duct. But he thought it no good omen to the cause, if papers of so simple and fair a nature were deemed subjects of embarrassment to those in power. The House divided on Mr. Burke's motion: Yeas 44: Noes 87. MR. DUNDAS'S BILL TO EXPLAIN AND AMEND MR. PITT'S EAST INDIA BILL. March 22. THIS day Mr. Dundas moved for leave to bring in a bill to explain and amend Mr. Pitt's East India bill of 1784. The principal alterations that he proposed to make in the bill related, first, to the election of persons to serve in council. As the bill stood, it confined it to the servants of the Company in India; but he meant that it should comprehend the servants at home as well as those in India. Another alteration was, an addition to the principle of the bill; for, instead of leaving every thing to be decided by the voice of the majority of the council at Calcutta, he meant to give the governor-general more power than he at present possessed, and to let him decide upon every measure whether his council agreed with him or not. A third alteration would be that of empowering the governorgeneral to nominate a successor to sit in council on the death of any one member, instead of the oldest in service succeeding as a matter of course. He intended to entrust the directors with the power to decide as they thought it most for the benefit of the service, whether the commander-in-chief should have a seat at the council or not. A fourth alteration would be with respect to promotions in India: according to the bill of 1784, the Company's servants were all to rise by regular gradation; but as there were different heads of service, so a regular rise must in some cases prove inconvenient, and therefore he meant to divide the servants into their respective classes, and enact, that each class should rise regularly. In regard to that part of the bill, which obliged the servants of the Company, on their coming home, to deliver in upon oath the amount of their fortunes, and also an account how they had disposed of any part of their fortunes in India; he meant to leave the clause out of his bill, and to let the account of the fortune they brought home be made secretly, and kept secret unless in particular cases. Another alteration was, in respect to the mode of balloting for the petty jury to try persons charged with having committed crimes and misdemeanors in India, after their arrival in England. As the bill of 1784 stood, two hundred members were obliged to be present before the House could proceed to ballot. This was extremely inconvenient; and therefore he meant to omit that part of the bill. Leave was given to bring in the bill. Mr. Dundas shortly after presented it to the House. In the committee upon the bill, on the 22d of March, Mr. Francis opposed its further progress, and moved that the chairman do leave the chair. The chairman, Mr. Rous, was about to put the question, when Mr. BURKE rosc. He declared, that the anxiety and indignation which filled his breast, whilst he reflected upon the present measure, were past description; nor could he avoid bitterly complaining against the indecency of suffering a question of that importance to be put without the honourable gentlemen on the other side deigning to say one word in reply to so much serious and solid reasoning. But well did it become the learned and right honourable gentleman (Mr. Dundas) to remain silent: and much did he appear satisfied, that if the majority of arguments was on one side, the majority of noses was on the other. The principle of the bill was to introduce an arbitrary and despotic government in India, on the false pretence of its tending greatly to the strength and security of the British possessions there, and giving energy, vigour, and dispatch to the measures and proceedings of the executive government. Mr. Burke reprobated the whole of the idea, contending that an arbitrary and despotic government was always sure to produce the reverse of energy, vigour, and dispatch, its constant features being weakness, debility, and delay. He referred to the Turkish government and to every arbitrary government that ever existed, in proof of his assertion. It was, he observed, usual to presume the preamble to every bill founded in truth; but as the present bill was only in a state of probation, he made no scruple to assert, that the preamble of the clause which laid it down as a principle that arbitrary power was necessary to give vigour and dispatch, was a libel on the liberties of the people of England, and a libel on the British constitution; it gave the lie to all common sense, to all reason, and to the uniform experience of ages. He denied that there ever had been a people abject enough to submit willingly to an arbitrary government. He said, that however a prince, amiable in his private character, great, glorious, and successful in his victories abroad, wise and just in his administration at home, might prevail on his people to submit to his will, to which they were ready to resign themselves, from the pride which they might too naturally feel at seeing such a character exalted, yet, in so submitting, it was not from any sense of conviction, or an acquiescence in the principles of an arbitrary government. In the Turkish government there were principles of freedom; nor was there ever a government in the world in which there were not balances that distinguished it from an arbitrary government. This had been lately experienced at Smyrna, where there were three different powers to check and controul each other, and yet the Turkish government had been blazoned forth by the advocates of arbitrary power as a true model of that sort of government. But, in fact, the whole of the business of Indian reform was a most contemptible result to so much time and trouble as it had cost him and other members of that. House in inquiries into the abuses of the East, and in preparing numerous and voluminous reports upon the subject. He told Mr. Rous that he little expected the whole was to end in his being seated in that chair, the chairman of a committee on such a bill as the one upon the table. He thanked the honourable gentleman for his select committee, and lamented that such a laudable design should end in the learned and right honourable gentleman opposite to him having endeavoured to erect a whispering gallery for the board of controul, which demanded auricular confession, and armed with the new powers the new bill was to give it, would prove a direct copy of the ear of Dionysius. The bill was, he said, a rawhead and bloodybones, which had assumed various shapes; and to prove that dispatch was a thing which defeated many projects, he put the case-had the learned and right honourable gentleman come down to that House at once, and said out boldly, "My plan is despotism and an arbitrary government;" in that case the House would have revolted at once, but now they had been taken by sap; they were tamely surrendering to principles that would have shaken every fibre in the frame of their ancestors but to have heard mentioned in any other terms than those of execration. He described the progress of the India bills of the gentlemen on the other side allegorically, and said, that profligacy had first cried out, "Give me despotism;" but hypocrisy, more artful and wily, had said, "No, let us come 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 show; 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, reminded him of the man who said he could apply one short and immediate remedy for the various diseases of the human body-poison. He declared that he considered the present bill as pregnant with unconstitutional doctrines. Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights gave every man a trial "per judicium parium, vel per legem terræ." This bill confirmed a new court of star-chamber, and prevented a possibility of a trial per pares, as would be the case if Earl Cornwallis should be tried. What he, from the experience derived from many years attention, would recommend as a means of recovering India, and reforming all its abuses, was a combination of these three things-a government by law, trial by jury, and publicity in every executive and judicial concern. Various were the arts played off by profligacy and hypocrisy; and when hypocrisy might think proper to conclude her game, and let profligacy play her part, "Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire, Measures of this complexion would indeed account for ministerial taciturnity. It was the only species of conduct which could suit the question which occupied the committee. He deplored the fate of the country and the constitution, from the spectacle which attracted their attention at that moment. What did these amendments recommend? It was a system of arbitrary government. Where were the feelings of Englishmen, who could hear what struck him as the grossest insult that could be offered to a British parliament? And were they, then, reduced to that degraded and abject situation which forced them, instead of delivering the captives from thraldom, to forge for them new chains, to be the instruments of increasing even the heavy misfortunes of slaves? Was this the character of our forefathers? No: it had happened to us in these dregs of times, when public spirit, the liberties of mankind, the generosity, the justice, the dignity of the nation, were all extinguished. But nothing could astonish him more than to find that dignity, energy, and dispatch, were expected to result from absolute power. Was not even this absurdity, gross and monstrous as it was, too palpable to be swallowed implicitly by a British House of Commons? He desired to know where that arbitary government existed, of which dignity, energy, and dispatch, were the characteristics. To what had democracy, in all ages and all countries, owed most of its triumphs, |