in the Mayor’s Court against Taylor, Majendie, and Call, for the bond given to him, when he agreed to disappear for his own benefit as well as that of the common concern.  The assignees of his debt, who little expected the springing of this mine, even from such an engineer as Mr. Benfield, after recovering their first alarm, thought it best to take ground on the real state of the transaction.  They divulged the whole mystery, and were prepared to plead that they had never received from Mr. Benfield any other consideration for the bond than a transfer, in trust for himself, of his demand on the Nabob of Arcot.  An universal indignation arose against the perfidy of Mr. Benfield’s proceeding; the event of the suit was looked upon as so certain, that Benfield was compelled to retreat as precipitately as he had advanced boldly; he gave up his bond, and was reinstated in his original demand, to wait the fortune of other claimants.  At that time, and at Madras, this hope was dull indeed; but at home another scene was preparing.

It was long before any public account of this discovery at Madras had arrived in England, that the present minister and his Board of Control thought fit to determine on the debt of 1777.  The recorded proceedings at this time knew nothing of any debt to Benfield.  There was his own testimony, there was the testimony of the list, there was the testimony of the Nabob of Arcot, against it.  Yet such was the ministers’ feeling of the true secret of this transaction, that they thought proper, in the teeth of all these testimonies, to give him license to return to Madras.  Here the ministers were under some embarrassment.  Confounded between their resolution of rewarding the good services of Benfield’s friends and associates in England, and the shame of sending that notorious incendiary to the court of the Nabob of Arcot, to renew his intrigues against the British government, at the time they authorize his return, they forbid him, under the severest penalties, from any conversation with the Nabob or his ministers:  that is, they forbid his communication with the very person on account of his dealings with whom they permit his return to that city.  To overtop this contradiction, there is not a word restraining him from the freest intercourse with the Nabob’s second son, the real author of all that is done in the Nabob’s name; who, in conjunction with this very Benfield, has acquired an absolute dominion over that unhappy man, is able to persuade him to put his signature to whatever paper they please, and often without any communication of the contents.  This management was detailed to them at full length by Lord Macartney, and they cannot pretend ignorance of it.[64]