of former and better times.  There is no doubt that a period did exist, when the large portion of the Carnatic held by the Nabob of Arcot might be fairly reputed to produce a revenue to that, or to a greater amount.  But the whole had so melted away by the slow and silent hostility of oppression and mismanagement, that the revenues, sinking with the prosperity of the country, had fallen to about 800,000_l._ a year, even before an enemy’s horse had imprinted his hoof on the soil of the Carnatic.  From that view, and independently of the decisive effects of the war which ensued, Sir Eyre Coote conceived that years must pass before the country could be restored to its former prosperity, and production.  It was that state of revenue (namely, the actual state before the war) which the Directors have opposed to Lord Macartney’s speculation.  They refused to take the revenues for more than 800,000_l._ In this they are justified by Lord Macartney himself, who, in a subsequent letter, informs the court that his sketch is a matter of speculation; it supposes the country restored to its ancient prosperity, and the revenue to be in a course of effective and honest collection.  If, therefore, the ministers have gone wrong, they were not deceived by Lord Macartney:  they were deceived by no man.  The estimate of the Directors is nearly the very estimate furnished by the right honorable gentleman himself, and published to the world in one of the printed reports of his own committee;[41] but as soon as he obtained his power, he chose to abandon his account.  No part of his official conduct can be defended on the ground of his Parliamentary information.

In this clashing of accounts and estimates, ought not the ministry, if they wished to preserve even appearances, to have waited for information of the actual result of these speculations, before they laid a charge, and such a charge, not conditionally and eventually, but positively and authoritatively, upon a country which they all knew, and which one of them had registered on the records of this House, to be wasted, beyond all example, by every oppression of an abusive government, and every ravage of a desolating war?  But that you may discern in what manner they use the correspondence of office, and that thereby you may enter into the true spirit of the ministerial Board of Control, I desire you, Mr. Speaker, to remark, that, through their whole controversy with the Court of Directors, they do not so much as hint at their ever having seen any other paper from Lord Macartney, or any other estimate of revenue than this of 1781.  To this they hold.  Here they take post; here they intrench themselves.