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.* The usurping Council say that they labored hard with their master,

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

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 num ber 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.*

Suppose his Highness not to be well broken in to

See further Consultations, 3d February, 1778.

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