_[27] However, it never was
without a resource for recruiting it to its old plumpness. There was a
sort of floating debt of about four or five hundred thousand pounds more
ready to be added, as occasion should require.
In short, when you pressed this sensitive-plant, it always contracted
its dimensions. When the rude hand of inquiry was withdrawn, it expanded
in all the luxuriant vigor of its original vegetation. In the treaty of
1781, the whole of the Nabob's debt to private Europeans is by Mr.
Sulivan, agent to the Nabob and his creditors, stated at 2,800,000_l._,
which, if the Cavalry Loan and the remains of the debt of 1767 be
subtracted, leaves it nearly at the amount originally declared at the
Durbar in 1777: but then there is a private instruction to Mr. Sulivan,
which, it seems, will reduce it again to the lower standard of
1,400,000_l._
Failing in all my attempts, by a direct account, to ascertain the extent
of the capital claimed, (where in all probability no capital was ever
advanced,) I endeavored, if possible, to discover it by the interest
which was to be paid. For that purpose, I looked to the several
agreements for assigning the territories of the Carnatic to secure the
principal and interest of this debt. In one of them,[28] I found, in a
sort of postscript, by way of an additional remark, (not in the body of
the obligation,) the debt represented at 1,400,000_l.
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