One country for a while remained, which stood as an island in the midst of the grand waste of the Company’s dominion.  My right honorable friend, in his admirable speech on moving the bill, just touched the situation, the offences, and the punishment of a native prince, called Fizulla Khan.  This man, by policy and force, had protected himself from the general extirpation of the Rohilla chiefs.  He was secured (if that were any security) by a treaty.  It was stated to you, as it was stated by the enemies of that unfortunate man, “that the whole of his country is what the whole country of the Rohillas was, cultivated like a garden, without one neglected spot in it.”  Another accuser says,—­“Fyzoolah Khan, though a bad soldier, [that is the true source of his misfortune,] has approved himself a good aumil,—­having, it is supposed, in the course of a few years, at least doubled the population and revenue of his country.”  In another part of the correspondence he is charged with making his country an asylum for the oppressed peasants who fly from the territories of Oude.  The improvement of his revenue, arising from this single crime, (which Mr. Hastings considers as tantamount to treason,) is stated at an hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year.

Dr. Swift somewhere says, that he who could make two blades of grass grow where but one grew before was a greater benefactor to the human race than all the politicians that ever existed.  This prince, who would have been deified by antiquity, who would have been ranked with Osiris, and Bacchus, and Ceres, and the divinities most propitious to men, was, for those very merits, by name attacked by the Company’s government, as a cheat, a robber, a traitor.  In the same breath in which he was accused as a rebel, he was ordered at once to furnish five thousand horse.  On delay, or (according to the technical phrase, when any remonstrance is made to them) “on evasion,” he was declared a violator of treaties, and everything he had was to be taken from him.  Not one word, however, of horse in this treaty.

The territory of this Fizulla Khan, Mr. Speaker, is less than the County of Norfolk.  It is an inland country, full seven hundred miles from any seaport, and not distinguished for any one considerable branch of manufacture whatsoever.  From this territory several very considerable sums had at several times been paid to the British resident.  The demand of cavalry, without a shadow or decent pretext of right, amounted to three hundred thousand a year more, at the lowest computation; and it is stated, by the last person sent to negotiate, as a demand of little use, if it could be complied with,—­but that the compliance was impossible, as it amounted to more than his territories could supply, if there had been no other demand upon him.  Three hundred thousand pounds a year from an inland country not so large as Norfolk!

The thing most extraordinary was to hear the culprit defend himself from the imputation of his virtues, as if they had been the blackest offences.  He extenuated the superior cultivation of his country.  He denied its population.  He endeavored to prove that he had often sent back the poor peasant that sought shelter with him.—­I can make no observation on this.