The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III | Page 9

years been
witness to the immense sums laid out by the servants of the Company
in stocks of all denominations, in the purchase of lands, in the buying
and building of houses, in the securing quiet seats in Parliament or in
the tumultuous riot of contested elections, in wandering throughout the
whole range of those variegated modes of inventive prodigality which
sometimes have excited our wonder, sometimes roused our indignation,
that, after all, India was four millions still in debt to _them_? India in
debt to them! For what? Every debt, for which an equivalent of some
kind or other is not given, is, on the face of it, a fraud. What is the
equivalent they have given? What equivalent had they to give? What
are the articles of commerce, or the branches of manufacture, which
those gentlemen have carried hence to enrich India? What are the
sciences they beamed out to enlighten it? What are the arts they
introduced to cheer and to adorn it? What are the religious, what the
moral institutions they have taught among that people, as a guide to life,
or as a consolation when life is to be no more, that there is an eternal
debt, a debt "still paying, still to owe," which must be bound on the
present generation in India, and entailed on their mortgaged posterity
forever? A debt of millions, in favor of a set of men whose names, with
few exceptions, are either buried in the obscurity of their origin and
talents or dragged into light by the enormity of their crimes!
In my opinion the courage of the minister was the most wonderful part
of the transaction, especially as he must have read, or rather the right
honorable gentleman says he has read for him, whole volumes upon the
subject. The volumes, by the way, are not by one tenth part so
numerous as the right honorable gentleman has thought proper to
pretend, in order to frighten you from inquiry; but in these volumes,
such as they are, the minister must have found a full authority for a
suspicion (at the very least) of everything relative to the great fortunes

made at Madras. What is that authority? Why, no other than the
standing authority for all the claims which the ministry has thought fit
to provide for,--the grand debtor,--the Nabob of Arcot himself. Hear
that prince, in the letter written to the Court of Directors, at the precise
period whilst the main body of these debts were contracting. In his
letter he states himself to be, what undoubtedly he is, a most competent
witness to this point. After speaking of the war with Hyder Ali in 1768
and 1769, and of other measures which he censures, (whether right or
wrong it signifies nothing,) and into which he says he had been led by
the Company's servants, he proceeds in this manner:--"If all these
things were against the real interests of the Company, they are ten
thousand times more against mine, and against the prosperity of my
country and the happiness of my people; for your interests and mine are
the same. _What were they owing to, then? To the private views of a
few individuals, who have enriched themselves at the expense of your
influence and of my country: for your servants HAVE NO TRADE IN
THIS COUNTRY, neither do you pay them high wages; yet in a few
years they return to England with many lacs of pagodas. How can you
or I account for such immense fortunes acquired in so short a time,
without any visible means of getting them?_"
When he asked this question, which involves its answer, it is
extraordinary that curiosity did not prompt the Chancellor of the
Exchequer to that inquiry which might come in vain recommended to
him by his own act of Parliament. Does not the Nabob of Arcot tell us,
in so many words, that there was no fair way of making the enormous
sums sent by the Company's servants to England? And do you imagine
that there was or could be more honesty and good faith in the demands
for what remained behind in India? Of what nature were the
transactions with himself? If you follow the train of his information,
you must see, that, if these great sums were at all lent, it was not
property, but spoil, that was lent; if not lent, the transaction was not a
contract, but a fraud. Either way, if light enough could not be furnished
to authorize a full condemnation of these demands, they ought to have
been left to the parties, who best knew and understood each other's
proceedings. It was not necessary that the authority of government
should interpose in favor of claims whose very foundation was a
defiance