y him
distributed, through a long course of years, to some of the Company's
servants. Besides these presumed payments in ready money, (of which,
from the nature of the thing, the direct proof is very difficult,) debts
have at several periods been acknowledged to those gentlemen, to an
immense amount,--that is, to some millions of sterling money. There is
strong reason to suspect that the body of these debts is wholly
fictitious, and was never created by money _bona fide_ lent. But even on
a supposition that this vast sum was really advanced, it was impossible
that the very reality of such an astonishing transaction should not
cause some degree of alarm and incite to some sort of inquiry.

It was not at all seemly, at a moment when the Company itself was so
distressed as to require a suspension, by act of Parliament, of the
payment of bills drawn on them from India,--and also a direct tax upon
every house in England, in order to facilitate the vent of their goods,
and to avoid instant insolvency,--at that very moment, that their
servants should appear in so flourishing a condition, as, besides ten
millions of other demands on their masters, to be entitled to claim a
debt of three or four millions more from the territorial revenue of one
of their dependent princes.

The ostensible pecuniary transactions of the Nabob of Arcot with very
private persons are so enormous, that they evidently set aside every
pretence of policy which might induce a prudent government in some
instances to wink at ordinary loose practice in ill-managed departments.
No caution could be too great in handling this matter, no scrutiny too
exact. It was evidently the interest, and as evidently at least in the
power, of the creditors, by admitting secret participation in this dark
and undefined concern, to spread corruption to the greatest and the most
alarming extent.

These facts relative to the debts were so notorious, the opinion of
their being a principal source of the disorders of the British
government in India was so undisputed and universal, that there was no
party, no description of men in Parliament, who did not think themselves
bound, if not in honor and conscience, at least in common decency, to
institute a vigorous inquiry into the very bottom of the business,
before they admitted any part of that vast and suspicious charge to be
laid upon an exhausted country. Every plan concurred in directing such
an inquiry, in order that whatever wa