his obligations, but to give his bond in exchange for the bond of
Messieurs Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and to pay, besides, a good, smart
interest, legally twelve per cent, (in reality, perhaps, twenty or
twenty-four per cent,) for this exchange of paper. But his troops were
not to be so paid, or so disbanded. They wanted bread, and could not
live by cutting and shuffling of bonds. The Nabob still kept the troops
in service, and was obliged to continue, as you have seen, the whole
expense to exonerate himself from which he became indebted to the
soucars.

Had it stood here, the transaction would have been of the most audacious
strain of fraud and usury perhaps ever before discovered, whatever might
have been practised and concealed. But the same authority (I mean the
Nabob's) brings before you something, if possible, more striking. He
states, that, for this their paper, he immediately handed over to these
gentlemen something very different from paper,--that is, the receipt of
a territorial revenue, of which, it seems, they continued as long in
possession as the Nabob himself continued in possession of anything.
Their payments, therefore, not being to commence before the end of four
months, and not being completed in two years, it must be presumed
(unless they prove the contrary) that their payments to the Nabob were
made out of the revenues they had received from his assignment. Thus
they condescended to accumulate a debt of 160,000_l._ with an interest
of twelve per cent, in compensation for a lingering payment to the
Nabob of 160,000_l._ of his own money.

Still we have not the whole. About two years after the assignment of
those territorial revenues to these gentlemen, the Nabob receives a
remonstrance from his chief manager in a principal province, of which
this is the tenor. "The _entire_ revenue of those districts is by your