CHAPTER VIII.

Nabob of Arcot-Burke's Speech on India Affairs-Hyder AliHastings-Dupleix.

THE transaction which we have now reached in his career was among the penalties of the bond. The memorable India Bill had overthrown the Administration. In all cases of party failure, the first effort of the friends of the criminal is to transfer the blame; and while Fox, with the openness which belonged to his nature, acknowledged the project as his own, his adherents laboured to throw its whole weight on the head of Burke. The bill was undone; the party who were to have been borne on it into power, into more than power, into a complete and irreversible tyranny over the empire, had gone down with the wreck. But it was still to produce public and striking consequences. Burke, as a leader in all the councils of Opposition, had been largely consulted in the Indian details; and this knowledge, which had a peculiar charm for his vivid fancy, naturally led him into enquiries relative to the conduct of the chief public servants in Hindostan. Among those, the highest was hastily deemed the most guilty; and the result was the memorable impeachment of Warren Hastings.

A preliminary was the scarcely less memorable enquiry into the Nabob of Arcot's debts,—a topic which long engaged the attention of English statesmen, giving rise to a board of commissioners, whose duties occupied nearly half a century, and involving immense sums of money, and the characters of a large number of important individuals.

The Nabob of Arcot was placed on his throne, against the claims of an elder brother and other competitors, by the arms of the East India Company, about the year 1765. It was charged on him, that he subsequently attempted some seizures of neighbouring territory, and some interior arrangements of his own, incompatible with right, and his compact with the Company; that to accomplish those objects, he had intrigued with the chief servants of the Company, and that in the course of the traffic he had disbursed vast sums among the delinquent officials. It was considered as an evidence of some extraordinary proceedings, that this prince seemed to relinquish all personal interest in his dominions. He withdrew from his palaces and provinces, and settled in a comparatively obscure abode in the suburbs of Madras. There he remained for a succession of years, carrying on various complicated negotiations with the Company, thwarting the Government by means of its own officers, and purchasing immunities and territories in defiance of the principles alike of British faith and Indian tranquillity. It was alleged, that not merely secret moneys were distributed among the principal indivi

duals of the Government, but that the debts which the Nabob stated to be due to a whole host of creditors, were, in fact, bribes, amounting to some millions, and Parliament was called on to make enquiry into the right of the claimants, as British subjects, to require payment from a territory which was under British protection. Fox, in 1785, brought the topic before the House, on a motion" for copies and extracts of all letters and orders of the Court of Directors" on the subject. It was further alleged, that the Nabob of Arcot had sent troops into the dominions of the Rajah of Tanjore, pillaged the country, and imprisoned the prince, for the seizure of money sufficient to pay those demands. An outcry now arose through all circles connected with Indian affairs against the injustice of this course, and the Directors commenced an enquiry. The enquiry was again negatived by the Minister, who had formed other views of Indian government. But the debts were acknowledged, and a fund for their discharge was assigned from the revenues of the Carnatic. This detail is necessary for understanding Burke's speech. It was the last in the debate, and was worthy of concluding a competition between the great masters of parliamentary eloquence.

After some general remarks on the deficiency of enlarged views in the Ministry, and on the ability still residing in the House of Commons-" stripped as it then was of its brightest ornaments, and of its most important privileges," (so old is the language of political complaint), Burke proceeded to contrast the narrowQ

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ness of the Ministers' restoratives with the profusion of his means of ruin. "Out of some, I know not what, remains of Irish hereditary revenue, out of the surplus of deficiency, out of the savings of prodigality, this Minister of wonder (Pitt) will provide support for this nation, sinking under the mountainous load of two hundred and thirty millions of debt! But while we look with pain at his desperate and laborious trifling, while we are apprehensive that he will break his back in stooping to pick up chaff and straws, he recovers himself at an elastic bound, and, with a broad-cast swing of his arm, he squanders over his Indian field a sum far greater than the whole hereditary revenue of the kingdom of Ireland. Strange as this conduct in Ministry is, it is still true to itself, and faithful to its own perverted order. Those who are bountiful to crimes, will be rigid to merit and penurious to service. Their penury is even held out as a cover to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is to furnish resources for the fund of corruption. They pay off their protection to great crimes and great criminals, by being inexorable to the paltry frailties of little men. Those modern flagellants are sure, with a rigid fidelity, to whip their own enormities on the vicarious back of every small

offender."

The Nabob's Debt.-" From 1760 to 1780, the extraction of money from the Carnatic probably did not amount to a great deal less than twenty millions of money. During the deep silent plan of this steady stream of wealth, which set from India into Europe,

it generally passed over with no adequate observation. But happening at some periods to meet rifts of rocks that checked its course, it grew more noisy and attracted more notice. The pecuniary discussion caused by the accumulation of part of the fortunes of their servants in a debt from the Nabob of Arcot, was the first thing which very particularly called for, and long engaged, the attention of the Court of Directors. The debt amounted to L.880,000 sterling, claimed, for the most part, by English gentlemen residing at Madras. This capital, settled at length by order at 10 per cent. afforded an annuity of L.88,000. Finally, the whole debt, amounting to four millions four hundred and forty thousand pounds! produced annuities amounting to L.623,000 a-year; a good deal more than onethird of the land-tax of England, at 4s. in the pound; a good deal more than double the whole annual dividend of the East India Company, the nominal masters of those proprietors.

"When this gigantic phantom of debt first appeared before a young Minister, it naturally would have justified some apprehension. Such a prodigy would have filled any man with superstitious fears. He would have exorcised that shapeless, nameless form, and adjured it to tell by what means a small number of individuals, of no consequence, possessed of no lucrative offices, without the command of armies, or administration of revenues, without profession of any kind, or any sort of trade sufficient to employ a pedlar, could have in a few years, some in a few months, amassed