upon the very day of signing the treaty, (as Mr. Middleton himself tells
you,) upon that very day, I say, he recommended to the Nabob that these
pensioners might remain upon that very establishment which, by a solemn
treaty of his own making and his own dictating, he had agreed to
relieve from this intolerable burden.

Mr. Hastings, your Lordships will remember, had departed from Benares,
frustrated in his designs of extorting 500,000_l._ from the Rajah for
the Company's use. He had ravaged the country, without obtaining any
benefit for his masters: the British soldiers having divided the only
spoil, and nothing remaining for the share of his employers but
disgrace. He was therefore afraid to return without having something of
a lucrative pecuniary nature to exhibit to the Company. Having this
object in view, Oude appears to have first presented itself to his
notice, as a country from which some advantage of a pecuniary kind might
be derived; and accordingly he turned in his head a vast variety of
stratagems for effecting his purpose.

The first article that occurs in the treaty of Chunar is a power given
to the Nabob to resume all the jaghires not guarantied by the Company,
and to give pensions to all those persons who should be removed from
their jaghires.

Now the first thing which would naturally occur to a man, who was going
to raise a revenue through the intervention of the prince of the
country, would be to recommend to that prince a better economy in his
affairs, and a rational and equal assessment upon his subjects, in order
to furnish the amount of the demand which he was about to make upon him.
I need not tell your Lordships, trained and formed as your minds are to
the rules and orders of good government, that there is no way by which a