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