As to the previous knowledge of the Company, and its sanction to the debts, you see that this assertion of that knowledge is utterly unfounded.  But did the Directors approve of it, and ratify the transaction, when it was known?  The very reverse.  On the same 3d of March, the Directors declare, “upon an impartial examination of the whole conduct of our late Governor and Council of Fort George [Madras], and on the fullest consideration, that the said Governor and Council have, in notorious violation of the trust reposed in them, manifestly preferred the interest of private individuals to that of the Company, in permitting the assignment of the revenues of certain valuable districts, to a very large amount, from the Nabob to individuals”; and then, highly aggravating their crimes, they add,—­“We order and direct that you do examine, in the most impartial manner, all the above-mentioned transactions, and that you punish, by suspension, degradation, dismission, or otherwise, as to you shall seem meet, all and every such servant or servants of the Company who may by you be found guilty of any of the above offences.”  “We had” (say the Directors) “the mortification to find that the servants of the Company, who had been raised, supported, and owed their present opulence to the advantages gained in such service, have in this instance most unfaithfully betrayed their trust, abandoned the Company’s interest, and prostituted its influence to accomplish the purposes of individuals, whilst the interest of the Company is almost wholly neglected, and payment to us rendered extremely precarious.”  Here, then, is the rock of approbation of the Court of Directors, on which the right honorable gentleman says this debt was founded.  Any member, Mr. Speaker, who should come into the House, on my reading this sentence of condemnation of the Court of Directors against their unfaithful servants, might well imagine that he had heard an harsh, severe, unqualified invective against the present ministerial Board of Control.  So exactly do the proceedings of the patrons of this abuse tally with those of the actors in it, that the expressions used in the condemnation of the one may serve for the reprobation of the other, without the change of a word.

To read you all the expressions of wrath and indignation fulminated in this dispatch against the meritorious creditors of the right honorable gentleman, who according to him have been so fully approved by the Company, would be to read the whole.

The right honorable gentleman, with an address peculiar to himself, every now and then slides in the Presidency of Madras, as synonymous to the Company.  That the Presidency did approve the debt is certain.  But the right honorable gentleman, as prudent in suppressing as skilful in bringing forward his matter, has not chosen to tell you that the Presidency were the very persons guilty of contracting this loan,—­creditors themselves, and agents and trustees for all the other creditors.  For this the Court of Directors accuse them of breach of trust; and for this the right honorable gentleman considers them as perfectly good authority for those claims.  It is pleasant to hear a gentleman of the law quote the approbation of creditors as an authority for their own debt.