and revolutions of government that have taken | be trusted, safely trusted, to act in strict conplace since the beginning of the world. Scheme op- formity to their common principles, manners, measures, interests, and connections. They will want neither monitor nor control. It is not easy to choose men to act in conformity to a public interest against their private, but a sure dependence may be had on those who are chosen to forward their private interest at the expense of the public. But if the Directors should slip, and deviate into rectitude, the punishment is in the hands of the General Court, and it will surely be remembered to them at their next election. If the government of India wants no reformation, but gentlemen are amusing themselves with a theory, conceiving a more democratic or aristocratic mode of government for these dependencies, or if they are in a dispute only about patronage, the dispute is with me of so little concern, that I should not take the pains to utter an affirmative or negative to any proposition in it. If it be only for a theoretical amusement that they are to propose a bill, the thing is at best frivolous and unnecessary. But if the Compa I will now say a few words to the general principle of the plan which is set up posed to Mr. against that of my right honorable friend. It is to re-commit the government of India to the court of Directors. Those who would commit the reformation of India to the destroyers of it, are the enemies to that reformation. They would make a distinction between Directors and Proprietors, which, in the present state of things, does not, can not exist. But a right honorable gentleman says he would keep the present government of India in the court of Directors, and would, to curb them, provide salutary regulations. Wonderful! That is, he would appoint the old offenders to correct the old offenses, and he would render the vicious and the foolish wise and virtuous by salutary regulations! He would appoint the wolf as guardian of the sheep; but he has invented a curious muzzle, by which this protecting wolf shall not be able to open his jaws above an inch or two at the utmost. Thus his work is finish-ny's government is not only full of abuse, but is ed. But I tell the right honorable gentleman that controlled depravity is not innocence, and that it is not the labor of delinquency in chains that will correct abuses. Will these gentlemen of the direction animadvert on the partners of their own guilt? Never did a serious plan of amending of any old tyrannical establishment propose the authors and abettors of the abuses as the reformers of them. If the undone people of India see their old oppressors in confirmed power, even by the reformation, they will expect nothing but what they will certainly feel-a continuance, or rather an aggravation, of all their former sufferings. They look to the seat of power, and to the persons who fill it; and they despise those gentlemen's regulations as much as the gentlemen do who talk of them. But there is a cure for every thing. Take away, say they, the court of Proprietors, and the court of Directors will do their duty. Yes, as they have done it hitherto! That the evils in India have solely arisen from the court of Proprietors, is grossly false. In many of them, the Directors were heartily concurring; in most of them, they were encouraging, and sometimes commanding; in all, they were conniving. But who are to choose this well-regulated and reforming court of Directors? Why, the very proprietors who are excluded from all management for the abuse of their power. They will choose, undoubtedly, out of themselves, men like themselves; and those who are most forward in resisting your authority, those who are most engaged in faction or interest with the delinquents abroad, will be the objects of their selection. But gentlemen say that when this choice is made the Proprietors are not to interfere in the measures of the Directors, while those Directors are busy in the control of their common patrons and masters in India. No, indeed, I believe they will not desire to interfere. They will choose those whom they know may one of the most corrupt and destructive tyrannies that probably ever existed in the world (as I am sure it is), what a cruel mockery would it be in me, and in those who think like me, to propose this kind of remedy for this kind of evil! II. I now come to the second objection: That this bill will increase the influence of the second Crown. An honorable gentleman has objection. demanded of me whether I was in earnest when I proposed to this House a plan for the reduction of that influence. Indeed, sir, I was much, very much in earnest. My heart was deeply concerned in it, and I hope the public has not lost the effect of it. How far my judgment was right for what concerned personal favor and consequence to myself, I shall not presume to determine, nor is its effect upon me of any moment. But as to this bill, whether it increases the influence of the Crown or not, is a question I should be ashamed to ask. If I am not able to correct a system of oppression and tyranny, that goes to the utter ruin of thirty millions of my fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects, but by some increase to the influence of the Crown, I am ready here to declare that I, who have been active to reduce it, shall be at least as active and strenuous to restore it again. I am no lover of names; I contend for the substance of good and protecting government, let it come from what quarter it will. One That influence this bill cuts up by the roots; I That man's whole fortune-half a million, perhaps becomes an instrument of influence, without a shilling of charge to the civil list; and the influx of fortunes which stand in need of this protection is continual. It works both ways; it influences the delinquent, and it may corrupt the minister. Compare the influence acquired by appointing, for instance, even a Governor General, and that obtained by protecting him. I shall push this no farther; but I wish gentlemen to roll it a little in their own minds. hopes of reformation are gone. I am far from knowing or believing that this bill will increase the influence of the Crown. We all know that the Crown has ever had some influence in the court of Directors, and that it has been extremely increased by the acts of 1773 and 1780. The gentlemen (Mr. Dundas, &c.) who, as part of their reformation, propose a more active control on the part of the Crown," which is to put the Directors under a Secretary of State specially named for that purpose, must know that their project will increase it farther. But that old influence has had, and the new will have, incurable inconveniences, which can not happen under the parliamentary establishment proposed in this bill. An honorable gentleman (Governor Johnstone) not now in his place, but who is well acquainted with the India Company, and by no means a friend to this bill, has told you that a ministerial influence has always been predomi-condition? nant in that body; and that to make the Directors pliant to their purposes, ministers generally caused persons meanly qualified to be chosen Directors. According to his idea, to secure subserviency they submitted the Company's affairs to the direction of incapacity. This was to ruin the Company in order to govern it. This was certainly influence in the very worst form in which it could appear. At best it was clandestine and irresponsible. Whether this was done so much upon system as that gentleman supposes, I greatly doubt. But such, in effect, the operation of government on that court unquestionably was, and such, under a similar constitution, it will be forever. Ministers must be wholly removed from the management of the affairs of India, or they will have an influence in its patronage. The thing is inevitable. Their scheme of a new Secretary of State, "with a more vigorous control," is not much better than a repeti-abused or shall abuse his authority. At the tion of the measure which we know by experi- board, as appointed and regulated by this bill, ence will not do. Since the year 1773 and the reward and punishment can not be shifted and year 1780, the Company has been under the reversed by a whisper. That commission becontrol of the Secretary of State's office, and we comes fatal to cabal, to intrigue, and to secret had then three Secretaries of State. If more representation, those instruments of the ruin of than this is done, then they annihilate the direc- India. He that cuts off the means of premature tion which they pretend to support, and they fortune, and the power of protecting it when acaugment the influence of the Crown, of whose quired, strikes a deadly blow at the great fund, growth they affect so great a horror. But, in the bank, the capital stock of Indian influence, truth, this scheme of reconciling a direction real-which can not be vested any where, or in any ly and truly deliberative, with an office really and substantially controlling, is a sort of machinery that can be kept in order but a very short time. Either the Directors will dwindle into clerks, or the Secretary of State, as hitherto has been the course, will leave every thing to them, often through design, often through neglect. If both should affect activity, collision, procrastination, delay, and, in the end, utter confusion, must ensue. But, sir, there is one kind of influence far A worse kad greater than that of the nomination to of Lafucace. office. This, gentlemen in opposition have totally overlooked, although it now exists in its full vigor; and it will do so, upon their scheme, in at least as much force as it does now. The bill before you cuts off this source of influence. Its design and main scope is to regu late the administration of India upon the principles of a court of judicature, and to exclude, as far as human prudence can exclude, all possibility of a corrupt partiality, in appointing to office, or supporting in office, or covering from inquiry and punishment, any person who has hands, without the most dangerous consequences to the public. III. The third contradictory objection is, that this bill does not increase the influence of Third ob the Crown; on the contrary, that the just jection. power of the Crown will be lessened and transferred to the use of a party, by giving the patronage of India to a commission nominated by Parliament and independent of the Crown. The contradiction is glaring, and it has been too well exposed to make it necessary for me to insist upon it; but, passing the contradiction, and taking it without any relation, of all objections, that is the most extraordinary. Do not gentlemen know that the Crown has not at present the grant of a single office under the Company, civil or mili The tenure This House of Commons would not endure the sound of such names. He would perish by the means which he is supposed to pursue for the security of his power. The first pledge he must give of his sincerity in this great reform will be in the confidence which ought to be reposed in those names. tary, at home or abroad? So far as the Crown is concerned, it is certainly rather a gainer, for the vacant offices are to be filled up by the King. It is argued, as a part of the bill derogatory to the prerogatives of the Crown, that for four years the Commissioners named in the bill defended. are to continue for a short term of years (too short, in my opinion), and because, For my part, sir, in this business I put all induring that time, they are not at the mercy of direct questions wholly out of my mind. My every predominant faction of the Court. Does sole question, on each clause of the bill, amounts not this objection lie against the present Direct- to this: Is the measure proposed required by the ors, none of whom are named by the Crown, and necessities of India? I can not consent totally a proportion of whom hold for this very term of to lose sight of the real wants of the people who four years? Did it not lie against the Governor are the objects of it, and to hunt after every matGeneral and council named in the act of 1773, ter of party squabble that may be started on the who were invested by name, as the present Com- several provisions. On the question of the duramissioners are to be appointed in the body of the tion of the commission I am clear and decided. act of Parliament, who were to hold their places | Can I, can any one who has taken the smallest for a term of years, and were not removable at trouble to be informed concerning the affairs of the discretion of the Crown? Did it not lie India, amuse himself with so strange an imaginaagainst the reappointment, in the year 1780, tion as that the habitual despotism and oppresupon the very same terms? Yet at none of these sion, that the monopolies, the peculations, the times, whatever other objections the scheme universal destruction of all the legal authority might be liable to, was it supposed to be a dero- of this kingdom, which have been for twenty gation to the just prerogative of the Crown, that a years maturing to their present enormity, comcommission created by act of Parliament should bined with the distance of the scene, the boldhave its members named by the authority which ness and artifice of delinquents, their combinacalled it into existence? This is not the dis- tion, their excessive wealth, and the faction they posal by Parliament of any office derived from have made in England, can be fully corrected the authority of the Crown, or now disposable in a shorter term than four years? None has by that authority. It is so far from being any hazarded such an assertion; none who has a rething new, violent, or alarming, that I do not rec-gard for his reputation will hazard it. ollect, in any parliamentary commission, down to the commissioners of the land tax, that it has ever been otherwise. objection that the minister will appoint bis friends as The objection of the tenure for four years is an objection to all places that are not held during pleasure; but in that objection I pronounce the gentlemen, from my knowledge of their complexion and of their principles, to be perfectly in earnest. The party (say these gentlemen) of the minister who proposes this scheme will be rendered Answer to the powerful by it, for he will name his party friends to the commission. This objection against party is a party obCommissioners. jection; and in this, too, these gentlemen are perfectly serious. They see that if, by any intrigue, they should succeed to office, they will lose the clandestine patronage, the true instrument of clandestine influence, enjoyed in the name of subservient Directors, and of wealthy, trembling Indian delinquents. But as often as they are beaten off this ground, they return to it again. The minister will name his friends, and persons of his own party. Who should he name? Should he name those whom he can not trust? Should he name those to execute his plans who are the declared enemies to the principles of his reform ? His character is here at stake. If he proposes for his own ends (but he never will propose) such names as, from their want of rank, fortune, character, ability, or knowledge, are likely to betray or to fall short of their trust, he is in an independent House of Commons; in a House of Commons which has, by its own virtue, destroyed the instruments of parliamentary subservience. a great work Sir, the gentlemen, whoever they are, who shall be appointed to this commission, The Commis have an undertaking of magnitude on sioners have their hands, and their stability must to perform. not only be, but it must be thought, real; and who is it will believe that any thing short of an establishment made, supported, and fixed in its duration with all the authority of Parliament, can be thought secure of a reasonable stability? The plan of my honorable friend is the reverse of that of reforming by the authors of the abuse. The best we could expect from them is, that they should not continue their ancient pernicious activity. To those we could think of nothing but applying control, as we are sure that even a regard to their reputation (if any such thing exists in them) would oblige them to cover, to conceal, to suppress, and consequently to prevent, all cure of the grievances of India. For what can be discovered which is not to their disgrace? Every attempt to correct an abuse would be a satire on their former administration. Every man they should pretend to call to an account would be found their instrument or their accomplice. They can never see a beneficial regulation but with a view to defeat it. The shorter the tenure of such persons, the better would be the chance of some amendment. But the system of the bill is different. It calls in persons nowise concerned with any act censured by Parliament; persons generated with, and for the reform of which they are themselves the most essential part. To these the chief regulations in the bill are helps, not fetters; they are authorities to support, not regulations to restrain them. From these we look for much more than innocence. From these we expect zeal, firmness, and unremitted activity. Their duty, their character, binds them to proceedings of vigor; and they ought to have a tenure in their office which precludes all fear, while they are acting up to the purposes of their trust; a tenure without which none will undertake plans that require a series and system of acts. When they know that they can not be whispered out of their duty, that their public conduct can not be censured without a public discussion, that the schemes which they have begun will not be committed to those who will have an interest and credit in defeating and disgracing them, then we may entertain hopes. The tenure is for four years, or during their good behavior. That good behavior is as long as they are true to the principles of the bill; and the judgment is in either house of Parliament. This is the tenure of your judges; and the 'aluable principle of the bill is, to make a judicial administration for India. It is to give confidence in the execution of a duty which requires as much perseverance and fortitude as can fall to the lot of any that is born of woman. Answer to ob party gain. As to the gain by party from the right honorable gentleman's bill, let it be shown jection as to that this supposed party advantage is pernicious to its object, and the objecttion is of weight; but until this is done, and this has not been attempted, I shall consider the sole objection, from its tendency to promote the interest of a party, as altogether contemptible. The kingdom is divided into parties, and it ever has been so divided, and it ever will be so divided; and if no system for relieving the subjects of this kingdom from oppression, and snatching its affairs from ruin, can be adopted until it is demonstrated that no party can derive an advantage from it, no good can ever be done in this country. If party is to derive an advantage from the reform of India (which is more than I know or believe), it ought to be that party which alone in this kingdom has its reputation, nay, its very being, pledged to the protection and preservation of that part of the empire. Great fear is expressed that the Commissioners named in this bill will show some regard to a minister out of place [Lord North]. To men like the object ors, this must appear criminal. Let it, however, be remembered by others, that if the Commissioners should be his friends, they can not be his slaves. But dependents are not in a condition to adhere to friends, nor to principles, nor to any uniform line of conduct. They may begin censors, and be obliged to end accomplices. They may be even put under the direction of those whom they were appointed to punish. | owing to the mismanagement of the East India Company, have already taken a million from that fund by the non-payment of duties. The bills drawn upon the Company, which are about sour millions, can not be accepted without the consent of the treasury. The treasury, acting under a parliamentary trust and authority, pledges the public for these millions. If they pledge the public, the public must have a security in its hands for the management of this interest, or the national credit is gone; for otherwise it is not only the East India Company, which is a great interest, that is undone, but, clinging to the security of all your funds, it drags down the rest, and the whole fabric perishes in one ruin. If this bill does not provide a direction of integrity and of ability competent to that trust, the objection is fatal. If it does, public credit must depend on the support of the bill. It has been said, if you violate this charter, what security has the charter of the Bank, in which public credit is so deeply concerned, and even the charter of London, in which the rights of so many subjects are involved? I answer, in the like case they have no security at all—no— no security at all. If the Bank should, by every species of mismanagement, fall into a state similar to that of the East India Company; if it should be oppressed with demands it could not answer, engagements which it could not perform, and with bills for which it could not procure payment, no charter should protect the mismanagement from correction, and such public grievances from redress. If the city of London had the means and will of destroying an empire, and of cruelly oppressing and tyrannizing over millions of men as good as themselves, the charter of the city of London should prove no sanction to such tyranny and such oppression. Charters are kept when their purposes are maintained; they are violated when the privilege is supported against its aim and object. Peroration Now, sir, I have finished all I proposed to say, as my reasons for giving my vote to this bill. If I am wrong, it is not for want of pains to know what is right. This pledge, at least, of my rectitude, I have given to my country. And now, having done my duty to the bill, let me say a word to the author. I should Eulogium leave him to his own noble sentiments, on Mr. Fox. if the unworthy and illiberal language with which he has been treated, beyond all example of parliamentary liberty, did not make a few words necessary, not so much in justice to him as to my own feelings. I must say, then, that it will be a distinction honorable to the age, that the rescue of the greatest number of the human race that ever were so grievously oppressed, from the greatest tyranny that was ever exercised, has fallen to the lot of abilities and dispositions equal to the task; that it has fallen to one who has the enlargement to comprehend, the spirit to undertake, and the eloquence to support so great a measure of hazardous benevolence. His spirit is not owing to his ignorance of the state of men and things; he well knows what snares are 328 MR. BURKE ON THE EAST INDIA BILL OF MR. FOX. Implebit terras voce; et furialia bella [1783. This was what was said of the predecessor of the only person to whose eloquence it does not wrong that of the mover of this bill to be compared. But the Ganges and the Indus are the patrimony of the fame of my honorable friend, and not of Cicero. I confess I anticipate with joy the reward of those whose whole conse spread about his path, from personal animosity, from court intrigues, and possibly from popular delusion. But he has put to hazard his ease, his security, his interest, his power, even his darling popularity, for the benefit of a people whom he has never seen. This is the road that all heroes have trod before him. He is traduced and abused for his supposed motives. He will remember that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory; he will remem-quence, power, and authority exist only for the ber that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the nature and constitution of things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts of a triumph.21 These thoughts will support a mind, which only exists for honor, under the burden of temporary reproach. He is doing, indeed, a great good, such as rarely falls to the lot, and almost as rarely coincides with the desires of any Let him use his time. Let him give the whole length of the reins to his benevolence. He is now on a great eminence, where the eyes of mankind are turned to him. He may live long; he may do much. But here is the summit. He never can exceed what he does this day. man. He has faults, but they are faults that, though they may in a small degree tarnish the luster and sometimes impede the march of his abilities, have nothing in them to extinguish the fire of great virtues. In those faults there is no mixture of deceit, of hypocrisy, of pride, of ferocity, of complexional despotism, or want of feeling for the distresses of mankind. His are faults which might exist in a descendant of Henry the Fourth of France, as they did exist in that father of his country. Henry the Fourth wished that he might live to see a fowl in the pot of every peasant of his kingdom. That sentiment of homely benevolence was worth all the splendid sayings that are recorded of kings; but he wished, perhaps, for more than could be obtained, and the goodness of the man exceeded the power of the king. But this gentleman, a subject, may this day say this, at least, with truth, that he secures the rice in his pot to every man in India. A poet of antiquity thought it one of the first distinctions to a prince whom he meant to celebrate, that, through a long succession of generations, he had been the progenitor of an able and virtuous citizen [Cicero], who, by force of the arts of peace, had corrected governments of oppression and suppressed wars of rapine. Indole proh quantâ juvenis, quantumque daturus During the procession in a Roman triumph, the soldiers and spectators proclaimed the praises of the conqueror, or indulged in keen sarcasms and coarse ribaldry at his expense, the most perfect freedom of speech being exercised on this occasion.-Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities, p. 1018. 22 Mr. Burke seems to have been partial to this image. Elsewhere he speaks of "pouring out all the length of the reins," &c., using the image in va rious forms a number of times. It is derived from the "laxas habenas," "effundere habenas" of Virgil, in speaking of the management of steeds in chariot races, &c. benefit of mankind; and I carry my mind to all I have spoken what I think and what I feel of the mover of this bill. An honorable friend of mine, speaking of his merits, was charged with having made a studied panegyric. I don't know what his was. Mine, I am sure, is a studied panegyric; the fruit of much meditation; the result of the observation of near twenty years. For my own part, I am happy that I have lived to see this day. I feel myself overpaid for the labors of eighteen years, when, at this late period, I am able to take my share, by one humble vote, in destroying a tyranny that exists to the disgrace of this nation and the destruction of so large a part of the human species. The bill passed the House of Commons by a very large majority, but was defeated in the House of Lords by a resort to means which are fully explained in the sketch of Mr. Fox's life. In connection with this defeat, Mr. Fox was dismissed, and Mr. William Pitt placed at the head of affairs. Mr. Burke went out of office with his friend, and was engaged for some years in a most active opposition to Mr. Pitt, whom he attacked with great force in the speech which immediately follows. 23 The poet here addresses Tullus Attius, one of the early kings of the Volsci, who, according to some accounts, was the progenitor of Cicero, and congratulates him, in this character, on the greatness of his future descendant. Rich in the gifts of nature, favored youth! |