which had given rise to that day's debate, was an event that he never could fear. For if the plainest legal analogies, the most obvious precedents in point, the strongest convictions of reason and of right, together with the pride of consistency, and the jealousy of incorruptible, but insulted integrity, were not of themselves sufficient to preclude every possibility of a compliance with the present motion, still there was another motive more binding on their feelings and on their justice, (though in itself not of equal importance) which there could be no doubt would operate to confirm the House in an adherence to its former principles; this was the situation into which the high bailiff of Westminster would be betrayed by such a conduct. This man, on the credit and faith of the House, had been forced to proceed on the scrutiny; for that proceeding he was now threatened with a penal action; and would the House, by rescinding the resolutions which had formed the basis of the high bailiff's determination to prosecute that line of conduct which had subjected him to those threats, seem, by abandoning the principles on which the whole proceeding had been founded, to prejudge a question which was to be the object of a judicial inquiry? Here he took occasion to exult in the complexion of the present House of Commons, which, notwithstanding the disadvantages that attended its constitution from the imperfect mode of its election, retained so much of the characteristic dignity of the British nation, as it had evinced in every stage of its existence. He attributed this, in a great measure, to the right hon. gentleman and his colleagues in office, who, by pressing forward a crisis, the most momentous and important any part of our history presented, had roused every exertion of public spirit that remained among the people, and had concentered the whole weight of those exertions in the assembly before whom he had the honour to stand. The present House of Commons, with a manliness and liberality that became the representatives of a manly and a liberal people, had proceeded hitherto in the face of all those prejudices which had so long bound down and restrained the faculties of the nation, to the reform of all abuses that militated against the great end of their free constitution. He was still in hopes, farther, to see every local prepossession which now stood between the empire and its true interests vanish; and he derived a flattering presage, from the character of the House, that the great question which was nearest to his heart, that on which the prospect of a final triumph over every obstacle to greatness and to glory depended; that alone which could entitle Englishmen to the appellation of free; and that alone which could ensure to wise, to virtuous, and to constitutional endeavours, a victory over factious ambition or corrupt venality, the great and stupendous question of a parliamentary reform, taken up with a degree of determined and upright boldness, that must soon be crowned with success. In that case, he could not help flattering himself, that at the remote period to which the right hon. gentleman looked forward, for the completion of his meditated triumph, he would, perhaps, find a parliament, that, like the present, should speak the sense of the people; of a people who had, in a most decided manner, already passed judgment between him and the right hon. gentleman; and he warned gentlemen, particularly those whom the right hon. gentleman had so repeatedly marked with the most insolent contempt and invective, those new members, with whom the House was crowded on the opening of the session, "men whose faces nobody was acquainted with," how they trusted to those professions of regard and affection, those meretricious blandishments, which one successful day's good humour had drawn from the right hon. gentleman, to lure them into a dereliction of principle, a violation of law, and an undeserved selfcondemnation! Mr. Fox said, the right hon. gentleman had charged him with having treated that House with invective and contempt. He was not conscious of having ever treated the House with either. When speaking of the immediate subject of the day, the identical Westminster scrutiny, he had sometimes been betrayed into more warmth than he might perhaps have wished to have shewn; but when a matter so imme niately involving the rights of that House and the rights of election, was under consideration, it was not possible for him always to have kept that guard upon his expressions, that perhaps he should have done; but sure he was, he never had treated the House with contempt. When the right hon. gentleman, therefore, thought proper to make any assertions of that sort, he wished he would be so fair, as to spe cify a few instances of the occasions to which he referred. Not knowing what those seasons were, but perfectly aware, how far it was from his mind, at any time, or on any occasion, to treat the House with contempt, he could only directly deny the charge, and declare the assertions of the right hon. gentleman to be false in fact, wholly unwarranted, and solely calculated, as he imagined, for the purpose of rounding his periods to captivate the House. Mr. Pitt declared his conviction to be fully satisfied that no person would believe him capable of throwing out any charge or assertion whatsoever, for the purpose of rounding his periods. He desired the House to recollect, whether the expressions he had made use of in his speech, of the House being crowded by "new members, men whose faces nobody was acquainted with," had not fallen from the right hon. gentleman; whether he had not repeatedly endeavoured to depreciate the respectability of the House by his assertions, that it had been chosen under a delusion, and that it seemed to act under a similar delusion; and whether he had not repeatedly thrown out the most pointed invectives against that East India phalanx which had absorbed and swallowed up all the faculties of the executive government. Mr. Fox said, he really was at a loss to know what the right hon. gentleman meant by his having said, that the House was filled with faces which had never been seen there before. Some of his friends who sat near him had thought that the right hon. gentleman alluded to something that had fallen from him in the course of his speech of that day, but that he considered as so totally impossible, that he could not himself believe it. All that he could say was, that he did not remember the matter to which the right hon. gentleman had alluded. With regard to his having said, that the House had been called together under a delusion, if the right hon. gentleman called that an invective, he owned he had said so, be cause he thought so. He thought so still, and he would persevere in so saying. In like manner with regard to his having insinuated that the number of East India gentlemen introduced into that House, evidently had too much weight in the executive government, was a circumstance that was but too palpable; but exclusive of these two opinions, which he neither had nor would attempt to conceal, he was at a loss to imagine upon what part of his conduct the right hon. gentleman could ground a charge against him of his having ever treated that House with contempt, or, in any degree, in an improper manner. Perhaps the right hon. gentleman, in his own mind, had so connected and interwoven himself personally with that House of Commons, that whenever he, or any other gentleman, found occasion to question any part of the conduct of the execu-· tive government, the right hon. gentleman considered what was said of him as a minister, as an abuse of the House. In that case, he was ready to admit he had afforded abundant grounds for the right hon. gentleman to charge him with having attacked the House. Mr. Pitt rose again, and appeared desirous of entering into a more minute detail of the instances of disrespect shewn by Mr. Fox to the House, but the cry of Order, stopped him, a member declaring, he called the right hon. gentleman to order for alluding to what had passed in former debates. The Speaker stated the rule of the House, that no member had a right to state the words of another member spoken in a former debate. If those words were of so offensive a nature as to make the speaker of them liable to the severest censure in the power of the House to inflict, yet unless they were taken down at the time, by the clerk at the table, it was, he said, extremely disorderly for any member to repeat them in a debate that took place on a subsequent day. He confined himself solely to explaining what the order of the House was, and hoped the right hon. gentleman would avoid saying any thing that might either tend to violate the order that he had stated; or that might provoke heat and ill humour. Mr. Pitt assured the Speaker, that he was not going to violate the established order; but that he thought it highly unbecoming the right hon. gentleman to throw out such expressions as the House had just heard; expressions tending to fix the stigma of falsehood and dishonour on any member of that House, at a time when his general denial could not, by the order of the House, be called into question. That for his own part, being precluded from coming to the proof of the truth of his assertions, he had only to rest satisfied, that the memory of many gentlemen in the House, and his own reputation, would do him justice. "I cannot," he concluded, "enter farther into the reality of what I have advanced, but I maintain it." Mr. For said, he heartily wished the right hon. gentleman could have been allowed to go on, whether disorderly or not, because he was convinced he could have said nothing liable to any construction similar to that which the right hon. gentleman had mentioned, which he could not explain in such a manner as to give full satisfaction to the House. With regard to what the right hon. gentleman had just said, of his having chosen to deny generally that he had not treated that House with invective and contempt, at a moment when the order of the House would not permit the particulars to be stated, Mr. Fox said, he presumed it was just as proper for him to deny those assertions then, as it had been proper for the right hon. gentleman to make them at a time when he perfectly well knew, he could not go into a specific statement of them. Mr. Sheridan said, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had, in the course of his speech, glanced more than once at him, and insinuated that he was answerable for the questionable shape of the return, and the nature of the paper of the high bailiff, which had been ordered to be annexed to the writ for Middlesex. in existence. There was, he said, a wide difference between the affair of Elgin and the present case. The precept for Elgin was dated within the return of the writ for Elginshire, but, by some accidental blunder, had not been returned to the sheriff, to be by him delivered into the Crownoffice with his writ. The return for Westminster was, they all knew, dated many months after the 20th of May, 1784, the day on which the writ was returnable. Mr. Sheridan read to the House the resolutions of the same day, in order to shew them that the resolution implied, that the scrutiny was illegal, a ground which his friends had not once abandoned in the course of the business. The right hon. gentleman appeared to know but little about the act of parliament, to which he had referred as a statute, regulating the elections for London, and declaring a scrutiny there to be lawful. The Act in question was not originally brought in as a Bill for regulating the election of members of parliament to serve for the city of London, but for the election of mayors, sheriffs, and other city magistrates and officers. At the time, there had been great disturbances in London, upon the subject of choosing sheriffs, and matters had been carried with so high a hand, that the city was in danger of being without sheThe Speaker said, that as the affair of riffs; a circumstance that would have the return had been adjusted in a very been attended with infinite inconvenience. thin House, and that was a very full one, On the spur of the occasion a Bill had he would take that opportunity of stating been brought in to regulate the election the particulars of the transaction. He of sheriffs and other city officers. While then stated that in consequence of the last that Bill was in the House, it was sugorder of the House, relative to the scru- gested by a member, that the city also tiny, the high bailiff and the deputy clerk held elections for members of parliament, of the crown had been at a loss, in what and that it might be as well to introduce manner the return should be made out some clauses that might refer to them. and received. That he had ordered the Hence the present Act, that the right deputy clerk of the crown to attend the hon. gentleman had argued upon, as if its next day, to receive the instructions of the sole and principal object had been to reHouse. That the deputy clerk of the gulate the city elections of members of crown had, in consequence, attended on parliament. Mr. Sheridan read two exthe Friday, when he had thought it his tracts from the Act, to shew that it only duty to state to the House, the case of recognized the scrutiny on the election the writ for Elgin, and the House had for sheriffs, as a lawful scrutiny, which he ordered the return for Westminster to be said it might well do, as the city had a annexed to the writ for Middlesex. right under its charter to make bye-laws, and a scrutiny on an election for sheriffs was sanctioned by those bye-laws; but the Act in those clauses, which referred to the election by wardmotes, dropped the word lawful,' and only talked generally of a scrutiny, without recognizing its legality, Mr. Sheridan added some other arguments, all tending to convince the Mr. Sheridan thanked the Speaker for having given the House the information he had stated, and desired, that it might be remembered that his idea had been to antedate the return, and to make it bear the same date as the writ, because it was extremely absurd to annex a return to the writ, bearing date later than the writ was House, that what the right hon. gentle- | he was convinced his constituents sent man had said, as to the necessity that him to that House to vote according to they should extend their protection to the best of his judgment, and not as this the high bailiff who had been drawn in or that set of men desired him to do. (as the right hon. gentleman had phrased Were he to conceive his constituents it) by the House to go on with the scru- wished him to vote implicitly or blindly tiny, were thrown away. Those argu- with any party, he would apply to the ments, he said, should have been urged minister for a place, which he believed before, because the House had withdrawn even his very moderate abilities would be its protection from the high bailiff the found equal to, viz. the stewardship of moment they came to the former resolu- the Chiltern Hundreds. tion, in which they set the high bailiff at liberty to make a return, without waiting for the orders of the House. Mr. Sheridan contended, that for the sake of consistency, all those gentlemen who had voted for the resolution of Tuesday, must vote for the motion of rescinding now. Mr. Macnamara said, that the sole question for gentlemen to decide upon was this was the resolution of the 8th of June last a legal proceeding, or an illegal one? If it were perfectly legal, no man in his senses, he believed, would wish it to rescinded; if an illegal proceeding, in that case he conceived the most effectual mode of doing it away, would be by a Bill. Viewing the matter in that light, he should vote against the motion for rescinding, but would consent to the bringing in of a Bill the first opportunity. Mr. Vansittart said, he had voted that the high bailiff should proceed with the scrutiny; he had also voted this session, that he should be at liberty to make a return as soon as he had satisfied his conscience; but upon hearing of the offer that had been made by Mr. Fox's counsel, to go into the parish of St. Margaret's and St. John's, and that it had been rejected, he was of opinion that it was irreconcileable with justice that it should be continued any longer, and therefore he had voted against it last Thursday; but he did not at all see that he should act inconsistently, if he now voted against the motion for rescinding the resolutions. He thought the resolutions just and equitable, and therefore he should not vote for their being erased from the Journals. Mr. Martin said, it gave him great satisfaction to think that he had all along opposed the scrutiny. He was convinced, under all the circumstances of the case, it was an illegal proceeding, and therefore he should vote that day for rescinding the resolutions. He lamented that he should vote that day differently from many gentlemen, of whose integrity and abilities he entertained the highest opinion; but [VOL. XXV.] At length the House divided: Tellers. YEAS NOES Lord Maitland Eliot {Mr. Robert Smith So it passed in the negative. :} :} 137 242 Mr. Fox, as soon as the House was resumed, urged the necessity of bringing in a Bill to prevent the repetition of any such business as the Westminster scrutiny. That was now, he said, the only means of preventing the bad precedent of the 8th of June last being acted upon. Mr. Pitt assured him, it was his intention early after the holidays to bring in a Bill for the purpose; but, he said, he feared it would be a Bill that the right hon. gentleman would oppose, as he certainly should not be for a declaratory, but an enacting Bill. Debates in the Commons on Mr. Francis's Motion for Papers relating to the Conduct of Mr. Hastings in India.] Feb. 16. Mr. Francis rose to move for papers which he conceived to be necessary to the information of the House. In the estimates of the expense of the East-India establishment there appeared a degree of prodigality superior to any thing that could enter into the minds even of those who made allowance for the extravagant ideas of that country. He would draw the attention of the House to some very remarkable instances. He began with saying that the civil establishment of Bengal, in 1774, stood at no more than 136,0021. That in consequence of the institution of the governor-general and council, and supreme court of judicature, it was increased to 251,5331.; at which amount it stood in 1776. That since 1776, when colonel Monson died, and when the whole power of the government devolved on Mr. Hastings, (in whose hands it had continued ever since) the total had increased (according to the [L] were five capital agencies or contracts, whose profits were stated by the directors to be unknown, viz. 1. Agent for making gunpowder. 2. Ditto for supplying military stores. 3. Ditto for providing elephants. 4. Ditto for boats. 5. Ditto for furnishing the army with draught and carriage bullocks. That the profits of this last contract, though not ascertained or avowed, had been commonly computed at 50,000l. a year. statement delivered in by the court of whose stated profits were exorbitant, there directors) to the enormous sum of 927,9451. Among the particulars of this astonishing increase he stated the following facts: that there was a salt-office instituted by Mr. Hastings, consisting of six persons, who divided annually among them no less than 72,8071.: that the chief of this board received 18,480l. per annum as such; besides which, he was chief of the district of Nuddea; but, in that capacity, his profits were stated by the directors to be unknown. The other five salt agents stood as follow, viz. 1st member, 13,100l. per annum; 2d, 11,480l.; 3d, 13,183.; 4th, 6,2571.; 5th, 10,3071. That there was a board of customs at Calcutta, where the customs collected were, comparatively, very inconsiderable, and whose salaries or annual profits amounted to 23,070l. among three persons. That there was a new committee of revenue, the duty of which used to be done by the governorgeneral and council themselves, whose annual profits were stated at 47,350l. among five persons, viz. 1st member, 10,950l.; 2d, 9,100l.; 3d, 9,100l.; 4th, 9,100.; 5th, 9,100%. That the president of this board had been for some years, and was still, ambassador at the court of Scindia, a great Mahratta chief. on the other side of India, for which he was allowed 4,280l. a year, which raised his emoluments to 15,230l. a year. That there was an agent victualler to the garrison of Fort William, whose profits, on an average of three years, were stated at 15,970l. per annum. That this agency was held by the postmaster-general, who, in that capacity, received 2,200/. a year from the Company, who was actually no higher than a writer in the service. That there was a committee of grain, whose salaries amounted to 14,100l. a year. That the paymasters of the different brigades and detachments of the army received salaries to the amount of 43,6701. Exclusive of which, there was a paymaster and accountant at Lucknow, whose fixed salary was 7,640. That there was an alłowance of 4,280l. to a supposed resident at Goa, where there never was a resident, and who was stated to be not a covenanted servant of the Company. That the Company were charged with 10,428. a year for chaplains, though there was not a church in Bengal. That the governorgeneral had eight aids-de-camp on his own establishment. That, besides these and an endless multitude of other officers, He intended to submit a motion to the House on the facts, and said, it was bis intention to have confined himself to the civil establishment; but finding, by the papers on the table, that the expense of the army estimates of Bengal, which in April 1784 amounted to three millions and a half, now, by this estimate, reduced to one million, he could not help saying the diminution of so large a sum, in so small a time, appeared to him extremely doubtful: he wished to avoid the harshness of saying he did not believe it. If the Company were in possession of documents that enabled them to ascertain this, there was no hardship in their producing them; he should therefore conclude with moving, "That the directors of the East-India Company do prepare and lay before this House, statements of the salaries and emoluments belonging to the offices and appointments under the general department, the revenue department, and commercial department in Bengal, in the years 1782 or 1783, compared with their amount in 1776, (distinguishing the increase, and the years when such increase took place); and, also, an abstract, shewing the increase of the establishments of the civil department in Bengal, as they stood at the end of the year 1783, beyond the amount of the estimate in 1776, according to such compilations as can be formed from accounts of actual payments from the records and other authentic documents." Mr. Francis also read his second motion, which was for "an estimate of the probable resources and disbursements of the Bengal government, from the 30th April, 1784, to the 1st May, 1785.” Mr. Dundas objected to the words marked in parentheses, as they would give infinite trouble, and rather retard than accelerate the full and accurate statement of all the facts the House wished to have before them, with regard to the civil, commercial, and revenue establishments in India, |