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 re-enact provisions, of which they have given bounties for the breach. This inconsistency has been well exposed by my right honourable friend who made this motion. 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 480,000l. a-year, as a fund for the debts before us. For the punctual payment of this annuity, they order him to give soucar security. When a soucar, that is, a money-dealer, becomes security for any native. prince, the course is, for the native prince to countersecure 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 24 per cent. The point fit for the House to know is, who are these soucars, to whom this security on the revenues in favour 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

favour of his worthy friends the soucars, with an additional 24 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 on account of these debts on the Carnatic revenues 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 of the impudence, both of the claim and of the adjudication? Services of some kind or other these servants of the Company must have done, so great and eminent, that the chancellor of the exchequer cannot think that all they have brought home is half enough. He halloos after them, "Gentlemen, you have forgot a large packet behind you, in your hurry; you have not sufficiently recovered yourselves; you ought to have, and you 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 honourable 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 160,000l. sterling net annual subsidy. He bears witness to a further grant of a town and port, with an annexed district of 30,000l. a-year, surrendered to the Company since the first donation. He has not borne witness, but the fact is, (he will not deny it,) that in the midst of war, and during the ruin and desolation of a considerable part of his territories, this prince made many very large payments. Notwithstanding these merits and services, the first regulation of ministry is to force from him a territory of an extent which they have not yet thought proper to ascertain, for a military peace-establishment, the particulars of which they have not yet been pleased to settle.

war.

The next part of their arrangement is with regard to 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

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, for ever. 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 360,000l. 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, 48 per cent. payable monthly, with compound interest.

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 40,000l. a-year to the nabob of Arcot; a tribute never due, or pretended to be due to him, even when he appeared to be something; a tribute, as things now stand, not to a real potentate, but to a shadow, a dream, an incubus of oppression. After the Company has accepted in subsidy, in grant of territory, in remission of rent, as a compensation for their own protection, at least two hundred thousand pounds a-year, without discounting a shilling for that receipt, the ministers condemn this harassed nation to be tributary to a person 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 dis

abled 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 colours, 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 burthen and the ability?