individuals. Now comes the company at home, which, on hearing this news, was all inflamed. The directors were on fire. They were shocked at it, and particularly at this donation to the army and navy. They resolved they would give it no countenance and support. In the mean time the gentlemen did not trouble their heads upon that subject, but meant to exact and get their 500,000l. as they could. Here was a third revolution bought at this amazing sum, and this poor miserable prince first dragged from Moorshedabad to Calcutta, then dragged back from Calcutta to Moorshedabad, the sport of fortune, and the plaything of avarice. This poor man is again set up, but is left with no authority; his troops limited, his person-every thing about him in a manner subjugated, a British resident the master of his court he is set up as a pageant on this throne, with no other authority but what would be sufficient to give a countenance to presents, gifts, and donations. That authority was always left, when all the rest was taken away. One would have thought, that this revolution might have satisfied these gentlemen, and that the money gained by it would have been sufficient. No. The partisans of Cossim Ally wanted another revolution. The partisans of the other side wished to have something more done in the present. They now began to think, that to depose Cossim instantly, and to sell him to another, was too much at one time; especially as Cossim Ally was a man of vigour and resolution, carrying on a fierce war against them. But what do you think they did? They began to see, from the example of Cossim Ally, that the lieutenancy, the ministry of the king, was a good thing to be sold, and the sale of that might turn out as good a thing as the sale of the prince. For this office there were two rival candidates, persons of great consideration in Bengal; one, a principal Mahomedan called Mahomed Reza Cawn, a man of high authority,-great piety in his own religion,--great learning in the law,-of the very first class of Mahomedan nobility: but at the same time, on all these accounts, he was abhorred and dreaded by the nabob, who necessarily feared, that a man of Mahomed Reza Cawn's description would be considered as better entitled and fitter for his seat, as nabob of the provinces. To balance him, there was another man, known by the name of the great-Rajah Nundcomar: this man was accounted the highest of his cast, and held the same rank among the Gentûs, that Mahomed Reza Cawn obtained among the Mahomedans. The prince on the throne had no jealousy of Nundcomar, because he knew, that, as a Gentû, he could not aspire to the office of soubahdar. For that reason he was firmly attached to him; he might depend completely on his services; he was his against Mahomed Reza Cawn, and against the whole world. There was, however, a flaw in the nabob's title, which it was necessary should be hid. And perhaps it lay against Mahomed Reza Cawn as well as him. But it was a source of apprehension to the nabob, and contributed to make him wish to keep all Mahomedan influence at a distance. For he was a syed, that is to say, a descendant of Mahomed, and as such, though of the only acknowledged nobility among Mussulmen, would be by that circumstance excluded by the known laws of the Mogul empire from being soubahdar in any of the Mogul provinces, in case the revival of the constitution of that empire should ever again take place. An auction was now opened before the English council at Calcutta. Mahomed Reza Cawn bid largely; Nundcomar bid largely. The circumstances of these two rivals at the nabob's court were equally favourable to the pretensions of each. But the preponderating merits of Mahomed Reza Cawn, arising from the subjection, in which he was likely to keep the nabob, and make him fitter for the purpose of continued exactions, induced the council to take his money, which amounted to about 220,000l. Be the sum paid what it may, it was certainly a large one. In consequence of which the council attempted to invest Mahomed Reza Cawn with the office of naib soubah or deputy viceroy. As to Nundcomar, they fell upon him with a vengeful fury he fought his battle as well as he could; he opposed bribe to bribe, eagle to eagle; but at length he was driven to the wall. Some received his money, but did him no service in return: others, more conscientious, refused to receive it: and in this battle of bribes he was vanquished. A deputa : tion was sent from Calcutta to the miserable nabob, to tear Nundcomar, his only support, from his side; and to put the object of all his terrours, Mahomed Reza Cawn, in his place. Thus began a new division, that split the presidency into violent factions; but the faction, which adhered to Nundcomar, was undoubtedly the weakest. That most miserable of men, Meer Jaffier Ally Cawn, clinging, as to the last pillar, to Nundcomar, trembling at Mahomed Reza Cawn, died in the struggle, a miserable victim to all the revolutions, to all the successive changes and versatile politicks at Calcutta. Like all the rest of the great personages, whom we have degraded and brutalized by insult and oppression, he betook himself to the usual destructive resources of unprincipled misery-sensuality, opium, and wine. His gigantick frame of constitution soon gave way under the oppression of this relief, and he died, leaving children and grand-children by wives and concubines. On the old nabob's death Mahomed Reza Cawn was acknowledged deputy nabob, the money paid, and this revolution completed. Here, my lords, opened a new source of plunder, peculation, and bribery, which was not neglected. Revolutions were no longer necessary, succession supplied their places; and well the object agreed with the policy. Rules of succession could not be very well ascertained to an office like that of the nabob, which was hereditary only by the appointment of the Mogul. The issue by lawful wives would naturally be preferred by those who meant the quiet of the country. But a more doubtful title was preferred, as better adapted to the purposes of extortion and peculation. This miserable succession was sold, and the eldest of the issue of Munny Begum, an harlot, brought in to pollute the haram of the seraglio, of whom you will hear much hereafter, was chosen. He soon succeeded to the grave. Another son of the same prostitute succeeded to the same unhappy throne, and followed to the same untimely grave. Every succession was sold; and between venal successions, and venal revolutions, in a very few years seven princes and six sales were seen successively in Bengal. The last was a minor, the issue of a legitimate wife, admitted to succeed because a mi He was nor, and because there was none illegitimate left. instantly stripped of the allowance of his progenitors, and reduced to a pension of 160,000 a year. He still exists, and continued to the end of Mr. Hastings's government, to furnish constant sources of bribery and plunder to him and his creatures. The offspring of Munny Begum clinging, as his father did, to Nundcomar, they tore Nundcomar from his side, as they had done from the side of his father, and carried him down as a sort of prisoner to Calcutta ; where, having had the weakness to become the first informer, he was made the first example. This person, pushed to the wall, and knowing, that the man he had to deal with, was desperate and cruel in his resentments, resolves on the first blow, and enters before the council a regular information in writing, of bribery against Mr. Hastings. In his preface to that charge he excuses himself for what is considered to be an act equally insane and wicked, and as the one inexpiable crime of an Indian-the discovery of the money he gives;-that Mr. Hastings had declaredly determined on his ruin, and to accomplish it had newly associated himself with one Mohun Persaud, a name I wish your lordships to remember, a bitter enemy of his, an infamous person, whom Mr. Hastings knew to be such, and as such had turned him out of his house; that Mr. Hastings had lately recalled, and held frequent communications with this Mohun Persaud, the subject of which he had no doubt was his ruin. In the year 1775 he was hanged by those incorrupt English judges, who were sent to India by parliament to protect the natives from oppression. Your lordships will observe, that this new sale of the office of ministers succeeded to the sale of that of nabobs. All these varied and successive sales shook the country to pieces. As if those miserable exhausted provinces were to be cured of inanition by phlebotomy-while Cossim Ally was racking it above, the company were drawing off all its nutriment below. A dreadful, an extensive, and most chargeable war followed. Half the northern force of India poured down like a torrent on Bengal, endangered our existence, and exhausted all our resources, The war was the fruit of Mr. Hastings's cabals. Its termination, as usual, was the result of the military merit, and the fortune of this nation. Cossim Ally, after having been defeated by the military genius and spirit of England, (for the Adamses, Monroes, and others of that period, I believe, showed as much skill and bravery as any of their predecessors) in his flight swept away above three millions in money, jewels, or effects, out of a country, which he had plundered and exhausted by his unheard of exactions. However, he fought his way like a retiring lion, turning his face to his pursuers. He still fought along his frontier. His ability and his money drew to his cause the soubahdar of Oude, the famous Shuja ul Dowla. The Mogul entered into these wars, and penetrated into the lower provinces on one side, whilst Bulwant Sing, the rajah of Benares, entered them on another. After various changes of party, and changes of fortune, the loss, which began in the treachery of the civil service, was, as I have before remarked, redeemed by military merit. Many examples of the same sort have since been seen. Whilst these things were transacted in India, the court of directors in London, hearing of so many changes, hearing of such an incredible mass of perfidy and venality, knowing, that there was a general market made of the country and of the company; that the flame of war spread from province to province; that, in proportion as it spread, the fire glowed with augmented fierceness; and that the rapacity, which originally gave rise to it, was following it in all its progress ; the company, my lords, alarmed not only for their acquisitions but their existence, and finding themselves sinking lower and lower by every victory they obtained, thought it necessary at length to come to some system and some settlement. After composing their differences with lord Clive, they sent him out to that country about the year 1765, in order, by his name, weight, authority, and vigour of mind, to give some sort of form and stability to government, and to rectify the innumerable abuses, which prevailed there; and particularly that great source of disorders, that fundamental abuse-presents: for the bribes, by which all these revolutions were bought, had not the name of conditions, stipu |