To state the country and its revenues in their real condition, and to provide for those fictitious claims, consistently with the support of an army and a civil establishment, would have been impossible; therefore the ministers are silent on that head, and rest themselves on the authority of Lord Macartney, who, in a letter to the Court of Directors, written in the year 1781, speculating on what might be the result of a wise management of the countries assigned by the Nabob of Arcot, rates the revenue, as in time of peace, at twelve hundred thousand pounds a year, as he does those of the king of Tanjore (which had not been assigned) at four hundred and fifty. On this Lord Macartney grounds his calculations, and on this they choose to ground theirs. It was on this calculation that the ministry, in direct opposition to the remonstrances of the Court of Directors, have compelled that miserable enslaved body to put their hands to an order for appropriating the enormous sum of 480,000l. annually, as a fund for paying to their rebellious servants a debt contracted in defiance of their clearest and most positive injunctions.
The authority and information of Lord Macartney is held high on this occasion, though it is totally rejected in every other particular of this business. I believe I have the honor of being almost as old an acquaintance as any Lord Macartney has. A constant and unbroken friendship has subsisted between us from a very early period; and I trust he thinks, that, as I respect his character, and in general admire his conduct, I am one of those who feel no common interest in his reputation. Yet I do not hesitate wholly to disallow the calculation of 1781, without any apprehension that I shall appear to distrust his veracity or his judgment. This peace estimate of revenue was not grounded on the state of the Carnatic, as it then, or as it had recently, stood. It was a statement of former and better times. There is no doubt that a period did exist, when the large portion of the Carnatic held by the Nabob of Arcot might be fairly reputed to produce a revenue to that, or to a greater amount. But the whole had so melted away by the slow and silent hostility of oppression and mismanagement, that the revenues, sinking with the prosperity of the country, had fallen to about 800,000l. a year, even before an enemy's horse had imprinted his hoof on the soil of the Carnatic. From that view, and independently of the decisive effects of the war which ensued, Sir Eyre Coote conceived that years must pass before the country could be restored to its former prosperity, and production. It was that state of revenue (namely, the actual state before the war) which the Directors have opposed to Lord Macartney's speculation. They refused to take the revenues for more than 800,000l. In this they are justified by Lord Macartney himself, who, in a subsequent letter, informs the court that his sketch is a matter of speculation; it supposes the country restored to its ancient prosperity, and the revenue to be in a course of effective and honest collection. If, therefore, the ministers have gone wrong, they were not deceived by Lord Macartney: they were deceived by no man. The estimate of the Directors is nearly the very estimate furnished by the right honorable gentleman himself, and published to the world in one of the printed reports of his own committee;[41] but as soon as he obtained his power, he chose to abandon his account. No part of his official conduct can be defended on the ground of his Parliamentary information.
In this clashing of accounts and estimates, ought not the ministry, if they wished to preserve even appearances, to have waited for information of the actual result of these speculations, before they laid a charge, and such a charge, not conditionally and eventually, but positively and authoritatively, upon a country which they all knew, and which one of them had registered on the records of this House, to be wasted, beyond all example, by every oppression of an abusive government, and every ravage of a desolating war? But that you may discern in what manner they use the correspondence of office, and that thereby you may enter into the true spirit of the ministerial Board of Control, I desire you, Mr. Speaker, to remark, that, through their whole controversy with the Court of Directors, they do not so much as hint at their ever having seen any other paper from Lord Macartney, or any other estimate of revenue than this of 1781. To this they hold. Here they take post; here they intrench themselves.
When I first read this curious controversy between the ministerial board and the Court of Directors, common candor obliged me to attribute their tenacious adherence to the estimate of 1781 to a total ignorance of what had appeared upon the records. But the right honorable gentleman has chosen to come forward with an uncalled-for declaration; he boastingly tells you, that he has seen, read, digested, compared everything,—and that, if he has sinned, he has sinned with his eyes broad open. Since, then, the ministers will obstinately shut the gates of mercy on themselves, let them add to their crimes what aggravations they please. They have, then, (since it must be so,) wilfully and corruptly suppressed the information which they ought to have produced, and, for the support of peculation, have made themselves guilty of spoliation and suppression of evidence.[42] The paper I hold in my hand, which totally overturns (for the present, at least) the estimate of 1781, they have no more taken notice of, in their controversy with the Court of Directors, than if it had no existence. It is the report made by a committee appointed at Madras to manage the whole of the six countries assigned to the Company by the Nabob of Arcot. This committee was wisely instituted by Lord Macartney, to remove from himself the suspicion of all improper management in so invidious a trust; and it seems to have been well chosen. This committee has made a comparative estimate of the only six districts which were in a condition to be let to farm. In one set of columns they state the gross and net produce of the districts as let by the Nabob. To that statement they oppose the terms on which the same districts were rented for five years under their authority. Under the Nabob, the gross farm was so high as 570,000l. sterling. What was the clear produce? Why, no more than about 250,000l.; and this was the whole profit of the Nabob's treasury, under his own management of all the districts which were in a condition to be let to farm on the 27th of May, 1782. Lord Macartney's leases stipulated a gross produce of no more than about 530,000l.; but then the estimated net amount was nearly double the Nabob's. It, however, did not then exceed 480,000l.; and Lord Macartney's commissioners take credit for an annual revenue amounting to this clear sum. Here is no speculation; here is no inaccurate account clandestinely obtained from those who might wish, and were enabled, to deceive. It is the authorized, recorded state of a real, recent transaction. Here is not twelve hundred thousand pound,—not eight hundred. The whole revenue of the Carnatic yielded no more, in May, 1782, than four hundred and eighty thousand pounds: nearly the very precise sum which your minister, who is so careful of the public security, has carried from all descriptions of establishment to form a fund for the private emolument of his creatures.
In this estimate, we see, as I have just observed, the Nabob's farms rated so high as 570,000l. Hitherto all is well: but follow on to the effective net revenue; there the illusion vanishes; and you will not find nearly so much as half the produce. It is with reason, therefore, Lord Macartney invariably, throughout the whole correspondence, qualifies all his views and expectations of revenue, and all his plans for its application, with this indispensable condition, that the management is not in the hands of the Nabob of Arcot. Should that fatal measure take place, he has over and over again told you that he has no prospect of realizing anything whatsoever for any public purpose. With these weighty declarations, confirmed by such a state of indisputable fact before them, what has been done by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his accomplices? Shall I be believed? They have delivered over those very territories, on the keeping of which in the hands of the committee the defence of our dominions, and, what was more dear to them, possibly, their own job, depended,—they have delivered back again, without condition, without arrangement, without stipulation of any sort for the natives of any rank, the whole of those vast countries, to many of which he had no just claim, into the ruinous mismanagement of the Nabob of Arcot. To crown all, according to their miserable practice, whenever they do anything transcendently absurd, they preface this their abdication of their trust by a solemn declaration that they were not obliged to it by any principle of policy or any demand of justice whatsoever.
I have stated to you the estimated produce of the territories of the Carnatic in a condition to be farmed in 1782, according to the different managements into which they might fall; and this estimate the ministers have thought proper to suppress. Since that, two other accounts have been received. The first informs us, that there has been a recovery of what is called arrear, as well as of an improvement of the revenue of one of the six provinces which were let in 1782.[43] It was brought about by making a new war. After some sharp actions, by the resolution and skill of Colonel Fullarton several of the petty princes of the most southerly of the unwasted provinces were compelled to pay very heavy rents and tributes, who for a long time before had not paid any acknowledgment. After this reduction, by the care of Mr. Irwin, one of the committee, that province was divided into twelve farms. This operation raised the income of that particular province; the others remain as they were first farmed. So that, instead of producing only their original rent of 480,000l., they netted, in about two years and a quarter, 1,320,000l. sterling, which would be about 660,000l. a year, if the recovered arrear was not included. What deduction is to be made on account of that arrear I cannot determine, but certainly what would reduce the annual income considerably below the rate I have allowed.
The second account received is the letting of the wasted provinces of the Carnatic. This I understand is at a growing rent, which may or may not realize what it promises; but if it should answer, it will raise the whole, at some future time, to 1,200,000l.
You must here remark, Mr. Speaker, that this revenue is the produce of all the Nabob's dominions. During the assignment, the Nabob paid nothing, because the Company had all. Supposing the whole of the lately assigned territory to yield up to the most sanguine expectations of the right honorable gentleman, and suppose 1,200,000l. to be annually realized, (of which we actually know of no more than the realizing of six hundred thousand,) out of this you must deduct the subsidy and rent which the Nabob paid before the assignment,—namely, 340,000l. a year. This reduces back the revenue applicable to the new distribution made by his Majesty's ministers to about 800,000l. Of that sum five eighths are by them surrendered to the debts. The remaining three are the only fund left for all the purposes so magnificently displayed in the letter of the Board of Control: that is, for a new-cast peace establishment, a now fund for ordnance and fortifications, and a large allowance for what they call "the splendor of the Durbar."
You have heard the account of these territories as they stood in 1782. You have seen the actual receipt since the assignment in 1781, of which I reckon about two years and a quarter productive. I have stated to you the expectation from the wasted part. For realizing all this you may value yourselves on the vigor and diligence of a governor and committee that have done so much. If these hopes from the committee are rational, remember that the committee is no more. Your ministers, who have formed their fund for these debts on the presumed effect of the committee's management, have put a complete end to that committee. Their acts are rescinded; their leases are broken; their renters are dispersed. Your ministers knew, when they signed the death-warrant of the Carnatic, that the Nabob would not only turn all these unfortunate farmers of revenue out of employment, but that he has denounced his severest vengeance against them, for acting under British authority. With a knowledge of this disposition, a British Chancellor of the Exchequer and Treasurer of the Navy, incited by no public advantage, impelled by no public necessity, in a strain of the most wanton perfidy which has ever stained the annals of mankind, have delivered over to plunder, imprisonment, exile, and death itself, according to the mercy of such execrable tyrants as Amir-ul-Omrah and Paul Benfield, the unhappy and deluded souls who, untaught by uniform example, were still weak enough to put their trust in English faith.[44] They have gone farther: they have thought proper to mock and outrage their misery by ordering them protection and compensation. From what power is this protection to be derived, and from what fund is this compensation to arise? The revenues are delivered over to their oppressor; the territorial jurisdiction, from whence that revenue is to arise, and under which they live, is surrendered to the same iron hands: and that they shall be deprived of all refuge and all hope, the minister has made a solemn, voluntary declaration that he never will interfere with the Nabob's internal government.[45]
The last thing considered by the Board of Control among the debts of the Carnatic was that arising to the East India Company, which, after the provision for the cavalry, and the consolidation of 1777, was to divide the residue of the fund of 480,000l. a year with the lenders of 1767. This debt the worthy chairman, who sits opposite to me, contends to be three millions sterling. Lord Macartney's account of 1781 states it to be at that period 1,200,000l. The first account of the Court of Directors makes it 900,000l. This, like the private debt, being without any solid existence, is incapable of any distinct limits. Whatever its amount or its validity may be, one thing is clear: it is of the nature and quality of a public debt. In that light nothing is provided for it, but an eventual surplus to be divided with one class of the private demands, after satisfying the two first classes. Never was a more shameful postponing a public demand, which, by the reason of the thing, and the uniform practice of all nations, supersedes every private claim.