to thirty-six per cent; it was then brought down to twenty-five per cent; at length it was reduced to twenty; and there it found its rest.  During the whole process, as often as any of these monstrous interests fell into an arrear, (into which they were continually falling,) the arrear, formed into a new capital,[13] was added to the old, and the same interest of twenty per cent accrued upon both.  The Company, having got some scent of the enormous usury which prevailed at Madras, thought it necessary to interfere, and to order all interests to be lowered to ten per cent.  This order, which contained no exception, though it by no means pointed particularly to this class of debts, came like a thunderclap on the Nabob.  He considered his political credit as ruined; but to find a remedy to this unexpected evil, he again added to the old principal twenty per cent interest accruing for the last year.  Thus a new fund was formed; and it was on that accumulation of various principals, and interests heaped upon interests, not on the sum originally lent, as the right honorable gentleman would make you believe, that ten per cent was settled on the whole.

When you consider the enormity of the interest at which these debts were contracted, and the several interests added to the principal, I believe you will not think me so skeptical, if I should doubt whether for this debt of 880,000_l._ the Nabob ever saw 100,000_l._ in real money.  The right honorable gentleman suspecting, with all his absolute dominion over fact, that he never will be able to defend even this venerable patriarchal job, though sanctified by its numerous issue, and hoary with prescriptive years, has recourse to recrimination, the last resource of guilt.  He says that this loan of 1767 was provided for in Mr. Fox’s India bill; and judging of others by his own nature and principles, he more than insinuates that this provision was made, not from any sense of merit in the claim, but from partiality to General Smith, a proprietor, and an agent for that debt.  If partiality could have had any weight against justice and policy with the then ministers and their friends, General Smith had titles to it.  But the right honorable gentleman knows as well as I do, that General Smith was very far from looking on himself as partially treated in the arrangements of that time; indeed, what man dared to hope for private partiality in that sacred plan for relief to nations?

It is not necessary that the right honorable gentleman should sarcastically call that time to our recollection.  Well do I remember every circumstance of that memorable period.  God forbid I should forget it!  O illustrious disgrace!  O victorious defeat!  May your memorial be fresh and new to the latest generations!  May the day of that generous conflict be stamped in characters never to be cancelled or worn out from the records of time!  Let no man hear of us, who shall not hear, that, in a struggle against the intrigues