equivalent) on this people; what one step has been taken to furnish
grounds for a just calculation and estimate of the proportion of the
burden and the ability? None,--not an attempt at it. They do not adapt
the burden to the strength, but they estimate the strength of the
bearers by the burden they impose. Then what care is taken to leave a
fund sufficient to the future reproduction of the revenues that are to
bear all these loads? Every one, but tolerably conversant in Indian
affairs, must know that the existence of this little kingdom depends on
its control over the river Cavery. The benefits of Heaven to any
community ought never to be connected with political arrangements, or
made to depend on the personal conduct of princes, in which the mistake,
or error, or neglect, or distress, or passion of a moment, on either
side, may bring famine on millions, and ruin an innocent nation perhaps
for ages. The means of the subsistence of mankind should be as immutable
as the laws of Nature, let power and dominion take what course they
may.--Observe what has been done with regard to this important concern.
The use of this river is, indeed, at length given to the Rajah, and a
power provided for its enjoyment _at his own charge_; but the means of
furnishing that charge (and a mighty one it is) are wholly out off. This
use of the water, which ought to have no more connection than clouds and
rains and sunshine with the politics of the Rajah, the Nabob, or the
Company, is expressly contrived as a means of enforcing demands and
arrears of tribute. This horrid and unnatural instrument of extortion
had been a distinguishing feature in the enormities of the Carnatic
politics, that loudly called for reformation. But the food of a whole
people is by the reformers of India conditioned on payments from its
prince, at a moment that he is overpowered with a swarm of their
demands, without regard to the ability of either prince or people. In
fine, by opening an avenue to the irruption of the Nabob of Arcot's
creditors and soucars, whom every man, who did not fall in love with
oppression and corruption on an experience of the calamities they
produced, would have raised wall before wall and mound before mound to
keep from a possibility of entrance, a more destructive enemy than Hyder
Ali is introduced into that kingdom. By this part of their arrangement,
in which they establish a debt to the Nabob of Arcot, in effect and
substance, they deliver over Tanjore, bound hand and foot, to Paul
Benfield, the old betrayer, insulter, oppressor, and scourge of a
country which has for years been an object of an unremitted, but,
unhappily, an unequal struggle, between the bounties of Providence to
renovate and the wickedness of mankind to destroy.
The right honorable gentleman[56] talks of his fairness in determining
the territorial dispute between the Nabob of Arcot and the prince of
that country, when he superseded the determination of the Directors, in
whom the law had vested the decision of that controversy. He is in this
just as feeble as he is in every other part. But it is not necessary to
say a word in refutation of any part of his argument. The mode of the
proceeding sufficiently speaks the spirit of it. It is enough to fix his
character as a judge, that he _never heard the Directors in defence of
their adjudication, nor either of the parties in support of their
respective claims_. It is sufficient for me that he takes from the Rajah
of Tanjore by this pretended adjudication, or rather from his unhappy
subjects, 40,000_l._ a year of his and their revenue, and leaves upon
his and their shoulders all the charges that can be made on the part of
the Nabob, on the part of his creditors, and on the part of the Company,
without so much as hearing him as to right or to ability. But what
principally induces me to leave the affair of the territorial dispute
between the Nabob and the Rajah to another day is this,--that, both the
parties being stripped of their all, it little signifies under which of
their names the unhappy, undone people are delivered over to the
merciless soucars, the allies of that right honorable gentleman and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer. In them ends the account of this long
dispute of the Nabob of Arcot and the Rajah of Tanjore.
The right honorable gentleman is of opinion that his judgment in this
case can be censured by none but those who seem to act as if they were
paid agents to one of the parties. What does he think of his Court of
Directors? If they are paid by either of the parties, by which of them
does he think they are paid? He knows that their decision has been
directly contrary to his. Shall I believe that it does not enter into
his heart to conceive that any person can steadily and actively interest
himself in the protection of the injured and oppressed without being
well paid for his service? I have taken notice of this sort of discourse
some days ago, so far as it may be supposed to relate to me. I then
contented myself, as I shall now do, with giving it a cold, though a
very direct contradiction. Thus much I do from respect to truth. If I
did more, it might be supposed, by my anxiety to clear myself, that I
had imbibed the ideas which, for obvious reasons, the right honorable
gentleman wishes to have received concerning all attempts to plead the
cause of the natives of India, as if it were a disreputable employment.
If he had not forgot, in his present occupation, every principle which
ought to have guided him, and I hope did guide him, in his late
profession, he would have known that he who takes a fee for pleading the
cause of distress against power, and manfully performs the duty he has
assumed, receives an honorable recompense for a virtuous service. But if
the right honorable gentleman will have no regard to fact in his
insinuations or to reason in his opinions, I wish him at least to
consider, that, if taking an earnest part with regard to the oppressions
exercised in India, and with regard to this most oppressive case of
Tanjore in particular, can ground a presumption of interested motives,
he is himself the most mercenary man I know. His conduct, indeed, is
such that he is on all occasions the standing testimony against himself.
He it was that first called to that case the attention of the House; the
reports of his own committee are ample and affecting upon that
subject;[57] and as many of us as have escaped his massacre must
remember the very pathetic picture he made of the sufferings of the
Tanjore country, on the day when he moved the unwieldy code of his
Indian resolutions. Has he not stated over and over again, in his
reports, the ill treatment of the Rajah of Tanjore (a branch of the
royal house of the Mahrattas, every injury to whom the Mahrattas felt as
offered to themselves) as a main cause of the alienation of that people
from the British power? And does he now think that to betray his
principles, to contradict his declarations, and to become himself an
active instrument in those oppressions which he had so tragically
lamented, is the way to clear himself of having been actuated by a
pecuniary interest at the time when he chose to appear full of
tenderness to that ruined nation?
The right honorable gentleman is fond of parading on the motives of
others, and on his own. As to himself, he despises the imputations of
those who suppose that anything corrupt could influence him in this his
unexampled liberality of the public treasure. I do not know that I am
obliged to speak to the motives of ministry, in the arrangements they
have made of the pretended debts of Arcot and Tanjore. If I prove fraud
and collusion with regard to public money on those right honorable
gentlemen, I am not obliged to assign their motives; because no good
motives can be pleaded in favor of their conduct. Upon that case I
stand; we are at issue; and I desire to go to trial. This, I am sure, is
not loose railing, or mean insinuation, according to their low and
degenerate fashion, when they make attacks on the measures of their
adversaries. It is a regular and juridical course; and unless I choose
it, nothing can compel me to go further.
But since these unhappy gentlemen have dared to hold a lofty tone about
their motives, and affect to despise suspicion, instead of being careful
not to give cause for it, I shall beg leave to lay before you some
general observations on what I conceive was their duty in so delicate a
business.
If I were worthy to suggest any line of prudence to that right honorable
gentleman, I would tell him that the way to avoid suspicion in the
settlement of pecuniary transactions, in which great frauds have been
very strongly presumed, is, to attend to these few plain
principles:--First, to hear all parties equally, and not the managers
for the suspected claimants only; not to proceed in the dark, but to act
with as much publicity as possible; not to precipitate decision; to be
religious in following the rules prescribed in the commission under
which we act; and, lastly, and above all, not to be fond of straining
constructions, to force a jurisdiction, and to draw to ourselves the
management of a trust in its nature invidious and obnoxious to
suspicion, where the plainest letter of the law does not compel it. If
these few plain rules are observed, no corruption ought to be suspected;
if any of them are violated, suspicion will attach in proportion; if all
of them are violated, a corrupt motive of some kind or other will not
only be suspected, but must be violently presumed.
The persons in whose favor all these rules have been violated, and the
conduct of ministers towards them, will naturally call for your
consideration, and will serve to lead you through a series and
combination of facts and characters, if I do not mistake, into the very
inmost recesses of this mysterious business. You will then be in
possession of all the materials on which the principles of sound
jurisprudence will found, or will reject, the presumption of corrupt
motives, or, if such motives are indicated, will point out to you of
what particular nature the corruption is.
Our wonderful minister, as you all know, formed a new plan, a plan
_insigne, recens, indictum ore alio_, a plan for supporting the freedom
of our Constitution by court intrigues, and for removing its corruptions
by Indian delinquency. To carry that bold, paradoxical design into
execution, sufficient funds and apt instruments became necessary. You
are perfectly sensible that a Parliamentary reform occupies his
thoughts day and night, as an essential member in this extraordinary
project. In his anxious researches upon this subject, natural instinct,
as well as sound policy, would direct his eyes and settle his choice on
Paul Benfield. Paul Benfield is the grand Parliamentary reformer, the
reformer to whom the whole choir of reformers bow, and to whom even the
right honorable gentleman himself must yield the palm: for what region
in the empire, what city, what borough, what county, what tribunal in
this kingdom is not full of his labors? Others have been only
speculators; he is the grand practical reformer; and whilst the
Chancellor of the Exchequer pledges in vain the man and the minister, to
increase the provincial members, Mr. Benfield has auspiciously and
practically begun it. Leaving far behind him even Lord Camelford's
generous design of bestowing Old Sarum on the Bank of England, Mr.
Benfield has thrown in the borough of Cricklade to reinforce the county
representation. Not content with this, in order to station a steady
phalanx for all future reforms, this public-spirited usurer, amidst his
charitable toils for the relief of India, did not forget the poor,
rotten Constitution of his native country. For her, he did not disdain
to stoop to the trade of a wholesale upholsterer for this House,--to
furnish it, not with the faded tapestry figures of antiquated merit,
such as decorate, and may reproach, some other houses, but with real,
solid, living patterns of true modern virtue. Paul Benfield made
(reckoning himself) no fewer than eight members in the last Parliament.
What copious streams of pure blood must he not have transfused into the
veins of the present!
But what is even more striking than the real services of this
new-imported patriot is his modesty. As soon as he had conferred this
benefit on the Constitution, he withdrew himself from our applause. He
conceived that the duties of a member of Parliament (which with the
elect faithful, the true believers, the _Islam_ of Parliamentary reform,
are of little or no merit, perhaps not much better than specious sins)
might he as well attended to in India as in England, and the means of
reformation to Parliament itself be far better provided. Mr. Benfield
was therefore no sooner elected than he set off for Madras, and
defrauded the longing eyes of Parliament. We have never enjoyed in this
House the luxury of beholding that minion of the human race, and
contemplating that visage which has so long reflected the happiness of
nations.
It was therefore not possible for the minister to consult personally
with this great man. What, then, was he to do? Through a sagacity that
never failed him in these pursuits, he found out, in Mr. Benfield's
representative, his exact resemblance. A specific attraction, by which
he gravitates towards all such characters, soon brought our minister
into a close connection with Mr. Benfield's agent and attorney, that is,
with the grand contractor, (whom I name to honor,) Mr. Richard
Atkinson,--a name that will be well remembered as long as the records of
this House, as long as the records of the British Treasury, as long as
the monumental debt of England, shall endure.
This gentleman, Sir, acts as attorney for Mr. Paul Benfield. Every one
who hears me is well acquainted with the sacred friendship and the
steady mutual attachment that subsists between him and the present
minister. As many members as chose to attend in the first session of
this Parliament can best tell their own feelings at the scenes which
were then acted. How much that honorable gentleman was consulted in the
original frame and fabric of the bill, commonly called Mr. Pitt's India
Bill, is matter only of conjecture, though by no means difficult to
divine. But the public was an indignant witness of the ostentation with
which the measure was made his own, and the authority with which he
brought up clause after clause, to stuff and fatten the rankness of that
corrupt act. As fast as the clauses were brought up to the table, they
were accepted. No hesitation, no discussion. They were received by the
new minister, not with approbation, but with implicit submission. The
reformation may be estimated by seeing who was the reformer. Paul
Benfield's associate and agent was held up to the world as legislator of
Hindostan. But it was necessary to authenticate the coalition between
the men of intrigue in India and the minister of intrigue in England by
a studied display of the power of this their connecting link. Every
trust, every honor, every distinction, was to be heaped upon him. He was
at once made a Director of the India Company, made an alderman of
London, and to be made, if ministry could prevail, (and I am sorry to
say how near, how very near, they were prevailing,) representative of
the capital of this kingdom. But to secure his services against all
risk, he was brought in for a ministerial borough. On his part, he was
not wanting in zeal for the common cause. His advertisements show his
motives, and the merits upon which he stood. For your minister, this
worn-out veteran submitted to enter into the dusty field of the London
contest; and you all remember that in the same virtuous cause he
submitted to keep a sort of public office or counting-house, where the
whole business of the last general election was managed. It was openly
managed by the direct agent and attorney of Benfield. It was managed
upon Indian principles and for an Indian interest. This was the golden
cup of abominations,--this the chalice of the fornications of rapine,
usury, and oppression, which was held out by the gorgeous Eastern
harlot,--which so many of the people, so many of the nobles of this land
had drained to the very dregs. Do you think that no reckoning was to
follow this lewd debauch? that no payment was to be demanded for this
riot of public drunkenness and national prostitution? Here, you have it
here before you! The principal of the grand election-manager must be
indemnified; accordingly, the claims of Benfield and his crew must be
put above all inquiry.
For several years Benfield appeared as the chief proprietor, as well as
the chief agent, director, and controller of this system of debt. The
worthy chairman of the Company has stated the claims of this single
gentleman on the Nabob of Arcot as amounting to five hundred thousand
pound.[58] Possibly at the time of the chairman's state they might have
been as high. Eight hundred thousand pound had been mentioned some time
before;[59] and, according to the practice of shifting the names of
creditors in these transactions, and reducing or raising the debt itself
at pleasure, I think it not impossible that at one period the name of
Benfield might have stood before those frightful figures. But my best
information goes to fix his share no higher than four hundred thousand
pounds. By the scheme of the present ministry for adding to the
principal twelve per cent from the year 1777 to the year 1781, four
hundred thousand pounds, that smallest of the sums ever mentioned for
Mr. Benfield, will form a capital of 592,000_l._ at six per cent. Thus,
besides the arrears of three years, amounting to 106,500_l._, (which, as
fast as received, may be legally lent out at twelve per cent,) Benfield
has received, by the ministerial grant before you, an annuity of
35,520_l._ a year, charged on the public revenues.
Our mirror of ministers of finance did not think this enough for the
services of such a friend as Benfield. He found that Lord Macartney, in
order to frighten the Court of Directors from the project of obliging
the Nabob to give soucar security for his debt, assured them, that, if
they should take that step, Benfield[60] would infallibly be the soucar,
and would thereby become the entire master of the Carnatic. What Lord
Macartney thought sufficient to deter the very agents and partakers with
Benfield in his iniquities was the inducement to the two right honorable
gentlemen to order this very soucar security to be given, and to recall
Benfield to the city of Madras from the sort of decent exile into which
he had been relegated by Lord Macartney. You must therefore consider
Benfield as soucar security for 480,000_l._ a year, which, at
twenty-four per cent, (supposing him contented with that profit,) will,
with the interest of his old debt, produce an annual income of
149,520_l._ a year.
Here is a specimen of the new and pure aristocracy created by the right
honorable gentleman,[61] as the support of the crown and Constitution
against the old, corrupt, refractory, natural interests of this kingdom;
and this is the grand counterpoise against all odious coalitions of
these interests. A single Benfield outweighs them all: a criminal, who
long since ought to have fattened the region kites with his offal, is by
his Majesty's ministers enthroned in the government of a great kingdom,
and enfeoffed with an estate which in the comparison effaces the
splendor of all the nobility of Europe. To bring a little more
distinctly into view the true secret of this dark transaction, I beg you
particularly to advert to the circumstances which I am going to place
before you.
The general corps of creditors, as well as Mr. Benfield himself, not
looking well into futurity, nor presaging the minister of this day,
thought it not expedient for their common interest that such a name as
his should stand at the head of their list. It was therefore agreed
amongst them that Mr. Benfield should disappear, by making over his debt
to Messrs. Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and should in return be secured
by their bond.
The debt thus exonerated of so great a weight of its odium, and
otherwise reduced from its alarming bulk, the agents thought they might
venture to print a list of the creditors. This was done for the first
time in the year 1783, during the Duke of Portland's administration. In
this list the name of Benfield was not to be seen. To this strong
negative testimony was added the further testimony of the Nabob of
Arcot. That prince[62] (or rather Mr. Benfield for him) writes to the
Court of Directors a letter[63] full of complaints and accusations
against Lord Macartney, conveyed in such terms as were natural for one
of Mr. Benfield's habits and education to employ. Amongst the rest he is
made to complain of his Lordship's endeavoring to prevent an intercourse
of politeness and sentiment between him and Mr. Benfield; and to
aggravate the affront, he expressly declares Mr. Benfield's visits to be
only on account of respect and of gratitude, as no pecuniary transaction
subsisted between them.
Such, for a considerable space of time, was the outward form of the loan
of 1777, in which Mr. Benfield had no sort of concern. At length
intelligence arrived at Madras, that this debt, which had always been
renounced by the Court of Directors, was rather like to become the
subject of something more like a criminal inquiry than of any patronage
or sanction from Parliament. Every ship brought accounts, one stronger
than the other, of the prevalence of the determined enemies of the
Indian system. The public revenues became an object desperate to the
hopes of Mr. Benfield; he therefore resolved to fall upon his
associates, and, in violation of that faith which subsists among those
who have abandoned all other, commences a suit in the Mayor's Court
against Taylor, Majendie, and Call, for the bond given to him, when he
agreed to disappear for his own benefit as well as that of the common
concern. The assignees of his debt, who little expected the springing of
this mine, even from such an engineer as Mr. Benfield, after recovering
their first alarm, thought it best to take ground on the real state of
the transaction. They divulged the whole mystery, and were prepared to
plead that they had never received from Mr. Benfield any other
consideration for the bond than a transfer, in trust for himself, of his
demand on the Nabob of Arcot. An universal indignation arose against the
perfidy of Mr. Benfield's proceeding; the event of the suit was looked
upon as so certain, that Benfield was compelled to retreat as
precipitately as he had advanced boldly; he gave up his bond, and was
reinstated in his original demand, to wait the fortune of other
claimants. At that time, and at Madras, this hope was dull indeed; but
at home another scene was preparing.
It was long before any public account of this discovery at Madras had
arrived in England, that the present minister and his Board of Control
thought fit to determine on the debt of 1777. The recorded proceedings
at this time knew nothing of any debt to Benfield. There was his own
testimony, there was the testimony of the list, there was the testimony
of the Nabob of Arcot, against it. Yet such was the ministers' feeling
of the true secret of this transaction, that they thought proper, in the
teeth of all these testimonies, to give him license to return to Madras.
Here the ministers were under some embarrassment. Confounded between
their resolution of rewarding the good services of Benfield's friends
and associates in England, and the shame of sending that notorious
incendiary to the court of the Nabob of Arcot, to renew his intrigues
against the British government, at the time they authorize his return,
they forbid him, under the severest penalties, from any conversation
with the Nabob or his ministers: that is, they forbid his communication
with the very person on account of his dealings with whom they permit
his return to that city. To overtop this contradiction, there is not a
word restraining him from the freest intercourse with the Nabob's second
son, the real author of all that is done in the Nabob's name; who, in
conjunction with this very Benfield, has acquired an absolute dominion
over that unhappy man, is able to persuade him to put his signature to
whatever paper they please, and often without any communication of the
contents. This management was detailed to them at full length by Lord
Macartney, and they cannot pretend ignorance of it.[64]
I believe, after this exposure of facts, no man can entertain a doubt of
the collusion of ministers with the corrupt interest of the delinquents
in India. Whenever those in authority provide for the interest of any
person, on the real, but concealed state of his affairs, without regard
to his avowed, public, and ostensible pretences, it must be presumed
that they are in confederacy with him, because they act for him on the
same fraudulent principles on which he acts for himself. It is plain
that the ministers were fully apprised of Benfield's real situation,
which he had used means to conceal, whilst concealment answered his
purposes. They were, or the person on whom they relied was, of the
cabinet council of Benfield, in the very depth of all his mysteries. An
honest magistrate compels men to abide by one story. An equitable judge
would not hear of the claim of a man who had himself thought proper to
renounce it. With such a judge his shuffling and prevarication would
have damned his claims; such a judge never would have known, but in
order to animadvert upon, proceedings of that character.