oppression were the fund for satisfying the claims of bribery and
peculation, who would wish to interfere between such litigants? If the
demands were confined to what might be drawn from the treasures which
the Company's records uniformly assert that the Nabob is in possession
of, or if he had mines of gold or silver or diamonds, (as we know that
he has none,) these gentlemen might break open his hoards or dig in his
mines without any disturbance from me. But the gentlemen on the other
side of the House know as well as I do, and they dare not contradict me,
that the Nabob of Arcot and his creditors are not adversaries, but
collusive parties, and that the whole transaction is under a false color
and false names. The litigation is not, nor ever has been, between their
rapacity and his hoarded riches. No: it is between him and them
combining and confederating, on one side, and the public revenues, and
the miserable inhabitants of a ruined country, on the other. These are
the real plaintiffs and the real defendants in the suit. Refusing a
shilling from his hoards for the satisfaction of any demand, the Nabob
of Arcot is always ready, nay, he earnestly, and with eagerness and
passion, contends for delivering up to these pretended creditors his
territory and his subjects. It is, therefore, not from treasuries and
mines, but from the food of your unpaid armies, from the blood withheld
from the veins and whipped out of the backs of the most miserable of
men, that we are to pamper extortion, usury, and peculation, under the
false names of debtors and creditors of state.

The great patron of these creditors, (to whose honor they ought to erect
statues,) the right honorable gentleman,[9] in stating the merits which
recommended them to his favor, has ranked them under three grand
divisions. The first, the creditors of 1767; then the creditors of the
cavalry loan; and lastly, the creditors of the loan in 1777. Let us
examine them, one by one, as they pass in review before us.