at Madras! Have they
so? Why, then, defraud our anxiety and their characters of that proof?
Is it not enough that the charges which I have laid before you have
stood on record against these poor injured gentlemen for eight years? Is
it not enough that they are in print by the orders of the East India
Company for five years? After these gentlemen have borne all the odium
of this publication and all the indignation of the Directors with such
unexampled equanimity, now that they are at length stimulated into
feeling are you to deny them their just relief? But will the right
honorable gentleman be pleased to tell us how they came not to give this
satisfaction to the Court of Directors, their lawful masters, during all
the eight years of this litigated claim? Were they not bound, by every
tie that can bind man, to give them this satisfaction? This day, for the
first time, we hear of the proofs. But when were these proofs offered?
In what cause? Who were the parties? Who inspected, who contested this
belated account? Let us see something to oppose to the body of record
which appears against them. The Mayor's Court! the Mayor's Court!
Pleasant! Does not the honorable gentleman know that the first corps of
creditors (the creditors of 1767) stated it as a sort of hardship to
them, that they could not have justice at Madras, from the impossibility
of their supporting their claims in the Mayor's Court? Why? Because, say
they, the members of that court were themselves creditors, and therefore
could not sit as judges.[19] Are we ripe to say that no creditor under
similar circumstances was member of the court, when the payment which is
the ground of this cavalry debt was put in proof?[20] Nay, are we not in
a manner compelled to conclude that the court was so constituted, when
we know there is scarcely a man in Madras who has not some participation
in these transactions? It is a shame to hear such proofs mentioned,
instead of the honest, vigorous scrutiny which the circumstances of such
an affair so indispensably call for.

But his Majesty's ministers, indulgent enough to other scrutinies, have
not been satisfied with authorizing the payment of this demand without
such inquiry as the act has prescribed; but they have added the arrear
of twelve per cent interest, from the year 1777 to the year 1784, to
make a new capital, raising thereby 160 to 294,000_l._ Then they charge
a new twelve per cent on the whole from that period, for a tra