The next thing which recommends this particular debt to the right
honorable gentleman is, it seems, the moderate interest of ten per cent.
It would be lost labor to observe on this assertion. The Nabob, in a
long apologetic letter[12] for the transaction between him and the body
of the creditors, states the fact as I shall state it to you. In the
accumulation of this debt, the first interest paid was from thirty to
thirty-six per cent; it was then brought down to twenty-five per cent;
at length it was reduced to twenty; and there it found its rest. During
the whole process, as often as any of these monstrous interests fell
into an arrear, (into which they were continually falling,) the arrear,
formed into a new capital,[13] was added to the old, and the same
interest of twenty per cent accrued upon both. The Company, having got
some scent of the enormous usury which prevailed at Madras, thought it
necessary to interfere, and to order all interests to be lowered to ten
per cent. This order, which contained no exception, though it by no
means pointed particularly to this class of debts, came like a
thunderclap on the Nabob. He considered his political credit as ruined;
but to find a remedy to this unexpected evil, he again added to the old
principal twenty per cent interest accruing for the last year. Thus a
new fund was formed; and it was on that accumulation of various
principals, and interests heaped upon interests, not on the sum
originally lent, as the right honorable gentleman would make you
believe, that ten per cent was settled on the whole.

When you consider the enormity of the interest at which these debts were
contracted, and the several interests added to the principal, I believe
you will not think me so skeptical, if I should doubt whether for this
debt of 880,000_l._ the Nabob ever saw 100,000_l._ in real money. The
right honorable gentleman suspecting, with all his absolute dominion
over fact, that he never will be able to defend even this venerable