The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III | Page 8

English
gentlemen on their private account, by the way of China alone.[6] If we
add four hundred thousand, as probably remitted through other
channels, and in other mediums, that is, in jewels, gold, and silver,
directly brought to Europe, and in bills upon the British and foreign
companies, you will scarcely think the matter overrated. If we fix the
commencement of this extraction of money from the Carnatic at a
period no earlier than the year 1760, and close it in the year 1780, it
probably will not amount to a great deal less than twenty millions of
money.
During the deep, silent flow of this steady stream of wealth which set
from India into Europe, it generally passed on with no adequate
observation; but happening at some periods to meet rifts of rocks that
checked its course, it grew more noisy and attracted more notice. The
pecuniary discussions caused by an accumulation of part of the fortunes
of their servants in a debt from the Nabob of Arcot was the first thing
which very particularly called for, and long engaged, the attention of
the Court of Directors. This debt amounted to eight hundred and eighty
thousand pounds sterling, and was claimed, for the greater part, by
English gentlemen residing at Madras. This grand capital, settled at
length by order at ten per cent, afforded an annuity of eighty-eight
thousand pounds.[7]
Whilst the Directors were digesting their astonishment at this
information, a memorial was presented to them from three gentlemen,
informing them that their friends had lent, likewise, to merchants of
Canton in China, a sum of not more than one million sterling. In this
memorial they called upon the Company for their assistance and

interposition with the Chinese government for the recovery of the debt.
This sum lent to Chinese merchants was at twenty-four per cent, which
would yield, if paid, an annuity of two hundred and forty thousand
pounds.[8]
Perplexed as the Directors were with these demands, you may conceive,
Sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed by
being made acquainted that they must again exert their influence for a
new reserve of the happy parsimony of their servants, collected into a
second debt from the Nabob of Arcot, amounting to two millions four
hundred thousand pounds, settled at an interest of twelve per cent. This
is known by the name of the Consolidation of 1777, as the former of
the Nabob's debts was by the title of the Consolidation of 1767. To this
was added, in a separate parcel, a little reserve, called the Cavalry Debt,
of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, at the same interest. The
whole of these four capitals, amounting to four millions four hundred
and forty thousand pounds, produced at their several rates, annuities
amounting to six hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds a year: a
good deal more than one third of the clear land-tax of England, at four
shillings in the pound; a good deal more than double the whole annual
dividend of the East India Company, the nominal masters to the
proprietors in these funds. Of this interest, three hundred and
eighty-three thousand two hundred pounds a year stood chargeable on
the public revenues of the Carnatic.
Sir, at this moment, it will not be necessary to consider the various
operations which the capital and interest of this debt have successively
undergone. I shall speak to these operations when I come particularly to
answer the right honorable gentleman on each of the heads, as he has
thought proper to divide them. But this was the exact view in which
these debts first appeared to the Court of Directors, and to the world. It
varied afterwards. But it never appeared in any other than a most
questionable shape. When this gigantic phantom of debt first appeared
before a young minister, it naturally would have justified some degree
of doubt and apprehension. Such a prodigy would have filled any
common man with superstitious fears. He would exorcise that shapeless,
nameless form, and by everything sacred would have adjured it to tell
by what means a small number of slight individuals, of no consequence
or situation, possessed of no lucrative offices, without the command of

armies or the known administration of revenues, without profession of
any kind, without any sort of trade sufficient to employ a peddler, could
have, in a few years, (as to some, even in a few months,) amassed
treasures equal to the revenues of a respectable kingdom? Was it not
enough to put these gentlemen, in the novitiate of their administration,
on their guard, and to call upon them for a strict inquiry, (if not to
justify them in a reprobation of those demands without any inquiry at
all,) that, when all England, Scotland, and Ireland had for