we longer hefitate to accept them?-we have not fcrupled to feize and poffefs part of his territory with violence; furely it would be more confcientious, and more confiftant with the laws of nature and nations, to hold the whole of thefe provinces under him by his own appointment.

"We cannot enough applaud the feafonable measure of fending out Lord Clive, which we esteem a happy event. I think the Public will not doubt this opinion to arife from a juft regard to his Lordship's character, as they know we lie under no obligations to that quarter that might excite our partiality."

"To fum up the whole, we venture to ftake our credit and veracity on the affertion, that the two provinces of Bengal and Bahar will fully yield a revenue of eleven crores of rupees, or £.13,750,000; if it yields this under a defpotic, tyrannical government in time of peace, and currency of trade, what may we not more expect from its improvement undera mild British one*?"

Intereft. Hiftor. Events, p. 204.

Governor Holwell, in 1759, had convinced Lord Clive and the Board that his reasons for the public fale of the rents of the Company's lands by auction were unanfwerable; and the fale was unanimously refolved on: he explained the whole to John Payne, Efq. the Chairman of the Board of Directors *.-"I had taken great pains to ferret out the real value of the lands, which was covered with almost impenetrable obfcurity and difficulty. By an eftimate I gave Colonel Clive at his return from the Patna expedition, I ventured to pronounce they would yield feven lacks and a half, and the total of their fale on the 13th July amounted to 7,657co ficca rupees per annum, exclufive of feveral referves in favour of the Company, fuch as a confiderable tract of land taken from the pergunnahs adjoining Calcutta, to extend its bounds, and all the advantages refulting from holding the royalties and judicial proceedings, &c. in our own hands on the Company's account: fo that I judge the whole produce of these lands (the before

Intereft. Hiftor. Events, Vol. I. p. 230.

mentioned reserves included) will be annually between nine and ten lacks, the fum I gueffed, when in conference with you in England on the subject.

"Methinks I hear you cry out, what the devil became of this difference last year as it must have been collected, beyond a doubt; or from whence can this advance answer to the prefent farmers? The answer is eafy and obvious; the difference fell fhort in its way to the Company's treasury, by the felf-fame roads your former revenues were diffipated, prior to the reform of your Zemindary. As your former Zemindars could not justly be deemed culpable in that cafe, from the frequent change of post, so in the present no blame properly falls on your collector, the trust being too extenfive for any one man existing; and though frauds are equally obvious from the extraordinary increase at a public fale, from farmers fubject to every poffible. check and restraint that can either prevent their debafing their lands or oppreffing the tenants, yet there is a moral certainty or profit to him, at the expira

tion of three years, and that they will then yield a farther increase to the Company.

"I will clear up a circumftance that poffibly may be caufe of wonder to you; by what means I arrived at their real value.

"In the first place, I had long and full conviction that the fame system of fraud and chicane ran through every Zemindary of the provinces, and from a general knowledge of the country granted to us, it appeared to me aftonishing they fhould yield no more than was brought to the Company's credit, at the clofe of the year in April 1758, when fo fmall a territory as Calcutta produced, on a fcrutiny and reform, an increase of 73 to 80,000 ficca I tried various means rupees per annum. to trace out a fatisfactory reason, and to account to myself for it, but without fuccefs, until I learnt by accident that three or four of the old ftandards, employed as tax gatherers and writers in the pergunnahs, had been difmiffed at the inftigation of the new operators: I fent privately for one or

two of the most creditable of them, and inquired into the cause of their difmiffion, and this brought on an opening of the whole scene, and gave me a fufficient foundation for forming my Letter of the 11th June, 1759

"Thus having made you mafter of the fubject in as short a detail as poffible, I fhall close it with this remark, that the fame chain of frauds runs through the whole empire, but more particularly in these provinces, to the heavy annual loss of the Crown, a circumftance which may, in a future, favourable conjuncture, be well worth confideration; at prefent we have but to ask and to have a more easy acquifition of the Soubahdary than we have already obtained of the Pergunnahs, but the times (1759) are not yet ripe for fo great a grasp, nor have we fufficient strength to hold it; though it is certain, were we Soubabs of the provinces, the Emperor

* Interesting Hift. Events, Vol. I. to C. Manningham, Efq. and Council, p. 226; and farther detail of the value of the Pergunnahs under different management, Vol. I. p. 216.