“Q. Whether your Lordship recollects an account that you have given to the Court of Directors, in your letter of the 2d of August, 1789, concerning the state of those provinces?—­A. I really could not venture to be particular as to any letter I may have written so long since, as I have brought no copies of my letters with me from India, having left them at Bengal when I went to the coast.—­Q. Whether your Lordship recollects, in any letter that you wrote about the 2d of August, 1789, paragraph 18, any expressions to this effect, namely:  ’I am sorry to be obliged to say, that agriculture and internal commerce have for many years been gradually declining, and that at present, excepting the class of shroffs and banians, who reside almost entirely in great towns, the inhabitants of these provinces are advancing hastily to a general state of poverty and wretchedness’:—­whether your Lordship recollects that you have written a letter to that effect?—­A. I cannot take upon me to recollect the words of a letter that I have written five years ago, but I conclude I must have written to that effect.—­Q. Whether your Lordship recollects that in the immediately following paragraph, the 19th, you wrote to this effect:  ‘In this description’ (namely, the foregone description) ’I must even include almost every zemindar in the Company’s territories, which, though it may have been partly occasioned by their own indolence and extravagance, I am afraid must also be in a great measure attributed to the defects of our former system of management.’ (Paragraph 20.) ’The settlement, in conformity to your orders, will only be made for ten years certain, with the notification of its being your intention to declare it a perpetual, an unalterable assessment of these provinces, if the amount and the principles upon which it has been made should meet with your approbation’:—­whether your Lordship recollects to have written something to the effect of these two last paragraphs, as well as of the first?—­A. I do recollect that I did write it; but in that letter I alluded to the former system of annual assessments.—­Q. Whether your Lordship recollects that you wrote, on or about the 18th of September, 1789, in one of your minutes, thus:  ’I may safely assert that one third of the Company’s territory in Hindostan is now a jungle, inhabited only by wild beasts:  will a ten years’ lease induce any proprietor to clear away that jungle, and encourage the ryot to come and cultivate his lands, when at the end of that lease he must either submit to be taxed ad libitum for the newly cultivated lands, or lose all hopes of deriving any benefit from his labor, for which perhaps by that time he will hardly be repaid?’—­whether your Lordship recollects a minute to that effect?—­A. I perfectly recollect to have written that minute.—­Q. Now with respect to a letter, dated November the 3d, 1788, paragraph 38, containing the following sentiments: