some other black person to represent him. But some have so managed the
affair, that, when you inquire who the farmer is,--Was such a one
farmer? No. Cantoo Baboo? No. Another? No,--at last you find three deep
of fictitious farmers, and you find the European gentlemen, high in
place and authority, the real farmers of the settlement. So that the
zemindars were dispossessed, the country racked and ruined, for the
benefit of an European, under the name of a farmer: for you will easily
judge whether these gentlemen had fallen so deeply in love with the
banians, and thought so highly of their merits and services, as to
reward _them_ with all the possessions of the great landed interest of
the country. Your Lordships are too grave, wise, and discerning, to make
it necessary for me to say more upon that subject. Tell me that the
banians of English gentlemen, dependants on them at Calcutta, were the
farmers throughout, and I believe I need not tell your Lordships for
whose benefit they were farmers.

But there is one of these who comes so nearly, indeed so precisely,
within this observation, that it is impossible for me to pass him by.
Whoever has heard of Mr. Hastings's name, with any knowledge of Indian
connections, has heard of his banian, Cantoo Baboo. This man is well
known in the records of the Company, as his agent for receiving secret
gifts, confiscations, and presents. You would have imagined that he
would at least have kept _him_ out of these farms, in order to give the
measure a color at least of disinterestedness, and to show that this
whole system of corruption and pecuniary oppression was carried on for
the benefit of the Company. The Governor-General and Council made an
ostensible order by which no collector, or person concerned in the
revenue, should have any connection with these farms. This order did not
include the Governor-General in the words of it, but more than included
him in the spirit of it; because his power to protect a farmer-general