a
sheet of paper. The natives, a people habitually made to concealment,
are the chief managers of the revenue throughout the provinces. I mean
by natives such wretches as your rulers select out of them as most
fitted for their purposes. As a proper keystone to bind the arch, a
native, one Gunga Govind Sing, a man turned out of his employment by Sir
John Clavering for malversation in office, is made the corresponding
secretary, and, indeed, the great moving principle of their new board.

As the whole revenue and civil administration was thus subverted, and a
clandestine government substituted in the place of it, the judicial
institution underwent a like revolution. In 1772 there had been six
courts, formed out of the six provincial councils. Eighteen new ones
are appointed in their place, with each a judge, taken from the _junior_
servants of the Company. To maintain these eighteen courts, a tax is
levied on the sums in litigation, of two and one half per cent on the
great, and of five per cent on the less. This money is all drawn from
the provinces to Calcutta. The chief justice (the same who stays in
defiance of a vote of this House, and of his Majesty's recall) is
appointed at once the treasurer and disposer of these taxes, levied
without any sort of authority from the Company, from the Crown, or from
Parliament.

In effect, Sir, every legal, regular authority, in matters of revenue,
of political administration, of criminal law, of civil law, in many of
the most essential parts of military discipline, is laid level with the
ground; and an oppressive, irregular, capricious, unsteady, rapacious,
and peculating despotism, with a direct disavowal of obedience to any
authority at home, and without any fixed maxim, principle, or rule of
proceeding to guide them in India, is at present the state of your
charter-government over great kingdoms.

As the Company has made this use of their trust, I should ill discharge
mine, if I refused to give my most cheerful vote for the redress of
these abuses, by putting the affairs of so large and valuable a part of
the interests of this nation and of mankind into some steady hands,
possessing the confidence and assured of the support of this House,
until they can be restored to regularity, order, and consistency.

I have touched the heads of some of the grievances of the people and the
abuses of government. But I hope and trust you will give me credit, when
I faithfully assure you tha