Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 42.31.2

42.31.2

Because it appears by Bolts, his tracts, written six and twenty years ago (tracts uncontradicted to this day), and also by the historian of the Seir-el-Mutaqherin's eternal complaints these full fourteen years, and lastly by a pamphlet written this year, (and all these form a chain, highly disgraceful), that the maxim: We are come to make our fortune in India, and will make it some way or other, is much adopted amongst the individuals of this nation; and that its very Rulers say, at least by their silence and apathy, the very same sentence adapted to their peculiar stations: We are come in India to gather taxes, kill people, and make conquests, and and and care little about all the rest. What? Gentlemen, a man innocent, and moreover an industrious subject, is despoiled of a property amounting to fifteen hundred pounds sterling, besides receiving several other enormous wrongs. He comes to the fountain-head for redress, and your Rulers tell him: What is it to us whether you are ruined or not by our Government? What? no redress at all to be obtained in Bengal? And what would your travellers say, had such an event happened at Algiers, in Turkey, or in China? What? that boasted Government of yours admits not of a redress, affords it not, is not susceptible of it? The candle, where the wick is yet burning, will soon catch fire again, says the author of the History of India.