Here we are commanded again to task our faith, and to
persuade
ourselves, that, out of the surplus of deficiency, out of
?
?
Edmund Burke
4 ADVERTISEMENT.
authority; the power might even be employed in
defiance of the authority, if the case should require,
as in truth it often did require, a proceeding of that
degree of boldness.
The Company had put him into possession of
several great cities and magnificent castles. The
good order of his affairs, his sense of personal dignity, his ideas of Oriental splendor, and the habits
of an Asiatic life, (to which, being a native of India,
and a Mahometan, he had from his infancy been
inured,) would naturally have led him to fix the
seat of his government within his own dominions.
Instead of this, he totally sequestered himself from
his country, and, abandoning all appearance of state,
he took up his residence in an ordinary house, which
he purchased in the suburbs of the Company's factory
at Madras. In that place he has lived, without removing one day from thence, for several years past.
He has there continued a constant cabal with the
Company's servants, from the highest to the lowest,
- creating, out of the ruins of the country, brilliant
fortunes for those who will, and entirely destroying
those who will not, be subservient to his purposes.
An opinion prevailed, strongly confirmed by several passages in his own letters, as well as by a combination of circumstances forming a body of evidence which cannot be resisted, that very great sums have
been by him distributed, through a long course of
years, to some of the Company's servants. Besides
these presumed payments in ready money, (of which,
from the nature of the thing, the direct proof is very
difficult,) debts have at several periods been acknowledged to those gentlemen, to an immense amount,
that is, to some millions of sterling money. There is
? ? ? ? ADVERTISEMENT. ,5
strong reason to suspect that the body of these debts
is wholly fictitious, and was never created by money
bond fide lent. But even on a supposition that this
vast sum was really advanced, it was impossible that
the very reality of such an astonishing transaction
should not cause some degree of alarm and incite
to some sort of inquiry.
It was not at all seemly, at a moment when the
Company itself was so distressed as to require a suspension, by act of Parliament, of the payment of bills drawn on them from India,-and also a direct tax
upon every house in England, in order to facilitate
the vent of their goods, and to avoid instant insolvency,-at that very moment, that their servants
should appear in so flourishing a condition, as, besides ten millions of other demands on their masters, to be entitled to claim a debt of three or four millions more from the territorial revenue of one of
their dependent princes.
The ostensible pecuniary transactions of the Nabob
of Arcot with very private persons are so enormous,
that they evidently set aside every pretence of policy
which might induce a prudent government in some
instances to wink at ordinary loose practice in illmanaged departments. No caution could be too
great in handling this matter, no scrutiny too exact.
It was evidently the interest, and as evidently at least
in the power, of the creditors, by admitting secret
participation in this dark and undefined concern, to
spread corruption to the greatest and the most alarming extent.
These facts relative to the debts were so notorious,
the opinion of their being a principal source of the
disorders of the British government in India was so
? ? ? ? 6 ADVERTISEMENT.
undisputed and universal, that there was no party,
no description of men in Parliament, who did not
think themselves bound, if not in honor and conscience, at least in common decency, to institute a
vigorous inquiry into the very bottom of the business, before they admitted any part of that vast and
suspicious charge to be laid upon an exhausted country. Every plan concurred in directing such an inquiry, in order that whatever was discovered to be corrupt, fraudulent, or oppressive should lead to a
due animadversion on the offenders, and, if anything
fair and equitable in its origin should be found, (nobody suspected that much, comparatively speaking,
would be so found,) it might be provided for, -- in
due subordination, however, to the ease of the subject and the service of the state.
These were the alleged grounds for an inquiry,
settled in all the bills brought into Parliament relative to India, -and there were, I think, no less than
four of them. By the bill commonly called Mr. Pitt's
bill, the inquiry was specially, and by express words,
committed to the Court of Directors, without any reserve for the interference of any other person or persons whatsoever. It was ordered that they should make the inquiry into the origin and justice of these
debts, as far as the materials in their possession ena
bled them to proceed; and where they found those
materials deficient, they should order the Presidency
of Fort St. George (Madras) to complete the inquiry.
The Court of Directors applied themselves to the
execution of the trust reposed in them. They first
examined into the amount of the debt, which they
computed, at compound interest, to be 2,945,6001.
sterling. Whether their mode of computation, either
? ? ? ? ADVERTISEMENT. 7
of the original sums or the amount on compound
interest, was exact, that is, whether they took the
interest too high or the several capitals too low, is
not material. On whatever principle any of the calculations were made up, none of them found the debt
to differ from the recital of the act, which asserted that the sums claimed were "very large. " The
last head of these debts the Directors compute at
2,465,6801. sterling. Of the existence of this debt
the Directors heard nothing until 1776, and they say,
that, "although they had repeatedly written to the
Nabob of Arcot, and to their servants, respecting the
debt, yet they had never been able to trace the origin
thereof, or to obtain any satisfactory information on the
subject. "
The Court of Directors, after stating the circumstances under which the debts appeared to them to
have been contracted, add as follows: -" For these
reasons we should have thought it our duty to inquire
very minutely into those debts, even if the act of Parliament had been silent on the subject, before we concurred in any measure for their payment. But with the positive injunctions of the act before us to examine into their nature and origin, we are indispensably
bound to direct such an inquiry to be instituted. "
They then order the President and Council of Madras
to enter into a full examination, &c. , &c.
The Directors, having drawn up their order to
the Presidency on these principles, communicated the
draught of the general letter in which those orders
were contained to the board of his Majesty's ministers, and other servants lately constituted by Mr.
Pitt's East India Act. These ministers, who had
just carried through Parliament the bill ordering a
? ? ? ? 8 ADVERTISEMENT.
specific inquiry, immediately drew up another letter,
on a principle directly opposite to that which was
prescribed by the act of Parliament and followed by
the Directors. In these second orders, all idea of an
inquiry into the justice and origin of the pretended
debts, particularly of the last, the greatest, and the
most obnoxious to suspicion, is abandoned. They
are all admitted and established without any investigation whatsoever, (except some private conference
with the agents of the claimants is to pass for an investigation,) and a fund for their discharge is assigned
and set apart out of the revenues of the Carnatic.
To this arrangement in favor of their servants, servants suspected of corruption and convicted of disobedience, the Directors of the East India Company were ordered to set their hands, asserting it to arise from
their own conviction and opinion, in flat contradiction to their recorded sentiments, their strong remonstrance, and their declared sense of their duty,
as well under their general trust and their oath as
Directors, as under the express injunctions of an act
of Parliament.
The principles upon which this summary proceeding was adopted by the ministerial board are stated
by themselves in a number in the appendix to this
speech.
By another section of the same act, the same Court
of Directors were ordered to take into consideration
and to decide on the indeterminate rights of the Rajah
of Tanjore and the Nabob of Arcot; and in this, as in
the former case, no power of appeal, revision, or alteration was reserved to any other. It was a jurisdiction, in a cause between party and party, given to the Court of Directors specifically. It was known that the
? ? ? ? ADVERTISEMENT. 9
territories of the former of these princes had been
twice invaded and pillaged, and the prince deposed
and imprisoned, by the Company's servants, influenced by the intrigues of the latter, and for the purpose of paying his pretended debts. The Company had, in the year 1775, ordered a restoration of the
Rajah to his government, under certain conditions.
The Rajah complained, that his territories had not
been completely restored to him, and that no part
of his goods, money, revenues, or records, unjustly
taken and withheld from him, were ever returned.
The Nabob, on the other hand, never ceased to claim
the country itself, and carried on a continued train of
negotiation, that it should again be given up to him,
in violation of the Company's public faith.
The Directors, in obedience to this part of the act,.
ordered an inquiry, and came to a determination to
restore certain of his territories to the Rajah. The
ministers, proceeding as in the former case, without
hearing any party, rescinded the decision of the Directors, refused the restitution of the territory, and,
without regard to the condition of the country of
Tanjore, which had been within a few years four
times plundered, (twice by the Nabob of Arcot, and
twice by enemies brought upon it solely by the politics of the same Nabob, the declared enemy of
that people,) and without discounting a shilling for
their sufferings, they accumulate an arrear of about
four hundred thousand pounds of pretended tribute
to this enemy; and then they order the Directors
to put their hands to a new adjudication, directly
contrary to a judgment in a judicial character and
trust solemnly given by them and entered on their
records.
? ? ? ? 10 ADVERTISEMENT.
These proceedings naturally called for some inquiry. On the 28th of February, 1785, Mr. Fox
made the following motion in the House of Commons, after moving that the clauses of the act should
be read: - " That the proper officer do lay before this
House copies or extracts of all letters and orders of
the Court of Directors of the United East India Company, in pursuance of the injunctions contained in the 37th and 38th clauses of the said act "; and the question being put, it passed in the negative by a very great majority.
The last speech in the debate was the following;
which is given to the public, not as being more worthy of its attention than others, (some of which were of consummate ability,) but as entering more into
the detail of the subject,
? ? ? ? SPEECH.
THE times we live in, Mr. Speaker, have been distinguished by extraordinary events. Habituated, however, as we are, to uncommon combinations of men and of affairs, I believe nobody recollects anything more surprising than the spectacle of this day.
The right honorable gentleman* whose conduct is
now in question formerly stood forth in this House,
the prosecutor of the worthy baronet t who spoke after him. He charged him with several grievous acts
of malversation in office, with abuses of a public trust
of a great and heinous nature. In less than two years
we see the situation of the parties reversed; and a singular revolution puts the worthy baronet in a fair way
of returning the prosecution in a recriminatory bill of
pains and penalties, grounded on a breach of public
trust relative to the government of the very same
part of India. If he should undertake a bill of that
kind, he will find no difficulty in conducting it with
a degree of skill and vigor fully equal to all that have
been exerted against him.
But the change of relation between these two gentlemen is not so striking as the total difference of
their deportment under the same unhappy circumstances. Whatever the merits of the worthy baro* Right Honorable Henry Dundas.
t Sir Thomas Rumbold, late Governor of Madras.
? ? ? ? 12 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
net's defence might have been, he did not shrink
from the charge. He met it with manliness of spirit
and decency of behavior. What would have been
thought of him, if he had held the present language
of his old accuser? When articles were exhibited
against him by that right honorable gentleman, he
did not think proper to tell the House that we ought
to institute no inquiry, to inspect no paper, to examine no witness. He did not tell us (what at that time le might have told us with some show of
reason) that our concerns in India were matters of
delicacy, that to divulge anything relative to them
would be mischievous to the state. He did not tell
us that those who would inquire into his proceedings
were disposed to dismember the empire. He had not
the presumption to say, that, for his part, having obtained, in his Indian presidency, the ultimate object of his ambition, his honor was concerned in executing with integrity the trust which had been legally committed to his charge: that others, not having
been so fortunate, could not be so disinterested;
and therefore their accusations could spring from no
other source than faction, and envy to his fortune.
Had he been frontless enough to hold such vain,
vaporing language in the face of a grave, a detailed,
a specified matter of accusation, whilst he violently
resisted everything which could bring the merits of
his cause to the test, -had he been wild enough to
anticipate the absurdities of this day, -that is, had
he inferred, as his late accuser has thought proper to
do, that he could not have been guilty of malversation in office, for this sole and curious reason, that he had been in office, - had he argued the impossibility
of his abusing his power on this sole principle, that
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 13
he had power to abuse, - he would have left but one
impression on the mind of every man who heard him,
and who believed him in his senses: that in the utmost extent he was guilty of the charge.
But, Sir, leaving these two gentlemen to alternate
as criminal and accuser upon what principles they
think expedient, it is for us to consider whether the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasurer of
the Navy, acting as a Board of Control, are justified
by law or policy in suspending the legal arrangements
made by the Court of Directors, in order to transfer
the public revenues to the private emolument of certain servants of the East India Company, without the
inquiry into the origin and justice of their claims prescribed by an act of Parliament.
It is not contended that the act of Parliament did
not expressly ordain an inquiry. It is not asserted
that this inquiry was not, with equal precision of
terms, specially committed, under particular regulations, to the Court of Directors. I conceive, therefore,
the Board of Control had no right whatsoever to intermeddle in that business. There is nothing certain
in the principles of jurisprudence, if this be not undeniably true, that when a special authority is given to
any persons by name to do some particular act, that no
others, by virtue of general powers, can obtain a legal
title to intrude themselves into that trust, and to exercise those special functions in their place. I therefore consider the intermeddling of ministers in this affair as a downright usurpation. But if the strained
construction by which they have forced themselves
into a suspicious office (which every man delicate
with regard to character would rather have sought
constructions to avoid) were perfectly sound and
? ? ? ? 14 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
perfectly legal, of this I am certain, that they cannot
be justified in declining the inquiry which had been
prescribed to the Court of Directors. If the Board of
Control did lawfully possess the right of executing the
special trust given to that court, they must take it as
they found it, subject to the very same regulations
which bound the Court of Directors. It will be allowed that the Court of Directors had no authority to dispense with either the substance or the mode of
inquiry prescribed by the act of Parliament. If they
had not, where in the act did the Board of Control
acquire that capacity? Indeed, it was impossible
they should acquire it. What must we. think of
the fabric and texture of an act of Parliament which
should find it necessary to prescribe a strict inquisition, that should descend into minute regulations for the conduct of that inquisition, that should commit
this trust to a particular description of men, and in
the very same breath should enable another body, at
their own pleasure, to supersede all the provisions the
legislature had made, and to defeat the whole purpose, end, and object of the law? This cannot be supposed even of an act of Parliament conceived by
the ministers themselves, and brought forth during
the delirium of the last session.
My honorable friend has told you in the speech
which introduced his motion, that fortunately this
question is not a great deal involved in the labyrinths of Indian detail. Certainly not. But if it
were, I beg leave to assure you that there is nothing in the Indian detail which is more difficult than
in the detail of any other business. I admit, because
I have some experience of the fact, that for the interior regulation of India a minute knowledge of India
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 15
is requisite. But on any specific matter of delinquency in its government you are as capable of
judging as if the same thing were done at your
door. Fraud, injustice, oppression, peculation, engendered in India, are crimes of the same blood, family, and cast with those that are born and bred
in England. To go no farther than the case before
us: you are just as competent to judge whether the
sum of four millions sterling ought or ought not
to be passed from the public treasury into a private pocket without any title except the claim of
the parties, when the issue of fact is laid in Madras,
as when it is laid in Westminster. Terms of art,
indeed, are different in different places; but they are
generally understood in none. The technical style
of an Indian treasury is not one jot more remote
than the jargon of our own Exchequer from the train
of our ordinary ideas or the idiom of our common
language. The difference, therefore, in the two cases
is not in the comparative difficulty or facility of the
two subjects, but in our attention to the one and
our total neglect of the other. Had this attention
and neglect been regulated by the value of the several objects, there would be nothing to complain of. But the reverse of that supposition is true. The
scene of the Indian abuse is distant, indeed; but we
must not infer that the value of our interest in it is
decreased in proportion as it recedes from our view.
In our politics, as in our common conduct, we shall
be worse than infants, if we do not put our senses
under the tuition of our judgment, and effectually
cure ourselves of that optical illusion which makes
a brier at our nose of greater magnitude than an
oak at five hundred yards' distance.
? ? ? ? 16 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
I think I can trace all the calamities of this country to the single source of our not having had steadily
before our eyes a general, comprehensive, well-connected, and well-proportioned view of the whole of
our dominions, and a just sense of their true bearings and relations. After all its reductions, the British empire is still vast and various. After all the
reductions of the House of Commons, (stripped as we
are of our brightest ornaments and of our most important privileges,) enough are yet left to furnish us,
if we please, with means of showing to the world
that we deserve the superintendence of as large an
empire as this kingdom ever held, and the continuance of as ample privileges as the House of Commons, in the plenitude of its power, had been habituated to assert. But if we make ourselves too little for the sphere of our duty, if, on the contrary, we
do not stretch and expand our minds to the compass
of their object, be well assured that everything about
us will dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to the dimensions of our minds.
It is not a predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred
cares that will avert the consequences of a false estimation of our interest, or prevent the shameful dilapidation into which a great empire must fall by mean
reparations upon mighty ruins.
I confess I feel a degree of disgust, almost leading
to despair, at the manner in which we are acting in
the great exigencies of our country. There is now
a bill in this House appointing a rigid inquisition
into the minutest detail of our offices at home. The
collection of sixteen millions annually, a collection
on which the public greatness, safety, and credit have
their reliance, the whole order of criminal jurispru
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 17
dence, which holds together society itself, have at no
time obliged us to call forth such powers, --no, nor
anything like them. There is not a principle of the
law and Constitution of this country that is not subverted to favor the execution of that project. * And
for what is all this apparatus of bustle and terror?
Is it because anything substantial is expected from
it? No. The stir and bustle itself is the end proposed. The eye-servants of a short-sighted master
will employ themselves, not on what is most essential to his affairs, but on what is nearest to his ken. Great difficulties have given a just value to economy; and our minister of the day must be an econ -- omist, whatever it may cost us. But where is he to,
exert his talents? At home, to be sure; for where
else can he obtain a profitable credit for their exertion? It is nothing to him, whether the object on which he works under our eye be promising or not.
If he does not obtain any public benefit, he may
make regulations without end. Those are sure to
pay in present expectation, whilst the effect is at a
distance, and may be the concern of other times
and other men. On these principles, he chooses to
suppose (for he does not pretend more than to suppose) a naked possibility that he shall draw some resource out of crumbs dropped from the trenchers
of penury; that something shall be laid in store
from the short allowance of revenue-officers overloaded with duty and famished for want of bread, -
by a reduction from officers who are at this very
hour ready to batter the Treasury with what breaks
through stone walls for an increase of their appointments. From the marrowless bones of these skeleton * Appendix, No. 1.
VOL. III. 2
? ? ? ? I8 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. establishments, by the use of every sort of cutting and of every sort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he may chip and rasp an empirical alimentary powder, to diet into some similitude of health and substance the languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation.
Whilst he is thus employed according to his policy and to his taste, he has not leisure to inquire
into those abuses in India that are drawing off
money by millions from the treasures of this country, which are exhausting the vital juices from members of the state, where the public inanition is far
more sorely felt than in the local exchequer of England. Not content with winking at these abuses,
whilst he attempts to squeeze the laborious, ill-paid
drudges of English revenue, he lavishes, in one act
of corrupt prodigality, upon those who never served
the public in any honest occupation at all, an annual
income equal to two thirds of the whole collection of
the revenues of this kingdom.
Actuated by the same principle of choice, he has
now on the anvil another scheme, full of difficulty
and desperate hazard, which totally alters the commercial relation of two kingdoms, and, what end
soever it shall have, may bequeath a legacy of heartburning and discontent to one of the countries, perhaps to both, to be perpetuated to the latest posterity. This project is also undertaken on the hope of profit.
It is provided, that, out of some (I know not what)
remains of the Irish hereditary revenue, a fund, at
some time, and of some sort, should be applied to
the protection of the Irish trade.
Here we are commanded again to task our faith, and to persuade ourselves, that, out of the surplus of deficiency, out of
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 19
tile savings of habitual and systematic prodigality, the
minister of wonders will provide support for this nation, sinking under the mountainous load of two hundred and thirty millions of debt. But whilst we look with pain at his desperate and laborious trifling,
whilst we are apprehensive that he will break his
back in stooping to pick up chaff and straws, he recovers himself at an elastic bound, and with a broadcast swing of his arm he squanders over his Indian field a sum far greater than the clear produce of the
whole hereditary revenue of the kingdom of Ireland. *
Strange as this scheme of conduct in ministry is,
and inconsistent with all just policy, it is still true to
itself, and faithful to its own perverted order. Those
who are bountiful to crimes will be rigid to merit
and penurious to service. Their penury is even held
out as a blind and cover to their prodigality. The
economy of injustice is to furnish resources for the
fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection to great crimes and great criminals by being inexorable to the paltry frailties of little men; and these modern flagellants are sure, with a rigid fidelity, to
whip their own enormities on the vicarious back of
every small offender.
It is to draw your attention to economy of quite
another order, it is to animadvert on offences of a far
different description, that my honorable friend has
brought before you the motion of this day. It is to
perpetuate the abuses which are subverting the fabric
* The whole of the net Irish hereditary revenue is, on a medium
of the last seven years, about 330,0001. yearly. The revenues of all
denominations fall short more than 150,0001. yearly of the charges.
On the present produce, if Mr. Pitt's scheme was to take place, he
might gain from seven to ten thousand pounds a year.
? ? ? ? 20 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
of your empire, that the motion is opposed. It is,
therefore, with reason (and if he has power to carry
himself through, I commend his prudence) that the
right honorable gentleman makes his stand at the
very outset, and boldly refuses all Parliamentary
information. Let him admit but one step towards
inquiry, and he is undone. You must be ignorant,
-or he cannot be safe. But before his curtain is let
down, and the shades of eternal night shall veil our.
Eastern dominions from our view, permit me, Sir, to
avail myself of the means which were furnished in
anxious and inquisitive times to demonstrate out of
this single act of the present minister what advantages you are to derive from permitting the greatest concern of this nation to be separated from the cognizance, and exempted even out of the competence, of Parliament. The greatest body of your revenue,
your most numerous armies, your most important
commerce, the richest sources of your public credit,
(contrary to every idea of the known, settled policy
of England,) are on the point of being converted into
a mystery of state. You are going to have one half
of the globe hid even from the common liberal curiosity of an English gentleman. Here a grand revolution commences. Mark the period, and mark the circumstances. In most of the capital changes that
are recorded in the principles and system of any government, a public benefit of some kind or other has
been pretended. The revolution commenced in something plausible, in something which carried the appearance at least of punishment of delinquency or correction of abuse. But here, in the very moment
of the conversion of a department of British government into an Indian mystery, and in the very act in
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 21
which the change commences, a corrupt private interest is set up in direct opposition to the necessities of the nation. A diversion is made of millions of the
public money from the public treasury to a private
purse. It is not into secret negotiations for war,
peace, or alliance that the House of Commons is forbidden to inquire. It is a matter of account; it is a pecuniary transaction; it is the demand of a suspected steward upon ruined tenants and an embarrassed master that the Commons of Great Britain are commanded not to inspect. The whole tenor of the right honorable gentleman's argument is consonant to the
nature of his policy. The system of concealment is
fostered by a system of falsehood. False facts, false
colors, false names of persons and things, are its
whole support.
Sir, I mean to follow the right honorable gentleman over that field of deception, clearing what he
has purposely obscured, and fairly stating what it was
necessary for him to misrepresent. For this purpose,
it is necessary you should know, with some degree of
distinctness, a little of the locality, the nature, the
circumstances, the magnitude of the pretended debts
on which this marvellous donation is founded, as well
as of the persons from whom and by whom it is
claimed.
Madras, with its dependencies, is the second (but
with a long interval, the second) member of the British empire in the East. The trade of that city, and
of the adjacent territory, was not very long -ago
among the most flourishing in Asia. But since the
establishment of the British power it has wasted
away under an uniform gradual decline, insomuch
that inl the year 1779 not one merchant of eminence
? ? ? ? 22 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
was to be found in the whole country. * During this
period of decay, about six hundred thousand sterling
pounds a year have been drawn off by English gentlemen on their private account, by the way of China
alone. t If we add four hundred thousand, as probably remitted through other channels, and in other
mediums, that is, in jewels, gold, and silver, directly
brought to Europe, and in bills upon the British and
foreign companies, you will scarcely think the matter overrated. If we fix the commencement of this
extraction of money from the Carnatic at a period no
earlier than the year 1760, and close it in the year
1780, it probably will not amount to a great deal less
than twenty millions of money.
During the deep, silent flow of this steady stream
of wealth which set from India into Europe, it generally passed on with no adequate observation; but
happening at some periods to meet rifts of rocks that
checked its course, it grew more noisy and attracted
more notice. The pecuniary discussions caused by
an accumulation of part of the fortunes of their servants in a debt from the Nabob of Arcot was the first
thing which very particularly called for, and long engaged, the attention of the Court of Directors. This
debt amounted to eight hundred and eighty thousand
pounds sterling, and was claimed, for the greater part,
by English gentlemen residing at Madras. This grand
capital, settled at length by order at ten per cent, afforded an annuity of eighty-eight thousand pounds. t
Whilst the Directors were digesting their astonish* Mr. Smith's Examination before the Select Committee. Appen. dix, No. 2.
t Appendix, No. 2.
t Fourth Report, Mr. Dundas's Committee, p. 4.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 23
ment at this information, a memorial was presented
to them from three gentlemen, informing them that
their friends had lent, likewise, to merchants of Canton in China, a sum of not more than one million sterling. In this memorial they called upon the
Company for their assistance and interposition with
the Chinese government for the recovery of the debt.
This sum lent to Chinese merchants was at twentyfour per cent, which would yield, if paid, an annuity
of two hundred and forty thousand pounds. *
Perplexed as the Directors were with these demands, you may conceive, Sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed by being made
acquainted that they must again exert their influence
for a new reserve of the happy parsimony of their servants, collected into a second debt from the Nabob of Arcot, amounting to two millions four hundred thousand pounds, settled at an interest of twelve per cent. This is known by the name of the Consolidation of
1777, as the former of the Nabob's debts was by the
title of the Consolidation of 1767. To this was added,
in a separate parcel, a little reserve, called the Cavalry
Debt, of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, at
the same interest. The whole of these four capitals,
amounting to four millions four hundred and forty
thousand pounds, produced at their several rates,
annuities amounting to six hundred and twentythree thousand pounds a year: a good deal more
than one third of the clear land-tax of England, at
four shillings in the pound; a good deal more than
double the whole annual dividend of the East India
* A witness examined before the Committee of Secrecy says that
eighteen per cent was the usual interest, but he had heard that more
bad been given. The above is the account which Mr. B. received.
? ? ? ? 24 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT' S DEBTS.
Company, the nominal masters to the proprietors in
these funds. Of this interest, three hundred and
eighty-three thousand two hundred pounds a year
stood chargeable on the public revenues of the Carnatic.
Sir, at this moment, it will not be necessary to consider the various operations which the capital and interest of this debt have successively undergone. I shall speak to these operations when I come particularly to answer the right honorable gentleman on
each of the heads, as he has thought proper to divide
them. But this was the exact view in which these
debts first appeared to the Court of Directors, and to
the world. It varied afterwards. But it never appeared in any other than a most. questionable shape. When this gigantic phantom of debt first appeared
before a young minister, it naturally would have justified some degree of doubt and apprehension. Such
a prodigy would have filled any common man with
superstitious fears. He would exorcise that shapeless, nameless form, and by everything sacred would
have adjured it to tell by what means a small number of slight individuals, of no consequence or situation, possessed of no lucrative offices, without the command of armies or the known administration of
revenues, without profession of any kind, without any
sort of trade sufficient to employ a peddler, could have,
in a few years, (as to some, even in a few months,)
amassed treasures equal to the revenues of a respectable kingdom? Was it not enough to put these gentlemen, in the novitiate of their administration, oni their guard, and to call upon them for a strict inquiry, (if not to justify them in a reprobation of those
demands without any inquiry at all,) that, when all
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 25 England, Scotland, and Ireland had for years been witness to the immense sums laid out by the servants of the Company in stocks of all denominations, in the purchase of lands, in the buying and building of houses, in the securing quiet seats in Parliament
or in the tumultuous riot of contested elections, in
wandering throughout the whole range of those variegated modes of inventive prodigality which sometimes have excited our wonder, sometimes roused our indignation, that, after all, India was four millions
still in debt to them? India in debt to them! For
what? Every debt, for which an equivalent of some
kind or other is not given, is, on the face of it, a
fraud. What is the equivalent they have given?
What equivalent had they to give? What are the
articles of commerce, or the branches of manufacture, which those gentlemen have carried hence to
enrich India? What are the sciences they beamed
out to enlighten it? What are the arts they introduced to cheer and to adorn it? What are the religious, what the moral institutions they have taught
among that people, as a guide to life, or as a consolation when life is to be no more, that there is an eternal debt, a debt "still paying, still to owe," which must be bound on the present generation in India,
and entailed on their mortgaged posterity forever?
A debt of millions, in favor of a set of men whose
names, with few exceptions, are either buried in the
obscurity of their origin and talents or dragged into
light by the enormity of their crimes!
In my opinion the courage of the minister was the
most wonderful part of the transaction, especially as
he must have read, or rather the right honorable
gentleman says he has read for him, whole volumes
? ? ? ? 26 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
upon the subject. The volumes, by the way, are not
by one tenth part so numerous as the right honorable
gentleman has thought proper to pretend, in order to
frighten you from inquiry; but in these volumes,
such as they are, the minister must have found a
full authority for a suspicion (at the very least) of
everything relative to the great fortunes made at
Madras. What is that authority? Why, no other
than the standing authority for all the claims which
the ministry has thought fit to provide for,-the
grand debtor, -- the Nabob of Arcot himself. Hear
that prince, in the letter written to the Court of Directors, at the precise period whilst the main body of these debts were contracting. In his letter he states
himself to be, what undoubtedly he is, a most competent witness to this point. After speaking of the war with Hyder Ali in 1768 and 1769, and of other measures which he censures, (whether right or wrong it signifies nothing,) and into which he says he had
been led by the Company's servants, he proceeds in
this manner: -- " If all these things were against the
real interests of the Company, they are ten thousand
times more against mine, and against the prosperity
of my country and the happiness of my people; for
your interests and mine are the same. What were
they owing to, then? To the private views of a few
individuals, who have enriched themselves at the expense of your influence and of my country: for your servants A VE NO TRADE IN THIS COUNTRY, neither do
you pay them high wages; yet in a few years they
return to England with many lacs of pagodas. How
can you or I account for such immense fortunes acquired in so short a time, without any visible means of getting them. ? '
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT9S DEBTS. 27
When he asked this question, which involves its
answer, it is extraordinary that curiosity did not
prompt the Chancellor of the Exchequer to that inquiry which might come in vain recommended to him by his own act of Parliament. Does not the Nabob of Arcot tell us, in so many words, that there was no fair way of making the enormous sums sent
by the Company's servants to England? And do you imagine that there was or could be more honesty and good faith in the demands for what remained behind in India? Of what nature were the transactions with himself? If you follow the train of his information,
you must see, that, if these great sums were at all
lent, it was not property, but spoil, that was lent; if
not lent, the transaction was not a contract, but a
fraud. Either way, if light enough could not be
furnished to authorize a full condemnation of these
demands, they ought to have been left to the parties,
who best knew and understood each other's proceedilngs. It was not necessary that the authority of goverlnlent should interpose in favor of claims whose very foundation was a defiance of that authority, and
whose object and end was its entire subversion.
It may be said that this letter was written by the
Nabob of Arcot in a moody humor, under the influence of some chagrin. Certainly it was; but it is in such humors that truth comes out. And when he tells
you, from his own knowledge, what every one must
presume, from the extreme probability of the thing,
whether he told it or not, one such testimony is worth
a thousand that contradict that probability, when the
parties have a better understanding with each other,
and when they have a point to carry that may unite
them in a common deceit.
? ? ? ? 28 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS.
If this body of private claims of debt, real or devised, were a question, as it is falsely pretended, between the Nabob of Arcot, as debtor, and Paul Benfield and his associates, as creditors, I am sure I should give myself but little trouble about it. If the hoards
of oppression were the fund for satisfying the claims
of bribery and peculation, who would wish to interfere between such litigants? If the demands were
confined to what might be drawn from the treasures
which the Company's records uniformly assert that
the Nabob is in possession of, or if he had mines of
gold or silver or diamonds, (as we know that he
has none,) these gentlemen might break open his
hoards or dig in his mines without any disturbance
from me. But the gentlemen on the other side of
the House know as well as I do, and they dare not
contradict me, that the Nabob of Arcot and his creditors are not adversaries, but collusive parties, and
that the whole transaction is under a false color and
false names. The litigation is not, nor ever has been,
between their rapacity and his hoarded riches. No:
it is between him and them combining and confederating, on one side, and the public revenues, and the
miserable inhabitants of a ruined country, on the
other. These are the real plaintiffs and the real defendants in the suit. Refusing a shilling from his
hoards for the satisfaction of any demand, the Nabob
of Arcot is always ready, nay, he earnestly, and with
eagerness and passion, contends for delivering up to
these pretended creditors his territory and his subjects. It is, therefore, not from treasuries and mines,
but from the food of your unpaid armies, from the
blood withheld from the veins and whipped out of the
backs of the most miserable of men, that we are to
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 29
pamper extortion, usury, and peculation, under the
false names of debtors and creditors of state.
The great patron of these creditors, (to whose honor they ought to erect statues,) the right honorable gentleman,* in stating the merits which recommended them to his favor, has ranked thenm under three grand divisions. The first, the creditors of 1767;
then the creditors of the cavalry loan; and lastly,
the creditors of the loan in 1777. Let us examine
them, one by one, as they pass in review before us.
The first of these loans, that of 1767, he insists,
has an indisputable claim upon the public justice.
The creditors, he affirms, lent their money publicly;
they advanced it with the express knowledge and approbation of the Company; and it was contracted at the moderate interest of ten per cent. In this loan,
the demand is, according to him, not only just, but
meritorious in a very high degree: and one would be
inclined to believe he thought so, because he has put
it last in the provision he has made for these claims.
I readily admit this debt to stand the fairest of the
whole; for, whatever may be my suspicions concerning a part of it, I can convict it of nothing worse than the most enormous usury. But I can convict,
upon the spot, the right honorable gentleman of the
most daring misrepresentation in every one fact,
without any exception, that he has alleged in defence
of this loan, and of his 6wn conduct with regard to it.
I will show you that this debt was never contracted
with the knowledge of the Company; that it had not
their approbation; that they received the first intelligence of it with the utmost possible surprise, indignation, and alarm. * Mr. Dundas.
? ? ? ? 30 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
So far from being previously apprised of the transaction from its origin, it was two years before the
Court of Directors obtained any official intelligence
of it. " The dealings of the servants with the Nabob
were concealed from the first, until they were found
out" (says Mr. Sayer, the Company's counsel) "by
the report of the country. " The Presidency, however, at last thought proper to send an official
account. On this the Directors tell them, "To your
great reproach, it has been concealed from us. We
cannot but suspect this debt to have had its weight
in your proposed aggrandizement of Mahomed Ali [the
Nabob of Arcot]; but whether it has or has not, certain it is you are guilty of an high breach of duty in concealing it from us. "
These expressions, concerning the ground of the
transaction, its effect, and its clandestine nature, are
in the letters bearing date March 17, 1769. After receiving a more full account, on the 23d March, 1770, they state, that "Messrs. John Pybus, Johif Call,
and James Bourchier, as trustees for themselves and
others of the Nabob's private creditors, had proved a
deed of assignment upon the Nabob and his son of
FIFTEEN districts of the Nabob's country, the revenues of which yielded, in time of peace, eight lacs of pagodas [320,0001. sterling] annually; and likewise
an assignment of the yearly tribute paid the Nabob
from the Rajah of Tanjore, amounting to four lacs of
rupees [40,0001. ]. " The territorial revenue at that
time possessed by these gentlemen, without the knowledge or consent of their masters, amounted to three hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling annually.
They were making rapid strides to the entire possession of the country, when the Directors, whom the
?
authority; the power might even be employed in
defiance of the authority, if the case should require,
as in truth it often did require, a proceeding of that
degree of boldness.
The Company had put him into possession of
several great cities and magnificent castles. The
good order of his affairs, his sense of personal dignity, his ideas of Oriental splendor, and the habits
of an Asiatic life, (to which, being a native of India,
and a Mahometan, he had from his infancy been
inured,) would naturally have led him to fix the
seat of his government within his own dominions.
Instead of this, he totally sequestered himself from
his country, and, abandoning all appearance of state,
he took up his residence in an ordinary house, which
he purchased in the suburbs of the Company's factory
at Madras. In that place he has lived, without removing one day from thence, for several years past.
He has there continued a constant cabal with the
Company's servants, from the highest to the lowest,
- creating, out of the ruins of the country, brilliant
fortunes for those who will, and entirely destroying
those who will not, be subservient to his purposes.
An opinion prevailed, strongly confirmed by several passages in his own letters, as well as by a combination of circumstances forming a body of evidence which cannot be resisted, that very great sums have
been by him distributed, through a long course of
years, to some of the Company's servants. Besides
these presumed payments in ready money, (of which,
from the nature of the thing, the direct proof is very
difficult,) debts have at several periods been acknowledged to those gentlemen, to an immense amount,
that is, to some millions of sterling money. There is
? ? ? ? ADVERTISEMENT. ,5
strong reason to suspect that the body of these debts
is wholly fictitious, and was never created by money
bond fide lent. But even on a supposition that this
vast sum was really advanced, it was impossible that
the very reality of such an astonishing transaction
should not cause some degree of alarm and incite
to some sort of inquiry.
It was not at all seemly, at a moment when the
Company itself was so distressed as to require a suspension, by act of Parliament, of the payment of bills drawn on them from India,-and also a direct tax
upon every house in England, in order to facilitate
the vent of their goods, and to avoid instant insolvency,-at that very moment, that their servants
should appear in so flourishing a condition, as, besides ten millions of other demands on their masters, to be entitled to claim a debt of three or four millions more from the territorial revenue of one of
their dependent princes.
The ostensible pecuniary transactions of the Nabob
of Arcot with very private persons are so enormous,
that they evidently set aside every pretence of policy
which might induce a prudent government in some
instances to wink at ordinary loose practice in illmanaged departments. No caution could be too
great in handling this matter, no scrutiny too exact.
It was evidently the interest, and as evidently at least
in the power, of the creditors, by admitting secret
participation in this dark and undefined concern, to
spread corruption to the greatest and the most alarming extent.
These facts relative to the debts were so notorious,
the opinion of their being a principal source of the
disorders of the British government in India was so
? ? ? ? 6 ADVERTISEMENT.
undisputed and universal, that there was no party,
no description of men in Parliament, who did not
think themselves bound, if not in honor and conscience, at least in common decency, to institute a
vigorous inquiry into the very bottom of the business, before they admitted any part of that vast and
suspicious charge to be laid upon an exhausted country. Every plan concurred in directing such an inquiry, in order that whatever was discovered to be corrupt, fraudulent, or oppressive should lead to a
due animadversion on the offenders, and, if anything
fair and equitable in its origin should be found, (nobody suspected that much, comparatively speaking,
would be so found,) it might be provided for, -- in
due subordination, however, to the ease of the subject and the service of the state.
These were the alleged grounds for an inquiry,
settled in all the bills brought into Parliament relative to India, -and there were, I think, no less than
four of them. By the bill commonly called Mr. Pitt's
bill, the inquiry was specially, and by express words,
committed to the Court of Directors, without any reserve for the interference of any other person or persons whatsoever. It was ordered that they should make the inquiry into the origin and justice of these
debts, as far as the materials in their possession ena
bled them to proceed; and where they found those
materials deficient, they should order the Presidency
of Fort St. George (Madras) to complete the inquiry.
The Court of Directors applied themselves to the
execution of the trust reposed in them. They first
examined into the amount of the debt, which they
computed, at compound interest, to be 2,945,6001.
sterling. Whether their mode of computation, either
? ? ? ? ADVERTISEMENT. 7
of the original sums or the amount on compound
interest, was exact, that is, whether they took the
interest too high or the several capitals too low, is
not material. On whatever principle any of the calculations were made up, none of them found the debt
to differ from the recital of the act, which asserted that the sums claimed were "very large. " The
last head of these debts the Directors compute at
2,465,6801. sterling. Of the existence of this debt
the Directors heard nothing until 1776, and they say,
that, "although they had repeatedly written to the
Nabob of Arcot, and to their servants, respecting the
debt, yet they had never been able to trace the origin
thereof, or to obtain any satisfactory information on the
subject. "
The Court of Directors, after stating the circumstances under which the debts appeared to them to
have been contracted, add as follows: -" For these
reasons we should have thought it our duty to inquire
very minutely into those debts, even if the act of Parliament had been silent on the subject, before we concurred in any measure for their payment. But with the positive injunctions of the act before us to examine into their nature and origin, we are indispensably
bound to direct such an inquiry to be instituted. "
They then order the President and Council of Madras
to enter into a full examination, &c. , &c.
The Directors, having drawn up their order to
the Presidency on these principles, communicated the
draught of the general letter in which those orders
were contained to the board of his Majesty's ministers, and other servants lately constituted by Mr.
Pitt's East India Act. These ministers, who had
just carried through Parliament the bill ordering a
? ? ? ? 8 ADVERTISEMENT.
specific inquiry, immediately drew up another letter,
on a principle directly opposite to that which was
prescribed by the act of Parliament and followed by
the Directors. In these second orders, all idea of an
inquiry into the justice and origin of the pretended
debts, particularly of the last, the greatest, and the
most obnoxious to suspicion, is abandoned. They
are all admitted and established without any investigation whatsoever, (except some private conference
with the agents of the claimants is to pass for an investigation,) and a fund for their discharge is assigned
and set apart out of the revenues of the Carnatic.
To this arrangement in favor of their servants, servants suspected of corruption and convicted of disobedience, the Directors of the East India Company were ordered to set their hands, asserting it to arise from
their own conviction and opinion, in flat contradiction to their recorded sentiments, their strong remonstrance, and their declared sense of their duty,
as well under their general trust and their oath as
Directors, as under the express injunctions of an act
of Parliament.
The principles upon which this summary proceeding was adopted by the ministerial board are stated
by themselves in a number in the appendix to this
speech.
By another section of the same act, the same Court
of Directors were ordered to take into consideration
and to decide on the indeterminate rights of the Rajah
of Tanjore and the Nabob of Arcot; and in this, as in
the former case, no power of appeal, revision, or alteration was reserved to any other. It was a jurisdiction, in a cause between party and party, given to the Court of Directors specifically. It was known that the
? ? ? ? ADVERTISEMENT. 9
territories of the former of these princes had been
twice invaded and pillaged, and the prince deposed
and imprisoned, by the Company's servants, influenced by the intrigues of the latter, and for the purpose of paying his pretended debts. The Company had, in the year 1775, ordered a restoration of the
Rajah to his government, under certain conditions.
The Rajah complained, that his territories had not
been completely restored to him, and that no part
of his goods, money, revenues, or records, unjustly
taken and withheld from him, were ever returned.
The Nabob, on the other hand, never ceased to claim
the country itself, and carried on a continued train of
negotiation, that it should again be given up to him,
in violation of the Company's public faith.
The Directors, in obedience to this part of the act,.
ordered an inquiry, and came to a determination to
restore certain of his territories to the Rajah. The
ministers, proceeding as in the former case, without
hearing any party, rescinded the decision of the Directors, refused the restitution of the territory, and,
without regard to the condition of the country of
Tanjore, which had been within a few years four
times plundered, (twice by the Nabob of Arcot, and
twice by enemies brought upon it solely by the politics of the same Nabob, the declared enemy of
that people,) and without discounting a shilling for
their sufferings, they accumulate an arrear of about
four hundred thousand pounds of pretended tribute
to this enemy; and then they order the Directors
to put their hands to a new adjudication, directly
contrary to a judgment in a judicial character and
trust solemnly given by them and entered on their
records.
? ? ? ? 10 ADVERTISEMENT.
These proceedings naturally called for some inquiry. On the 28th of February, 1785, Mr. Fox
made the following motion in the House of Commons, after moving that the clauses of the act should
be read: - " That the proper officer do lay before this
House copies or extracts of all letters and orders of
the Court of Directors of the United East India Company, in pursuance of the injunctions contained in the 37th and 38th clauses of the said act "; and the question being put, it passed in the negative by a very great majority.
The last speech in the debate was the following;
which is given to the public, not as being more worthy of its attention than others, (some of which were of consummate ability,) but as entering more into
the detail of the subject,
? ? ? ? SPEECH.
THE times we live in, Mr. Speaker, have been distinguished by extraordinary events. Habituated, however, as we are, to uncommon combinations of men and of affairs, I believe nobody recollects anything more surprising than the spectacle of this day.
The right honorable gentleman* whose conduct is
now in question formerly stood forth in this House,
the prosecutor of the worthy baronet t who spoke after him. He charged him with several grievous acts
of malversation in office, with abuses of a public trust
of a great and heinous nature. In less than two years
we see the situation of the parties reversed; and a singular revolution puts the worthy baronet in a fair way
of returning the prosecution in a recriminatory bill of
pains and penalties, grounded on a breach of public
trust relative to the government of the very same
part of India. If he should undertake a bill of that
kind, he will find no difficulty in conducting it with
a degree of skill and vigor fully equal to all that have
been exerted against him.
But the change of relation between these two gentlemen is not so striking as the total difference of
their deportment under the same unhappy circumstances. Whatever the merits of the worthy baro* Right Honorable Henry Dundas.
t Sir Thomas Rumbold, late Governor of Madras.
? ? ? ? 12 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
net's defence might have been, he did not shrink
from the charge. He met it with manliness of spirit
and decency of behavior. What would have been
thought of him, if he had held the present language
of his old accuser? When articles were exhibited
against him by that right honorable gentleman, he
did not think proper to tell the House that we ought
to institute no inquiry, to inspect no paper, to examine no witness. He did not tell us (what at that time le might have told us with some show of
reason) that our concerns in India were matters of
delicacy, that to divulge anything relative to them
would be mischievous to the state. He did not tell
us that those who would inquire into his proceedings
were disposed to dismember the empire. He had not
the presumption to say, that, for his part, having obtained, in his Indian presidency, the ultimate object of his ambition, his honor was concerned in executing with integrity the trust which had been legally committed to his charge: that others, not having
been so fortunate, could not be so disinterested;
and therefore their accusations could spring from no
other source than faction, and envy to his fortune.
Had he been frontless enough to hold such vain,
vaporing language in the face of a grave, a detailed,
a specified matter of accusation, whilst he violently
resisted everything which could bring the merits of
his cause to the test, -had he been wild enough to
anticipate the absurdities of this day, -that is, had
he inferred, as his late accuser has thought proper to
do, that he could not have been guilty of malversation in office, for this sole and curious reason, that he had been in office, - had he argued the impossibility
of his abusing his power on this sole principle, that
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 13
he had power to abuse, - he would have left but one
impression on the mind of every man who heard him,
and who believed him in his senses: that in the utmost extent he was guilty of the charge.
But, Sir, leaving these two gentlemen to alternate
as criminal and accuser upon what principles they
think expedient, it is for us to consider whether the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasurer of
the Navy, acting as a Board of Control, are justified
by law or policy in suspending the legal arrangements
made by the Court of Directors, in order to transfer
the public revenues to the private emolument of certain servants of the East India Company, without the
inquiry into the origin and justice of their claims prescribed by an act of Parliament.
It is not contended that the act of Parliament did
not expressly ordain an inquiry. It is not asserted
that this inquiry was not, with equal precision of
terms, specially committed, under particular regulations, to the Court of Directors. I conceive, therefore,
the Board of Control had no right whatsoever to intermeddle in that business. There is nothing certain
in the principles of jurisprudence, if this be not undeniably true, that when a special authority is given to
any persons by name to do some particular act, that no
others, by virtue of general powers, can obtain a legal
title to intrude themselves into that trust, and to exercise those special functions in their place. I therefore consider the intermeddling of ministers in this affair as a downright usurpation. But if the strained
construction by which they have forced themselves
into a suspicious office (which every man delicate
with regard to character would rather have sought
constructions to avoid) were perfectly sound and
? ? ? ? 14 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
perfectly legal, of this I am certain, that they cannot
be justified in declining the inquiry which had been
prescribed to the Court of Directors. If the Board of
Control did lawfully possess the right of executing the
special trust given to that court, they must take it as
they found it, subject to the very same regulations
which bound the Court of Directors. It will be allowed that the Court of Directors had no authority to dispense with either the substance or the mode of
inquiry prescribed by the act of Parliament. If they
had not, where in the act did the Board of Control
acquire that capacity? Indeed, it was impossible
they should acquire it. What must we. think of
the fabric and texture of an act of Parliament which
should find it necessary to prescribe a strict inquisition, that should descend into minute regulations for the conduct of that inquisition, that should commit
this trust to a particular description of men, and in
the very same breath should enable another body, at
their own pleasure, to supersede all the provisions the
legislature had made, and to defeat the whole purpose, end, and object of the law? This cannot be supposed even of an act of Parliament conceived by
the ministers themselves, and brought forth during
the delirium of the last session.
My honorable friend has told you in the speech
which introduced his motion, that fortunately this
question is not a great deal involved in the labyrinths of Indian detail. Certainly not. But if it
were, I beg leave to assure you that there is nothing in the Indian detail which is more difficult than
in the detail of any other business. I admit, because
I have some experience of the fact, that for the interior regulation of India a minute knowledge of India
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 15
is requisite. But on any specific matter of delinquency in its government you are as capable of
judging as if the same thing were done at your
door. Fraud, injustice, oppression, peculation, engendered in India, are crimes of the same blood, family, and cast with those that are born and bred
in England. To go no farther than the case before
us: you are just as competent to judge whether the
sum of four millions sterling ought or ought not
to be passed from the public treasury into a private pocket without any title except the claim of
the parties, when the issue of fact is laid in Madras,
as when it is laid in Westminster. Terms of art,
indeed, are different in different places; but they are
generally understood in none. The technical style
of an Indian treasury is not one jot more remote
than the jargon of our own Exchequer from the train
of our ordinary ideas or the idiom of our common
language. The difference, therefore, in the two cases
is not in the comparative difficulty or facility of the
two subjects, but in our attention to the one and
our total neglect of the other. Had this attention
and neglect been regulated by the value of the several objects, there would be nothing to complain of. But the reverse of that supposition is true. The
scene of the Indian abuse is distant, indeed; but we
must not infer that the value of our interest in it is
decreased in proportion as it recedes from our view.
In our politics, as in our common conduct, we shall
be worse than infants, if we do not put our senses
under the tuition of our judgment, and effectually
cure ourselves of that optical illusion which makes
a brier at our nose of greater magnitude than an
oak at five hundred yards' distance.
? ? ? ? 16 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
I think I can trace all the calamities of this country to the single source of our not having had steadily
before our eyes a general, comprehensive, well-connected, and well-proportioned view of the whole of
our dominions, and a just sense of their true bearings and relations. After all its reductions, the British empire is still vast and various. After all the
reductions of the House of Commons, (stripped as we
are of our brightest ornaments and of our most important privileges,) enough are yet left to furnish us,
if we please, with means of showing to the world
that we deserve the superintendence of as large an
empire as this kingdom ever held, and the continuance of as ample privileges as the House of Commons, in the plenitude of its power, had been habituated to assert. But if we make ourselves too little for the sphere of our duty, if, on the contrary, we
do not stretch and expand our minds to the compass
of their object, be well assured that everything about
us will dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to the dimensions of our minds.
It is not a predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred
cares that will avert the consequences of a false estimation of our interest, or prevent the shameful dilapidation into which a great empire must fall by mean
reparations upon mighty ruins.
I confess I feel a degree of disgust, almost leading
to despair, at the manner in which we are acting in
the great exigencies of our country. There is now
a bill in this House appointing a rigid inquisition
into the minutest detail of our offices at home. The
collection of sixteen millions annually, a collection
on which the public greatness, safety, and credit have
their reliance, the whole order of criminal jurispru
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 17
dence, which holds together society itself, have at no
time obliged us to call forth such powers, --no, nor
anything like them. There is not a principle of the
law and Constitution of this country that is not subverted to favor the execution of that project. * And
for what is all this apparatus of bustle and terror?
Is it because anything substantial is expected from
it? No. The stir and bustle itself is the end proposed. The eye-servants of a short-sighted master
will employ themselves, not on what is most essential to his affairs, but on what is nearest to his ken. Great difficulties have given a just value to economy; and our minister of the day must be an econ -- omist, whatever it may cost us. But where is he to,
exert his talents? At home, to be sure; for where
else can he obtain a profitable credit for their exertion? It is nothing to him, whether the object on which he works under our eye be promising or not.
If he does not obtain any public benefit, he may
make regulations without end. Those are sure to
pay in present expectation, whilst the effect is at a
distance, and may be the concern of other times
and other men. On these principles, he chooses to
suppose (for he does not pretend more than to suppose) a naked possibility that he shall draw some resource out of crumbs dropped from the trenchers
of penury; that something shall be laid in store
from the short allowance of revenue-officers overloaded with duty and famished for want of bread, -
by a reduction from officers who are at this very
hour ready to batter the Treasury with what breaks
through stone walls for an increase of their appointments. From the marrowless bones of these skeleton * Appendix, No. 1.
VOL. III. 2
? ? ? ? I8 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. establishments, by the use of every sort of cutting and of every sort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he may chip and rasp an empirical alimentary powder, to diet into some similitude of health and substance the languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation.
Whilst he is thus employed according to his policy and to his taste, he has not leisure to inquire
into those abuses in India that are drawing off
money by millions from the treasures of this country, which are exhausting the vital juices from members of the state, where the public inanition is far
more sorely felt than in the local exchequer of England. Not content with winking at these abuses,
whilst he attempts to squeeze the laborious, ill-paid
drudges of English revenue, he lavishes, in one act
of corrupt prodigality, upon those who never served
the public in any honest occupation at all, an annual
income equal to two thirds of the whole collection of
the revenues of this kingdom.
Actuated by the same principle of choice, he has
now on the anvil another scheme, full of difficulty
and desperate hazard, which totally alters the commercial relation of two kingdoms, and, what end
soever it shall have, may bequeath a legacy of heartburning and discontent to one of the countries, perhaps to both, to be perpetuated to the latest posterity. This project is also undertaken on the hope of profit.
It is provided, that, out of some (I know not what)
remains of the Irish hereditary revenue, a fund, at
some time, and of some sort, should be applied to
the protection of the Irish trade.
Here we are commanded again to task our faith, and to persuade ourselves, that, out of the surplus of deficiency, out of
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 19
tile savings of habitual and systematic prodigality, the
minister of wonders will provide support for this nation, sinking under the mountainous load of two hundred and thirty millions of debt. But whilst we look with pain at his desperate and laborious trifling,
whilst we are apprehensive that he will break his
back in stooping to pick up chaff and straws, he recovers himself at an elastic bound, and with a broadcast swing of his arm he squanders over his Indian field a sum far greater than the clear produce of the
whole hereditary revenue of the kingdom of Ireland. *
Strange as this scheme of conduct in ministry is,
and inconsistent with all just policy, it is still true to
itself, and faithful to its own perverted order. Those
who are bountiful to crimes will be rigid to merit
and penurious to service. Their penury is even held
out as a blind and cover to their prodigality. The
economy of injustice is to furnish resources for the
fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection to great crimes and great criminals by being inexorable to the paltry frailties of little men; and these modern flagellants are sure, with a rigid fidelity, to
whip their own enormities on the vicarious back of
every small offender.
It is to draw your attention to economy of quite
another order, it is to animadvert on offences of a far
different description, that my honorable friend has
brought before you the motion of this day. It is to
perpetuate the abuses which are subverting the fabric
* The whole of the net Irish hereditary revenue is, on a medium
of the last seven years, about 330,0001. yearly. The revenues of all
denominations fall short more than 150,0001. yearly of the charges.
On the present produce, if Mr. Pitt's scheme was to take place, he
might gain from seven to ten thousand pounds a year.
? ? ? ? 20 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
of your empire, that the motion is opposed. It is,
therefore, with reason (and if he has power to carry
himself through, I commend his prudence) that the
right honorable gentleman makes his stand at the
very outset, and boldly refuses all Parliamentary
information. Let him admit but one step towards
inquiry, and he is undone. You must be ignorant,
-or he cannot be safe. But before his curtain is let
down, and the shades of eternal night shall veil our.
Eastern dominions from our view, permit me, Sir, to
avail myself of the means which were furnished in
anxious and inquisitive times to demonstrate out of
this single act of the present minister what advantages you are to derive from permitting the greatest concern of this nation to be separated from the cognizance, and exempted even out of the competence, of Parliament. The greatest body of your revenue,
your most numerous armies, your most important
commerce, the richest sources of your public credit,
(contrary to every idea of the known, settled policy
of England,) are on the point of being converted into
a mystery of state. You are going to have one half
of the globe hid even from the common liberal curiosity of an English gentleman. Here a grand revolution commences. Mark the period, and mark the circumstances. In most of the capital changes that
are recorded in the principles and system of any government, a public benefit of some kind or other has
been pretended. The revolution commenced in something plausible, in something which carried the appearance at least of punishment of delinquency or correction of abuse. But here, in the very moment
of the conversion of a department of British government into an Indian mystery, and in the very act in
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 21
which the change commences, a corrupt private interest is set up in direct opposition to the necessities of the nation. A diversion is made of millions of the
public money from the public treasury to a private
purse. It is not into secret negotiations for war,
peace, or alliance that the House of Commons is forbidden to inquire. It is a matter of account; it is a pecuniary transaction; it is the demand of a suspected steward upon ruined tenants and an embarrassed master that the Commons of Great Britain are commanded not to inspect. The whole tenor of the right honorable gentleman's argument is consonant to the
nature of his policy. The system of concealment is
fostered by a system of falsehood. False facts, false
colors, false names of persons and things, are its
whole support.
Sir, I mean to follow the right honorable gentleman over that field of deception, clearing what he
has purposely obscured, and fairly stating what it was
necessary for him to misrepresent. For this purpose,
it is necessary you should know, with some degree of
distinctness, a little of the locality, the nature, the
circumstances, the magnitude of the pretended debts
on which this marvellous donation is founded, as well
as of the persons from whom and by whom it is
claimed.
Madras, with its dependencies, is the second (but
with a long interval, the second) member of the British empire in the East. The trade of that city, and
of the adjacent territory, was not very long -ago
among the most flourishing in Asia. But since the
establishment of the British power it has wasted
away under an uniform gradual decline, insomuch
that inl the year 1779 not one merchant of eminence
? ? ? ? 22 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
was to be found in the whole country. * During this
period of decay, about six hundred thousand sterling
pounds a year have been drawn off by English gentlemen on their private account, by the way of China
alone. t If we add four hundred thousand, as probably remitted through other channels, and in other
mediums, that is, in jewels, gold, and silver, directly
brought to Europe, and in bills upon the British and
foreign companies, you will scarcely think the matter overrated. If we fix the commencement of this
extraction of money from the Carnatic at a period no
earlier than the year 1760, and close it in the year
1780, it probably will not amount to a great deal less
than twenty millions of money.
During the deep, silent flow of this steady stream
of wealth which set from India into Europe, it generally passed on with no adequate observation; but
happening at some periods to meet rifts of rocks that
checked its course, it grew more noisy and attracted
more notice. The pecuniary discussions caused by
an accumulation of part of the fortunes of their servants in a debt from the Nabob of Arcot was the first
thing which very particularly called for, and long engaged, the attention of the Court of Directors. This
debt amounted to eight hundred and eighty thousand
pounds sterling, and was claimed, for the greater part,
by English gentlemen residing at Madras. This grand
capital, settled at length by order at ten per cent, afforded an annuity of eighty-eight thousand pounds. t
Whilst the Directors were digesting their astonish* Mr. Smith's Examination before the Select Committee. Appen. dix, No. 2.
t Appendix, No. 2.
t Fourth Report, Mr. Dundas's Committee, p. 4.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 23
ment at this information, a memorial was presented
to them from three gentlemen, informing them that
their friends had lent, likewise, to merchants of Canton in China, a sum of not more than one million sterling. In this memorial they called upon the
Company for their assistance and interposition with
the Chinese government for the recovery of the debt.
This sum lent to Chinese merchants was at twentyfour per cent, which would yield, if paid, an annuity
of two hundred and forty thousand pounds. *
Perplexed as the Directors were with these demands, you may conceive, Sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed by being made
acquainted that they must again exert their influence
for a new reserve of the happy parsimony of their servants, collected into a second debt from the Nabob of Arcot, amounting to two millions four hundred thousand pounds, settled at an interest of twelve per cent. This is known by the name of the Consolidation of
1777, as the former of the Nabob's debts was by the
title of the Consolidation of 1767. To this was added,
in a separate parcel, a little reserve, called the Cavalry
Debt, of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, at
the same interest. The whole of these four capitals,
amounting to four millions four hundred and forty
thousand pounds, produced at their several rates,
annuities amounting to six hundred and twentythree thousand pounds a year: a good deal more
than one third of the clear land-tax of England, at
four shillings in the pound; a good deal more than
double the whole annual dividend of the East India
* A witness examined before the Committee of Secrecy says that
eighteen per cent was the usual interest, but he had heard that more
bad been given. The above is the account which Mr. B. received.
? ? ? ? 24 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT' S DEBTS.
Company, the nominal masters to the proprietors in
these funds. Of this interest, three hundred and
eighty-three thousand two hundred pounds a year
stood chargeable on the public revenues of the Carnatic.
Sir, at this moment, it will not be necessary to consider the various operations which the capital and interest of this debt have successively undergone. I shall speak to these operations when I come particularly to answer the right honorable gentleman on
each of the heads, as he has thought proper to divide
them. But this was the exact view in which these
debts first appeared to the Court of Directors, and to
the world. It varied afterwards. But it never appeared in any other than a most. questionable shape. When this gigantic phantom of debt first appeared
before a young minister, it naturally would have justified some degree of doubt and apprehension. Such
a prodigy would have filled any common man with
superstitious fears. He would exorcise that shapeless, nameless form, and by everything sacred would
have adjured it to tell by what means a small number of slight individuals, of no consequence or situation, possessed of no lucrative offices, without the command of armies or the known administration of
revenues, without profession of any kind, without any
sort of trade sufficient to employ a peddler, could have,
in a few years, (as to some, even in a few months,)
amassed treasures equal to the revenues of a respectable kingdom? Was it not enough to put these gentlemen, in the novitiate of their administration, oni their guard, and to call upon them for a strict inquiry, (if not to justify them in a reprobation of those
demands without any inquiry at all,) that, when all
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 25 England, Scotland, and Ireland had for years been witness to the immense sums laid out by the servants of the Company in stocks of all denominations, in the purchase of lands, in the buying and building of houses, in the securing quiet seats in Parliament
or in the tumultuous riot of contested elections, in
wandering throughout the whole range of those variegated modes of inventive prodigality which sometimes have excited our wonder, sometimes roused our indignation, that, after all, India was four millions
still in debt to them? India in debt to them! For
what? Every debt, for which an equivalent of some
kind or other is not given, is, on the face of it, a
fraud. What is the equivalent they have given?
What equivalent had they to give? What are the
articles of commerce, or the branches of manufacture, which those gentlemen have carried hence to
enrich India? What are the sciences they beamed
out to enlighten it? What are the arts they introduced to cheer and to adorn it? What are the religious, what the moral institutions they have taught
among that people, as a guide to life, or as a consolation when life is to be no more, that there is an eternal debt, a debt "still paying, still to owe," which must be bound on the present generation in India,
and entailed on their mortgaged posterity forever?
A debt of millions, in favor of a set of men whose
names, with few exceptions, are either buried in the
obscurity of their origin and talents or dragged into
light by the enormity of their crimes!
In my opinion the courage of the minister was the
most wonderful part of the transaction, especially as
he must have read, or rather the right honorable
gentleman says he has read for him, whole volumes
? ? ? ? 26 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
upon the subject. The volumes, by the way, are not
by one tenth part so numerous as the right honorable
gentleman has thought proper to pretend, in order to
frighten you from inquiry; but in these volumes,
such as they are, the minister must have found a
full authority for a suspicion (at the very least) of
everything relative to the great fortunes made at
Madras. What is that authority? Why, no other
than the standing authority for all the claims which
the ministry has thought fit to provide for,-the
grand debtor, -- the Nabob of Arcot himself. Hear
that prince, in the letter written to the Court of Directors, at the precise period whilst the main body of these debts were contracting. In his letter he states
himself to be, what undoubtedly he is, a most competent witness to this point. After speaking of the war with Hyder Ali in 1768 and 1769, and of other measures which he censures, (whether right or wrong it signifies nothing,) and into which he says he had
been led by the Company's servants, he proceeds in
this manner: -- " If all these things were against the
real interests of the Company, they are ten thousand
times more against mine, and against the prosperity
of my country and the happiness of my people; for
your interests and mine are the same. What were
they owing to, then? To the private views of a few
individuals, who have enriched themselves at the expense of your influence and of my country: for your servants A VE NO TRADE IN THIS COUNTRY, neither do
you pay them high wages; yet in a few years they
return to England with many lacs of pagodas. How
can you or I account for such immense fortunes acquired in so short a time, without any visible means of getting them. ? '
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT9S DEBTS. 27
When he asked this question, which involves its
answer, it is extraordinary that curiosity did not
prompt the Chancellor of the Exchequer to that inquiry which might come in vain recommended to him by his own act of Parliament. Does not the Nabob of Arcot tell us, in so many words, that there was no fair way of making the enormous sums sent
by the Company's servants to England? And do you imagine that there was or could be more honesty and good faith in the demands for what remained behind in India? Of what nature were the transactions with himself? If you follow the train of his information,
you must see, that, if these great sums were at all
lent, it was not property, but spoil, that was lent; if
not lent, the transaction was not a contract, but a
fraud. Either way, if light enough could not be
furnished to authorize a full condemnation of these
demands, they ought to have been left to the parties,
who best knew and understood each other's proceedilngs. It was not necessary that the authority of goverlnlent should interpose in favor of claims whose very foundation was a defiance of that authority, and
whose object and end was its entire subversion.
It may be said that this letter was written by the
Nabob of Arcot in a moody humor, under the influence of some chagrin. Certainly it was; but it is in such humors that truth comes out. And when he tells
you, from his own knowledge, what every one must
presume, from the extreme probability of the thing,
whether he told it or not, one such testimony is worth
a thousand that contradict that probability, when the
parties have a better understanding with each other,
and when they have a point to carry that may unite
them in a common deceit.
? ? ? ? 28 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS.
If this body of private claims of debt, real or devised, were a question, as it is falsely pretended, between the Nabob of Arcot, as debtor, and Paul Benfield and his associates, as creditors, I am sure I should give myself but little trouble about it. If the hoards
of oppression were the fund for satisfying the claims
of bribery and peculation, who would wish to interfere between such litigants? If the demands were
confined to what might be drawn from the treasures
which the Company's records uniformly assert that
the Nabob is in possession of, or if he had mines of
gold or silver or diamonds, (as we know that he
has none,) these gentlemen might break open his
hoards or dig in his mines without any disturbance
from me. But the gentlemen on the other side of
the House know as well as I do, and they dare not
contradict me, that the Nabob of Arcot and his creditors are not adversaries, but collusive parties, and
that the whole transaction is under a false color and
false names. The litigation is not, nor ever has been,
between their rapacity and his hoarded riches. No:
it is between him and them combining and confederating, on one side, and the public revenues, and the
miserable inhabitants of a ruined country, on the
other. These are the real plaintiffs and the real defendants in the suit. Refusing a shilling from his
hoards for the satisfaction of any demand, the Nabob
of Arcot is always ready, nay, he earnestly, and with
eagerness and passion, contends for delivering up to
these pretended creditors his territory and his subjects. It is, therefore, not from treasuries and mines,
but from the food of your unpaid armies, from the
blood withheld from the veins and whipped out of the
backs of the most miserable of men, that we are to
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 29
pamper extortion, usury, and peculation, under the
false names of debtors and creditors of state.
The great patron of these creditors, (to whose honor they ought to erect statues,) the right honorable gentleman,* in stating the merits which recommended them to his favor, has ranked thenm under three grand divisions. The first, the creditors of 1767;
then the creditors of the cavalry loan; and lastly,
the creditors of the loan in 1777. Let us examine
them, one by one, as they pass in review before us.
The first of these loans, that of 1767, he insists,
has an indisputable claim upon the public justice.
The creditors, he affirms, lent their money publicly;
they advanced it with the express knowledge and approbation of the Company; and it was contracted at the moderate interest of ten per cent. In this loan,
the demand is, according to him, not only just, but
meritorious in a very high degree: and one would be
inclined to believe he thought so, because he has put
it last in the provision he has made for these claims.
I readily admit this debt to stand the fairest of the
whole; for, whatever may be my suspicions concerning a part of it, I can convict it of nothing worse than the most enormous usury. But I can convict,
upon the spot, the right honorable gentleman of the
most daring misrepresentation in every one fact,
without any exception, that he has alleged in defence
of this loan, and of his 6wn conduct with regard to it.
I will show you that this debt was never contracted
with the knowledge of the Company; that it had not
their approbation; that they received the first intelligence of it with the utmost possible surprise, indignation, and alarm. * Mr. Dundas.
? ? ? ? 30 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
So far from being previously apprised of the transaction from its origin, it was two years before the
Court of Directors obtained any official intelligence
of it. " The dealings of the servants with the Nabob
were concealed from the first, until they were found
out" (says Mr. Sayer, the Company's counsel) "by
the report of the country. " The Presidency, however, at last thought proper to send an official
account. On this the Directors tell them, "To your
great reproach, it has been concealed from us. We
cannot but suspect this debt to have had its weight
in your proposed aggrandizement of Mahomed Ali [the
Nabob of Arcot]; but whether it has or has not, certain it is you are guilty of an high breach of duty in concealing it from us. "
These expressions, concerning the ground of the
transaction, its effect, and its clandestine nature, are
in the letters bearing date March 17, 1769. After receiving a more full account, on the 23d March, 1770, they state, that "Messrs. John Pybus, Johif Call,
and James Bourchier, as trustees for themselves and
others of the Nabob's private creditors, had proved a
deed of assignment upon the Nabob and his son of
FIFTEEN districts of the Nabob's country, the revenues of which yielded, in time of peace, eight lacs of pagodas [320,0001. sterling] annually; and likewise
an assignment of the yearly tribute paid the Nabob
from the Rajah of Tanjore, amounting to four lacs of
rupees [40,0001. ]. " The territorial revenue at that
time possessed by these gentlemen, without the knowledge or consent of their masters, amounted to three hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling annually.
They were making rapid strides to the entire possession of the country, when the Directors, whom the
?
