You have seen the _actual_ receipt since the assignment in 1781, of
which I reckon about two years and a quarter productive. I have stated
to you the expectation from the wasted part. For realizing all this you
may value yourselves on the vigor and diligence of a governor and
committee that have done so much. If these hopes from the committee are
rational, remember that the committee is no more. Your ministers, who
have formed their fund for these debts on the presumed effect of the
committee's management, have put a complete end to that committee. Their
acts are rescinded; their leases are broken; their renters are
dispersed. Your ministers knew, when they signed the death-warrant of
the Carnatic, that the Nabob would not only turn all these unfortunate
farmers of revenue out of employment, but that he has denounced his
severest vengeance against them, for acting under British authority.
With a knowledge of this disposition, a British Chancellor of the
Exchequer and Treasurer of the Navy, incited by no public advantage,
impelled by no public necessity, in a strain of the most wanton perfidy
which has ever stained the annals of mankind, have delivered over to
plunder, imprisonment, exile, and death itself, according to the mercy
of such execrable tyrants as Amir-ul-Omrah and Paul Benfield, the
unhappy and deluded souls who, untaught by uniform example, were still
weak enough to put their trust in English faith.[44] They have gone
farther: they have thought proper to mock and outrage their misery by
ordering them protection and compensation. From what power is this
protection to be derived, and from what fund is this compensation to
arise? The revenues are delivered over to their oppressor; the
territorial jurisdiction, from whence that revenue is to arise, and
under which they live, is surrendered to the same iron hands: and that
they shall be deprived of all refuge and all hope, the minister has made
a solemn, voluntary declaration that he never will interfere with the
Nabob's internal government.[45]
The last thing considered by the Board of Control among the debts of the
Carnatic was that arising to the East India Company, which, after the
provision for the cavalry, and the consolidation of 1777, was to divide
the residue of the fund of 480,000_l._ a year with the lenders of 1767.
This debt the worthy chairman, who sits opposite to me, contends to be
three millions sterling. Lord Macartney's account of 1781 states it to
be at that period 1,200,000_l._ The first account of the Court of
Directors makes it 900,000_l._ This, like the private debt, being
without any solid existence, is incapable of any distinct limits.
Whatever its amount or its validity may be, one thing is clear: it is of
the nature and quality of a public debt. In that light nothing is
provided for it, but an eventual surplus to be divided with one class
of the private demands, after satisfying the two first classes. Never
was a more shameful postponing a public demand, which, by the reason of
the thing, and the uniform practice of all nations, supersedes every
private claim.
Those who gave this preference to private claims consider the Company's
as a lawful demand; else why did they pretend to provide for it? On
their own principles they are condemned.
But I, Sir, who profess to speak to your understanding and to your
conscience, and to brush away from this business all false colors, all
false appellations, as well as false facts, do positively deny that the
Carnatic owes a shilling to the Company,--whatever the Company may be
indebted to that undone country. It owes nothing to the Company, for
this plain and simple reason: the territory charged with the debt is
their own. To say that their revenues fall short, and owe them money, is
to say they are in debt to themselves, which is only talking nonsense.
The fact is, that, by the invasion of an enemy, and the ruin of the
country, the Company, either in its own name, or in the names of the
Nabob of Arcot and Rajah of Tanjore, has lost for several years what it
might have looked to receive from its own estate. If men were allowed to
credit themselves upon such principles, any one might soon grow rich by
this mode of accounting. A flood comes down upon a man's estate in the
Bedford Level of a thousand pounds a year, and drowns his rents for ten
years. The Chancellor would put that man into the hands of a trustee,
who would gravely make up his books, and for this loss credit himself in
his account for a debt due to him of 10,000_l._ It is, however, on this
principle the Company makes up its demands on the Carnatic. In peace
they go the full length, and indeed more than the full length, of what
the people can bear for current establishments; then they are absurd
enough to consolidate all the calamities of war into debts,--to
metamorphose the devastations of the country into demands upon its
future production. What is this but to avow a resolution utterly to
destroy their own country, and to force the people to pay for their
sufferings to a government which has proved unable to protect either the
share of the husbandman or their own? In every lease of a farm, the
invasion of an enemy, instead of forming a demand for arrear, is a
release of rent: nor for that release is it at all necessary to show
that the invasion has left nothing to the occupier of the soil; though
in the present case it would be too easy to prove that melancholy
fact.[46] I therefore applauded my right honorable friend, who, when he
canvassed the Company's accounts, as a preliminary to a bill that ought
not to stand on falsehood of any kind, fixed his discerning eye and his
deciding hand on these debts of the Company from the Nabob of Arcot and
Rajah of Tanjore, and at one stroke expunged them all, as utterly
irrecoverable: he might have added, as utterly unfounded.
On these grounds I do not blame the arrangement this day in question, as
a preference given to the debt of individuals over the Company's debt.
In my eye it is no more than the preference of a fiction over a chimera;
but I blame the preference given to those fictitious private debts over
the standing defence and the standing government. It is there the public
is robbed. It is robbed in its army; it is robbed in its civil
administration; it is robbed in its credit; it is robbed in its
investment, which forms the commercial connection between that country
and Europe. There is the robbery.
But my principal objection lies a good deal deeper. That debt to the
Company is the pretext under which all the other debts lurk and cover
themselves. That debt forms the foul, putrid mucus in which are
engendered the whole brood of creeping ascarides, all the endless
involutions, the eternal knot, added to a knot of those inexpugnable
tape-worms which devour the nutriment and eat up the bowels of
India.[47] It is necessary, Sir, you should recollect two things. First,
that the Nabob's debt to the Company carries no interest. In the next
place, you will observe, that, whenever the Company has occasion to
borrow, she has always commanded whatever she thought fit at eight per
cent. Carrying in your mind these two facts, attend to the process with
regard to the public and private debt, and with what little appearance
of decency they play into each other's hands a game of utter perdition
to the unhappy natives of India. The Nabob falls into an arrear to the
Company. The Presidency presses for payment. The Nabob's answer is, "I
have no money." Good! But there are soucars who will supply you on the
mortgage of your territories. Then steps forward some Paul Benfield,
and, from his grateful compassion to the Nabob, and his filial regard
to the Company, he unlocks the treasures of his virtuous industry, and,
for a consideration of twenty-four or thirty-six per cent on a mortgage
of the territorial revenue, becomes security to the Company for the
Nabob's arrear.
All this intermediate usury thus becomes sanctified by the ultimate view
to the Company's payment. In this case, would not a plain man ask this
plain question of the Company: If you know that the Nabob must annually
mortgage his territories to your servants to pay his annual arrear to
you, why is not the assignment or mortgage made directly to the Company
itself? By this simple, obvious operation, the Company would be relieved
and the debt paid, without the charge of a shilling interest to that
prince. But if that course should be thought too indulgent, why do they
not take that assignment with such interest to themselves as they pay to
others, that is, eight per cent? Or if it were thought more advisable
(why it should I know not) that he must borrow, why do not the Company
lend their own credit to the Nabob for their own payment? That credit
would not be weakened by the collateral security of his territorial
mortgage. The money might still be had at eight per cent. Instead of any
of these honest and obvious methods, the Company has for years kept up a
show of disinterestedness and moderation, by suffering a debt to
accumulate to them from the country powers without any interest at all;
and at the same time have seen before their eyes, on a pretext of
borrowing to pay that debt, the revenues of the country charged with an
usury of twenty, twenty-four, thirty-six, and even eight-and-forty per
cent, with compound interest,[48] for the benefit of their servants. All
this time they know that by having a debt subsisting without any
interest, which is to be paid by contracting a debt on the highest
interest, they manifestly render it necessary to the Nabob of Arcot to
give the private demand a preference to the public; and, by binding him
and their servants together in a common cause, they enable him to form a
party to the utter ruin of their own authority and their own affairs.
Thus their false moderation, and their affected purity, by the natural
operation of everything false and everything affected, becomes pander
and bawd to the unbridled debauchery and licentious lewdness of usury
and extortion.
In consequence of this double game, all the territorial revenues have at
one time or other been covered by those locusts, the English soucars.
Not one single foot of the Carnatic has escaped them: a territory as
large as England. During these operations what a scene has that country
presented![49] The usurious European assignee supersedes the Nabob's
native farmer of the revenue; the farmer flies to the Nabob's presence
to claim his bargain; whilst his servants murmur for wages, and his
soldiers mutiny for pay. The mortgage to the European assignee is then
resumed, and the native farmer replaced,--replaced, again to be removed
on the new clamor of the European assignee.[50] Every man of rank and
landed fortune being long since extinguished, the remaining miserable
last cultivator, who grows to the soil, after having his back scored by
the farmer, has it again flayed by the whip of the assignee, and is
thus, by a ravenous, because a short-lived succession of claimants,
lashed from oppressor to oppressor, whilst a single drop of blood is
left as the means of extorting a single grain of corn. Do not think I
paint. Far, very far, from it: I do not reach the fact, nor approach to
it. Men of respectable condition, men equal to your substantial English
yeomen, are daily tied up and scourged to answer the multiplied demands
of various contending and contradictory titles, all issuing from one and
the same source. Tyrannous exaction brings on servile concealment; and
that again calls forth tyrannous coercion. They move in a circle,
mutually producing and produced; till at length nothing of humanity is
left in the government, no trace of integrity, spirit, or manliness in
the people, who drag out a precarious and degraded existence under this
system of outrage upon human nature. Such is the effect of the
establishment of a debt to the Company, as it has hitherto been managed,
and as it ever will remain, until ideas are adopted totally different
from those which prevail at this time.
Your worthy ministers, supporting what they are obliged to condemn, have
thought fit to renew the Company's old order against contracting private
debts in future. They begin by rewarding the violation of the ancient
law; and then they gravely reenact provisions, of which they have given
bounties for the breach. This inconsistency has been well exposed.[51]
But what will you say to their having gone the length of giving positive
directions for contracting the debt which they positively forbid?
I will explain myself. They order the Nabob, out of the revenues of the
Carnatic, to allot four hundred and eighty thousand pounds a year, as a
fund for the debts before us. For the punctual payment of this annuity,
they order him to give soucar security.[52] When a soucar, that is, a
money-dealer, becomes security for any native prince, the course is for
the native prince to counter-secure the money-dealer, by making over to
him in mortgage a portion of his territory equal to the sum annually to
be paid, with an interest of at least twenty-four per cent. The point
fit for the House to know is, who are these soucars to whom this
security on the revenues in favor of the Nabob's creditors is to be
given? The majority of the House, unaccustomed to these transactions,
will hear with astonishment that these soucars are no other than the
creditors themselves. The minister, not content with authorizing these
transactions in a manner and to an extent unhoped for by the rapacious
expectations of usury itself, loads the broken back of the Indian
revenues, in favor of his worthy friends, the soucars, with an
additional twenty-four per cent for being security to themselves for
their own claims, for condescending to take the country in mortgage to
pay to themselves the fruits of their own extortions.
The interest to be paid for this security, according to the most
moderate strain of soucar demand, comes to 118,000_l._ a year, which,
added to the 480,000_l._ on which it is to accrue, will make the whole
charge amount to 598,000_l._ a year,--as much as even a long peace will
enable those revenues to produce. Can any one reflect for a moment on
all those claims of debt, which the minister exhausts himself in
contrivances to augment with new usuries, without lifting up his hands
and eyes in astonishment at the impudence both of the claim and of the
adjudication? Services of some kind or other these servants of the
Company must have done, so great and eminent that the Chancellor of the
Exchequer cannot think that all they have brought home is half enough.
He hallooes after them, "Gentlemen, you have forgot a large packet
behind you, in your hurry; you have not sufficiently recovered
yourselves; you ought to have, and you shall have, interest upon
interest upon a prohibited debt that is made up of interest upon
interest. Even this is too little. I have thought of another character
for you, by which you may add something to your gains: you shall be
security to yourselves; and hence will arise a new usury, which shall
efface the memory of all the usuries suggested to you by your own dull
inventions."
I have done with the arrangement relative to the Carnatic. After this it
is to little purpose to observe on what the ministers have done to
Tanjore. Your ministers have not observed even form and ceremony in
their outrageous and insulting robbery of that country, whose only crime
has been its early and constant adherence to the power of this, and the
suffering of an uniform pillage in consequence of it. The debt of the
Company from the Rajah of Tanjore is just of the same stuff with that of
the Nabob of Arcot.
The subsidy from Tanjore, on the arrear of which this pretended debt (if
any there be) has accrued to the Company, is not, like that paid by the
Nabob of Arcot, a compensation for vast countries obtained, augmented,
and preserved for him; not the price of pillaged treasuries, ransacked
houses, and plundered territories: it is a large grant, from a small
kingdom not obtained by our arms; robbed, not protected, by our power; a
grant for which no equivalent was ever given, or pretended to be given.
The right honorable gentleman, however, bears witness in his reports to
the punctuality of the payments of this grant of bounty, or, if you
please, of fear. It amounts to one hundred and sixty thousand pounds
sterling net annual subsidy. He bears witness to a further grant of a
town and port, with an annexed district of thirty thousand pound a year,
surrendered to the Company since the first donation. He has not borne
witness, but the fact is, (he will not deny it,) that in the midst of
war, and during the ruin and desolation of a considerable part of his
territories, this prince made many very large payments. Notwithstanding
these merits and services, the first regulation of ministry is to force
from him a territory of an extent which they have not yet thought proper
to ascertain,[53] for a military peace establishment the particulars of
which they have not yet been pleased to settle.
The next part of their arrangement is with regard to war. As confessedly
this prince had no share in stirring up any of the former wars, so all
future wars are completely out of his power; for he has no troops
whatever, and is under a stipulation not so much as to correspond with
any foreign state, except through the Company. Yet, in case the
Company's servants should be again involved in war, or should think
proper again to provoke any enemy, as in times past they have wantonly
provoked all India, he is to be subjected to a new penalty. To what
penalty? Why, to no less than the confiscation of all his revenues. But
this is to end with the war, and they are to be faithfully returned? Oh,
no! nothing like it. The country is to remain under confiscation until
all the debt which the Company shall think fit to incur in such war
shall be discharged: that is to say, forever. His sole comfort is, to
find his old enemy, the Nabob of Arcot, placed in the very same
condition.
The revenues of that miserable country were, before the invasion of
Hyder, reduced to a _gross_ annual receipt of three hundred and sixty
thousand pound.[54] From this receipt the subsidy I have just stated is
taken. This again, by payments in advance, by extorting deposits of
additional sums to a vast amount for the benefit of their soucars, and
by an endless variety of other extortions, public and private, is loaded
with a debt, the amount of which I never could ascertain, but which is
large undoubtedly, generating an usury the most completely ruinous that
probably was ever heard of: _that is, forty-eight per cent, payable
monthly, with compound interest_.[55]
Such is the state to which the Company's servants have reduced that
country. Now come the reformers, restorers, and comforters of India.
What have they done? In addition to all these tyrannous exactions, with
all these ruinous debts in their train, looking to one side of an
agreement whilst they wilfully shut their eyes to the other, they
withdraw from Tanjore all the benefits of the treaty of 1762, and they
subject that nation to a perpetual tribute of forty thousand a year to
the Nabob of Arcot: a tribute never due, or pretended to be due, to
_him_, even when he appeared to be something; a tribute, as things now
stand, not to a real potentate, but to a shadow, a dream, an incubus of
oppression. After the Company has accepted in subsidy, in grant of
territory, in remission of rent, as a compensation for their own
protection, at least two hundred thousand pound a year, without
discounting a shilling for that receipt, the ministers condemn this
harassed nation to be tributary to a person who is himself, by their own
arrangement, deprived of the right of war or peace, deprived of the
power of the sword, forbid to keep up a single regiment of soldiers, and
is therefore wholly disabled from all protection of the country which is
the object of the pretended tribute. Tribute hangs on the sword. It is
an incident inseparable from real, sovereign power. In the present case,
to suppose its existence is as absurd as it is cruel and oppressive. And
here, Mr. Speaker, you have a clear exemplification of the use of those
false names and false colors which the gentlemen who have lately taken
possession of India choose to lay on for the purpose of disguising their
plan of oppression. The Nabob of Arcot and Rajah of Tanjore have, in
truth and substance, no more than a merely civil authority, held in the
most entire dependence on the Company. The Nabob, without military,
without federal capacity, is extinguished as a potentate; but then he is
carefully kept alive as an independent and sovereign power, for the
purpose of rapine and extortion,--for the purpose of perpetuating the
old intrigues, animosities, usuries, and corruptions.
It was not enough that this mockery of tribute was to be continued
without the correspondent protection, or any of the stipulated
equivalents, but ten years of arrear, to the amount of 400,000_l._
sterling, is added to all the debts to the Company and to individuals,
in order to create a new debt, to be paid (if at all possible to be paid
in whole or in part) only by new usuries,--and all this for the Nabob of
Arcot, or rather for Mr. Benfield and the corps of the Nabob's creditors
and their soucars. Thus these miserable Indian princes are continued in
their seats for no other purpose than to render them, in the first
instance, objects of every species of extortion, and, in the second, to
force them to become, for the sake of a momentary shadow of reduced
authority, a sort of subordinate tyrants, the ruin and calamity, not the
fathers and cherishers, of their people.