The country being in many parts left wholly waste and in all parts considerably depopulated by the first rigors, the full rate of the district was exacted from the miserable survivors.  Their burdens were increased, as their fellow-laborers, to whose joint efforts they were to owe the means of payment, diminished.  Driven to make payments beyond all possible calculation, previous to receipts and above their means, in a very short time they fell into the hands of usurers.

The usurers, who under such a government held their own funds by a precarious tenure, and were to lend to those whose substance was still more precarious, to the natural hardness and austerity of that race of men had additional motives to extortion, and made their terms accordingly.  And what were the terms these poor people were obliged to consent to, to answer the bribes and peshcush paid to Mr. Hastings?—­five, ten, twenty, forty per cent?  No! at an interest of six hundred per cent per annum, payable by the day!  A tiller of land to pay six hundred per cent to discharge the demands of government!  What exhaustless fund of opulence could supply this destructive resource of wretchedness and misery?  Accordingly, the husbandman ground to powder between the usurer below and the oppressor above, the whole crop of the country was forced at once to market; and the market glutted, overcharged, and suffocated, the price of grain fell to the fifth part of its usual value.  The crop was then gone, but the debt remained.  An universal treasury extent and process of execution followed on the cattle and stock, and was enforced with more or less rigor in every quarter.  We have it in evidence, that in those sales five cows were sold for not more than seven or eight shillings.  All other things were depreciated in the same proportion.  The sale of the instruments of husbandry succeeded to that of the corn and stock.  Instances there are, where, all other things failing, the farmers were dragged from the court to their houses, in order to see them first plundered, and then burnt down before their faces.  It was not a rigorous collection of revenue, it was a savage war made upon the country.

The peasants were left little else than their families and their bodies.  The families were disposed of.  It is a known observation, that those who have the fewest of all other worldly enjoyments are the most tenderly attached to their children and wives.  The most tender of parents sold their children at market.  The most fondly jealous of husbands sold their wives.  The tyranny of Mr. Hastings extinguished every sentiment of father, son, brother, and husband!

I come now to the last stage of their miseries.  Everything visible and vendible was seized and sold.  Nothing but the bodies remained.