five
years, upon an idea which always accompanies his acts of oppression, the
idea of _moneyed merit_. He adopted this mode of confiscating the
estates, and letting them to farmers, for the avowed purpose of seeing
how much it was possible to take out of them. Accordingly, he set them
up to this wild and wicked auction, as it would have been, if it had
been a real one,--corrupt and treacherous, as it was,--he set these
lands up for the purpose of making that discovery, and pretended that
the discovery would yield a most amazing increase of rent. And for some
time it appeared so to do, till it came to the touchstone of experience;
and then it was found that there was a defalcation from these monstrous
raised revenues which were to cancel in the minds of the Directors the
wickedness of so atrocious, flagitious, and horrid an act of treachery.
At the end of five years what do you think was the failure? No less than
2,050,000_l._ Then a new source of corruption was opened,--that is, how
to deal with the balances: for every man who had engaged in these
transactions was a debtor to government, and the remission of that debt
depended upon the discretion of the Governor-General. Then the persons
who were to settle the composition of that immense debt, who were to see
how much was recoverable and how much not, were able to favor, or to
exact to the last shilling; and there never existed a doubt but that not
only upon the original cruel exaction, but upon the remission
afterwards, immense gains were derived. This will account for the manner
in which those stupendous fortunes which astonish the world have been
made. They have been made, first by a tyrannous exaction from the people
who were suffered to remain in possession of their own land as
farmers,--then by selling the rest to farmers at rents and under hopes
which could never be realized, and then getting money for the relaxation
of their debts. But whatever excuse, and however wicked, there might
have been for this wicked act, namely, that it carried upon the face of
it some sort of appearance of public good,--that is to say, that sort of
public good which Mr. Hastings so often professed, of ruining the
country for the benefit of the Company,--yet, in fact, this business of
balances is that _nidus_ in which have been nustled and bred and born
all the corruptions of India, first by making extravagant demands, and
afterwards by making corrupt relaxations of them.

Besides this