"
The Court of Directors, after stating the circumstances under which the
debts appeared to them to have been contracted, add as follows:--"For
these reasons we should have thought it our duty to inquire _very
minutely_ into those debts, even if the act of Parliament had been
silent on the subject, before we concurred in any measure for their
payment. But with the positive injunctions of the act before us to
examine into their nature and origin, we are indispensably bound to
direct such an inquiry to be instituted." They then order the President
and Council of Madras to enter into a full examination, &c., &c.
The Directors, having drawn up their order to the Presidency on these
principles, communicated the draught of the general letter in which
those orders were contained to the board of his Majesty's ministers, and
other servants lately constituted by Mr. Pitt's East India Act. These
ministers, who had just carried through Parliament the bill ordering a
specific inquiry, immediately drew up another letter, on a principle
directly opposite to that which was prescribed by the act of Parliament
and followed by the Directors. In these second orders, all idea of an
inquiry into the justice and origin of the pretended debts, particularly
of the last, the greatest, and the most obnoxious to suspicion, is
abandoned. They are all admitted and established without any
investigation whatsoever, (except some private conference with the
agents of the claimants is to pass for an investigation,) and a fund for
their discharge is assigned and set apart out of the revenues of the
Carnatic.
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