The next part of their arrangement is with regard to war. As confessedly
this prince had no share in stirring up any of the former wars, so all
future wars are completely out of his power; for he has no troops
whatever, and is under a stipulation not so much as to correspond with
any foreign state, except through the Company. Yet, in case the
Company's servants should be again involved in war, or should think
proper again to provoke any enemy, as in times past they have wantonly
provoked all India, he is to be subjected to a new penalty. To what
penalty? Why, to no less than the confiscation of all his revenues. But
this is to end with the war, and they are to be faithfully returned? Oh,
no! nothing like it. The country is to remain under confiscation until
all the debt which the Company shall think fit to incur in such war
shall be discharged: that is to say, forever. His sole comfort is, to
find his old enemy, the Nabob of Arcot, placed in the very same
condition.
The revenues of that miserable country were, before the invasion of
Hyder, reduced to a _gross_ annual receipt of three hundred and sixty
thousand pound.[54] From this receipt the subsidy I have just stated is
taken. This again, by payments in advance, by extorting deposits of
additional sums to a vast amount for the benefit of their soucars, and
by an endless variety of other extortions, public and private, is loaded
with a debt, the amount of which I never could ascertain, but which is
large undoubtedly, generating an usury the most completely ruinous that
probably was ever heard of: _that is, forty-eight per cent, payable
monthly, with compound interest_.
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