The invariable course of the Company’s policy is this:  either they set up some prince too odious to maintain himself without the necessity of their assistance, or they soon render him odious by making him the instrument of their government.  In that case troops are bountifully sent to him to maintain his authority.  That he should have no want of assistance, a civil gentleman, called a Resident, is kept at his court, who, under pretence of providing duly for the pay of these troops, gets assignments on the revenue into his hands.  Under his provident management, debts soon accumulate; new assignments are made for these debts; until, step by step, the whole revenue, and with it the whole power of the country, is delivered into his hands.  The military do not behold without a virtuous emulation the moderate gains of the civil department.  They feel that in a country driven to habitual rebellion by the civil government the military is necessary; and they will not permit their services to go unrewarded.  Tracts of country are delivered over to their discretion.  Then it is found proper to convert their commanding officers into farmers of revenue.  Thus, between the well-paid civil and well-rewarded military establishment, the situation of the natives may be easily conjectured.  The authority of the regular and lawful government is everywhere and in every point extinguished.  Disorders and violences arise; they are repressed by other disorders and other violences.  Wherever the collectors of the revenue and the farming colonels and majors move, ruin is about them, rebellion before and behind them.  The people in crowds fly out of the country; and the frontier is guarded by lines of troops, not to exclude an enemy, but to prevent the escape of the inhabitants.

By these means, in the course of not more than four or five years, this once opulent and flourishing country, which, by the accounts given in the Bengal consultations, yielded more than three crore of sicca rupees, that is, above three millions sterling, annually, is reduced, as far as I can discover, in a matter purposely involved in the utmost perplexity, to less than one million three hundred thousand pounds, and that exacted by every mode of rigor that can be devised.  To complete the business, most of the wretched remnants of this revenue are mortgaged, and delivered into the hands of the usurers at Benares (for there alone are to be found some lingering remains of the ancient wealth of these regions) at an interest of near thirty per cent per annum.

The revenues in this manner failing, they seized upon the estates of every person of eminence in the country, and, under the name of resumption, confiscated their property.  I wish, Sir, to be understood universally and literally, when I assert that there is not left one man of property and substance for his rank in the whole of these provinces, in provinces which are nearly the extent of England and Wales taken together:  not one landholder, not one banker, not one merchant, not one even of those who usually perish last, the ultimum moriens in a ruined state, not one farmer of revenue.