“One mode,” says Clavering’s correspondent, “of amassing money at the Nabob’s cost is curious.  He is generally in arrears to the Company.  Here the Governor, being cash-keeper, is generally on good terms with the banker, who manages matters thus.  The Governor presses the Nabob for the balance due from him; the Nabob flies to his banker for relief; the banker engages to pay the money, and grants his notes accordingly, which he puts in the cash-book as ready money; the Nabob pays him an interest for it at two and three per cent per mensem, till the tunkaws he grants on the particular districts for it are paid.  Matters in the mean time are so managed that there is no call for this money for the Company’s service till the tunkaws become due.  By this means not a cash is advanced by the banker, though he receives a heavy interest from the Nabob, which is divided as lawful spoil.”

Here, Mr. Speaker, you have the whole art and mystery, the true free-mason secret, of the profession of soucaring; by which a few innocent, inexperienced young Englishmen, such as Mr. Paul Benfield, for instance, without property upon which any one would lend to themselves a single shilling, are enabled at once to take provinces in mortgage, to make princes their debtors, and to become creditors for millions.

But it seems the right honorable gentleman’s favorite soucar cavalry have proved the payment before the Mayor’s Court at Madras!  Have they so?  Why, then, defraud our anxiety and their characters of that proof?  Is it not enough that the charges which I have laid before you have stood on record against these poor injured gentlemen for eight years?  Is it not enough that they are in print by the orders of the East India Company for five years?  After these gentlemen have borne all the odium of this publication and all the indignation of the Directors with such unexampled equanimity, now that they are at length stimulated into feeling are you to deny them their just relief?  But will the right honorable gentleman be pleased to tell us how they came not to give this satisfaction to the Court of Directors, their lawful masters, during all the eight years of this litigated claim?  Were they not bound, by every tie that can bind man, to give them this satisfaction?  This day, for the first time, we hear of the proofs.  But when were these proofs offered?  In what cause?  Who were the parties?  Who inspected, who contested this belated account?  Let us see something to oppose to the body of record which appears against them.  The Mayor’s Court! the Mayor’s Court!  Pleasant!  Does not the honorable gentleman know that the first corps of creditors (the creditors of 1767) stated it as a sort of hardship to them, that they could not have justice at Madras, from the impossibility of their supporting their claims in the Mayor’s Court?  Why?  Because, say they, the members of that court were themselves creditors, and therefore could not sit as judges.[19]