the parts, and through the whole succession,
of the company's service. But in the company it gave rise to other
sentiments. They did not find the new channels of acquisition flow with
equal riches to them. On the contrary, the high flood-tide of private
emolument was generally in the lowest ebb of their affairs. They began
also to fear that the fortune of war might take away what the fortune of
war had given. Wars were accordingly discouraged by repeated injunctions
and menaces; and that the servants might not be bribed into them by the
native princes, they were strictly forbidden to take any money
whatsoever from their hands. But vehement passion is ingenious in
resources. The company's servants were not only stimulated but better
instructed by the prohibition. They soon fell upon a contrivance which
answered their purposes far better than the methods which were
forbidden; though in this also they violated an ancient, but they
thought an abrogated, order. They reversed their proceedings. Instead of
receiving presents, they made loans. Instead of carrying on wars in
their own name, they contrived an authority, at once irresistible and
irresponsible, in whose name they might ravage at pleasure; and being
thus freed from all restraint, they indulged themselves in the most
extravagant speculations of plunder. The cabal of creditors who have
been the object of the late bountiful grant from His Majesty's
ministers, in order to possess themselves, under the name of creditors
and assignees, of every country in India as fast as it should be
conquered, inspired into the mind of the Nabob of Arcot (then a
dependent on the company of the humblest order) a scheme of the most
wild and desperate ambition that I believe ever was admitted into the
thoughts of a man so situated. First, they persuaded him to consider
himself as a principal member in the political system of Europe. In the
next place they held out to him, and he readily imbibed, the idea of the
general empire of Indostan. As a preliminary to this undertaking, they
prevailed on him to propose a tripartite division of that vast
country--one part to the company; another to the Mahrattas; and the
third to himself. To himself he reserved all the southern part of the
great peninsula, comprehended under the general name of the Deccan.

On this scheme of their servants, the company was to appear in the
Carnatic in no other light than as a contractor for the provision of
armies and