that the levity and inconstancy of these mock legislators
were not the least afflicting parts of the oppressions suffered under
their usurpation; nor will anything give stability to the property of
the natives, but an administration in England at once protecting and
stable. The country sustains, almost every year, the miseries of a
revolution. At present, all is uncertainty, misery, and confusion. There
is to be found through these vast regions no longer one landed man who
is a resource for voluntary aid or an object for particular rapine. Some
of them were not long since great princes; they possessed treasures,
they levied armies. There was a zemindar in Bengal, (I forget his name,)
that, on the threat of an invasion, supplied the subah of these
provinces with the loan of a million sterling. The family at this day
wants credit for a breakfast at the bazaar.

I shall now say a word or two on the Company's care of the commercial
interest of those kingdoms. As it appears in the Reports that persons in
the highest stations in Bengal have adopted, as a fixed plan of policy,
the destruction of all intermediate dealers between the Company and the
manufacturer, native merchants have disappeared of course. The spoil of
the revenues is the sole capital which purchases the produce and
manufactures, and through three or four foreign companies transmits the
official gains of individuals to Europe. No other commerce has an
existence in Bengal. The transport of its plunder is the only traffic of
the country. I wish to refer you to the Appendix to the Ninth Report for
a full account of the manner in which the Company have protected the
commercial interests of their dominions in the East.

As to the native government and the administration of justice, it
subsisted in a poor, tottering manner for some years. In the year 1781 a
total revolution took place in that establishment. In one of the usual
freaks of legislation of the Council of Bengal, the whole criminal
jurisdiction of these courts, called the Phoujdary Judicature, exercised
till then by the principal Mussulmen, was in one day, without notice,
without consultation with the magistrates or the people there, and
without communication with the Directors or Ministers here, totally
subverted. A new institution took place, by which this jurisdiction was
divided between certain English servants of the Company and the Gentoo
zemindars of the country, the latter of whom never petitioned