furnished to authorize a full
condemnation of these demands, they ought to have been left to the
parties, who best knew and understood each other's proceedings. It was
not necessary that the authority of government should interpose in favor
of claims whose very foundation was a defiance of that authority, and
whose object and end was its entire subversion.

It may be said that this letter was written by the Nabob of Arcot in a
moody humor, under the influence of some chagrin. Certainly it was; but
it is in such humors that truth comes out. And when he tells you, from
his own knowledge, what every one must presume, from the extreme
probability of the thing, whether he told it or not, one such testimony
is worth a thousand that contradict that probability, when the parties
have a better understanding with each other, and when they have a point
to carry that may unite them in a common deceit.

If this body of private claims of debt, real or devised, were a
question, as it is falsely pretended, between the Nabob of Arcot, as
debtor, and Paul Benfield and his associates, as creditors, I am sure I
should give myself but little trouble about it. If the hoards of
oppression were the fund for satisfying the claims of bribery and
peculation, who would wish to interfere between such litigants? If the
demands were confined to what might be drawn from the treasures which
the Company's records uniformly assert that the Nabob is in possession
of, or if he had mines of gold or silver or diamonds, (as we know that
he has none,) these gentlemen might break open his hoards or dig in his
mines without any disturbance from me. But the gentlemen on the other
side of the House know as well as I do, and they dare not contradict me,
that the Nabob of Arcot and his creditors are not adversaries, but
collusive parties, and that the whole transaction is under a false color
and false names. The litigation is not, nor ever has been, between their
rapacity and his hoarded riches. No: it is between him and them
combining and confederating, on one side, and the public revenues, and
the miserable inhabitants of a ruined country, on the other. These are
the real plaintiffs and the real defendants in the suit. Refusing a
shilling from his hoards for the satisfaction of any demand, the Nabob
of Arcot is always ready, nay, he earnestly, and with eagerness and
passion, contends for delivering up to these pretended creditors his
territory and his subjects. I