In my opinion the courage of the minister was the most wonderful part of the transaction, especially as he must have read, or rather the right honorable gentleman says he has read for him, whole volumes upon the subject.  The volumes, by the way, are not by one tenth part so numerous as the right honorable gentleman has thought proper to pretend, in order to frighten you from inquiry; but in these volumes, such as they are, the minister must have found a full authority for a suspicion (at the very least) of everything relative to the great fortunes made at Madras.  What is that authority?  Why, no other than the standing authority for all the claims which the ministry has thought fit to provide for,—­the grand debtor,—­the Nabob of Arcot himself.  Hear that prince, in the letter written to the Court of Directors, at the precise period whilst the main body of these debts were contracting.  In his letter he states himself to be, what undoubtedly he is, a most competent witness to this point.  After speaking of the war with Hyder Ali in 1768 and 1769, and of other measures which he censures, (whether right or wrong it signifies nothing,) and into which he says he had been led by the Company’s servants, he proceeds in this manner:—­“If all these things were against the real interests of the Company, they are ten thousand times more against mine, and against the prosperity of my country and the happiness of my people; for your interests and mine are the same. What were they owing to, then?  To the private views of a few individuals, who have enriched themselves at the expense of your influence and of my country:  for your servants HAVE NO TRADE IN THIS COUNTRY, neither do you pay them high wages; yet in a few years they return to England with many lacs of pagodas.  How can you or I account for such immense fortunes acquired in so short a time, without any visible means of getting them?”

When he asked this question, which involves its answer, it is extraordinary that curiosity did not prompt the Chancellor of the Exchequer to that inquiry which might come in vain recommended to him by his own act of Parliament.  Does not the Nabob of Arcot tell us, in so many words, that there was no fair way of making the enormous sums sent by the Company’s servants to England?  And do you imagine that there was or could be more honesty and good faith in the demands for what remained behind in India?  Of what nature were the transactions with himself?  If you follow the train of his information, you must see, that, if these great sums were at all lent, it was not property, but spoil, that was lent; if not lent, the transaction was not a contract, but a fraud.  Either way, if light enough could not be furnished to authorize a full condemnation of these demands, they ought to have been left to the parties, who best knew and understood each other’s proceedings.  It was not necessary that the authority of government should interpose in favor of claims whose very foundation was a defiance of that authority, and whose object and end was its entire subversion.