shall again labor under a want of rain, every field will be abandoned, the revenue fail, and thousands perish through want of subsistence:  for who will labor for the sole benefit of others, and to make himself the subject of exaction?  These practices are to be imputed to the Naib himself” (the administrator forced by the said Warren Hastings on the present Rajah of Benares).  “The avowed principle on which he acts, and which he acknowledged to myself, is, that the whole sum fixed for the revenue of the province must be collected,—­and that, for this purpose, the deficiency arising in places where the crops have failed, or which have been left uncultivated, must be supplied from the resources of others, where the soil has been better suited to the season, or the industry of the cultivators hath been more successfully exerted:  a principle which, however specious and plausible it may at first appear, certainly tends to the most pernicious and destructive consequences.  If this declaration of the Naib had been made only to myself, I might have doubted my construction of it; but it was repeated by him to Mr. Anderson, who understood it exactly in the same sense.  In the management of the customs, the conduct of the Naib, or of the officer under him, was forced also upon my attention. The exorbitant rates exacted by an arbitrary valuation of the goods, the practice of exacting duties twice on the same goods, (first from the seller, and afterwards from the buyer,) and the vexations, disputes, and delays drawn on the merchants by these oppressions, were loudly complained of; and some instances of this kind were said to exist at the very time I was at Benares.  Under such circumstances, we are not to wonder, if the merchants of foreign countries are discouraged from resorting to Benares, and if the commerce of that province should annually decay. Other evils, or imputed evils, have accidentally come to my knowledge, which I will not now particularize, as I hope, that, with the assistance of the Resident, they may be in part corrected.  One evil I must mention, because it has been verified by my own observation, and is of that kind which reflects an unmerited reproach on our general and national character.  When I was at Buxar, the Resident, at my desire, enjoined the Naib to appoint creditable people to every town through which our route lay, to persuade and encourage the inhabitants to remain in their houses, promising to give them guards as I approached, and they required it for their protection; and that he might perceive how earnest I was for his observation of this precaution, I repeated it to him in person, and dismissed him that he might precede me for that purpose.  But, to my great disappointment, I found every place through which I passed abandoned; nor had there been a man left in any of them for their protection.  I am sorry to add, that, from Buxar to the opposite boundary, I have seen nothing