The greatest body of your
revenue, your most numerous armies, your most important commerce, the
richest sources of your public credit, (contrary to every idea of the
known, settled policy of England,) are on the point of being converted
into a mystery of state. You are going to have one half of the globe hid
even from the common liberal curiosity of an English gentleman. Here a
grand revolution commences. Mark the period, and mark the circumstances.
In most of the capital changes that are recorded in the principles and
system of any government, a public benefit of some kind or other has
been pretended. The revolution commenced in something plausible, in
something which carried the appearance at least of punishment of
delinquency or correction of abuse. But here, in the very moment of the
conversion of a department of British government into an Indian mystery,
and in the very act in which the change commences, a corrupt private
interest is set up in direct opposition to the necessities of the
nation. A diversion is made of millions of the public money from the
public treasury to a private purse. It is not into secret negotiations
for war, peace, or alliance that the House of Commons is forbidden to
inquire. It is a matter of account; it is a pecuniary transaction; it is
the demand of a suspected steward upon ruined tenants and an embarrassed
master that the Commons of Great Britain are commanded not to inspect.
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