than its voracious appetite could devour."

"If there had been any men in the country, who had not their hearts and
souls so subdued by fear, as to refuse to speak the truth at all upon
such a subject, they would have told him, there had been no war since the
time of Sujah ul Dowlah,--tyrant, indeed, as he was, but then deeply
regretted by his subjects--that no hostile blow of any enemy had been
struck in that land--that there had been no disputed succession--no civil
war--no religious frenzy. But that these were the tokens of British
friendship, the marks left by the embraces of British allies--more
dreadful than the blows of the bitterest enemy. They would tell him that
these allies had converted a prince into a slave, to make him the
principal in the extortion upon his subjects;--that their rapacity
increased in proportion as the means of supplying their avarice
diminished; that they made the sovereign pay as if they had a right to an
increased price, because the labor of extortion and plunder increased. To
such causes, they would tell him, these calamities were owing.

"Need I refer Your Lordships to the strong testimony of Major Naylor when
he rescued Colonel Hannay from their hands--where you see that this
people, born to submission and bent to most abject subjection--that even
they, in whose meek hearts injury had never yet begot resentment, nor
even despair bred courage--that _their_ hatred, _their_
abhorrence of Colonel Hannay was such that they clung round him by
thousands and thousands;--that when Major Naylor rescued him, they
refused life from the hand that could rescue Hannay;--that they nourished
this desperate consolation, that by their death they should at least thin
the number of wretches who suffered by his devastation and extortion. He
says that, when he crossed the river, he found the poor wretches
quivering upon the parched banks of the polluted river, encouraging their