What is the
equivalent they have given? What equivalent had they to give? What are
the articles of commerce, or the branches of manufacture, which those
gentlemen have carried hence to enrich India? What are the sciences they
beamed out to enlighten it? What are the arts they introduced to cheer
and to adorn it? What are the religious, what the moral institutions
they have taught among that people, as a guide to life, or as a
consolation when life is to be no more, that there is an eternal debt, a
debt "still paying, still to owe," which must be bound on the present
generation in India, and entailed on their mortgaged posterity forever?
A debt of millions, in favor of a set of men whose names, with few
exceptions, are either buried in the obscurity of their origin and
talents or dragged into light by the enormity of their crimes!
In my opinion the courage of the minister was the most wonderful part of
the transaction, especially as he must have read, or rather the right
honorable gentleman says he has read for him, whole volumes upon the
subject. The volumes, by the way, are not by one tenth part so numerous
as the right honorable gentleman has thought proper to pretend, in order
to frighten you from inquiry; but in these volumes, such as they are,
the minister must have found a full authority for a suspicion (at the
very least) of everything relative to the great fortunes made at Madras.
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