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. 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 The ministers proceeding as in the former case, without hearing any party, rescinded the decision of the directors, refused the restitution of the territory, and without regard to the condition of the country of Tanjore, which had been within a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. 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 These proceedings naturally called for some entwice invaded and pillaged, and the prince deposed quiry. On the 28th of February, 1785, Mr. Fox and imprisoned, by the company's servants, influ- made the following motion in the house of comenced by the intrigues of the latter, and for the mons, after moving that the clauses of the act purpose of paying his pretended debts. The com- should be read-"That the proper officer do lay pany had, in the year 1775, ordered a restoration" before this house copies and extracts of all letof 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, never 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 66 "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. The last speech in the debate was the following; which is given to the publick, not as being more worthy of its attention than others, (some of which were of consummate ability,) but as entering more into the detail of the subject. SPEECH, &c. 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 heinous nature. In 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 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 | 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 controul did lawfully possess the right of executing the special 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 authority to dispense with either the substance or the mode of enquiry prescribed by the act of parliament. If they had not, where, in the act, did the board of controul acquire that capacity? Indeed, it was impossible they should acquire it. What must we think of the fabrick and texture of an act of parliament which should find it necessary to prescribe a strict inquisition; that should descend into minute regulations for the conduct of that inquisition; that should commit this trust to a particular description of men, and in the very same breath should enable another body, at their own pleasure, to supersede all the provisions the legislature had made, and to defeat the whole purpose, end, and object of the law? This cannot be supposed even of an act of parliament conceived by the ministers themselves, and brought forth during the delirium of the last session. My honourable friend has told you in the speech which introduced his motion, that fortunately this question is not a great deal involved in the labyrinths of Indian detail. Certainly not. But if it were, I beg leave to assure you, that there is nothing in the Indian detail which is more difficult than in the detail of any other business. I admit, because I have some experience of the fact, that for the interiour regulation of India, a minute knowledge of India is requisite. But on any specifick matter of delinquency in its government, you are as capable of judging, as if the same thing were done at your door. Fraud, injustice, oppression, peculation, engendered in India, are crimes of the same blood, family, and cast, with those that are born and bred in England. To go no farther than the case before us: you are just as competent to judge whether the sum of four millions sterling ought, or ought not, to be passed from the publick treasury into a private pocket, without any title except the claim of the parties, when the issue of fact is laid in Madras, as when it is laid in Westminster. Terms of art, indeed, are different in different places; but they are generally understood in none. The technical style of an Indian treasury is not one jot more remote than the jargon of our own exchequer from the train of our ordinary ideas, or the idiom of our common language. The difference, therefore, in the two cases, is not in the comparative difficulty or facility of the two subjects, but in our attention to the one, and our total neglect of the other. Had this attention and neglect been regulated by the value of the several objects, there would be nothing to complain of. But the reverse of that supposition is true. The scene of the Indian abuse is distant indeed; but we must not infer, that the value of our interest in it is decreased in proportion as it recedes from our view. In our politicks, as in our common conduct, we shall be worse than infants, if we do not put our senses under the tuition of our judgment, and effectually cure ourselves of that optical illusion which makes a briar at our nose of greater magnitude, than an oak at five hundred yards distance. I think I can trace all the calamities of this country to the single source of our not having had steadily before our eyes a general, comprehensive, well-connected, and well-proportioned view of the whole of our dominions, and a just sense of their true bearings and relations. After all its reductions, the British empire is still vast and various. After all the reductions of the house of commons, (stripped as we are of our brightest ornaments, and of our most important privileges,) enough are yet left to furnish us, if we please, with means of shewing to the world, that we deserve the superintendence of as large an empire as this kingdom ever held, and the continuance of as ample privileges as the house of commons, in the plenitude of its power, had been habituated to assert. But if we make ourselves too little for the sphere of our duty; if, on the contrary, we do not stretch and expand our minds to the compass of their object; be well assured, that every thing about us will dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to the dimensions of our minds. It is not a predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred cares, that will avert the consequences of a false estimation of our interest, or prevent the shameful dilapidation, into which a great empire must fall, by mean reparations upon mighty ruins. I confess I feel a degree of disgust, almost leading to despair, at the manner in which we are acting in the great exigencies of our country. There is now a bill in this house, appointing a rigid inquisition into the minutest detail of our offices at home. The collection of sixteen millions annually; a collection on which the publick greatness, safety, and credit have their reliance; the whole order of criminal jurisprudence, which holds together society itself, has at no time obliged us to call forth such powers; no, nor any thing like them. There is not a principle of the law and constitution of this country that is not subverted to favour the execution of that project. And for what is all this apparatus of bustle and terrour? Is it because any thing substantial is expected from it? No. The stir and bustle itself is the end proposed. The eye-servants of a shortsighted master will employ themselves, not on what is most essential to his affairs, but on what is nearest to his ken. Great difficulties have given a just value to economy; and our minister of the day must be an economist, whatever it may cost But where is he to exert his talents? At home to be sure; for where else can he obtain a • Appendix, No. 1. us. men. profitable credit for their exertion? It is nothing to him, whether the object on which he works under our eye be promising or not. If he does not obtain any publick benefit, he may make regulations without end. Those are sure to pay in present expectation, whilst the effect is at a distance, and may be the concern of other times, and other On these principles he chooses to suppose (for he does not pretend more than to suppose) a naked possibility, that he shall draw some resource out of crumbs dropped from the trenchers of pcnury; that something shall be laid in store from the short allowance of revenue officers, overladen with duty, and famished for want of bread; by a reduction from officers who are at this very hour ready to batter the treasury with what breaks through stone walls, for an encrease of their appointments. From the marrowless bones of these skeleton establishments, by the use of every sort of cutting, and of every sort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he may chip and rasp an empirical alimentary powder, to diet into some similitude of health and substance the languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation. Whilst he is thus employed according to his policy and to his taste, he has not leisure to enquire into those abuses in India that are drawing off money by millions from the treasures of this country, which are exhausting the vital juices from members of the state, where the publick inanition is far more sorely felt, than in the local exchequer of England. Not content with winking at these abuses, whilst he attempts to squeeze the laborious, ill-paid drudges of English revenue, he lavishes in one act of corrupt prodigality, upon those who never served the publick in any honest occupation at all, an annual income equal to two thirds of the whole collection of the revenues of this kingdom. Actuated by the same principle of choice, he has now on the anvil another scheme, full of difficulty and desperate hazard, which totally alters the commercial relation of two kingdoms; and what end soever it shall have, may bequeath a legacy of heart-burning and discontent to one of the countries, perhaps to both, to be perpetuated to the latest posterity. This project is also undertaken on the hope of profit. It is provided, that out of some (I know not what) remains of the Irish hereditary revenue, a fund at some time, and of some sort, should be applied to the protection of the Irish trade. Here we are commanded again to task our faith, and to persuade ourselves, that out of the surplus of deficiency, out of the savings of habitual and systematick prodigality, the minister of wonders will provide support for this nation, sinking under the mountainous load of two hundred and thirty millions of debt. But whilst we look with pain at his desperate and laborious trifling; whilst we are apprehensive that he will break his back in stopping to pick up chaff and straws, he recovers himself at an elastick bound, and with a broad-cast swing of his arm, he squanders over his Indian field a sum far greater than the clear produce of the whole hereditary revenue of the kingdom of Ireland.* Strange as this scheme of conduct in ministry is, and inconsistent with all just policy, it is still true to itself, and faithful to its own perverted order. Those who are bountiful to crimes, will be rigid to merit, and penurious to service. Their penury is even held out as a blind and cover to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is, to furnish resources for the fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection to great crimes and great criminals, by being inexorable to the paltry frailties of little men; and these modern flagellants are sure, with a rigid fidelity, to whip their own enormities on the vicarious back of every small offender. made of millions of the publick money from the publick treasury to a private purse. It is not into secret negociations for war, peace, or alliance, that the house of commons is forbidden to enquire. It is a matter of account; it is a pecuniary transaction; it is the demand of a suspected steward upon ruined tenants and an embarrassed master, that the commons of Great Britain are commanded not to inspect. The whole tenour of the right honourable gentleman's argument is consonant to the nature of his policy. The system of concealment is fostered by a system of falsehood. False facts, false colours, false names of persons and things, are its whole support. Sir, I mean to follow the right honourable gentleman over that field of deception, clearing what he has purposely obscured, and fairly stating what it was necessary for him to misrepresent. For this purpose, it is necessary you should know, with some degree of distinctness, a little of the locality, the nature, the circumstances, the magnitude of the pretended debts on which this marvellous donation is founded, as well as of the persons from whom and by whom it is claimed. It is to draw your attention to economy of quite another order, it is to animadvert on offences of a far different description, that my honourable friend has brought before you the motion of this day. It is to perpetuate the abuses which are subverting the fabrick of your empire, that the motion is opposed. It is therefore with reason (and if he has power to carry himself through, I commend his prudence) that the right honourable Madras, with its dependencies, is the second gentleman makes his stand at the very outset; and (but with a long interval, the second) member of boldly refuses all parliamentary information. Let Let the British empire in the east. The trade of that him admit but one step towards enquiry, and he city, and of the adjacent territory, was, not very is undone. You must be ignorant, or he cannot long ago, among the most flourishing in Asia. But be safe. But before his curtain is let down, and since the establishment of the British power, it has the shades of eternal night shall veil our eastern wasted away under an uniform gradual decline; dominions from our view, permit me, Sir, to avail insomuch that in the year 1779 not one merchant myself of the means which were furnished in anx- of eminence was to be found in the whole counious and inquisitive times, to demonstrate out of try. During this period of decay, about six hunthis single act of the present minister, what advan- dred thousand sterling pounds a year have been tage you are to derive from permitting the greatest drawn off by English gentlemen on their private concern of this nation to be separated from the account, by the way of China alone. If we add cognizance, and exempted even out of the com- four hundred thousand as probably remitted petence, of parliament. The greatest body of your through other channels, and in other mediums, revenue, your most numerous armies, your most that is, in jewels, gold, and silver, directly brought important commerce, the richest sources of your to Europe, and in bills upon the British and fopublick credit, (contrary to every idea of the reign companies, you will scarcely think the matter known, settled policy of England,) are on the point over-rated. If we fix the commencement of this of being converted into a mystery of state. You extraction of money from the Carnatick at a period are going to have one half of the globe hid even no earlier than the year 1760, and close it in the from the common liberal curiosity of an English year 1780, it probably will not amount to a great gentleman. Here a grand revolution commences. deal less than twenty millions of money. Mark the period, and mark the circumstances. In most of the capital changes that are recorded in the principles and system of any government, a publick benefit of some kind or other has been pretended. The revolution commenced in something plausible; in something which carried the appearance at least of punishment of delinquency, or correction of abuse. But here, in the very moment of the conversion of a department of British government into an Indian mystery, and in the very act in which the change commences, a corrupt, private interest is set up in direct opposition to the necessities of the nation. A diversion is The whole of the net Irish hereditary revenue is, on a medium of the last seven years, about 330,000l. yearly. The revenues of all denominations fall short more than 150,0001. yearly of the charges. On the present produce, if Mr. Pitt's scheme was to During the deep, silent flow of this steady stream of wealth, which set from India into Europe, it generally passed on with no adequate observation; but happening at some periods to meet rifts of rocks that checked its course, it grew more noisy and attracted more notice. The pecuniary discussions caused by an accumulation of part of the fortunes of their servants in a debt from the nabob of Arcot, was the first thing which very particularly called for, and long engaged, the attention of the court of directors. This debt amounted to eight hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling, and was claimed, for the greater part, by English gen take place, he might gain from seven to ten thousand pounds a tlemen, residing at Madras. This grand capital, tion, possessed of no lucrative offices, without the settled at length by order at 10 per cent. afforded command of armies, or the known administration an annuity of eighty-eight thousand pounds." of revenues, without profession of any kind, without Whilst the directors were digesting their asto- any sort of trade sufficient to employ a pedlar, nishment at this information, a memorial was pre- could have, in a few years, (as to some, even sented to them from three gentlemen, informing in a few months,) amassed treasures equal to the them that their friends had lent likewise, to mer- revenues of a respectable kingdom? Was it not chants of Canton in China, a sum of not more enough to put these gentlemen, in the noviciate than one million sterling. In this memorial they of their administration, on their guard, and to call called upon the company for their assistance and upon them for a strict enquiry (if not to justify interposition with the Chinese government for the them in a reprobation of those demands without recovery of the debt. This sum lent to Chinese any enquiry at all) that when all England, Scotmerchants, was at 24 per cent. which would yield, | land, and Ireland, had for years been witness to if paid, an annuity of two hundred and forty thou- the immense sums laid out by the servants of the sand pounds.† company in stocks of all denominations, in the purchase of lands, in the buying and building of houses, in the securing quiet seats in parliament, or in the tumultuous riot of contested elections, in wandering throughout the whole range of those variegated modes of inventive prodigality, which sometimes have excited our wonder, sometimes roused our indignation: that after all, India was four millions still in debt to them? India in debt to them! For what? Every debt for which an equivalent of some kind or other is not given, is, on the face of it, a fraud. What is the equivalent they have given? What equivalent had they to give? What are the articles of commerce, or the branches of manufacture, which those gentlemen have carried hence to enrich India? What are the sciences they beamed out to enlighten it? What are the arts they introduced to cheer and to adorn it? Perplexed as the directors were with these demands, you may conceive, Sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed by being made acquainted that they must again exert their influence for a new reserve of the happy parsimony of their servants, collected into a second debt from the nabob of Arcot, amounting to two millions four hundred thousand pounds, settled at an interest of 12 per cent. This is known by the name of the Consolidation of 1777, as the former of the nabob's debts was by the title of the Consolidation of 1767. To this was added, in a separate parcel, a little reserve called the Cavalry debt, of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, at the same interest. The whole of these four capitals, amounting to four millions four hundred and forty thousand pounds, produced at their several rates, annuities amounting to six hundred and twenty-What are the religious, what the moral institutions three thousand pounds a year; a good deal more than one-third of the clear land-tax of England, at four shillings in the pound; a good deal more than double the whole annual dividend of the East-India company, the nominal masters of the proprietors in these funds. Of this interest, three hundred and eighty-three thousand two hundred pounds a year stood chargeable on the publick revenues of the Carnatick. Sir, at this moment, it will not be necessary to consider the various operations which the capital and interest of this debt have successively undergone. I shall speak to these operations when I come particularly to answer the right honourable gentleman on each of the heads, as he has thought proper to divide them. But this was the exact view in which these debts first appeared to the court of directors, and to the world. It varied afterwards. But it never appeared in any other than a most questionable shape. When this gigantick phantom of debt first appeared before a young minister, it naturally would have justified some degree of doubt and apprehension. Such a prodigy would have filled any common man with superstitious fears. He would exorcise that shapeless, nameless form, and by every thing sacred would have adjured it to tell by what means a small number of slight individuals, of no consequence or situa they have taught among that people as a guide to life, or as a consolation when life is to be no more, that there is an eternal debt, a debt "still paying "still to owe," which must be bound on the present generation in India, and entailed on their mortgaged posterity for ever? A debt of millions, in favour of a set of men, whose names, with few exceptions, are either buried in the obscurity of their origin and talents, or dragged into light by the enormity of their crimes? In my opinion the courage of the minister was the most wonderful part of the transaction, especially as he must have read, or rather, the right honourable gentleman says, he has read for him, whole volumes upon the subject. The volumes, by the way, are not by one tenth part so numerous as the right honourable gentleman has thought proper to pretend, in order to frighten you from enquiry; but in these volumes, such as they are, the minister must have found a full authority for a suspicion (at the very least) of every thing relative to the great fortunes made at Madras. What is that authority? Why no other than the standing authority for all the claims which the ministry has thought fit to provide for-the grand debtor-the nabob of Arcot himself. Hear that prince, in the letter written to the court of directors, at the precise period, whilst the main body of these debts that more had been given. The above is the account which Mr. B. received. |