When I first read this curious controversy between the ministerial board and the Court of Directors, common candor obliged me to attribute their tenacious adherence to the estimate of 1781 to a total ignorance of what had appeared upon the records. But the right honorable gentleman has chosen to come forward with an uncalled-for declaration; he boastingly tells you, that he has seen, read, digested, compared everything,--and that, if he has sinned, he has sinned with his eyes broad open. Since, then, the ministers will obstinately shut the gates of mercy on themselves, let them add to their crimes what aggravations they please. They have, then, (since it must be so,) wilfully and corruptly suppressed the information which they ought to have produced, and, for the support of peculation, have made themselves guilty of spoliation and suppression of evidence.[42] The paper I hold in my hand, which totally overturns (for the present, at least) the estimate of 1781, they have no more taken notice of, in their controversy with the Court of Directors, than if it had no existence. It is the report made by a committee appointed at Madras to manage the whole of the six countries assigned to the Company by the Nabob of Arcot. This committee was wisely instituted by Lord Macartney, to remove from himself the suspicion of all improper management in so invidious a trust; and it seems to have been well chosen. This committee has made a comparative estimate of the only six districts which were in a condition to be let to farm. In one set of columns they state the gross and net produce of the districts as let by the Nabob. To that statement they oppose the terms on which the same districts were rented for five years under their authority. Under the Nabob, the gross farm was so high as 570,000_l._ sterling. What was the clear produce? Why, no more than about 250,000_l._; and this was the whole profit of the Nabob's treasury, under his own management of all the districts which were in a condition to be let to farm on the 27th of May, 1782. Lord Macartney's leases stipulated a gross produce of no more than about 530,000_l._; but then the estimated net amount was nearly double the Nabob's. It, however, did not then exceed 480,000_l._; and Lord Macartney's commissioners take credit for an annual revenue amounting to this clear sum. Here is no speculation; here is no inaccurate account clandestinely obtained from those who might wish, and were enabled, to deceive. It is the authorized, recorded state of a real, recent transaction. Here is not twelve hundred thousand pound,--not eight hundred. The whole revenue of the Carnatic yielded no more, in May, 1782, than four hundred and eighty thousand pounds: nearly the very precise sum which your minister, who is so careful of the public security, has carried from all descriptions of establishment to form a fund for the private emolument of his creatures.