ormer errors. Resuming the history where I broke off yesterday by your
indulgence to my weakness,--Surajah Dowlah was the adopted grandson of
Aliverdy Khan, a cruel and ferocious tyrant, the manner of whose
acquisition of power I have already stated. He came too young and
unexperienced to that throne of usurpation. It was a usurpation yet
green in the country, and the country felt uneasy under it. It had not
the advantage of that prescriptive usage, that inveterate habit, that
traditionary opinion, which a long continuance of any system of
government secures to it. The only real security which Surajah Dowlah's
government could possess was the security of an army. But the great aim
of this prince and his predecessor was to supply the weakness of his
government by the strength of his purse; he therefore amassed treasures
by all ways and on all hands. But as the Indian princes, in general, are
as unwisely tenacious of their treasure as they are rapacious in getting
it, the more money he amassed, the more he felt the effects of poverty.
The consequence was, that their armies were unpaid, and, being unpaid or
irregularly paid, were undisciplined, disorderly, unfaithful. In this
situation, a young prince, confiding more in the appearances than
examining into the reality of things, undertook (from motives which the
House of Commons, with all their industry to discover the circumstances,
have found it difficult to make out) to attack a little miserable
trading fort that we had erected at Calcutta. He succeeded in that
attempt only because success in that attempt was easy. A close
imprisonment of the whole settlement followed,--not owing, I believe, to
the direct will of the prince, but, what will always happen when the
will of the prince is but too much the law, to a gross abuse of his
power by his lowest servants,--by which one hundred and twenty or more
of our countrymen perished miserably in a dungeon, by a fate too
tragical for me to be desirous to relate, and too well known to stand in
need of it.

At the time that this event happened, there was at the same time a
concurrence of other events, which, from this partial and momentary
weakness, displayed the strength of Great Britain in Asia. For some
years before, the French and English troops began, on the coast of
Coromandel, to exhibit the power, force, and efficacy of European
discipline. As we daily looked for a war with France, our settlements on
that coast were in some