attorney for Mr. Paul Benfield. Every one who hears me is well acquainted with the sacred friendship and the steady mutual attachment that subsists between him and the present minister. As many members as chose to attend in the first session of this Parliament can best tell their own feelings at the scenes which were then acted. How much that honorable gentleman was consulted in the original frame and fabric of the bill, commonly called Mr. Pitt's India Bill, is matter only of conjecture, though by no means difficult to divine. But the public was an indignant witness of the ostentation with which the measure was made his own, and the authority with which he brought up clause after clause, to stuff and fatten the rankness of that corrupt act. As fast as the clauses were brought up to the table, they were accepted. No hesitation, no discussion. They were received by the new minister, not with approbation, but with implicit submission. The reformation may be estimated by seeing who was the reformer. Paul Benfield's associate and agent was held up to the world as legislator of Hindostan. But it was necessary to authenticate the coalition between the men of intrigue in India and the minister of intrigue in England by a studied display of the power of this their connecting link. Every trust, every honor, every distinction, was to be heaped upon him. He was at once made a Director of the India Company, made an alderman of London, and to be made, if ministry could prevail, (and I am sorry to say how near, how very near, they were prevailing,) representative of the capital of this kingdom. But to secure his services against all risk, he was brought in for a ministerial borough. On his part, he was not wanting in zeal for the common cause. His advertisements show his motives, and the merits upon which he stood. For your minister, this worn-out veteran submitted to enter into the dusty field of the London contest; and you all remember that in the same virtuous cause he submitted to keep a sort of public office or counting-house, where the whole business of the last general election was managed. It was openly managed by the direct agent and attorney of Benfield. It was managed upon Indian principles and for an Indian interest. This was the golden cup of abominations,—this the chalice of the fornications of rapine, usury, and oppression, which was held out by the gorgeous Eastern harlot,—which so many of the people, so many of the nobles of this land had drained to the very dregs. Do you think that no reckoning was to follow this lewd debauch? that no payment was to be demanded for this riot of public drunkenness and national prostitution? Here, you have it here before you! The principal of the grand election-manager must be indemnified; accordingly, the claims of Benfield and his crew must be put above all inquiry.
For several years Benfield appeared as the chief proprietor, as well as the chief agent, director, and controller of this system of debt. The worthy chairman of the Company has stated the claims of this single gentleman on the Nabob of Arcot as amounting to five hundred thousand pound.58 Possibly at the time of the chairman's state they might have been as high. Eight hundred thousand pound had been mentioned some time before;59 and, according to the practice of shifting the names of creditors in these transactions, and reducing or raising the debt itself at pleasure, I think it not impossible that at one period the name of Benfield might have stood before those frightful figures. But my best information goes to fix his share no higher than four hundred thousand pounds. By the scheme of the present ministry for adding to the principal twelve per cent from the year 1777 to the year 1781, four hundred thousand pounds, that smallest of the sums ever mentioned for Mr. Benfield, will form a capital of 592,000l. at six per cent. Thus, besides the arrears of three years, amounting to 106,500l., (which, as fast as received, may be legally lent out at twelve per cent,) Benfield has received, by the ministerial grant before you, an annuity of 35,520l. a year, charged on the public revenues.
Our mirror of ministers of finance did not think this enough for the services of such a friend as Benfield. He found that Lord Macartney, in order to frighten the Court of Directors from the project of obliging the Nabob to give soucar security for his debt, assured them, that, if they should take that step, Benfield60 would infallibly be the soucar, and would thereby become the entire master of the Carnatic. What Lord Macartney thought sufficient to deter the very agents and partakers with Benfield in his iniquities was the inducement to the two right honorable gentlemen to order this very soucar security to be given, and to recall Benfield to the city of Madras from the sort of decent exile into which he had been relegated by Lord Macartney. You must therefore consider Benfield as soucar security for 480,000l. a year, which, at twenty-four per cent, (supposing him contented with that profit,) will, with the interest of his old debt, produce an annual income of 149,520l. a year.
Here is a specimen of the new and pure aristocracy created by the right honorable gentleman,61 as the support of the crown and Constitution against the old, corrupt, refractory, natural interests of this kingdom; and this is the grand counterpoise against all odious coalitions of these interests. A single Benfield outweighs them all: a criminal, who long since ought to have fattened the region kites with his offal, is by his Majesty's ministers enthroned in the government of a great kingdom, and enfeoffed with an estate which in the comparison effaces the splendor of all the nobility of Europe. To bring a little more distinctly into view the true secret of this dark transaction, I beg you particularly to advert to the circumstances which I am going to place before you.
The general corps of creditors, as well as Mr. Benfield himself, not looking well into futurity, nor presaging the minister of this day, thought it not expedient for their common interest that such a name as his should stand at the head of their list. It was therefore agreed amongst them that Mr. Benfield should disappear, by making over his debt to Messrs. Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and should in return be secured by their bond.
The debt thus exonerated of so great a weight of its odium, and otherwise reduced from its alarming bulk, the agents thought they might venture to print a list of the creditors. This was done for the first time in the year 1783, during the Duke of Portland's administration. In this list the name of Benfield was not to be seen. To this strong negative testimony was added the further testimony of the Nabob of Arcot. That prince62 (or rather Mr. Benfield for him) writes to the Court of Directors a letter63 full of complaints and accusations against Lord Macartney, conveyed in such terms as were natural for one of Mr. Benfield's habits and education to employ. Amongst the rest he is made to complain of his Lordship's endeavoring to prevent an intercourse of politeness and sentiment between him and Mr. Benfield; and to aggravate the affront, he expressly declares Mr. Benfield's visits to be only on account of respect and of gratitude, as no pecuniary transaction subsisted between them.
Such, for a considerable space of time, was the outward form of the loan of 1777, in which Mr. Benfield had no sort of concern. At length intelligence arrived at Madras, that this debt, which had always been renounced by the Court of Directors, was rather like to become the subject of something more like a criminal inquiry than of any patronage or sanction from Parliament. Every ship brought accounts, one stronger than the other, of the prevalence of the determined enemies of the Indian system. The public revenues became an object desperate to the hopes of Mr. Benfield; he therefore resolved to fall upon his associates, and, in violation of that faith which subsists among those who have abandoned all other, commences a suit in the Mayor's Court against Taylor, Majendie, and Call, for the bond given to him, when he agreed to disappear for his own benefit as well as that of the common concern. The assignees of his debt, who little expected the springing of this mine, even from such an engineer as Mr. Benfield, after recovering their first alarm, thought it best to take ground on the real state of the transaction. They divulged the whole mystery, and were prepared to plead that they had never received from Mr. Benfield any other consideration for the bond than a transfer, in trust for himself, of his demand on the Nabob of Arcot. An universal indignation arose against the perfidy of Mr. Benfield's proceeding; the event of the suit was looked upon as so certain, that Benfield was compelled to retreat as precipitately as he had advanced boldly; he gave up his bond, and was reinstated in his original demand, to wait the fortune of other claimants. At that time, and at Madras, this hope was dull indeed; but at home another scene was preparing.
It was long before any public account of this discovery at Madras had arrived
Mr. Smith's protest.
Madras correspondence on this subject.
Appendix, No 6.
Right Honorable William Pitt.
Appendix, No. 10.
Dated 13th October. For further illustration of the style in which these letters were written, and the principles on which they proceed, see letters from the Nabob to the Court of Directors, dated August 16th and September 7th, 1783, delivered by Mr. James Macpherson, minister to the Nabob, January 14, 1784. Appendix, No. 10.
