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 ge neral 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 honour. able gentleman knows as well as I do, that 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 honourable 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 honour, 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 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 for providing funds for it, as this ministry have wickedly done for this, and for ten times worse transactions, out of the publick 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.

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 publick 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 Carnatick.

The tenour, 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 honourable 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 panegyrick. Listen to the right honourable 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 honourable 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 honourable gentleman has the unparalelled 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 publick prosecution. The delinquents, after they had subverted government, in order to make 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 honourable 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 colourable, 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. The usurping council say that they laboured 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 publick 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 moneyjobbers 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 honourable 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 lacks 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 burthen 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 Carnatick to governour Rumbold, dated the 22d, and received the 24th of March 1779.

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 12 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