they should be augmented. The declaration of property, he said, had been lately under consideration, and ministers intended to submit the matter to Parliament.

After a few more observations from Mr. Anstruther, Major Scott, and several other members, the motion was lost without a division.

In a few days, Mr. Dundas obtained leave to bring in a bill with nearly the same title as that proposed by Mr. Francis. The alterations were, first, that persons who had served the Company at home, should be eligible members of the council, as well as those who had served in India; second, that, instead of all measures being decided by the majority of the council, the Governor-general should be empowered to adopt such as he might think proper, whether the council agreed with him or not; third, that the Governor might, in case of death, nominate new members of the councilboard; and the Directors were to determine whether the Commander-in-Chief should have a seat or not; and fourth, the mode of succeeding to offices by gradation was to be qualified. The manner of accounting for property acquired, and of trying offences, was also to be considerably altered. No opposition was made to the motion, but Mr. Francis requiring that it should be an instruction, in preparing the bill, that no part of the present law should be confirmed, by which the inalienable birth-right of every British subject to a trial by jury, as declared by Magna Charta, should be taken away or impaired; his motion was negatived on a division*.

In the committee, the clauses were warmly debated, principally by the members of opposition. The silence of the ministerial party called forth animadversions from Sir James Erskine, and a thundering philippic from Mr. Burke, who, in his own peculiar manner, said, of the India bills brought in by ministers, that profligacy had first cried out, "Give me despotism;" but hypocrisy, more artful and wily, said, "No, let us come

⚫ 85 to 16.

66

upon them by degrees, and then they will submit to "what would have frightened them at first;" and so an abortion of tyranny, like an imperfect fœtus in a bottle, was produced and handed about as a shew; at length, the child's navel-strings broke, and a fullgrown monster of tyranny, the bill upon the table, was brought forth. To administer arbitrary power as a cure for the ills of India, was like that man who said he could apply one short and immediate remedy for the various diseases of the human body-poison. Several other members spoke with considerable warmth; but, after a short reply from Mr. Pitt, the House divided on an amendment, which was negatived*.

CHAP.

LXI.

1785.

moved by

A division had taken place on another clause†, Amendment when Mr. Sheridan observed that the bill consisted of Mr. Sheridan. two parts; the first relating to the regulations of the 24th. government of India, the second to the new court of judicature to be instituted at home. These distinct objects should be separately considered; and, as administration had probably made it a condition with Earl Cornwallis that he should go to Bengal invested with certain powers, they might desire to pass that portion of the bill as soon as possible: the same necessity for dispatch did not apply to the clauses on the judicature; and, as they had been but little considered when the India bill passed, he wished to divide that before the House, and separate the two subjects; thus enabling ministers to keep faith with the Governorgeneral, and affording the House the necessary time Agreed to. for discussion. This temperate and well-considered proposition was acceded to without an objection, and the first bill was speedily transmitted to the Lords, where, after one unimportant debate, it passed with- the Commons. out a division.

27th.

The bills pass

The other bill encountered no opposition in the Debated in lower House in the Lords, the Earl of Carlisle moved the Lords. an amendment; and, in the debate, ministers were ac- June 14th. cused of a systematic design to destroy the trial by jury, a charge which they indignantly denied. Lord

СНАР.

LXI.

1785.

of Earl Camden.

Of Lord Loughborough.

Camden declared that, if he were to be tried for his life as an Indian delinquent, he would prefer a court constituted like that now proposed to any tribunal in Observations existence. Instead of having neither judge nor jury, it had the benefit of both, so happily blended, that the judges became (what they had never been before) jurors. Lord Loughborough, on the contrary, treated the bill as utterly unnecessary; the law, as it stood, was sufficient to meet every species of delinquency; and, as a proof, he cited the case of Stratton, Floyer, and others, which he, as Attorney-general, had prosecuted with complete success, and in which, it was needless to say, that no evidence was omitted that could have availed the defendants, for Mr. Dunning was his opponent. The amendment was negatived*; the bill passed with some alterations which were assented to by the other House.

Bill passed.

Lord Cornwallis goes to India.

Debts of the
Nabob of
Arcot.

Thus Lord Cornwallis proceeded to the government of India, invested with powers which assured a proper and necessary control. He was the bearer of a boon which the British residents had so earnestly solicited, which emancipated them from the insufferable oppression of giving, on oath, an inventory of their property, and which mitigated at least, if it did not wholly destroy, a tribunal which they beheld with fear and abhorrence. He was also relieved from the embarrassments and disputes which probably would have arisen with a native power, by the adjustment of certain claims made by British subjects upon Mahommed Ally, the Nabob of Arcot. These demands, some of which had been accumulating during twenty yearst, were taken, including compound interest at 2,945,600 pounds sterling. They had always been the subject of suspicion and inquiry, and, on bringing into Parliament the several bills of Mr. Dundas, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Pitt, an investigation had always been declared necessary. The last in particular enacted

that the Court of Directors should take these claims into consideration, and order their presidencies and

servants abroad to make a complete investigation, and supply the necessary information for establishing, in concert with the Nabob, a fund for the discharge of those which were justly due.

The Directors had endeavoured to trace the origin of the greater portion of the debt, but without success. They ordered the President and Council of Madras to enter fully into the examination; but their letter was so altered by the Board of Control as to render further inquiry impossible. The Nabob's liabilities, divided into three classes, were all directed to be paid without diminution or inquiry as to the principal, in which was necessarily included the arrears of compound interest; and the whole amount, although created at different periods of time, and rates of interest, was made a charge on the revenues of the Carnatic. The Directors remonstrated, in humble terms and powerful reasonings, against this hasty and injurious decision, but in vain.

CHAP.

LXI.

1785.

Direeted to be paid without

deduction.

subject.

February 25.

Mr. Dundas.

A proceeding so apparently adverse to the plain Mr. Fox's mosense of the very recent act of Parliament did not tion on the escape without animadversion. Mr. Fox, after a luminous statement of the facts, moved for certain letters and papers relative to this transaction. His motion was seconded by Mr. Francis, and supported by Mr. Smith, the chairman of the East India Company, and by Sir Thomas Rumbold. The only defender of the Opposed by measure was Mr. Dundas, who contended that, as the statute directed that the Court of Directors should take into consideration the origin and justice of the demands on the Nabob, so far as the materials in their possession should enable them, and, as the letters and correspondence in their books, and a variety of other data, afforded as full information as could be required, the Board of Control had done their duty in deciding without seeking for more. He viewed the debts in their different classes, and vindicated the direction for paying them.

celebrated

Mr. Burke adorned the debate with one of his most Mr. Burke's lofty and powerful effusions of eloquence. He ana- speech. lyzed Mr. Dundas's speech with great severity, shewed the origin of the debts to be in a great measure scan

CHAP.
LXI.

1785.

18th Feb. and 1st. March.

House of

dalously fraudulent, or fictitiously contrived for the benefit of individual claimants, whose demerits, particularly those of Mr. Paul Benfield, he exhibited in glowing colours. He treated the proposed mode of extinguishing these demands as a shameless scheme for securing Parliamentary support, by throwing into the possession of this Mr. Benfield a capital of five hundred and ninety-two thousand pounds, or an income of thirty-five thousand five hundred and twenty pounds, charged on the public revenues.

It is impossible, by any extract or analysis, to convey an adequate notion of the oratorical beauty and argumentative force of this oration; whether it were unanswerable or not cannot be told, for, when several members rose at its conclusion to address the chair, a general call for the question prevented their being heard; and, on a division, Mr. Fox's motion was negatived by a large majority*.

In the House of Lords, the subject was twice agiMotions in the tated, in consequence of motions by the Earl of Carlisle; but, as the debates produced nothing of novelty or peculiar interest, it may suffice to say that a division, on the latter day, was no more prosperous to the Earl than it had been to the illustrious commonert.

Lords.

Departure of

from India.

From Lord Cornwallis, deputed, in times of peace Mr. Hastings and ease, with powers so ample, and means of conciliation so abundant, we turn our eyes to Mr. Hastings, leaving the scene of his disputed and controlled authority, to encounter in his native land such vexations as had never before been the lot of any man. His departure was marked with more than usual testimonies of regret. Not only the constituted authorities, judicial, civil, and military, presented warm and even enthusiastic addresses; not only did the natives of superior class follow the example, decorating their valedictions with all the gorgeous flowers of eastern adulation, but

164 to 69. Mr. Burke afterwards printed his speech, with an introduction and an appendix, from which much of the preceding narrative has been derived. They are re-printed in his works, 8vo. edition, vol. iv. p. 183, and with the advertisement, but without the Appendix, in Hansard's Debates, vol. xxv. p. 182. See also Mills' History of India, vol. v. p. 18.

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