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To thefe fums received for the ufe of the Company, are to be added the fums diftributed by the princes and other natives of Bengal to the Company's fervants, from the year 1757 to the year 1766, both inclufive:

On depofing Serajah Dowla, and advancing Meer

Jaffier to the government in 1757,

On depofing Meer Jaffier in favour of Coffim in

1,60,

On reftoring Meer Jaffier in 1763,

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1,238,575

200,269

437,499

Prefents received by two commanders of the army,
On the acceffion of Najim ul Dowla, Meer Jaffier's

62,666

fon, in 1765,

139,357

Received of the king, queen mother, and one of

90,999

Received of Meer Jaffier in 1757,

600,000

600,000

£. 3,369.365

the princes, in 1765 and 1766,

Received of Meer Jaffier again in 1763,

To thefe fums are to be added three hundred thousand pounds for Lord Clive's jagheer for ten years. And what was made by private trade does not come within the proofs or acknowledgments of the fums before ftated. Lord Clive calculated the duty on falt, beetle nut, and tobacco, would yield one hundred thousand pounds a year to the Company; this he fuppofed equal to half the profits of the trade itself; and if Lord Clive was as near in this, as he was in his calculation of the dewannee, the fum then received from the inland trade in ten years, would be two millions, which, added to the fums proved or acknowledged to be received, makes the whole fum twentyfour millions fix hundred and forty thousand fix hundred and twenty one pounds Sterling.'

Thus, as our Author obferves, we fee what use the Company and their fervants made of their newly acquired power; and the talents they displayed, as statesmen, and as foldiers !

The rest of the work is little more than a recital of particu. lar circumstances attending the new modes of tyranny to which thefe unfortunate provinces were thus fubjected. The dreadful effects of the monopolies of rice, &c. the ravages made by the confequent peftilence and famine, are too well known, and too horrible to be defcribed. Englishmen in this country will scarce bear to read, what Englishmen abroad will dare to act.- Our Author, indeed, feems to have mentioned the circumftances here alluded to (and of which we have elfewhere feen a more copious difplay) with all poffible brevity; perhaps in tenderness to the fame of his countrymen, whofe names are fo justly execrated in India.

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In the conclufion, this humane and fenfible Writer fuppofes, and indulges the idea of, fome fuch propofition taking place, as that fuggefted by the great SULLY-of uniting the heads of civilized ftates together by a compact, for the purposes of preferving

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peace

peace upon earth, promoting juftice, and repreffing the wrong done to one country by another, at the expence of the whole. And were we to fuppofe the deputies of thefe nations affembled at the place of their general appointment-Suppofe the time arrived, and the place of affembly the city of Rome, and the deputies confifting of the most grave, wife, and beft men each country could afford-Suppose we faw them affembled, acknowledging their infinite inferiority to the Author of all their intelligence, and in that comparison banish from the affembly all diftinctions of rank amongst them, and as men with equal feelings for themselves and all mankind, proceed to difpenfe impartial justice to all the nations that claim it at their hands.

Who are these lighting from their camels ?-They are the deputies from Bengal, Bahar, and Orixa.-Let us follow the dejected men into the fenate-for public juftice fits with open doors ;-hear their names announced.'

"We are the deputies of Indoftan," say they, "come to ask juftice of this affembly against England."-We have not room to infert the whole of the proceedings of our imaginary assembly, on this supposed occafion; but the following paffage, taken from the conclufive part of the pathetic fpeech of the deputies, will form no improper conclufion to the prefent Article:

"Seven years now are paft fince the English became our mafters, and all our fufferings by their wars, have been but the prelude to our miferies under their avarice-purfuing the end they had in view, they have torn away the work half finished from the hands of honeft industry, left it fhould fall a prey to the fecond comer. Our lands, our labours, and our all, has been at their difpofal, and behold the fum which by their own fhameless confeffion they have taken away from us without pretence of trade or honeft fervice, but in bribes forced from the hands of treachery or fear, and exacted by oppreffion and wrong!-Since we have been under the government of the English, executions have been common among us, without other grounds of juft accufation, than that of with holding from them what was not their due.-Not difcovering what we poffeffed was a crime the English punished with ftripes-not to yield what we had was of ten death-the cries of maffacres and murders filled our dwellings with continual fear, and day and night our women, and our children, trembled in our defenceless habitations for fear of the English, as young hinds in hearing of the wolf.-The labours of the loom and of the field were equally feized as their prey, neither he that laboured or he that planted was fure to reap, black despair took place, a dreadful calm enfued, and famine, peftilence, and the English have covered our land with horror and defolation.-The two leaft have abated, but the English ftill remain to exact the fame tribute from the fad furvivers of all this mifery; and if this be the ftatute of the government of England which we have heard this day, it not only applies a part of what has been thus taken from us for the use of ,their nation, but the nobles and people of England defire their king to have it proclaimed as a law, that our country fhall remain in the hands of his fubjects our oppreffors for years to come.

"But

"But furely the days of our calamity will speedily have an end, if the fcriptures of the Chriftians be true, as true they must be or the world's undone: for, laying afide our own, the crimes our land has feen committed by a fmall number of ftrangers, is beyond all price of human facrifice to make atonement to offended justice-that juftice, by which a juft Being muft judge mankind hereafter, and nations bere, or justice be incomplete and undo all rules of right, reasonable and divine. Surely therefore our calamities fhall not endure for ever, and the kingdom of our oppreffors rule over us to the end of the world.-For, "Thus faith the Lord God, Behold, I am against thee, I will ftretch out mine hand against thee, and I will make thee moft defolate-I will lay thy cities wafte, and thou shalt be defolate, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord.Because thou haft had a perpetual hatred and haft fhed the blood of this people by the force of the fword, in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end.-Therefore as I live, faith the Lord God, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall purfue thee: fince thou haft not hated blood, even blood shall purfue thee. Thus will I make thee most defolate.—And I will fill thy mountains with flain men:-in thy hills, and in thy vallies, and in all thy rivers fhall they fall that are flain with the fword.-I will make thee perpetual defolations, and thy cities fhall not return, and ye fhall know that I am the Lord. Becaufe thou haft faid,―Thefe nations and these countries fhall be mine, and we will poffefs them though the Lord was there.-Therefore, as I live, faith the Lord God, I will even do according to thine anger, and ccording to thine envy which thou hast ufed out of thy hatred against them and I will make myself known amongst them when I have judged thee.And thou shalt know that I am the Lord, and that I have heard all thy blafphemies which thou haft fpoken, faying-They are laid defolate-they are given us to confume. Thus with your mouth ye have boafted against me, and have multiplied your words against me: -I have heard them-Therefore when the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee defolate.-As thou didst rejoice at their defolation, fo will I do unto thee, and they shall know that I am the Lord.

:

"Thus were the difpenfations of God directed in ages past. And is the Almighty fubject to change? Shall He punish one nation of wrong-doers, and cruel men with war and defolation, and let another for ever pass unpunished, having before them for their guidance, the rules of His juftice, and the examples of His judgments, and without figns of penitence, or token of reparation, defpife His government? Infinite as he is in forbearance, with nations and with men, fuch partiality would unfettle all the examples His juftice has made of the nations of the earth, who have funk under the ftroke of His judgments, and be directly contrary to His dealings with the nation moft highly favoured by Him, and under the government of a king after His own heart, and yet punished with famine year after year, for oppreffing a people who by voluntary contract were their flaves. If it be true that thofe writings handed down to the Chriftians are of God, then all that has happened to us in the Eaft, agrees with that reafon and justice, with which men may believe, the Almighty would govern the world He made. For what more reasonable, than

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that

that thofe bleffings which in our abundance in India we defpifed, fhould be withdrawn from us! What more just, than that we should be given up to fuffer what we inflicted with merciless hands even upon our brothers.

"On the belief, therefore, that the hiftory of the Chriftians is true, let others treat it as they may, we fhall continue to hope that when our nation is humbled, and we return into the ways of juftice, mercy, and truth, that the Being whofe attributes these are, will give us wisdom to unite and be at peace. For he can take away our oppreffors with a word of his mouth, and can even make the cafting of an Indian weed into the ocean, kindle the flames of war in the land of our destroyers; and if the nation of our enemies were as numerous, as rich, and as proud as we were, when we called ourselves invincible, ftill we must believe, from our own experience, that the greatest nation under heaven is only like a filly victim before almighty juftice-For we who had millions of men, and our princes millions of money to reward them, have been robbed of thofe millions, and hundreds of thousands of our people killed, by a lefs number of men than one of our little villages contain, and yet Providence made these men, few as they were, fo ftrong, and we fo weak, by divifions, that they have enflaved us, taken our country for their own, and keep our princes captive to this day. But the time of our deliverance, we truft, draws nigh; for that deliverance we look to God alone, who can raife up help to us at his pleasure from among the nations of the earth, to whom we publish the wrongs that have been done us by the English."

We have a wed more than ordinary fcope to this Article, on the fuppofition that many of our Readers (those, especially, who refide at a remote distance from the capital, the centre of intelligence) are but little acquainted with the nature and prefent fituation of our affairs in the Eaft Indies; which, probably, may one day produce confequences to this nation, as unexpected, and as important, as those which have lately sprung up in the Western world.

ART. VI. The Philofophy of Rhetoric. By George Campbell, D. D. Principal of the Marifchal College, Aberdeen. 8vo. 2 Vols. 128. Cadell.

IT

1776.

T feems to have been a fashionable opinion among modern connoiffeurs in every branch of the fine arts, that the way 'to excel in them is freely to follow the direction of feeling and tafte, without fubmitting to the reftraint of rules. Whereas it is most evident that every art, having its foundation in nature, must be capable of being reduced to general principles and laws. Even in the rudeft productions of genius, we may difcover evident traces of fome natural ideas of propriety, order, and grace; which, though not digefted into a fyftem, guided the pen of the writer, or the hand of the artist. And if that principle, which has obtained fuch general admiration in mo

dern

dern times under the appellation of Tafte, means any thing, it denotes a clear difcernment of those relations between the objects of nature and the perceptions and emotions of the human mind, on the accurate inveftigation of which all true criticism muft depend.

The restraints which the laws of criticifm lay upon the wild excurfions of genius, are abundantly overbalanced by the affiftance which they afford her, in giving her productions a perfection of form, and a degree of polifh, which are never found in the works of those who either want or defpife her aid. It therefore deferves to be confidered as a real advantage to literature, that the critical art has been so much an object of attention in modern times, and that so much ingenuity and learning have been employed in afcertaining its principles, and deducing from thence a regular theory of criticism.

Among the writers who have diftinguifhed themselves in this walk, we have met with few who have given us so much fatisfaction as the Author of the prefent work. His plan is much more extenfive than the title he has chofen feems to promise, and leads him to the philofophical investigation, not merely of the principles of rhetoric in the ufual acceptation of the term, but of good writing in general. And, as far as he has executed his defign, he has difcovered a clearness of difcernment and accuracy of obfervation, which juftly entitle him to be ranked among the most judicious critics. That our Readers may form fome idea of the extenfive plan and masterly execution of this work, we shall take a brief furvey of its feveral parts in the order in which the Author has difpofed them.

After a pertinent and fenfible introduction, which is defigned to illuftrate the importance of the critical art, particularly as it is employed in tracing back the precepts and laws of criticifm to thofe principles in human nature on which they are founded; Dr. Campbell proceeds to point out the general forms in which eloquence has been exhibited, with their different objects, ends, and characters. Defining eloquence, the art or talent by which the difcourfe is adapted to its end,' he reduces the ends of fpeaking to thefe four; to enlighten the underftanding, to please the imagination, to move the paffions, or to influence the will. In this order, he remarks that each preceding fpecies is preparatory to the fubfequent, and that they afcend in regular progreffion; knowledge furnishing materials for the fancy: the fancy culling and compounding these materials fo as to affect the paffions; and the paffions leading to volition and action. Having marked with precifion the different kinds of addrefs which are adapted to the feveral ends of speaking, in affairs of a serious and important nature; he next treats of that genus of eloquence which is fuited to light and trivial

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matters.

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