It is impossible (at least I have found it impossible) to fix on the
real amount of the pretended debts with which your ministers have
thought proper to load the Carnatic. They are obscure; they shun
inquiry; they are enormous. That is all you know of them.

That you may judge what chance any honorable and useful end of
government has for a provision that comes in for the leavings of these
gluttonous demands, I must take it on myself to bring before you the
real condition of that abused, insulted, racked, and ruined country;
though in truth my mind revolts from it, though you will hear it with
horror, and I confess I tremble when I think on these awful and
confounding dispensations of Providence. I shall first trouble you with
a few words as to the cause.

The great fortunes made in India, in the beginnings of conquest,
naturally excited an emulation in all the parts and through the whole
succession of the Company's service. But in the Company it gave rise to
other sentiments. They did not find the new channels of acquisition flow
with equal riches to them. On the contrary, the high flood-tide of
private emolument was generally in the lowest ebb of their affairs. They
began also to fear that the fortune of war might take away what the
fortune of war had given. Wars were accordingly discouraged by repeated
injunctions and menaces: and that the servants might not be bribed into
them by the native princes, they were strictly forbidden to take any
money whatsoever from their hands. But vehement passion is ingenious in
resources. The Company's servants were not only stimulated, but better
instructed by the prohibition. They soon fell upon a contrivance which
answered their purposes far better than the methods which were
forbidden: though in this also they violated an ancient, but they
thought, an abrogated order. They reversed their proceedings. Instead of
receiving presents, they made loans. Instead of carrying on wars in
their own name, they contrived an authority, at once irresistible and
irresponsible, in whose name they might ravage at pleasure; and being
thus freed from all restraint, they indulged themselves in the most
extravagant speculations of plunder. The cabal of creditors who have
been the object of the late bountiful grant from his Majesty's
ministers, in order to possess themselves, under the name of creditors
and assignees, of every country in India, as fast as it should be
conquered, inspired into the m