to select such orations and pleadings, as have undergone the revision, or been published under the actual superintendence of the author. He has been sedulous to follow with fidelity the text, nor ever presumed foolishly, if not flagitiously, to interpolate the copy; a practice, which of late, has become a sort of fashion in America, to the confusion of authors, and to the prejudice of learning.

The editor, in preparing this compilation for the press, felt none of the incitements of literary ambition, nor does he now arrogate any of the pretensions of authorship. The motives, which led him to undertake it, were of a very different kind. He contemplated it as an enterprise, certainly of a useful, splendid, and honourable nature, peculiarly calculated to recreate his leisure, and to deceive the burthens of an anxious and arduous profession.

Having, thus, incidentally, alluded to his walk in life, he hopes that neither his medical brethren, nor the publick at large, will deem him a reprehensible wanderer, though, in the intervals of professional duty, he has excursed to the Bar or the Senate to make no inaccurate report of the dexterity of wit, and the dictates of wisdom, the sagacity of statesmen, and the eloquence of orators.

By the mythology of the ancients, which has often a fine, though not always an obvious moral, we are instructed that the study and practice of physick was most conspicuously connected with the love of the liberal arts, and of polite literature.

In a mood of no censurable enthusiasm, may the editor exclaim, as to an Apollo, the tutelary god, not only of the disciples of Esculapius, but of the votaries of the muses,

Phoebe, fave, novus ingreditur tua templa sacerdos.

MR. BURKE'S SPEECH

ON THE

MOTION MADE FOR PAPERS

RELATIVE TO THE DIRECTIONS FOR CHARGING THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S PRIVATE DEBTS TO EUROPEANS, ON THE REVENUES OF THE CARNATICK. FEB. 28, 1785.

Ευλαῦθα τί πράτ7ειν ἐχρῆν ἄνδρα τῶν Πλάτωνᾧ καὶ Αριςοτέλους ζηλωτὴν δογμάτων; ἄρα περιορᾶν ἀνθρώποις ἀθλίες τοις κλέπλαις ἐκδιδομένος, ἡ καλα δύναμιν αὐτοῖς ἀμύνειν, ὅιμαι, ώς ήδη το κύκνειον ἐξάδουσι διὰ τὸ θεομισὲς ἐργαστήριον τῶν τοιέτων; Ἐμοὶ μὲν ἐν ἀισχρον εἶναι δοκεῖ τὰς μὲν χιλιάρχες· ὅταν λείπωσι τήν τάξιν. καταδικάζειν· την δὲ ὑπὲς ἀθλίων ἀνθρῶπων ὑπολείπειν τάξιν, ὅταν δέῃ πρὸς κλεπίας ἀγωνίζε εσθαι τοιέτες· καὶ ταῦτα τὰ Θεὸ συμμάχοντος ἡμῖν. ώσπερ εν ἔτυξεν. JULIANA, Epist. 17.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THAT the least informed reader of this speech may be enabled to enter fully into the spirit of the transaction on occasion of which it was delivered, it may be proper to acquaint him, that among the princes dependent on this nation in the southern part of India, the most considerable at present is commonly known by the title of the Nabob of Arcot.

This prince owed the establishment of his government, against the claims of his elder brother, as well as those of other competitors, to the arms and influence of the British East India company. Being thus established in a considerable part of the dominions he now possesses, he began, about the year 1765, to form, at the instigation (as he asserts) of the servants of the East India company, a variety of designs for the further extension of his territories. Some years after, he carried his views to certain objects of interiour arrangement, of a very pernicious

nature. None of these designs could be encompassed without the aid of the company's arms; nor could those arms be employed consistently with an obedience to the company's orders. He was therefore advised to form a more secret, but an equally powerful interest among the servants of that company, and among others both at home and abroad. By engaging them in his interests, the use of the company's power might be obtained without their ostensible authority; the power might even be employed in defiance of the authority; if the case should require, as in truth it often did require, a proceeding of that degree of boldness.

The company had put him into possession of several great cities and magnificent castles. The good order of his affairs, his sense of personal dignity, his ideas of oriental splendour, and the habits of an Asiatick life (to which, being a native of India, and a Mahometan, he had from his infancy been inured) would naturally have led him to fix the seat of his government within his own dominions. Instead of this, he totally sequestered himself from his country; and abandoning all appearance of state, he took state, he took up his residence in an ordinary house, which he purchased in the suburbs of the company's factory at Madras. In that place he has lived, without removing one day from thence, for several years past. He has there continued a constant cabal with the company's servants, from the highest to the lowest; creating, out of the ruins of the country, brilliant fortunes for those who will, and entirely destroying those who will not, be subservient to his purposes.

An opinion prevailed, strongly confirmed by several passages in his own letters, as well as by a combination of circumstances forming a body of evidence which cannot be resisted, that very great sums have been by him distributed, through a long course of years, to some of the company's servants. Besides these presumed payments in ready money (of which, from the nature of the thing, the direct proof is very difficult) debts have at several periods been acknowledged to those gentlemen, to an immense amount; that

is, to some millions of sterling money. There is strong reason to suspect, that the body of these debts is wholly fictitious, and was never created by money bona fide lent. But even on a supposition that this vast sum was really advanced, it was impossible that the very reality of such an astonishing transaction should not cause some degree of alarm, and incite to some sort of inquiry.

It was not at all seemly, at a moment when the company itself was so distressed, as to require a suspension, by act of parliament, of the payment of bills drawn on them from India-and also a direct tax upon every house in England, in order to facilitate the vent of their goods, and to avoid instant insolvency-at that very moment that their servants should appear in so flourishing a condition, as, besides ten millions of other demands on their masters, to be entitled to claim a debt of three or four millions more from the territorial revenue of one of their dependent princes.

The ostensible pecuniary transactions of the nabob of Arcot, with very private persons, are so enormous, that they evidently set aside every pretence of policy, which might induce a prudent government in some instances to wink at ordinary loose practice in illmanaged departments. No caution could be too great in handling this matter; no scrutiny too exact. It was evidently the interest, and as evidently at least in the power, of the creditors, by admitting secret participation in this dark and undefined concern, to spread corruption to the greatest and the most alarming extent.

These facts relative to the debts were so notorious, the opinion of their being a principal source of the disorders of the British government in India was so undisputed and universal, that there was no party, no description of men in parliament, who did not think themselves bound, if not in honour and conscience, at least in common decency, to institute a vigorous inquiry into the very bottom of the business, before they admitted any part of that vast and suspi