After a variety of extortions and vexations, too fatiguing to you, too disgusting to me, to go through with, they found “that they ought to be in a better state to warrant forcible means”; they therefore contented themselves with a gross sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds for their present demand.  They offered him, indeed, an indemnity from their exactions in future for three hundred thousand pounds more.  But he refused to buy their securities,—­pleading (probably with truth) his poverty; but if the plea were not founded, in my opinion very wisely:  not choosing to deal any more in that dangerous commodity of the Company’s faith; and thinking it better to oppose distress and unarmed obstinacy to uncolored exaction than to subject himself to be considered as a cheat, if he should make a treaty in the least beneficial to himself.

Thus they executed an exemplary punishment on Fizulla Khan for the culture of his country.  But, conscious that the prevention of evils is the great object of all good regulation, they deprived him of the means of increasing that criminal cultivation in future, by exhausting his coffers; and that the population of his country should no more be a standing reproach and libel on the Company’s government, they bound him by a positive engagement not to afford any shelter whatsoever to the farmers and laborers who should seek refuge in his territories from the exactions of the British residents in Oude.  When they had done all this effectually, they gave him a full and complete acquittance from all charges of rebellion, or of any intention to rebel, or of his having originally had any interest in, or any means of, rebellion.

These intended rebellions are one of the Company’s standing resources.  When money has been thought to be heaped up anywhere, its owners are universally accused of rebellion, until they are acquitted of their money and their treasons at once.  The money once taken, all accusation, trial, and punishment ends.  It is so settled a resource, that I rather wonder how it comes to be omitted in the Directors’ account; but I take it for granted this omission will be supplied in their next edition.

The Company stretched this resource to the full extent, when they accused two old women, in the remotest corner of India, (who could have no possible view or motive to raise disturbances,) of being engaged in rebellion, with an intent to drive out the English nation, in whose protection, purchased by money and secured by treaty, rested the sole hope of their existence.  But the Company wanted money, and the old women must be guilty of a plot.  They were accused of rebellion, and they were convicted of wealth.  Twice had great sums been extorted from them, and as often had the British faith guarantied the remainder.  A body of British troops, with one of the military farmers-general at their head, was sent to seize upon the castle in which these helpless women resided.  Their chief