merchants of
Canton in China, a sum of not more than one million sterling. In this
memorial they called upon the Company for their assistance and
interposition with the Chinese government for the recovery of the debt.
This sum lent to Chinese merchants was at twenty-four per cent, which
would yield, if paid, an annuity of two hundred and forty thousand
pounds.[8]

Perplexed as the Directors were with these demands, you may conceive,
Sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed by being
made acquainted that they must again exert their influence for a new
reserve of the happy parsimony of their servants, collected into a
second debt from the Nabob of Arcot, amounting to two millions four
hundred thousand pounds, settled at an interest of twelve per cent. This
is known by the name of the Consolidation of 1777, as the former of the
Nabob's debts was by the title of the Consolidation of 1767. To this was
added, in a separate parcel, a little reserve, called the Cavalry Debt,
of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, at the same interest. The
whole of these four capitals, amounting to four millions four hundred
and forty thousand pounds, produced at their several rates, annuities
amounting to six hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds a year: a good
deal more than one third of the clear land-tax of England, at four
shillings in the pound; a good deal more than double the whole annual
dividend of the East India Company, the nominal masters to the
proprietors in these funds. Of this interest, three hundred and
eighty-three thousand two hundred pounds a year stood chargeable on the
public revenues of the Carnatic.

Sir, at this moment, it will not be necessary to consider the various
operations which the capital and interest of this debt have successively
undergone. I shall speak to these operations when I come particularly to
answer the right honorable gentleman on each of the heads, as he has
thought proper to divide them. But this was the exact view in which
these debts first appeared to the Court of Directors, and to the world.
It varied afterwards. But it never appeared in any other than a most
questionable shape. When this gigantic phantom of debt first appeared
before a young minister, it naturally would have justified some degree
of doubt and apprehension. Such a prodigy would have filled any common
man with superstitious fears. He would exorcise that shapeless, nameless
form, and by everything sa