laws to restrain abuse, here
are not only salaries to prevent the temptation to it, but here are
praises to animate and encourage him, here is what very few men, even
bad in other respects, have resisted,--here is a great trust put in him,
to call upon him with particular vigor and exertion to prevent all
abuses through the settlement, and particularly these abuses of
corruption. Much trust is put in his frugality, his order, his
management of his private affairs; and from thence they hope that he
would not ruin his own fortune, but improve it by honorable means, and
teach the Company's servants the same order and management, in order to
free them from temptation to rapacity in their own particular
situations. There have been known to be men, otherwise corrupt and
vicious, who, when great trust was put in them, have called forth
principles of honor latent in their minds; and men who were nursed, in a
manner, in corruption have been not only great reformers by institution,
but greater reformers by the example of their own conduct. Then I am to
show, that, soon after his coming to that government, there were means
given him instantly of realizing those hopes and expectations, by
putting into his hands several arduous and several difficult
commissions.

My Lords, in the year 1772 the Company had received alarming advices of
many disorders throughout the country: there were likewise, at the same
time, circumstances in the state of the government upon which they
thought it necessary to make new regulations. The famine which prevailed
in and devastated Bengal, and the ill use that was made of that calamity
to aggravate the distress for the advantage of individuals, produced a
great many complaints, some true, some exaggerated, but universally
spread, as I believe is in the memory of those who are not very young
among us. This obliged the Company to a very serious consideration of an
affair which dishonored and disgraced their government, not only at
home, but through all the countries in Europe, much more than perhaps
even more grievous and real oppressions that were exercised under them.
It had alarmed their feelings, it had been marked, and had called the
attention of the public upon them in an eminent manner.

Your Lordships remember the death of Jaffier Ali Khan, the first of
those subahs who introduced the English power into Bengal. He died about
four or five years before this period. He was succeeded by two of his
so