stood here, the transaction would have been of the most audacious
strain of fraud and usury perhaps ever before discovered, whatever might
have been practised and concealed. But the same authority (I mean the
Nabob's) brings before you something, if possible, more striking. He
states, that, for this their paper, he immediately handed over to these
gentlemen something very different from paper,--that is, the receipt of
a territorial revenue, of which, it seems, they continued as long in
possession as the Nabob himself continued in possession of anything.
Their payments, therefore, not being to commence before the end of four
months, and not being completed in two years, it must be presumed
(unless they prove the contrary) that their payments to the Nabob were
made out of the revenues they had received from his assignment. Thus
they condescended to accumulate a debt of 160,000_l._ with an interest
of twelve per cent, in compensation for a lingering payment to the
Nabob of 160,000_l._ of his own money.

Still we have not the whole. About two years after the assignment of
those territorial revenues to these gentlemen, the Nabob receives a
remonstrance from his chief manager in a principal province, of which
this is the tenor. "The _entire_ revenue of those districts is by your
Highness's order set apart to discharge the tunkaws [assignments]
granted to the Europeans. The gomastahs [agents] of Mr. Taylor to Mr. De
Fries are there in order to collect those tunkaws; and as they receive
_all_ the revenue that is collected, your Highness's troops have _seven
or eight months' pay due_, which they cannot receive, and are thereby
reduced to the greatest _distress_. _In such times_ it is highly
necessary to provide for the sustenance of the troops, that they may be
ready to exert themselves in the service of your Highness."

Here, Sir, you see how these causes and effects act upon one another.
One body of troops mutinies for want of pay; a debt is contracted to pay
them; and they still remain unpaid. A territory destined to pay other
troops is assigned for this debt; and these other troops fall into the
same state of indigence and mutiny with the first. Bond is paid by bond;
arrear is turned into new arrear; usury engenders new usury; mutiny,
suspended in one quarter, starts up in another; until all the revenues
and all the establishments are entangled into one inextricable knot of
confusion, from which they are only disengaged by b