Jagher Deo Seo, the present Naib.  I knew him not, and the other members of the board as little.  While Mr. Markham remained in office, of whom, as his immediate patron, he may have stood in awe, I am told that he restrained his natural disposition, which has been described to me as rapacious, unfeeling, haughty, and to an extreme vindictive.

“I cannot avoid remarking, that, excepting the city of Benares itself, the province depending upon it is in effect without a government, the Naib exercising only a dependent jurisdiction without a principal.  The Rajah is without authority, and even his name disused in the official instruments issued or taken by the manager.  The representation of his situation shall be the subject of another letter; I have made this already too long, and shall confine it to the single subject for the communication of which it was begun.  This permit me to recapitulate.  The administration of the province is misconducted, and the people oppressed; trade discouraged, and the revenue, though said to be exceeded in the actual collections by many lacs, (for I have a minute account of it, which states the net amount, including jaghires, as something more than fifty-one lacs,) in danger of a rapid decline, from the violent appropriation of its means; the Naib or manager is unfit for his office; a new manager is required, and a system of official control,—­in a word, a constitution:  for neither can the board extend its superintending powers to a district so remote from its observation, nor has it delegated that authority to the Resident, who is merely the representative of government, and the receiver of its revenue in the last process of it; nor, indeed, would it be possible to render him wholly so, for reasons which I may hereafter detail.”

My Lords, you have now heard—­not from the Managers, not from records of office, not from witnesses at your bar, but from the prisoner himself—­the state of the country of Benares, from the time that Mr. Hastings and his delegated Residents had taken the management of it.  My Lords, it is a proof, beyond all other proof, of the melancholy state of the country, in which, by attempting to exercise usurped and arbitrary power, all power and all authority become extinguished, complete anarchy takes place, and nothing of government appears but the means of robbing and ravaging, with an utter indisposition to take one step for the protection of the people.

Think, my Lords, what a triumphal progress it was for a British governor, from one extremity of the province to the other, (for so he has stated it,) to be pursued by the cries of an oppressed and ruined people, where they dared to appear before him,—­and when they did not dare to appear, flying from every place, even the very magistrates being the first to fly!  Think, my Lords, that, when these unhappy people saw the appearance of a British soldier, they fled as from a pestilence; and then think, that these were the people who labored in the manner which you have just heard, who dug their own wells, whose country would not produce anything but from the indefatigable industry of its inhabitants; and that such a meritorious, such an industrious people, should be subjected to such a cursed anarchy under pretence of revenue, to such a cursed tyranny under the pretence of government!