is, the receipt of a territorial revenue, of which, it seems, they continued as long in possession as the Nabob himself continued in possession of anything.  Their payments, therefore, not being to commence before the end of four months, and not being completed in two years, it must be presumed (unless they prove the contrary) that their payments to the Nabob were made out of the revenues they had received from his assignment.  Thus they condescended to accumulate a debt of 160,000_l._ with an interest of twelve per cent, in compensation for a lingering payment to the Nabob of 160,000_l._ of his own money.

Still we have not the whole.  About two years after the assignment of those territorial revenues to these gentlemen, the Nabob receives a remonstrance from his chief manager in a principal province, of which this is the tenor.  “The entire revenue of those districts is by your Highness’s order set apart to discharge the tunkaws [assignments] granted to the Europeans.  The gomastahs [agents] of Mr. Taylor to Mr. De Fries are there in order to collect those tunkaws; and as they receive all the revenue that is collected, your Highness’s troops have seven or eight months’ pay due, which they cannot receive, and are thereby reduced to the greatest distress. In such times it is highly necessary to provide for the sustenance of the troops, that they may be ready to exert themselves in the service of your Highness.”

Here, Sir, you see how these causes and effects act upon one another.  One body of troops mutinies for want of pay; a debt is contracted to pay them; and they still remain unpaid.  A territory destined to pay other troops is assigned for this debt; and these other troops fall into the same state of indigence and mutiny with the first.  Bond is paid by bond; arrear is turned into new arrear; usury engenders new usury; mutiny, suspended in one quarter, starts up in another; until all the revenues and all the establishments are entangled into one inextricable knot of confusion, from which they are only disengaged by being entirely destroyed.  In that state of confusion, in a very few months after the date of the memorial I have just read to you, things were found, when the Nabob’s troops, famished to feed English soucars, instead of defending the country, joined the invaders, and deserted in entire bodies to Hyder Ali.[18]

The manner in which this transaction was carried on shows that good examples are not easily forgot, especially by those who are bred in a great school.  One of those splendid examples give me leave to mention, at a somewhat more early period; because one fraud furnishes light to the discovery of another, and so on, until the whole secret of mysterious iniquity bursts upon you in a blaze of detection.  The paper I shall read you is not on record.  If you please, you may take it on my word.  It is a letter written from one of undoubted information in Madras to Sir John Clavering, describing the practice that prevailed there, whilst the Company’s allies were under sale, during the time of Governor Winch’s administration.