

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 project of obliging the
Nabob to give soucar security for his debt, assured them, that, if they should
take that step, Benfield[60] 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 480,000l. 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 149,520l. a year.

Here is a specimen of the new and pure aristocracy created by the right
honorable gentleman,[61] as the support of the crown and Constitution
against the old, corrupt, refractory, natural interests of this kingdom; and
this is the grand counterpoise against all odious coalitions of these interests.
A single Benfield outweighs them all: a criminal, who long since ought to
have fattened the region kites with his offal, is by his Majesty's ministers
enthroned in the government of a great kingdom, and enfeoffed with an
estate which in the comparison effaces the splendor of all the nobility of
Europe. 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.

The general corps of creditors, as well as Mr. Benfield himself, not
looking well into futurity, nor presaging the minister of this day, thought it
not expedient for their common interest that such a name as his should
stand at the head of their list. It was therefore agreed amongst them that Mr.
Benfield should disappear, by making over his debt to Messrs. Taylor,
Majendie, and Call, and should in return be secured by their bond.

The debt thus exonerated of so great a weight of its odium, and otherwise
reduced from its alarming bulk, the agents thought they might venture to
print a list of the creditors. This was done for the first time in the year 1783,
during the Duke of Portland's administration. In this list the name of
Benfield was not to be seen. To this strong negative testimony was added
the further testimony of the Nabob of Arcot. That prince[62] (or rather Mr.
Benfield for him) writes to the Court of Directors a letter[63] full of
complaints and accusations against Lord Macartney, conveyed in such
terms as were natural for one of Mr. Benfield's habits and education to
employ. Amongst the rest he is made to complain of his Lordship's
endeavoring to prevent an intercourse of politeness and sentiment between
him and Mr. Benfield; and to aggravate the affront, he expressly declares
Mr. Benfield's visits to be only on account of respect and of gratitude, as no
pecuniary transaction subsisted between them.

Such, for a considerable space of time, was the outward form of the loan
of 1777, in which Mr. Benfield had no sort of concern. At length
intelligence arrived at Madras, that this debt, which had always been
renounced by the Court of Directors, was rather like to become the subject
of something more like a criminal inquiry than of any patronage or sanction
from Parliament. Every ship brought accounts, one stronger than the other,
of the prevalence of the determined enemies of the Indian system. The
public revenues became an object desperate to the hopes of Mr. Benfield; he
therefore resolved to fall upon his associates, and, in violation of that faith

which subsists among those who have abandoned all other, commences a
suit in the Mayor's Court against Taylor, Majendie, and Call, for the bond
given to him, when he agreed to disappear for his own benefit as well as
that of the common concern. The assignees of his debt, who little expected
the springing of this mine, even from such an engineer as Mr. Benfield,
after recovering their first alarm, thought it best to take ground on the real
state of the transaction. They divulged the whole mystery, and were
prepared to plead that they had never received from Mr. Benfield any other
consideration for the bond than a transfer, in trust for himself, of his
demand on the Nabob of Arcot. An universal indignation arose against the
perfidy of Mr. Benfield's proceeding; the event of the suit was looked upon
as so certain, that Benfield was compelled to retreat as precipitately as he
had advanced boldly; he gave up his bond, and was reinstated in his original
demand, to wait the fortune of other claimants. At that time, and at Madras,
this hope was dull indeed; but at home another scene was preparing.

It was long before any public account of this discovery at Madras had
arrived in England, that the present minister and his Board of Control
thought fit to determine on the debt of 1777. The recorded proceedings at
this time knew nothing of any debt to Benfield. There was his own
testimony, there was the testimony of the list, there was the testimony of the
Nabob of Arcot, against it. Yet such was the ministers' feeling of the true
secret of this transaction, that they thought proper, in the teeth of all these
testimonies, to give him license to return to Madras. Here the ministers
were under some embarrassment. Confounded between their resolution of
rewarding the good services of Benfield's friends and associates in England,
and the shame of sending that notorious incendiary to the court of the
Nabob of Arcot, to renew his intrigues against the British government, at
the time they authorize his return, they forbid him, under the severest
penalties, from any conversation with the Nabob or his ministers: that is,
they forbid his communication with the very person on account of his

dealings with whom they permit his return to that city. To overtop this
contradiction, there is not a word restraining him from the freest intercourse
with the Nabob's second son, the real author of all that is done in the
Nabob's name; who, in conjunction with this very Benfield, has acquired an
absolute dominion over that unhappy man, is able to persuade him to put
his signature to whatever paper they please, and often without any
communication of the contents. This management was detailed to them at
full length by Lord Macartney, and they cannot pretend ignorance of it.[64]

I believe, after this exposure of facts, no man can entertain a doubt of the
collusion of ministers with the corrupt interest of the delinquents in India.
Whenever those in authority provide for the interest of any person, on the
real, but concealed state of his affairs, without regard to his avowed, public,
and ostensible pretences, it must be presumed that they are in confederacy
with him, because they act for him on the same fraudulent principles on
which he acts for himself. It is plain that the ministers were fully apprised
of Benfield's real situation, which he had used means to conceal, whilst
concealment answered his purposes. They were, or the person on whom
they relied was, of the cabinet council of Benfield, in the very depth of all
his mysteries. An honest magistrate compels men to abide by one story. An
equitable judge would not hear of the claim of a man who had himself
thought proper to renounce it. With such a judge his shuffling and
prevarication would have damned his claims; such a judge never would
have known, but in order to animadvert upon, proceedings of that character.

I have thus laid before you, Mr. Speaker, I think with sufficient clearness,
the connection of the ministers with Mr. Atkinson at the general election; I
have laid open to you the connection of Atkinson with Benfield; I have
shown Benfield's employment of his wealth in creating a Parliamentary
interest to procure a ministerial protection; I have set before your eyes his
large concern in the debt, his practices to hide that concern from the public

eye, and the liberal protection which he has received from the minister. If
this chain of circumstances does not lead you necessarily to conclude that
the minister has paid to the avarice of Benfield the services done by
Benfield's connections to his ambition, I do not know anything short of the
confession of the party that can persuade you of his guilt. Clandestine and
collusive practice can only be traced by combination and comparison of
circumstances. To reject such combination and comparison is to reject the
only means of detecting fraud; it is, indeed, to give it a patent and free
license to cheat with impunity.

I confine myself to the connection of ministers, mediately or
immediately, with only two persons concerned in this debt. How many
others, who support their power and greatness within and without doors, are
concerned originally, or by transfers of these debts, must be left to general
opinion. I refer to the reports of the Select Committee for the proceedings
of some of the agents in these affairs, and their attempts, at least, to furnish
ministers with the means of buying General Courts, and even whole
Parliaments, in the gross.[65]

I know that the ministers will think it little less than acquittal, that they
are not charged with having taken to themselves some part of the money of
which they have made so liberal a donation to their partisans, though the
charge may be indisputably fixed upon the corruption of their politics. For
my part, I follow their crimes to that point to which legal presumptions and
natural indications lead me, without considering what species of evil motive
tends most to aggravate or to extenuate the guilt of their conduct. But if I
am to speak my private sentiments, I think that in a thousand cases for one
it would be far less mischievous to the public, and full as little dishonorable
to themselves, to be polluted with direct bribery, than thus to become a
standing auxiliary to the oppression, usury, and peculation of multitudes, in
order to obtain a corrupt support to their power. It is by bribing, not so often

by being bribed, that wicked politicians bring rum on mankind. Avarice is a
rival to the pursuits of many. It finds a multitude of checks, and many
opposers, in every walk of life. But the objects of ambition are for the few;
and every person who aims at indirect profit, and therefore wants other
protection than innocence and law, instead of its rival, becomes its
instrument. There is a natural allegiance and fealty due to this domineering,
paramount evil, from all the vassal vices, which acknowledge its
superiority, and readily militate under its banners; and it is under that
discipline alone that avarice is able to spread to any considerable extent, or
to render itself a general, public mischief. It is therefore no apology for
ministers, that they have not been bought by the East India delinquents, but
that they have only formed an alliance with them for screening each other
from justice, according to the exigence of their several necessities. That
they have done so is evident; and the junction of the power of office in
England with the abuse of authority in the East has not only prevented even
the appearance of redress to the grievances of India, but I wish it may not
be found to have dulled, if not extinguished, the honor, the candor, the
generosity, the good-nature, which used formerly to characterize the people
of England. I confess, I wish that some more feeling than I have yet
observed for the sufferings of our fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects in
that oppressed part of the world had manifested itself in any one quarter of
the kingdom, or in any one large description of men.

That these oppressions exist is a fact no more denied than it is resented as
it ought to be. Much evil has been done in India under the British authority.
What has been done to redress it? We are no longer surprised at anything.
We are above the unlearned and vulgar passion of admiration. But it will
astonish posterity, when they read our opinions in our actions, that, after
years of inquiry, we have found out that the sole grievance of India
consisted in this, that the servants of the Company there had not profited
enough of their opportunities, nor drained it sufficiently of its treasures,—

when they shall hear that the very first and only important act of a
commission specially named by act of Parliament is, to charge upon an
undone country, in favor of a handful of men in the humblest ranks of the
public service, the enormous sum of perhaps four millions of sterling
money.

It is difficult for the most wise and upright government to correct the
abuses of remote, delegated power, productive of unmeasured wealth, and
protected by the boldness and strength of the same ill-got riches. These
abuses, full of their own wild native vigor, will grow and flourish under
mere neglect. But where the supreme authority, not content with winking at
the rapacity of its inferior instruments, is so shameless and corrupt as
openly to give bounties and premiums for disobedience to its laws,—when
it will not trust to the activity of avarice in the pursuit of its own gains,—
when it secures public robbery by all the careful jealousy and attention with
which it ought to protect property from such violence,—the commonwealth
then is become totally perverted from its purposes; neither God nor man
will long endure it; nor will it long endure itself. In that case, there is an
unnatural infection, a pestilential taint, fermenting in the constitution of
society, which fever and convulsions of some kind or other must throw off,
or in which the vital powers, worsted in an unequal struggle, are pushed
back upon themselves, and, by a reversal of their whole functions, fester to
gangrene, to death,—and instead of what was but just now the delight and
boast of the creation, there will be cast out in the face of the sun a bloated,
putrid, noisome carcass, full of stench and poison, an offence, a horror, a
lesson to the world.

In my opinion, we ought not to wait for the fruitless instruction of
calamity to inquire into the abuses which bring upon us ruin in the worst of
its forms, in the loss of our fame and virtue. But the right honorable
gentleman[66] says, in answer to all the powerful arguments of my

honorable friend, "that this inquiry is of a delicate nature, and that the state
will suffer detriment by the exposure of this transaction." But it is exposed;
it is perfectly known in every member, in every particle, and in every way,
except that which may lead to a remedy. He knows that the papers of
correspondence are printed, and that they are in every hand.

He and delicacy are a rare and a singular coalition. He thinks that to
divulge our Indian politics may be highly dangerous. He! the mover, the
chairman, the reporter of the Committee of Secrecy! he, that brought forth
in the utmost detail, in several vast, printed folios, the most recondite parts
of the politics, the military, the revenues of the British empire in India! With
six great chopping bastards,[67] each as lusty as an infant Hercules, this
delicate creature blushes at the sight of his new bridegroom, assumes a
virgin delicacy; or, to use a more fit, as well as a more poetic comparison,
the person so squeamish, so timid, so trembling lest the winds of heaven
should visit too roughly, is expanded to broad sunshine, exposed like the
sow of imperial augury, lying in the mud with all the prodigies of her
fertility about her, as evidence of her delicate amours,—

Triginta capitum fœtus enixa jacebat,
Alba, solo recubans, albi circum ubera nati.

Whilst discovery of the misgovernment of others led to his own power, it was wise to inquire,
it was safe to publish: there was then no delicacy; there was then no danger. But when his object
is obtained, and in his imitation he has outdone the crimes that he had reprobated in volumes of
reports and in sheets of bills of pains and penalties, then concealment becomes prudence, and it
concerns the safety of the state that we should not know, in a mode of Parliamentary
cognizance, what all the world knows but too well, that is, in what manner he chooses to
dispose of the public revenues to the creatures of his politics.

The debate has been long, and as much so on my part, at least, as on the part of those who
have spoken before me. But long as it is, the more material half of the subject has hardly been
touched on: that is, the corrupt and destructive system to which this debt has been rendered
subservient, and which seems to be pursued with at least as much vigor and regularity as ever. If
I considered your ease or my own, rather than the weight and importance of this question, I
ought to make some apology to you, perhaps some apology to myself, for having detained your
attention so long. I know on what ground I tread. This subject, at one time taken up with so
much fervor and zeal, is no longer a favorite in this House. The House itself has undergone a
great and signal revolution. To some the subject is strange and uncouth; to several, harsh and
distasteful; to the relics of the last Parliament it is a matter of fear and apprehension. It is natural
for those who have seen their friends sink in the tornado which raged during the late shift of the
monsoon, and have hardly escaped on the planks of the general wreck, it is but too natural for
them, as soon as they make the rocks and quicksands of their former disasters, to put about their
new-built barks, and, as much as possible, to keep aloof from this perilous lee shore.

But let us do what we please to put India from our thoughts, we can do nothing to separate it
from our public interest and our national reputation. Our attempts to banish this importunate
duty will only make it return upon us again and again, and every time in a shape more
unpleasant than the former. A government has been fabricated for that great province; the right
honorable gentleman says that therefore you ought not to examine into its conduct. Heavens!
what an argument is this! We are not to examine into the conduct of the Direction, because it is
an old government; we are not to examine into this Board of Control, because it is a new one.
Then we are only to examine into the conduct of those who have no conduct to account for.
Unfortunately, the basis of this new government has been laid on old, condemned delinquents,
and its superstructure is raised out of prosecutors turned into protectors. The event has been
such as might be expected. But if it had been otherwise constituted, had it been constituted even
as I wished, and as the mover of this question had planned, the better part of the proposed
establishment was in the publicity of its proceedings, in its perpetual responsibility to

Parliament. Without this check, what is our government at home, even awed, as every European
government is, by an audience formed of the other states of Europe, by the applause or
condemnation of the discerning and critical company before which it acts? But if the scene on
the other side of the globe, which tempts, invites, almost compels, to tyranny and rapine, be not
inspected with the eye of a severe and unremitting vigilance, shame and destruction must ensue.
For one, the worst event of this day, though it may deject, shall not break or subdue me. The call
upon us is authoritative. Let who will shrink back, I shall be found at my post. Baffled,
discountenanced, subdued, discredited, as the cause of justice and humanity is, it will be only
the dearer to me. Whoever, therefore, shall at any time bring before you anything towards the
relief of our distressed fellow-citizens in India, and towards a subversion of the present most
corrupt and oppressive system for its government, in me shall find a weak, I am afraid, but a
steady, earnest, and faithful assistant.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Right Honorable Henry Dundas.

[2] Sir Thomas Rumbold, late Governor of Madras.

[3] Appendix, No. 1.

[4] 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 150,000l. yearly of the
charges. On the present produce, if Mr. Pitt's scheme was to take place, he might gain from
seven to ten thousand pounds a year.

[5] Mr. Smith's Examination before the Select Committee. Appendix, No. 2.

[6] Appendix, No. 2.

[7] Fourth Report, Mr. Dundas's Committee, p. 4.

[8] A witness examined before the Committee of Secrecy says that eighteen per cent was the
usual interest, but he had heard that more had been given. The above is the account which Mr.
B. received.

[9] Mr. Dundas.

[10] For the threats of the creditors, and total subversion of the authority of the Company in
favor of the Nabob's power and the increase thereby of his evil dispositions, and the great
derangement of all public concerns, see Select Committee Fort St. George's letters, 21st

November, 1769, and January 31st, 1770; September 11, 1772; and Governor Bourchier's letters
to the Nabob of Arcot, 21st November, 1769, and December 9th, 1769.

[11] "He [the Nabob] is in a great degree the cause of our present inability, by diverting the
revenues of the Carnatic through private channels." "Even this peshcush [the Tanjore tribute],
circumstanced as he and we are, he has assigned over to others, who now set themselves in
opposition to the Company."—Consultations, October 11, 1769, on the 12th communicated to
the Nabob.

[12] Nabob's letter to Governor Palk. Papers published by the Directors in 1775; and papers
printed by the same authority, 1781.

[13] See papers printed by order of a General Court in 1780, pp. 222 and 224; as also Nabob's
letter to Governor Dupré, 19th July, 1771: "I have taken up loans by which I have suffered a
loss of upwards of a crore of pagodas [four millions sterling] by interest on an heavy interest."
Letter 15th January, 1772: "Notwithstanding I have taken much trouble, and have made many
payments to my creditors, yet the load of my debt, which became so great by interest and
compound interest, is not cleared."

[14] The Nabob of Arcot.

[15] Appendix, No. 3.

[16] See Mr. Dundas's 1st, 2d, and 3d Reports.

[17] See further Consultations, 3d February, 1778.

[18] Mr. Dundas's 1st Report, pp. 26, 29, and Appendix, No. 2, 10, 18, for the mutinous state
and desertion of the Nabob's troops for want of pay. See also Report IV. of the same committee.

[19] Memorial from the creditors to the Governor and Council, 22d January, 1770.

[20] In the year 1778, Mr. James Call, one of the proprietors of this specific debt, was actually
mayor. (Appendix to 2d Report of Mr. Dundas's committee, No. 65.) The only proof which
appeared on the inquiry instituted in the General Court of 1781 was an affidavit of the lenders
themselves, deposing (what nobody ever denied) that they had engaged and agreed to pay—not
that they had paid—the sum of 160,000l. This was two years after the transaction; and the
affidavit is made before George Proctor, mayor, an attorney for certain of the old creditors.—
Proceedings of the President and Council of Fort St. George, 22d February, 1779.

[21] Right Honorable Henry Dundas.

[22] Appendix to the 4th Report of Mr. Dundas's committee, No 15.

[23] "No sense of the common danger, in case of a war, can prevail on him [the Nabob of
Arcot] to furnish the Company with what is absolutely necessary to assemble an army, though it
is beyond a doubt that money to a large amount is now hoarded up in his coffers at Chepauk;
and tunkaws are granted to individuals, upon some of his most valuable countries, for payment
of part of those debts which he has contracted, and which certainly will not bear inspection, as
neither debtor nor creditors have ever had the confidence to submit the accounts to our
examination, though they expressed a wish to consolidate the debts under the auspices of this
government, agreeably to a plan they had formed."—Madras Consultations, 20th July, 1778.
Mr. Dundas's Appendix to 2nd Report, 143. See also last Appendix to ditto Report, No. 376, B.

[24] Transcriber's note: Footnote missing in original text.

[25] Lord Pigot

[26] In Sir Thomas Rumbold's letter to the Court of Directors, March 15th, 1778, he represents
it as higher, in the following manner:—"How shall I paint to you my astonishment, on my
arrival here, when I was informed, that, independent of this four lacs of pagodas [the Cavalry
Loan], independent of the Nabob's debt to his old creditors, and the money due to the Company,
he had contracted a debt to the enormous amount of sixty-three lacs of pagodas [2,520,000l.]. I
mention this circumstance to you with horror; for the creditors being in general servants of the
Company renders my task, on the part of the Company, difficult and invidious." "I have freed
the sanction of this government from so corrupt a transaction. It is in my mind the most venal
of all proceedings to give the Company's protection to debts that cannot bear the light; and
though it appears exceedingly alarming, that a country on which you are to depend for
resources should be so involved as to be nearly three years' revenue in debt,—in a country, too,
where one year's revenue can never be called secure, by men who know anything of the politics
of this part of India." "I think it proper to mention to you, that, although the Nabob reports his
private debt to amount to upwards of sixty lacs, yet I understand that it is not quite so much."
Afterwards Sir Thomas Rumbold recommended this debt to the favorable attention of the
Company, but without any sufficient reason for his change of disposition. However, he went no
further.

[27] Nabob's proposals, November 25th, 1778; and memorial of the creditors, March 1st, 1779.

[28] Nabob's proposals to his new consolidated creditors, November 25th, 1778.

[29] Paper signed by the Nabob, 6th January, 1780.

[30] Kistbundi to July 31, 1780.

[31] Governor's letter to the Nabob, 25th July, 1779.

[32] Report of the Select Committee, Madras Consultations, January 7, 1771. See also papers
published by the order of the Court of Directors in 1776; and Lord Macartney's correspondence
with Mr. Hastings and the Nabob of Arcot. See also Mr. Dundas's Appendix, No 376, B.
Nabob's propositions through Mr. Sulivan and Assam Khân, Art. 6, and indeed the whole.

[33] "The principal object of the expedition is, to get money from Tanjore to pay the Nabob's
debt: if a surplus, to be applied in discharge of the Nabob's debts to his private creditors."
(Consultations, March 20, 1771; and for further lights, Consultations, 12th June, 1771.) "We are
alarmed lest this debt to individuals should have been the real motive for the aggrandizement of
Mahomed Ali [the Nabob of Arcot], and that we are plunged into a war to put him in
possession of the Mysore revenues for the discharge of the debt."—Letter from the Directors,
March 17, 1769.

[34] Letter from the Nabob, May 1st, 1768; and ditto, 24th April, 1770, 1st October; ditto, 16th
September, 1772, 16th March, 1773.

[35] Letter from the Presidency at Madras to the Court of Directors, 27th June, 1769.

[36] Mr. Dundas's committee. Report L, Appendix, No. 29.

[37] Appendix, No. 4. Report of the Committee of Assigned Revenue.

[38] Mr. Barnard's map of the Jaghire

[39] See Report IV., Mr. Dundas's committee, p. 46.

[40] Interest is rated in India by the month.

[41] Mr. Dundas's committee. Rep. I. p. 9, and ditto, Rep. IV. 69, where the revenue of 1777
stated only at 22 lacs,—30 lacs stated as the revenue, "supposing the Carnatic to be properly
managed."

[42] See Appendix, No. 4. statement in the Report of the Committee of Assigned Revenue.

[43] The province of Tinnevelly.

[44] Appendix, No. 5.

[45] See extract of their letter in the Appendix, No. 9.

[46] "It is certain that the incursion of a few of Hyder's horse into the Jaghire, in 1767, cost the
Company upwards of pagodas 27,000, in allowances for damages."—Consultations, February
11th, 1771.

[47] Proceeding at Madras, 11th February, 1769, and throughout the correspondence on this
subject; particularly Consultations, October 4th, 1769, and the creditors' memorial, 20th
January, 1770.

[48] Appendix, No. 7.

[49] For some part of these usurious transactions, see Consultation, 28th January, 1781; and for
the Nabob's excusing his oppressions on account of these debts, Consultation, 26th November,
1770. "Still I undertook, first, the payment of the money belonging to the Company, who are
my kind friends, and by borrowing, and mortgaging my jewels, &c., by taking from every one of
my servants, in proportion to their circumstances, by fresh severities also on my country,
notwithstanding its distressed state, as you know."—The Board's remark is as follows: after
controverting some of the facts, they say, "That his countries are oppressed is most certain, but
not from real necessity; his debts, indeed, have afforded him a constant pretence for using
severities and cruel oppressions."

[50] See Consultation, 28th January, 1781, where it is asserted, and not denied, that the Nabob's
farmers of revenue seldom continue for three months together. From this the state of the
country may be easily judged of.

[51] In Mr. Fox's speech.

[52] The amended letter, Appendix, No. 9.

[53] Appendix, No. 8.

[54] Mr. Petrie's evidence before the Select Committee, Appendix, No. 7.

[55] Appendix, No. 7.

[56] Mr. Dundas.

[57] See Report IV., Committee of Secrecy, pp. 73 and 74; and Appendix, in sundry places.

[58] Mr. Smith's protest.

[59] Madras correspondence on this subject.

[60] Appendix, No 6.

[61] Right Honorable William Pitt.

[62] Appendix, No. 10.

[63] Dated 13th October. For further illustration of the style in which these letters were written,
and the principles on which they proceed, see letters from the Nabob to the Court of Directors,
dated August 16th and September 7th, 1783, delivered by Mr. James Macpherson, minister to
the Nabob, January 14, 1784. Appendix, No. 10.

[64] Appendix, No. 6.

[65] Second Report of Select (General Smith's) Committee.

[66] Mr. Dundas.

[67] Six Reports of the Committee of Secrecy.

APPENDIX.

No. 1.

CLAUSES OF MR PITT'S BILL.

Referred to from p. 17.

Appointing Commissioners to inquire into the Fees, Gratuities, Perquisites,
Emoluments, which are, or have been lately, received in the several Public Offices
therein mentioned; to examine into any Abuses which may exist in the same, &c.

And be it further enacted, that it shall and may be lawful to and for the said commissioners,
or any two of them, and they are hereby empowered, authorized, and required, to examine upon
oath (which oath they, or any two of them, are hereby authorized to administer) the several
persons, of all descriptions, belonging to any of the offices or departments before mentioned,
and all other persons whom the said commissioners, or any two of them, shall think fit to
examine, touching the business of each office or department, and the fees, gratuities,
perquisites, and emoluments taken therein, and touching all other matters and things necessary
for the execution of the powers vested in the said commissioners by this act; all which persons

are hereby required and directed punctually to attend the said commissioners, at such time and
place as they, or any two of them, shall appoint, and also to observe and execute such orders
and directions as the said commissioners, or any two of them, shall make or give for the
purposes before mentioned.

And be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the said commissioners, or any two of them,
shall be and are hereby empowered to examine into any corrupt and fraudulent practices, or
other misconduct, committed by any person or persons concerned in the management of any of
the offices or departments hereinbefore mentioned; and for the better execution of this present
act, the said commissioners, or any two of them, are hereby authorized to meet and sit, from
time to time, in such place or places as they shall find most convenient, with, or without
adjournment, and to send their precept or precepts, under their hands and seals, for any person
or persons whatsoever, and for such books, papers, writings, or records, as they shall judge
necessary for their information, relating to any of the offices or departments hereinbefore
mentioned; and all bailiffs, constables, sheriffs, and other his Majesty's officers, are hereby
required to obey and execute such orders and precepts aforesaid as shall be sent to them, or any
of them, by the said commissioners, or any two of them, touching the premises.

No. 2.

Referred to from p. 22.

NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.

Mr. George Smith being asked, Whether the debts of the Nabob of Arcot have increased since
he knew Madras? he said, Yes, they have. He distinguishes his debts into two sorts: those
contracted before the year 1766, and those contracted from that year to the year in which he left
Madras.—Being asked, What he thinks is the original amount of the old debts? he said,
Between twenty-three and twenty-four lacs of pagodas, as well as he can recollect.—Being
asked, What was the amount of that debt when he left Madras? he said, Between four and five
lacs of pagodas, as he understood.—Being asked, What was the amount of the new debt when
he left Madras? he said, In November, 1777, that debt amounted, according to the Nabob's own
account, and published at Chepauk, his place of residence, to sixty lacs of pagodas, independent
of the old debt, on which debt of sixty lacs of pagodas the Nabob did agree to pay an interest of
twelve per cent per annum.—Being asked, Whether this debt was approved of by the Court of
Directors? he said, He does not know it was.—Being asked, Whether the old debt was
recognized by the Court of Directors? he said, Yes, it has been; and the Court of Directors have
sent out repeated orders to the President and Council of Madras to enforce its recovery and

payment.—Being asked, If the interest upon the new debt is punctually paid? he said, It was not
during his residence at Madras, from 1777 to 1779, in which period he thinks no more than five
per cent interest was paid, in different dividends of two and one per cent.—Being asked, What
is the usual course taken by the Nabob concerning the arrears of interest? he said, Not having
ever lent him moneys himself, he cannot fully answer as to the mode of settling the interest with
him.

Being asked, Whether he has reason to believe the sixty lacs of pagodas was all principal
money really and truly advanced to the Nabob of Arcot, or a fictitious capital, made up of
obligations given by him, where no money or goods were received, or which was increased by
the uniting into it a greater interest than the twelve per cent expressed to be due on the capital?
he said, He has no reason to believe that the sum of sixty lacs of pagodas was lent in money or
goods to the Nabob, because that sum he thinks is of more value than all the money, goods, and
chattels in the settlement; but he does not know in what mode or manner this debt of the
Nabob's was incurred or accumulated.—Being asked, Whether it was not a general and well-
grounded opinion at Madras, that a great part of this sum was accumulated by obligations, and
was for services performed or to be performed for the Nabob? he said, He has heard that a part
of this debt was given for the purposes mentioned in the above question, but he does not know
that it was so.—Being asked, Whether it was the general opinion of the settlement? he said, He
cannot say that it was the general opinion, but it was the opinion of a considerable part of the
settlement.—Being asked, Whether it was the declared opinion of those that were concerned in
the debt, or those that were not? he said, It was the opinion of both parties, at least such of them
as he conversed with.—Being asked, Whether he has reason to believe that the interest really
paid by the Nabob, upon obligations given, or money lent, did not frequently exceed twelve per
cent? he said, Prior to the 1st of August, 1774, he had had reason to believe that a higher interest
than twelve per cent was paid by the Nabob on moneys lent to him; but from and after that
period, when the last act of Parliament took place in India, he does not know that more than
twelve per cent had been paid by the Nabob, or received from him.—Being asked, Whether it is
not his opinion that the Nabob has paid more than twelve per cent for money due since the 1st
of August, 1774? he said, He has heard that he has, but he does not know it.—Being asked,
Whether he has been told so by any considerable and weighty authority, that was like to know?
he said, He has been so informed by persons who he believes had a very good opportunity of
knowing it.—Being asked, Whether he was ever told so by the Nabob of Arcot himself? he said,
He does not recollect that the Nabob of Arcot directly told him so, but from what he said he did
infer that he paid a higher interest than twelve per cent.

Mr. Smith being asked, Whether, in the course of trade, he ever sold anything to the Nabob of
Arcot? he said, In the year 1775 he did sell to the Nabob of Arcot pearls to the amount of
32,500 pagodas, for which the Nabob gave him an order or tankah on the country of Tanjore,

payable in six months, without interest.—Being asked, Whether, at the time he asked the Nabob
his price for the pearls, the Nabob beat down that price, as dealers commonly do? he said, No;
so far from it, he offered him more than he asked by 1000 pagodas, and which he rejected.—
Being asked, Whether, in settling a transaction of discount with the Nabob's agent, he was not
offered a greater discount than 12l. per cent? he said, In discounting a soucar's bill for 180,000
pagodas, the Nabob's agent did offer him a discount of twenty-four per cent per annum, saving
that it was the usual rate of discount paid by the Nabob; but which he would not accept of,
thinking himself confined by the act of Parliament limiting the interest of moneys to twelve per
cent, and accordingly he discounted the bill at twelve per cent per annum only.—Being asked,
Whether he does not think those offers were made him because the Nabob thought he was a
person of some consequence in the settlement? he said, Being only a private merchant, he
apprehends that the offer was made to him more from its being a general practice than from any
opinion of his importance.

No. 3.

Referred to from p. 38.

A Bill for the Better Government of the Territorial Possessions and
Dependencies in India.

[ONE OF MR FOX'S INDIA BILLS.]

And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the Nabob of Arcot, the Rajah of
Tanjore, or any other native protected prince in India, shall not assign, mortgage, or pledge any
territory or land whatsoever, or the produce or revenue thereof, to any British subject
whatsoever; neither shall it be lawful to and for any British subject whatsoever to take or
receive any such assignment, mortgage, or pledge; and the same are hereby declared to be 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 his or their representatives.

No. 4.

Referred to from pp. 64 and 73.

(COPY.)

27th May, 1782.

Letter from the Committee of Assigned Revenue, to the President and Select
Committee, dated 27th May, 1782; with Comparative Statement, and Minute thereon.

To the Right Honorable LORD MACARTNEY, K.B., President, and Governor, &c.,
Select Committee of Fort St. George.

MY LORD, AND GENTLEMEN,—

Although we have, in obedience to your commands of the 5th January, regularly laid before
you our proceedings at large, and have occasionally addressed you upon such points as required
your resolutions or orders for our guidance, we still think it necessary to collect and digest in a
summary report those transactions in the management of the assigned revenue which have
principally engaged our attention, and which, upon the proceeding, are too much intermixed
with ordinary occurrences to be readily traced and understood.

Such a report may be formed with the greater propriety at this time, when your Lordship,
&c., have been pleased to conclude your arrangements for the rent of several of the Nabob's
districts. Our aim in it is briefly to explain the state of the Carnatic at the period of the Nabob's
assignment,—the particular causes which existed to the prejudice of that assignment, after it
was made,—and the measures which your Lordship, &c., have, upon our recommendation,
adopted for removing those causes, and introducing a more regular and beneficial system of
management in the country.

Hyder Ali having entered the Carnatic with his whole force, about the middle of July, 1780,
and employed fire and sword in its destruction for near eighteen months before the Nabob's
assignment took place, it will not be difficult to conceive the state of the country at that period.
In those provinces which were fully exposed to the ravages of horse, scarce a vestige remained
either of population or agriculture: such of the miserable inhabitants as escaped the fury of the
sword were either carried into the Mysore country or left to struggle under the horrors of
famine. The Arcot and Trichinopoly districts began early to feel the effects of this desolating
war. Tinnevelly, Madura, and Ramnadaporum, though little infested with Hyder's troops,
became a prey to the incursions of the Polygars, who stripped them of the greatest part of the
revenues. Ongole, Nellore, and Palnaud, the only remaining districts, had suffered, but in a
small degree.

The misfortunes of war, however, were not the only evils which the Carnatic experienced.
The Nabob's aumildars, and other servants, appear to have taken advantage of the general
confusion to enrich themselves. A very small part of the revenue was accounted for; and so high
were the ordinary expenses of every district, that double the apparent produce of the whole
country would not have satisfied them.

In this state, which we believe is no way exaggerated, the Company took charge of the
assigned countries. Their prospect of relief from the heavy burdens of the war was, indeed, but
little advanced by the Nabob's concession; and the revenues of the Carnatic seemed in danger of
being irrecoverably lost, unless a speedy and entire change of system could be adopted.

On our minutes of the 21st January we treated the subject of the assignment at some length,
and pointed out the mischiefs which, in addition to the effects of the war, had arisen from what
we conceived to be wrong and oppressive management. We used the freedom to suggest an
entire alteration in the mode of realizing the revenues. We proposed a considerable and
immediate reduction of expenses, and a total change of the principal aumildars who had been
employed under the Nabob.

Our ideas had the good fortune to receive your approbation; but the removal of the Nabob's
servants being thought improper at that particular period of the collections, we employed our
attention chiefly in preserving what revenue was left the country, and acquiring such materials
as might lead to a more perfect knowledge of its former and present state.

These pursuits, as we apprehended, met with great obstructions from the conduct of the
Nabob's servants. The orders they received were evaded under various pretexts; no attention
was paid to the strong and repeated applications made to them for the accounts of their
management; and their attachment to the Company's interest appeared, in every instance, so
feeble, that we saw no prospect whatever of success, but in the appointment of renters under the
Company's sole authority.

Upon this principle, we judged it expedient to recommend that such of the Nabob's districts
as were in a state to be farmed out might be immediately let by a public advertisement, issued in
the Company's name, and circulated through every province of the Carnatic; and, with the view
of encouraging bidders, we proposed that the countries might be advertised for the whole period
of the Nabob's assignment, and the security of the Company's protection promised in the fullest
manner to such persons as might become renters.

This plan had the desired effect; and the attempts which were secretly made to counteract it
afforded an unequivocal proof of its necessity: but the advantages resulting from it were more
pleasingly evinced by the number of proposals that were delivered, and by the terms which
were in general offered for the districts intended to be farmed out.

Having so far attained the purposes of the assignment, our attention was next turned to the
heavy expenses entailed upon the different provinces; and here, we confess, our astonishment
was raised to the highest pitch. In the Trichinopoly country the standing disbursements
appeared, by the Nabob's own accounts, to be one lac of rupees more than the receipts. In other

districts the charges were not in so high a proportion, but still rated on a most extravagant scale;
and we saw, by every account that was brought before us, the absolute necessity of retrenching
considerably in all the articles of expense.

Our own reason, aided by such inquiries as we were able to make, suggested the alterations
we have recommended to your Lordship, &c., under this head. You will observe that we have
not acted sparingly, but we chose rather, in cases of doubt, to incur the hazard of retrenching too
much than too little; because it would be easier, after any stated allowance for expenses, to add
what might be necessary than to diminish. We hope, however, there will be no material increase
in the articles, as they now stand.

One considerable charge upon the Nabob's country was for extraordinary sibbendies, sepoys,
and horsemen, who appeared to us to be a very unnecessary incumbrance on the revenue. Your
Lordship, &c., have determined to receive such of these people as will enlist into the Company's
service, and discharge the rest. This measure will not only relieve the country of a heavy
burden, but tend greatly to fix in the Company that kind of authority which is requisite for the
due collection of the revenues.

In consequence of your determination respecting the Nabob's sepoys, &c., every charge under
that head has been struck out of our account of expenses. If the whole number of these people
be enlisted by the Company, there will probably be no more than sufficient to complete their
ordinary military establishment. But should the present reduction of the Nabob's artillery render
it expedient, after the war, to make any addition to the Company's establishment for the
purposes of the assigned countries, the expense of such addition, whatever it be, must be
deducted from the present account of savings.

In considering the charges of the several districts, in order to establish better regulations, we
were careful to discriminate those incurred for troops, kept or supposed to be kept up for the
defence of the country, from those of the sibbendy, servants, &c., for the cultivation of the lands
and the collection of the revenues, as well as to pay attention, to such of the established customs
of the country, ancient privileges of the inhabitants, and public charities, as were necessarily
allowed, and appeared proper to be continued, but which, under the Nabob's government, were
not only rated much higher, but had been blended under one confused and almost unintelligible
title of expenses of the districts: so joined, perhaps, to afford pleas and means of secreting and
appropriating great part of the revenues to other purposes than fairly appeared; and certainly
betraying the utmost neglect and mismanagement, as giving latitude for every species of fraud
and oppression. Such a system has, in the few latter years of the Nabob's necessities, brought all
his countries into that situation from which nothing but the most rigid economy, strict

observance of the conduct of managers, and the most conciliating attention to the rights of the
inhabitants can possibly recover them.

It now only remains for us to lay before your Lordship, &c., the inclosed statement of the
sums at which the districts lately advertised have been let, compared with the accounts of their
produce delivered by the Nabob, and entered on our proceedings of the 21st January,—likewise
a comparative view of the former and present expenses.

The Nabob's accounts of the produce of these districts state, as we have some reason to think,
the sums which former renters engaged to pay to him, (and which were seldom, if ever, made
good,) and not the sums actually produced by the districts; yet we have the satisfaction to
observe that the present aggregate rents, upon an average, are equal to those accounts. Your
Lordship, &c., cannot, indeed, expect, that, in the midst of the danger, invasion, and distress
which assail the Carnatic on every side, the renters now appointed will be able at present to
fulfil the terms of their leases; but we trust, from the measures we have taken, that very little, if
any, of the actual collections will be lost, even during the war,—and that, on the return of peace
and tranquillity, the renters will have it in their power fully to perform their respective
agreements.

We much regret that the situation of the Arcot province will not admit of the same settlement
which has been made for the other districts; but the enemy being in possession of the capital,
together with several other strongholds, and having entirely desolated the country, there is little
room to hope for more from it than a bare subsistence to the few garrisons we have left there.

We shall not fail to give our attention towards obtaining every information respecting this
province that the present times will permit, and to take the first opportunity to propose such
arrangements for the management as we may think eligible.

We have the honor to be

Your most obedient humble servants,

CHARLES OAKLEY,
EYLES IRWIN,
HALL PLUMER,
DAVID HALIBURTON,
GEORGE MOUBRAY.

FORT ST. GEORGE, 27th May, 1782.

A true copy.

J. HUDLESTON, Sec.

COMPARATIVE STATEMENT of the Revenues and Expenses of the Nellore, Ongole,
Palnaud, Trichinopoly, Madura, and Tinnevelly Countries, while in the Hands of the Nabob,
with those of the same Countries on the Terms of the Leases lately granted for Four Years, to
commence with the Beginning of the Phazeley, 1192, or the 12th July, 1782. Abstracted from the
Accounts received from the Nabob, and from the Rents stipulated for and Expenses allowed by
the present Leases.

GROSS REVENUE. EXPENSES. NET REVENUE.
Annual
Gross Rent
Annual
by the Annual
Rent by
Nabob's Expenses
the Annual Net Net
Account. allowed Reduction
present Expenses Revenue Revenue Increase
Average of by the in the
Leases, at by the by the by the of Net
the Four present Annual
an Nabob's Nabob's present Revenue.
Years Leases at Expenses.
Average Accounts. Accounts. Leases.
immediately an
of Four
preceding Estimate.
Years.
the present
War.
Star Star Star Star Star Star Star Star
Pagodas. Pagodas. Pagodas. Pagodas. Pagodas. Pagodas. Pagodas. Pagodas.
Nellore and
3,22,830 3,61,900 1,98,794 33,000 1,65,794 1,24,036 3,28,900 2,04,864
Sarapilly
Ongole 1,10,967[68] 55,000 88,254 ... 88,254 22,713 55,000 32,287
Palnaud 51,355 53,500 25,721 5,698 20,023 25,634 47,802 22,168
Trichinopoly 2,89,993 [69] 2,73,214 2,82,148 13,143 2,63,005 7,845 2,54,071 2,46,226
Madura 1,02,756 60,290 63,710 12,037 51,673 39,046 48,253 9,207
Tinnevelly 5,65,537 5,79,713 1,64,098 70,368 93,730 4,01,439 5,09,345 1,07,906
Total 14,43,438 13,83,617 8,22,725 1,40,246 6,82,479 6,20,71312,43,371 6,22,658

N.B. In this statement, Madras Pagodas are calculated at 10 per cent Batta; Chuckrums at two
thirds of a Porto Novo Pagoda, which are reckoned at 115 per 100 Star Pagodas; and Rupees at
350 per 100 Star Pagodas. To avoid fractions, the nearest integral numbers have been taken.

Signed,

CHARLES OAKLEY,
EYLES IRWIN,
HALL PLUMER,
DAVID HALIBURTON,

GEORGE MOUBRAY.

FORT ST. GEORGE, 27th May, 1782.

No. 5.

Referred to from p. 73.

Case of certain Persons renting the Assigned Lands wider the Authority of the East
India Company.

Extract of a Letter from the President and Council of Fort St. George, 25th May, 1783.

One of them [the renters], Ram Chunder Raus, was, indeed, one of those unfortunate rajahs
whose country, by being near to the territories of the Nabob, forfeited its title to independence,
and became the prey of ambition and cupidity. This man, though not able to resist the
Company's arms, employed in such a deed at the Nabob's instigation, had industry and ability.
He acquired, by a series of services, even the confidence of the Nabob, who suffered him to rent
apart of the country of which he had deprived him of the property. This man had afforded no
motive for his rejection by the Nabob, but that of being ready to engage with the Company: a
motive most powerful, indeed, but not to be avowed.

[This is the person whom the English instruments of the Nabob of Arcot have had the
audacity to charge with a corrupt transaction with Lord Macartney, and, in support of that
charge, to produce a forged letter from his Lordship's steward. The charge and letter the reader
may see in this Appendix, under the proper head. It is asserted by the unfortunate prince above
mentioned, that the Company first settled on the coast of Coromandel under the protection of
one of his ancestors. If this be true, (and it is far from unlikely,) the world must judge of the
return the descendant has met with. The case of another of the victims given up by the ministry,
though not altogether so striking as the former, is worthy of attention. It is that of the renter of
the Province of Nellore.]

It is, with a wantonness of falsehood, and indifference to detection, asserted to you, in proof
of the validity of the Nabob's objections, that this man's failures had already forced us to
remove him: though in fact he has continued invariably in office; though our greatest supplies
have been received from him; and that, in the disappointment of your remittances [the
remittances from Bengal] and of other resources, the specie sent us from Nellore alone has
sometimes enabled us to carry on the public business; and that the present expedition against

the French must, without this assistance from the assignment, have been laid aside, or delayed
until it might have become too late.

[This man is by the ministry given over to the mercy of persons capable of making charges
on him "with a wantonness of falsehood, and indifference to detection." What is likely to
happen to him and the rest of the victims may appear by the following.]

Letter to the Governor-General and Council, March 13th, 1782.

The speedy termination, to which the people were taught to look, of the Company's interference
in the revenues, and the vengeance denounced against those who, contrary to the mandate of the
Durbar, should be connected with them, as reported by Mr. Sullivan, may, as much as the
former exactions and oppressions of the Nabob in the revenue, as reported by the commander-
in-chief, have deterred some of the fittest men from offering to be concerned in it.

The timid disposition of the Hindoo natives of this country was not likely to be insensible to
the specimen of that vengeance given by his Excellency the Amir, who, upon the mere rumor,
that a Bramin, of the name of Appagee Row, had given proposals to the Company for the
rentership of Vellore, had the temerity to send for him, and to put him in confinement.

A man thus seized by the Nabob's sepoys within the walls of Madras gave a general alarm,
and government found it necessary to promise the protection of the Company, in order to calm
the apprehensions of the people.

No. 6.

Referred to from pp. 101 and 105.

Extract of a Letter from the Council and Select Committee at Fort St. George, to the
Governor-General and Council, dated 25th May, 1783.

In the prosecution of our duty, we beseech you to consider, as an act of strict and necessary
justice, previous to reiteration of your orders for the surrender of the assignment, how far it
would be likely to affect third persons who do not appear to have committed any breach of their
engagements. You command us to compel our aumils to deliver over their respective charges as
shall be appointed by the Nabob, or to retain their trust under his sole authority, if he shall
choose to confirm them. These aumils are really renters; they were appointed in the room of the
Nabob's aumils, and contrary to his wishes; they have already been rejected by him, and are

therefore not likely to be confirmed by him. They applied to this government, in consequence of
public advertisements in our name, as possessing in this instance the joint authority of the
Nabob and the Company, and have entered into mutual and strict covenants with us, and we
with them, relative to the certain districts not actually in the possession of the enemy; by which
covenants, as they are bound to the punctual payment of their rents and due management of the
country, so we, and our constituents, and the public faith, are in like manner bound to maintain
them in the enjoyment of their leases, during the continuance of the term. That term was for five
years, agreeably to the words of the assignment, which declare that the time of renting shall be
for three or five years, as the Governor shall settle with the renters.—Their leases cannot be
legally torn from them. Nothing but their previous breach of a part could justify our breach of
the whole. Such a stretch and abuse of power would, indeed, not only savor of the assumption
of sovereignty, but of arbitrary and oppressive despotism. In the present contest, whether the
Nabob be guilty, or we be guilty, the renters are not guilty. Whichever of the contending parties
has broken the condition of the assignment, the renters have not broken the condition of their
leases. These men, in conducting the business of the assignment, have acted in opposition to the
designs of the Nabob, in despite of the menaces denounced against all who should dare to
oppose the mandates of the Durbar justice. Gratitude and humanity require that provision
should be made by you, before you set the Nabob's ministers loose on the country, for the
protection of the victims devoted to their vengeance.

Mr. Benfield, to secure the permanency of his power, and the perfection of his schemes,
thought it necessary to render the Nabob an absolute stranger to the state of his affairs. He
assured his Highness that full justice was not done to the strength of his sentiments and the
keenness of his attacks, in the translations that were made by the Company's servants from the
original Persian of his letters. He therefore proposed to him that they should for the future be
transmitted in English.—Of the English language or writing his Highness or the Amir cannot
read one word, though the latter can converse in it with sufficient fluency. The Persian
language, as the language of the Mahomedan conquerors, and of the court of Delhi, as an
appendage or signal of authority, was at all times particularly affected by the Nabob. It is the
language of all acts of state, and all public transactions, among the Mussulman chiefs of
Hindostan. The Nabob thought to have gained no inconsiderable point, in procuring the
correspondence from our predecessors to the Rajah of Tanjore to be changed from the Mahratta
language, which that Hindoo prince understands, to the Persian, which he disclaims
understanding. To force the Rajah to the Nabob's language was gratifying the latter with a new
species of subserviency. He had formerly contended with considerable anxiety, and, it was
thought, no inconsiderable cost, for particular forms of address to be used towards him in that
language. But all of a sudden, in favor of Mr. Benfield, he quits his former affections, his habits,
his knowledge, his curiosity, the increasing mistrust of age, to throw himself upon the generous
candor, the faithful interpretation, the grateful return, and eloquent organ of Mr. Benfield!—Mr.

Benfield relates and reads what he pleases to his Excellency the Amir-ul-Omrah; his Excellency
communicates with the Nabob, his father, in the language the latter understands. Through two
channels so pure, the truth must arrive at the Nabob in perfect refinement; through this double
trust, his Highness receives whatever impression it may be convenient to make on him: he
abandons his signature to whatever paper they tell him contains, in the English language, the
sentiments with which they had inspired him. He thus is surrounded on every side. He is totally
at their mercy, to believe what is not true, and to subscribe to what he does not mean. There is
no system so new, so foreign to his intentions, that they may not pursue in his name, without
possibility of detection: for they are cautious of who approach him, and have thought prudent to
decline, for him, the visits of the Governor, even upon the usual solemn and acceptable occasion
of delivering to his Highness the Company's letters. Such is the complete ascendency gained by
Mr. Benfield. It may be partly explained by the facts observed already, some years ago, by Mr.
Benfield himself, in regard to the Nabob, of the infirmities natural to his advanced age, joined to
the decays of his constitution. To this ascendency, in proportion as it grew, must chiefly be
ascribed, if not the origin, at least the continuance and increase, of the Nabob's disunion with
this Presidency: a disunion which creates the importance and subserves the resentments of Mr.
Benfield; and an ascendency which, if you effect the surrender of the assignment, will entirely
leave the exercise of power and accumulation of fortune at his boundless discretion: to him, and
to the Amir-ul-Omrah, and to Seyd Assam Cawn, the assignment would in fact be surrendered.
HE WILL (IF ANY) BE THE SOUCAR SECURITY; and security in this country is counter-
secured by possession. You would not choose to take the assignment from the Company, to give
it to individuals. Of the impropriety of its returning to the Nabob, Mr. Benfield would now
again argue from his former observations, that, under his Highness's management, his country
declined, his people emigrated, his revenues decreased, and his country was rapidly
approaching to a state of political insolvency. Of Seyd Assam Cawn we judge only from the
observations this letter already contains. But of the other two persons [Amir-ul-Omrah and Mr.
Benfield] we undertake to declare, not as parties in a cause, or even as voluntary witnesses, but
as executive officers, reporting to you, in the discharge of our duty, and under the impression of
the sacred obligation which binds us to truth, as well as to justice, that, from every observation
of their principles and dispositions, and every information of their character and conduct, they
have prosecuted projects to the injury and danger of the Company and individuals; that it would
be improper to trust, and dangerous to employ them, in any public or important situation; that
the tranquillity of the Carnatic requires a restraint to the power of the Amir; and that the
Company, whose service and protection Mr. Benfield has repeatedly and recently forfeited,
would be more secure against danger and confusion, if he were removed from their several
Presidencies.

[After the above solemn declaration from so weighty an authority, the principal object of that
awful and deliberate warning, instead of being "removed from the several Presidencies," is

licensed to return to one of the principal of those Presidencies, and the grand theatre of the
operations on account of which the Presidency recommends his total removal. The reason given
is, for the accommodation of that very debt which has been the chief instrument of his
dangerous practices, and the main cause of all the confusions in the Company's government.]

No. 7.

Referred to from pp. 82, 88, and 89.

Extracts from the Evidence of Mr. Petrie, late Resident for the Company at Tanjore,
given to the Select Committee, relative to the Revenues and State of the Country, &c.,
&c.

9th May, 1782.

William Petrie, Esq., attending according to order, was asked, In what station he was in the
Company's service? he said, He went to India in the year 1765, a writer upon the Madras
establishment: he was employed, during the former war with Hyder Ali, in the capacity of
paymaster and commissary to part of the army, and was afterwards paymaster and commissary
to the army in the first siege of Tanjore, and the subsequent campaigns; then secretary to the
Secret Department from 1772 to 1775; he came to England in 1775, and returned again to
Madras the beginning of 1778; he was resident at the durbar of the Rajah of Tanjore from that
time to the month of May; and from that time to January, 1780, was chief of Nagore and
Carrical, the first of which was received from the Rajah of Tanjore, and the second was taken
from the French.—Being asked, Who sent him to Tanjore? he said, Sir Thomas Rumbold, and
the Secret Committee.—Being then asked, Upon what errand? he said, He went first up with a
letter from the Company to the Rajah of Tanjore: he was directed to give the Rajah the strongest
assurances that he should be kept in possession of his country, and every privilege to which he
had been restored; he was likewise directed to negotiate with the Rajah of Tanjore for the
cession of the seaport and district of Nagore in lieu of the town and district of Devicotta, which
he had promised to Lord Pigot: these were the principal, and, to the best of his recollection at
present, the only objects in view, when he was first sent up to Tanjore. In the course of his stay
at Tanjore, other matters of business occurred between the Company and the Rajah, which came
under his management as resident at that durbar.—Being asked, Whether the Rajah did deliver
up to him the town and the annexed districts of Nagore voluntarily, or whether he was forced to
it? he said, When he made the first proposition to the Rajah, agreeable to the directions he had
received from the Secret Committee at Madras, in the most free, open, and liberal manner, the
Rajah told him the seaport of Nagore was entirely at the service of his benefactors, the
Company, and that he was happy in having that opportunity of testifying his gratitude to them.

These may be supposed to be words of course; but, from every experience which he had of the
Rajah's mind and conduct, whilst he was at Tanjore, he has reason to believe that his
declarations of gratitude to the Company were perfectly sincere. He speaks to the town of
Nagore at present, and a certain district,—not of the districts to the amount of which they
afterwards received. The Rajah asked him, To what amount he expected a jaghire to the
Company? And the witness further said, That he acknowledged to the committee that he was not
instructed upon that head; that he wrote for orders to Madras, and was directed to ask the Rajah
for a jaghire to a certain amount; that this gave rise to a long negotiation, the Rajah representing
to him his inability to make such a gift to the Company as the Secret Committee at Madras
seemed to expect; while he (the witness) on the other hand, was directed to make as good a
bargain as he could for the Company. From the view that he then took of the Rajah's finances,
from the situation of his country, and from the load of debt which pressed hard upon him, he
believes he at different times, in his correspondence with the government, represented the
necessity of their being moderate in their demands, and it was at last agreed to accept of the
town of Nagore, valued at a certain annual revenue, and a jaghire annexed to the town, the
whole amounting to 250,000 rupees.—Being asked, Whether it did turn out so valuable? he
said, He had not a doubt but it would turn out more, as it was let for more than that to farmers at
Madras, if they had managed the districts properly; but they were strangers to the manners and
customs of the people; when they came down, they oppressed the inhabitants, and threw the
whole district into confusion; the inhabitants, many of them, left the country, and deserted the
cultivation of their lands; of course the farmers were disappointed of their collections, and they
have since failed, and the Company have lost a considerable part of what the farmers were to
pay for the jaghire.—Being asked, Who these farmers were? he said, One of them was the
renter of the St. Thomé district, near Madras, and the other, and the most responsible, was a
Madras dubash.—Being asked, Whom he was dubash to? he said, To Mr. Cass-major.

Being asked, Whether the lease was made upon higher terms than the district was rated to
him by the Rajah? he said, It was.—Being then asked, What reason was assigned why the
district was not kept under the former management by aumildars, or let to persons in the Tanjore
country acquainted with the district? he said, No reasons were assigned: he was directed from
Madras to advertise them to be let to persons of the country; but before he received any
proposal, he received accounts that they were let at Madras, in consequence of public
advertisements which had been made there: he believes, indeed, there were very few men in
those districts responsible enough to have been intrusted with the management of those lands.—
Being asked, Whether, at the time he was authorized to negotiate for Nagore in the place of
Devicotta, Devicotta was given up to the Rajah? he said, No.—Being asked, Whether the Rajah
of Tanjore did not frequently desire that the districts of Arnee and Hanamantagoody should be
restored to him, agreeable to treaty, and the Company's orders to Lord Pigot? he said, Many a

time; and he transmitted his representations regularly to Madras.—Being then asked, Whether
those places were restored to him? he said, Not while he was in India.

Being asked, Whether he was not authorized and required by the Presidency at Madras to
demand a large sum of money over and above the four lacs of pagodas that were to be annually
paid by a grant of the Rajah, made in the time of Lord Pigot? he said, He was: to the amount, he
believes, of four lacs of pagodas, commonly known by the name of deposit-money.—Being
asked, Whether the Rajah did not frequently plead his inability to pay that money? he said, He
did every time he mentioned it, and complained loudly of the demand.—Being asked, Whether
he thinks those complaints were well founded? he says, He thinks the Rajah of Tanjore was not
only not in a state of ability to pay the deposit-money, but that the annual payment of four lacs
of pagodas was more than his revenues could afford.—Being asked, Whether he was not
frequently obliged to borrow money, in order to pay the instalments of the annual payments, and
such parts as he paid of the deposit? he said, Yes, he was.—Being asked, Where he borrowed
the money? he said, He believes principally from soucars or native bankers, and some at
Madras, as he told him.—Being asked, Whether he told him that his credit was very good, and
that he borrowed upon moderate interest? he said, That he told him he found great difficulties in
raising money, and was obliged to borrow at a most exorbitant interest, even some of it at forty-
eight per cent, and he believes not a great deal under it. He desired him (the witness) to speak to
one of the soucars or bankers at Tanjore to accommodate him with a loan of money: that man
showed him an account between him and the Rajah, from which it appeared that he charged
forty-eight per cent, besides compound interest.—Being asked, Whether the sums duo were
large? he said, Yes, they were considerable; though he does not recollect the amount.—Being
asked, Whether the banker lent the money? he said, He would not, unless the witness could
procure him payment of his old arrears.

Being asked, What notice did the government of Madras take of the king of Tanjore's
representations of the state of his affairs, and his inability to pay? he said, He does not recollect,
that, in their correspondence with him, there was any reasoning upon the subject; and in his
correspondence with Sir Thomas Rumbold, upon the amount of the jaghire, he seemed very
desirous of adapting the demand of government to the Rajah's circumstances; but, whilst he
stayed at Tanjore, the Rajah was not exonerated from any part of his burdens.—Being asked,
Whether they ever desired the Rajah to make up a statement of his accounts, disbursements,
debts, and payments to the Company, in order to ascertain whether the country was able to pay
the increasing demands upon it? he said, Through him he is certain they never did.—Being then
asked, If he ever heard whether they did through any one else? he said, He never did.

Being asked, Whether the Rajah is not bound to furnish the cultivators of land with seed for
their crops, according to the custom of the country? he said, The king of Tanjore, as proprietor

of the land, always makes advances of money for seed for the cultivation of the land.—Being
then asked, If money beyond his power of furnishing should be extorted from him, might it not
prevent, in the first instance, the means of cultivating the country? he said, It certainly does; he
knows it for a fact; and he knows, that, when he left the country, there were several districts
which were uncultivated from that cause.—Being asked, Whether it is not necessary to be at a
considerable expense in order to keep up the mounds and watercourses? he said, A very
considerable one annually.—Being asked, What would be the consequence, if money should
fail for that? he said, In the first instance, the country would be partially supplied with water,
some districts would be overflowed, and others would be parched.—Being asked, Whether there
is not a considerable dam called the Anicut, on the keeping up of which the prosperity of the
country greatly depends, and which requires a great expense? he said, Yes, there is: the whole of
the Tanjore country is admirably well supplied with water, nor can he conceive any method
could be fallen upon more happily adapted to the cultivation and prosperity of the country; but,
as the Anicut is the source of that prosperity, any injury done to that must essentially affect all
the other works in the country: it is a most stupendous piece of masonry, but, from the very
great floods, frequently requiring repairs, which if neglected, not only the expense of repairing
must be greatly increased, but a general injury done to the whole country.—Being asked,
Whether that dam has been kept in as good preservation since the prevalence of the English
government as before? he said, From his own knowledge he cannot tell, but from everything he
has read or heard of the former prosperity and opulence of the kings of Tanjore, he should
suppose not.—Being asked, Whether he does not know of several attempts that have been made
to prevent the repair, and even to damage the work? he said, The Rajah himself frequently
complained of that to him, and he has likewise heard it from others at Tanjore.—Being asked,
Who it was that attempted those acts of violence? he said, He was told it was the inhabitants of
the Nabob's country adjoining to the Anicut.—Being asked, Whether they were not set on or
instigated by the Nabob? he answered, The Rajah said so.—And being asked, What steps the
President and Council took to punish the authors and prevent those violences? he said, To the
best of his recollection, the Governor told him he would make inquiries into it, but he does not
know that any inquiries were made; that Sir Thomas Rumbold, the Governor, informed him that
he had laid his representations with respect to the Anicut before the Nabob, who denied that his
people had given any interruption to the repairs of that work.

10th May.

Being asked, What he thinks the real clear receipt of the revenues of Tanjore were worth
when he left it? he said, He cannot say what was the net amount, as he does not know the
expense of the Rajah's collection; but while he was at Tanjore, he understood from the Rajah
himself, and from his ministers, that the gross collection did not exceed nine lacs of pagodas

(360,000l.).—Being asked, Whether he thinks the country could pay the eight lacs of pagodas
which had been demanded to be paid in the course of one year? he said, Clearly not.—Being
asked, Whether there was not an attempt made to remove the Rajah's minister, upon some delay
in payment of the deposit? he said, The Governor of Madras wrote to that effect, which he
represented to the Rajah.—Being asked, Who was mentioned to succeed to the minister that
then was, in case he should be removed? he said, When Sir Hector Munro came afterwards to
Tanjore, the old daubiere was mentioned, and recommended to the Rajah as successor to his
then dewan.—Being asked, Of what age was the daubiere at that time? he said, Of a very great
age: upwards of fourscore.—Being asked, Whether a person called Kanonga Saba Pilla was not
likewise named? he said, Yes, he was: he was recommended by Sir Thomas Rumbold; and one
recommendation, as well as I can recollect, went through me.—Being asked, What was the
reason of his being recommended? he said, He undertook to pay off the Rajah's debts, and to
give security for the regular payment of the Rajah's instalments to the Company.—Being asked,
Whether he offered to give any security for preserving the country from oppression, and for
supporting the dignity of the Rajah and his people? he said, He does not know that he did, or
that it was asked of him.—Being asked, Whether he was a person agreeable to the Rajah? he
said, He was not.—Being asked, Whether he was not a person who had fled out of the country
to avoid the resentment of the Rajah? he said, He was.—Being asked, Whether he was not
charged by the Rajah with malpractices, and breach of trust relative to his effects? he said, He
was; but he told the Governor that he would account for his conduct, and explain everything to
the satisfaction of the Rajah.—Being asked, Whether the Rajah did not consider this man as in
the interest of his enemies, and particularly of the Nabob of Arcot and Mr. Benfield? he said, He
does not recollect that he did mention that to him: he remembers to have heard him complain of
a transaction between Kanonga Saba Pilla and Mr. Benfield; but he told him he had been guilty
of a variety of malpractices in his administration, that he had oppressed the people, and
defrauded him.—Being asked, In what branch of business the Rajah had formerly employed
him? he said, He was at one time, he believes, renter of the whole country, was supposed to
have great influence with the Rajah, and was in fact dewan some time.—Being asked, Whether
the nomination of that man was not particularly odious to the Rajah? he said, He found the
Rajah's mind so exceedingly averse to that man, that he believes he would almost as soon have
submitted to his being deposed as to submit to the nomination of that man to be his prime-
minister.

13th May.

Mr. Petrie being asked, Whether he was informed by the Rajah, or by others, at Tanjore or
Madras, that Mr. Benfield, whilst he managed the revenues at Tanjore, during the usurpation of
the Nabob, did not treat the inhabitants with great rigor? he said, He did hear from the Rajah

that Mr. Benfield did treat the inhabitants with rigor during the time he had anything to do with
the administration of the revenues of Tanjore.—Being asked, If he recollects in what
particulars? he said, The Rajah particularly complained that grain had been delivered out to the
inhabitants, for the purposes of cultivation, at a higher price than the market price of grain in the
country; he cannot say the actual difference of price, but it struck him at the time as something
very considerable.—Being asked, Whether that money was all recovered from the inhabitants?
he said, The Rajah of Tanjore told him that the money was all recovered from the inhabitants.—
Being asked, Whether he did not hear that the Nabob exacted from the country of Tanjore,
whilst he was in possession of it? he said, From the accounts which he received at Tanjore of
the revenues for a number of years past, it appeared that the Nabob collected from the country,
while he was in possession, rather more than sixteen lacs of pagodas annually; whereas, when
he was at Tanjore, it did not yield more than nine lacs.—Being asked, From whence that
difference arose? he said, When Tanjore was conquered for the Nabob, he has been told that
many thousand of the native inhabitants fled from the country, some into the country of Mysore,
and others into the dominions of the Mahrattas; he understood from the same authority, that,
while the Nabob was in possession of the country, many inhabitants from the Carnatic, allured
by the superior fertility and opulence of Tanjore, and encouraged by the Nabob, took up their
residence there, which enabled the Nabob to cultivate the whole country; and upon the
restoration of the Rajah, he has heard that the Carnatic inhabitants were carried back to their
own country, which left a considerable blank in the population, which was not replaced while he
was there, principally owing to an opinion which prevailed through the country that the Rajah's
government was not to be permanent, but that another revolution was fast approaching. During
the Nabob's government, the price of grain was considerably higher (owing to a very unusual
scarcity in the Carnatic) than when he was in Tanjore.—Being asked, Whether he was ever in
the Marawar country? he said, Yes; he was commissary to the army in that expedition.—Being
asked, Whether that country was much wasted by the war? he said, Plunder was not permitted to
the army, nor did the country suffer from its operations, except in causing many thousands of
the inhabitants, who had been employed in the cultivation of the country, to leave it.—Being
asked, Whether he knows what is done with the palace and inhabitants of Ramnaut? he said,
The town was taken by storm, but not plundered by the troops; it was immediately delivered up
to the Nabob's eldest son.—Being asked, Whether great riches were not supposed to be in that
palace and temple? he said, It was universally believed so.—Being asked, What account was
given of them? he said, He cannot tell; everything remained in the possession of the Nabob.—
Being asked, What became of the children and women of the family of the prince of that
country? he said, The Rajah was a minor; the government was in the hands of the Ranny, his
mother: from general report he has heard they were carried to Trichinopoly, and placed in
confinement there.—Being asked, Whether he perceived any difference in the face of the
Carnatic when he first knew it and when he last knew it? he said, He thinks he did, particularly

in its population.—Being asked, Whether it was better or worse? he said, It was not so
populous.—Being asked, What is the condition of the Nabob's eldest son? he said, He was in
the Black Town of Madras, when he left the country.—Being asked, Whether he was entertained
there in a manner suitable to his birth and expectations? he said, No: he lived there without any
of those exterior marks of splendor which princes of his rank in India are particularly fond of.—
Being asked, Whether he has not heard that his appointments were poor and mean? he said, He
has heard that they were not equal to his rank and expectations.—Being asked, Whether he had
any share in the government? he said, He believes none: for some years past the Nabob has
delegated most of the powers of government to his second son.—Being asked, Whether the
Rajah did not complain to him of the behavior of Mr. Benfield to himself personally; and what
were the particulars? he said, He did so, and related to him the following particulars. About
fifteen days after Lord Pigot's confinement, Mr. Benfield came to Tanjore, and delivered the
Rajah two letters from the then Governor, Mr. Stratton,—one public, and the other private. He
demanded an immediate account of the presents which had been made to Lord Pigot, payment
of the tunkahs which he (Mr. Benfield) had received from the Nabob upon the country, and that
the Rajah should only write such letters to the Madras government as Mr. Benfield should
approve and give to him. The Rajah answered, that he did not acknowledge the validity of any
demands made by the Nabob upon the country; that those tunkahs related to accounts which he
(the Rajah) had no concern with; that he never had given Lord Pigot any presents, but Lord
Pigot had given him many; and that as to his correspondence with the Madras government, he
would not trouble Mr. Benfield, because he would write his letters himself. That the Rajah told
the witness, that by reason of this answer he was much threatened, in consequence of which he
desired Colonel Harper, who then commanded at Tanjore, to be present at his next interview
with Mr. Benfield; when Mr. Benfield denied many parts of the preceding conversation, and
threw the blame upon his interpreter, Comroo. When Mr. Benfield found (as the Rajah informed
him) that he could not carry these points which had brought him to Tanjore, he prepared to set
off for Madras; that the Rajah sent him a letter which he had drawn out in answer to one which
Mr. Benfield had brought him; that Mr. Benfield disapproved of the answer, and returned it by
Comroo to the durbar, who did not deliver it into the Rajah's hands, but threw it upon the
ground, and expressed himself improperly to him.

Being asked, Whether it was at the king of Tanjore's desire, that such persons as Mr. Benfield
and Comroo had been brought into his presence? he said, The Rajah told him, that, when Lord
Pigot came to Tanjore, to restore him to his dominions, Comroo, without being sent for, or
desired to come to the palace, had found means to get access to his person: he made an offer of
introducing Mr. Benfield to the Rajah, which he declined.—Being asked, Whether the military
officer commanding there protected the Rajah from the intrusion of such people? he said, The
Rajah did not tell him that he called upon the military officer to prevent these intrusions, but
that he desired Colonel Harper to be present as a witness to what might pass between him and

Mr. Benfield.—Being asked, If it is usual for persons of the conditions and occupations of Mr.
Benfield and Comroo to intrude themselves into the presence of the princes of the country, and
to treat them with such freedom? he said, Certainly it is not: less there than in any other country.
—Being asked, Whether the king of Tanjore has no ministers to whom application might be
made to transact such business as Mr. Benfield and Comroo had to do in the country? he said,
Undoubtedly: his minister is the person whose province it is to transact that business.—Being
asked, Before the invasion of the British troops into Tanjore, what would have been the
consequence, if Mr. Benfield had intruded himself into the Rajah's presence, and behaved in that
manner? he said, He could not say what would have been the consequence; but the attempt
would have been madness, and could not have happened.—Being asked, Whether the Rajah had
not particular exceptions to Comroo, and thought he had betrayed him in very essential points?
he said, Yes, he had.—Being asked, Whether the Rajah has not been apprised that the Company
have made stipulations that their servants should not interfere in the concerns of his
government? he said, He signified it to the Rajah, that it was the Company's positive orders, and
that any of their servants so interfering would incur their highest displeasure.

No. 8.

Referred to from p. 87, &c.

Commissioners' Amended Clauses for the Fort St. George Dispatch, relative to the
Indeterminate Mights and Pretensions of the Nabob of Arcot and Rajah of Tanjore.

In our letter of the 28th January last we stated the reasonableness of our expectation that certain
contributions towards the expenses of the war should be made by the Rajah of Tanjore. Since
writing that letter, we have received one from the Rajah, of the 15th of October last, which
contains at length his representations of his inability to make such further payment. We think it
unnecessary here to discuss whether these representations are or are not exaggerated, because,
from the explanations we have given of our wishes for a new arrangement in future, both with
the Nabob of Arcot and the Rajah of Tanjore, and the directions we have given you to carry that
arrangement into execution, we think it impolitic to insist upon any demands upon the Rajah for
the expenses of the late war, beyond the sum of four lacs of pagodas annually: such a demand
might tend to interrupt the harmony which should prevail between the Company and the Rajah,
and impede the great objects of the general system we have already so fully explained to you.

But although it is not our opinion that any further claim should be made on the Rajah for his
share of the extraordinary expenses of the late war, it is by no means our intention in any
manner to affect the just claim which the Nabob has on the Rajah for the arrears due to him on
account of peshcush, for the regular payment of which we became guaranty by the treaty of

1762; but we have already expressed to you our hopes that the Nabob may be induced to allow
these arrears and the growing payments, when due, to be received by the Company, and carried
in discharge of his debt to us. You are at the same time to use every means to convince him,
that, when this debt shall be discharged, it is our intention, as we are bound by the above treaty,
to exert ourselves to the utmost of our power to insure the constant and regular payment of it
into his own hands.

We observe, by the plan sent to us by our Governor of Fort St. George, on the 30th October,
1781, that an arrangement is there proposed for the receipt of those arrears from the Rajah in
three years.

We are unable to decide how far this proposal may be consistent with the present state of the
Rajah's resources; but we direct you to use all proper means to bring these arrears to account as
soon as possible, consistently with a due attention to this consideration.

CLAUSES H.

You will observe, that, by the 38th section of the late act of Parliament, it is enacted, that, for
settling upon a permanent foundation the present indeterminate rights of the Nabob of Arcot and
the Rajah of Tanjore with respect to each other, we should take into our immediate
consideration the said indeterminate rights and pretensions, and take and pursue such measures
as in our judgment and discretion shall be best calculated to ascertain and settle the same,
according to the principles and the terms and stipulations contained in the treaty of 1762
between the said Nabob and the said Rajah.

On a retrospect of the proceedings transmitted to us from your Presidency, on the subject of
the disputes which have heretofore arisen between the Nabob and the Rajah, we find the
following points remain unadjusted, viz.

1st, Whether the jaghire of Arnee shall be enjoyed by the Nabob, or delivered up, either to the
Rajah, or the descendants of Tremaul Row, the late jaghiredar.

2d, Whether the fort and district of Hanamantagoody, which is admitted by both parties to be
within the Marawar, ought to be possessed by the Nabob, or to be delivered up by him to the
Rajah.

3rd, To whom the government share of the crop of the Tanjore country, of the year 1775-6,
properly belongs.

Lastly, Whether the Rajah has a right, by usage and custom, or ought, from the necessity of
the case, to be permitted to repair such part of the Anicut, or dam and banks of the Cavery, as lie
within the district of Trichinopoly, and to take earth and sand in the Trichinopoly territory for
the repairs of the dam and banks within either or both of those districts.

In order to obtain a complete knowledge of the facts and circumstances relative to the several
points in dispute, and how far they are connected with the treaty of 1762, we have with great
circumspection examined into all the materials before us on these subjects, and will proceed to
state to you the result of our inquiries and deliberations.

The objects of the treaty of 1762 appear to be restricted to the arrears of tribute to be paid to
the Nabob for his past claims, and to the quantum of the Rajah's future tribute or peshcush; the
cancelling of a certain bond given by the Rajah's father to the father of the Nabob; the
confirmation to the Rajah of the districts of Coveladdy and Elangaud, and the restoration of
Tremaul Row to his jaghire of Arnee, in condescension to the Rajah's request, upon certain
stipulations, viz., that the fort of Arnee and Doby Gudy should be retained by the Nabob; that
Tremaul Row should not erect any fortress, walled pagoda, or other stronghold, nor any wall
round his dwelling-house exceeding eight feet high or two feet thick, and should in all things
behave himself with due obedience to the government; and that he should pay yearly, in the
month of July, unto the Nabob or his successors, the sum of ten thousand rupees: the Rajah
thereby becoming the security for Tremaul Row, that he should in all things demean and behave
himself accordingly, and pay yearly the stipulated sum.

Upon a review of this treaty, the only point now in dispute, which appears to us to be so
immediately connected with it as to bring it within the strict line of our duty to ascertain and
settle according to the terms and stipulations of the treaty, is that respecting Arnee. For,
although the other points enumerated may in some respects have a relation to that treaty, yet, as
they are foreign to the purposes expressed in it, and could not be in the contemplation of the
contracting parties at the time of making it, those disputes cannot in our comprehension fall
within the line of description of rights and pretensions to be now ascertained and settled by us,
according to any of the terms and stipulations of it.

In respect to the jaghire of Arnee, we do not find that our records afford us any satisfactory
information by what title the Rajah claims it, or what degree of relationship or connection has
subsisted between the Rajah and the Killadar of Arnee, save only that by the treaty of 1762 the
former became the surety for Tremaul Row's performance of his engagements specified therein,
as the conditions for his restoration to that jaghire; on the death of Tremaul Row, we perceive
that he was succeeded by his widow, and after her death, by his grandson Seneewasarow, both
of whom were admitted to the jaghire by the Nabob.

From your Minutes of Consultation of the 31st October, 1770, and the Nabob's letter to the
President of the 21st March, 1771, and the two letters from Rajah Beerbur Atchenur Punt (who
we presume was then the Nabob's manager at Arcot) of the 16th and 18th March, referred to in
the Nabob's letter, and transmitted therewith to the President, we observe, that, previous to the
treaty of 1762, Mr. Pigot concurred in the expediency of the Nabob's taking possession of this
jaghire, on account of the troublesome and refractory behavior of the Arnee braminees, by their
affording protection to all disturbers, who, by reason of the little distance between Arnee and
Arcot, fled to the former, and were there protected, and not given up, though demanded;—that,
though the jaghire was restored in 1762, it was done under such conditions and restrictions as
were thought best calculated to preserve the peace and good order of the place and due
obedience to government;—that, nevertheless, the braminees (quarrelling among themselves)
did afterwards, in express violation of the treaty, enlist and assemble many thousand sepoys,
and other troops; that they erected gaddies and other small forts, provided themselves with wall-
pieces, small guns, and other warlike stores, and raised troubles and disturbances in the
neighborhood of the city of Arcot and the forts of Arnee and Shaw Gaddy; and that, finally, they
imprisoned the hircarrahs of the Nabob, sent with his letters and instructions, in pursuance of
the advice of your board, to require certain of the braminees to repair to the Nabob at Chepauk,
and, though peremptorily required to repair thither, paid no regard to those, or to any other
orders from the circar.

By the 13th article contained in the instructions given by the Nabob to Mr. Dupré, as the basis
for negotiating the treaty made with the Rajah in 1771, the Nabob required that the Arnee
district should be delivered up to the circar, because the braminees had broken the conditions
which they were to have observed. In the answers given by the Rajah to these propositions, he
says, "I am to give up to the circar the jaghire district of Arnee"; and on the 7th of November,
1771, the Rajah, by letter to Seneewasarow, who appears by your Consultations and country
correspondence to have been the grandson of Tremaul Row, and to have been put in possession
of the jaghire at your recommendation, (on the death of his grandmother,) writes, acquainting
him that he had given the Arnee country, then in his (Seneewasarow's) possession, to the Nabob,
to whose aumildars Seneewasarow was to deliver up the possession of the country. And in your
letter to us of the 28th February, 1772, you certified the district of Arnee to be one of the
countries acquired by this treaty, and to be of the estimated value of two lacs of rupees per
annum.

In our orders dated the 12th of April, 1775, we declared our determination to replace the
Rajah upon the throne of his ancestors, upon certain terms and conditions, to be agreed upon for
the mutual benefit of himself and the Company, without infringing the rights of the Nabob. We
declared that our faith stood pledged by the treaty of 1762 to obtain payment of the Rajah's
tribute to the Nabob, and that for the insuring such payment the fort of Tanjore should be

garrisoned by our troops. We directed that you should pay no regard to the article of the treaty
of 1771 which respected the alienation of part of the Rajah's dominions; and we declared, that,
if the Nabob had not a just title to those territories before the conclusion of the treaty, we denied
that he obtained any right thereby, except such temporary sovereignty, for securing the payment
of his expenses, as is therein mentioned.

These instructions appear to have been executed in the month of April, 1776; and by your
letter of the 14th May following you certified to us that the Rajah had been put into the
possession of the whole country his father held in 1762, when the treaty was concluded with the
Nabob; but we do not find that you came to any resolution, either antecedent or subsequent to
this advice, either for questioning or impeaching the right of the Nabob to the sovereignty of
Arnee, or expressive of any doubt of his title to it. Nevertheless, we find, that, although the
Board passed no such resolution, yet your President, in his letter to the Nabob of the 30th July
and 24th August, called upon his Highness to give up the possession of Arnee to the Rajah; and
the Rajah himself, in several letters to us, particularly in those of 21st October, 1776, and the
7th of June, 1777, expressed his expectation of our orders for delivering up that fort and district
to him; and so recently as the 15th of October, 1783, he reminds us of his former application,
and states, that the country of Arnee being guarantied to him by the Company, it of course is his
right, but that it has not been given up to him, and he therefore earnestly entreats our orders for
putting him into the possession of it. We also observe by your letter of the 14th of October,
1779, that the Rajah had not then accounted for the Nabob's peshcush since his restoration, but
had assigned as a reason for his withdrawing it, that the Nabob had retained from him the
district of Arnee, with a certain other district, (Hanamantagoody,) which is made the subject of
another part of our present dispatches.

We have thus stated to you the result of our inquiry into the grounds of the dispute relative to
Arnee; and as the research has offered no evidence in support of the Rajah's claim, nor even any
lights whereby we can discover in what degree of relationship, by consanguinity, caste, or other
circumstances, the Rajah now stands, or formerly stood, with the Killadar of Arnee, or the
nature of his connection with or command over that district, or the authority he exercised or
assumed previous to the treaty of 1771, we should think ourselves highly reprehensible in
complying with the Rajah's request,—and the more so, as it is expressly stated, in the treaty of
1762, that this fort and district were then in the possession of the Nabob, as well as the person
of the jaghiredar, on account of his disobedience, and were restored him by the Nabob, in
condescension to the Rajah's request, upon such terms and stipulations as could not, in our
judgment, have been imposed by the one or submitted to by the other, if the sovereignty of the
one or the dependency of the other had been at that time a matter of doubt.

Although these materials have not furnished us with evidence in support of the Rajah's claim,
they are far from satisfactory to evince the justice of or the political necessity for the Nabob's
continuing to withhold the jaghire from the descendants of Tremaul Row; his hereditary right to
that jaghire seems to us to have been fully recognized by the stipulations of the treaty of 1762,
and so little doubted, that, on his death, his widow was admitted by the Nabob to hold it, on
account, as may be presumed, of the nonage of his grandson and heir, Seneewasarow, who
appears to have been confirmed in the jaghire, on her death, by the Nabob, as the lineal heir and
successor to his grandfather.

With respect to Seneewasarow, it does not appear, by any of the Proceedings in our
possession, that he was concerned in the misconduct of the braminees, complained of by the
Nabob in the year 1770, which rendered it necessary for his Highness to take the jaghire into his
own hands, or that he was privy to or could have prevented those disturbances.

We therefore direct, that, if the heir of Tremaul Row is not at present in possession of the
jaghire, and has not, by any violation of the treaty, or act of disobedience, incurred a forfeiture
thereof, he be forthwith restored to the possession of it, according to the terms and stipulations
of the treaty of 1762. But if any powerful motive of regard to the peace and tranquillity of the
Carnatic shall in your judgment render it expedient to suspend the execution of these orders, in
that case you are with all convenient speed to transmit to us your proceedings thereupon, with
the full state of the facts, and of the reasons which have actuated your conduct.

We have before given it as our opinion that the stipulations of the treaty of 1762 do not apply
to the points remaining to be decided. But the late act of Parliament having, from the nature of
our connection with the two powers in the Carnatic, pointed out the expediency, and even
necessity, of settling the several matters in dispute between them by a speedy and permanent
arrangement, we now proceed to give you our instructions upon, the several other heads of
disputes before enumerated.

With respect to the fort and district of Hanamantagoody, we observe, that, on the restoration
of the Rajah in 1776, you informed us in your letter of the 14th of May, That the Rajah had been
put into possession of the whole of the country his father held in 1762, when the treaty was
concluded with the Nabob; and on the 25th of June you came to the resolution of putting the
Rajah into possession of Hanamantagoody, on the ground of its appearing, on reference to the
Nabob's instructions to Mr. Dupré in June, 1762, to his reply, and to the Rajah's representations
of 25th March, 1771, that Hanamantagoody was actually in the hands of the late Rajah at the
time of making the treaty of 1762. We have referred as well to those papers as to all the other
proceedings on this subject, and must confess they fall very short of demonstrating to us the

truth of that fact. And we find, by the Secret Consultations of Fort William of the 7th of August,
1776, that the same doubt was entertained by our Governor-General and Council.

But whether, in point of fact, the late Rajah was or was not in possession of Hanamantagoody
in 1762, it is notorious that the Nabob had always claimed the dominion of the countries of
which this fort and district are a part.

We observe that the Nabob is now in the actual possession of this fort and district; and we are
not warranted, by any document we have seen, to concur with the wishes of the Rajah to
dispossess him.

With regard to the government share of the crop of 1775-6, we observe by the dobeer's
memorandum, recited in your Consultations of the 13th of May, 1776, that it was the
established custom of the Tanjore country to gather in the harvest and complete the collections
within the month of March, but that, for the causes therein particularly stated, the harvest (and
of course the collection of the government share of the crop) was delayed till the month of
March was over. We also observe that the Rajah was not restored to his kingdom until the 11th
of April, 1776; and from hence we infer, that, if the harvest and collection had been finished at
the usual time, the Nabob (being then sovereign of the country) would have received the full
benefit of that year's crop.

Although the harvest and collection were delayed beyond the usual time, yet we find by the
Proceedings of your government, and particularly by Mr. Mackay's Minute of the 29th of May,
1776, and also by the dobeer's account, that the greatest part of the grain was cut down whilst
the Nabob remained in the government of the country.

It is difficult, from the contradictory allegations on the subject, to ascertain what was the
precise amount of the collections made after the Nabob ceased to have the possession of the
country. But whatever it was, it appears from General Stuart's letter of the 2d of April, 1777,
that it had been asserted with good authority that the far greater part of the government share of
the crop was plundered by individuals, and never came to account in the Rajah's treasury.

Under all the circumstances of this case, we must be of opinion that the government share of
the crop of 1776 belonged to the Nabob, as the then reigning sovereign of the kingdom of
Tanjore, he being, de facto, in the full and absolute possession of the government thereof; and
consequently that the assignments made by him of the government share of the crop were valid.

Nevertheless, we would by no means be understood by this opinion to suggest that any
further demands ought to be made upon the Rajah, in respect of such parts of the government
share of the crop as were collected by his people.

For, on the contrary, after so great a length of time as hath elapsed, we should think it highly
unjust that the Rajah should be now compelled either to pay the supposed balances, whatever
they may be, or be called upon to render a specific account of the collection made by his people.

The Rajah has already, in his letter to Governor Stratton of the 21st of April, 1777, given his
assurance, that the produce of the preceding year, accounted for to him, was little more than one
lac of pagodas; and as you have acquainted us, by your letter of the 14th of October, 1779, that
the Rajah has actually paid into our treasury one lac of pagodas, by way of deposit, on account
of the Nabob's claims to the crop, till our sentiments should be known, we direct you to
surcease any further demands from the Rajah on that account.

We learn by the Proceedings, and particularly by the Nabob's letter to Lord Pigot of the 6th of
July, 1776, that the Nabob, previous to the restoration of the Rajah, actually made assignments
or granted tunkaws of the whole of his share of the crop to his creditors and troops; and that
your government, (entertaining the same opinion as we do upon the question of right to that
share,) by letter to the Rajah of the 20th of August, 1776, recommended to him "to restore to
Mr. Benfield (one of the principal assignees or tunkaw-holders of the Nabob) the grain of the
last year, which was in possession of his people, and said to be forcibly taken from them,—and
farther, to give Mr. Benfield all reasonable assistance in recovering such debts as should appear
to have been justly due to him from the inhabitants; and acquainted the Rajah that it had been
judged by a majority of the Council that it was the Company's intention to let the Nabob have
the produce of the crop of 1776, but that you had no intention that the Rajah should be
accountable for more than the government share, whatever that might be; and that you did not
mean to do more than recommend to him to see justice done, leaving the manner and time to
himself." Subsequent representations appear to have been made to the Rajah by your
government on the same subject, in favor of the Nabob's mortgages.

In answer to these applications, the Rajah, in his letter to Mr. Stratton of the 12th January,
1777, acquainted you "that he had given orders respecting the grain which Mr. Benfield had
heaped up in his country; and with regard to the money due to him by the farmers, that he had
desired Mr. Benfield to bring accounts of it, that he might limit a time for the payment of it
proportionably to their ability, and that the necessary orders for stopping this money out of the
inhabitants' share of the crop had been sent to the ryots and aumildars; that Mr. Benfield's
gomastah was then present there, and oversaw his affairs; and that in everything that was just he
(the Rajah) willingly obeyed our Governor and Council."

Our opinion being that the Rajah ought to be answerable for no more than the amount of what
he admits was collected by his people for the government share of the crop; and the Proceedings
before us not sufficiently explaining whether, in the sum which the Rajah, by his before-

mentioned letter of the 21st April, 1777, admits to have collected, are included those parts of the
government share of the crop which were taken by his people from Mr. Benfield, or from any
other of the assignees or tunkaw-holders; and uninformed, as we also are, what compensation
the Rajah has or has not made to Mr. Benfield, or any other of the parties from whom the grain
was taken by the Rajah's people; or whether, by means of the Rajah's refusal so to do, or from
any other circumstance, any of the persons dispossessed of their grain may have had recourse to
the Nabob for satisfaction: we are, for these reasons, incompetent to form a proper judgment
what disposition ought in justice to be made of the one lac of pagodas deposited by the Rajah.
But as our sentiments and intentions are so fully expressed upon the whole subject, we presume
you, who are upon the spot, can have no doubt or difficulty in making such an application of the
deposit as will be consistent with those principles of justice whereon our sentiments are
founded. But should any such difficulty suggest itself, you will suspend any application of the
deposit, until you have fully explained the same to us, and have received our further orders.

With respect to the repairs of the Anicut and banks of the Cavery we have upon various
occasions fully expressed to you our sentiments, and in particular in our general letter of the 4th
July, 1777, we referred you to the investigation and correspondence on that subject of the year
1764, and to the report made by Mr. James Bourchier, on his personal survey of the waters, and
to several letters of the year 1765 and 1767; we also, by our said general letter, acquainted you
that it appeared to us perfectly reasonable that the Rajah should be permitted to repair those
banks, and the Anicut, in the same manner as had been practised in times past; and we directed
you to establish such regulations, by reference to former usage, for keeping the said banks in
repair, as would be effectual, and remove all cause of complaint in future.

Notwithstanding such our instructions, the Rajah, in his letter to us of the 15th October, 1783,
complains of the destruction of the Anicut; and as the cultivation of the Tanjore country appears,
by all the surveys and reports of our engineers employed on that service, to depend altogether
on a supply of water by the Cavery, which can only be secured by keeping the Anicut and banks
in repair, we think it necessary to repeat to you our orders of the 4th July, 1777, on the subject
of those repairs.

And further, as it appears by the survey and report of Mr. Pringle, that those repairs are
attended with a much heavier expense, when done with materials taken from the Tanjore
district, than with those of Trichinopoly, and that the last-mentioned materials are far preferable
to the other, it is our order, that, if any occurrences should make it necessary or expedient, you
apply to the Nabob, in our name, to desire that his Highness will permit proper spots of ground
to be set out, and bounded by proper marks on the Trichinopoly side, where the Rajah and his
people may at all times take sand and earth sufficient for these repairs; and that his Highness
will grant his lease of such spots of land for a certain term of years to the Company, at a

reasonable annual rent, to the intent that through you the cultivation of the Tanjore country may
be secured, without infringing or impairing the rights of the Nabob.

If any attempts have been or shall be hereafter made to divert the water from the Cavery into
the Coleroon, by contracting the current of the Upper or Lower Cavery, by planting long grass,
as mentioned in Mr. Pringle's report, or by any other means, we have no doubt his Highness, on
a proper representation to him in our name, will prevent his people from taking any measures
detrimental to the Tanjore country, in the prosperity of which his Highness, as well as the
Company, is materially interested.

Should you succeed in reconciling the Nabob to this measure, we think it but just that the
proposed lease shall remain no longer in force than whilst the Rajah shall be punctual in the
payment of the annual peshcush to the Nabob, as well as the rent to be reserved for the spots of
ground. And in order effectually to remove all future occasions of jealousy and complaint
between the parties,—that the Rajah, on the one hand, may be satisfied that all necessary works
for the cultivation of his country will be made and kept in repair, and that the Nabob, on the
other hand, may be satisfied that no encroachment on his rights can be made, nor any works
detrimental to the fertility of his country erected,—we think it proper that it should be
recommended to the parties, as a part of the adjustment of this very important point, that skilful
engineers, appointed by the Company, be employed at the Rajah's expense to conduct all the
necessary works, with the strictest attention to the respective rights and interests of both parties.
This will remove every probability of injury or dispute. But should either party unexpectedly
conceive themselves to be injured, immediate redress might be obtained by application to the
government of Madras, under whose appointment the engineer will act, without any discussion
between the parties, which might disturb that harmony which it is so much the wish of the
Company to establish and preserve, as essential to the prosperity and peace of the Carnatic.

Having now, in obedience to the directions of the act of Parliament, upon the fullest
consideration of the indeterminate rights and pretensions of the Nabob and Rajah, pointed out
such measures and arrangements as in our judgment and discretion will be best calculated to
ascertain and settle the same, we hope, that, upon a candid consideration of the whole system,
although each of the parties may feel disappointed in our decision on particular points, they will
be convinced that we have been guided in our investigation by principles of strict justice and
impartiality, and that the most anxious attention has been paid to the substantial interests of both
parties, and such a general and comprehensive plan of arrangement proposed as will most
effectually prevent all future dissatisfaction.

Approved by the Board.

HENRY DUNDAS,
WALSINGHAM,
W.W. GRENVILLE,
MULGRAVE.

WHITEHALL, October 27, 1784.

No. 9.

Referred to from pp. 78 and 85.

Extract of a Letter from the Court of Directors to the President and Council of Fort St.
George, as amended and approved by the Board of Control.

We have taken into our consideration the several advices and papers received from India,
relative to the assignment of the revenues of the Carnatic, from the conclusion of the Bengal
treaty to the date of your letter in October, 1783, together with the representations of the Nabob
of the Carnatic upon that subject; and although we might contend that the agreement should
subsist till we are fully reimbursed his Highness's proportion of the expenses of the war, yet,
from a principle of moderation, and personal attachment to our old ally, his Highness the Nabob
of the Carnatic, for whose dignity and happiness we are ever solicitous, and to cement more
strongly, if possible, that mutual harmony and confidence which our connection makes so
essentially necessary for our reciprocal safety and welfare, and for removing from his mind
every idea of secret design on our part to lessen his authority over the internal government of
the Carnatic, and the collection and administration of its revenues, we have resolved that the
assignment shall be surrendered; and we do accordingly direct our President, in whose name the
assignment was taken, without delay, to surrender the same to his Highness. But while we have
adopted this resolution, we repose entire confidence in his Highness, that, actuated by the same
motives of liberality, and feelings of old friendship and alliance, he will cheerfully and instantly
accede to such arrangements as are necessary to be adopted for our common safety, and for
preserving the respect, rights, and interests we enjoy in the Carnatic. The following are the
heads and principles of such an arrangement as we are decisively of opinion must be adopted
for these purposes, viz.

That, for making a provision for discharging the Nabob's just debts to the Company and
individuals, (for the payment of which his Highness has so frequently expressed the greatest
solicitude,) the Nabob shall give soucar security for the punctual payment, by instalments, into
the Company's treasury, of twelve lacs of pagodas per annum, (as voluntarily proposed by his
Highness,) until those debts, with interest, shall be discharged; and shall also consent that the

equitable provision lately made by the British legislature for the liquidation of those debts, and
such resolutions and determinations as we shall hereafter make, under the authority of that
provision for the liquidation and adjustment of the said debts, bonâ fide incurred, shall be
carried into full force and effect.

Should any difficulty arise between his Highness and our government of Fort St. George, in
respect to the responsibility of the soucar security, or the times and terms of the instalments, it
is our pleasure that you pay obedience to the orders and resolutions of our Governor-General
and Council of Bengal in respect thereto, not doubting but the Nabob will in such case consent
to abide by the determination of our said supreme government.

Although, from the great confidence we repose in the honor and integrity of the Nabob, and
from an earnest desire not to subject him to any embarrassment on this occasion, we have not
proposed any specific assignment of territory or revenue for securing the payments aforesaid,
we nevertheless think it our duty, as well to the private creditors, whose interests in this respect
have been so solemnly intrusted to us by the late act of Parliament, as from regard to the debt
due to the Company, to insist on a declaration, that, in the event of the failure of the security
proposed, or in default of payment at the stipulated periods, we reserve to ourselves full right to
demand of the Nabob such additional security, by assignment on his country, as shall be
effectual for answering the purposes of the agreement.

After having conciliated the mind of the Nabob to this measure, and adjusted the particulars,
you are to carry the same into execution by a formal deed between his Highness and the
Company, according to the tenor of these instructions.

As the administration of the British interests and connections in India has in some respects
assumed a new shape by the late act of Parliament, and a general peace in India has been
happily accomplished, the present appears to us to be the proper period, and which cannot
without great imprudence be omitted, to settle and arrange, by a just and equitable treaty, a plan
for the future defence and protection of the Carnatic, both in time of peace and war, on a solid
and lasting foundation.

For the accomplishment of this great and necessary object, we direct you, in the name of the
Company, to use your utmost endeavors to impress the expediency of, and the good effects to be
derived from this measure, so strongly upon the minds of the Nabob and the Rajah of Tanjore,
as to prevail upon them, jointly or separately, to enter into one or more treaty or treaties with the
Company, grounded on this principle of equity: That all the contracting parties shall be bound to
contribute jointly to the support of the military force and garrisons, as well in peace as in war.

That the military peace establishment shall be forthwith settled and adjusted by the Company,
in pursuance of the authority and directions given to them by the late act of Parliament.

As the payment of the troops and garrisons, occasional expenses in the repairs and
improvements of fortifications, and other services incidental to a military establishment, must of
necessity be punctual and accurate, no latitude of personal assurance or reciprocal confidence of
either of the parties on the other must be accepted or required; but the Nabob and Rajah must of
necessity specify particular districts and revenues for securing the due and regular payment of
their contributions into the treasury of the Company, with whom the charge of the defence of
the coast, and of course the power of the sword, must be exclusively intrusted, with power for
the Company, in case of failure or default of such payments at the stipulated times and seasons,
to enter upon and possess such districts, and to let the same to renters, to be confirmed by the
Nabob and the Rajah respectively; but, trusting that in the execution of this part of the
arrangement no undue obstruction will be given by either of those powers, we direct that this
part of the treaty be coupled with a most positive assurance, on our part, of our determination to
support the dignity and authority of the Nabob and Rajah in the exclusive administration of the
civil government and revenues of their respective countries;—and further, that, in case of any
hostility committed against the territories of either of the contracting parties on the coast of
Coromandel, the whole revenues of their respective territories shall be considered as one
common stock, to be appropriated in the common cause of their defence; that the Company, on
their part, shall engage to refrain, during the war, from the application of any part of their
revenues to any commercial purposes whatsoever, but apply the whole, save only the ordinary
charges of their civil government, to the purposes of the war; that the Nabob and the Rajah shall
in like manner engage, on their parts, to refrain, during the war, from the application of any part
of their revenues, save only what shall be actually necessary for the support of themselves and
the civil government of their respective countries, to any other purposes than that of defraying
the expenses of such military operations as the Company may find it necessary to carry on for
the common safety of their interests on the coast of Coromandel.

And to obviate any difficulties or misunderstanding which might arise from leaving
indeterminate the sum necessary to be appropriated for the civil establishment of each of the
respective powers, that the sum be now ascertained which is indispensably necessary to be
applied to those purposes, and which is to be held sacred under every emergency, and set apart
previous to the application of the rest of the revenues, as hereby stipulated, for the purposes of
mutual or common defence against any enemy, for clearing the incumbrance which may have
become necessarily incurred in addition to the expenditure of those revenues which must be
always deemed part of the war establishment. This we think absolutely necessary; as nothing
can tend so much to the preservation of peace, and to prevent the renewal of hostilities, as the
early putting the finances of the several powers upon a clear footing, and the showing to all

other powers that the Company, the Nabob, and the Rajah are firmly united in one common
cause, and combined in one system of permanent and vigorous defence, for the preservation of
their respective territories and the general tranquillity.

That the whole aggregate revenue of the contracting parties shall, during the war, be under
the application of the Company, and shall continue as long after the war as shall be necessary,
to discharge the burdens contracted by it; but it must be declared that this provision shall in no
respect extend to deprive either the Nabob or the Rajah of the substantial authority necessary to
the collection of the revenues of their respective countries. But it is meant that they shall
faithfully perform the conditions of this arrangement; and if a division of any part of the
revenues to any other than the stipulated purposes shall take place, the Company shall be
entitled to take upon themselves the collection of the revenue.

The Company are to engage, during the time they shall administer the revenues, to produce to
the other contracting parties regular accounts of the application thereof to the purposes
stipulated by the treaty, and faithfully apply them in support of the war.

And, lastly, as the defence of the Carnatic is thus to rest with the Company, the Nabob shall
be satisfied of the propriety of avoiding all unnecessary expense, and will therefore agree not to
maintain a greater number of troops than shall be necessary for the support of his dignity and
the splendor of the durbar, which number shall be specified in the treaty; and if any military aid
is requisite for the security and collection of his revenues, other than the fixed establishment
employed to enforce the ordinary collections and preserve the police of the country, the
Company must be bound to furnish him with such aid: the Rajah of Tanjore must likewise
become bound by similar engagements, and be entitled to similar aid.

As, in virtue of the powers vested in Lord Macartney by the agreement of December, 1781,
sundry leases, of various periods, have been granted to renters, we direct that you apply to the
Nabob, in our name, for his consent that they may be permitted to hold their leases to the end of
the stipulated term; and we have great reliance[70] on the liberality and spirit of accommodation
manifested by the Nabob on so many occasions, that he will be disposed to acquiesce in a
proposition so just and reasonable. But if, contrary to our expectations, his Highness should be
impressed with any particular aversion to comply with this proposition, we do not desire you to
insist upon it as an essential part of the arrangement to take place between us; but, in that event,
you must take especial care to give such indemnification to the renters for any loss they may
sustain as you judge to be reasonable.

It equally concerns the honor of our government, that such natives as may have been put in
any degree of authority over the collections, in consequence of the deed of assignment, and who
have proved faithful to their trust, shall not suffer inconvenience on account of their fidelity.

Having thus given our sentiments at large, as well for the surrender of the assignment as with
regard to those arrangements which we think necessary to adopt in consequence thereof, we
cannot dismiss this subject without expressing our highest approbation of the ability,
moderation, and command of temper with which our President at Madras has conducted himself
in the management of a very delicate and embarrassing situation. His conduct, and that of the
Select Committee of Fort St. George, in the execution of the trust delegated to Lord Macartney
by the Nabob Mahomed Ali, has been vigorous and effectual, for the purpose of realizing as
great a revenue, at a crisis of necessity, as the nature of the case admitted; and the imputation of
corruption, suggested in some of the Proceedings, appears to be totally groundless and
unwarranted.

While we find so much to applaud, it is with regret we are induced to advert to anything
which may appear worthy of blame: as the step of issuing the Torana Chits in Lord Macartney's
own name can only be justified upon the ground of absolute necessity;[71] and as his Lordship
had every reason to believe that the demand, when made, would be irksome and disagreeable to
the feelings of Mahomed Ali, every precaution ought to have been used and more time allowed
for proving that necessity, by previous acts of address, civility, and conciliation, applied for the
purposes of obtaining his authority to such a measure. It appears to us that more of this might
have been used; and therefore we cannot consider the omission of it as blameless, consistent
with our wishes of sanctifying no act contrary to the spirit of the agreement, or derogatory to the
authority of the Nabob of the Carnatic, in the exercise of any of his just rights in the government
of the people under his authority.

We likewise observe, the Nabob has complained that no official communication was made to
him of the peace, for near a month after the cessation of arms took place. This, and every other
mark of disrespect to the Nabob, will ever appear highly reprehensible in our eyes; and we
direct that you do, upon all occasions, pay the highest attention to him and his family.

Lord Macartney, in his Minute of the 9th of September last, has been fully under our
consideration. We shall ever applaud the prudence and foresight of our servants which induces
them to collect and communicate to us every opinion, or even ground of suspicion they may
entertain, relative to any of the powers in India with whose conduct our interest and the safety
of our settlements is essentially connected. At the same time we earnestly recommend that those
opinions and speculations be communicated to us with prudence, discretion, and all possible
secrecy, and the terms in which they are conveyed be expressed in a manner as little offensive as
possible to the powers whom they may concern and into whose hands they may fall.[72]

We next proceed to give you our sentiments respecting the private debts of the Nabob; and
we cannot but acknowledge that the origin and justice, both of the loan of 1767, and the loan of

1777, commonly called the Cavalry Loan, appear to us clear and indisputable, agreeable to the
true sense and spirit of the late act of Parliament.

In speaking of the loan of 1767, we are to be understood as speaking of the debt as
constituted by the original bonds of that year, bearing interest at 10l. per cent; and therefore, if
any of the Nabob's creditors, under a pretence that their debts made part of the consolidated debt
of 1767, although secured by bonds of a subsequent date, carrying an interest exceeding 10l. per
cent, shall claim the benefit of the following orders, we direct that you pay no regard to such
claims, without further especial instructions for that purpose.

With respect to the consolidated debt of 1777, it certainly stands upon a less favorable
footing. So early as the 27th March, 1769, it was ordered by our then President and Council of
Fort St. George, that, for the preventing all persons living under the Company's protection from
having any dealings with any of the country powers or their ministers without the knowledge or
consent of the Board, an advertisement should be published, by fixing it up at the sea-gate, and
sending round a copy to the Company's servants and inhabitants, and to the different
subordinates, and our garrisons, and giving it out in general orders, stating therein that the
President and Council did consider the irreversible order of the Court of Directors of the year
1714 (whereby their people were prohibited from having any dealings with the country
governments in money matters) to be in full force and vigor, and thereby expressly forbidding
all servants of the Company, and other Europeans under their jurisdiction, to make loans or have
any money transactions with any of the princes or states in India, without special license and
permission of the President and Council for the time being, except only in the particular cases
there mentioned, and declaring that any wilful deviation therefrom should be deemed a breach
of orders, and treated as such. And on the 4th of March, 1778, it was resolved by our President
and Council of Fort St George, that the consolidated debt of 1777 was not, on any respect
whatever, conducted under the auspices or protection of that government; and on the
circumstance of the consolidation of the said debt being made known to us, we did, on the 23rd
of December, 1778, write to you in the following terms: "Your account of the Nabob's private
debts is very alarming; but from whatever cause or causes those debts have been contracted or
increased, we hereby repeat our orders, that the sanction of the Company be on no account
given to any kind of security for the payment or liquidation of any part thereof, (except by the
express authority of the Court of Directors,) on any account or pretence whatever."

The loan of 1777, therefore, has no sanction or authority from us; and in considering the
situation and circumstances of this loan, we cannot omit to observe, that the creditors could not
be ignorant how greatly the affairs of the Nabob were at that time deranged, and that his debt to
the Company was then very considerable,—the payment of which the parties took the most
effectual means to postpone, by procuring an assignment of such specific revenues for the

discharge of their own debts as alone could have enabled the Nabob to have discharged that of
the Company.

Under all these circumstances, we should be warranted to refuse our aid or protection in the
recovery of this loan. But when we consider the inexpediency of keeping the subject of the
Nabob's debts longer afloat than is absolutely necessary,—when we consider how much the
final conclusion of this business will tend to promote tranquillity, credit, and circulation of
property in the Carnatic,—and when we consider that the debtor concurs with the creditor in
establishing the justice of those debts consolidated in 1777 into gross sums, for which bonds
were given, liable to be transferred to persons different from the original creditors, and having
no share or knowledge of the transactions in which the debts originated, and of course how little
ground there is to expect any substantial good to result from an unlimited investigation into
them, we have resolved so far to recognize the justice of those debts as to extend to them that
protection which, upon more forcible grounds, we have seen cause to allow to the other two
classes of debts. But although we so far adopt the general presumption in their favor as to admit
them to a participation in the manner hereafter directed, we do not mean to debar you from
receiving any complaints against those debts of 1777, at the instance either of the Nabob
himself, or of other creditors injured by their being so admitted, or by any other persons having
a proper interest, or stating reasonable grounds of objection; and if any complaints are offered,
we order that the grounds of all such be attentively examined by you, and be transmitted to us,
together with the evidence adduced in support of them, for our final decision; and as we have
before directed that the sum of twelve lacs of pagodas, to be received annually from the Nabob,
should be paid into our treasury, it is our order that the same be distributed according to the
following arrangement.

That the debt be made up in the following manner, viz.

The debt consolidated in 1767 to be made up to the end of the year 1784, with the current
interest at ten per cent.

The Cavalry Loan to be made up to the same period, with the current interest at twelve per
cent.

The debt consolidated in 1777 to be made up to the same period, with the current interest at
twelve per cent, to November, 1781, and from thence with the current interest at six per cent.

The twelve lacs annually to be received are then to be applied,—

1. To the growing interest on the Cavalry Loan, at twelve per cent.

2. To the growing interest on the debt of 1777, at six per cent.

The remainder to be equally divided: one half to be applied to the extinction of the
Company's debt; the other half to be applied to the payment of growing interest at 10l. per cent,
and towards the discharge of the principal of the debt of 1767.

This arrangement to continue till the principal of the debt 1767 is discharged.

The application of the twelve lacs is, then, to be,—

1. To the interest of the debt of 1777, as above. The remainder to be then equally divided,—
one half towards the discharge of the current interest and principal of the Cavalry Loan, and the
other half towards the discharge of the Company's debt.

When the Cavalry Loan shall be thus discharged, there shall then be paid towards the
discharge of the Company's debt seven lacs.

To the growing interest and capital of the 1777 loan, five lacs.

When the Company's debt shall be discharged, the whole is then to be applied in discharge of
the debt 1777.

If the Nabob shall be prevailed upon to apply the arrears and growing payments of the
Tanjore peshcush in further discharge of his debts, over and above the twelve lacs of pagodas,
we direct that the whole of that payment, when made, shall be applied towards the reduction of
the Company's debt.

We have laid down these general rules of distribution, as appearing to us founded on justice,
and the relative circumstances of the different debts; and therefore we give our authority and
protection to them only on the supposition that they who ask our protection acquiesce in the
condition upon which it is given; and therefore we expressly order, that, if any creditor of the
Nabob, a servant of the Company, or being under our protection, shall refuse to express his
acquiescence in these arrangements, he shall not only be excluded from receiving any share of
the fund under your distribution, but shall be prohibited from taking any separate measures to
recover his debt from the Nabob: it being one great inducement to our adopting this
arrangement, that the Nabob shall be relieved from all further disquietude by the importunities
of his individual creditors, and be left at liberty to pursue those measures for the prosperity of
his country which the embarrassments of his situation have hitherto deprived him of the means
of exerting. And we further direct, that, if any creditor shall be found refractory, or disposed to
disturb the arrangement we have suggested, he shall be dismissed the service, and sent home to
England.

The directions we have given only apply to the three classes of debts which have come under
our observation. It has been surmised that the Nabob has of late contracted further debts: if any
of these are due to British subjects, we forbid any countenance or protection whatever to be
given to them, until the debt is fully investigated, the nature of it reported home, and our special
instructions upon it received.

We cannot conclude this subject without adverting in the strongest terms to the prohibitions
which have from time to time issued under the authority of different Courts of Directors against
any of our servants, or of those under our protection, having any money transactions with any of
the country powers, without the knowledge and previous consent of our respective governments
abroad. We are happy to find that the Nabob, sensible of the great embarrassments, both to his
own and the Company's affairs, which the enormous amount of their private claims have
occasioned, is willing to engage not to incur any new debts with individuals, and we think little
difficulty will be found in persuading his Highness into a positive stipulation for that purpose.
And though the legislature has thus humanely interfered in behalf of such individuals as might
otherwise have been reduced to great distress by the past transactions, we hereby, in the most
pointed and positive terms, repeat our prohibition upon this subject, and direct that no person,
being a servant of the Company, or being under our protection, shall, on any pretence whatever,
be concerned in any loan or other money transaction with any of the country powers, unless
with the knowledge and express permission of our respective governments. And if any of our
servants, or others, being under our protection, shall be discovered in any respect counteracting
these orders, we strictly enjoin you to take the first opportunity of sending them home to
England, to be punished as guilty of disobedience of orders, and no protection or assistance of
the Company shall be given for the recovery of any loans connected with such transactions.
Your particular attention to this subject is strictly enjoined; and any connivance on your parts to
a breach of our orders upon it will incur our highest displeasure. In order to put an end to those
intrigues which have been so successfully carried on at the Nabob's durbar, we repeat our
prohibition in the strongest terms respecting any intercourse between British subjects and the
Nabob and his family; as we are convinced that such an intercourse has been carried on greatly
to the detriment and expense of the Nabob, and merely to the advantage of individuals. We
therefore direct that all persons who shall offend against the letter and spirit of this necessary
order, whether in the Company's service or under their protection, be forthwith sent to England.

Approved by the Board.
HENRY DUNDAS,
WALSINGHAM,
W.W. GRENVILLE,
MULGRAVE.
WHITEHALL, 15th Oct. 1784.

Extract from the Representation of the Court of Directors of the East India Company.

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,—

It is with extreme concern that we express a difference of opinion with your right honorable
board, in this early exercise of your controlling power; but in so novel an institution, it can
scarce be thought extraordinary, if the exact boundaries of our respective functions and duties
should not at once, on either side, be precisely and familiarly understood, and therefore confide
in your justice and candor for believing that we have no wish to invade or frustrate the salutary
purposes of your institution, as we on our part are thoroughly satisfied that you have no wish to
encroach on the legal powers of the East India Company. We shall proceed to state our
objections to such of the amendments as appear to us to be either insufficient, inexpedient, or
unwarranted.

6th. Concerning the private debts of the Nabob of Arcot, and the application
of the fund of twelve lacs of pagodas per annum.

Under this head you are pleased, in lieu of our paragraphs, to substantiate
at once the justice of all those demands which the act requires us to
investigate, subject only to a right reserved to the Nabob, or any other party
concerned, to question the justice of any debt falling within the last of the
three classes. We submit, that at least the opportunity of questioning, within
the limited time, the justice of any of the debts, ought to have been fully
preserved; and supposing the first and second classes to stand free from
imputation, (as we incline to believe they do,) no injury can result to
individuals from such discussion: and we further submit to your
consideration, how far the express direction of the act to examine the nature
and origin of the debts has been by the amended paragraphs complied with;
and whether at least the rate of interest, according to which the debts arising
from soucar assignment of the land-revenues to the servants of the
Company, acting in the capacity of native bankers, have been accumulated,
ought not to be inquired into, as well as the reasonableness of the deduction
of twenty-five per cent which the Bengal government directed to be made
from a great part of the debts on certain conditions. But to your
appropriation of the fund our duty requires that we should state our
strongest dissent. Our right to be paid the arrears of those expenses by
which, almost to our own ruin, we have preserved the country and all the
property connected with it from falling a prey to a foreign conqueror, surely
stands paramount to all claims for former debts upon the revenues of a
country so preserved, even if the legislature had not expressly limited the
assistance to be given the private creditors to be such as should be
consistent with our own rights. The Nabob had, long before passing the act,
by treaty with our Bengal government, agreed to pay us seven lacs of
pagodas, as part of the twelve lacs, in liquidation of those arrears; of which

seven lacs the arrangement you have been pleased to lay down would take
away from us more than the half, and give it to private creditors, of whose
demands there are only about a sixth part which do not stand in a
predicament that you declare would not entitle them to any aid or protection
from us in the recovery thereof, were it not upon grounds of expediency, as
will more particularly appear by the annexed estimate. Until our debt shall
be discharged, we can by no means consent to give up any part of the seven
lacs to the private creditors; and we humbly apprehend that in this
declaration we do not exceed the limits of the authority and rights vested in
us.

THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE COMMISSIONERS FOR THE
AFFAIRS OF INDIA.

The Representation of the Court of Directors of the East India
Company.

My Lords and Gentlemen,—

The Court, having duly attended to your reasonings and decisions on the
subjects of Arnee and Hanamantagoody, beg leave to observe, with due
deference to your judgment, that the directions we had given in these
paragraphs which did not obtain your approbation still appear to us to have
been consistent with justice, and agreeable to the late act of Parliament,
which pointed out to us, as we apprehended, the treaty of 1762 as our guide.

Signed by order of the said Court,

THO. MORTON, Sec.

EAST INDIA HOUSE, the 3rd November, 1784.

Extract of a Letter from the Commissioners for the Affairs of India, to
the Court of Directors, dated 3rd November, 1784, in Answer to their
Remonstrance.

SIXTH ARTICLE.

We think it proper, considering the particular nature of the subject, to state
to you the following remarks on that part of your representation which
relates to the plan for the discharging of the Nabob's debts.

1st. You compute the revenue which the Carnatic may be expected to
produce only at twenty lacs of pagodas. If we concurred with you in this
opinion, we should certainly feel our hopes of advantage to all the parties
from this arrangement considerably diminished. But we trust that we are not
too sanguine on this head, when we place the greatest reliance on the
estimate transmitted to you by your President of Fort St. George, having
there the best means of information upon the fact, and stating it with a
particular view to the subject matter of these paragraphs. Some allowance,
we are sensible, must be made for the difference of collection in the
Nabob's hands, but, we trust, not such as to reduce the receipt nearly to
what you suppose.

2ndly. In making up the amount of the private debts, you take in
compound interest at the different rates specified in our paragraph. This it
was not our intention to allow; and lest any misconception should arise on
the spot, we have added an express direction that the debts be made up with
simple interest only, from the time of their respective consolidation. Clause
F f.

3rdly. We have also the strongest grounds to believe that the debts will be
in other respects considerably less than they are now computed by you; and
consequently, the Company's annual proportion of the twelve lacs will be

larger than it appears on your estimate. But even on your own statement of
it, if we add to the 150,000l., or 3,75,000 pagodas, (which you take as the
annual proportion to be received by the Company for five years to the end
of 1789,) the annual amount of the Tanjore peshcush for the same period,
and the arrears on the peshcush, (proposed by Lord Macartney to be
received in three years,) the whole will make a sum not falling very short of
pagodas 35,00,000, the amount of pagodas 7,00,000 per annum for the
same period. And if we carry our calculations farther, it will appear, that,
both by the plan proposed by the Nabob and adopted in your paragraphs,
and by that which we transmitted to you, the debt from the Nabob, if taken
at 3,000,000l., will be discharged nearly at the same period, viz., in the
course of the eleventh year. We cannot, therefore, be of opinion that there is
the smallest ground for objecting to this arrangement, as injurious to the
interests of the Company, even if the measure were to be considered on the
mere ground of expediency, and with a view only to the wisdom of
reëstablishing credit and circulation in a commercial settlement, without
any consideration of those motives of attention to the feelings and honor of
the Nabob, of humanity to individuals, and of justice to persons in your
service and living under your protection, which have actuated the
legislature, and which afford not only justifiable, but commendable grounds
for your conduct.

Impressed with this conviction, we have not made any alteration in the
general outlines of the arrangement which we had before transmitted to
you. But, as the amount of the Nabob's revenue is matter of uncertain
conjecture, and as it does not appear just to us that any deficiency should
fall wholly on any one class of these debts, we have added a direction to
your government of Fort St. George, that, if, notwithstanding the provisions
contained in our former paragraphs, any deficiency should arise, the
payments of what shall be received shall be made in the same proportion

which would have obtained in the division of the whole twelve lacs, had
they been paid.

No. 10.

Referred to from p. 103.

[The following extracts are subjoined, to show the matter and the
style of representation employed by those who have obtained that
ascendency over the Nabob of Arcot which is described in the letter
marked No. 6 of the present Appendix, and which is so totally
destructive of the authority and credit of the lawful British
government at Madras. The charges made by these persons have
been solemnly denied by Lord Macartney; and to judge from the
character of the parties accused and accusing, they are probably
void of all foundation. But as the letters are in the name and under
the signature of a person of great rank and consequence among the
natives,—as they contain matter of the most serious nature,—as
they charge the most enormous crimes, and corruptions of the
grossest kind, on a British governor,—and as they refer to the
Nabob's minister in Great Britain for proof and further elucidation
of the matters complained of,—common decency and common
policy demanded an inquiry into their truth or falsehood. The
writing is obviously the product of some English pen. If, on inquiry,
these charges should be made good, (a thing very unlikely,) the
party accused would become a just object of animadversion. If they
should be found (as in all probability they would be found) false and
calumnious, and supported by forgery, then the censure would fall
on the accuser; at the same time the necessity would be manifest for
proper measures towards the security of government against such

infamous accusations. It is as necessary to protect the honest fame
of virtuous governors as it is to punish the corrupt and tyrannical.
But neither the Court of Directors nor the Board of Control have
made any inquiry into the truth or falsehood of these charges. They
have covered over the accusers and accused with abundance of
compliments; they have insinuated some oblique censures; and they
have recommended perfect harmony between the chargers of
corruption and peculation and the persons charged with these
crimes.]

13th October, 1782. Extract of a Translation of a Letter from the
Nabob of Arcot to the Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East
India Company.

Fatally for me, and for the public interest, the Company's favor and my
unbounded confidence have been lavished on a man totally unfit for the
exalted station in which he has been placed, and unworthy of the trusts that
have been reposed in him. When I speak of one who has so deeply stabbed
my honor, my wounds bleed afresh, and I must be allowed that freedom of
expression which the galling reflection of my injuries and my misfortunes
naturally draws from me. Shall your servants, unchecked, unrestrained, and
unpunished, gratify their private views and ambition at the expense of my
honor, my peace, and my happiness, and to the ruin of my country, as well
as of all your affairs? No sooner had Lord Macartney obtained the favorite
object of his ambition than he betrayed the greatest insolence towards me,
the most glaring neglect of the common civilities and attentions paid me by
all former governors in the worst of times, and even by the most inveterate
of my enemies. He insulted my servants, endeavored to defame my
character by unjustly censuring my administration, and extended his
boundless usurpation to the whole government of my dominions, in all the
branches of judicature and police; and, in violation of the express articles of

the agreements, proceeded to send renters into the countries, unapproved of
by me, men of bad character, and unequal to my management or
responsibility. Though he is chargeable with the greatest acts of cruelty,
even to the shedding the blood and cutting off the noses and ears of my
subjects, by those exercising his authority in the countries, and that even the
duties of religion and public worship have been interrupted or prevented,
and though he carries on all his business by the arbitrary exertion of
military force, yet does he not collect from the countries one fourth of the
revenue that should be produced. The statement he pretends to hold forth of
expected revenue is totally fallacious, and can never be realized under the
management of his Lordship, in the appointment of renters totally
disqualified, rapacious, and irresponsible, who are actually embezzling and
dissipating the public revenues that should assist in the support of the war.
Totally occupied by his private views, and governed by his passions, he has
neglected or sacrificed all the essential objects of public good, and by want
of coöperation with Sir Eyre Coote, and refusal to furnish the army with the
necessary supplies, has rendered the glorious and repeated victories of the
gallant general ineffectual to the expulsion of our cruel enemy. To cover his
insufficiency, and veil the discredit attendant on his failure in every
measure, he throws out the most illiberal expressions, and institutes unjust
accusations against me; and in aggravation of all the distresses imposed
upon me, he has abetted the meanest calumniators to bring forward false
charges against me and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, in order to create
embarrassment, and for the distress of my mind. My papers and writings
sent to you must testify to the whole world the malevolence of his designs,
and the means that have been used to forward them. He has violently seized
and opened all letters addressed to me and my servants, on my public and
private affairs. My vackeel, that attended him according to ancient custom,
has been ignominiously dismissed from his presence, and not suffered to
approach the Government-House. He has in the meanest manner, and as he

thought in secret, been tampering and intriguing with my family and
relations for the worst of purposes. And if I express the agonies of my mind
under these most pointed injuries and oppressions, and complain of the
violence and injustice of Lord Macartney, I am insulted by his affected
construction that my communications are dictated by the insinuations of
others, at the same time that his conscious apprehensions for his misconduct
have produced the most abject applications to me to smother my feelings,
and entreaties to write in his Lordship's favor to England, and to submit all
my affairs to his direction. When his submissions have failed to mould me
to his will, he has endeavored to effect his purposes by menaces of his
secret influence with those in power in England, which he pretends to assert
shall be effectual to confirm his usurpation, and to deprive me, and my
family, in succession, of my rights of sovereignty and government forever.
To such a length have his passions and violences carried him, that all my
family, my dependants, and even my friends and visitors, are persecuted
with the strongest marks of his displeasure. Every shadow of authority in
my person is taken from me, and respect to my name discouraged
throughout the whole country. When an officer of high rank in his Majesty's
service was some time since introduced to me by Lord Macartney, his
Lordship took occasion to show a personal derision and contempt of me.
Mr. Richard Sulivan, who has attended my durbar under the commission of
the Governor-General and Council of Bengal, has experienced his
resentment; and Mr. Benfield, with whom I have no business, and who, as
he has been accustomed to do for many years, has continued to pay me his
visits of respect, has felt the weight of his Lordship's displeasure, and has
had every unmerited insinuation thrown out against him, to prejudice him,
and deter him from paying me his compliments as usual.

Thus, Gentlemen, have you delivered me over to a stranger; to a man
unacquainted with government and business, and too opinionated to learn;
to a man whose ignorance and prejudices operate to the neglect of every

good measure, or the liberal coöperation with any that wish well to the
public interests; to a man who, to pursue his own passions, plans, and
designs, will certainly ruin all mine, as well as the Company's affairs. His
mismanagement and obstinacy have caused the loss of many lacs of my
revenues, dissipated and embezzled, and every public consideration
sacrificed to his vanity and private views. I beg to offer an instance in proof
of my assertions, and to justify the hope I have that you will cause to be
made good to me all the losses I have sustained by the maladministration
and bad practices of your servants, according to all the account of receipts
of former years, and which I made known to Lord Macartney, amongst
other papers of information, in the beginning of his management in the
collections. The district of Ongole produced annually, upon a medium of
many years, 90,000 pagodas; but Lord Macartney, upon receiving a sum of
money from Ramchundry[73] let it out to him, in April last, for the
inadequate rent of 50,000 pagodas per annum, diminishing, in this district
alone, near half the accustomed revenues. After this manner hath he
exercised his powers over the countries, to suit his own purposes and
designs; and this secret mode has he taken to reduce the collections.

1st November, 1782. Copy of a Letter from the Nabob of Arcot to the
Court of Directors, &c. Received 7th April, 1783.

The distresses which I have set forth in my former letters are now increased
to such an alarming pitch by the imprudent measures of your Governor, and
by the arbitrary and impolitic conduct pursued with the merchants and
importers of grain, that the very existence of the Fort of Madras seems at
stake, and that of the inhabitants of the settlement appears to have been
totally overlooked: many thousands have died, and continue hourly to
perish of famine, though the capacity of one of your youngest servants, with
diligence and attention, by doing justice, and giving reasonable

encouragement to the merchants, and by drawing the supplies of grain
which the northern countries would have afforded, might have secured us
against all those dreadful calamities. I had with much difficulty procured
and purchased a small quantity of rice, for the use of myself, my family, and
attendants, and with a view of sending off the greatest part of the latter to
the northern countries, with a little subsistence in their hands. But what
must your surprise be, when you learn that even this rice was seized by
Lord Macartney, with a military force! and thus am I unable to provide for
the few people I have about me, who are driven to such extremity and
misery that it gives me pain to behold them. I have desired permission to
get a little rice from the northern countries for the subsistence of my people,
without its being liable to seizure by your sepoys: this even has been
refused me by Lord Macartney. What must your feelings be, on such
wanton cruelty exercised towards me, when you consider, that, of thousands
of villages belonging to me, a single one would have sufficed for my
subsistence!

22d March, 1783. Translation of a Letter from the Nabob of Arcot to
the Chairman and Directors of the East India Company. Received
from Mr. James Macpherson, 1st January, 1784.

I am willing to attribute this continued usurpation to the fear of detection in
Lord Macartney: he dreads the awful day when the scene of his enormities
will be laid open, at my restoration to my country, and when the tongues of
my oppressed subjects will be unloosed, and proclaim aloud the cruel
tyrannies they have sustained. These sentiments of his Lordship's designs
are corroborated by his sending, on the 10th instant, two gentlemen to me
and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah; and these gentlemen from Lord Macartney
especially set forth to me, and to my son, that all dependence on the power
of the superior government of Bengal to enforce the intentions of the

Company to restore my country was vain and groundless,—that the
Company confided in his Lordship's judgment and discretion, and upon his
representations, and that if I, and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, would enter into
friendship with Lord Macartney, and sign a paper declaring all my charges
and complaints against him to be false, that his Lordship might be induced
to write to England that all his allegations against me and my son were not
well founded, and, notwithstanding his declarations to withhold my country,
yet, on these considerations, it might be still restored to me.

What must be your feelings for your ancient and faithful friend, on his
receiving such insults to his honor and understanding from your principal
servant, armed with your authority! From these manoeuvres, amongst
thousands I have experienced, the truth must evidently appear to you, that I
have not been loaded with those injuries and oppressions from motives of
public service, but to answer the private views and interests of his Lordship
and his secret agents: some papers to this point are inclosed; others, almost
without number, must be submitted to your justice, when time and
circumstances shall enable me fully to investigate those transactions. This
opportunity will not permit the full representation of my load of injuries and
distresses: I beg leave to refer you to my minister, Mr. Macpherson, for the
papers, according to the inclosed list, which accompanied my last
dispatches by the Rodney, which I fear have failed; and my correspondence
with Lord Macartney subsequent to that period, such as I have been able to
prepare for this opportunity, are inclosed.

Notwithstanding all the violent acts and declarations of Lord Macartney,
yet a consciousness of his own misconduct was the sole incentive to the
menaces and overtures he has held out in various shapes. He has been
insultingly lavish in his expressions of high respect for my person; has had
the insolence to say that all his measures flowed from his affectionate
regard alone; has presumed to say that all his enmity and oppression were

levelled at my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, to whom he before acknowledged
every aid and assistance; and his Lordship being without any just cause or
foundation for complaint against us, or a veil to cover his own violences, he
has now had recourse to the meanness and has dared to intimate of my son,
in order to intimidate me and to strengthen his own wicked purposes, to be
in league with our enemies the French. You must doubtless be astonished,
no less at the assurance than at the absurdity of such a wicked suggestion.

IN THE NABOB'S OWN HAND.

P.S. In my own handwriting I acquainted Mr. Hastings, as I now do my
ancient friends the Company, with the insult offered to my honor and
understanding, in the extraordinary propositions sent to me by Lord
Macartney, through two gentlemen, on the 10th instant, so artfully veiled
with menaces, hopes, and promises. But how can Lord Macartney add to his
enormities, after his wicked and calumniating insinuations, so evidently
directed against me and my family, through my faithful, my dutiful, and
beloved son, Amir-ul-Omrah, who, you well know, has been ever born and
bred amongst the English, whom I have studiously brought up in the
warmest sentiments of affection and attachment to them,—sentiments that
in his maturity have been his highest ambition to improve, insomuch that he
knows no happiness but in the faithful support of our alliance and
connection with the English nation?

12th August, and Postscript of the 16th August, 1783. Translation of
a Letter to the Chairman and Directors of the East India Company.
Received from Mr. James Macpherson, 14th January, 1784.

Your astonishment and indignation will be equally raised with mine, when
you hear that your President has dared, contrary to your intention, to

continue to usurp the privileges and hereditary powers of the Nabob of the
Carnatic, your old and unshaken friend, and the declared ally of the king of
Great Britain.

I will not take up your time by enumerating the particular acts of Lord
Macartney's violence, cruelty, and injustice: they, indeed, occur too
frequently, and fall upon me and my devoted subjects and country too thick,
to be regularly related. I refer you to my minister, Mr. James Macpherson,
for a more circumstantial account of the oppressions and enormities by
which he has brought both mine and the Company's affairs to the brink of
destruction. I trust that such flagrant violations of all justice, honor, and the
faith of treaties will receive the severest marks of your displeasure, and that
Lord Macartney's conduct, in making use of your name and authority as a
sanction for the continuance of his usurpation, will be disclaimed with the
utmost indignation, and followed with the severest punishment. I conceive
that his Lordship's arbitrary retention of my country and government can
only originate in his insatiable cravings, in his implacable malevolence
against me, and through fear of detection, which must follow the surrender
of the Carnatic into my hands, of those nefarious proceedings which are
now suppressed by the arm of violence and power.

I did not fail to represent to the supreme government of Bengal the
deplorable situation to which I was reduced, and the unmerited persecutions
I have unremittingly sustained from Lord Macartney; and I earnestly
implored them to stretch forth a saving arm, and interpose that controlling
power which was vested in them, to check rapacity and presumption, and
preserve the honor and faith of the Company from violation. The Governor-
General and Council not only felt the cruelty and injustice I had suffered,
but were greatly alarmed for the fatal consequences that might result from
the distrust of the country powers in the professions of the English, when
they saw the Nabob of the Carnatic, the friend of the Company, and the ally

of Great Britain, thus stripped of his rights, his dominions, and his dignity,
by the most fraudulent means, and under the mask of friendship. The
Bengal government had already heard both the Mahrattas and the Nizam
urge, as an objection to an alliance with the English, the faithless behavior
of Lord Macartney to a prince whose life had been devoted and whose
treasures had been exhausted in their service and support; and they did not
hesitate to give positive orders to Lord Macartney for the restitution of my
government and authority, on such terms as were not only strictly
honorable, but equally advantageous to my friends the Company: for they
justly thought that my honor and dignity and sovereign rights were the first
objects of my wishes and ambition. But how can I paint my astonishment at
Lord Macartney's presumption in continuing his usurpation after their
positive and reiterated mandates, and, as if nettled by their interference,
which he disdained, in redoubling the fury of his violence, and sacrificing
the public and myself to his malice and ungovernable passions?

I am, Gentlemen, at a loss to conceive where his usurpation will stop and
have an end. Has he not solemnly declared that the assignment was only
made for the support of war? and if neither your instructions nor the orders
of his superiors at Bengal were to be considered as effectual, has not the
treaty of peace virtually determined the period of his tyrannical
administration? But so far from surrendering the Carnatic into my hands, he
has, since that event, affixed advertisements to the walls and gates of the
Black Town for letting to the best bidder the various districts for the term of
three years,—and has continued the Committee of Revenue, which you
positively ordered to be abolished, to whom he has allowed enormous
salaries, from 6000 to 4000 pagodas per annum, which each member has
received from the time of his appointment, though his Lordship well knows
that most of them are by your orders disqualified by being my principal
creditors.

If those acts of violence and outrage had been productive of public
advantage, I conceive his Lordship might have held them forward in
extenuation of his conduct; but whilst he cloaks his justification under the
veil of your records, it is impossible to refute his assertions or to expose to
you their fallacy; and when he is no longer able to support his conduct by
argument, he refers to those records, where, I understand, he has exercised
all his sophistry and malicious insinuations to render me and my family
obnoxious in the eyes of the Company and the British nation. And when the
glorious victories of Sir Eyre Coote have been rendered abortive by a
constant deficiency of supplies,—and when, since the departure of that
excellent general to Bengal, whose loss I must ever regret, a dreadful
famine, at the close of last year, occasioned by his Lordship's neglect to lay
up a sufficient stock of grain at a proper season, and from his prohibitory
orders to private merchants,—and when no exertion has been made, nor
advantage gained over the enemy,—when Hyder's death and Tippoo's return
to his own dominions operated in no degree for the benefit of our affairs,—
in short, when all has been a continued series of disappointment and
disgrace under Lord Macartney's management, (and in him alone has the
management been vested,)—I want words to convey those ideas of his
insufficiency, ignorance, and obstinacy which I am convinced you would
entertain, had you been spectators of his ruinous and destructive conduct.

But against me, and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, has his Lordship's
vengeance chiefly been exerted: even the Company's own subordinate
zemindars have found better treatment, probably because they were more
rich; those of Nizanagoram have been permitted, contrary to your pointed
orders, to hold their rich zemindaries at the old disproportionate rate of little
more than a sixth part of the real revenue; and my zemindar of Tanjore,
though he should have regarded himself equally concerned with us in the
event of the war, and from whose fertile country many valuable harvests
have been gathered in, which have sold at a vast price, has, I understand,

only contributed, last year, towards the public exigencies, the very
inconsiderable sum of one lac of pagodas, and a few thousand pagodas'
worth of grain.

I am much concerned to acquaint you that ever since the peace a dreadful
famine has swept away many thousands of the followers and sepoys'
families of the army, from Lord Macartney's neglect to send down grain to
the camp, though the roads are crowded with vessels: but his Lordship has
been too intent upon his own disgraceful schemes to attend to the wants of
the army. The negotiation with Tippoo, which he has set on foot through the
mediation of Monsieur Bussy, has employed all his thoughts, and to the
attainment of that object he will sacrifice the dearest interests of the
Company to gratify his malevolence against me, and for his own private
advantages. The endeavor to treat with Tippoo, through the means of the
French, must strike you, Gentlemen, as highly improper and impolitic; but
it must raise your utmost indignation to hear, that, by intercepted letters
from Bussy to Tippoo, as well as from their respective vakeels, and from
various accounts from Cuddalore, we have every reason to conclude that his
Lordship's secretary, Mr. Staunton, when at Cuddalore, as his agent to settle
the cessation of arms with the French, was informed of all their operations
and projects, and consequently that Lord Macartney has secretly connived
at Monsieur Bussy's recommendation to Tippoo to return into the Carnatic,
as the means of procuring the most advantageous terms, and furnishing
Lord Macartney with the plea of necessity for concluding a peace after his
own manner: and what further confirms the truth of this fact is, that
repeated reports, as well as the alarms of the inhabitants to the westward,
leave us no reason to doubt that Tippoo is approaching towards us. His
Lordship has issued public orders that the garrison store of rice, for which
we are indebted to the exertions of the Bengal government, should be
immediately disposed of, and has strictly forbid all private grain to be sold;
by which act he effectually prohibits all private importation of grain, and

may eventually cause as horrid a famine as that which we experienced at
the close of last year from the same shortsighted policy and destructive
prohibitions of Lord Macartney.

But as he has the fabrication of the records in his own hands, he trusts to
those partial representations of his character and conduct, because the
signatures of those members of government whom he seldom consults are
affixed, as a public sanction; but you may form a just idea of their
correctness and propriety, when you are informed that his Lordship, upon
my noticing the heavy disbursements made for secret service money,
ordered the sums to be struck off, and the accounts to be erased from the
cash-book of the Company; and I think I cannot give you a better proof of
his management of my country and revenues than by calling your attention
to his conduct in the Ongole province, and by referring you to his
Lordship's administration of your own jaghire, from whence he has brought
to the public account the sum of twelve hundred pagodas for the last year's
revenue, yet blazons forth his vast merits and exertions, and expects to
receive the thanks of his Committee and Council.

I will beg leave to refer you to my minister, James Macpherson, Esq., for
a more particular account of my sufferings and miseries, to whom I have
transmitted copies of all papers that passed with his Lordship.

I cannot conclude without calling your attention to the situation of my
different creditors, whose claims are the claims of justice, and whose
demands I am bound by honor and every moral obligation to discharge; it is
not, therefore, without great concern I have heard insinuations tending to
question the legality of their right to the payment of those just debts: they
proceeded from advances made by them openly and honorably for the
support of my own and the public affairs. But I hope the tongue of calumny
will never drown the voice of truth and justice; and while that is heard, the

wisdom of the English nation cannot fail to accede to an effectual remedy
for their distresses, by any arrangement in which their claims may be duly
considered and equitably provided for: and for this purpose, my minister,
Mr. Macpherson, will readily subscribe, in my name, to any agreement you
may think proper to adopt, founded on the same principles with either of the
engagements I entered into with the supreme government of Bengal for our
mutual interest and advantage.

I always pray for your happiness and prosperity.

6th September, and Postscript of 7th September, 1783. Translation
of a Letter from the Nabob of Arcot to the Chairman and Directors of
the East India Company. Received from Mr. James Macpherson,
14th January, 1784.

I refer you, Gentlemen, to my inclosed duplicate, as well as to my minister,
Mr. Macpherson, for the particulars of my sufferings. There is no word or
action of mine that is not perverted; and though it was my intention to have
sent my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, who is well versed in my affairs, to Bengal, to
impress those gentlemen with a full sense of my situation, yet I find myself
obliged to lay it aside, from the insinuations of the calumniating tongue of
Lord Macartney, that takes every license to traduce every action of my life
and that of my son. I am informed that Lord Macartney, at this late moment,
intends to write a letter: I am ignorant of the subject, but fully perceive,
that, by delaying to send it till the very eve of the dispatch, he means to
deprive me of all possibility of communicating my reply, and forwarding it
for the information of my friends in England. Conscious of the weak ground
on which he stands, he is obliged to have recourse to these artifices to
mislead the judgment, and support for a time his unjustifiable measures by
deceit and imposition. I wish only to meet and combat his charges and

allegations fairly and openly, and I have repeatedly and urgently demanded
to be furnished with copies of those parts of his fabricated records relative
to myself; but as he well knows I should refute his sophistry, I cannot be
surprised at his refusal, though I lament that it prevents you, Gentlemen,
from a clear investigation of his conduct towards me.

Inclosed you have a translation of an arzee from the Killidar of Vellore. I
have thousands of the same kind; but this, just now received, will serve to
give you some idea of the miseries brought upon this my devoted country,
and the wretched inhabitants that remain in it, by the oppressive hand of
Lord Macartney's management: nor will the embezzlements of collections
thus obtained, when brought before you in proof, appear less extraordinary,
—which shall certainly be done in due time.

Translation of an Arzee, in the Persian Language, from Uzzim-ul-Doen
Cawn, the Killidar of Vellore, to the Nabob, dated 1st September, 1783.
Inclosed in the Nabob's Letter to the Court of Directors, September, 1783.

I have repeatedly represented to your Highness the violences and
oppressions exercised by the present aumildar [collector of revenue], of
Lord Macartney's appointment, over the few remaining inhabitants of the
districts of Vellore, Amboor, Saulguda, &c.

The outrages and violences now committed are of that astonishing nature
as were never known or heard of during the administration of the Circar.
Hyder Naik, the cruellest of tyrants, used every kind of oppression in the
Circar countries; but even his measures were not like those now pursued.
Such of the inhabitants as had escaped the sword and pillage of Hyder Naik,
by taking refuge in the woods, and within the walls of Vellore, &c., on the
arrival of Lord Macartney's aumildar to Vellore, and in consequence of his
cowle of protection and support, most cheerfully returned to the villages, set
about the cultivation of the lands, and with great pains rebuilt their cottages.

—But now the aumildar has imprisoned the wives and children of the
inhabitants, seized the few jewels that were on the bodies of the women,
and then, before the faces of their husbands, flogged them, in order to make
them produce other jewels and effects, which he said they had buried
somewhere under ground, and to make the inhabitants bring him money,
notwithstanding there was yet no cultivation in the country. Terrified with
the flagellations, some of them produced their jewels and wearing-apparel
of their women, to the amount of ten or fifteen pagodas, which they had
hidden; others, who declared they had none, the aumildar flogged their
women severely, tied cords around their breasts, and tore the sucking
children from their teats, and exposed them to the scorching heat of the sun.
Those children died, as did the wife of Ramsoamy, an inhabitant of
Bringpoor. Even this could not stir up compassion in the breast of the
aumildar. Some of the children that were somewhat large he exposed to
sale. In short, the violences of the aumildar are so astonishing, that the
people, on seeing the present situation, remember the loss of Hyder with
regret. With whomsoever the aumildar finds a single measure of natchinee
or rice, he takes it away from him, and appropriates it to the expenses of the
sibindy that he keeps up. No revenues are collected from the countries, but
from the effects of the poor, wretched inhabitants. Those ryots [yeomen]
who intended to return to their habitations, hearing of those violences, have
fled for refuge, with their wives and children, into Hyder's country. Every
day is ushered in and closed with these violences and disturbances. I have
no power to do anything; and who will hear what I have to say? My
business is to inform your Highness, who are my master. The people bring
their complaints to me, and I tell them I will write to your Highness.[74]

Translation of a Tellinga Letter from Veira Permaul, Head Dubash to Lord
Macartney, in his own Handwriting, to Rajah Ramchunda, the Renter of
Ongole. Dated 25th of the Hindoo month Mausay, in the year Plavanamal,
corresponding to 5th March, 1782.

I present my respects to you, and am very well here, wishing to hear
frequently of your welfare.

Your peasher Vancatroyloo has brought the Visseel Bakees, and delivered
them to me, as also what you sent him for me to deliver to my master, which
I have done. My master at first refused to take it, because he is
unacquainted with your disposition, or what kind of a person you are. But
after I made encomiums on your goodness and greatness of mind, and took
my oath to the same, and that it would not become public, but be held as
precious as our lives, my master accepted it. You may remain satisfied that I
will get the Ongole business settled in your name; I will cause the
jamaubundee to be settled agreeable to your desire. It was formerly the
Nabob's intention to give this business to you, as the Governor knows full
well, but did not at that time agree to it, which you must be well acquainted
with.

Your peasher Vancatroyloo is a very careful, good man; he is well
experienced in business; he has bound me by an oath to keep all this
business secret, and that his own, yours, and my lives are responsible for it.
I write this letter to you with the greatest reluctance, and I signified the
same to your peasher, and declared that I would not write to you by any
means. To this the peasher urged, that, if I did not write to his master, how
could he know to whom he (the peasher) delivered the money, and what
must his master think of it? Therefore I write you this letter, and send it by
my servant Ramanah, accompanied by the peasher's servant, and it will
come safe to your hands. After perusal, you will send it back to me
immediately: until I receive it, I don't like to eat my victuals or take any
sleep. Your peasher took his oath, and urged me to write this for your
satisfaction, and has engaged to me that I shall have this letter returned to
me in the space of twelve days.

The present Governor is not like the former Governors: he is a very great
man in Europe; and all the great men of Europe are much obliged, to him
for his condescension in accepting the government of this place. It is his
custom, when he makes friendship with any one, to continue it always; and
if he is at enmity with any one, he never will desist till he has worked his
destruction. He is now exceedingly displeased with the Nabob, and you will
understand by-and-by that the Nabob's business cannot be carried on; he
(the Nabob) will have no power to do anything in his own affairs: you have,
therefore, no room to fear him; you may remain with a contented mind. I
desired the Governor to write you a letter for your satisfaction: the
Governor said he would do so, when the business was settled. This letter
you must peruse as soon as possible, and send it back with all speed by the
bearer, Ramadoo, accompanied by three or four of your people, to the end
that no accident may happen on the road. These people must be ordered to
march in the night only, and to arrive here with the greatest dispatch. You
sent ten mangoes for my master and two for me, all of which I have
delivered to my master, thinking that ten was not sufficient to present him
with. I write this for your information, and salute you with ten thousand
respects.

I, Muttu Kistnah, of Madras Patnam, dubash, declare that I perfectly
understand the Gentoo language, and do most solemnly affirm that the
foregoing is a true translation of the annexed paper writing from the Gentoo
language.

(Signed)

Muttu Kistnah.

FOOTNOTES:

[68] In this statement, the Ongole country, though it is included under the
head of gross revenue, has been let for a certain sum, exclusive of charges.
If the expenses specified in the Nabob's vassool accounts for this district
are added, the present gross revenue even would appear to exceed the
Nabob's; and as the country is only let for one year, there may hereafter be
an increase of its revenue.

[69] The Trichinopoly countries let for the above sum, exclusive of the
expenses of sibbendy and saderwared, amounting, by the Nabob's accounts,
to rupees 1,30,00 per annum, which are to be defrayed by the renter. And
the jaghires of Amir-ul-Omrah and the Begum are not included in the
present lease.

[70] For the ground of this "great reliance," see the papers in this Appendix,
No. 5. as also the Nabob's letters to the Court of Directors in this Appendix,
No. 10.

[71] For the full proof of this necessity, Lord Macartney's whole
correspondence on the subject may be referred to. Without the act here
condemned, not one of the acts commended in the preceding paragraph
could be performed. By referring to the Nabob's letters in this Appendix it
will be seen what sort of task a governor has on his hands, who is to use,
according to the direction of this letter, "acts of address, civility, and
conciliation," and to pay, upon all occasions, the highest attention, to
persons who at the very time are falsely, and in the grossest terms, accusing
him of peculation, corruption, treason, and every species of malversation in
office. The recommendation, under menaces of such behavior, and under
such circumstances, conveys a lesson the tendency of which cannot be
misunderstood.

[72] The delicacy here recommended, in the expressions concerning
conduct "with which the safety of our settlements is essentially connected,"

is a lesson of the same nature with the former. Dangerous designs, if truly
such, ought to be expressed according to their nature and qualities. And as
for the secrecy recommended concerning the designs here alluded to,
nothing can be more absurd; as they appear very fully and directly in the
papers published by the authority of the Court of Directors in 1775, and
may be easily discerned from the propositions for the Bengal treaty,
published in the Reports of the Committee of Secrecy, and in the Reports of
the Select Committee. The keeping of such secrets too long has been one
cause of the Carnatic war, and of the ruin of our affairs in India.

[73] See Tellinga letter, at the end of this correspondence.

[74] The above-recited practices, or practices similar to them, have
prevailed in almost every part of the miserable countries on the coast of
Coromandel for near twenty years past. That they prevailed as strongly and
generally as they could prevail, under the administration of the Nabob,
there can be no question, notwithstanding the assertion in the beginning of
the above petition; nor will it ever be otherwise, whilst affairs are
conducted upon the principles which influence the present system. Whether
the particulars here asserted are true or false neither the Court of Directors
nor their ministry have thought proper to inquire. If they are true, in order
to bring them to affect Lord Macartney, it ought to be proved that the
complaint was made to him, and that he had refused redress. Instead of this
fair course, the complaint is carried to the Court of Directors.—The above
is one of the documents transmitted by the Nabob, in proof of his charge of
corruption against Lord Macartney. If genuine, it is conclusive, at least
against Lord Macartney's principal agent and manager. If it be a forgery, (as
in all likelihood it is,) it is conclusive against the Nabob and his evil
counsellors, and folly demonstrates, if anything further were necessary to
demonstrate, the necessity of the clause in Mr. Fox's bill prohibiting the
residence of the native princes in the Company's principal settlements,—

which clause was, for obvious reasons, not admitted into Mr. Pitt's. It
shows, too, the absolute necessity of a severe and exemplary punishment on
certain of his English evil counsellors and creditors, by whom such
practices are carried on.

SUBSTANCE OF THE SPEECH

IN THE

DEBATE ON THE ARMY ESTIMATES

IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,

ON TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1790

COMPREHENDING

A DISCUSSION OF THE PRESENT
SITUATION OF AFFAIRS IN FRANCE.

Mr. Burke's speech on the report of the army estimates has not been
correctly stated in some of the public papers. It is of consequence to him not
to be misunderstood. The matter which incidentally came into discussion is
of the most serious importance. It is thought that the heads and substance of
the speech will answer the purpose sufficiently. If, in making the abstract,
through defect of memory in the person who now gives it, any difference at
all should be perceived from the speech as it was spoken, it will not, the
editor imagines, be found in anything which may amount to a retraction of

the opinions he then maintained, or to any softening in the expressions in
which they were conveyed.

Mr. Burke spoke a considerable time in answer to various arguments,
which had been insisted upon by Mr. Grenville and Mr. Pitt, for keeping an
increased peace establishment, and against an improper jealousy of the
ministers, in whom a full confidence, subject to responsibility, ought to be
placed, on account of their knowledge of the real situation of affairs, the
exact state of which it frequently happened that they could not disclose
without violating the constitutional and political secrecy necessary to the
well-being of their country.

Mr. Burke said in substance, That confidence might become a vice, and
jealousy a virtue, according to circumstances. That confidence, of all public
virtues, was the most dangerous, and jealousy in an House of Commons, of
all public vices, the most tolerable,—- especially where the number and the
charge of standing armies in time of peace was the question.

That in the annual Mutiny Bill the annual army was declared to be for the
purpose of preserving the balance of power in Europe. The propriety of its
being larger or smaller depended, therefore, upon the true state of that
balance. If the increase of peace establishments demanded of Parliament
agreed with the manifest appearance of the balance, confidence in ministers
as to the particulars would be very proper. If the increase was not at all
supported by any such appearance, he thought great jealousy might be, and
ought to be, entertained on that subject.

That he did not find, on a review of all Europe, that, politically, we stood
in the smallest degree of danger from any one state or kingdom it contained,
nor that any other foreign powers than our own allies were likely to obtain a
considerable preponderance in the scale.

That France had hitherto been our first object in all considerations
concerning the balance of power. The presence or absence of France totally
varied every sort of speculation relative to that balance.

That France is at this time, in a political light, to be considered as
expunged out of the system of Europe. Whether she could ever appear in it
again, as a leading power, was not easy to determine; but at present be
considered France as not politically existing; and most assuredly it would
take up much time to restore her to her former active existence: Gallos
quoque in bellis floruisse audivimus might possibly be the language of the
rising generation. He did not mean to deny that it was our duty to keep our
eye on that nation, and to regulate our preparation by the symptoms of her
recovery.

That it was to her strength, not to her form of government, which we were
to attend; because republics, as well as monarchies, were susceptible of
ambition, jealousy, and anger, the usual causes of war.

But if, while France continued in this swoon, we should go on increasing
our expenses, we should certainly make ourselves less a match for her when
it became our concern to arm.

It was said, that, as she had speedily fallen, she might speedily rise again.
He doubted this. That the fall from an height was with an accelerated
velocity; but to lift a weight up to that height again was difficult, and
opposed by the laws of physical and political gravitation.

In a political view, France was low indeed. She had lost everything, even
to her name.

Jacet ingens littore truncus,
Avolsumque humeris caput, et sine nomine corpus. [75]

He was astonished at it; he was alarmed at it; he trembled at the uncertainty
of all human greatness.

Since the House had been prorogued in the summer much work was done
in France. The French had shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin
that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they
had completely pulled down to the ground their monarchy, their church,
their nobility, their law, their revenue, their army, their navy, their
commerce, their arts, and their manufactures. They had done their business
for us as rivals in a way in which twenty Ramillies or Blenheims could
never have done it. Were we absolute conquerors, and France to lie
prostrate at our feet, we should be ashamed to send a commission to settle
their affairs which could impose so hard a law upon the French, and so
destructive of all their consequence as a nation, as that they had imposed
upon themselves.

France, by the mere circumstance of its vicinity, had been, and in a
degree always must be, an object of our vigilance, either with regard to her
actual power or to her influence and example. As to the former he had
spoken; as to the latter (her example) he should say a few words: for by this
example our friendship and our intercourse with that nation had once been,
and might again become, more dangerous to us than their worst hostility.

In the last century, Louis the Fourteenth had established a greater and
better disciplined military force than ever had been before seen in Europe,
and with it a perfect despotism. Though that despotism was proudly arrayed
in manners, gallantry, splendor, magnificence, and even covered over with
the imposing robes of science, literature, and arts, it was, in government,
nothing better than a painted and gilded tyranny,—in religion, a hard, stern
intolerance, the fit companion and auxiliary to the despotic tyranny which
prevailed in its government. The same character of despotism insinuated

itself into every court of Europe,—the same spirit of disproportioned
magnificence,—the same love of standing armies, above the ability of the
people. In particular, our then sovereigns, King Charles and King James,
fell in love with the government of their neighbor, so flattering to the pride
of kings. A similarity of sentiments brought on connections equally
dangerous to the interests and liberties of their country. It were well that the
infection had gone no farther than the throne. The admiration of a
government flourishing and successful, unchecked in its operations, and
seeming, therefore, to compass its objects more speedily and effectually,
gained something upon all ranks of people. The good patriots of that day,
however, struggled against it. They sought nothing more anxiously than to
break off all communication with France, and to beget a total alienation
from its councils and its example,—which, by the animosity prevalent
between the abettors of their religious system and the assertors of ours, was
in some degree effected.

This day the evil is totally changed in France: but there is an evil there.
The disease is altered; but the vicinity of the two countries remains, and
must remain; and the natural mental habits of mankind are such, that the
present distemper of France is far more likely to be contagious than the old
one: for it is not quite easy to spread a passion for servitude among the
people; but in all evils of the opposite kind our natural inclinations are
flattered. In the case of despotism, there is the fœdum crimen servitutis: in
the last, the falsa SPECIES libertatis; and accordingly, as the historian says,
pronis auribus accipitur.

In the last age we were in danger of being entangled by the example of
France in the net of a relentless despotism. It is not necessary to say
anything upon that example. It exists no longer. Our present danger from
the example of a people whose character knows no medium is, with regard
to government, a danger from anarchy: a danger of being led, through an

admiration of successful fraud and violence, to an imitation of the excesses
of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering,
ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy. On the side of religion, the
danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from atheism: a
foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind;
which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a
faction, accredited, and almost avowed.

These are our present dangers from France. But, in his opinion, the very
worst part of the example set is in the late assumption of citizenship by the
army, and the whole of the arrangement, or rather disarrangement, of their
military.

He was sorry that his right honorable friend (Mr. Fox) had dropped even
a word expressive of exultation on that circumstance, or that he seemed of
opinion that the objection from standing armies was at all lessened by it. He
attributed this opinion of Mr. Fox entirely to his known zeal for the best of
all causes, liberty. That it was with a pain inexpressible he was obliged to
have even the shadow of a difference with his friend, whose authority
would always be great with him, and with all thinking people,—Quæ
maxima semper censetur nobis, et ERIT quæ maxima semper;—his
confidence in Mr. Fox was such, and so ample, as to be almost implicit.
That he was not ashamed to avow that degree of docility. That, when the
choice is well made, it strengthens, instead of oppressing our intellect. That
he who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own. He who
profits of a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the
height of the superior understanding he unites with. He had found the
benefit of such a junction, and would not lightly depart from it. He wished
almost, on all occasions, that his sentiments were understood to be
conveyed in Mr. Fox's words. And that he wished, as amongst the greatest
benefits he could wish the country, an eminent share of power to that right

honorable gentleman; because he knew that to his great and masterly
understanding he had joined the greatest possible degree of that natural
moderation which is the best corrective of power: that he was of the most
artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition; disinterested in the
extreme; of a temper mild and placable even to a fault; without one drop of
gall in his whole constitution.

That the House must perceive, from his coming forward to mark an
expression or two of his best friend, how anxious he was to keep the
distemper of France from the least countenance in England, where he was
sure some wicked persons had shown a strong disposition to recommend an
imitation of the French spirit of reform. He was so strongly opposed to any
the least tendency towards the means of introducing a democracy like
theirs, as well as to the end itself, that, much as it would afflict him, if such
a thing could be attempted, and that any friend of his could concur in such
measures, (he was far, very far, from believing they could,) he would
abandon his best friends, and join with his worst enemies, to oppose either
the means or the end,—and to resist all violent exertions of the spirit of
innovation, so distant from all principles of true and safe reformation: a
spirit well calculated to overturn states, but perfectly unfit to amend them.

That he was no enemy to reformation. Almost every business in which he
was much concerned, from the first day he sat in that House to that hour,
was a business of reformation; and when he had not been employed in
correcting, he had been employed in resisting abuses. Some traces of this
spirit in him now stand on their statute-book. In his opinion, anything which
unnecessarily tore to pieces the contexture of the state not only prevented
all real reformation, but introduced evils which would call, but perhaps call
in vain, for new reformation.

That he thought the French nation very unwise. What they valued
themselves on was a disgrace to them. They had gloried (and some people
in England had thought fit to take share in that glory) in making a
Revolution, as if revolutions were good things in themselves. All the
horrors and all the crimes of the anarchy which led to their Revolution,
which attend its progress, and which may virtually attend it in its
establishment, pass for nothing with the lovers of revolutions. The French
have made their way, through the destruction of their country, to a bad
constitution, when they were absolutely in possession of a good one. They
were in possession of it the day the states met in separate orders. Their
business, had they been either virtuous or wise, or had been left to their own
judgment, was to secure the stability and independence of the states,
according to those orders, under the monarch on the throne. It was then
their duty to redress grievances.

Instead of redressing grievances, and improving the fabric of their state,
to which they were called by their monarch and sent by their country, they
were made to take a very different course. They first destroyed all the
balances and counterpoises which serve to fix the state and to give it a
steady direction, and which furnish sure correctives to any violent spirit
which may prevail in any of the orders. These balances existed in their
oldest constitution, and in the constitution of this country, and in the
constitution of all the countries in Europe. These they rashly destroyed, and
then they melted down the whole into one incongruous, ill-connected mass.

When they had done this, they instantly, and with the most atrocious
perfidy and breach of all faith among men, laid the axe to the root of all
property, and consequently of all national prosperity, by the principles they
established and the example they set, in confiscating all the possessions of
the Church. They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of
anarchy, called the Rights of Man, in such a pedantic abuse of elementary

principles as would have disgraced boys at school: but this declaration of
rights was worse than trifling and pedantic in them; as by their name and
authority they systematically destroyed every hold of authority by opinion,
religious or civil, on the minds of the people. By this mad declaration they
subverted the state, and brought on such calamities as no country, without a
long war, has ever been known to suffer, and which may in the end produce
such a war, and perhaps many such.

With them the question was not between despotism and liberty. The
sacrifice they made of the peace and power of their country was not made
on the altar of freedom. Freedom, and a better security for freedom than that
they have taken, they might have had without any sacrifice at all. They
brought themselves into all the calamities they suffer, not that through them
they might obtain a British constitution; they plunged themselves headlong
into those calamities to prevent themselves from settling into that
constitution, or into anything resembling it.

That, if they should perfectly succeed in what they propose, as they are
likely enough to do, and establish a democracy, or a mob of democracies, in
a country circumstanced like France, they will establish a very bad
government,—a very bad species of tyranny.

That the worst effect of all their proceeding was on their military, which
was rendered an army for every purpose but that of defence. That, if the
question was, whether soldiers were to forget they were citizens, as an
abstract proposition, he could have no difference about it; though, as it is
usual, when abstract principles are to be applied, much was to be thought on
the manner of uniting the character of citizen and soldier. But as applied to
the events which had happened in France, where the abstract principle was
clothed with its circumstances, he thought that his friend would agree with
him, that what was done there furnished no matter of exultation, either in

the act or the example. These soldiers were not citizens, but base, hireling
mutineers, and mercenary, sordid deserters, wholly destitute of any
honorable principle. Their conduct was one of the fruits of that anarchic
spirit from the evils of which a democracy itself was to be resorted to, by
those who were the least disposed to that form, as a sort of refuge. It was
not an army in corps and with discipline, and embodied under the
respectable patriot citizens of the state in resisting tyranny. Nothing like it.
It was the case of common soldiers deserting from their officers, to join a
furious, licentious populace. It was a desertion to a cause the real object of
which was to level all those institutions, and to break all those connections,
natural and civil, that regulate and hold together the community by a chain
of subordination: to raise soldiers against their officers, servants against
their masters, tradesmen against their customers, artificers against their
employers, tenants against their landlords, curates against their bishops, and
children against their parents. That this cause of theirs was not an enemy to
servitude, but to society.

He wished the House to consider how the members would like to have
their mansions pulled down and pillaged, their persons abused, insulted, and
destroyed, their title-deeds brought out and burned before their faces, and
themselves and their families driven to seek refuge in every nation
throughout Europe, for no other reason than this, that, without any fault of
theirs, they were born gentlemen and men of property, and were suspected
of a desire to preserve their consideration and their estates. The desertion in
France was to aid an abominable sedition, the very professed principle of
which was an implacable hostility to nobility and gentry, and whose savage
war-whoop was, "A l'Aristocrate!"—by which senseless, bloody cry they
animated one another to rapine and murder; whilst abetted by ambitious
men of another class, they were crushing everything respectable and
virtuous in their nation, and to their power disgracing almost every name by
which we formerly knew there was such a country in the world as France.

He knew too well, and he felt as much as any man, how difficult it was to
accommodate a standing army to a free constitution, or to any constitution.
An armed disciplined body is, in its essence, dangerous to liberty;
undisciplined, it is ruinous to society. Its component parts are in the latter
case neither good citizens nor good soldiers. What have they thought of in
France, under such a difficulty as almost puts the human faculties to a
stand? They have put their army under such a variety of principles of duty,
that it is more likely to breed litigants, pettifoggers, and mutineers than
soldiers.[76] They have set up, to balance their crown army, another army,
deriving under another authority, called a municipal army,—a balance of
armies, not of orders. These latter they have destroyed with every mark of
insult and oppression. States may, and they will best, exist with a partition
of civil powers. Armies cannot exist under a divided command. This state of
things he thought in effect a state of war, or at best but a truce, instead of
peace, in the country.

What a dreadful thing is a standing army for the conduct of the whole or
any part of which no man is responsible! In the present state of the French
crown army, is the crown responsible for the whole of it? Is there any
general who can be responsible for the obedience of a brigade, any colonel
for that of a regiment, any captain for that of a company? And as to the
municipal army, reinforced as it is by the new citizen deserters, under
whose command are they? Have we not seen them, not led by, but dragging,
their nominal commander, with a rope about his neck, when they, or those
whom they accompanied, proceeded to the most atrocious acts of treason
and murder? Are any of these armies? Are any of these citizens?

We have in such a difficulty as that of fitting a standing army to the state,
he conceived, done much better. We have not distracted our army by
divided principles of obedience. We have put them under a single authority,

with a simple (our common) oath of fidelity; and we keep the whole under
our annual inspection. This was doing all that could be safely done.

He felt some concern that this strange thing called a Revolution in France
should be compared with the glorious event commonly called the
Revolution in England, and the conduct of the soldiery on that occasion
compared with the behavior of some of the troops of France in the present
instance. At that period, the Prince of Orange, a prince of the blood-royal in
England, was called in by the flower of the English aristocracy to defend its
ancient Constitution, and not to level all distinctions. To this prince, so
invited, the aristocratic leaders who commanded the troops went over with
their several corps, in bodies, to the deliverer of their country. Aristocratic
leaders brought up the corps of citizens who newly enlisted in this cause.
Military obedience changed its object; but military discipline was not for a
moment interrupted in its principle. The troops were ready for war, but
indisposed to mutiny.

But as the conduct of the English armies was different, so was that of the
whole English nation at that time. In truth, the circumstances of our
Revolution (as it is called) and that of France are just the reverse of each
other in almost every particular, and in the whole spirit of the transaction.
With us it was the case of a legal monarch attempting arbitrary power; in
France it is the case of an arbitrary monarch beginning, from whatever
cause, to legalize his authority. The one was to be resisted, the other was to
be managed and directed; but in neither case was the order of the state to be
changed, lest government might be ruined, which ought only to be corrected
and legalized. With us we got rid of the man, and preserved the constituent
parts of the state. There they get rid of the constituent parts of the state, and
keep the man. What we did was in truth and substance, and in a
constitutional light, a revolution, not made, but prevented. We took solid
securities; we settled doubtful questions; we corrected anomalies in our law.

In the stable, fundamental parts of our Constitution we made no revolution,
—no, nor any alteration at all. We did not impair the monarchy. Perhaps it
might be shown that we strengthened it very considerably. The nation kept
the same ranks, the same orders, the same privileges, the same franchises,
the same rules for property, the same subordinations, the same order in the
law, in the revenue, and in the magistracy,—the same lords, the same
commons, the same corporations, the same electors.

The Church was not impaired. Her estates, her majesty, her splendor, her
orders and gradations, continued the same. She was preserved in her full
efficiency, and cleared only of a certain intolerance, which was her
weakness and disgrace. The Church and the State were the same after the
Revolution that they were before, but better secured in every part.

Was little done because a revolution was not made in the Constitution?
No! Everything was done; because we commenced with reparation, not
with ruin. Accordingly, the state flourished. Instead of lying as dead, in a
sort of trance, or exposed, as some others, in an epileptic fit, to the pity or
derision of the world, for her wild, ridiculous, convulsive movements,
impotent to every purpose but that of dashing out her brains against the
pavement, Great Britain rose above the standard even of her former self. An
era of a more improved domestic prosperity then commenced, and still
continues, not only unimpaired, but growing, under the wasting hand of
time. All the energies of the country were awakened. England never
preserved a firmer countenance or a more vigorous arm to all her enemies
and to all her rivals. Europe under her respired and revived. Everywhere she
appeared as the protector, assertor, or avenger of liberty. A war was made
and supported against fortune itself. The treaty of Ryswick, which first
limited the power of France, was soon after made; the grand alliance very
shortly followed, which shook to the foundations the dreadful power which
menaced the independence of mankind. The states of Europe lay happy

under the shade of a great and free monarchy, which knew how to be great
without endangering its own peace at home or the internal or external peace
of any of its neighbors.

Mr. Burke said he should have felt very unpleasantly, if he had not
delivered these sentiments. He was near the end of his natural, probably still
nearer the end of his political career. That he was weak and weary, and
wished for rest. That he was little disposed to controversies, or what is
called a detailed opposition. That at his time of life, if he could not do
something by some sort of weight of opinion, natural or acquired, it was
useless and indecorous to attempt anything by mere struggle. Turpe senex
miles. That he had for that reason little attended the army business, or that
of the revenue, or almost any other matter of detail, for some years past.
That he had, however, his task. He was far from condemning such
opposition; on the contrary, he most highly applauded it, where a just
occasion existed for it, and gentlemen had vigor and capacity to pursue it.
Where a great occasion occurred, he was, and, while he continued in
Parliament, would be, amongst the most active and the most earnest,—as he
hoped he had shown on a late event. With respect to the Constitution itself,
he wished few alterations in it,—happy if he left it not the worse for any
share he had taken in its service.

Mr. Fox then rose, and declared, in substance, that, so far as regarded the
French army, he went no farther than the general principle, by which that
army showed itself indisposed to be an instrument in the servitude of their
fellow-citizens, but did not enter into the particulars of their conduct. He
declared that he did not affect a democracy: that he always thought any of
the simple, unbalanced governments bad: simple monarchy, simple
aristocracy, simple democracy,—he held them all imperfect or vicious; all
were bad by themselves; the composition alone was good. That these had

been always his principles, in which he had agreed with his friend Mr.
Burke,—of whom he had said many kind and flattering things, which Mr.
Burke, I take it for granted, will know himself too well to think he merits
from anything but Mr. Fox's acknowledged good-nature. Mr. Fox thought,
however, that, in many cases, Mr. Burke was rather carried too far by his
hatred to innovation.

Mr. Burke said, he well knew that these had been Mr. Fox's invariable
opinions; that they were a sure ground for the confidence of his country.
But he had been fearful that cabals of very different intentions would be
ready to make use of his great name, against his character and sentiments,
in order to derive a credit to their destructive machinations.

Mr. Sheridan then rose, and made a lively and eloquent speech against
Mr. Burke; in which, among other things, he said that Mr. Burke had
libelled the National Assembly of France, and had cast out reflections on
such characters as those of the Marquis de La Fayette and Mr. Bailly.

Mr. Burke said, that he did not libel the National Assembly of France,
whom he considered very little in the discussion of these matters. That he
thought all the substantial power resided in the republic of Paris, whose
authority guided, or whose example was followed by, all the republics of
France. The republic of Paris had an army under their orders, and not under
those of the National Assembly.

N.B. As to the particular gentlemen, I do not remember that Mr. Burke
mentioned either of them,—certainly not Mr. Bailly. He alluded,
undoubtedly, to the case of the Marquis de La Fayette; but whether what he
asserted of him be a libel on him must be left to those who are acquainted
with the business.

Mr. Pitt concluded the debate with becoming gravity and dignity, and a
reserve on both sides of the question, as related to France, fit for a person in
a ministerial situation. He said, that what he had spoken only regarded
France when she should unite, which he rather thought she soon might, with
the liberty she had acquired, the blessings of law and order. He, too, said
several civil things concerning the sentiments of Mr. Burke, as applied to
this country.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] Mr. Burke probably had in his mind the remainder of the passage, and
was filled with some congenial apprehensions:—

Hæc finis Priami fatorum; hic exitus illum
Sorte tulit, Trojam incensam et prolapsa videntem
Pergama, tot quondam populis terrisque superbum
Regnatorem Asiæ. Jacet ingens littore truncus,
Avolsumque humeris caput, et sine nomine corpus.
At me tum primum sævus circumstetit horror.
Obstupui: subiit chari genitoris imago.

[76] They are Sworn to obey the king, the nation, and the law.

REFLECTIONS

ON THE

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE,

AND ON

THE PROCEEDINGS IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES
IN LONDON RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT:

IN A LETTER

INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SENT TO A GENTLEMAN IN
PARIS.

1790.

It may not be unnecessary to inform the reader that the following
Reflections had their origin in a correspondence between the author and a
very young gentleman at Paris, who did him the honor of desiring his
opinion upon the important transactions which then, and ever since have, so

much occupied the attention of all men. An answer was written some time
in the month of October, 1789; but it was kept back upon prudential
considerations. That letter is alluded to in the beginning of the following
sheets. It has been since forwarded to the person to whom it was addressed.
The reasons for the delay in sending it were assigned in a short letter to the
same gentleman. This produced on his part a new and pressing application
for the author's sentiments.

The author began a second and more full discussion on the subject. This
he had some thoughts of publishing early in the last spring; but the matter
gaining upon him, he found that what he had undertaken not only far
exceeded the measure of a letter, but that its importance required rather a
more detailed consideration than at that time he had any leisure to bestow
upon it. However, having thrown down his first thoughts in the form of a
letter, and, indeed, when he sat down to write, having intended it for a
private letter, he found it difficult to change the form of address, when his
sentiments had grown into a greater extent and had received another
direction. A different plan, he is sensible, might be more favorable to a
commodious division and distribution of his matter.

REFLECTIONS

ON

THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE.

Dear Sir,—You are pleased to call again, and with some earnestness, for my
thoughts on the late proceedings in France. I will not give you reason to
imagine that I think my sentiments of such value as to wish myself to be
solicited about them. They are of too little consequence to be very
anxiously either communicated or withheld. It was from attention to you,
and to you only, that I hesitated at the time when you first desired to receive
them. In the first letter I had the honor to write to you, and which at length I
send, I wrote neither for nor from any description of men; nor shall I in this.
My errors, if any, are my own. My reputation alone is to answer for them.

You see, Sir, by the long letter I have transmitted to you, that, though I do
most heartily wish that France may be animated by a spirit of rational
liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest policy, to provide a
permanent body in which that spirit may reside, and an effectual organ by
which it may act, it is my misfortune to entertain great doubts concerning
several material points in your late transactions.

You imagined, when you wrote last, that I might possibly be reckoned
among the approvers of certain proceedings in France, from the solemn

public seal of sanction they have received from two clubs of gentlemen in
London, called the Constitutional Society, and the Revolution Society.

I certainly have the honor to belong to more clubs than one in which the
Constitution of this kingdom and the principles of the glorious Revolution
are held in high reverence; and I reckon myself among the most forward in
my zeal for maintaining that Constitution and those principles in their
utmost purity and vigor. It is because I do so that I think it necessary for me
that there should be no mistake. Those who cultivate the memory of our
Revolution, and those who are attached to the Constitution of this kingdom,
will take good care how they are involved with persons who, under the
pretext of zeal towards the Revolution and Constitution, too frequently
wander from their true principles, and are ready on every occasion to depart
from the firm, but cautious and deliberate, spirit which produced the one
and which presides in the other. Before I proceed to answer the more
material particulars in your letter, I shall beg leave to give you such
information as I have been able to obtain of the two clubs which have
thought proper, as bodies, to interfere in the concerns of France,—first
assuring you that I am not, and that I have never been, a member of either
of those societies.

The first, calling itself the Constitutional Society, or Society for
Constitutional Information, or by some such title, is, I believe, of seven or
eight years' standing. The institution of this society appears to be of a
charitable, and so far of a laudable nature: it was intended for the
circulation, at the expense of the members, of many books which few others
would be at the expense of buying, and which might lie on the hands of the
booksellers, to the great loss of an useful body of men. Whether the books
so charitably circulated were ever as charitably read is more than I know.
Possibly several of them have been exported to France, and, like goods not
in request here, may with you have found a market. I have heard much talk

of the lights to be drawn from books that are sent from hence. What
improvements they have had in their passage (as it is said some liquors are
meliorated by crossing the sea) I cannot tell; but I never heard a man of
common judgment or the least degree of information speak a word in praise
of the greater part of the publications circulated by that society; nor have
their proceedings been accounted, except by some of themselves, as of any
serious consequence.

Your National Assembly seems to entertain much the same opinion that I
do of this poor charitable club. As a nation, you reserved the whole stock of
your eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolution Society, when their
fellows in the Constitutional were in equity entitled to some share. Since
you have selected the Revolution Society as the great object of your
national thanks and praises, you will think me excusable in making its late
conduct the subject of my observations. The National Assembly of France
has given importance to these gentlemen by adopting them; and they return
the favor by acting as a committee in England for extending the principles
of the National Assembly. Henceforward we must consider them as a kind
of privileged persons, as no inconsiderable members in the diplomatic body.
This is one among the revolutions which have given splendor to obscurity
and distinction to undiscerned merit. Until very lately I do not recollect to
have heard of this club. I am quite sure that it never occupied a moment of
my thoughts,—nor, I believe, those of any person out of their own set. I
find, upon inquiry, that, on the anniversary of the Revolution in 1688, a club
of Dissenters, but of what denomination I know not, have long had the
custom of hearing a sermon in one of their churches, and that afterwards
they spent the day cheerfully, as other clubs do, at the tavern. But I never
heard that any public measure or political system, much less that the merits
of the constitution of any foreign nation, had been the subject of a formal
proceeding at their festivals, until, to my inexpressible surprise, I found
them in a sort of public capacity, by a congratulatory address, giving an

authoritative sanction to the proceedings of the National Assembly in
France.

In the ancient principles and conduct of the club, so far at least as they
were declared, I see nothing to which I could take exception. I think it very
probable, that, for some purpose, new members may have entered among
them,—and that some truly Christian politicians, who love to dispense
benefits, but are careful to conceal the hand which distributes the dole, may
have made them the instruments of their pious designs. Whatever I may
have reason to suspect concerning private management, I shall speak of
nothing as of a certainty but what is public.

For one, I should be sorry to be thought directly or indirectly concerned
in their proceedings. I certainly take my full share, along with the rest of the
world, in my individual and private capacity, in speculating on what has
been done, or is doing, on the public stage, in any place, ancient or modern,
—in the republic of Rome, or the republic of Paris; but having no general
apostolical mission, being a citizen of a particular state, and being bound
up, in a considerable degree, by its public will, I should think it at least
improper and irregular for me to open a formal public correspondence with
the actual government of a foreign nation, without the express authority of
the government under which I live.

I should be still more unwilling to enter into that correspondence under
anything like an equivocal description, which to many, unacquainted with
our usages, might make the address in which I joined appear as the act of
persons in some sort of corporate capacity, acknowledged by the laws of
this kingdom, and authorized to speak the sense of some part of it. On
account of the ambiguity and uncertainty of unauthorized general
descriptions, and of the deceit which may be practised under them, and not
from mere formality, the House of Commons would reject the most

sneaking petition for the most trifling object, under that mode of signature
to which you have thrown open the folding-doors of your presence-
chamber, and have ushered into your National Assembly with as much
ceremony and parade, and with as great a bustle of applause, as if you had
been visited by the whole representative majesty of the whole English
nation. If what this society has thought proper to send forth had been a
piece of argument, it would have signified little whose argument it was. It
would be neither the more nor the less convincing on account of the party it
came from. But this is only a vote and resolution. It stands solely on
authority; and in this case it is the mere authority of individuals, few of
whom appear. Their signatures ought, in my opinion, to have been annexed
to their instrument. The world would then have the means of knowing how
many they are, who they are, and of what value their opinions may be, from
their personal abilities, from their knowledge, their experience, or their lead
and authority in this state. To me, who am but a plain man, the proceeding
looks a little too refined and too ingenious; it has too much the air of a
political stratagem, adopted for the sake of giving, under a high-sounding
name, an importance to the public declarations of this club, which, when the
matter came to be closely inspected, they did not altogether so well deserve.
It is a policy that has very much the complexion of a fraud.

I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any
gentleman of that society, be he who he will; and perhaps I have given as
good proofs of my attachment to that cause, in the whole course of my
public conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do to any other nation.
But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to anything which
relates to human actions and human concerns on a simple view of the
object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and
solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some
gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its
distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what

render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.
Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I,
in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment
of a government, (for she then had a government,) without inquiry what the
nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now
congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the
abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am
seriously to felicitate a madman who has escaped from the protecting
restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell on his restoration to the
enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and
murderer who has broke prison upon the recovery of his natural rights? This
would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the
galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful
Countenance.

When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work;
and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the fixed
air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgment until the
first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we
see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I
must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a
blessing, that they have really received one. Flattery corrupts both the
receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people
than to kings. I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new
liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with
government, with public force, with the discipline and obedience of armies,
with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue, with
morality and religion, with solidity and property, with peace and order, with
civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things, too; and
without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to
continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what

they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk
congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence
would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men. But
liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before they
declare themselves, will observe the use which is made of power,—and
particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose
principles, tempers, and dispositions they have little or no experience, and
in situations where those who appear the most stirring in the scene may
possibly not be the real movers.

All these considerations, however, were below the transcendental dignity
of the Revolution Society. Whilst I continued in the country, from whence I
had the honor of writing to you, I had but an imperfect idea of their
transactions. On my coming to town, I sent for an account of their
proceedings, which had been published by their authority, containing a
sermon of Dr. Price, with the Duke de Rochefoucault's and the Archbishop
of Aix's letter and several other documents annexed. The whole of that
publication, with the manifest design of connecting the affairs of France
with those of England, by drawing us into an imitation of the conduct of the
National Assembly, gave me a considerable degree of uneasiness. The effect
of that conduct upon the power, credit, prosperity, and tranquillity of France
became every day more evident. The form of constitution to be settled, for
its future polity, became more clear. We are now in a condition to discern
with tolerable exactness the true nature of the object held up to our
imitation. If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some
circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may justify us in
speaking our thoughts. The beginnings of confusion with us in England are
at present feeble enough; but with you we have seen an infancy still more
feeble growing by moments into a strength to heap mountains upon
mountains, and to wage war with Heaven itself. Whenever our neighbor's
house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our

own. Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too
confident a security.

Solicitous chiefly for the peace of my own country, but by no means
unconcerned for yours, I wish to communicate more largely what was at
first intended only for your private satisfaction. I shall still keep your affairs
in my eye, and continue to address myself to you. Indulging myself in the
freedom of epistolary intercourse, I beg leave to throw out my thoughts and
express my feelings just as they arise in my mind, with very little attention
to formal method. I set out with the proceedings of the Revolution Society;
but I shall not confine myself to them. Is it possible I should? It looks to me
as if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but of all
Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circumstances taken together, the
French Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the
world. The most wonderful things are brought about in many instances by
means the most absurd and ridiculous, in the most ridiculous modes, and
apparently by the most contemptible instruments. Everything seems out of
nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes
jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragi-
comic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily succeed and sometimes
mix with each other in the mind: alternate contempt and indignation,
alternate laughter and tears, alternate scorn and horror.

It cannot, however, be denied that to some this strange scene appeared in
quite another point of view. Into them it inspired no other sentiments than
those of exultation and rapture. They saw nothing in what has been done in
France but a firm and temperate exertion of freedom,—so consistent, on the
whole, with morals and with piety as to make it deserving not only of the
secular applause of dashing Machiavelian politicians, but to render it a fit
theme for all the devout effusions of sacred eloquence.

On the forenoon of the fourth of November last, Doctor Richard Price, a
Non-Conforming minister of eminence, preached at the Dissenting meeting-
house of the Old Jewry, to his club or society, a very extraordinary
miscellaneous sermon, in which there are some good moral and religious
sentiments, and not ill expressed, mixed up with a sort of porridge of
various political opinions and reflections: but the Revolution in France is
the grand ingredient in the caldron. I consider the address transmitted by the
Revolution Society to the National Assembly, through Earl Stanhope, as
originating in the principles of the sermon, and as a corollary from them. It
was moved by the preacher of that discourse. It was passed by those who
came reeking from the effect of the sermon, without any censure or
qualification, expressed or implied. If, however, any of the gentlemen
concerned shall wish to separate the sermon from the resolution, they know
how to acknowledge the one and to disavow the other. They may do it: I
cannot.

For my part, I looked on that sermon as the public declaration of a man
much connected with literary caballers and intriguing philosophers, with
political theologians and theological politicians, both at home and abroad. I
know they set him up as a sort of oracle; because, with the best intentions in
the world, he naturally philippizes, and chants his prophetic song in exact
unison with their designs.

That sermon is in a strain which I believe has not been heard in this
kingdom, in any of the pulpits which are tolerated or encouraged in it, since
the year 1648,—when a predecessor of Dr. Price, the Reverend Hugh
Peters, made the vault of the king's own chapel at St. James's ring with the
honor and privilege of the saints, who, with the "high praises of God in their
mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands, were to execute judgment on
the heathen, and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with
chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron."[77] Few harangues from the

pulpit, except in the days of your League in France, or in the days of our
Solemn League and Covenant in England, have ever breathed less of the
spirit of moderation than this lecture in the Old Jewry. Supposing, however,
that something like moderation were visible in this political sermon, yet
politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought
to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The
cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion
by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume
what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the
character they leave and of the character they assume. Wholly unacquainted
with the world, in which they are so fond of meddling, and inexperienced in
all its affairs, on which they pronounce with so much confidence, they have
nothing of politics but the passions they excite. Surely the church is a place
where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and
animosities of mankind.

This pulpit style, revived after so long a discontinuance, had to me the air
of novelty, and of a novelty not wholly without danger. I do not charge this
danger equally to every part of the discourse. The hint given to a noble and
reverend lay-divine, who is supposed high in office in one of our
universities,[78] and other lay-divines "of rank and literature," may be
proper and seasonable, though somewhat new. If the noble Seekers should
find nothing to satisfy their pious fancies in the old staple of the national
Church, or in all the rich variety to be found in the well-assorted
warehouses of the Dissenting congregations, Dr. Price advises them to
improve upon Non-Conformity, and to set up, each of them, a separate
meeting-house upon his own particular principles.[79] It is somewhat
remarkable that this reverend divine should be so earnest for setting up new
churches, and so perfectly indifferent concerning the doctrine which may be
taught in them. His zeal is of a curious character. It is not for the
propagation of his own opinions, but of any opinions. It is not for the

diffusion of truth, but for the spreading of contradiction. Let the noble
teachers but dissent, it is no matter from whom or from what. This great
point once secured, it is taken for granted their religion will be rational and
manly. I doubt whether religion would reap all the benefits which the
calculating divine computes from this "great company of great preachers."
It would certainly be a valuable addition of nondescripts to the ample
collection of known classes, genera, and species, which at present beautify
the hortus siccus of Dissent. A sermon from a noble duke, or a noble
marquis, or a noble earl, or baron bold, would certainly increase and
diversify the amusements of this town, which begins to grow satiated with
the uniform round of its vapid dissipations. I should only stipulate that these
new Mess-Johns in robes and coronets should keep some sort of bounds in
the democratic and levelling principles which are expected from their titled
pulpits. The new evangelists will, I dare say, disappoint the hopes that are
conceived of them. They will not become, literally as well as figuratively,
polemic divines,—nor be disposed so to drill their congregations, that they
may, as in former blessed times, preach their doctrines to regiments of
dragoons and corps of infantry and artillery. Such arrangements, however
favorable to the cause of compulsory freedom, civil and religious, may not
be equally conducive to the national tranquillity. These few restrictions I
hope are no great stretches of intolerance, no very violent exertions of
despotism.

But I may say of our preacher, "Utinam nugis tota illa dedisset et
tempora sævitiæ." All things in this his fulminating bull are not of so
innoxious a tendency. His doctrines affect our Constitution in its vital parts.
He tells the Revolution Society, in this political sermon, that his Majesty "is
almost the only lawful king in the world, because the only one who owes his
crown to the choice of his people." As to the kings of the world, all of
whom (except one) this arch-pontiff of the rights of men, with all the
plenitude and with more than the boldness of the Papal deposing power in

its meridian fervor of the twelfth century, puts into one sweeping clause of
ban and anathema, and proclaims usurpers by circles of longitude and
latitude over the whole globe, it behooves them to consider how they admit
into their territories these apostolic missionaries, who are to tell their
subjects they are not lawful kings. That is their concern. It is ours, as a
domestic interest of some moment, seriously to consider the solidity of the
only principle upon which these gentlemen acknowledge a king of Great
Britain to be entitled to their allegiance.

This doctrine, as applied to the prince now on the British throne, either is
nonsense, and therefore neither true nor false, or it affirms a most
unfounded, dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional position. According to
this spiritual doctor of politics, if his Majesty does not owe his crown to the
choice of his people, he is no lawful king. Now nothing can be more untrue
than that the crown of this kingdom is so held by his Majesty. Therefore, if
you follow their rule, the king of Great Britain, who most certainly does not
owe his high office to any form of popular election, is in no respect better
than the rest of the gang of usurpers, who reign, or rather rob, all over the
face of this our miserable world, without any sort of right or title to the
allegiance of their people. The policy of this general doctrine, so qualified,
is evident enough. The propagators of this political gospel are in hopes their
abstract principle (their principle that a popular choice is necessary to the
legal existence of the sovereign magistracy) would be overlooked, whilst
the king of Great Britain was not affected by it. In the mean time the ears of
their congregations would be gradually habituated to it, as if it were a first
principle admitted without dispute. For the present it would only operate as
a theory, pickled in the preserving juices of pulpit eloquence, and laid by for
future use. Condo et compono quæ mox depromere passim. By this policy,
whilst our government is soothed with a reservation in its favor, to which it
has no claim, the security which it has in common with all governments, so
far as opinion is security, is taken away.

Thus these politicians proceed, whilst little notice is taken of their
doctrines; but when they come to be examined upon the plain meaning of
their words and the direct tendency of their doctrines, then equivocations
and slippery constructions come into play. When they say the king owes his
crown to the choice of his people, and is therefore the only lawful sovereign
in the world, they will perhaps tell us they mean to say no more than that
some of the king's predecessors have been called to the throne by some sort
of choice, and therefore he owes his crown to the choice of his people.
Thus, by a miserable subterfuge, they hope to render their proposition safe
by rendering it nugatory. They are welcome to the asylum they seek for
their offence, since they take refuge in their folly. For, if you admit this
interpretation, how does their idea of election differ from our idea of
inheritance? And how does the settlement of the crown in the Brunswick
line, derived from James the First, come to legalize our monarchy rather
than that of any of the neighboring countries? At some time or other, to be
sure, all the beginners of dynasties were chosen by those who called them
to govern. There is ground enough for the opinion that all the kingdoms of
Europe were at a remote period elective, with more or fewer limitations in
the objects of choice. But whatever kings might have been here or
elsewhere a thousand years ago, or in whatever manner the ruling dynasties
of England or France may have begun, the king of Great Britain is at this
day king by a fixed rule of succession, according to the laws of his country;
and whilst the legal conditions of the compact of sovereignty are performed
by him, (as they are performed,) he holds his crown in contempt of the
choice of the Revolution Society, who have not a single vote for a king
amongst them, either individually or collectively: though I make no doubt
they would soon erect themselves into an electoral college, if things were
ripe to give effect to their claim. His Majesty's heirs and successors, each in
his time and order, will come to the crown with the same contempt of their
choice with which his Majesty has succeeded to that he wears.

Whatever may be the success of evasion in explaining away the gross
error of fact, which supposes that his Majesty (though he holds it in
concurrence with the wishes) owes his crown to the choice of his people,
yet nothing can evade their full, explicit declaration concerning the
principle of a right in the people to choose,—which right is directly
maintained, and tenaciously adhered to. All the oblique insinuations
concerning election bottom in this proposition, and are referable to it. Lest
the foundation of the king's exclusive legal title should pass for a mere rant
of adulatory freedom, the political divine proceeds dogmatically to assert,
[80] that, by the principles of the Revolution, the people of England have

acquired three fundamental rights, all of which, with him, compose one
system, and lie together in one short sentence: namely, that we have
acquired a right

1. "To choose our own governors."

2. "To cashier them for misconduct."

3. "To frame a government for ourselves."

This new, and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights, though made in the name of
the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their faction only. The
body of the people of England have no share in it. They utterly disclaim it.
They will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes.
They are bound to do so by the laws of their country, made at the time of
that very Revolution which is appealed to in favor of the fictitious rights
claimed by the society which abuses its name.

These gentlemen of the Old Jewry, in all their reasonings on the
Revolution of 1688, have a revolution which happened in England about
forty years before, and the late French Revolution, so much before their
eyes and in their hearts, that they are constantly confounding all the three

together. It is necessary that we should separate what they confound. We
must recall their erring fancies to the acts of the Revolution which we
revere, for the discovery of its true principles. If the principles of the
Revolution of 1688 are anywhere to be found, it is in the statute called the
Declaration of Right. In that most wise, sober, and considerate declaration,
drawn up by great lawyers and great statesmen, and not by warm and
inexperienced enthusiasts, not one word is said, nor one suggestion made,
of a general right "to choose our own governors, to cashier them for
misconduct, and to form a government for ourselves."

This Declaration of Right (the act of the 1st of William and Mary, sess. 2,
ch. 2) is the corner-stone of our Constitution, as reinforced, explained,
improved, and in its fundamental principles forever settled. It is called "An
act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject, and for settling the
succession of the crown." You will observe that these rights and this
succession are declared in one body, and bound indissolubly together.

A few years after this period, a second opportunity offered for asserting a
right of election to the crown. On the prospect of a total failure of issue
from King William, and from the princess, afterwards Queen Anne, the
consideration of the settlement of the Crown, and of a further security for
the liberties of the people, again came before the legislature. Did they this
second time make any provision for legalizing the crown on the spurious
Revolution principles of the Old Jewry? No. They followed the principles
which prevailed in the Declaration of Right; indicating with more precision
the persons who were to inherit in the Protestant line. This act also
incorporated, by the same policy, our liberties and an hereditary succession
in the same act. Instead of a right to choose our own governors, they
declared that the succession in that line (the Protestant line drawn from
James the First) was absolutely necessary "for the peace, quiet, and security
of the realm," and that it was equally urgent on them "to maintain a

certainty in the succession thereof, to which the subjects may safely have
recourse for their protection." Both these acts, in which are heard the
unerring, unambiguous oracles of Revolution policy, instead of
countenancing the delusive gypsy predictions of a "right to choose our
governors," prove to a demonstration how totally adverse the wisdom of the
nation was from turning a case of necessity into a rule of law.

Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the person of King
William, a small and a temporary deviation from the strict order of a regular
hereditary succession; but it is against all genuine principles of
jurisprudence to draw a principle from a law made in a special case and
regarding an individual person. Privilegium non transit in exemplum. If
ever there was a time favorable for establishing the principle that a king of
popular choice was the only legal king, without all doubt it was at the
Revolution. Its not being done at that time is a proof that the nation was of
opinion it ought not to be done at any time. There is no person so
completely ignorant of our history as not to know that the majority in
Parliament, of both parties, were so little disposed to anything resembling
that principle, that at first they were determined to place the vacant crown,
not on the head of the Prince of Orange, but on that of his wife, Mary,
daughter of King James, the eldest born of the issue of that king, which they
acknowledged as undoubtedly his. It would be to repeat a very trite story, to
recall to your memory all those circumstances which demonstrated that
their accepting King William was not properly a choice; but to all those
who did not wish in effect to recall King James, or to deluge their country
in blood, and again to bring their religion, laws, and liberties into the peril
they had just escaped, it was an act of necessity, in the strictest moral sense
in which necessity can be taken.

In the very act in which, for a time, and in a single case, Parliament
departed from the strict order of inheritance, in favor of a prince who,

though not next, was, however, very near in the line of succession, it is
curious to observe how Lord Somers, who drew the bill called the
Declaration of Right, has comported himself on that delicate occasion. It is
curious to observe with what address this temporary solution of continuity
is kept from the eye; whilst all that could be found in this act of necessity to
countenance the idea of an hereditary succession is brought forward, and
fostered, and made the most of, by this great man, and by the legislature
who followed him. Quitting the dry, imperative style of an act of
Parliament, he makes the Lords and Commons fall to a pious legislative
ejaculation, and declare that they consider it "as a marvellous providence,
and merciful goodness of God to this nation, to preserve their said
Majesties' royal persons most happily to reign over us on the throne of their
ancestors, for which, from the bottom of their hearts, they return their
humblest thanks and praises." The legislature plainly had in view the Act of
Recognition of the first of Queen Elizabeth, chap. 3rd, and of that of James
the First, chap. 1st, both acts strongly declaratory of the inheritable nature
of the crown; and in many parts they follow, with a nearly literal precision,
the words, and even the form of thanksgiving which is found in these old
declaratory statutes.

The two Houses, in the act of King William, did not thank God that they
had found a fair opportunity to assert a right to choose their own governors,
much less to make an election the only lawful title to the crown. Their
having been in a condition to avoid the very appearance of it, as much as
possible, was by them considered as a providential escape. They threw a
politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the
rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate,
or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they
had then settled forever. Accordingly, that they might not relax the nerves of
their monarchy, and that they might preserve a close conformity to the
practice of their ancestors, as it appeared in the declaratory statutes of

Queen Mary[81] and Queen Elizabeth, in the next clause they vest, by
recognition, in their Majesties all the legal prerogatives of the crown,
declaring "that in them they are most fully, rightfully, and entirely invested,
incorporated, united, and annexed." In the clause which follows, for
preventing questions, by reason of any pretended titles to the crown, they
declare (observing also in this the traditionary language, along with the
traditionary policy of the nation, and repeating as from a rubric the
language of the preceding acts of Elizabeth and James) that on the
preserving "a certainty in the SUCCESSION thereof the unity, peace, and
tranquillity of this nation doth, under God, wholly depend."

They knew that a doubtful title of succession would but too much
resemble an election, and that an election would be utterly destructive of the
"unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation," which they thought to be
considerations of some moment. To provide for these objects, and therefore
to exclude forever the Old Jewry doctrine of "a right to choose our own
governors," they follow with a clause containing a most solemn pledge,
taken from the preceding act of Queen Elizabeth,—as solemn a pledge as
ever was or can be given in favor of an hereditary succession, and as
solemn a renunciation as could be made of the principles by this society
imputed to them:—"The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do,
in the name of all the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit
themselves, their heirs, and posterities forever; and do faithfully promise
that they will stand to, maintain, and defend their said Majesties, and also
the limitation of the crown, herein specified and contained, to the utmost of
their powers," &c., &c.

So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to
elect our kings, that, if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at
that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for
all their posterity forever. These gentlemen may value themselves as much

as they please on their Whig principles; but I never desire to be thought a
better Whig than Lord Somers, or to understand the principles of the
Revolution better than those by whom it was brought about, or to read in
the Declaration of Right any mysteries unknown to those whose penetrating
style has engraved in our ordinances, and in our hearts, the words and spirit
of that immortal law.

It is true, that, aided with the powers derived from force and opportunity,
the nation was at that time, in some sense, free to take what course it
pleased for filling the throne,—but only free to do so upon the same
grounds on which they might have wholly abolished their monarchy, and
every other part of their Constitution. However, they did not think such bold
changes within their commission. It is, indeed, difficult, perhaps impossible,
to give limits to the mere abstract competence of the supreme power, such
as was exercised by Parliament at that time; but the limits of a moral
competence, subjecting, even in powers more indisputably sovereign,
occasional will to permanent reason, and to the steady maxims of faith,
justice, and fixed fundamental policy, are perfectly intelligible, and
perfectly binding upon those who exercise any authority, under any name,
or under any title, in the state. The House of Lords, for instance, is not
morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,—no, nor even to
dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of
the kingdom. Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot
abdicate for the monarchy. By as strong, or by a stronger reason, the House
of Commons cannot renounce its share of authority. The engagement and
pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution,
forbids such invasion and such surrender. The constituent parts of a state are
obliged to hold their public faith with each other, and with all those who
derive any serious interest under their engagements, as much as the whole
state is bound to keep its faith with separate communities: otherwise,
competence and power would soon be confounded, and no law be left but

the will of a prevailing force. On this principle, the succession of the crown
has always been what it now is, an hereditary succession by law: in the old
line it was a succession by the Common Law; in the new by the statute law,
operating on the principles of the Common Law, not changing the
substance, but regulating the mode and describing the persons. Both these
descriptions of law are of the same force, and are derived from an equal
authority, emanating from the common agreement and original compact of
the state, communi sponsione reipublicæ, and as such are equally binding
on king, and people too, as long as the terms are observed, and they
continue the same body politic.

It is far from impossible to reconcile, if we do not suffer ourselves to be
entangled in the mazes of metaphysic sophistry, the use both of a fixed rule
and an occasional deviation,—the sacredness of an hereditary principle of
succession in our government with a power of change in its application in
cases of extreme emergency. Even in that extremity, (if we take the measure
of our rights by our exercise of them at the Revolution,) the change is to be
confined to the peccant part only,—to the part which produced the
necessary deviation; and even then it is to be effected without a
decomposition of the whole civil and political mass, for the purpose of
originating a new civil order out of the first elements of society.

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its
conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of
the Constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve. The two
principles of conservation and correction operated strongly at the two
critical periods of the Restoration and Revolution, when England found
itself without a king. At both those periods the nation had lost the bond of
union in their ancient edifice: they did not, however, dissolve the whole
fabric. On the contrary, in both cases they regenerated the deficient part of
the old Constitution through the parts which were not impaired. They kept

these old parts exactly as they were, that the part recovered might be suited
to them. They acted by the ancient organized states in the shape of their old
organization, and not by the organic moleculæ of a disbanded people. At no
time, perhaps, did the sovereign legislature manifest a more tender regard to
that fundamental principle of British constitutional policy than at the time
of the Revolution, when it deviated from the direct line of hereditary
succession. The crown was carried somewhat out of the line in which it had
before moved; but the new line was derived from the same stock. It was still
a line of hereditary descent; still an hereditary descent in the same blood,
though an hereditary descent qualified with Protestantism. When the
legislature altered the direction, but kept the principle, they showed that
they held it inviolable.

On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted some amendment
in the old time, and long before the era of the Revolution. Some time after
the Conquest great questions arose upon the legal principles of hereditary
descent. It became a matter of doubt whether the heir per capita or the heir
per stirpes was to succeed; but whether the heir per capita gave way when
the heirdom per stirpes took place, or the Catholic heir when the Protestant
was preferred, the inheritable principle survived with a sort of immortality
through all transmigrations,—

Multosque per annos
Stat fortuna domûs, et avi numerantur avorum.

This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all
its revolutions. Whoever came in, or however he came in, whether he
obtained the crown by law or by force, the hereditary succession was either
continued or adopted.

The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions see nothing in that of 1688
but the deviation from the Constitution; and they take the deviation from

the principle for the principle. They have little regard to the obvious
consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive
authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country. When such
an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the
elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious
election can be valid. Do these theorists mean to imitate some of their
predecessors, who dragged the bodies of our ancient sovereigns out of the
quiet of their tombs? Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the
kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the
throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation? Do they mean to
invalidate, annul, or to call into question, together with the titles of the
whole line of our kings, that great body of our statute law which passed
under those whom they treat as usurpers? to annul laws of inestimable value
to our liberties,—of as great value at least as any which have passed at or
since the period of the Revolution? If kings who did not owe their crown to
the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of
the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act
of Habeas Corpus? Do these new doctors of the rights of men presume to
assert that King James the Second, who came to the crown as next of blood,
according to the rules of a then unqualified succession, was not to all intents
and purposes a lawful king of England, before he had done any of those acts
which were justly construed into an abdication of his crown? If he was not,
much trouble in Parliament might have been saved at the period these
gentlemen commemorate. But King James was a bad king with a good title,
and not an usurper. The princes who succeeded according to the act of
Parliament which settled the crown on the Electress Sophia and on her
descendants, being Protestants, came in as much by a title of inheritance as
King James did. He came in according to the law, as it stood at his
accession to the crown; and the princes of the House of Brunswick came to
the inheritance of the crown, not by election, but by the law, as it stood at

their several accessions, of Protestant descent and inheritance, as I hope I
have shown sufficiently.

The law by which this royal family is specifically destined to the
succession is the act of the 12th and 13th of King William. The terms of this
act bind "us, and our heirs, and our posterity, to them, their heirs, and their
posterity," being Protestants, to the end of time, in the same words as the
Declaration of Right had bound us to the heirs of King William and Queen
Mary. It therefore secures both an hereditary crown and an hereditary
allegiance. On what ground, except the constitutional policy of forming an
establishment to secure that kind of succession which is to preclude a
choice of the people forever, could the legislature have fastidiously rejected
the fair and abundant choice which our own country presented to them, and
searched in strange lands for a foreign princess, from whose womb the line
of our future rulers were to derive their title to govern millions of men
through a series of ages?

The Princess Sophia was named in the act of settlement of the 12th and
13th of King William, for a stock and root of inheritance to our kings, and
not for her merits as a temporary administratrix of a power which she might
not, and in fact did not, herself ever exercise. She was adopted for one
reason, and for one only,—because, says the act, "the most excellent
Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess Dowager of Hanover, is daughter
of the most excellent Princess Elizabeth, late Queen of Bohemia, daughter
of our late sovereign lord King James the First, of happy memory, and is
hereby declared to be the next in succession in the Protestant line," &c.,
&c.; "and the crown shall continue to the heirs of her body, being
Protestants." This limitation was made by Parliament, that through the
Princess Sophia an inheritable line not only was to be continued in future,
but (what they thought very material) that through her it was to be
connected with the old stock of inheritance in King James the First; in order

that the monarchy might preserve an unbroken unity through all ages, and
might be preserved (with safety to our religion) in the old approved mode
by descent, in which, if our liberties had been once endangered, they had
often, through all storms and struggles of prerogative and privilege, been
preserved. They did well. No experience has taught us that in any other
course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be
regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right. An
irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular,
convulsive disease. But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the
British Constitution. Was it that the legislature wanted, at the act for the
limitation of the crown in the Hanoverian line, drawn through the female
descendants of James the First, a due sense of the inconveniences of having
two or three, or possibly more, foreigners in succession to the British
throne? No!—they had a due sense of the evils which might happen from
such foreign rule, and more than a due sense of them. But a more decisive
proof cannot be given of the full conviction of the British nation that the
principles of the Revolution did not authorize them to elect kings at their
pleasure, and without any attention to the ancient fundamental principles of
our government, than their continuing to adopt a plan of hereditary
Protestant succession in the old line, with all the dangers and all the
inconveniences of its being a foreign line full before their eyes, and
operating with the utmost force upon their minds.

A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of
supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this
seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and
printed. The dislike I feel to revolutions, the signals for which have so often
been given from pulpits,—the spirit of change that is gone abroad,—the
total contempt which prevails with you, and may come to prevail with us, of
all ancient institutions, when set in opposition to a present sense of
convenience, or to the bent of a present inclination,—all these

considerations make it not unadvisable, in my opinion, to call back our
attention to the true principles of our own domestic laws, that you, my
French friend, should begin to know, and that we should continue to cherish
them. We ought not, on either side of the water, to suffer ourselves to be
imposed upon by the counterfeit wares which some persons, by a double
fraud, export to you in illicit bottoms, as raw commodities of British
growth, though wholly alien to our soil, in order afterwards to smuggle
them back again into this country, manufactured after the newest Paris
fashion of an improved liberty.

The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried,
nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial. They look
upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights,
not as among their wrongs,—as a benefit, not as a grievance,—as a security
for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude. They look on the frame of their
commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they
conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the
stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our Constitution.

I shall beg leave, before I go any further, to take notice of some paltry
artifices which the abettors of election as the only lawful title to the crown
are ready to employ, in order to render the support of the just principles of
our Constitution a task somewhat invidious. These sophisters substitute a
fictitious cause, and feigned personages, in whose favor they suppose you
engaged, whenever you defend the inheritable nature of the crown. It is
common with them to dispute as if they were in a conflict with some of
those exploded fanatics of slavery who formerly maintained, what I believe
no creature now maintains, "that the crown is held by divine, hereditary, and
indefeasible right." These old fanatics of single arbitrary power dogmatized
as if hereditary royalty was the only lawful government in the world,—just
as our new fanatics of popular arbitrary power maintain that a popular

election is the sole lawful source of authority. The old prerogative
enthusiasts, it is true, did speculate foolishly, and perhaps impiously too, as
if monarchy had more of a divine sanction than any other mode of
government,—and as if a right to govern by inheritance were in strictness
indefeasible in every person who should be found in the succession to a
throne, and under every circumstance, which no civil or political right can
be. But an absurd opinion concerning the king's hereditary right to the
crown does not prejudice one that is rational, and bottomed upon solid
principles of law and policy. If all the absurd theories of lawyers and
divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should
have no law and no religion left in the world. But an absurd theory on one
side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or
promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.

The second claim of the Revolution Society is "a right of cashiering their
governors for misconduct." Perhaps the apprehensions our ancestors
entertained of forming such a precedent as that "of cashiering for
misconduct" was the cause that the declaration of the act which implied the
abdication of King James was, if it had any fault, rather too guarded and too
circumstantial.[82] But all this guard, and all this accumulation of
circumstances, serves to show the spirit of caution which predominated in
the national councils, in a situation in which men irritated by oppression,
and elevated by a triumph over it, are apt to abandon themselves to violent
and extreme courses; it shows the anxiety of the great men who influenced
the conduct of affairs at that great event to make the Revolution a parent of
settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

No government could stand a moment, if it could be blown down with
anything so loose and indefinite as an opinion of "misconduct." They who
led at the Revolution grounded their virtual abdication of King James upon

no such light and uncertain principle. They charged him with nothing less
than a design, confirmed by a multitude of illegal overt acts, to subvert the
Protestant Church and State, and their fundamental, unquestionable laws
and liberties: they charged him with having broken the original contract
between king and people. This was more than misconduct. A grave and
overruling necessity obliged them to take the step they took, and took with
infinite reluctance, as under that most rigorous of all laws. Their trust for
the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
The grand policy of all their regulations was to render it almost
impracticable for any future sovereign to compel the states of the kingdom
to have again recourse to those violent remedies. They left the crown, what
in the eye and estimation of law it had ever been, perfectly irresponsible. In
order to lighten the crown still further, they aggravated responsibility on
ministers of state. By the statute of the first of King William, sess. 2d,
called "the act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject, and for
settling the succession of the crown," they enacted that the ministers should
serve the crown on the terms of that declaration. They secured soon after
the frequent meetings of Parliament, by which the whole government would
be under the constant inspection and active control of the popular
representative and of the magnates of the kingdom. In the next great
constitutional act, that of the 12th and 13th of King William, for the further
limitation of the crown, and better securing the rights and liberties of the
subject, they provided "that no pardon under the great seal of England
should be pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons in Parliament."
The rule laid down for government in the Declaration of Right, the constant
inspection of Parliament, the practical claim of impeachment, they thought
infinitely a better security not only for their constitutional liberty, but
against the vices of administration, than the reservation of a right so
difficult in the practice, so uncertain in the issue, and often so mischievous
in the consequences, as that "cashiering their governors."

Dr. Price, in this sermon,[83] condemns, very properly, the practice of
gross adulatory addresses to kings. Instead of this fulsome style, he
proposes that his Majesty should be told, on occasions of congratulation,
that "he is to consider himself as more properly the servant than the
sovereign of his people." For a compliment, this new form of address does
not seem to be very soothing. Those who are servants in name, as well as in
effect, do not like to be told of their situation, their duty, and their
obligations. The slave in the old play tells his master, "Hæc commemeratio
est quasi exprobratio." It is not pleasant as compliment; it is not wholesome
as instruction. After all, if the king were to bring himself to echo this new
kind of address, to adopt it in terms, and even to take the appellation of
Servant of the People as his royal style, how either he or we should be
much mended by it I cannot imagine. I have seen very assuming letters
signed, "Your most obedient, humble servant." The proudest domination
that ever was endured on earth took a title of still greater humility than that
which is now proposed for sovereigns by the Apostle of Liberty. Kings and
nations were trampled upon by the foot of one calling himself "The Servant
of Servants"; and mandates for deposing sovereigns were sealed with the
signet of "The Fisherman."

I should have considered all this as no more than a sort of flippant, vain
discourse, in which, as in an unsavory fume, several persons suffer the spirit
of liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in support of the idea, and a
part of the scheme, of "cashiering kings for misconduct." In that light it is
worth some observation.

Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants of the people, because
their power has no other rational end than that of the general advantage; but
it is not true that they are, in the ordinary sense, (by our Constitution, at
least,) anything like servants,—the essence of whose situation is to obey the
commands of some other, and to be removable at pleasure. But the king of

Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and
collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience. The law,
which knows neither to flatter nor to insult, calls this high-magistrate, not
our servant, as this humble divine calls him, but "our sovereign lord the
king"; and we, on our parts, have learned to speak only the primitive
language of the law, and not the confused jargon of their Babylonian
pulpits.

As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our
Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a
servant, in any degree responsible. Our Constitution knows nothing of a
magistrate like the Justicia of Aragon,—nor of any court legally appointed,
nor of any process legally settled, for submitting the king to the
responsibility belonging to all servants. In this he is not distinguished from
the commons and the lords, who, in their several public capacities, can
never be called to an account for their conduct; although the Revolution
Society chooses to assert, in direct opposition to one of the wisest and most
beautiful parts of our Constitution, that "a king is no more than the first
servant of the public, created by it, and responsible to it."

Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for
wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering
their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,—if
they had been able to contrive no better remedy against arbitrary power
than civil confusion. Let these gentlemen state who that representative
public is to whom they will affirm the king, as a servant, to be responsible.
It will be then time enough for me to produce to them the positive statute
law which affirms that he is not.

The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so
much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force. It then

becomes a case of war, and not of constitution. Laws are commanded to
hold their tongues amongst arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the
peace they are no longer able to uphold. The Revolution of 1688 was
obtained by a just war, in the only case in which any war, and much more a
civil war, can be just. "Justa bella quibus NECESSARIA." The question of
dethroning, or, if these gentlemen, like the phrase better, "cashiering kings,"
will always be, as it has always been, an extraordinary question of state, and
wholly out of the law: a question (like all other questions of state) of
dispositions, and of means, and of probable consequences, rather than of
positive rights. As it was not made for common abuses, so it is not to be
agitated by common minds. The speculative line of demarcation, where
obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not
easily definable. It is not a single act or a single event which determines it.
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought
of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the
past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease
is to indicate the remedy to those whom Nature has qualified to administer
in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state.
Times and occasions and provocations will teach their own lessons. The
wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from
sensibility to oppression; the high-minded, from disdain and indignation at
abusive power in unworthy hands; the brave and bold, from the love of
honorable danger in a generous cause: but, with or without right, a
revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good.

The third head of right asserted by the pulpit of the Old Jewry, namely,
the "right to form a government for ourselves," has, at least, as little
countenance from anything done at the Revolution, either in precedent or
principle, as the two first of their claims. The Revolution was made to
preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient

constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty. If
you are desirous of knowing the spirit of our Constitution, and the policy
which predominated in that great period which has secured it to this hour,
pray look for both in our histories, in our records, in our acts of Parliament
and journals of Parliament, and not in the sermons of the Old Jewry, and the
after-dinner toasts of the Revolution Society. In the former you will find
other ideas and another language. Such a claim is as ill-suited to our temper
and wishes as it is unsupported by any appearance of authority. The very
idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust
and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to
derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that
body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any scion
alien to the nature of the original plant. All the reformations we have
hitherto made have proceeded upon the principle of reference to antiquity;
and I hope, nay, I am persuaded, that all those which possibly may be made
hereafter will be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, authority, and
example.

Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will see that Sir
Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who
follow him, to Blackstone,[84] are industrious to prove the pedigree of our
liberties. They endeavor to prove that the ancient charter, the Magna Charta
of King John, was connected with another positive charter from Henry the
First, and that both the one and the other were nothing more than a
reaffirmance of the still more ancient standing law of the kingdom. In the
matter of fact, for the greater part, these authors appear to be in the right;
perhaps not always: but if the lawyers mistake in some particulars, it proves
my position still the more strongly; because it demonstrates the powerful
prepossession towards antiquity with which the minds of all our lawyers
and legislators, and of all the people whom they wish to influence, have

been always filled, and the stationary policy of this kingdom in considering
their most sacred rights and franchises as an inheritance.

In the famous law of the 3rd of Charles the First, called the Petition of
Right, the Parliament says to the king, "Your subjects have inherited this
freedom": claiming their franchises, not on abstract principles, "as the rights
of men," but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from
their forefathers. Selden, and the other profoundly learned men who drew
this Petition of Right, were as well acquainted, at least, with all the general
theories concerning the "rights of men" as any of the discoursers in our
pulpits or on your tribune: full as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abbé Sièyes.
But, for reasons worthy of that practical wisdom which superseded their
theoretic science, they preferred this positive, recorded, hereditary title to
all which can be dear to the man and the citizen to that vague, speculative
right which exposed their sure inheritance to be scrambled for and torn to
pieces by every wild, litigious spirit.

The same policy pervades all the laws which have since been made for
the preservation of our liberties. In the 1st of William and Mary, in the
famous statute called the Declaration of Right, the two Houses utter not a
syllable of "a right to frame a government for themselves." You will see that
their whole care was to secure the religion, laws, and liberties that had been
long possessed, and had been lately endangered. "Taking[85] into their most
serious consideration the best means for making such an establishment that
their religion, laws, and liberties might not be in danger of being again
subverted," they auspicate all their proceedings by stating as some of those
best means, "in the first place," to do "as their ancestors in like cases have
usually done for vindicating their ancient rights and liberties, to declare";—
and then they pray the king and queen "that it may be declared and enacted
that all and singular the rights and liberties asserted and declared are the

true ancient and indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this
kingdom."

You will observe, that, from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right, it
has been the uniform policy of our Constitution to claim and assert our
liberties as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to
be transmitted to our posterity,—as an estate specially belonging to the
people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other more
general or prior right. By this means our Constitution preserves an unity in
so great a diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown, an inheritable
peerage, and a House of Commons and a people inheriting privileges,
franchises, and liberties from a long line of ancestors.

This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection,—or
rather the happy effect of following Nature, which is wisdom without
reflection, and above it. A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a
selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to
posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. Besides, the people
of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle
of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission, without at all
excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition free; but it
secures what it acquires. Whatever advantages are obtained by a state
proceeding on these maxims are locked fast as in a sort of family
settlement, grasped as in a kind of mortmain forever. By a constitutional
policy working after the pattern of Nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit
our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy
and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods
of fortune, the gifts of Providence, are handed down to us, and from us, in
the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just
correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the
mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory

parts,—wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding
together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at
one time, is never old or middle-aged or young, but, in a condition of
unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual
decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of
Nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly
new, in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering in this
manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the
superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this
choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a
relation in blood: binding up the Constitution of our country with our
dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our
family affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of
all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths,
our sepulchres, and our altars.

Through the same plan of a conformity to Nature in our artificial
institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful instincts
to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived
several other, and those no small benefits, from considering our liberties in
the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized
forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is
tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us
with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence
almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first
acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble
freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and
illustrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. It has its
gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its records, evidences, and
titles. We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon
which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age,

and on account of those from whom they are descended. All your sophisters
cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly
freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature
rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for the
great conservatories and magazines of our rights and privileges.

You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have given
to your recovered freedom a correspondent dignity. Your privileges, though
discontinued, were not lost to memory. Your Constitution, it is true, whilst
you were out of possession, suffered waste and dilapidation; but you
possessed in some parts the walls, and in all the foundations, of a noble and
venerable castle. You might have repaired those walls; you might have built
on those old foundations. Your Constitution was suspended before it was
perfected; but you had the elements of a Constitution very nearly as good as
could be wished. In your old states you possessed that variety of parts
corresponding with the various descriptions of which your community was
happily composed; you had all that combination and all that opposition of
interests, you had that action and counteraction, which, in the natural and in
the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws
out the harmony of the universe. These opposed and conflicting interests,
which you considered as so great a blemish in your old and in our present
Constitution, interpose a salutary check to all precipitate resolutions. They
render deliberation a matter, not of choice, but of necessity; they make all
change a subject of compromise, which naturally begets moderation; they
produce temperaments, preventing the sore evil of harsh, crude, unqualified
reformations, and rendering all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in
the few or in the many, forever impracticable. Through that diversity of
members and interests, general liberty had as many securities as there were
separate views in the several orders; whilst by pressing down the whole by

the weight of a real monarchy, the separate parts would have been
prevented from warping and starting from their allotted places.

You had all these advantages in your ancient states; but you chose to act
as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had everything to
begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that
belonged to you. You set up your trade without a capital. If the last
generations of your country appeared without much lustre in your eyes, you
might have passed them by, and derived your claims from a more early race
of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your
imaginations would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom
beyond the vulgar practice of the hour; and you would have risen with the
example to whose imitation you aspired. Respecting your forefathers, you
would have been taught to respect yourselves. You would not have chosen
to consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a nation of low-born,
servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789. In order to furnish, at
the expense of your honor, an excuse to your apologists here for several
enormities of yours, you would not have been content to be represented as a
gang of Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of bondage,
and therefore to be pardoned for your abuse of the liberty to which you
were not accustomed, and were ill fitted. Would it not, my worthy friend,
have been wiser to have you thought, what I for one always thought you, a
generous and gallant nation, long misled to your disadvantage by your high
and romantic sentiments of fidelity, honor, and loyalty; that events had been
unfavorable to you, but that you were not enslaved through any illiberal or
servile disposition; that, in your most devoted submission, you were
actuated by a principle of public spirit; and that it was your country you
worshipped, in the person of your king? Had you made it to be understood,
that, in the delusion of this amiable error, you had gone further than your
wise ancestors,—that you were resolved to resume your ancient privileges,
whilst you preserved the spirit of your ancient and your recent loyalty and

honor; or if, diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost
obliterated Constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your
neighbors in this land, who had kept alive the ancient principles and models
of the old common law of Europe, meliorated and adapted to its present
state,—by following wise examples you would have given new examples of
wisdom to the world. You would have rendered the cause of liberty
venerable in the eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would
have shamed despotism from the earth, by showing that freedom was not
only reconcilable, but, as, when well disciplined, it is, auxiliary to law. You
would have had an unoppressive, but a productive revenue. You would have
had a flourishing commerce to feed it. You would have had a free
Constitution, a potent monarchy, a disciplined army, a reformed and
venerated clergy,—a mitigated, but spirited nobility, to lead your virtue, not
to overlay it; you would have had a liberal order of commons, to emulate
and to recruit that nobility; you would have had a protected, satisfied,
laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and to recognize the
happiness that is to be found by virtue in all conditions,—in which consists
the true moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction which,
by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in
the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter
that real inequality which it never can remove, and which the order of civil
life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in an
humble state as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid,
but not more happy. You had a smooth and easy career of felicity and glory
laid open to you, beyond anything recorded in the history of the world; but
you have shown that difficulty is good for man.

Compute your gains; see what is got by those extravagant and
presumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders to despise all
their predecessors, and all their contemporaries, and even to despise
themselves, until the moment in which they became truly despicable. By

following those false lights, France has bought undisguised calamities at a
higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings.
France has bought poverty by crime. France has not sacrificed her virtue to
her interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her
virtue. All other nations have begun the fabric of a new government, or the
reformation of an old, by establishing originally, or by enforcing with
greater exactness, some rites or other of religion. All other people have laid
the foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and a system of a more
austere and masculine morality. France, when she let loose the reins of regal
authority, doubled the license of a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and
of an insolent irreligion in opinions and practices,—and has extended
through all ranks of life, as if she were communicating some privilege, or
laying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy corruptions that usually
were the disease of wealth and power. This is one of the new principles of
equality in France.

France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly disgraced the tone of
lenient council in the cabinets of princes, and disarmed it of its most potent
topics. She has sanctified the dark, suspicious maxims of tyrannous distrust,
and taught kings to tremble at (what will hereafter be called) the delusive
plausibilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns will consider those who
advise them to place an unlimited confidence in their people as subverters
of their thrones,—as traitors who aim at their destruction, by leading their
easy good-nature, under specious pretences, to admit combinations of bold
and faithless men into a participation of their power. This alone (if there
were nothing else) is an irreparable calamity to you and to mankind.
Remember that your Parliament of Paris told your king, that, in calling the
states together, he had nothing to fear but the prodigal excess of their zeal in
providing for the support of the throne. It is right that these men should hide
their heads. It is right that they should bear their part in the ruin which their
counsel has brought on their sovereign and their country. Such sanguine

declarations tend to lull authority asleep,—to encourage it rashly to engage
in perilous adventures of untried policy,—to neglect those provisions,
preparations, and precautions which distinguish benevolence from
imbecility, and without which no man can answer for the salutary effect of
any abstract plan of government or of freedom. For want of these, they have
seen the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison. They have seen the
French rebel against a mild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage,
and insult than ever any people has been known to rise against the most
illegal usurper or the most sanguinary tyrant. Their resistance was made to
concession; their revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at a
hand holding out graces, favors, and immunities.

This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They have found their
punishment in their success. Laws overturned; tribunals subverted; industry
without vigor; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people
impoverished; a church pillaged, and a state not relieved; civil and military
anarchy made the constitution of the kingdom; everything human and
divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the
consequence; and, to crown all, the paper securities of new, precarious,
tottering power, the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud and
beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire, in lieu
of the two great recognized species that represent the lasting, conventional
credit of mankind, which disappeared and hid themselves in the earth from
whence they came, when the principle of property, whose creatures and
representatives they are, was systematically subverted.

Were all these dreadful things necessary? Were they the inevitable results
of the desperate struggle of determined patriots, compelled to wade through
blood and tumult to the quiet shore of a tranquil and prosperous liberty?
No! nothing like it. The fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings
wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devastation of civil war: they are

the sad, but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of
profound peace. They are the display of inconsiderate and presumptuous,
because unresisted and irresistible authority. The persons who have thus
squandered away the precious treasure of their crimes, the persons who
have made this prodigal and wild waste of public evils, (the last stake
reserved for the ultimate ransom of the state,) have met in their progress
with little, or rather with no opposition at all. Their whole march was more
like a triumphal procession than the progress of a war. Their pioneers have
gone before them, and demolished and laid everything level at their feet.
Not one drop of their blood have they shed in the cause of the country they
have ruined. They have made no sacrifices to their projects of greater
consequence than their shoe-buckles, whilst they were imprisoning their
king, murdering their fellow-citizens, and bathing in tears and plunging in
poverty and distress thousands of worthy men and worthy families. Their
cruelty has not even been the base result of fear. It has been the effect of
their sense of perfect safety, in authorizing treasons, robberies, rapes,
assassinations, slaughters, and burnings, throughout their harassed land. But
the cause of all was plain from the beginning.

This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would appear perfectly
unaccountable, if we did not consider the composition of the National
Assembly: I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as it now stands, is
exceptionable enough, but the materials of which in a great measure it is
composed, which is of ten thousand times greater consequence than all the
formalities in the world. If we were to know nothing of this assembly but by
its title and function, no colors could paint to the imagination anything more
venerable. In that light, the mind of an inquirer, subdued by such an awful
image as that of the virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected into one
focus, would pause and hesitate in condemning things even of the very
worst aspect. Instead of blamable, they would appear only mysterious. But

no name, no power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can
make the men, of whom any system of authority is composed, any other
than God, and Nature, and education, and their habits of life have made
them. Capacities beyond these the people have not to give. Virtue and
wisdom may be the objects of their choice; but their choice confers neither
the one nor the other on those upon whom they lay their ordaining hands.
They have not the engagement of Nature, they have not the promise of
Revelation for any such powers.

After I had read over the list of the persons and descriptions elected into
the Tiers État, nothing which they afterwards did could appear astonishing.
Among them, indeed, I saw some of known rank, some of shining talents;
but of any practical experience in the state not one man was to be found.
The best were only men of theory. But whatever the distinguished few may
have been, it is the substance and mass of the body which constitutes its
character, and must finally determine its direction. In all bodies, those who
will lead must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They must conform
their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition of those whom they
wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed
in a very great part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as
very rarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter into
calculation, will prevent the men of talents disseminated through it from
becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects. If, what is the
more likely event, instead of that unusual degree of virtue, they should be
actuated by sinister ambition and a lust of meretricious glory, then the
feeble part of the assembly, to whom at first they conform, becomes, in its
turn, the dupe and instrument of their designs. In this political traffic, the
leaders will be obliged to bow to the ignorance of their followers, and the
followers to become subservient to the worst designs of their leaders.

To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions made by the leaders
in any public assembly, they ought to respect, in some degree perhaps to
fear, those whom they conduct. To be led any otherwise than blindly, the
followers must be qualified, if not for actors, at least for judges; they must
also be judges of natural weight and authority. Nothing can secure a steady
and moderate conduct in such assemblies, but that the body of them should
be respectably composed, in point of condition in life, of permanent
property, of education, and of such habits as enlarge and liberalize the
understanding.

In the calling of the States-General of France, the first thing that struck
me was a great departure from the ancient course. I found the representation
for the third estate composed of six hundred persons. They were equal in
number to the representatives of both the other orders. If the orders were to
act separately, the number would not, beyond the consideration of the
expense, be of much moment. But when it became apparent that the three
orders were to be melted down into one, the policy and necessary effect of
this numerous representation became obvious. A very small desertion from
either of the other two orders must throw the power of both into the hands
of the third. In fact, the whole power of the state was soon resolved into that
body. Its due composition became, therefore, of infinitely the greater
importance.

Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a very great proportion of
the Assembly (a majority, I believe, of the members who attended) was
composed of practitioners in the law. It was composed, not of distinguished
magistrates, who had given pledges to their country of their science,
prudence, and integrity,—not of leading advocates, the glory of the bar,—
not of renowned professors in universities,—but for the far greater part, as
it must in such a number, of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely
instrumental members of the profession. There were distinguished

exceptions; but the general composition was of obscure provincial
advocates, of stewards of petty local jurisdictions, country attorneys,
notaries, and the whole train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the
fomenters and conductors of the petty war of village vexation. From the
moment I read the list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it has happened,
all that was to follow.

The degree of estimation in which any profession is held becomes the
standard of the estimation in which the professors hold themselves.
Whatever the personal merits of many individual lawyers might have been,
(and in many it was undoubtedly very considerable,) in that military
kingdom no part of the profession had been much regarded, except the
highest of all, who often united to their professional offices great family
splendor, and were invested with great power and authority. These certainly
were highly respected, and even with no small degree of awe. The next rank
was not much esteemed; the mechanical part was in a very low degree of
repute.

Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a body so composed, it must
evidently produce the consequences of supreme authority placed in the
hands of men not taught habitually to respect themselves,—who had no
previous fortune in character at stake,—who could not be expected to bear
with moderation or to conduct with discretion a power which they
themselves, more than any others, must be surprised to find in their hands.
Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by
enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not
be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness? Who could conceive that
men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious
dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old
condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable
chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which

they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which
they understood but too well? It was not an event depending on chance or
contingency. It was inevitable; it was necessary; it was planted in the nature
of things. They must join (if their capacity did not permit them to lead) in
any project which could procure to them a litigious constitution,—which
could lay open to them those innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in the
train of all great convulsions and revolutions in the state, and particularly in
all great and violent permutations of property. Was it to be expected that
they would attend to the stability of property, whose existence had always
depended upon whatever rendered property questionable, ambiguous, and
insecure? Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their
disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must
remain the same.

Well! but these men were to be tempered and restrained by other
descriptions, of more sober minds and more enlarged understandings. Were
they, then, to be awed by the supereminent authority and awful dignity of a
handful of country clowns, who have seats in that assembly, some of whom
are said not to be able to read and write,—and by not a greater number of
traders, who, though somewhat more instructed, and more conspicuous in
the order of society, had never known anything beyond their counting-
house? No! both these descriptions were more formed to be overborne and
swayed by the intrigues and artifices of lawyers than to become their
counterpoise. With such a dangerous disproportion, the whole must needs
be governed by them.

To the faculty of law was joined a pretty considerable proportion of the
faculty of medicine. This faculty had not, any more than that of the law,
possessed in France its just estimation. Its professors, therefore, must have
the qualities of men not habituated to sentiments of dignity. But supposing
they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the

sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and
legislators. Then came the dealers in stocks and funds, who must be eager,
at any expense, to change their ideal paper wealth for the more solid
substance of land. To these were joined men of other descriptions, from
whom as little knowledge of or attention to the interests of a great state was
to be expected, and as little regard to the stability of any institution,—men
formed to be instruments, not controls.—Such, in general, was the
composition of the Tiers État in the National Assembly; in which was
scarcely to be perceived the slightest traces of what we call the natural
landed interest of the country.

We know that the British House of Commons, without shutting its doors
to any merit in any class, is, by the sure operation of adequate causes, filled
with everything illustrious in rank, in descent, in hereditary and in acquired
opulence, in cultivated talents, in military, civil, naval, and politic
distinction, that the country can afford. But supposing, what hardly can be
supposed as a case, that the House of Commons should be composed in the
same manner with the Tiers État in France,—would this dominion of
chicane be borne with patience, or even conceived without horror? God
forbid I should insinuate anything derogatory to that profession which is
another priesthood, administering the rights of sacred justice! But whilst I
revere men in the functions which belong to them, and would do as much as
one man can do to prevent their exclusion from any, I cannot, to flatter
them, give the lie to Nature. They are good and useful in the composition;
they must be mischievous, if they preponderate so as virtually to become
the whole. Their very excellence in their peculiar functions may be far from
a qualification for others. It cannot escape observation, that, when men are
too much confined to professional and faculty habits, and, as it were,
inveterate in the recurrent employment of that narrow circle, they are rather
disabled than qualified for whatever depends on the knowledge of mankind,
on experience in mixed affairs, on a comprehensive, connected view of the

various, complicated, external, and internal interests which go to the
formation of that multifarious thing called a State.

After all, if the House of Commons were to have an wholly professional
and faculty composition, what is the power of the House of Commons,
circumscribed and shut in by the immovable barriers of laws, usages,
positive rules of doctrine and practice, counterpoised by the House of
Lords, and every moment of its existence at the discretion of the crown to
continue, prorogue, or dissolve us? The power of the House of Commons,
direct or indirect, is, indeed, great: and long may it be able to preserve its
greatness, and the spirit belonging to true greatness, at the full!—and it will
do so, as long as it can keep the breakers of law in India from becoming the
makers of law for England. The power, however, of the House of
Commons, when least diminished, is as a drop of water in the ocean,
compared to that residing in a settled majority of your National Assembly.
That assembly, since the destruction of the orders, has no fundamental law,
no strict convention, no respected usage to restrain it. Instead of finding
themselves obliged to conform to a fixed constitution, they have a power to
make a constitution which shall conform to their designs. Nothing in
heaven or upon earth can serve as a control on them. What ought to be the
heads, the hearts, the dispositions, that are qualified, or that dare, not only
to make laws under a fixed constitution, but at one heat to strike out a
totally new constitution for a great kingdom, and in every part of it, from
the monarch on the throne to the vestry of a parish? But

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

In such a state of unbounded power, for undefined and undefinable
purposes, the evil of a moral and almost physical inaptitude of the man to
the function must be the greatest we can conceive to happen in the
management of human affairs.

Having considered the composition of the third estate, as it stood in its
original frame, I took a view of the representatives of the clergy. There, too,
it appeared that full as little regard was had to the general security of
property, or to the aptitude of the deputies for their public purposes, in the
principles of their election. That election was so contrived as to send a very
large proportion of mere country curates to the great and arduous work of
new-modelling a state: men who never had seen the state so much as in a
picture; men who knew nothing of the world beyond the bounds of an
obscure village; who, immersed in hopeless poverty, could regard all
property, whether secular or ecclesiastical, with no other eye than that of
envy; among whom must be many who, for the smallest hope of the
meanest dividend in plunder, would readily join in any attempts upon a
body of wealth in which they could hardly look to have any share, except in
a general scramble. Instead of balancing the power of the active chicaners
in the other assembly, these curates must necessarily become the active
coadjutors, or at best the passive instruments, of those by whom they had
been habitually guided in their petty village concerns. They, too, could
hardly be the most conscientious of their kind, who, presuming upon their
incompetent understanding, could intrigue for a trust which led them from
their natural relation to their flocks, and their natural spheres of action, to
undertake the regeneration of kingdoms. This preponderating weight, being
added to the force of the body of chicane in the Tiers État, completed that

momentum of ignorance, rashness, presumption, and lust of plunder, which
nothing has been able to resist.

To observing men it must have appeared from the beginning, that the
majority of the third estate, in conjunction with such a deputation from the
clergy as I have described, whilst it pursued the destruction of the nobility,
would inevitably become subservient to the worst designs of individuals in
that class. In the spoil and humiliation of their own order these individuals
would possess a sure fund for the pay of their new followers. To squander
away the objects which made the happiness of their fellows would be to
them no sacrifice at all. Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in
proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance,
generally despise their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover
of a selfish and mischievous ambition is a profligate disregard of a dignity
which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to love
the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ, as
it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we
proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind. The interest of that
portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who
compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but
traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.

There were, in the time of our civil troubles in England, (I do not know
whether you have any such in your Assembly in France,) several persons,
like the then Earl of Holland, who by themselves or their families had
brought an odium on the throne by the prodigal dispensation of its bounties
towards them, who afterwards joined in the rebellions arising from the
discontents of which they were themselves the cause: men who helped to
subvert that throne to which they owed, some of them, their existence,
others all that power which they employed to ruin their benefactor. If any
bounds are set to the rapacious demands of that sort of people, or that others

are permitted to partake in the objects they would engross, revenge and
envy soon fill up the craving void that is left in their avarice. Confounded
by the complication of distempered passions, their reason is disturbed; their
views become vast and perplexed,—to others inexplicable, to themselves
uncertain. They find, on all sides, bounds to their unprincipled ambition in
any fixed order of things; but in the fog and haze of confusion all is
enlarged, and appears without any limit.

When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a
distinct object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole
composition becomes low and base. Does not something like this now
appear in France? Does it not produce something ignoble and inglorious: a
kind of meanness in all the prevalent policy; a tendency in all that is done to
lower along with individuals all the dignity and importance of the state?
Other revolutions have been conducted by persons who, whilst they
attempted or affected changes in the commonwealth, sanctified their
ambition by advancing the dignity of the people whose peace they troubled.
They had long views. They aimed at the rule, not at the destruction of their
country. They were men of great civil and great military talents, and if the
terror, the ornament of their age. They were not like Jew brokers contending
with each other who could best remedy with fraudulent circulation and
depreciated paper the wretchedness and ruin brought on their country by
their degenerate councils. The compliment made to one of the great bad
men of the old stamp (Cromwell) by his kinsman, a favorite poet of that
time, shows what it was he proposed, and what indeed to a great degree he
accomplished in the success of his ambition:—

"Still as you rise, the state, exalted too,
Finds no distemper whilst 't is changed by you;
Changed like the world's great scene, when without noise
The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys."

These disturbers were not so much like men usurping power as asserting
their natural place in society. Their rising was to illuminate and beautify the
world. Their conquest over their competitors was by outshining them. The
hand, that, like a destroying angel, smote the country, communicated to it
the force and energy under which it suffered. I do not say, (God forbid!) I
do not say that the virtues of such men were to be taken as a balance to their
crimes; but they were some corrective to their effects. Such was, as I said,
our Cromwell. Such were your whole race of Guises, Condés, and
Colignys. Such the Richelieus, who in more quiet times acted in the spirit of
a civil war. Such, as better men, and in a less dubious cause, were your
Henry the Fourth, and your Sully, though nursed in civil confusions, and not
wholly without some of their taint. It is a thing to be wondered at, to see
how very soon France, when she had a moment to respire, recovered and
emerged from the longest and most dreadful civil war that ever was known
in any nation. Why? Because, among all their massacres, they had not slain
the mind in their country. A conscious dignity, a noble pride, a generous
sense of glory and emulation, was not extinguished. On the contrary, it was
kindled and inflamed. The organs also of the state, however shattered,
existed. All the prizes of honor and virtue, all the rewards, all the
distinctions, remained. But your present confusion, like a palsy, has
attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person in your country, in a
situation to be actuated by a principle of honor, is disgraced and degraded,
and can entertain no sensation of life, except in a mortified and humiliated
indignation. But this generation will quickly pass away. The next generation
of the nobility will resemble the artificers and clowns, and money-jobbers,
usurers, and Jews, who will be always their fellows, sometimes their
masters. Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level never equalize. In all
societies consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description
must be uppermost. The levellers, therefore, only change and pervert the
natural order of things: they load the edifice of society by setting up in the

air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. The
associations of tailors and carpenters, of which the republic (of Paris, for
instance) is composed, cannot be equal to the situation into which, by the
worst of usurpations, an usurpation on the prerogatives of Nature, you
attempt to force them.

The Chancellor of France, at the opening of the States, said, in a tone of
oratorial flourish, that all occupations were honorable. If he meant only that
no honest employment was disgraceful, he would not have gone beyond the
truth. But in asserting that anything is honorable, we imply some distinction
in its favor. The occupation of a hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-
chandler, cannot be a matter of honor to any person,—to say nothing of a
number of other more servile employments. Such descriptions of men ought
not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression, if
such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this
you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with Nature.[86]

I do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that sophistical, captious
spirit, or of that uncandid dullness, as to require, for every general
observation or sentiment, an explicit detail of the correctives and exceptions
which reason will presume to be included in all the general propositions
which come from reasonable men. You do not imagine that I wish to
confine power, authority, and distinction to blood and names and titles. No,
Sir. There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual
or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever
state, condition, profession, or trade, the passport of Heaven to human place
and honor. Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the
service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given
to grace and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity everything formed
to diffuse lustre and glory around a state! Woe to that country, too, that,
passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean,

contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a preferable
title to command! Everything ought to be open,—but not indifferently to
every man. No rotation, no appointment by lot, no mode of election
operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation, can be generally good in a
government conversant in extensive objects; because they have no
tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty, or to
accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate to say that the road to
eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to be made too
easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare
things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor
ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be opened through virtue, let it be
remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some
struggle.

Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state, that does not
represent its ability, as well as its property. But as ability is a vigorous and
active principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it never can be
safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be, out of all proportion,
predominant in the representation. It must be represented, too, in great
masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected. The characteristic
essence of property, formed out of the combined principles of its acquisition
and conservation, is to be unequal. The great masses, therefore, which
excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put out of the possibility of danger.
Then they form a natural rampart about the lesser properties in all their
gradations. The same quantity of property which is by the natural course of
things divided among many has not the same operation. Its defensive power
is weakened as it is diffused. In this diffusion each man's portion is less than
what, in the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself to obtain by
dissipating the accumulations of others. The plunder of the few would,
indeed, give but a share inconceivably small in the distribution to the many.

But the many are not capable of making this calculation; and those who
lead them to rapine never intend this distribution.

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most
valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends
the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness
subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The
possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction which attends hereditary
possession, (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this
transmission. With us the House of Peers is formed upon this principle. It is
wholly composed of hereditary property and hereditary distinction, and
made, therefore, the third of the legislature, and, in the last event, the sole
judge of all property in all its subdivisions. The House of Commons, too,
though not necessarily, yet in fact, is always so composed, in the far greater
part. Let those large proprietors be what they will, (and they have their
chance of being amongst the best,) they are, at the very worst, the ballast in
the vessel of the commonwealth. For though hereditary wealth, and the rank
which goes with it, are too much idolized by creeping sycophants, and the
blind, abject admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in shallow
speculations of the petulant, assuming, short-sighted coxcombs of
philosophy. Some decent, regulated preëminence, some preference (not
exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor
impolitic.

It is said that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred
thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic.
This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-post for its second:
to men who may reason calmly it is ridiculous. The will of the many, and
their interest, must very often differ; and great will be the difference when
they make an evil choice. A government of five hundred country attorneys
and obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it

were chosen by eight-and-forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided
by a dozen of persons of quality who have betrayed their trust in order to
obtain that power. At present, you seem in everything to have strayed out of
the high road of Nature. The property of France does not govern it. Of
course property is destroyed, and rational liberty has no existence. All you
have got for the present is a paper circulation, and a stock-jobbing
constitution: and as to the future, do you seriously think that the territory of
France, upon the republican system of eighty-three independent
municipalities, (to say nothing of the parts that compose them,) can ever be
governed as one body, or can ever be set in motion by the impulse of one
mind? When the National Assembly has completed its work, it will have
accomplished its ruin. These commonwealths will not long bear a state of
subjection to the republic of Paris. They will not bear that this one body
should monopolize the captivity of the king, and the dominion over the
assembly calling itself national. Each will keep its own portion of the spoil
of the Church to itself; and it will not suffer either that spoil, or the more
just fruits of their industry, or the natural produce of their soil, to be sent to
swell the insolence or pamper the luxury of the mechanics of Paris. In this
they will see none of the equality, under the pretence of which they have
been tempted to throw off their allegiance to their sovereign, as well as the
ancient constitution of their country. There can be no capital city in such a
constitution as they have lately made. They have forgot, that, when they
framed democratic governments, they had virtually dismembered their
country. The person whom they persevere in calling king has not power left
to him by the hundredth part sufficient to hold together this collection of
republics. The republic of Paris will endeavor, indeed, to complete the
debauchery of the army, and illegally to perpetuate the Assembly, without
resort to its constituents, as the means of continuing its despotism. It will
make efforts, by becoming the heart of a boundless paper circulation, to

draw everything to itself: but in vain. All this policy in the end will appear
as feeble as it is now violent.

If this be your actual situation, compared to the situation to which you
were called, as it were by the voice of God and man, I cannot find it in my
heart to congratulate you on the choice you have made, or the success
which has attended your endeavors. I can as little recommend to any other
nation a conduct grounded on such principles and productive of such
effects. That I must leave to those who can see further into your affairs than
I am able to do, and who best know how far your actions are favorable to
their designs. The gentlemen of the Revolution Society, who were so early
in their congratulations, appear to be strongly of opinion that there is some
scheme of politics relative to this country, in which your proceedings may
in some way be useful. For your Dr. Price, who seems to have speculated
himself into no small degree of fervor upon this subject, addresses his
auditors in the following very remarkable words:—"I cannot conclude
without recalling particularly to your recollection a consideration which I
have more than once alluded to, and which probably your thoughts have
been all along anticipating; a consideration with which my mind is
impressed more than can express: I mean the consideration of the
favorableness of the present times to all exertions in the cause of liberty."

It is plain that the mind of this political preacher was at the time big with
some extraordinary design; and it is very probable that the thoughts of his
audience, who understood him better than I do, did all along run before him
in his reflection, and in the whole train of consequences to which it led.

Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had lived in a free country;
and it was an error I cherished, because it gave me a greater liking to the
country I lived in. I was, indeed, aware that a jealous, ever-waking

vigilance, to guard the treasure of our liberty, not only from invasion, but
from decay and corruption, was our best wisdom and our first duty.
However, I considered that treasure rather as a possession to be secured
than as a prize to be contended for. I did not discern how the present time
came to be so very favorable to all exertions in the cause of freedom. The
present time differs from any other only by the circumstance of what is
doing in France. If the example of that nation is to have an influence on
this, I can easily conceive why some of their proceedings which have an
unpleasant aspect, and are not quite reconcilable to humanity, generosity,
good faith, and justice, are palliated with so much milky good-nature
towards the actors, and borne with so much heroic fortitude towards the
sufferers. It is certainly not prudent to discredit the authority of an example
we mean to follow. But allowing this, we are led to a very natural question:
—What is that cause of liberty, and what are those exertions in its favor, to
which the example of France is so singularly auspicious? Is our monarchy
to be annihilated, with all the laws, all the tribunals, and all the ancient
corporations of the kingdom? Is every landmark of the country to be done
away in favor of a geometrical and arithmetical constitution? Is the House
of Lords to be voted useless? Is Episcopacy to be abolished? Are the
Church lands to be sold to Jews and jobbers, or given to bribe new-invented
municipal republics into a participation in sacrilege? Are all the taxes to be
voted grievances, and the revenue reduced to a patriotic contribution or
patriotic presents? Are silver shoe-buckles to be substituted in the place of
the land-tax and the malt-tax, for the support of the naval strength of this
kingdom? Are all orders, ranks, and distinctions to be confounded, that out
of universal anarchy, joined to national bankruptcy, three or four thousand
democracies should be formed into eighty-three, and that they may all, by
some sort of unknown attractive power, be organized into one? For this
great end is the army to be seduced from its discipline and its fidelity, first
by every kind of debauchery, and then by the terrible precedent of a

donative in the increase of pay? Are the curates to be seduced from their
bishops by holding out to them the delusive hope of a dole out of the spoils
of their own order? Are the citizens of London to be drawn from their
allegiance by feeding them at the expense of their fellow-subjects? Is a
compulsory paper currency to be substituted in the place of the legal coin of
this kingdom? Is what remains of the plundered stock of public revenue to
be employed in the wild project of maintaining two armies to watch over
and to fight with each other? If these are the ends and means of the
Revolution Society, I admit they are well assorted; and France may furnish
them for both with precedents in point.

I see that your example is held out to shame us. I know that we are
supposed a dull, sluggish race, rendered passive by finding our situation
tolerable, and prevented by a mediocrity of freedom from ever attaining to
its full perfection. Your leaders in France began by affecting to admire,
almost to adore, the British Constitution; but as they advanced, they came
to look upon it with a sovereign contempt. The friends of your National
Assembly amongst us have full as mean an opinion of what was formerly
thought the glory of their country. The Revolution Society has discovered
that the English nation is not free. They are convinced that the inequality in
our representation is a "defect in our Constitution so gross and palpable as
to make it excellent chiefly in form and theory";[87]—that a representation
in the legislature of a kingdom is not only the basis of all constitutional
liberty in it, but of "all legitimate government; that without it a government
is nothing but an usurpation";—that, "when the representation is partial,
the kingdom possesses liberty only partially; and if extremely partial, it
gives only a semblance; and if not only extremely partial, but corruptly
chosen, it becomes a nuisance." Dr. Price considers this inadequacy of
representation as our fundamental grievance; and though, as to the
corruption of this semblance of representation, he hopes it is not yet arrived
to its full perfection of depravity, he fears that "nothing will be done

towards gaining for us this essential blessing, until some great abuse of
power again provokes our resentment, or some great calamity again alarms
our fears, or perhaps till the acquisition of a pure and equal representation
by other countries, whilst we are mocked with the shadow, kindles our
shame." To this he subjoins a note in these words:—"A representation
chosen chiefly by the Treasury, and a few thousands of the dregs of the
people, who are generally paid for their votes."

You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who, when
they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with
the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them
the depositories of all power. It would require a long discourse to point out
to you the many fallacies that lurk in the generality and equivocal nature of
the terms "inadequate representation." I shall only say here, in justice to that
old-fashioned Constitution under which we have long prospered, that our
representation has been found perfectly adequate to all the purposes for
which a representation of the people can be desired or devised. I defy the
enemies of our Constitution to show the contrary. To detail the particulars in
which it is found so well to promote its ends would demand a treatise on
our practical Constitution. I state here the doctrine of the revolutionists,
only that you and others may see what an opinion these gentlemen entertain
of the Constitution of their country, and why they seem to think that some
great abuse of power, or some great calamity, as giving a chance for the
blessing of a Constitution according to their ideas, would be much palliated
to their feelings; you see why they are so much enamored of your fair and
equal representation, which being once obtained, the same effects might
follow. You see they consider our House of Commons as only "a
semblance," "a form," "a theory," "a shadow," "a mockery," perhaps "a
nuisance."

These gentlemen value themselves on being systematic, and not without
reason. They must therefore look on this gross and palpable defect of
representation, this fundamental grievance, (so they call it,) as a thing not
only vicious in itself, but as rendering our whole government absolutely
illegitimate, and not at all better than a downright usurpation. Another
revolution, to get rid of this illegitimate and usurped government, would of
course be perfectly justifiable, if not absolutely necessary. Indeed, their
principle, if you observe it with any attention, goes much further than to an
alteration in the election of the House of Commons; for, if popular
representation, or choice, is necessary to the legitimacy of all government,
the House of Lords is, at one stroke, bastardized and corrupted in blood.
That House is no representative of the people at all, even in "semblance" or
"in form." The case of the crown is altogether as bad. In vain the crown
may endeavor to screen itself against these gentlemen by the authority of
the establishment made on the Revolution. The Revolution, which is
resorted to for a title, on their system, wants a title itself. The Revolution is
built, according to their theory, upon a basis not more solid than our present
formalities, as it was made by a House of Lords not representing any one
but themselves, and by a House of Commons exactly such as the present,
that is, as they term it, by a mere "shadow and mockery" of representation.

Something they must destroy, or they seem to themselves to exist for no
purpose. One set is for destroying the civil power through the ecclesiastical;
another for demolishing the ecclesiastic through the civil. They are aware
that the worst consequences might happen to the public in accomplishing
this double ruin of Church and State; but they are so heated with their
theories, that they give more than hints that this ruin, with all the mischiefs
that must lead to it and attend it, and which to themselves appear quite
certain, would not be unacceptable to them, or very remote from their
wishes. A man amongst them of great authority, and certainly of great
talents, speaking of a supposed alliance between Church and State, says,

"Perhaps we must wait for the fall of the civil powers, before this most
unnatural alliance be broken. Calamitous, no doubt, will that time be. But
what convulsion in the political world ought to be a subject of lamentation,
if it be attended with so desirable an effect?" You see with what a steady
eye these gentlemen are prepared to view the greatest calamities which can
befall their country!

It is no wonder, therefore, that, with these ideas of everything in their
Constitution and government at home, either in Church or State, as
illegitimate and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with
an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these
notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the
fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a Constitution whose
merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience and an increasing
public strength and national prosperity. They despise experience as the
wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought under
ground a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion, all examples of
antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of Parliament. They have "the
rights of men." Against these there can be no prescription; against these no
argument is binding: these admit no temperament and no compromise:
anything withheld from their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice.
Against these their rights of men let no government look for security in the
length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration.
The objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their
theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government as
against the most violent tyranny or the greenest usurpation. They are always
at issue with governments, not on a question of abuse, but a question of
competency and a question of title. I have nothing to say to the clumsy
subtilty of their political metaphysics. Let them be their amusement in the
schools.