How they came to contract the debt to themselves, how they came to act as agents for those whom they ought to have controlled, is for your inquiry.  The policy of this debt was announced to the Court of Directors by the very persons concerned in creating it.  “Till very lately,” say the Presidency, “the Nabob placed his dependence on the Company.  Now he has been taught by ill advisers that an interest out of doors may stand him in good stead.  He has been made to believe that his private creditors have power and interest to overrule the Court of Directors."[10] The Nabob was not misinformed.  The private creditors instantly qualified a vast number of votes; and having made themselves masters of the Court of Proprietors, as well as extending a powerful cabal in other places as important, they so completely overturned the authority of the Court of Directors at home and abroad, that this poor, baffled government was soon obliged to lower its tone.  It was glad to be admitted into partnership with its own servants.  The Court of Directors, establishing the debt which they had reprobated as a breach of trust, and which was planned for the subversion of their authority, settled its payments on a par with those of the public; and even so were not able to obtain peace, or even equality in their demands.  All the consequences lay in a regular and irresistible train.  By employing their influence for the recovery of this debt, their orders, issued in the same breath, against creating new debts, only animated the strong desires of their servants to this prohibited prolific sport, and it soon produced a swarm of sons and daughters, not in the least degenerated from the virtue of their parents.

From that moment the authority of the Court of Directors expired in the Carnatic, and everywhere else.  “Every man,” says the Presidency, “who opposes the government and its measures, finds an immediate countenance from the Nabob; even our discarded officers, however unworthy, are received into the Nabob’s service."[11] It was, indeed, a matter of no wonderful sagacity to determine whether the Court of Directors, with their miserable salaries to their servants, of four or five hundred pounds a year, or the distributor of millions, was most likely to be obeyed.  It was an invention beyond the imagination of all the speculatists of our speculating age, to see a government quietly settled in one and the same town, composed of two distinct members:  one to pay scantily for obedience, and the other to bribe high for rebellion and revolt.

The next thing which recommends this particular debt to the right honorable gentleman is, it seems, the moderate interest of ten per cent.  It would be lost labor to observe on this assertion.  The Nabob, in a long apologetic letter[12] for the transaction between him and the body of the creditors, states the fact as I shall state it to you.  In the accumulation of this debt, the first interest paid was from thirty