vanced to the Board of Trade was stated to be 837,4651. and this was erroneous. The sum for investments was only 635,000l. and this sum ought to be less by 160,000l. He stated the particulars of this error also. It was not a little singular to find by what means the company swelled up their account of debts due to them, in order to shew what means they were possessed of to pay their debts. In this place they valued the current rupee at 2s. 3d. when every man knew that to rate it at 2s. 1d. was setting rather a high value on it, the general exchange being at 25.

The next article he would wish to press to the consideration of the House: it was the debt due by the nabob Asoph ul Dowla, 789,8281. This debt was in the nature of many others which were due to us in India, and which had been made the foundation of our various wars. A claim was made on the nabobs, or the rajahs, for the debt which they owed. Their answer was, that they were unable; but that their subjects in a certain district were not only in arrears, but refractory, and therefore if the company would assist them to reduce their subjects to obedience and payment, they would pay their debts. On this pretext we entered on the war, and what particular species of war we commenced might be drawn from the records of the company-a war of horror and devastation-we scoured deserted countries-we ravaged and burnt the villages-we destroyed or we captured the women and the infants-in this manner the Rohillas one year, the Marawar country the next, then the Polygars were laid waste and desolated, and those innocent and unprotected natives destroyed; the men were murdered, the women imprisoned and disgraced, their children left a prey to want, and every religious and civil right violated. To prove this he desired the clerk might read a letter from Lieutenant-colonel Bonjour, a Swiss officer in the company's service, which described the manner in which he found a country, in India in 1773, when sent into it to force people to pay money: the villages were deserted by the men, who left none in them but women and children; the men fell upon the English convoys, and cut them off, and put many of the soldiers to death. He represented therefore that either the design must be given up, or reprisals must be made on women and children, which would shock humanity. He painted to them, in the warm colours of feeling, the scene of horror which the service exhibited, and deprecated such wars as inglorious and contemptible. Thank God! exclaimed Mr. Fox, they have always failed. They have constantly been as unproductive of revenue as they were productive of infamy. In every instance we have failed in our object, but in no instance have we avoided the curses, the

abhorrence, the contempt of mankind. He read also a letter from the Soubah of Oude, of which the following is a copy: "When the knife had penetrated to the bone, and I was surrounded with such heavy distresses that I could no longer live in expectations, I wrote you an account of my difficulties. The answer which I have received to it is such, that it has given me inexpressible grief and affliction. I never had the least idea or expectation from you and the council, that you would ever have given your orders in so afflicting a manner, in which you never before wrote, and which I could not have imagined. As I am resolved to obey your orders and directions of the council, without any delay, as long as I live, I have, agreeably to those orders, delivered up all my private papers to him (the resident) that when he shall have examined my receipts and expences, he may take whatever remains. As I know it to be my duty to satisfy you, the company, and council, I have not failed to obey in any instance, but requested of him that it might be done so as not to distress me in my necessary expences; there being no other funds but those for the expences of my mutseddies, household expences, and servants, &c. He demanded these in such a manner, that being remediless, I was obliged to comply with what he required. He has accordingly stopped the pensions of my old servants for thirty years, whether sepoys, mutseddies, or household servants, and the expences of my family and kitchen, together with the jaghires of my grandmother, mother, and aunts, and of my brothers and dependents, which were for their support. I had raised 1300 horse, and three battalions of sepoys, to attend upon me; but, as I have no resource to support them, I have been obliged to remove the people stationed in the mahals (districts) and to send his people (the resident's people) into the mahals; so that I have not now one single servant about me; should I mention to what farther difficulties I have been reduced, it would lay me open to contempt."

He would make no comments on this letter, he would leave it to the feelings of the House. All these debts from this nabob, and from all the nabobs and rajahs, he wished at once to strike off; and he believed that the feelings and the magnanimity of the country would go with him in saying, that they would rather be doomed to pay all that the company owed, ill as they could at this time bear it; ill as their sinking-fund could sustain the shock, they would apply to that, rather than wring it from the princes of the country, by aiding them in wars on their innocent people. In this part of his speech, all sides of the House joined in the exclamation of "hear! hear!" as the testimony of their approbation. The next article was, debts due by the company in Bengal,

on bond and otherwise, 2,367,1161. Upon this he only observed, that from the word otherwise, it might be imagined that there were considerable debts not on bond, whereas the whole amount was on bond except 100,000l. With this observation to mark the style of the account, he allowed the same. But there was a very curious and singular matter occurred here. It stated that the arrears due to the army did not appear; but by a subsequent minute it did appear, that the arrears up to March 1783, amount to 502,174l. This they state to come by the last dispatches. Would it not be imagined that at least they would bring this 500,000l. to account? Not one figure of it. He asked the House what they would think of government, if having accounts from abroad of arrears due to the army, they failed to bring half a million forward? Would they not impeach the defaulter? He wished, therefore, to rescue the affairs of the East from a company capable of such a crime: for a crime he declared it was. Before he left the article of the quick stock of Bengal, he must observe, there was an omission entirely of 130,000l. due by the company to the Military Fund established by Lord Člive, and the nabob Asoph ul Dowla, and a considerable part of which sum must be paid to the heirs of Lord Clive.

The quick stock at Madras came next: and here again he objected to the article of stores, military and naval, unexpended, which was 264,110l.; and on the same account that he objected to the sum due from Asoph ul Dowla, he objected to the charge of 968,012l. stated to be due by the Nabob of Arcot, to 158,250l. due from the Rajah of Tanjore, and to 993,8047. due from the renters of sundry districts.

He said, the nabob could not attempt to pay his debt without attempting to take it from the rajah, nor the rajah without taking it from some neighbouring power, and all this with the assistance of the company's troops, and at the expence of the company's treasure. As to the renters of sundry districts of land, how could money be recovered from those who had none to give? Had not these people been driven from their possessions, and made the victims of cruel and unjust wars? And how could it be expected that they should be able to answer this enormous demand? At the end of the account of these debts, there was a curious observation, contained in a nota bene, to the following effect:"The war in the Carnatic will delay the payment of some of these debts, and must have rendered many others of them precarious, so that their exact value cannot be ascertained." After this beginning, said Mr. Fox, would not the House imagine that the account was going to say that some particular part of the sum, such as a 5th, an 8th, or a 10th of

these sums might be recovered; but, the account, instead of saying any such thing, goes on, and says, "but the above sums are undoubtedly due to the company." These debts, put together, would amount to 2,822,310l. and to this sum he was resolved to object, as unfit to be inserted in an account of means to answer the company's pressing demands. The ridicule, the absurdity, and the determination to impose, contained in this annotation, drew from him a vein of irony and attack that we scarcely remember to have heard equalled even by Mr. Fox. He once more dwelt upon the scandalous conduct of those who had dared to produce to parliament an account so full of imposition and absurdity; particularly with regard to the stating these desperate and ruinous debts, more ruinous in recovering than abandoning, as a fund, and the unparalleled impudence of this conclusion of the N. B. that the above sums were "undoubtedly due to the company." No doubt they were due: and if the company were to go on for five years more, five times the sum might, and probably would, from the experience of past times, be as fairly due; and from thence it would be in the power of those who had the hardiness to impose upon the public by such an account, to shew the company in a better situation every year, as their debts encreased: that they would soon have it in their power to prove the flourishing state of the company, by stating the debts of the nabob at twice 900,000l. and those of Asoph ul Dowla at double the present sum. But he desired the House to recollect, that it was their business to interfere to prevent that species of prosperity from gaining farther than it had hitherto gone, and to stem those torrents of blood which must flow, if the attempt was made to procure them; an attempt which must end in wasting more money (setting considerations of humanity aside) than the amount of them would repay. To estimate the property of the company in this way was most fallacious. In proportion as they oppressed as they racked as they were guilty of weakness in the first instance, and of violence in the second, their debts would encrease; and even when they were more deeply involved, they might by such accounts, shew themselves to be on paper more flourishing. But such debts were not available property, and could not be estimated.

The debts due by the company in Madras, 31st August 1782, including arrears to the military, 821,1647., he stated to have increased since; and that the right honourable gentleman opposite (Mr. Pitt) knew it: it was a secret disclosed to the treasury, of which he was chancellor of the exchequer, and he doubted not, he would not deny it. By these disallowances,

he reduced the balance of quick stock at Madras 2,078,0784 to little more than 500,000l.

Of the quick stock at Bencoolen, consisting of the dif ference between cash and effects, and the debts owing by the company, amounting on the 19th of March, 1783, to a balance in favour of the company of 189,0367. he allowed only the odd 89,000l. the other 100,000l. being exhausted in the expence of the establishment, and therefore on the footing of warehouses, not convertible, unless they gave up trade, consequently not applicable to present relief. The quick stock at St. Helena, 27,6187. disallowed on the same principle. The quick stock in China, 132,5967. he allowed, because consisting of goods, and there we had no territories nor establishment to maintain. The quick stock at Bombay, 15th September 1782, valuing the rupee at 2s. 6d. Cash and bills 24,6637. he allowed. Goods provided for Europe, 95,145h. Of this he disallowed 32,000l. put on board two ships that sailed after the date here taken, and which was included in the prior statement of goods in warehouses, and he also took the freight and demurrage, to be paid on their arrival in England, 148,0037. for military and naval stores, disallowed for reasons formerly given.

The debts due to the company of 891,0691. he doubted of as much as of the unsecured part of Ragobah's debt, for the reasons already stated. By these deductions, the debt due by the company at Bombay amounted to 2,000,000l. instead of 1,790,000l. There was an additional arrear to be taken as due to the army in India, beyond what the account stated of 140,000l. They also owed to the nizam 30 lacks of rupees, which was 300,000l. totally omitted. Besides these sums, which amount in the whole to 9,400,000l. there was to be added the sum due to the proprietors of 3,200,000l. which made the sum in the whole more than 12,000,000l. which he pledged himself to exhibit in objection to their account. There were other inaccuracies in their statement, which made considerable difference in its truth, but into which he had not particularly entered. It was alledged that the sum of 400,000l. lately paid by the company to government, was as a price for the renewal of their charter. It was no such thing. They paid it as a debt due to the country, and so it was considered.

The right honourable gentleman then went into a train of most admirable and eloquent deductions from his premises, and into distinct answers to the several arguments which had been adduced against the principle, provision, and tendency of the bill. The peace with the Mahrattas had been held out by the friends and agents of that great man Mr. Hastings, a man who, by disobeying the orders of his employers, had