om his other
territories; and thus, in order to furnish the means of oppressing one
part of the Carnatic, he is led to oppress all the rest.

The House perceives that the livery of the Company's government is
uniform. I have described the condition of the countries indirectly, but
most substantially, under the Company's authority. And now I ask,
whether, with this map of misgovernment before me, I can suppose myself
bound by my vote to continue, upon any principles of pretended public
faith, the management of these countries in those hands. If I kept such
a faith (which in reality is no better than a _fides latronum_) with
what is called the Company, I must break the faith, the covenant, the
solemn, original, indispensable oath, in which I am bound, by the
eternal frame and constitution of things, to the whole human race.

As I have dwelt so long on these who are indirectly under the Company's
administration, I will endeavor to be a little shorter upon the
countries immediately under this charter-government. These are the
Bengal provinces. The condition of these provinces is pretty fully
detailed in the Sixth and Ninth Reports, and in their Appendixes. I
will select only such principles and instances as are broad and general.
To your own thoughts I shall leave it to furnish the detail of
oppressions involved in them. I shall state to you, as shortly as I am
able, the conduct of the Company:--1st, towards the landed
interests;--next, the commercial interests;--3rdly, the native
government;--and lastly, to their own government.

Bengal, and the provinces that are united to it, are larger than the
kingdom of France, and once contained, as France does contain, a great
and independent landed interest, composed of princes, of great lords, of
a numerous nobility and gentry, of freeholders, of lower tenants, of
religious communities, and public foundations. So early as 1769, the
Company's servants perceived the decay into which these provinces had
fallen under English administration, and they made a strong
representation upon this decay, and what they apprehended to be the
causes of it. Soon after this representation, Mr. Hastings became
President of Bengal. Instead of administering a remedy to this
melancholy disorder, upon the heels of a dreadful famine, in the year
1772, the succor which the new President and the Council lent to this
afflicted nation was--shall I be believed in relating it?--the landed
interest of a whole