monstrous failure, in consequence of a miserable exaction
by which more was attempted to be forced from the country than it was
capable of yielding, and this by way of experiment, when your Lordships
come to inquire who the farmers-general of the revenue were, you would
naturally expect to find them to be the men in the several countries who
had the most interest, the greatest wealth, the best knowledge of the
revenue and resources of the country in which they lived. Those would be
thought the natural, proper farmers-general of each district. No such
thing, my Lords. They are found in the body of people whom I have
mentioned to your Lordships. They were almost all let to Calcutta
banians. Calcutta banians were the farmers of almost the whole. They
sub-delegated to others, who sometimes had sub-delegates under them _ad
infinitum_. The whole formed a system together, through the succession
of black tyrants scattered through the country, in which you at last
find the European at the end, sometimes indeed not hid very deep, not
above one between him and the farmer, namely, his banian directly, or
some other black person to represent him. But some have so managed the
affair, that, when you inquire who the farmer is,--Was such a one
farmer? No. Cantoo Baboo? No. Another? No,--at last you find three deep
of fictitious farmers, and you find the European gentlemen, high in
place and authority, the real farmers of the settlement. So that the
zemindars were dispossessed, the country racked and ruined, for the
benefit of an European, under the name of a farmer: for you will easily
judge whether these gentlemen had fallen so deeply in love with the
banians, and thought so highly of their merits and services, as to
reward _them_ with all the possessions of the great landed interest of
the country. Your Lordships are too grave, wise, and discerning, to make
it necessary for me to say more upon that subject. Tell me that the
banians of English gentlemen, dependants on them at Calcutta, were the
farmers throughout, and I believe I need not tell your Lordships for
whose benefit they were farmers.

But there is one of these who comes so nearly, indeed so precisely,
within this observation, that it is impossible for me to pass him by.
Whoever has heard of Mr. Hastings's name, with any knowledge of Indian
connections, has heard of his banian, Cantoo Baboo. This man is well
known in the records of the Company, as his agent for receiving secr