to complain of his Lordship's endeavoring to prevent an intercourse
of politeness and sentiment between him and Mr. 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. Benfield any other
consideration for the bond than a transfer, in trust for himself, of his
demand on the Nabob of Arcot. An universal indignation arose against the
perfidy of Mr. Benfield's proceeding; the event of the suit was looked
upon as so certain, that Benfield was compelled to retreat as
precipitately as he had advanced boldly; he gave up his bond, and was
reinstated in his original demand, to wait the fortune of other
claimants. At that time, and at Madras, this hope was dull indeed; but
at home another scene was preparing.

It was long before any public account of this discovery at Madras had
arrived in England, that the present minister and his Board of Control
thought fit to determine on the debt of 1777. The recorded proceedings
at this time knew nothing of any debt to Benfield. There was his own
testimony, there was the testimony of the list, there was the testimony
of the Nabob of Arcot, against it. Ye