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!
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!
Edmund Burke
They had no lawful government
? ? ? ? 54 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
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. *
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
* Lord Pigot.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 55
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 220,0001. , 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 396,0001. 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 294,0001. ; and this 294,0001. , 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 880,0001. capital. When this
consolidation of 1777 was first announced at the Durbar, it was represented authentically at 2,400,0001. In that, or rather in a higher state, Sir Thomas Rumbold found and condemned it. * It afterwards fell
* 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
? ? ? ? 56 SPEECH ON THE. NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
into such a terror as to sweat away a million of its
weight at once; and it sunk to 1,400,0001. * 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 2,800,0001. , 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
[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 [2,520,0001. ].
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, diicult 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.
* Nabob's proposals, November 25th, 1778; and memorial of the
creditors, March 1st, 1779.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 57
there is a private instruction to Mr. Sulivan, which,
it seems, will reduce it again to the lower standard of
1,400,0001.
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,* I found, in a sort of postscript,
by way of an additional remark, (not in the body of
the obligation,) the debt represented at 1,400,0001. :
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. f Another instalment-bond
was afterwards granted: in that bond the interest exactly tallies with a capital of 1,400,0001. :: 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. ~
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
* Nabob's proposals to his new consolidated creditors, November
25th, 1778.
t Paper signed by the Nabob, 6th January, 1780.
t Kistbundi to July 31, 1780.
~ Governor's letter to the Nabob, 25th July, 1779.
? ? ? ? 58 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
in the instruments of consolidation, or in the instalment-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
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT' S DEBTS. 59
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
dependaI;t 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
? ? ? ? 60 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
man so situated. * First, they persuaded him to con.
sider 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 flindostan. 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
* 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
Khan, Art. 6, and indeed the whole.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 61
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. * 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. t 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
* ", 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.
t Letter from the Nabob, May 1st, 1768; and ditto, 24th April,
1770, 1st October; ditto, 16th September, 1772, 16th March, 1773.
? ? ? ? 62 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
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. *
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. When at length iyder 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
* Letter from the Presidency at Madras to the Court of Directors,
27th June, 1769.
t Mr. Dundas's committee, Report I. , Appendix, No. 29.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 63
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
? ? ? ? 64 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
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 illn 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,* without intermission, this
destruction raged from the gates of Madras to the
gates of Tanjore; and so completely did these masters in their art, Ilyder 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
* Appendix, No. 4, Report of the Committee of Assigned Revenue.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 65
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 sup
pose 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
VOL. III. 5
? ? ? ? 66 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
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 Englahd 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
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 67
that a curious and interesting map, kept in the India
House, should be laid before you. * 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 lev* Mr. Barnard's map of the Jaghire.
? ? ? ? 68 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS,
elled. 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. * 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 reestablish them, as the
means of present subsistence to the people and of future revenue to the state.
* See Report IV. , Mr. Dundas's committee, p. 46.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 69
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
? ? ? ? 70 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
usury, that had long missed the harvest of its returning months; * they felt for peculation, which had
been for so many years raking in the dust of an empty
t- easury; 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
lihe does those of the king of Tanjore (which had not
been assigned) at four hundred and fifty. On this
Lord 3Macartney 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
480,0001. 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
* Interest is rated in India by the month.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 71
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 800,0001. a year, even before an enemy's horse had imprinted
his hoof on the soil of tile 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 800,0001. 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 effect
? ? ? ? 72 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
ive 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; 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 ap
pearances, 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 b(
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
* 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. "
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 73
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. * 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 corn
mittee 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
* See Appendix, No. 4, statement in the Report of the Committee
of Assigned Revenue.
? ? ? ? 74 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. which the same districts were rented for five years under their authority. Under the Nabob, the gross farm was so high as 570,0001. sterling. What was the clear produce? Why, no more than about 250,0001. ; 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 530,0001. ; but then the estimated net amount was nearly double the Nabob's. It, however, did not then exceed 480,0001. ; 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. 1
In this estimate, we see, as I have just observed,
the Nabob's farms rated so high as 570,0001. Hitherto all is well: but follow on to the effective net revenue; there the illusion vanishes; arid 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
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 75.
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 dcco
laration that they were not obliged to it by ally princ:iple 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. * It was brought about by making a new
war. After some sharp actions, by the resolution and
* The province of Tinnevelly.
? ? ? ? 76 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
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 480,0001. , they netted, in about
two years and a quarter, 1,320,0001. sterling, which
would be about 660,0001. 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 1,200,0001.
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 1,200,0001. 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, 340,0001. a
year. This reduces back the revenue applicable to
the new distribution made by his Majesty's minis.
? ? ?
? ? ? ? 54 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
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. *
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
* Lord Pigot.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 55
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 220,0001. , 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 396,0001. 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 294,0001. ; and this 294,0001. , 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 880,0001. capital. When this
consolidation of 1777 was first announced at the Durbar, it was represented authentically at 2,400,0001. In that, or rather in a higher state, Sir Thomas Rumbold found and condemned it. * It afterwards fell
* 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
? ? ? ? 56 SPEECH ON THE. NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
into such a terror as to sweat away a million of its
weight at once; and it sunk to 1,400,0001. * 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 2,800,0001. , 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
[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 [2,520,0001. ].
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, diicult 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.
* Nabob's proposals, November 25th, 1778; and memorial of the
creditors, March 1st, 1779.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 57
there is a private instruction to Mr. Sulivan, which,
it seems, will reduce it again to the lower standard of
1,400,0001.
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,* I found, in a sort of postscript,
by way of an additional remark, (not in the body of
the obligation,) the debt represented at 1,400,0001. :
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. f Another instalment-bond
was afterwards granted: in that bond the interest exactly tallies with a capital of 1,400,0001. :: 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. ~
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
* Nabob's proposals to his new consolidated creditors, November
25th, 1778.
t Paper signed by the Nabob, 6th January, 1780.
t Kistbundi to July 31, 1780.
~ Governor's letter to the Nabob, 25th July, 1779.
? ? ? ? 58 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
in the instruments of consolidation, or in the instalment-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
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT' S DEBTS. 59
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
dependaI;t 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
? ? ? ? 60 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
man so situated. * First, they persuaded him to con.
sider 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 flindostan. 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
* 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
Khan, Art. 6, and indeed the whole.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 61
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. * 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. t 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
* ", 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.
t Letter from the Nabob, May 1st, 1768; and ditto, 24th April,
1770, 1st October; ditto, 16th September, 1772, 16th March, 1773.
? ? ? ? 62 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
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. *
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. When at length iyder 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
* Letter from the Presidency at Madras to the Court of Directors,
27th June, 1769.
t Mr. Dundas's committee, Report I. , Appendix, No. 29.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 63
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
? ? ? ? 64 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
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 illn 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,* without intermission, this
destruction raged from the gates of Madras to the
gates of Tanjore; and so completely did these masters in their art, Ilyder 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
* Appendix, No. 4, Report of the Committee of Assigned Revenue.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 65
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 sup
pose 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
VOL. III. 5
? ? ? ? 66 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
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 Englahd 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
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 67
that a curious and interesting map, kept in the India
House, should be laid before you. * 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 lev* Mr. Barnard's map of the Jaghire.
? ? ? ? 68 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS,
elled. 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. * 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 reestablish them, as the
means of present subsistence to the people and of future revenue to the state.
* See Report IV. , Mr. Dundas's committee, p. 46.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 69
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
? ? ? ? 70 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
usury, that had long missed the harvest of its returning months; * they felt for peculation, which had
been for so many years raking in the dust of an empty
t- easury; 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
lihe does those of the king of Tanjore (which had not
been assigned) at four hundred and fifty. On this
Lord 3Macartney 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
480,0001. 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
* Interest is rated in India by the month.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 71
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 800,0001. a year, even before an enemy's horse had imprinted
his hoof on the soil of tile 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 800,0001. 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 effect
? ? ? ? 72 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
ive 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; 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 ap
pearances, 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 b(
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
* 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. "
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 73
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. * 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 corn
mittee 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
* See Appendix, No. 4, statement in the Report of the Committee
of Assigned Revenue.
? ? ? ? 74 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. which the same districts were rented for five years under their authority. Under the Nabob, the gross farm was so high as 570,0001. sterling. What was the clear produce? Why, no more than about 250,0001. ; 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 530,0001. ; but then the estimated net amount was nearly double the Nabob's. It, however, did not then exceed 480,0001. ; 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. 1
In this estimate, we see, as I have just observed,
the Nabob's farms rated so high as 570,0001. Hitherto all is well: but follow on to the effective net revenue; there the illusion vanishes; arid 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
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 75.
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 dcco
laration that they were not obliged to it by ally princ:iple 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. * It was brought about by making a new
war. After some sharp actions, by the resolution and
* The province of Tinnevelly.
? ? ? ? 76 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
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 480,0001. , they netted, in about
two years and a quarter, 1,320,0001. sterling, which
would be about 660,0001. 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 1,200,0001.
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 1,200,0001. 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, 340,0001. a
year. This reduces back the revenue applicable to
the new distribution made by his Majesty's minis.
? ? ?
