be
found unemployed in India, large as his offers were, Mr. Hastings would
not have taken this money from Debi Sing.

Debi Sing was one of those who in the early stages of the English power
in Bengal attached himself to those natives who then stood high in
office. He courted Mahomed Reza Khan, a Mussulman of the highest rank,
of the tribe of Koreish, whom I have already mentioned, then at the head
of the revenue, and now at the head of the criminal justice of Bengal,
with all the supple assiduity of which those who possess no valuable art
or useful talent are commonly complete masters. Possessing large funds,
acquired by his apprenticeship and novitiate in the lowest frauds, he
was enabled to lend to this then powerful man, in the several
emergencies of his variable fortune, very large sums of money. This
great man had been brought down by Mr. Hastings, under the orders of the
Court of Directors, upon a cruel charge, to Calcutta. He was accused of
many crimes, and acquitted, 220,000_l._ in debt: that is to say, as soon
as he was a great debtor, he ceased to be a great criminal.

Debi Sing obtained by his services no slight influence over Mahomed Reza
Khan, a person of a character very different from his.

From that connection he was appointed to the farm of the revenue, and
inclusively of the government of Purneah, a province of very great
extent, and then in a state of no inconsiderable opulence. In this
office he exerted his talents with so much vigor and industry that in a
very short time the province was half depopulated and totally ruined.

The farm, on the expiration of his lease, was taken by a set of
adventurers in this kind of traffic from Calcutta. But when the new
undertakers came to survey the object of their future operations and
future profits, they were so shocked at the hideous and squalid scenes
of misery and desolation that glared upon them in every quarter, that
they instantly fled out of the country, and thought themselves but too
happy to be permitted, on the payment of a penalty of twelve thousand
pounds, to be released from their engagements.

To give in a few words as clear an idea as I am able to give of the
immense volume which might be composed of the vexations, violence, and
rapine of that tyrannical administration, the territorial revenue of
Purneah, which had been let to Debi Sing at the rate of 160,000_l._
sterling a year, was with difficulty leased for a yearly sum under
90,000_l._,