Benfield; and to
aggravate the affront, he expressly declares Mr. Benfield's visits to be
only on account of respect and of gratitude, as no pecuniary transaction
subsisted between them.
Such, for a considerable space of time, was the outward form of the loan
of 1777, in which Mr. Benfield had no sort of concern. At length
intelligence arrived at Madras, that this debt, which had always been
renounced by the Court of Directors, was rather like to become the
subject of something more like a criminal inquiry than of any patronage
or sanction from Parliament. Every ship brought accounts, one stronger
than the other, of the prevalence of the determined enemies of the
Indian system. The public revenues became an object desperate to the
hopes of Mr. Benfield; he therefore resolved to fall upon his
associates, and, in violation of that faith which subsists among those
who have abandoned all other, commences a suit in the Mayor's Court
against Taylor, Majendie, and Call, for the bond given to him, when he
agreed to disappear for his own benefit as well as that of the common
concern. The assignees of his debt, who little expected the springing of
this mine, even from such an engineer as Mr. Benfield, after recovering
their first alarm, thought it best to take ground on the real state of
the transaction. They divulged the whole mystery, and were prepared to
plead that they had never received from Mr.
Pages:
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123