t such was the ministers' feeling
of the true secret of this transaction, that they thought proper, in the
teeth of all these testimonies, to give him license to return to Madras.
Here the ministers were under some embarrassment. Confounded between
their resolution of rewarding the good services of Benfield's friends
and associates in England, and the shame of sending that notorious
incendiary to the court of the Nabob of Arcot, to renew his intrigues
against the British government, at the time they authorize his return,
they forbid him, under the severest penalties, from any conversation
with the Nabob or his ministers: that is, they forbid his communication
with the very person on account of his dealings with whom they permit
his return to that city. To overtop this contradiction, there is not a
word restraining him from the freest intercourse with the Nabob's second
son, the real author of all that is done in the Nabob's name; who, in
conjunction with this very Benfield, has acquired an absolute dominion
over that unhappy man, is able to persuade him to put his signature to
whatever paper they please, and often without any communication of the
contents. This management was detailed to them at full length by Lord
Macartney, and they cannot pretend ignorance of it.[64]

I believe, after this exposure of facts, no man can entertain a doubt of
the collusion of ministers with the corrupt interest of the delinquents
in India. Whenever those in authority provide for the interest of any
person, on the real, but concealed state of his affairs, without regard
to his avowed, public, and ostensible pretences, it must be presumed
that they are in confederacy with him, because they act for him on the
same fraudulent principles on which he acts for himself. It is plain
that the ministers were fully apprised of Benfield's real situation,
which he had used means to conceal, whilst concealment answered his
purposes. They were, or the person on whom they relied was, of the
cabinet council of Benfield, in the very depth of all his mysteries. An
honest magistrate compels men to abide by one story. An equitable judge
would not hear of the claim of a man who had himself thought proper to
renounce it. With such a judge his shuffling and prevarication would
have damned his claims; such a judge never would have known, but in
order to animadvert upon, proceedings of that character.

I have thus laid before you, Mr. Speaker, I think with suffic