SPEECH, &c.

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.

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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 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 preHad he been frontless enough to hold such vain, scribe a strict inquisition; that should descend into vapouring language in the face of a grave, a de- minute regulations for the conduct of that inquitailed, a specified matter of accusation, whilst hesition; that should commit this trust to a particular violently resisted every thing which could bring description of men, and in the very same breath the merits of his cause to the test; had he been should enable another body, at their own pleasure, wild enough to anticipate the absurdities of this to supersede all the provisions the legislature had day; that is, had he inferred, as his late accuser made, and to defeat the whole purpose, end, and had thought proper to do, that he could not have object of the law? This cannot be supposed even been guilty of malversation in office, for this sole of an act of parliament conceived by the ministers and curious reason, that he had been in office; themselves, and brought forth during the delirium had he argued the impossibility of his abusing his of the last session. 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 ?

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

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 pre-treasury into a private pocket, without any title cision 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

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 judge ment, 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.

to him, credit for their exertion? It is nothing 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 men. 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 peI think I can trace all the calamities of this coun- nury; that something shall be laid in store from try to the single source of our not having had the short allowance of revenue officers, overladen steadily before our eyes a general, comprehensive, with duty, and famished for want of bread; by a well-connected, and well-proportioned view of the reduction from officers who are at this very hour whole of our dominions, and a just sense of their ready to batter the treasury with what breaks true bearings and relations. After all its reduc- through stone walls, for an encrease of their aptions, the British empire is still vast and various. pointments. From the marrowless bones of these After all the reductions of the house of commons, skeleton establishments, by the use of every sort (stripped as we are of our brightest ornaments, of cutting, and of every sort of fretting tool, he and of our most important privileges,) enough are flatters himself that he may chip and rasp an emyet left to furnish us, if we please, with means of pirical alimentary powder, to diet into some sishewing to the world, that we deserve the super-militude of health and substance the languishing intendence of as large an empire as this kingdom chimeras of fraudulent reformation. 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 us. But where is he to exert his talents? At home to be sure; for where else can he obtain a Appendix, No. 1.

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 | made of millions of the publick money from the 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.

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 gentleman makes his stand at the very outset ; and boldly refuses all parliamentary information. Let him admit but one step towards enquiry, and he is undone. You must be ignorant, or he cannot be safe. But before his curtain is let down, and the shades of eternal night shall veil our eastern dominions from our view, permit me, Sir, to avail myself of the means which were furnished in anxious and inquisitive times, to demonstrate out of this single act of the present minister, what advantage you are to derive from permitting the greatest concern of this nation to be separated from the cognizance, and exempted even out of the competence, of parliament. The greatest body of your revenue, your most numerous armies, your most important commerce, the richest sources of your publick credit, (contrary to every idea of the known, settled policy of England,) are on the point of being converted into a mystery of state. are going to have one half of the globe hid even from the common liberal curiosity of an English gentleman. Here a grand revolution commences. 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

You

• 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 150,000l. yearly of the charges. On the present produce, if Mr. Pitt's scheme was to

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.

Madras, with its dependencies, is the second (but with a long interval, the second) member of the British empire in the east. The trade of that city, and of the adjacent territory, was, not very long ago, among the most flourishing in Asia. But since the establishment of the British power, it has wasted away under an uniform gradual decline; insomuch that in the year 1779 not one merchant of eminence was to be found in the whole country. During this period of decay, about six hundred thousand sterling pounds a year have been drawn off by English gentlemen on their private account, by the way of China alone. If we add four hundred thousand as probably remitted through other channels, and in other mediums, that is, in jewels, gold, and silver, directly brought to Europe, and in bills upon the British and foreign companies, you will scarcely think the matter over-rated. If we fix the commencement of this extraction of money from the Carnatick at a period no earlier than the year 1760, and close it in the year 1780, it probably will not amount to a great deal less than twenty millions of money.

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

tlemen, residing at Madras. This grand capital, | settled at length by order at 10 per cent. afforded an annuity of eighty-eight thousand pounds.* Whilst the directors were digesting their astonishment at this information, a memorial was presented to them from three gentlemen, informing them that their friends had lent likewise, to merchants of Canton in China, a sum of not more than one million sterling. In this memorial they called upon the company for their assistance and interposition with the Chinese government for the recovery of the debt. This sum lent to Chinese merchants, was at 24 per cent. which would yield, if paid, an annuity of two hundred and forty thousand pounds.+

tion, possessed of no lucrative offices, without the command of armies, or the known administration of revenues, without profession of any kind, without any sort of trade sufficient to employ a pedlar, could have, in a few years, (as to some, even in a few months,) amassed treasures equal to the revenues of a respectable kingdom? Was it not enough to put these gentlemen, in the noviciate of their administration, on their guard, and to call upon them for a strict enquiry (if not to justify them in a reprobation of those demands without any enquiry at all) that when all England, Scotland, and Ireland, had for years been witness to the immense sums laid out by the servants of the company in stocks of all denominations, in the 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? What are the religious, what the moral institutions 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?

Perplexed as the directors were with these de-purchase of lands, in the buying and building of mands, 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 twentythree 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.

the

Sir, at this moment, it will not be necessary to consider the various operations which the capital In my opinion the courage of the minister was and interest of this debt have successively under- the most wonderful part of the transaction, espegone. I shall speak to these operations when I cially as he must have read, or rather, the right come particularly to answer the right honourable honourable gentleman says, he has read for him, gentleman on each of the heads, as he has thought whole volumes upon the subject. The volumes, by proper to divide them. But this was the exact the way, are not by one tenth part so numerous as view in which these debts first appeared to the the right honourable gentleman has thought procourt of directors, and to the world. It varied per to pretend, in order to frighten you from enafterwards. But it never appeared in any other quiry; but in these volumes, such as they are, than a most questionable shape. When this gigan- minister must have found a full authority for a sustick phantom of debt first appeared before a young picion (at the very least) of every thing relative to minister, it naturally would have justified some de- the great fortunes made at Madras. What is that gree of doubt and apprehension. Such a prodigy authority? Why no other than the standing auwould have filled any common man with supersti-thority for all the claims which the ministry has tious 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

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.