Who
were the parties?
were the parties?
Edmund Burke
During the
whole process, as often as any of these monstrous
interests fell into an arrear, (into which they were
continually falling,) the arrear, formed into a new
capital,t was added to the old, and the same interest
of twenty per cent accrued upon both. The Company, having got some scent of the enormous usury which prevailed at Madras, thought it necessary to
interfere, and to order all interests to be lowered to
ten per cent. This order, which contained no exception, though it by no means pointed particularly to this
class of debts, came like a thunderclap on the Nabob.
He considered his political credit as ruined; but to
* Nabob's letter to Governor Palk. Papers published by the Directors in 1775; and papers printed by the same authority, 1781.
t See papers printed by order of a General Court in 1780, pp. 222
and 224; as also Nabob's letter to Governor Dupre, 19th July, 1771:
" I have taken up loans by which I have suffered a loss of upwards
of a crore of pagodas [four millions sterling] by interest on an heavy interest. " Letter 15th January, 1772: "Notwithstanding I have taken much trouble, and have made many payments to my creditors, yet
the load of my debt, which became so great by interest and compound in.
terest, is not cleared. "
? ? ? ? 36 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
find a remedy to this unexpected evil, he again added
to the old principal twenty per cent interest accruing
for the last year. Thus a new fund was formed; and
it was on that accumulation of various principals,
and interests heaped upon interests, not on the sum
originally lent, as the right honorable gentleman
would make you believe, that ten per cent was settled on the whole.
When you consider the enormity of the interest at
which these debts were contracted, and the several interests added to the principal, I believe you will not think me so skeptical, if I should doubt whether for
this debt of 880,0001. the Nabob ever saw 100,0001.
in real money. The right honorable gentleman suspecting, with all his absolute dominion over fact, that he never will be able to defend even this venerable
patriarchal job, though sanctified by its numerous
issue, and hoary with prescriptive years, has recourse
to recrimination, the last resource of guilt. He says
that this loan of 1767 was provided for in Mr. Fox's
India bill; and judging of others by his own nature
and principles, he more than insinuates that this provision was made, not from any sense of merit in the claim, but from partiality to General Smith, a proprietor, and an agent for that debt. If partiality could have had any weight against justice and policy with
the then ministers and their friends, General Smith
had titles to it. But the right honorable gentleman
knows as well as I do, that General Smith was very
far from looking on himself as partially treated in the
arrangements of that time; indeed, what man dared
to hope for private partiality in that sacred plan for
relief to nations?
It is not necessary that the right honorable gentle
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 37
man should sarcastically call that time to our recollection. Well do I remember every circumstance of that memorable period. God forbid I should forget
it! 0 illustrious disgrace! 0 victorious defeat! May
your memorial be fresh and new to the latest generations! May the day of that generous conflict be stamped in characters never to be cancelled or worn
out from the records of time! Let no man hear of
us, who shall not hear, that, in a struggle against the
intrigues of courts and the perfidious levity of the
multitude, we fell in the cause of honor, in the cause
of our country, in the cause of human nature itself!
But if fortune should be as powerful over fame as
she has been prevalent over virtue, at least our conscience is beyond her jurisdiction. My poor share in the support of that great measure no man shall ravish
from me. It shall be safely lodged in the sanctuary
of my heart, - never, never to be torn from thence,
but with those holds that grapple it to life.
I say, I well remember that bill, and every one of
its honest and its wise provisions. It is not true that
this debt was ever protected or enforced, or any revenue whatsoever set apart for it. It was left in that bill just where it stood: to be paid or not to be paid
out of the Nabob's private treasures, according to his
own discretion. The Company had actually given it
their sanction, though always relying for its validity
on the sole security of the faith of him * who without
their knowledge or consent entered into the original
obligation. It had no other sanction; it ought to have
had no other. So far was Mr. Fox's bill from providing funds for it, as this ministry have wickedly done for this, and for ten times worse transactions, out of the
* The Nabob of Arcot.
? ? ? ? 38 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS.
public estate, that an express clause immediately preceded, positively forbidding any British subject from receiving assignments upon any part of the territorial
revenue, on any pretence whatsoever. *
You recollect, Mr. Speaker, that the Chancellor
of the Exchequer strongly professed to retain every
part of Mr. Fox's bill which was intended to prevent
abuse; bul in his India bill, which (let me do justice) is as able and skilful a performance, for its own purposes, as ever issued from the wit of man, premeditating this iniquity, -
Hoc ipsum ut strueret, Trojamque aperiret Achivis, -
expunged this essential clause, broke down the fence
which was raised to cover the public property against
the rapacity of his partisans, and thus levelling every
obstruction, he made a firm, broad highway for sin
and death, for usury and oppression, to renew their
ravages throughout the devoted revenues of the Carnatic.
The tenor, the policy, and the consequences of this
debt of 1767 are in the eyes of ministry so excellent, that its merits are irresistible; and it takes the
lead to give credit and countenance to all the rest.
Along with this chosen body of heavy-armed infantry,
and to support it in the line, the right honorable
gentleman has stationed his corps of black cavalry.
If there be any advantage between this debt and that
of 1769, according to him the cavalry debt has it.
It is not a subject of defence: it is a theme of panegyric. Listen to the right honorable gentleman, and
you will find it was contracted to save the country, -
to prevent mutiny in armies, -to introduce economy
* Appendix, No. 3.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 39
In revenues; and for. all these honorable purposes,
it originated at the express desire and by the representative authority of the Company itself.
First let me say a word to the authority. This
debt was contracted, not by the authority of the Company, not by its representatives, (as the right honorable gentleman has the unparalleled confidence to assert,) but in the ever-memorable period of 1777,
by the usurped power of those who rebelliously, in
conjunction with the Nabob of Arcot, had overturned
the lawful government of Madras. For that rebellion this House unanimously directed a public prosecution. The delinquents, after they had subverted government, in order to make to themselves a party
to support them in their power, are universally known
to have dealt jobs about to the right and to the left,
and to any who were willing to receive them. This
usurpation, which the right honorable gentleman well
knows was brought about by and for the great mass
of these pretended debts, is the authority which is
set up by him to represent the Company, -to represent that Company which, from the first moment
of their hearing of this corrupt and fraudulent transaction to this hour, have uniformly disowned and
disavowed it.
So much for the authority. As to the facts, partly. true, and partly colorable, as they stand recorded,
they are in substance these. The Nabob of Arcot,
as soon as he had thrown off the superiority of this
country by means of these creditors, kept up a great
army which he never paid. Of course his soldiers
were generally in a state of mutiny. * The usurping
Council say that they labored hard with their master,
* See Mr. Dundas's 1st, 2d, and 3d Reports.
? ? ? ? 40 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
the Nabob, to persuade him to reduce these mutinous
and useless troops. He consented; but, as usual,
pleaded inability to pay them their arrears. Here
was a difficulty. The Nabob had no money; the
Company had no money; every public supply was
empty. But there was one resource which no season
has ever yet dried up in that climate. The soucars
were at hand: that is, private English money-jobbers
offered their assistance. Messieurs Taylor, Majendie, and Call proposed to advance the small sum of
160,0001. to pay off the Nabob's black cavalry, provided the Company's authority was given for their
loan. This was the great point of policy always
aimed at, and pursued through a hundred devices by
the servants at Madras. The Presidency, who themselves had no authority for the functions they presumed to exercise, very readily gave the sanction of the Company to those servants who knew that the
Company, whose sanction was demanded, had positively prohibited all such transactions.
However, so far as the reality of the dealing goes,
all is hitherto fair and plausible; and here the right
honorable gentleman concludes, with commendable
prudence,. his account of the business. But here it
is I shall beg leave to commence my supplement:
for the gentleman's discreet modesty has led him to
cut the thread of the story somewhat abruptly. One
of the most essential parties is quite forgotten. Why
should the episode of the poor Nabob be omitted?
When that prince chooses it, nobody can tell his story
better. Excuse me, if I apply again to my book, and
give it you from the first hand: from the Nabob
himself.
" Mr. Stratton became acquainted with this, and
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 41
got Mr. Taylor and others to lend me four lacs of pagodas towards discharging the arrears of pay of my
troops. Upon this, I wrote a letter of thanks to Mr.
Stratton; and upon the faith of this money being
paid immediately, I ordered many of my troops to be
discharged by a certain day, and lessened the number of my servants. Mr. Taylor, &c. , some time after
acquainted me, that they had no ready money, but
they would grant teeps payable in four months. This
astonished me; for I did not know what might happen, when the sepoys were dismissed from my service. I begged of Mr. Taylor and the others to pay this sum to the officers of my regiments at the time
they mentioned; and desired the officers, at the same
time, to pacify and persuade the men belonging to
them that their pay would be given to them at the
end of four months, and that, till those arrears were
discharged, their pay should be continued to them.
Two years are nearly expired since that time, but Mr.
Taylor has not yet entirely discharged the arrears of
those troops, and I am obliged to continue their pay
from that time till this. I hoped to have been able,
by this expedient, to have lessened the number of my
troops, and discharged the arrears due to them, considering the trifle of interest to Mr. Taylor and the
others as no great matter; but instead of this, I am
oppressed with the burden of pay due to those troops,
and the interest, which is going on to Mr. Taylor from
the day the teeps were granted to him. " What I have
read to you is an extract of a letter from the Nabob
of the Carnatic to Governor Rumbold, dated the
22d, and received the 24th of March, 1779. *
Suppose his Highness not to be well broken in to
* See further Consultations, 3d February, 1778.
? ? ? ? 42 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
things of this kind, it must, indeed, surprise so known
and established a bond-vender as the Nabob of Arcot,
one who keeps himself the largest bond-warehouse
in the world, to find that he was now to receive in
kind: not to take money for his obligations, but to
give his bond in exchange for the bond of Messieurs
Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and to pay, besides, a
good, smart interest, legally twelve per cent, (in reality, perhaps, twenty or twenty-four per cent,) for this exchange of paper. But his troops were not to be
so paid, or so disbanded. They wanted bread, and
could not live by cutting and shuffling of bonds.
The Nabob still kept the troops in service, and was
obliged to continue, as you have seen, the whole expense to exonerate himself from which he became indebted to the soucars.
Had it stood here, the transaction would have been
of the most audacious strain of fraud and usury perhaps ever before discovered, whatever might have been practised and concealed. But the same authority (I mean the Nabob's) brings before you something, if possible, more striking. He states, that, for this
their paper, he immediately handed over to these
gentlemen something very different from paper, --
that is, the receipt of a territorial revenue, of which,
it seems, they continued as long in possession as the
Nabob himself continued in possession of anything.
Their payments, therefore, not being to commence
before the end of four months, and not being completed in two years, it must be presumed (unless they prove the contrary) that their payments to the Nabob
were made out of the revenues they had received from
his assignment. Thus they condescended to accumulate a debt of 160,0001. with an interest of twelve per
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 43
cent, in compensation for a lingering payment to the
Nabob of 160,0001. of his own money.
Still we have not the whole. About two years after
the assignment of those territorial revenues to these
gentlemen, the Nabob receives a remonstrance from
his chief manager in a principal province, of which
this is the tenor. " The entire revenue of those
districts is by your Highness's order set apart to
discharge the tunkaws [assignments] granted to the
Europeans. The gomastahs [agents] of Mr. Taylor
to Mr. De Fries are there in order to collect those
tunkaws; and as they receive all the revenue that is
collected, your Highness's troops have seven or eight
months' pay due, which they cannot receive, and are
thereby reduced to the greatest distress. In such
times it is highly necessary to provide for the sustenance of the troops, that they may be ready to exert themselves in the service of your Highness. "
Here, Sir, you see how these causes and effects act
upon one another. One body of troops mutinies for
want of pay; a debt is contracted to pay them; and
they still remain unpaid. A territory destined to pay
other troops is assigned for this debt; and these other
troops fall into the same state of indigence and mutiny with the first. Bond is paid by bond; arrear is turned into new arrear; usury engenders new usury;
mutiny, suspended in one quarter, starts up in another; until all the revenues and all the establishments are entangled into one inextricable knot of confusion,
from which they are only disengaged by being entirely
destroyed. In that state of confusion, in a very few
months after the date of the memorial I have just
read to you, things were found, when the Nabob's
troops, fainislled to feed English soucars, instead of
? ? ? ? 44 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
defending the country, joined the invaders, and deserted in entire bodies to Hyder Ali. *
The manner in which this transaction was carried
on shows that good examples are not easily forgot,
especially by those who are bred in a great school.
One of those splendid examples give me leave to
mention, at a somewhat more early period; because
one fraud furnishes light to the discovery of another,
and so on, until the whole secret of mysterious iniquity bursts upon you in a blaze of detection. The paper I shall read you is not on record. If you
please, you may take it on my word. It is a letter
written from one of undoubted information in Madras to Sir John Clavering, describing the practice that prevailed there, whilst the Company's allies were
under sale, during the time of Governor Winch's administration.
" One mode," says Clavering's correspondent, " of
amassing money at the Nabob's cost is curious. He
is generally in arrears to the Company. Here the
Governor, being cash-keeper, is generally on good
terms with the banker, who manages matters thus.
The Governor presses the Nabob for the balance due
from him; the Nabob flies to his banker for relief;
the banker engages to pay the money, and grants his
notes accordingly, which he puts in the cash-book as
ready money; the Nabob pays him an interest for it at
two and three per cent per mensern, till the tunkaws
he grants on the particular districts for it are paid.
Matters in the mean time are so managed that there
is no call for this money for the Company's service
* Mr. Dundas's 1st Report, pp. 26, 29, and Appendix, No. 2, 10,
18, for the mutinous state and desertion of the Nabob's troops for
want of pay. See also Report IV. of the salne committee.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 45
till the tunkaws become due. By this means not a
cash is advanced by the banker, though he receives a
heavy interest from the Nabob, which is divided as
lawful spoil. "
Here, Mr. Speaker, you have the whole art and
mystery, the true free-mason secret, of the profession
of soucaring; by which a few innocent, inexperienced
young Englishmen, such as Mr. Paul Benfield, for instance, without property upon which any one would lend to themselves a single shilling, are enabled at
once to take provinces in mortgage, to make princes
their debtors, and to become creditors for millions.
But it seems the right honorable gentleman's favorite soucar cavalry have proved the payment before the Mayor's Court at Madras! Have they so? Why,
then, defraud our anxiety and their characters of that
proof? Is it not enough that the charges which I
have laid before you have stood on record against
these poor injured gentlemen for eight years? Is it
not enough that they are in print by the orders of the
East India Company for five years? After these gentlemen have borne all the odium of this publication and all the indignation of the Directors with such
unexampled equanimity, now that they are at length
stimulated into feeling are you to deny them their
just relief? But will the right honorable gentleman
be pleased to tell us how they came not to give this
satisfaction to the Court of Directors, their lawful
masters, during all the eight years of this litigated
claim? Were they not bound, by every tie that can
bind man, to give them this satisfaction? This day,
for the first time, we hear of the proofs. But when
were these proofs offered? In what cause?
Who
were the parties? Who inspected, who contested this
? ? ? ? 46 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS.
belated account? Let us see something to oppose
to the body of record which appears against them.
The Mayor's Court! the Mayor's Court! Pleasant!
Does not the honorable gentleman know that the
first corps of creditors (the creditors of 1767) stated
it as a sort of hardship to them, that they could not
have justice at Madras, from the impossibility of their
supporting their claims in the Mayor's Court? Why?
Because, say they, the members of that court were
themselves creditors, and therefore could not sit as
judges. * Are we ripe to say that no creditor under
similar circumstances was member of the court, when
the payment which is the ground of this cavalry debt
was put in proof? t Nay, are we not in a manner
compelled to conclude that the court was so constituted, when we know there is scarcely a man in Madras who has not some participation in these transactions? It is a shame to hear such proofs mentioned, instead of the honest, vigorous scrutiny which the
circumstances of such an affair so indispensably call
for.
But his Majesty's ministers, indulgent enough to
other scrutinies, have not been satisfied with author* Memorial from the creditors to the Governor and Council, 22d January, 1770.
t In the year 1778, Mr. James Call, one of the proprietors of this
specific debt, was actually mayor. (Appendix to 2d Rceport of Mr. Dundas's committee, No. 65. ) The only proof which appeared on the inquiry instituted in the General Court of 1781 was an affidavit of the lenders themselves, deposing (what nobody ever denied) that they had engaged and agreed to pay-not that they had paid-the sum of 160,0001. This was two years after the transaction; and the affidavit
is made before George Proctor, mayor, an attorney for certain of the old creditors. - Proceedings of the President and Council of Fort St. George, 22d February, 1779.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 47
izing the payment of this demand without such inquiry as the act has prescribed; but they have added
the arrear of twelve per cent interest, from the year
1777 to the year 1784, to make a new capital, raising
thereby 160 to 294,0001. Then they charge a new
twelve per cent on the whole from that period, for a
transaction in which it will be a miracle if a single
penny will be ever found really advanced from the
private stock of the pretended creditors.
In this manner, and at such an interest, the ministers have thought proper to dispose of 294,0001. of the
public revenues, for what is called the Cavalry Loan.
After dispatching this, the right honorable gentleman
leads to battle his last grand division, the consolidated
debt of 1777. But having exhausted all his panegyric
on the two first, he has nothing at all to say in favor
of the last. On the contrary, he admits that it was
contracted in defiance of the Company's orders, without even the pretended sanction of any pretended
representatives. Nobody, indeed, has yet been found
hardy enough to stand forth avowedly in its defence.
But it is little to the credit of the age, that what has
not plausibility enough to find an advocate has influence enough to obtain a protector. Could any man
expect to find that protector anywhere? But what
must every man think, when he finds that protector
in the chairman of the Committee of Secrecy,* who
had published to the House, and to the world, the
facts that condemn these debts, the orders that forbid the incurring of them, the dreadful consequences which attended them? Even in his official letter, when he tramples on his Parliamentary report, yet his general language is the same. Read the pref* Right Honorable Henry Dundas.
? ? ? ? 48 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS:
ace to this part of the ministerial arrangement, and
you would imagine that this debt was to be crushed,
with all the weight of indignation which could fall
from a vigilant guardian of the public treasury upon
those who attempted to rob it. What must be felt by
every man who has feeling, when, after such a thundering preamble of condemnation, this debt is ordered
to be paid without any sort of inquiry into its authenticity, -- without a single step taken to settle even
the amount of the demand, - without an attempt
so much as to ascertain the real persons claiming
a sum which rises in the accounts from one million
three hundred thousand pound sterling to two million
four hundred thousand pound, principal money,* --
without an attempt made to ascertain the proprietors,
of whom no list has ever yet been laid before the
Court of Directors, - of proprietors who are known to
be in a collusive shuffle, by which they never appear
to be the same in any two lists handed about for
their own particular purposes?
My honorable friend who made you the motion
has sufficiently exposed the nature of this debt. He
has stated to you, that its own agents, in the year
1781, in the arrangement they proposed to make at
Calcutta, were satisfied to have twenty-five per cent
at once struck off from the capital of a great part of
this debt, and prayed to have a provision made for
this reduced principal, without any interest at all.
This was an arrangement of their own, an arrangement made by those who best knew the true constitution of their own debt, who knew how little favor it merited,t and how little hopes they had to find any
* Appendix to the 4th Report of Mr. Dundas's committee, No 15.
t' "No sense of the common danger, in case of a war, can prevail
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 49
persons in authority abandoned enough to support it
as it stood.
But what corrupt men, in the fond imaginations
of a sanguine avarice, had not the confidence to propose, they have found a Chancellor of the Exchequer
in England hardy enough to undertake for them.
He has cheered their drooping spirits. He has
thanked the peculators for not despairing of their
commonwealth. He has told them they were too
modest. He has replaced the twenty-five per cent
which, in order to lighten themselves, they had abandoned in their conscious terror. Instead of cutting off
the interest, as they had themselves consented to do,
with the fourth of the capital, he has added the whole
growth of four years' usury of twelve per cent to
the first overgrown principal; and has again grafted
on this meliorated stock a perpetual annuity of six
per cent, to take place from the year 1781. Let no
man hereafter talk of the decaying energies of Nature.
All the acts and monuments in the records of peculation, the consolidated corruption of ages, the patterns
of exemplary plunder in the heroic times of Roman
iniquity, never equalled the gigantic corruption of
this single act. Never did Nero, in all the insolent
on him [the Nabob of Arcot] to furnish the Company with what is
absolutely necessary to assemble an army, though it is beyond a
doubt that money to a large amount is now hoarded up in his coffcrs at Chepauk; and tunkaws are granted to individuals, upon some of his most valuable countries, for payment of part of those debts which
he has contracted, and which certainly will not bear inspection, as neither
debtor nor creditors have ever had the confidence to submit the accounts to
our examination, though they expressed a wish to consolidate the
debts under the auspices of this government, agreeably to a plan
they had formed. " - Madras Consultations, 20th July, 1778. Mr.
Dundas's Appendix to 2nd Report, 143. See also last Appendix to
ditto Report, No. 376, B.
VOL. III. 4
? ? ? ? 50 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. prodigality of despotism, deal out to his praetorian guards a donation fit to be named with the largess showered down by the bounty of our Chancellor of the Exchequer on the faithful band of his Indian sepoys.
The right honorable gentleman* lets you freely
and voluntarily into the whole transaction. So perfectly has his conduct confounded his understanding, that he fairly tells you that through the course
of the whole business he has never conferred with
any but the agents of the pretended creditors. After this, do you want more to establish a secret
understanding with the parties, -- to fix, beyond a
doubt, their collusion and participation in a common
fraud?
If this were not enough, he has furnished you with
other presumptions that are not to be shaken. It is
one of the known indications of guilt to stagger and
prevaricate in a story, and to vary in the motives
that are assigned to conduct. Try these ministers
by this rule. In their official dispatch, they tell the
Presidency of Madras that they have established the
debt for two reasons: first, because the Nabob (the
party indebted) does not dispute it; secondly, because it is mischievous to keep it longer afloat,
and that the payment of the European creditors will
promote circulation in the country. These two motives (for the plainest reasons in the world) the right
honorable gentleman has this day thought fit totally
to abandon. In the first place, he rejects the authority of the Nabob of Arcot. It would, indeed, be pleasant to see him adhere to this exploded testimony. He next, upon grounds equally solid, abandons the
* Mr. Dundas.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 51
benefits of that circulation which was to be produced
by drawing out all the juices of the body. Laying
aside, or forgetting, these pretences of his dispatch,
he has just now assumed a principle totally different,
but to the full as extraordinary. He proceeds upon
a supposition that many of the claims may be fictitious. He then finds, that, in a case where many
valid and many fraudulent claims are blended together, the best course for their discrimination is
indiscriminately to establish them all. He trusts,
(I suppose,) as there may not be a fund sufficient
for every description of creditors, that the best warranted claimants will exert themselves in bringing
to light those debts which will not bear an inquiry.
What he will not do himself he is persuaded will
be done by others; and for this purpose he leaves to
any person a general power of excepting to the debt.
This total change of language and prevarication in
principle is enough, if it stood alone, to fix the presumption of unfair dealing. His dispatch assigns
motives of policy, concord, trade, and circulation:
his speech proclaims discord and litigations, and proposes, as the ultimate end, detection.
But he may shift his reasons, and wind and turn
as he will, confusion waits him at all his doubles.
Who will undertake this detection? Will the Nabob? But the right honorable gentleman has himself this moment told us that no prince of the country can by any motive be prevailed upon to
discover any fraud that is practised upon him by
the Company's servants. He says what (with the
exception of the complaint against the Cavalry Loan)
all the world knows to be true: and without that
prince's concurrence, what evidence can be had of
? ? ? ? 52 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
the fraud of any the smallest of these demands?
The ministers never authorized any person to enter
into his exchequer and to search his records. Why,
then, this shameful and insulting mockery of a pretended contest? Already contests for a preference have arisen among these rival bond-creditors. Has
not the Company itself struggled for a preference for
years, without any attempt at detection of the nature
of those debts with which they contended? Well is
the Nabob of Arcot attended to in the only specific
complaint he has ever made. He complained of unfair dealing in the Cavalry Loan. It is fixed upon him with interest on interest; and this loan is excepted from all power of litigation.
This day, and not before, the right honorable gentleman thinks that the general establishment of all claims is the surest way of laying open the fraud of
some of them. In India this is a reach of deep policy. But what would be thought of this mode of acting on a demand upon the Treasury in England?
Instead of all this cunning, is there not one plain
way open,- that is, to put the burden of the proof on
those who make the demand? Ought not ministry
to have said to the creditors, " The person who admits your debt stands excepted to as evidence; he
stands charged as a collusive party, to hand over the
public revenues to you for sinister purposes. You
say, you have a demand of some millions on the Indian Treasury; prove that you have acted by lawful
authority; prove, at least, that your money has been
bond fide advanced; entitle yourself to my protection by the fairness and fulness of the communications you make"? Did an honest creditor ever refuse that reasonable and honest test?
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 53
There is little doubt that several individuals have
been seduced by the purveyors to the Nabob of Arcot to put their money (perhaps the whole of honest
and laborious earnings) into their hands, and that at
such high interest as, being condemned at law, leaves
them at the mercy of the great managers whom they
trusted. These seduced creditors are probably persons of no power or interest either in England or India, and may be just objects of compassion. By taking, in this arrangement, no measures for discrimination and discovery, the fraudulent and the fair are in the first instance confounded in one mass. The subsequent selection and distribution is left to the Nabob.
With him the agents and instruments of his corruption, whom he sees to be omnipotent in England, and
who may serve him in future, as they have done in
times past, will have precedence, if not an exclusive
preference. These leading interests domineer, and
have always domineered, over the whole. By this
arrangement, the persons seduced are made dependent on their seducers; honesty (comparative honesty
at least) must become of the party of fraud, and
must quit its proper character and its just claims, to
entitle itself to the alms of bribery and peculation.
But be these English creditors what they may, the
creditors most certainly not fraudulent are the natives, who are numerous and wretched indeed: by
exhausting the whole revenues of the Carnatic, nothing is left for them. They lent bond fide; in all probability they were even forced to lend, or to give goods
and service for the Nabob's obligations. They had no
trusts to carry to his market. They had no faith ot
alliances to sell. They had no nations to betray to
robbery and ruin. They had no lawful government
? ? ? ? 54 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
seditiously to overturn; nor had they a governor, to
whom it is owing that you exist in India, to deliver
over to captivity, and to death in a shameful prison. *
These were the merits of the principal part of the
debt of 1777, and the universally conceived causes
of its growth; and thus the unhappy natives are deprived of every hope of payment for their real debts, to make provision for the arrears of unsatisfied bribery and treason. You see in this instance that the presumption of guilt is not only no exception to the
demands on the public treasury, but with these ministers it is a necessary condition to their support. But that you may not think this preference solely
owing to their known contempt of the natives, who
ought with every generous mind to claim their first
charities, you will find the same rule religiously
observed with Europeans too. Attend, Sir, to this
decisive case. Since the beginning of the war, besides arrears of every kind, a bond-debt has been contracted at Madras, uncertain in its amount, but
represented from four hundred thousand pound to
a million sterling. It stands only at the low interest
of eight per cent. Of the legal authority on which
this debt was contracted, of its purposes for the very
being of the state, of its publicity and fairness, no
doubt has been entertained for a moment. For this
debt no sort of provision whatever has been made.
It is rejected as an outcast, whilst the whole undissipated attention of the minister has been employed for the discharge of claims entitled to his favor by
the merits we have seen.
I have endeavored to find out, if possible, the
amount of the whole of those demands, in order to
* Lord Pigot.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 55
see how much, supposing the country in a condition
to furnish the fund, may remain to satisfy the public
debt and the necessary establishments. But I have
been foiled in my attempt.
About one fourth, that is, about 220,0001. , of the
loan of 1767 remains unpaid. How much interest is
in arrear I could never discover: seven or eight years'
at least, which would make the whole of that debt
about 396,0001. This stock, which the ministers in
their instructions to the Governor of Madras state as
the least exceptionable, they have thought proper to
distinguish by a marked severity, leaving it the only
one on which the interest is not added to the principal
to beget a new interest.
The Cavalry Loan, by the operation of the same authority, is made up to 294,0001. ; and this 294,0001. , made up of principal and interest, is crowned with a
new interest of twelve per cent.
What the grand loan, the bribery loan of 1777,
may be is amongst the deepest mysteries of state.
It is probably the first debt ever assuming the title
of Consolidation that did not express what the amount
of the sum consolidated was. It is little less than a
contradiction in terms. In the debt of the year 1767
the sum was stated in the act of consolidation, and
made to amount to 880,0001. capital. When this
consolidation of 1777 was first announced at the Durbar, it was represented authentically at 2,400,0001. In that, or rather in a higher state, Sir Thomas Rumbold found and condemned it. * It afterwards fell
* In Sir Thomas Rumbold's letter to the Court of Directors,
March 15th, 1778, he represents it as higher, in the following manner:
-" How shall I paint to you my astonishment, on my arrival here,
when I was informed, that, independent of this four lacs of pagodas
? ? ? ? 56 SPEECH ON THE. NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
into such a terror as to sweat away a million of its
weight at once; and it sunk to 1,400,0001. * However, it never was without a resource for recruiting it
to its old plumpness. There was a sort of floating
debt of about four or five hundred thousand pounds
more ready to be added, as occasion should require.
In short, when you pressed this sensitive-plant, it
always contracted its dimensions. When the rude
hand of inquiry was withdrawn, it expanded in all
the luxuriant vigor of its original vegetation. In the
treaty of 1781, the whole of the Nabob's debt to private Europeans is by Mr. Sulivan, agent to the Nabob and his creditors, stated at 2,800,0001. , which, if
the Cavalry Loan and the remains of the debt of 1767
be subtracted, leaves it nearly at the amount originally declared at the Durbar in 1777: but then
[the Cavalry Loan], independent of the Nabob's debt to his old creditors, and the money due to the Company, he had contracted a debt
to the enormous amount of sixty-three lacs of pagodas [2,520,0001. ].
whole process, as often as any of these monstrous
interests fell into an arrear, (into which they were
continually falling,) the arrear, formed into a new
capital,t was added to the old, and the same interest
of twenty per cent accrued upon both. The Company, having got some scent of the enormous usury which prevailed at Madras, thought it necessary to
interfere, and to order all interests to be lowered to
ten per cent. This order, which contained no exception, though it by no means pointed particularly to this
class of debts, came like a thunderclap on the Nabob.
He considered his political credit as ruined; but to
* Nabob's letter to Governor Palk. Papers published by the Directors in 1775; and papers printed by the same authority, 1781.
t See papers printed by order of a General Court in 1780, pp. 222
and 224; as also Nabob's letter to Governor Dupre, 19th July, 1771:
" I have taken up loans by which I have suffered a loss of upwards
of a crore of pagodas [four millions sterling] by interest on an heavy interest. " Letter 15th January, 1772: "Notwithstanding I have taken much trouble, and have made many payments to my creditors, yet
the load of my debt, which became so great by interest and compound in.
terest, is not cleared. "
? ? ? ? 36 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
find a remedy to this unexpected evil, he again added
to the old principal twenty per cent interest accruing
for the last year. Thus a new fund was formed; and
it was on that accumulation of various principals,
and interests heaped upon interests, not on the sum
originally lent, as the right honorable gentleman
would make you believe, that ten per cent was settled on the whole.
When you consider the enormity of the interest at
which these debts were contracted, and the several interests added to the principal, I believe you will not think me so skeptical, if I should doubt whether for
this debt of 880,0001. the Nabob ever saw 100,0001.
in real money. The right honorable gentleman suspecting, with all his absolute dominion over fact, that he never will be able to defend even this venerable
patriarchal job, though sanctified by its numerous
issue, and hoary with prescriptive years, has recourse
to recrimination, the last resource of guilt. He says
that this loan of 1767 was provided for in Mr. Fox's
India bill; and judging of others by his own nature
and principles, he more than insinuates that this provision was made, not from any sense of merit in the claim, but from partiality to General Smith, a proprietor, and an agent for that debt. If partiality could have had any weight against justice and policy with
the then ministers and their friends, General Smith
had titles to it. But the right honorable gentleman
knows as well as I do, that General Smith was very
far from looking on himself as partially treated in the
arrangements of that time; indeed, what man dared
to hope for private partiality in that sacred plan for
relief to nations?
It is not necessary that the right honorable gentle
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 37
man should sarcastically call that time to our recollection. Well do I remember every circumstance of that memorable period. God forbid I should forget
it! 0 illustrious disgrace! 0 victorious defeat! May
your memorial be fresh and new to the latest generations! May the day of that generous conflict be stamped in characters never to be cancelled or worn
out from the records of time! Let no man hear of
us, who shall not hear, that, in a struggle against the
intrigues of courts and the perfidious levity of the
multitude, we fell in the cause of honor, in the cause
of our country, in the cause of human nature itself!
But if fortune should be as powerful over fame as
she has been prevalent over virtue, at least our conscience is beyond her jurisdiction. My poor share in the support of that great measure no man shall ravish
from me. It shall be safely lodged in the sanctuary
of my heart, - never, never to be torn from thence,
but with those holds that grapple it to life.
I say, I well remember that bill, and every one of
its honest and its wise provisions. It is not true that
this debt was ever protected or enforced, or any revenue whatsoever set apart for it. It was left in that bill just where it stood: to be paid or not to be paid
out of the Nabob's private treasures, according to his
own discretion. The Company had actually given it
their sanction, though always relying for its validity
on the sole security of the faith of him * who without
their knowledge or consent entered into the original
obligation. It had no other sanction; it ought to have
had no other. So far was Mr. Fox's bill from providing funds for it, as this ministry have wickedly done for this, and for ten times worse transactions, out of the
* The Nabob of Arcot.
? ? ? ? 38 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS.
public estate, that an express clause immediately preceded, positively forbidding any British subject from receiving assignments upon any part of the territorial
revenue, on any pretence whatsoever. *
You recollect, Mr. Speaker, that the Chancellor
of the Exchequer strongly professed to retain every
part of Mr. Fox's bill which was intended to prevent
abuse; bul in his India bill, which (let me do justice) is as able and skilful a performance, for its own purposes, as ever issued from the wit of man, premeditating this iniquity, -
Hoc ipsum ut strueret, Trojamque aperiret Achivis, -
expunged this essential clause, broke down the fence
which was raised to cover the public property against
the rapacity of his partisans, and thus levelling every
obstruction, he made a firm, broad highway for sin
and death, for usury and oppression, to renew their
ravages throughout the devoted revenues of the Carnatic.
The tenor, the policy, and the consequences of this
debt of 1767 are in the eyes of ministry so excellent, that its merits are irresistible; and it takes the
lead to give credit and countenance to all the rest.
Along with this chosen body of heavy-armed infantry,
and to support it in the line, the right honorable
gentleman has stationed his corps of black cavalry.
If there be any advantage between this debt and that
of 1769, according to him the cavalry debt has it.
It is not a subject of defence: it is a theme of panegyric. Listen to the right honorable gentleman, and
you will find it was contracted to save the country, -
to prevent mutiny in armies, -to introduce economy
* Appendix, No. 3.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 39
In revenues; and for. all these honorable purposes,
it originated at the express desire and by the representative authority of the Company itself.
First let me say a word to the authority. This
debt was contracted, not by the authority of the Company, not by its representatives, (as the right honorable gentleman has the unparalleled confidence to assert,) but in the ever-memorable period of 1777,
by the usurped power of those who rebelliously, in
conjunction with the Nabob of Arcot, had overturned
the lawful government of Madras. For that rebellion this House unanimously directed a public prosecution. The delinquents, after they had subverted government, in order to make to themselves a party
to support them in their power, are universally known
to have dealt jobs about to the right and to the left,
and to any who were willing to receive them. This
usurpation, which the right honorable gentleman well
knows was brought about by and for the great mass
of these pretended debts, is the authority which is
set up by him to represent the Company, -to represent that Company which, from the first moment
of their hearing of this corrupt and fraudulent transaction to this hour, have uniformly disowned and
disavowed it.
So much for the authority. As to the facts, partly. true, and partly colorable, as they stand recorded,
they are in substance these. The Nabob of Arcot,
as soon as he had thrown off the superiority of this
country by means of these creditors, kept up a great
army which he never paid. Of course his soldiers
were generally in a state of mutiny. * The usurping
Council say that they labored hard with their master,
* See Mr. Dundas's 1st, 2d, and 3d Reports.
? ? ? ? 40 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
the Nabob, to persuade him to reduce these mutinous
and useless troops. He consented; but, as usual,
pleaded inability to pay them their arrears. Here
was a difficulty. The Nabob had no money; the
Company had no money; every public supply was
empty. But there was one resource which no season
has ever yet dried up in that climate. The soucars
were at hand: that is, private English money-jobbers
offered their assistance. Messieurs Taylor, Majendie, and Call proposed to advance the small sum of
160,0001. to pay off the Nabob's black cavalry, provided the Company's authority was given for their
loan. This was the great point of policy always
aimed at, and pursued through a hundred devices by
the servants at Madras. The Presidency, who themselves had no authority for the functions they presumed to exercise, very readily gave the sanction of the Company to those servants who knew that the
Company, whose sanction was demanded, had positively prohibited all such transactions.
However, so far as the reality of the dealing goes,
all is hitherto fair and plausible; and here the right
honorable gentleman concludes, with commendable
prudence,. his account of the business. But here it
is I shall beg leave to commence my supplement:
for the gentleman's discreet modesty has led him to
cut the thread of the story somewhat abruptly. One
of the most essential parties is quite forgotten. Why
should the episode of the poor Nabob be omitted?
When that prince chooses it, nobody can tell his story
better. Excuse me, if I apply again to my book, and
give it you from the first hand: from the Nabob
himself.
" Mr. Stratton became acquainted with this, and
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 41
got Mr. Taylor and others to lend me four lacs of pagodas towards discharging the arrears of pay of my
troops. Upon this, I wrote a letter of thanks to Mr.
Stratton; and upon the faith of this money being
paid immediately, I ordered many of my troops to be
discharged by a certain day, and lessened the number of my servants. Mr. Taylor, &c. , some time after
acquainted me, that they had no ready money, but
they would grant teeps payable in four months. This
astonished me; for I did not know what might happen, when the sepoys were dismissed from my service. I begged of Mr. Taylor and the others to pay this sum to the officers of my regiments at the time
they mentioned; and desired the officers, at the same
time, to pacify and persuade the men belonging to
them that their pay would be given to them at the
end of four months, and that, till those arrears were
discharged, their pay should be continued to them.
Two years are nearly expired since that time, but Mr.
Taylor has not yet entirely discharged the arrears of
those troops, and I am obliged to continue their pay
from that time till this. I hoped to have been able,
by this expedient, to have lessened the number of my
troops, and discharged the arrears due to them, considering the trifle of interest to Mr. Taylor and the
others as no great matter; but instead of this, I am
oppressed with the burden of pay due to those troops,
and the interest, which is going on to Mr. Taylor from
the day the teeps were granted to him. " What I have
read to you is an extract of a letter from the Nabob
of the Carnatic to Governor Rumbold, dated the
22d, and received the 24th of March, 1779. *
Suppose his Highness not to be well broken in to
* See further Consultations, 3d February, 1778.
? ? ? ? 42 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
things of this kind, it must, indeed, surprise so known
and established a bond-vender as the Nabob of Arcot,
one who keeps himself the largest bond-warehouse
in the world, to find that he was now to receive in
kind: not to take money for his obligations, but to
give his bond in exchange for the bond of Messieurs
Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and to pay, besides, a
good, smart interest, legally twelve per cent, (in reality, perhaps, twenty or twenty-four per cent,) for this exchange of paper. But his troops were not to be
so paid, or so disbanded. They wanted bread, and
could not live by cutting and shuffling of bonds.
The Nabob still kept the troops in service, and was
obliged to continue, as you have seen, the whole expense to exonerate himself from which he became indebted to the soucars.
Had it stood here, the transaction would have been
of the most audacious strain of fraud and usury perhaps ever before discovered, whatever might have been practised and concealed. But the same authority (I mean the Nabob's) brings before you something, if possible, more striking. He states, that, for this
their paper, he immediately handed over to these
gentlemen something very different from paper, --
that is, the receipt of a territorial revenue, of which,
it seems, they continued as long in possession as the
Nabob himself continued in possession of anything.
Their payments, therefore, not being to commence
before the end of four months, and not being completed in two years, it must be presumed (unless they prove the contrary) that their payments to the Nabob
were made out of the revenues they had received from
his assignment. Thus they condescended to accumulate a debt of 160,0001. with an interest of twelve per
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 43
cent, in compensation for a lingering payment to the
Nabob of 160,0001. of his own money.
Still we have not the whole. About two years after
the assignment of those territorial revenues to these
gentlemen, the Nabob receives a remonstrance from
his chief manager in a principal province, of which
this is the tenor. " The entire revenue of those
districts is by your Highness's order set apart to
discharge the tunkaws [assignments] granted to the
Europeans. The gomastahs [agents] of Mr. Taylor
to Mr. De Fries are there in order to collect those
tunkaws; and as they receive all the revenue that is
collected, your Highness's troops have seven or eight
months' pay due, which they cannot receive, and are
thereby reduced to the greatest distress. In such
times it is highly necessary to provide for the sustenance of the troops, that they may be ready to exert themselves in the service of your Highness. "
Here, Sir, you see how these causes and effects act
upon one another. One body of troops mutinies for
want of pay; a debt is contracted to pay them; and
they still remain unpaid. A territory destined to pay
other troops is assigned for this debt; and these other
troops fall into the same state of indigence and mutiny with the first. Bond is paid by bond; arrear is turned into new arrear; usury engenders new usury;
mutiny, suspended in one quarter, starts up in another; until all the revenues and all the establishments are entangled into one inextricable knot of confusion,
from which they are only disengaged by being entirely
destroyed. In that state of confusion, in a very few
months after the date of the memorial I have just
read to you, things were found, when the Nabob's
troops, fainislled to feed English soucars, instead of
? ? ? ? 44 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
defending the country, joined the invaders, and deserted in entire bodies to Hyder Ali. *
The manner in which this transaction was carried
on shows that good examples are not easily forgot,
especially by those who are bred in a great school.
One of those splendid examples give me leave to
mention, at a somewhat more early period; because
one fraud furnishes light to the discovery of another,
and so on, until the whole secret of mysterious iniquity bursts upon you in a blaze of detection. The paper I shall read you is not on record. If you
please, you may take it on my word. It is a letter
written from one of undoubted information in Madras to Sir John Clavering, describing the practice that prevailed there, whilst the Company's allies were
under sale, during the time of Governor Winch's administration.
" One mode," says Clavering's correspondent, " of
amassing money at the Nabob's cost is curious. He
is generally in arrears to the Company. Here the
Governor, being cash-keeper, is generally on good
terms with the banker, who manages matters thus.
The Governor presses the Nabob for the balance due
from him; the Nabob flies to his banker for relief;
the banker engages to pay the money, and grants his
notes accordingly, which he puts in the cash-book as
ready money; the Nabob pays him an interest for it at
two and three per cent per mensern, till the tunkaws
he grants on the particular districts for it are paid.
Matters in the mean time are so managed that there
is no call for this money for the Company's service
* Mr. Dundas's 1st Report, pp. 26, 29, and Appendix, No. 2, 10,
18, for the mutinous state and desertion of the Nabob's troops for
want of pay. See also Report IV. of the salne committee.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 45
till the tunkaws become due. By this means not a
cash is advanced by the banker, though he receives a
heavy interest from the Nabob, which is divided as
lawful spoil. "
Here, Mr. Speaker, you have the whole art and
mystery, the true free-mason secret, of the profession
of soucaring; by which a few innocent, inexperienced
young Englishmen, such as Mr. Paul Benfield, for instance, without property upon which any one would lend to themselves a single shilling, are enabled at
once to take provinces in mortgage, to make princes
their debtors, and to become creditors for millions.
But it seems the right honorable gentleman's favorite soucar cavalry have proved the payment before the Mayor's Court at Madras! Have they so? Why,
then, defraud our anxiety and their characters of that
proof? Is it not enough that the charges which I
have laid before you have stood on record against
these poor injured gentlemen for eight years? Is it
not enough that they are in print by the orders of the
East India Company for five years? After these gentlemen have borne all the odium of this publication and all the indignation of the Directors with such
unexampled equanimity, now that they are at length
stimulated into feeling are you to deny them their
just relief? But will the right honorable gentleman
be pleased to tell us how they came not to give this
satisfaction to the Court of Directors, their lawful
masters, during all the eight years of this litigated
claim? Were they not bound, by every tie that can
bind man, to give them this satisfaction? This day,
for the first time, we hear of the proofs. But when
were these proofs offered? In what cause?
Who
were the parties? Who inspected, who contested this
? ? ? ? 46 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS.
belated account? Let us see something to oppose
to the body of record which appears against them.
The Mayor's Court! the Mayor's Court! Pleasant!
Does not the honorable gentleman know that the
first corps of creditors (the creditors of 1767) stated
it as a sort of hardship to them, that they could not
have justice at Madras, from the impossibility of their
supporting their claims in the Mayor's Court? Why?
Because, say they, the members of that court were
themselves creditors, and therefore could not sit as
judges. * Are we ripe to say that no creditor under
similar circumstances was member of the court, when
the payment which is the ground of this cavalry debt
was put in proof? t Nay, are we not in a manner
compelled to conclude that the court was so constituted, when we know there is scarcely a man in Madras who has not some participation in these transactions? It is a shame to hear such proofs mentioned, instead of the honest, vigorous scrutiny which the
circumstances of such an affair so indispensably call
for.
But his Majesty's ministers, indulgent enough to
other scrutinies, have not been satisfied with author* Memorial from the creditors to the Governor and Council, 22d January, 1770.
t In the year 1778, Mr. James Call, one of the proprietors of this
specific debt, was actually mayor. (Appendix to 2d Rceport of Mr. Dundas's committee, No. 65. ) The only proof which appeared on the inquiry instituted in the General Court of 1781 was an affidavit of the lenders themselves, deposing (what nobody ever denied) that they had engaged and agreed to pay-not that they had paid-the sum of 160,0001. This was two years after the transaction; and the affidavit
is made before George Proctor, mayor, an attorney for certain of the old creditors. - Proceedings of the President and Council of Fort St. George, 22d February, 1779.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 47
izing the payment of this demand without such inquiry as the act has prescribed; but they have added
the arrear of twelve per cent interest, from the year
1777 to the year 1784, to make a new capital, raising
thereby 160 to 294,0001. Then they charge a new
twelve per cent on the whole from that period, for a
transaction in which it will be a miracle if a single
penny will be ever found really advanced from the
private stock of the pretended creditors.
In this manner, and at such an interest, the ministers have thought proper to dispose of 294,0001. of the
public revenues, for what is called the Cavalry Loan.
After dispatching this, the right honorable gentleman
leads to battle his last grand division, the consolidated
debt of 1777. But having exhausted all his panegyric
on the two first, he has nothing at all to say in favor
of the last. On the contrary, he admits that it was
contracted in defiance of the Company's orders, without even the pretended sanction of any pretended
representatives. Nobody, indeed, has yet been found
hardy enough to stand forth avowedly in its defence.
But it is little to the credit of the age, that what has
not plausibility enough to find an advocate has influence enough to obtain a protector. Could any man
expect to find that protector anywhere? But what
must every man think, when he finds that protector
in the chairman of the Committee of Secrecy,* who
had published to the House, and to the world, the
facts that condemn these debts, the orders that forbid the incurring of them, the dreadful consequences which attended them? Even in his official letter, when he tramples on his Parliamentary report, yet his general language is the same. Read the pref* Right Honorable Henry Dundas.
? ? ? ? 48 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS:
ace to this part of the ministerial arrangement, and
you would imagine that this debt was to be crushed,
with all the weight of indignation which could fall
from a vigilant guardian of the public treasury upon
those who attempted to rob it. What must be felt by
every man who has feeling, when, after such a thundering preamble of condemnation, this debt is ordered
to be paid without any sort of inquiry into its authenticity, -- without a single step taken to settle even
the amount of the demand, - without an attempt
so much as to ascertain the real persons claiming
a sum which rises in the accounts from one million
three hundred thousand pound sterling to two million
four hundred thousand pound, principal money,* --
without an attempt made to ascertain the proprietors,
of whom no list has ever yet been laid before the
Court of Directors, - of proprietors who are known to
be in a collusive shuffle, by which they never appear
to be the same in any two lists handed about for
their own particular purposes?
My honorable friend who made you the motion
has sufficiently exposed the nature of this debt. He
has stated to you, that its own agents, in the year
1781, in the arrangement they proposed to make at
Calcutta, were satisfied to have twenty-five per cent
at once struck off from the capital of a great part of
this debt, and prayed to have a provision made for
this reduced principal, without any interest at all.
This was an arrangement of their own, an arrangement made by those who best knew the true constitution of their own debt, who knew how little favor it merited,t and how little hopes they had to find any
* Appendix to the 4th Report of Mr. Dundas's committee, No 15.
t' "No sense of the common danger, in case of a war, can prevail
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 49
persons in authority abandoned enough to support it
as it stood.
But what corrupt men, in the fond imaginations
of a sanguine avarice, had not the confidence to propose, they have found a Chancellor of the Exchequer
in England hardy enough to undertake for them.
He has cheered their drooping spirits. He has
thanked the peculators for not despairing of their
commonwealth. He has told them they were too
modest. He has replaced the twenty-five per cent
which, in order to lighten themselves, they had abandoned in their conscious terror. Instead of cutting off
the interest, as they had themselves consented to do,
with the fourth of the capital, he has added the whole
growth of four years' usury of twelve per cent to
the first overgrown principal; and has again grafted
on this meliorated stock a perpetual annuity of six
per cent, to take place from the year 1781. Let no
man hereafter talk of the decaying energies of Nature.
All the acts and monuments in the records of peculation, the consolidated corruption of ages, the patterns
of exemplary plunder in the heroic times of Roman
iniquity, never equalled the gigantic corruption of
this single act. Never did Nero, in all the insolent
on him [the Nabob of Arcot] to furnish the Company with what is
absolutely necessary to assemble an army, though it is beyond a
doubt that money to a large amount is now hoarded up in his coffcrs at Chepauk; and tunkaws are granted to individuals, upon some of his most valuable countries, for payment of part of those debts which
he has contracted, and which certainly will not bear inspection, as neither
debtor nor creditors have ever had the confidence to submit the accounts to
our examination, though they expressed a wish to consolidate the
debts under the auspices of this government, agreeably to a plan
they had formed. " - Madras Consultations, 20th July, 1778. Mr.
Dundas's Appendix to 2nd Report, 143. See also last Appendix to
ditto Report, No. 376, B.
VOL. III. 4
? ? ? ? 50 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. prodigality of despotism, deal out to his praetorian guards a donation fit to be named with the largess showered down by the bounty of our Chancellor of the Exchequer on the faithful band of his Indian sepoys.
The right honorable gentleman* lets you freely
and voluntarily into the whole transaction. So perfectly has his conduct confounded his understanding, that he fairly tells you that through the course
of the whole business he has never conferred with
any but the agents of the pretended creditors. After this, do you want more to establish a secret
understanding with the parties, -- to fix, beyond a
doubt, their collusion and participation in a common
fraud?
If this were not enough, he has furnished you with
other presumptions that are not to be shaken. It is
one of the known indications of guilt to stagger and
prevaricate in a story, and to vary in the motives
that are assigned to conduct. Try these ministers
by this rule. In their official dispatch, they tell the
Presidency of Madras that they have established the
debt for two reasons: first, because the Nabob (the
party indebted) does not dispute it; secondly, because it is mischievous to keep it longer afloat,
and that the payment of the European creditors will
promote circulation in the country. These two motives (for the plainest reasons in the world) the right
honorable gentleman has this day thought fit totally
to abandon. In the first place, he rejects the authority of the Nabob of Arcot. It would, indeed, be pleasant to see him adhere to this exploded testimony. He next, upon grounds equally solid, abandons the
* Mr. Dundas.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 51
benefits of that circulation which was to be produced
by drawing out all the juices of the body. Laying
aside, or forgetting, these pretences of his dispatch,
he has just now assumed a principle totally different,
but to the full as extraordinary. He proceeds upon
a supposition that many of the claims may be fictitious. He then finds, that, in a case where many
valid and many fraudulent claims are blended together, the best course for their discrimination is
indiscriminately to establish them all. He trusts,
(I suppose,) as there may not be a fund sufficient
for every description of creditors, that the best warranted claimants will exert themselves in bringing
to light those debts which will not bear an inquiry.
What he will not do himself he is persuaded will
be done by others; and for this purpose he leaves to
any person a general power of excepting to the debt.
This total change of language and prevarication in
principle is enough, if it stood alone, to fix the presumption of unfair dealing. His dispatch assigns
motives of policy, concord, trade, and circulation:
his speech proclaims discord and litigations, and proposes, as the ultimate end, detection.
But he may shift his reasons, and wind and turn
as he will, confusion waits him at all his doubles.
Who will undertake this detection? Will the Nabob? But the right honorable gentleman has himself this moment told us that no prince of the country can by any motive be prevailed upon to
discover any fraud that is practised upon him by
the Company's servants. He says what (with the
exception of the complaint against the Cavalry Loan)
all the world knows to be true: and without that
prince's concurrence, what evidence can be had of
? ? ? ? 52 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
the fraud of any the smallest of these demands?
The ministers never authorized any person to enter
into his exchequer and to search his records. Why,
then, this shameful and insulting mockery of a pretended contest? Already contests for a preference have arisen among these rival bond-creditors. Has
not the Company itself struggled for a preference for
years, without any attempt at detection of the nature
of those debts with which they contended? Well is
the Nabob of Arcot attended to in the only specific
complaint he has ever made. He complained of unfair dealing in the Cavalry Loan. It is fixed upon him with interest on interest; and this loan is excepted from all power of litigation.
This day, and not before, the right honorable gentleman thinks that the general establishment of all claims is the surest way of laying open the fraud of
some of them. In India this is a reach of deep policy. But what would be thought of this mode of acting on a demand upon the Treasury in England?
Instead of all this cunning, is there not one plain
way open,- that is, to put the burden of the proof on
those who make the demand? Ought not ministry
to have said to the creditors, " The person who admits your debt stands excepted to as evidence; he
stands charged as a collusive party, to hand over the
public revenues to you for sinister purposes. You
say, you have a demand of some millions on the Indian Treasury; prove that you have acted by lawful
authority; prove, at least, that your money has been
bond fide advanced; entitle yourself to my protection by the fairness and fulness of the communications you make"? Did an honest creditor ever refuse that reasonable and honest test?
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 53
There is little doubt that several individuals have
been seduced by the purveyors to the Nabob of Arcot to put their money (perhaps the whole of honest
and laborious earnings) into their hands, and that at
such high interest as, being condemned at law, leaves
them at the mercy of the great managers whom they
trusted. These seduced creditors are probably persons of no power or interest either in England or India, and may be just objects of compassion. By taking, in this arrangement, no measures for discrimination and discovery, the fraudulent and the fair are in the first instance confounded in one mass. The subsequent selection and distribution is left to the Nabob.
With him the agents and instruments of his corruption, whom he sees to be omnipotent in England, and
who may serve him in future, as they have done in
times past, will have precedence, if not an exclusive
preference. These leading interests domineer, and
have always domineered, over the whole. By this
arrangement, the persons seduced are made dependent on their seducers; honesty (comparative honesty
at least) must become of the party of fraud, and
must quit its proper character and its just claims, to
entitle itself to the alms of bribery and peculation.
But be these English creditors what they may, the
creditors most certainly not fraudulent are the natives, who are numerous and wretched indeed: by
exhausting the whole revenues of the Carnatic, nothing is left for them. They lent bond fide; in all probability they were even forced to lend, or to give goods
and service for the Nabob's obligations. They had no
trusts to carry to his market. They had no faith ot
alliances to sell. They had no nations to betray to
robbery and ruin. They had no lawful government
? ? ? ? 54 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
seditiously to overturn; nor had they a governor, to
whom it is owing that you exist in India, to deliver
over to captivity, and to death in a shameful prison. *
These were the merits of the principal part of the
debt of 1777, and the universally conceived causes
of its growth; and thus the unhappy natives are deprived of every hope of payment for their real debts, to make provision for the arrears of unsatisfied bribery and treason. You see in this instance that the presumption of guilt is not only no exception to the
demands on the public treasury, but with these ministers it is a necessary condition to their support. But that you may not think this preference solely
owing to their known contempt of the natives, who
ought with every generous mind to claim their first
charities, you will find the same rule religiously
observed with Europeans too. Attend, Sir, to this
decisive case. Since the beginning of the war, besides arrears of every kind, a bond-debt has been contracted at Madras, uncertain in its amount, but
represented from four hundred thousand pound to
a million sterling. It stands only at the low interest
of eight per cent. Of the legal authority on which
this debt was contracted, of its purposes for the very
being of the state, of its publicity and fairness, no
doubt has been entertained for a moment. For this
debt no sort of provision whatever has been made.
It is rejected as an outcast, whilst the whole undissipated attention of the minister has been employed for the discharge of claims entitled to his favor by
the merits we have seen.
I have endeavored to find out, if possible, the
amount of the whole of those demands, in order to
* Lord Pigot.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 55
see how much, supposing the country in a condition
to furnish the fund, may remain to satisfy the public
debt and the necessary establishments. But I have
been foiled in my attempt.
About one fourth, that is, about 220,0001. , of the
loan of 1767 remains unpaid. How much interest is
in arrear I could never discover: seven or eight years'
at least, which would make the whole of that debt
about 396,0001. This stock, which the ministers in
their instructions to the Governor of Madras state as
the least exceptionable, they have thought proper to
distinguish by a marked severity, leaving it the only
one on which the interest is not added to the principal
to beget a new interest.
The Cavalry Loan, by the operation of the same authority, is made up to 294,0001. ; and this 294,0001. , made up of principal and interest, is crowned with a
new interest of twelve per cent.
What the grand loan, the bribery loan of 1777,
may be is amongst the deepest mysteries of state.
It is probably the first debt ever assuming the title
of Consolidation that did not express what the amount
of the sum consolidated was. It is little less than a
contradiction in terms. In the debt of the year 1767
the sum was stated in the act of consolidation, and
made to amount to 880,0001. capital. When this
consolidation of 1777 was first announced at the Durbar, it was represented authentically at 2,400,0001. In that, or rather in a higher state, Sir Thomas Rumbold found and condemned it. * It afterwards fell
* In Sir Thomas Rumbold's letter to the Court of Directors,
March 15th, 1778, he represents it as higher, in the following manner:
-" How shall I paint to you my astonishment, on my arrival here,
when I was informed, that, independent of this four lacs of pagodas
? ? ? ? 56 SPEECH ON THE. NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
into such a terror as to sweat away a million of its
weight at once; and it sunk to 1,400,0001. * However, it never was without a resource for recruiting it
to its old plumpness. There was a sort of floating
debt of about four or five hundred thousand pounds
more ready to be added, as occasion should require.
In short, when you pressed this sensitive-plant, it
always contracted its dimensions. When the rude
hand of inquiry was withdrawn, it expanded in all
the luxuriant vigor of its original vegetation. In the
treaty of 1781, the whole of the Nabob's debt to private Europeans is by Mr. Sulivan, agent to the Nabob and his creditors, stated at 2,800,0001. , which, if
the Cavalry Loan and the remains of the debt of 1767
be subtracted, leaves it nearly at the amount originally declared at the Durbar in 1777: but then
[the Cavalry Loan], independent of the Nabob's debt to his old creditors, and the money due to the Company, he had contracted a debt
to the enormous amount of sixty-three lacs of pagodas [2,520,0001. ].
