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om his other territories; and thus, in order to furnish the means of oppressing one part of the Carnatic, he is led to oppress all the rest. The House perceives that the livery of the Company's government is uniform. I have described the condition of the countries indirectly, but most substantially, under the Company's authority. And now I ask, whether, with this map of misgovernment before me, I can suppose myself bound by my vote to continue, upon any principles of pretended public faith, the management of these countries in those hands. If I kept such a faith (which in reality is no better than a _fides latronum_) with what is called the Company, I must break the faith, the covenant, the solemn, original, indispensable oath, in which I am bound, by the eternal frame and constitution of things, to the whole human race. As I have dwelt so long on these who are indirectly under the Company's administration, I will endeavor to be a little shorter upon the countries immediately under this charter-government. These are the Bengal provinces. The condition of these provinces is pretty fully detailed in the Sixth and Ninth Reports, and in their Appendixes. I will select only such principles and instances as are broad and general. To your own thoughts I shall leave it to furnish the detail of oppressions involved in them. I shall state to you, as shortly as I am able, the conduct of the Company:--1st, towards the landed interests;--next, the commercial interests;--3rdly, the native government;--and lastly, to their own government. Bengal, and the provinces that are united to it, are larger than the kingdom of France, and once contained, as France does contain, a great and independent landed interest, composed of princes, of great lords, of a numerous nobility and gentry, of freeholders, of lower tenants, of religious communities, and public foundations. So early as 1769, the Company's servants perceived the decay into which these provinces had fallen under English administration, and they made a strong representation upon this decay, and what they apprehended to be the causes of it. Soon after this representation, Mr. Hastings became President of Bengal. Instead of administering a remedy to this melancholy disorder, upon the heels of a dreadful famine, in the year 1772, the succor which the new President and the Council lent to this afflicted nation was--shall I be believed in relating it?--the landed interest of a whole
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