The first of these loans, that of 1767, he insists, has an indisputable
claim upon the public justice. The creditors, he affirms, lent their
money publicly; they advanced it with the express knowledge and
approbation of the Company; and it was contracted at the moderate
interest of ten per cent. In this loan, the demand is, according to him,
not only just, but meritorious in a very high degree: and one would be
inclined to believe he thought so, because he has put it last in the
provision he has made for these claims.

I readily admit this debt to stand the fairest of the whole; for,
whatever may be my suspicions concerning a part of it, I can convict it
of nothing worse than the most enormous usury. But I can convict, upon
the spot, the right honorable gentleman of the most daring
misrepresentation in every one fact, without any exception, that he has
alleged in defence of this loan, and of his own conduct with regard to
it. I will show you that this debt was never contracted with the
knowledge of the Company; that it had not their approbation; that they
received the first intelligence of it with the utmost possible surprise,
indignation, and alarm.

So for from being previously apprised of the transaction from its
origin, it was two years before the Court of Directors obtained any
official intelligence of it. "The dealings of the servants with the
Nabob were concealed from the first, until they were found out" (says
Mr. Sayer, the Company's counsel) "by the report of the country." The
Presidency, however, at last thought proper to send an official account.
On this the Directors tell them, "To your great reproach, it has been
_concealed from us_. We cannot but suspect this debt to have had its
weight in _your proposed aggrandizement of Mahomed Ali_ [the Nabob of