from the cognizance, and exempted even out of the competence, of Parliament.  The greatest body of your revenue, your most numerous armies, your most important commerce, the richest sources of your public credit, (contrary to every idea of the known, settled policy of England,) are on the point of being converted into a mystery of state.  You are going to have one half of the globe hid even from the common liberal curiosity of an English gentleman.  Here a grand revolution commences.  Mark the period, and mark the circumstances.  In most of the capital changes that are recorded in the principles and system of any government, a public benefit of some kind or other has been pretended.  The revolution commenced in something plausible, in something which carried the appearance at least of punishment of delinquency or correction of abuse.  But here, in the very moment of the conversion of a department of British government into an Indian mystery, and in the very act in which the change commences, a corrupt private interest is set up in direct opposition to the necessities of the nation.  A diversion is made of millions of the public money from the public treasury to a private purse.  It is not into secret negotiations for war, peace, or alliance that the House of Commons is forbidden to inquire.  It is a matter of account; it is a pecuniary transaction; it is the demand of a suspected steward upon ruined tenants and an embarrassed master that the Commons of Great Britain are commanded not to inspect.  The whole tenor of the right honorable gentleman’s argument is consonant to the nature of his policy.  The system of concealment is fostered by a system of falsehood.  False facts, false colors, false names of persons and things, are its whole support.

Sir, I mean to follow the right honorable gentleman over that field of deception, clearing what he has purposely obscured, and fairly stating what it was necessary for him to misrepresent.  For this purpose, it is necessary you should know, with some degree of distinctness, a little of the locality, the nature, the circumstances, the magnitude of the pretended debts on which this marvellous donation is founded, as well as of the persons from whom and by whom it is claimed.

Madras, with its dependencies, is the second (but with a long interval, the second) member of the British empire in the East.  The trade of that city, and of the adjacent territory, was not very long ago among the most flourishing in Asia.  But since the establishment of the British power it has wasted away under an uniform gradual decline, insomuch that in the year 1779 not one merchant of eminence was to be found in the whole country.[5] During this period of decay, about six hundred thousand sterling pounds a year have been drawn off by English gentlemen on their private account, by the way of China alone.[6] If we add four hundred thousand, as probably remitted through other channels, and in other mediums, that is, in jewels, gold, and silver, directly brought to Europe, and in bills upon the British and foreign companies, you will scarcely think the matter overrated.  If we fix the commencement of this extraction of money from the Carnatic at a period no earlier than the year 1760, and close it in the year 1780, it probably will not amount to a great deal less than twenty millions of money.