We must at length imagine that they knew the country could bear the impost imposed upon it.  I ask, How did they know this?  We have proved to you, by a paper presented here by Mr. Markham, that the net amount of the collections was about 360,000_l._ This is their own account, and was made up, as Mr. Markham says, by one of the clerks of Durbege Sing, together with his Persian moonshee, (a very fine council to settle the revenues of the kingdom!) in his private house.  And with this account before them, they have dared to impose upon the necks of that unhappy people a tribute of 400,000_l._, together with an income for the Rajah of 60,000_l._ These sums the Naib, Durbege Sing, was bound to furnish, and left to get them as he could.  Your Lordships will observe that I speak of the net proceeds of the collections.  We have nothing to do with the gross amount.  We are speaking of what came to the public treasury, which was no more than I have stated; and it was out of the public treasury that these payments were to be made, because there could be no other honest way of getting the money.

But let us now come to the main point, which is to ascertain what sums the country could really bear.  Mr. Hastings maintains (whether in the speech of his counsel or otherwise I do not recollect) that the revenue of the country was 400,000_l._, that it constantly paid that sum, and flourished under the payment.  In answer to this, I refer your Lordships, first, to Mr. Markham’s declaration, and the Wassil Baakee, which is in page 1750 of the printed Minutes.  I next refer your Lordships to Mr. Duncan’s Reports, in page 2493.  According to Mr. Duncan’s public estimate of the revenue of Benares, the net collections of the very year we are speaking of, when Durbege Sing had the management, and when Mr. Markham, his Persian moonshee, and a clerk in his private house, made their estimates without any documents, or with whatever documents, or God only knows, for nothing appears on the record of the transaction,—­the collections yielded in that year but 340,000_l._, that is, 20,000_l._ less than Mr. Markham’s estimate.  But take it which way you will, whether you take it at Mr. Markham’s 360,000_l._, or at Mr. Duncan’s 340,000_l._, your Lordships will see, that, after reserving 60,000_l._ for his own private expenses, the Rajah could not realize a sum nearly equal to the tribute demanded.

Your Lordships have also in evidence before you an account of the produce of the country for I believe full five years after this period, from which it appears that it never realized the forty lacs, or anything like it,—­yielding only thirty-seven and thirty-nine lacs, or thereabouts, which is 20,000_l._ short of Mr. Markham’s estimate, and 160,000_l._ short of Mr. Hastings’s.  On what data could the prisoner at your bar have formed this estimate?  Where were all the clerks and mutsuddies, where were all the men of business in Benares, who could have given him complete information upon the subject?  We do not find the trace of any of them; all our information is Mr. Markham’s moonshee, and some clerk of Durbege Sing’s employed in Mr. Markham’s private counting-house, in estimating revenues of a country.