Such an universal proscription, upon any pretence, has few examples.  Such a proscription, without even a pretence of delinquency, has none.  It stands by itself.  It stands as a monument to astonish the imagination, to confound the reason of mankind.  I confess to you, when I first came to know this business in its true nature and extent, my surprise did a little suspend my indignation.  I was in a manner stupefied by the desperate boldness of a few obscure young men, who, having obtained, by ways which they could not comprehend, a power of which they saw neither the purposes nor the limits, tossed about, subverted, and tore to pieces, as if it were in the gambols of a boyish unluckiness and malice, the most established rights, and the most ancient and most revered institutions, of ages and nations.  Sir, I will not now trouble you with any detail with regard to what they have since done with these same lands and landholders, only to inform you that nothing has been suffered to settle for two seasons together upon any basis, and that the levity and inconstancy of these mock legislators were not the least afflicting parts of the oppressions suffered under their usurpation; nor will anything give stability to the property of the natives, but an administration in England at once protecting and stable.  The country sustains, almost every year, the miseries of a revolution.  At present, all is uncertainty, misery, and confusion.  There is to be found through these vast regions no longer one landed man who is a resource for voluntary aid or an object for particular rapine.  Some of them were not long since great princes; they possessed treasures, they levied armies.  There was a zemindar in Bengal, (I forget his name,) that, on the threat of an invasion, supplied the subah of these provinces with the loan of a million sterling.  The family at this day wants credit for a breakfast at the bazaar.

I shall now say a word or two on the Company’s care of the commercial interest of those kingdoms.  As it appears in the Reports that persons in the highest stations in Bengal have adopted, as a fixed plan of policy, the destruction of all intermediate dealers between the Company and the manufacturer, native merchants have disappeared of course.  The spoil of the revenues is the sole capital which purchases the produce and manufactures, and through three or four foreign companies transmits the official gains of individuals to Europe.  No other commerce has an existence in Bengal.  The transport of its plunder is the only traffic of the country.  I wish to refer you to the Appendix to the Ninth Report for a full account of the manner in which the Company have protected the commercial interests of their dominions in the East.