ity on the revenues in favor of the Nabob's creditors is to be
given? The majority of the House, unaccustomed to these transactions,
will hear with astonishment that these soucars are no other than the
creditors themselves. The minister, not content with authorizing these
transactions in a manner and to an extent unhoped for by the rapacious
expectations of usury itself, loads the broken back of the Indian
revenues, in favor of his worthy friends, the soucars, with an
additional twenty-four per cent for being security to themselves for
their own claims, for condescending to take the country in mortgage to
pay to themselves the fruits of their own extortions.
The interest to be paid for this security, according to the most
moderate strain of soucar demand, comes to 118,000_l._ a year, which,
added to the 480,000_l._ on which it is to accrue, will make the whole
charge amount to 598,000_l._ a year,--as much as even a long peace will
enable those revenues to produce. Can any one reflect for a moment on
all those claims of debt, which the minister exhausts himself in
contrivances to augment with new usuries, without lifting up his hands
and eyes in astonishment at the impudence both of the claim and of the
adjudication? Services of some kind or other these servants of the
Company must have done, so great and eminent that the Chancellor of the
Exchequer cannot think that all they have brought home is half enough.
He hallooes after them, "Gentlemen, you have forgot a large packet
behind you, in your hurry; you have not sufficiently recovered
yourselves; you ought to have, and you shall have, interest upon
interest upon a prohibited debt that is made up of interest upon
interest. Even this is too little. I have thought of another character
for you, by which you may add something to your gains: you shall be
security to yourselves; and hence will arise a new usury, which shall
efface the memory of all the usuries suggested to you by your own dull
inventions."
I have done with the arrangement relative to the Carnatic. After this it
is to little purpose to observe on what the ministers have done to
Tanjore. Your ministers have not observed even form and ceremony in
their outrageous and insulting robbery of that country, whose only crime
has been its early and constant adherence to the power of this, and the
suffering of an uniform pillage in consequence of it. The debt of the
Company from the Rajah of Tanjore is just of the sam
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