the chalice of the fornications of rapine, usury, and oppression, which was held out by the gorgeous Eastern harlot,—­which so many of the people, so many of the nobles of this land had drained to the very dregs.  Do you think that no reckoning was to follow this lewd debauch? that no payment was to be demanded for this riot of public drunkenness and national prostitution?  Here, you have it here before you!  The principal of the grand election-manager must be indemnified; accordingly, the claims of Benfield and his crew must be put above all inquiry.

For several years Benfield appeared as the chief proprietor, as well as the chief agent, director, and controller of this system of debt.  The worthy chairman of the Company has stated the claims of this single gentleman on the Nabob of Arcot as amounting to five hundred thousand pound.[58] Possibly at the time of the chairman’s state they might have been as high.  Eight hundred thousand pound had been mentioned some time before;[59] and, according to the practice of shifting the names of creditors in these transactions, and reducing or raising the debt itself at pleasure, I think it not impossible that at one period the name of Benfield might have stood before those frightful figures.  But my best information goes to fix his share no higher than four hundred thousand pounds.  By the scheme of the present ministry for adding to the principal twelve per cent from the year 1777 to the year 1781, four hundred thousand pounds, that smallest of the sums ever mentioned for Mr. Benfield, will form a capital of 592,000_l._ at six per cent.  Thus, besides the arrears of three years, amounting to 106,500_l._, (which, as fast as received, may be legally lent out at twelve per cent,) Benfield has received, by the ministerial grant before you, an annuity of 35,520_l._ a year, charged on the public revenues.

Our mirror of ministers of finance did not think this enough for the services of such a friend as Benfield.  He found that Lord Macartney, in order to frighten the Court of Directors from the project of obliging the Nabob to give soucar security for his debt, assured them, that, if they should take that step, Benfield[60] would infallibly be the soucar, and would thereby become the entire master of the Carnatic.  What Lord Macartney thought sufficient to deter the very agents and partakers with Benfield in his iniquities was the inducement to the two right honorable gentlemen to order this very soucar security to be given, and to recall Benfield to the city of Madras from the sort of decent exile into which he had been relegated by Lord Macartney.  You must therefore consider Benfield as soucar security for 480,000_l._ a year, which, at twenty-four per cent, (supposing him contented with that profit,) will, with the interest of his old debt, produce an annual income of 149,520_l._ a year.