with the power and authority of all the Mahratta ftates, with the independence and dignity of the Soubah of the Decan, and the mighty strength, the resources, and the manly ftruggle of Hyder Ali; and then the Houfe will difcover the effects, on every power in India, of an easy confidence, or of a rooted diftruft in the faith of the Company.

These are some of my reasons, grounded on the abuse of the external political truft of that body, for thinking myself not only justified, but bound to declare against those chartered rights which produce fo many wrongs. I should deem myself the wickedest of men, if any vote of mine could contribute to the countenance of fo great an evil.

Now, Sir, according to the plan I propofed, I fhall take notice of the Company's internal government, as it is exercifed, firft, on the dependent provinces, and then as it affects thofe under the direct and immediate authority of that body. And here, Sir, before I enter into the spirit of their interior government, permit me to obferve to you, upon a few of the many lines of difference which are to be found between the vices of the Company's government, and those of the conquerors who preceded us in India; that we may be enabled a little the better to see our way in an attempt to the necessary reformation.

The several irruptions of Arabs, Tartars, and Perfians, into India, were, for the greater part, ferocious, bloody, and wasteful in the extreme. Our entrance into the dominion of that country was, as generally, with fmall comparative effufion of blood; being introduced by various frauds and delufions, and by taking advantage of the incurable, blind, and fenfeless animofity, which the feveral country powers bear towards each other, rather than by open force. But the difference in favour of the first conquerors is this: the Afiatic conquerors very foon abated of their ferocity, because they made the conquered country their own. They rofe or fell with the rife or fall of the territory they lived in. Fathers there depofited the hopes

af

of their pofterity; and children there beheld the monuments of their fathers. Here their lot was finally caft; and it is the natural wifh of all, that their lot fhould not be caft in a bad land. Poverty, fterility, and defolation, are not a recreating profpect to the eye of man; and there are very few who can bear to grow old among the curfes of a whole people. If their paffion or their avarice drove the Tartár Lords to acts of rapacity or tyranny, there was time enough, even in the fhort life of man, to bring round the ill effects of an abuse of power upon the power itself. If hoards were made by violence and tyranny, they were ftill domestic hoards; and domeftic profufion, or the rapine of a more powerful and prodigal hand, restored them to the people. With many diforders, and with few political checks upon power, nature had ftill fair play; the fources of acquifition were not dried up; and, therefore, the trade, the manufactures, and the commerce of the country flourished. Even avarice and ufury itself operated, both for the preservation and the employment of national wealth. The hufbandman and manufacturer paid heavy intereft; but then they augmented the fund from whence they were again to borrow. Their refources were dearly bought, but they were fure; and the general stock of the community grew by the general effort.

But under the English government all this order is reversed. The Tartar invafion was mifchievous; but it is our protection that destroys India. It was their enmity, but it is our friendfhip. Our conquest there, after twenty years, is as crude as it was the first day. The natives fcarcely know what it is to fee the gray head of an Englishman. Young men (boys almoft) govern there, without fociety, and without sympathy with the natives. They have no more focial habits with the people than if they ftill refided in England; nor indeed any fpecies of intercourse but that which is neceffary to making a fudden fortune, with a view to a remote fettlement. Animated with all the avarice of age, and all the impetuofity of

youth,

youth, they roll in, one after another, wave after wave; and there is nothing before the eyes of the natives but an endless, hopeless profpect of new flights of birds of prey and paffage, with appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually wafting. Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman, is loft for ever to India. With us are no retributory superftition, by which a foundation of charity compenfates, through ages, to the poor, for the rapine and injustice of a day. With us no pride erects stately monuments which repair the mischiefs which pride had produced, and which adorn a country out of its own fpoils. England has erected no churches, no hospitals, no palaces, no fchools; England has built no bridges, made no high roads, cut no navigations, dug out no refervoirs. Every other conqueror of every other description, has left some monument, either of ftate or beneficence, behind him. Were we to be driven out of India this day, nothing would remain, to tell that it had been poffeffed, during the inglorious period of our dominion, by any thing better than the ouran-outang, or the tyger.

There is nothing in the boys we fend to India worse than the boys whom we are whipping at school, or that we fee trailing a pike, or bending over a desk at home. But as English youth in India drink the intoxicating draught of authority and dominion before their heads are able to bear it, and as they are fully grown in fortune long before they are ripe in principle, neither nature nor reason have any opportunity to exert themselves for remedy of the exceffes of their premature power. The confequences of their conduct, which in good minds (and many of theirs are probably fuch) might produce penitence or amendment, are unable to pursue the rapidity of their flight. Their prey is lodged in England; and the cries of India are given to feas and winds, to be blown about, in every breaking up of the monfoon, over a remote and unhearing ocean. In India all the vices operate, by which fudden fortune is acquired; in England are often difplayed, by the fame perfons, the virtues which dif

penfe

penfe hereditary wealth. Arrived in England, the destroyers of the nobility and gentry of the whole kingdom, will find the best company in this nation, at a board of elegance and hofpitality. Here the manufacturer and husbandman will blefs, the just and punctual hand, that in India has torn the cloth from the loom, or wrested the scanty portion of rice and falt from the peasant of Bengal, or wrung from him the very opium in which he forgot his oppreffion and his oppreffor. They marry into your families; they enter into your Senate; they ease your eftates by loans; they raise their value by demand; they cherish and protect your relations, which lye heavy on your patronage; and there is scarcely an houfe in the kingdom that does not feel fome concern and intereft that makes all reform of our eastern government appear officious and disgusting; and, on the whole, a moft discouraging attempt. In fuch an attempt, you hurt thofe who are able to return kindness or to refent injury. If you fucceed, you fave those who cannot fo much as give you thanks, All these things fhew the difficulty of the work we have on hand; but they fhew its neceffity too. Our Indian government is, in its best state, a grievance. It is neceffary that the correctives fhould be uncommonly vigorous; and the work of men fanguine, warm, and even impaffioned in the cause. But it is an arduous thing to plead against abuses of a power which originates from your own country, and affects those whom we are used to confider as strangers.

Upon the plan which I laid down, and to which I beg leave to return, I was confidering the conduct of the Company to those nations which are indirectly subject to their authority. The most confiderable of the dependent Princes is the Nabob of Oud. My right honourable friend (Mr. Fox) to whom we owe the remedial bills on your table, has already pointed out to you, in one of the Reports, the condition of that Prince, and as it stood in the time he alluded to. I fhal only add a few circumstances that may tend to awaken fome fense of the manner in which the condition of the people is affected by that

of

of the Prince, and involved in it; and to fhew you, that when we talk of the fufferings of Princes, we do not lament the oppreffion of individuals; and that, in thefe cafes, the high and the low fuffer together.

In the year 1779, the Nabob of Oud represented, through the British Refident at his Court, that the number of the Company's troops ftationed in his dominions, was a main cause of his distress; and that all those which he was not bound by treaty to maintain should be withdrawn, as they had greatly diminished his revenue, and impoverished his country. I will read to you, if you please, a few extracts from these representations.

He ftates, "that the country and cultivation are abandoned; and this year in particular, from the exceffive drought of the feafon, deductions of many lacks having been allowed to the farmers, who are still left unfatisfied;" and then he proceeds with a long detail of his own distress, and that of his family, and all his dependents; and adds, "that the new-raised brigade is not only quite useless to my government, but is moreover the caufe of much lofs, both in revenues and cuftoms. The detached body of troops under European officers, bring nothing but confufion to the affairs of my government, and are entirely their own mafters." Mr. Middleton, Mr. Haftings' confidential Refident, vouches for the truth of this reprefentation, in its fullest extent. "I am concerned to confefs, that there is too good ground for this plea. The misfortune has been general throughout the whole of the Vizier's (the Nabob of Oud) dominions, obvious to every body; and so fatal have been its confequences, that no perfon, of either credit or character, would enter into engagements with government for farming the country." He then proceeds to give ftrong inftances of the general calamity, and its effects.

It was now to be seen what steps the Governor General and Council took for the relief of this diftreffed country, long labouring under the vexations of men, and now ftricken by

the