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at the bar of the house in behalf of the Company. BOOK At eleven o'clock, the counsel requested of the house an adjournment for the conclusion of their evidence; and a motion being made, it was carried in opposition to the ministers by 87 to 79 voices.

On the 17th it was moved, That the bill be REJECTED. On this occasion lord Camden distinguished himself by a most able and eloquent speech against a measure which his lordship affirmed to be in the highest degree pernicious and unconstitutional. "To divest the Company of the ma nagement of their own property and commercial concerns was (his lordship said) to treat them as IDIOTS; and he regarded the bill not so much in the light of a commission of bankruptcy as of lunacy.

of the year, eighteen thousand pounds were charged for the purchase of the princely mansion of sir Gregory Page, on Blackheath, as a royal military academy-a sum not more than equal to the value of the materials. And as several thousand pounds would by this means be saved in the repair of the old incommodious building at Woolwich, and likewise an allowance of five hundred pounds per annum for lodgings to the officers, who would henceforth be accommodated in the new academy, the expence was reduced to a mere nothing, whilst the purchase would have done honor to the taste and magnificence of the nation; yet was it opposed with most preposterous obstinacy by some weak and perverse members of the house, as a wanton and scandalous waste of the public money; and the chancellor of the exchequer had the injudicious complaisance to consent to omit it on the report.

BOOK But as the means of throwing an enormous addiXXI. tion of weight into the scale, not of regal but 1783. ministerial influence, it was still more alarming.

Were this bill to pass into a law (his lordship forcibly declared) we should see the king of England and the king of Bengal contending for superiority in the British parliament." After a vehement debate, the motion of rejection was carried by 95 against 76 voices. As the first divisions in the upper house were favorable to this bill, it will readily be imagined that some powerful cause, adequate to the extraordinary and unexpected effect produced, must have intervened. The solution of the phænomenon was indeed sufficiently obvious.

On the 11th of December, earl Temple had held a conference with the KING, in the course of which his lordship clearly and fully explained to his majesty the nature and tendency of a bill which had been hitherto honored with the king's entire approbation. The royal indignation was in consequence of this discovery excited in a very high degree. The monarch considered himself as having been DUPED and DECEIVED. A card was immediately written, stating, "That his majesty allowed earl Temple to say, that whoever voted for the India Bill was not only not his friend, but would be considered by him as his enemy. And if these words were not strong enough, earl Temple might use

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whatever words he might deem stronger or more to BOOK the purpose. ." This interposition becoming a matter of public notoriety, Mr. William Baker, member for Hertford, moved the house of commons on the very day the bill was rejected by the lords, "That it was now necessary to declare, that to report any opinion or pretended opinion of the king upon any bill, or other proceeding, depending in either house of parliament, with a view to influence the votes of the members, was a high crime and misdemeanor." Mr. Pitt treated the motion lightly, and represented it as unworthy of the dignity of the house to found any resolutions upon rumors and hearsays. But earl Nugent, father-in-law to earl Temple, with more seriousness and firmness declared, "That the resolutions before them went to the utter annihilation of sovereignty. What! were not peers by their rank and situation hereditary counsellors of the crown?-Would that house dare to derogate from the high dignity which the constitution had annexed to their station? Every peer, and indeed every commoner, under certain restrictions, had a right to address the sovereign. But the tendency of these resolutions was to make the monarch a kind of prisoner of state, and to shut him up from every species of information unacceptable to the existing administration. Were any relation of his, in a crisis of difficulty and danger, to con

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BOOK vey truths to his sovereign of high importance to XXI. be known, though at the risk of incurring the utmost punishment which the indignation of that house could inflict, he should consider his conduct not merely as justifiable, but transcendently meritorious, and such as would transmit his name with honor to the latest posterity." Other members acknowledged something of irregularity in these proceedings, and wished that a measure so dangerous might have been counteracted in a mode more open and constitutional; but a great good had been obtained, and in this case it were not wise to examine into the cause with too accurate a discrimination and too severe a scrutiny. The resolution moved by Mr. Baker passed nevertheless by a great majority.

mission of

tion mini

The quarrel between the crown and the ministers, supported as they were by a decided majority of the house of commons, having now become pub

lic and palpable, an entire change of administration Sudden dis- was at all hazards determined upon. At midnight the coali on the 18th of December, a royal message was sent to the secretaries of state, demanding the seals of their several departments; and early the next morning letters of dismission, signed TEMPLE, were sent to the other members of the cabinet.

sters,

Mr. Pitt

In a few days Mr. Pitt was declared first lord first mini- of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer ;

ster.

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the marquis of Carmarthen, and Mr. Thomas BOOK Townshend, created lord Sydney, were nominated secretaries of state; lord Thurlow was reinstated as lord-chancellor; earl Gower, created in the sequel marquis of Stafford, as president of the council; the duke of Rutland was constituted lord privy-seal; lord Howe placed at the head of the admiralty, and the duke of Richmond of the ordnance. The earl of Northington was recalled from his government of Ireland, to which lord Temple, who had retained the seals of secretary only three days, was again destined to succeed.

To the surprise and unquestionably to the great eventual detriment of the public, the earl of Shelburne was not included in the new arrangement of administration. The intelligence of this change was, notwithstanding, received by the nation with transports of joy.

The INDIA BILL, concerning which the public judgment was at the first suspended, had now, by a multiplicity of able and popular tracts industriously circulated, been completely developed and explained; and it was almost universally condemned as a measure in the highest degree arbitrary and oppressive, and with consummate artifice calculated to perpetuate the power of an administration who were the objects of the national detestation. It is nevertheless a supposition absolutely inadmissible, that such men as the duke of Portland, lord John Caven