The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12). Edmund Burke
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.
Those who gave this preference to private claims consider the Company's as a lawful demand; else why did they pretend to provide for it? On their own principles they are condemned.
But I, Sir, who profess to speak to your understanding and to your conscience, and to brush away from this business all false colors, all false appellations, as well as false facts, do positively deny that the Carnatic owes a shilling to the Company,—whatever the Company may be indebted to that undone country. It owes nothing to the Company, for this plain and simple reason: the territory charged with the debt is their own. To say that their revenues fall short, and owe them money, is to say they are in debt to themselves, which is only talking nonsense. The fact is, that, by the invasion of an enemy, and the ruin of the country, the Company, either in its own name, or in the names of the Nabob of Arcot and Rajah of Tanjore, has lost for several years what it might have looked to receive from its own estate. If men were allowed to credit themselves upon such principles, any one might soon grow rich by this mode of accounting. A flood comes down upon a man's estate in the Bedford Level of a thousand pounds a year, and drowns his rents for ten years. The Chancellor would put that man into the hands of a trustee, who would gravely make up his books, and for this loss credit himself in his account for a debt due to him of 10,000l. It is, however, on this principle the Company makes up its demands on the Carnatic. In peace they go the full length, and indeed more than the full length, of what the people can bear for current establishments; then they are absurd enough to consolidate all the calamities of war into debts,—to metamorphose the devastations of the country into demands upon its future production. What is this but to avow a resolution utterly to destroy their own country, and to force the people to pay for their sufferings to a government which has proved unable to protect either the share of the husbandman or their own? In every lease of a farm, the invasion of an enemy, instead of forming a demand for arrear, is a release of rent: nor for that release is it at all necessary to show that the invasion has left nothing to the occupier of the soil; though in the present case it would be too easy to prove that melancholy fact.46 I therefore applauded my right honorable friend, who, when he canvassed the Company's accounts, as a preliminary to a bill that ought not to stand on falsehood of any kind, fixed his discerning eye and his deciding hand on these debts of the Company from the Nabob of Arcot and Rajah of Tanjore, and at one stroke expunged them all, as utterly irrecoverable: he might have added, as utterly unfounded.
On these grounds I do not blame the arrangement this day in question, as a preference given to the debt of individuals over the Company's debt. In my eye it is no more than the preference of a fiction over a chimera; but I blame the preference given to those fictitious private debts over the standing defence and the standing government. It is there the public is robbed. It is robbed in its army; it is robbed in its civil administration; it is robbed in its credit; it is robbed in its investment, which forms the commercial connection between that country and Europe. There is the robbery.
But my principal objection lies a good deal deeper. That debt to the Company is the pretext under which all the other debts lurk and cover themselves. That debt forms the foul, putrid mucus in which are engendered the whole brood of creeping ascarides, all the endless involutions, the eternal knot, added to a knot of those inexpugnable tape-worms which devour the nutriment and eat up the bowels of India.47 It is necessary, Sir, you should recollect two things. First, that the Nabob's debt to the Company carries no interest. In the next place, you will observe, that, whenever the Company has occasion to borrow, she has always commanded whatever she thought fit at eight per cent. Carrying in your mind these two facts, attend to the process with regard to the public and private debt, and with what little appearance of decency they play into each other's hands a game of utter perdition to the unhappy natives of India. The Nabob falls into an arrear to the Company. The Presidency presses for payment. The Nabob's answer is, "I have no money." Good! But there are soucars who will supply you on the mortgage of your territories. Then steps forward some Paul Benfield, and, from his grateful compassion to the Nabob, and his filial regard to the Company, he unlocks the treasures of his virtuous industry, and, for a consideration of twenty-four or thirty-six per cent on a mortgage of the territorial revenue, becomes security to the Company for the Nabob's arrear.
All this intermediate usury thus becomes sanctified by the ultimate view to the Company's payment. In this case, would not a plain man ask this plain question of the Company: If you know that the Nabob must annually mortgage his territories to your servants to pay his annual arrear to you, why is not the assignment or mortgage made directly to the Company itself? By this simple, obvious operation, the Company would be relieved and the debt paid, without the charge of a shilling interest to that prince. But if that course should be thought too indulgent, why do they not take that assignment with such interest to themselves as they pay to others, that is, eight per cent? Or if it were thought more advisable (why it should I know not) that he must borrow, why do not the Company lend their own credit to the Nabob for their own payment? That credit would not be weakened by the collateral security of his territorial mortgage. The money might still be had at eight per cent. Instead of any of these honest and obvious methods, the Company has for years kept up a show of disinterestedness and moderation, by suffering a debt to accumulate to them from the country powers without any interest at all; and at the same time have seen before their eyes, on a pretext of borrowing to pay that debt, the revenues of the country charged with an usury of twenty, twenty-four, thirty-six, and even eight-and-forty per cent, with compound interest,48 for the benefit of their servants. All this time they know that by having a debt subsisting without any interest, which is to be paid by contracting a debt on the highest interest, they manifestly render it necessary to the Nabob of Arcot to give the private demand a preference to the public; and, by binding him and their servants together in a common cause, they enable him to form a party to the utter ruin of their own authority and their own affairs. Thus their false moderation, and their affected purity, by the natural operation of everything false and everything affected, becomes pander and bawd to the unbridled debauchery and licentious lewdness of usury and extortion.
In consequence of this double game, all the territorial revenues have at one time or other been covered by those locusts, the English soucars. Not one single foot of the Carnatic has escaped them: a territory as large as England.
Appendix, No. 5.
See extract of their letter in the Appendix, No. 9.
"It is certain that the incursion of a
Proceeding at Madras, 11th February, 1769, and throughout the correspondence on this subject; particularly Consultations, October 4th, 1769, and the creditors' memorial, 20th January, 1770.
Appendix, No. 7.