and of wealth and influence growing out of that abuse, his majesty's commons had, in the last parliament, and we still have, to struggle. We are sensible that the influence of that wealth, in a much larger degree and measure than at any former period, may have penetrated into the very quarter from whence alone any real reformation can be expected.*

If, therefore, in the arduous affairs recommended to us, our proceedings should be ill adapted, feeble, and ineffectual; if no delinquency should be prevented, and no delinquent should be called to account; if every person should be caressed, promoted, and raised in power, in proportion to the enormity of his offences; if no relief should be given to any of the natives unjustly dispossessed of their rights, jurisdictions, and properties; if no cruel and unjust exactions shall be forborne; if the

This will be evident to those who consider the number and description of directors and servants of the East India company, chosen into the present parliament. The light in which the present ministers hold the labours of the house of commons, in searching into the disorders in the Indian administration, and all its endeavours for the reformation of the government there, without any distinction of times, or of the persons concerned, will appear from the following extract from a speech of the present lord chancellor. After making a high-flown panegyrick on those whom the house of commons had condemned by their resolutions, he said-" Let us not be misled by reports from "committees of another house, to which, I again repeat, I pay as

source of no peculation, or oppressive gain, should be cut off; if, by the omission of the opportunities that were in our hands, our Indian empire should fall into ruin irretrievable, and in its fall crush the credit, and overwhelm the revenues, of this country, we stand acquitted to our honour and to our conscience, who have reluctantly seer the weightiest interests of our country, at times the most critical to its dignity and safety, rendered the sport of the inconsiderate and unmeasured ambition of individuals, and by that means the wis dom of his majesty's government degraded in th publick estimation, and the policy and character of this renowned nation rendered contemptible the eyes of all Europe.

It passed in the negative.

"much attention, as I would do to the history of Robinson Cruse "Let the conduct of the East-India company be fairly and h "enquired into. Let it be acquitted or condemned by eviden "brought to the bar of the house. Without entering very decar "into the subject, let me reply in a few words to an observat n "which fell from a noble and learned lord, that the comparS "finances are distressed, and that they owe, at this momenta "million sterling, to the nation. When such a charge is brought "will parliament in its justice forget that the company is restri "ed from employing that credit, which its great and flourishing "situation gives to it?"

THAT the least informed reader of this speech y be enabled to enter fully into the spirit of the ansaction, on occasion of which it was delivered, may be proper to acquaint him, that among the inces dependent on this nation in the southern rts of India, the most considerable at present is mmonly known by the title of the nabob of Arcot. This prince owed the establishment of his gonment, against the claims of his elder brother, well as those of other competitors, to the arms d influence of the British East-India company. ing thus established in a considerable part of dominions he now possesses, he began, about year 1765, to form, at the instigation (as he erts) of the servants of the East-India comy, a variety of designs for the further extension is territories. Some years after, he carried his ws to certain objects of interiour arrangement, a very pernicious nature. None of these deas could be compassed without the aid of the pany's arms; nor could those arms be emed consistently with an obedience to the comy's orders. He was therefore advised to form hore secret, but an equally powerful, interest ong the servants of that company, and among ers both at home and abroad. By engaging n in his interests, the use of the company's er might be obtained without their ostensible ority; the power might even be employed defiance of the authority; if the case should ire, as in truth it often did require, a proceedof 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 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

flat contradiction to their recorded sentiments, their strong remonstrance, and their declared sense of their duty, as well under their general trust and their oath as directors, as under the express injunctions of an act of parliament.

The principles upon which this summary proceeding was adopted by the ministerial board, are stated by themselves in a number in the appendix to this speech.

By another section of the same act, the same court of directors were ordered to take into consideration and to decide on the indeterminate rights of the rajah of Tanjore and the nabob of Arcot; and in this, as in the former case, no power of appeal, revision, or alteration, was reserved to any other. It was a jurisdiction, in a cause between party and party, given to the court of directors specifically. It was known that the territories of the former of these princes had been twice invaded and pillaged, and the prince deposed and imprisoned, by the company's servants, influenced by the intrigues of the latter, and for the purpose of paying his pretended debts. The company had, in the year 1775, ordered a restoration of the rajah to his government, under certain conditions. The rajah complained that his territories had not been completely restored to him; and that no part of his goods, money, revenues, or records, unjustly taken and withheld from him, were ever returned. The nabob, on the other hand, Dever ceased to claim the country itself, and carried on a continued train of negociation, that it should again be given up to him, in violation of the company's publick faith.

The directors, in obedience to this part of the

act, ordered an enquiry, and came to a determination to restore certain of his territories to the rajah. The ministers proceeding as in the former case, without hearing any party, rescinded the decision of the directors, refused the restitution of the territory, and without regard to the condition of the country of Tanjore, which had been within a few years four times plundered, (twice by the nabob of Arcot, and twice by enemies brought upon it solely by the politicks of the same nabob, the declared enemy of that people,) and, without discounting a shilling for their sufferings, they accumulate an arrear of about 400,000 pounds of pretended tribute to this enemy; and then they order the directors to put their hands to a new adjudication, directly contrary to a judgment in a judicial character and trust, solemnly given by them, and entered on their records.

These proceedings naturally called for some enquiry. On the 28th of February, 1785, Mr. Fox made the following motion in the house of commons, after moving that the clauses of the act should be read-" That the proper officer do lay "before this house copies and extracts of all let"ters and orders of the court of directors of the "united East-India company, in pursuance of the injunctions contained in the 37th and 38th "clauses of the said act;" and the question being put, it passed in the negative by a very great majority.

66

THE times we live in, Mr. Speaker, have been distinguished by extraordinary events. Habituated, however, as we are, to uncommon combinations of men and of affairs, I believe nobody recollects any thing more surprising than the spectacle of this day. The right honourable gentleman,* whose conduct is now in question, formerly stood forth in this house, the prosecutor of the worthy baronet + who spoke after him. He charged him with several grievous acts of malversation in office, with abuses of a publick trust of a great and heiIn less than two years we see the situation of the parties reversed: and a singular revolution puts the worthy baronet in a fair way of returning the prosecution in a recriminatory bill of pains and penalties, grounded on a breach of

nous nature.

• Right honourable Henry Dundas.

publick trust, relative to the government of the very same part of India. If he should undertake a bill of that kind, he will find no difficulty in conducting it with a degree of skill and vigour fully equal to all that have been exerted against him.

But the change of relation between these two gentlemen is not so striking as the total difference of their deportment under the same unhappy circumstances. Whatever the merits of the worthy baronet's defence might have been, he did not shrink from the charge. He met it with manliness of spirit, and decency of behaviour. What would have been thought of him, if he had held the present language of his old accuser? When articles were exhibited against him by that right

↑ Sir Thomas Rumbold, late governour of Madras.

honourable gentleman, he did not think proper to tell the house that we ought to institute no enquiry, to inspect no paper, to examine no witness. He did not tell us (what at that time he might have told us with some shew of reason) that our concerns in India were matters of delicacy; that to divulge any thing relative to them would be mischievous to the state. He did not tell us, that those who would enquire into his proceedings were disposed to dismember the empire. He had not the presumption to say, that for his part, having obtained in his Indian presidency, the ultimate object of his ambition, his honour was concerned in executing with integrity the trust which had been legally committed to his charge: That others, not having been so fortunate, could not be so disinterested; and therefore their accusations could spring from no other source than faction, and envy to his fortune.

Had he been frontless enough to hold such vain, vapouring language in the face of a grave, a detailed, a specified matter of accusation, whilst he violently resisted every thing which could bring the merits of his cause to the test; had he been wild enough to anticipate the absurdities of this day; that is, had he inferred, as his late accuser had thought proper to do, that he could not have been guilty of malversation in office, for this sole and curious reason, that he had been in office; had he argued the impossibility of his abusing his power on this sole principle, that he had power to abuse, he would have left but one impression on the mind of every man who heard him, and who believed him in his senses-that in the utmost extent he was guilty of the charge.

But, Sir, leaving these two gentlemen to alternate, as criminal and accuser, upon what principles they think expedient; it is for us to consider, whether the chancellor of the exchequer, and the treasurer of the navy, acting as a board of controul, are justified by law, or policy, in suspending the legal arrangements made by the court of directors, in order to transfer the publick revenues to the private emolument of certain servants of the EastIndia company, without the enquiry into the origin and justice of their claims, prescribed by an act of parliament ?

It is not contended, that the act of parliament did not expressly ordain an enquiry. It is not asserted that this enquiry was not, with equal precision of terms, specially committed under particular regulations to the court of directors. I conceive, therefore, the board of controul had no right whatsoever to intermeddle in that business. There is nothing certain in the principles of jurisprudence if this be not undeniably true, that, when a special authority is given to any persons by name, to do some particular act, no others, by virtue of general powers, can obtain a legal title to intrude themselves into that trust, and to exercise those special functions in their place. I therefore consider the intermeddling of ministers in this affair as a downright usurpation. But if the strained construction, by which they have

spe

forced themselves into a suspicious office, (which every man, delicate with regard to character, would rather have sought constructions to avoid,) were perfectly sound and perfectly legal, of this I am certain, that they cannot be justified in declining the inquiry which had been prescribed to the court of directors. If the board of control did lawfully possess the right of executing the cial trust given to that court, they must take it as they found it, subject to the very same regulations which bound the court of directors. It will be allowed that the court of directors had no autherity to dispense with either the substance or the mode of enquiry prescribed by the act of parlia ment. If they had not, where, in the act, did the board of controul acquire that capacity? Indeed, was impossible they should acquire it.What most we think of the fabrick and texture of an act of parliament which should find it necessary to pre scribe a strict inquisition; that should descend int minute regulations for the conduct of that inq sition; that should commit this trust to a particul description of men, and in the very same brea should enable another body, at their own pleasur to supersede all the provisions the legislature h made, and to defeat the whole purpose, end, ar: object of the law? This cannot be supposed eve of an act of parliament conceived by the ministers themselves, and brought forth during the delin of the last session.

1

My honourable friend has told you in the spe which introduced his motion, that fortunately th question is not a great deal involved in the la rinths of Indian detail. Certainly not. But i were, I beg leave to assure you, that there is thing in the Indian detail which is more dithet. than in the detail of any other business. I adr because I have some experience of the fact, that the interiour regulation of India, a minute krov ledge of India is requisite. But on any speci matter of delinquency in its government, you as capable of judging, as if the same thing v done at your door. Fraud, injustice, oppress peculation, engendered in India, are crimes of same blood, family, and cast, with those that born and bred in England. To go no farther the the case before us: you are just as competent judge whether the sum of four millions steri ought, or ought not, to be passed from the pabe treasury into a private pocket, without any except the claim of the parties, when the iss fact is laid in Madras, as when it is laid in West minster. Terms of art, indeed, are differen= different places; but they are generally underst in none. The technical style of an Indian treast" is not one jot more remote than the jargon of c own exchequer from the train of our ordi ideas, or the idiom of our common langua The difference, therefore, in the two cases, is D./ 3 the comparative difficulty or facility of the subjects, but in our attention to the one, and total neglect of the other. Had this attention and neglect been regulated by the value of the "objects, there would be nothing to complaia **