Here, Sir, is much heat and passion,—­but no more consideration of the distress of the country, from a failure of the means of subsistence, and (if possible) the worse evil of an useless and licentious soldiery, than if they were the most contemptible of all trifles.  A letter is written, in consequence, in such a style of lofty despotism as I believe has hitherto been unexampled and unheard of in the records of the East.  The troops were continued.  The gradual relief, whose effect was to be so distant, has never been substantially and beneficially applied,—­and the country is ruined.

Mr. Hastings, two years after, when it was too late, saw the absolute necessity of a removal of the intolerable grievance of this licentious soldiery, which, under pretence of defending it, held the country under military execution.  A new treaty and arrangement, according to the pleasure of Mr. Hastings, took place; and this new treaty was broken in the old manner, in every essential article.  The soldiery were again sent, and again set loose.  The effect of all his manoeuvres, from which it seems he was sanguine enough to entertain hopes, upon the state of the country, he himself informs us,—­“The event has proved the reverse of these hopes, and accumulation of distress, debasement, and dissatisfaction to the Nabob, and disappointment and disgrace to me.—­Every measure [which he had himself proposed] has been so conducted as to give him cause of displeasure.  There are no officers established by which his affairs could be regularly conducted:  mean, incapable, and indigent men have been appointed.  A number of the districts without authority, and without the means of personal protection; some of them have been murdered by the zemindars, and those zemindars, instead of punishment, have been permitted to retain their zemindaries, with independent authority; all the other zemindars suffered to rise up in rebellion, and to insult the authority of the sircar, without any attempt made to suppress them; and the Company’s debt, instead of being discharged by the assignments and extraordinary sources of money provided for that purpose, is likely to exceed even the amount at which it stood at the time in which the arrangement with his Excellency was concluded.”  The House will smile at the resource on which the Directors take credit as such a certainty in their curious account.

This is Mr. Hastings’s own narrative of the effects of his own settlement.  This is the state of the country which we have been told is in perfect peace and order; and, what is curious, he informs us, that every part of this was foretold to him in the order and manner in which it happened, at the very time he made his arrangement of men and measures.