Here is a specimen of the new and pure aristocracy created by the right honorable gentleman,[61] as the support of the crown and Constitution against the old, corrupt, refractory, natural interests of this kingdom; and this is the grand counterpoise against all odious coalitions of these interests.  A single Benfield outweighs them all:  a criminal, who long since ought to have fattened the region kites with his offal, is by his Majesty’s ministers enthroned in the government of a great kingdom, and enfeoffed with an estate which in the comparison effaces the splendor of all the nobility of Europe.  To bring a little more distinctly into view the true secret of this dark transaction, I beg you particularly to advert to the circumstances which I am going to place before you.

The general corps of creditors, as well as Mr. Benfield himself, not looking well into futurity, nor presaging the minister of this day, thought it not expedient for their common interest that such a name as his should stand at the head of their list.  It was therefore agreed amongst them that Mr. Benfield should disappear, by making over his debt to Messrs. Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and should in return be secured by their bond.

The debt thus exonerated of so great a weight of its odium, and otherwise reduced from its alarming bulk, the agents thought they might venture to print a list of the creditors.  This was done for the first time in the year 1783, during the Duke of Portland’s administration.  In this list the name of Benfield was not to be seen.  To this strong negative testimony was added the further testimony of the Nabob of Arcot.  That prince[62] (or rather Mr. Benfield for him) writes to the Court of Directors a letter[63] full of complaints and accusations against Lord Macartney, conveyed in such terms as were natural for one of Mr. Benfield’s habits and education to employ.  Amongst the rest he is made to complain of his Lordship’s endeavoring to prevent an intercourse of politeness and sentiment between him and Mr. Benfield; and to aggravate the affront, he expressly declares Mr. Benfield’s visits to be only on account of respect and of gratitude, as no pecuniary transaction subsisted between them.

Such, for a considerable space of time, was the outward form of the loan of 1777, in which Mr. Benfield had no sort of concern.  At length intelligence arrived at Madras, that this debt, which had always been renounced by the Court of Directors, was rather like to become the subject of something more like a criminal inquiry than of any patronage or sanction from Parliament.  Every ship brought accounts, one stronger than the other, of the prevalence of the determined enemies of the Indian system.  The public revenues became an object desperate to the hopes of Mr. Benfield; he therefore resolved to fall upon his associates, and, in violation of that faith which subsists among those who have abandoned all other, commences a suit