hat he should have no want of
assistance, a civil gentleman, called a Resident, is kept at his court,
who, under pretence of providing duly for the pay of these troops, gets
assignments on the revenue into his hands. Under his provident
management, debts soon accumulate; new assignments are made for these
debts; until, step by step, the whole revenue, and with it the whole
power of the country, is delivered into his hands. The military do not
behold without a virtuous emulation the moderate gains of the civil
department. They feel that in a country driven to habitual rebellion by
the civil government the military is necessary; and they will not permit
their services to go unrewarded. Tracts of country are delivered over to
their discretion. Then it is found proper to convert their commanding
officers into farmers of revenue. Thus, between the well-paid civil and
well-rewarded military establishment, the situation of the natives may
be easily conjectured. The authority of the regular and lawful
government is everywhere and in every point extinguished. Disorders and
violences arise; they are repressed by other disorders and other
violences. Wherever the collectors of the revenue and the farming
colonels and majors move, ruin is about them, rebellion before and
behind them. The people in crowds fly out of the country; and the
frontier is guarded by lines of troops, not to exclude an enemy, but to
prevent the escape of the inhabitants.

By these means, in the course of not more than four or five years, this
once opulent and flourishing country, which, by the accounts given in
the Bengal consultations, yielded more than three crore of sicca rupees,
that is, above three millions sterling, annually, is reduced, as far as
I can discover, in a matter purposely involved in the utmost perplexity,
to less than one million three hundred thousand pounds, and that exacted
by every mode of rigor that can be devised. To complete the business,
most of the wretched remnants of this revenue are mortgaged, and
delivered into the hands of the usurers at Benares (for there alone are
to be found some lingering remains of the ancient wealth of these
regions) at an interest of near _thirty per cent per annum_.

The revenues in this manner failing, they seized upon the estates of
every person of eminence in the country, and, under the name of
_resumption_, confiscated their property. I wish, Sir, to be understood
universally and literally, when