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powers or privileges, except such as a house of commons has frequently attacked, and will attack, (and they trust, in the end, with their wonted success,) that is, upon those which are corruptly and oppressively administered; and this house do faithfully assure his majesty, that we will correct, and, if necessary for the purpose, as far as in us lies, will wholly destroy, every species of power and authority exercised by British subjects to the oppression, wrong, and detriment, of the people, and to the impoverishment and desolation of the countries subject to it.

The propagators of the calumnies against that house of parliament have been indefatigable, in exaggerating the supposed injury done to the EastIndia company by the suspension of the authorities which they have, in every instance, abused; as if power had been wrested, by wrong and violence, from just and prudent hands: but they have, with equal care, concealed the weighty grounds and reasons on which that house had adopted the most moderate of all possible expedients for rescuing the natives of India from oppression, and for saving the interest of the real and honest proprietors of their stock, as well as that great national, commercial concern, from imminent ruin.

The ministers aforesaid have also caused it to be reported, that the house of commons have confiscated the property of the East-India company. It is the reverse of truth. The whole management was a trust for the proprietors, under their own inspection, (and it was so provided for in the bill,) and under the inspection of parliament. That bill, so far from confiscating the company's property, was the only one which, for several years past, did not, in some shape or other, affect their property, or restrain them in the disposition of it.

It is proper that his majesty and all his people should be informed, that the house of commons have proceeded, with regard to the East-India company, with a degree of care, circumspection, and deliberation, which has not been equalled in the history of parliamentary proceedings. For sixteen years the state and condition of that body has never been wholly out of their view: in the year 1767 the house took those objects into consideration, in a committee of the whole house;

feiture should be adjudged, the court of law has no power to modify or mitigate. The whole franchise is annihilated, and the corporate property goes into the hands of the crown. They who hold the new doctrines concerning the power of the house of commons, ought well to consider in such a case by what means the corporate rights could be revived, or the property could be recovered out of the hands of the crown. But parliament can do what the courts neither can do nor ought to attempt. Parliament is competent to give due weight to all political considerations. It may modify, it may mitigate, and it may render perfectly secure, all that it does not think fit to take away. It is not likely that parliament will ever draw to itself the cognizance of questions concerning ordinary corporations, farther than to protect them in case attempts are made to induce a forfeiture of their franchises.

The case of the East-India company is different even from that of the greatest of these corporations. No monopoly of trade, beyond their own limits, is vested in the corporate body of any town or city in the kingdom. Even within these limits the monopoly is not general. The company has the monopoly of the trade of half the world. The first corporation of the kingdom has for the object of its jurisdiction only a few matters of subordinary police. The East-India company governs an empire through all its concerns, and its departments, from the lowest

the business was pursued in the following year: in the year 1772, two committees were appointed for the same purpose, which examined into their affairs with much diligence, and made very ample reports in the year 1773, the proceedings were carried to an act of parliament, which proved ineffectual to its purpose: the oppressions and abuses in India have since rather encreased than diminished, on account of the greatness of the temptations, and convenience of the opportunities, which got the better of the legislative provisions calculated against ill practices, then in their beginnings: insomuch that, in 1781, two committees were again instituted, who have made seventeen reports. It was upon the most minute, exact, and laborious collection and discussion of facts, that the late house of commons proceeded in the reform which they attempted in the administration of India, but which has been frustrated by ways and means the most dishonourable to his majesty's government, and the most pernicious to the constitution of this kingdom. His majesty was so sensible of the disorders in the company's administration, that the consideration of that subject was no less than six times recommended to this house in speeches from the throne.

The result of the parliamentary enquiries has been, that the East-India company was found totally corrupted, and totally perverted from the purposes of its institution, whether political or commercial; that the powers of war and peace given by the charter had been abused, by kindling hostilities in every quarter for the purposes of rapine; that almost all the treaties of peace they have made, have only given cause to so many breaches of publick faith; that countries once the most flourishing are reduced to a state of indigence, decay, and depopulation, to the diminution of our strength, and to the infinite dishonour of our national character; that the laws of this kingdom are notoriously, and almost in every instance, despised; that the servants of the company, by the purchase of qualifications to vote in the general court, and, at length, by getting the company itself deeply in their debt, have obtained the entire and absolute mastery in the body, by which they ought to have been ruled and coerced. Thus their malversations in office are supported instead

office of economy to the highest councils of state-an empire to which Great Britain is in comparison but a respectable province. To leave these concerns without superiour cognizance would be madness; to leave them to be judged in the courts below, on the principles of a confined jurisprudence, would be folly. It is well if the whole legislative power is competent to the correction of abuses, which are commensurate to the immensity of the object they effect. The idea of an absolute power has indeed its terrours; but that objection lies to every parliamentary proceeding; and as no other can regulate the abuses of such a charter, it is fittest that sovereign authority should be exercised, where it is most likely to be attended with the most effectual correctives. These correctives are furnished by the nature and course of parliamentary proceedings, and by the infinitely diversified charac ters who compose the two houses. In effect and virtually they form a vast number, variety, and succession of judges and jurors The fulness, the freedom, and publicity, of discussion, leaves it easy to distinguish what are acts of power, and what the determinations of equity and reason. There prejudice corrects prejudice, and the different asperities of party zeal mitigate and neutralize each other. So far from violence being the general characteris tick of the proceedings of parliament, whatever the beginnings of any parliamentary process may be, its general fault in the end is, that it is found incomplete and ineffectual.

of being checked by the company. The whole of the affairs of that body are reduced to a most perilous situation; and many millions of innocent and deserving men, who are under the protection of this nation, and who ought to be protected by it, are oppressed by a most despotick and rapacious tyranny. The company and their servants have strengthened themselves by this confederacy, have set at defiance the authority and admonitions of this house employed to reform them; and when this house had selected certain principal delinquents, whom they declared it the duty of the company to recall, the company held out its legal privileges against all reformation; positively refused to recall them; and supported those, who had fallen under the just censure of this house, with new and stronger marks of countenance and approbation. The late house discovering the reversed situation of the company, by which the nominal servants are really the masters, and the offenders are become their own judges, thought fit to examine into the state of their commerce: and they have also discovered that their commercial affairs are in the greatest disorder, that their debts have accumulated beyond any present or obvious future means of payment, at least under the actual administration of their affairs; that this condition of the East-India company has begun to affect the sinking fund itself, on which the public credit of the kingdom rests, a million and upwards being due to the customs, which that house of commons, whose intentions towards the company have been so grossly misrepresented, were indulgent enough to respite. And thus, instead of confiscating their property, the company received without interest (which in such a case had been before charged) the use of a very large sum of the publick money. The revenues are under the peculiar care of this house, not only as the revenues originate from us, but as, on every failure of the funds set apart for support of the national credit, or to provide for the national strength and safety, the task of supplying every deficiency falls upon his majesty's faithful commons, this house must, in effect, tax the people. The house therefore, at every moment, incurs the hazard of becoming obnoxious to its constituents.

The enemies of the late house of commons resolved, if possible, to bring on that event. They therefore endeavoured to misrepresent the provident means adopted by the house of commons for keeping off this invidious necessity, as an attack on the rights of the East-India company; for they well knew, that, on the one hand, if, for want of proper regulation and relief, the company should become insolvent, or even stop payment, the national credit and commerce would sustain a heavy blow and that calamity would be justly imputed to parliament, which, after such long enquiries, and such frequent admonitions from his majesty,

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• The purpose of the misrepresentation being now completely answered, there is no doubt but the committee in this parliament, appointed by the ministers themselves, will justify the grounds upon which the last parliament proceeded; and will lay open to the world the dreadful state of the company's affairs, and the gross

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had neglected so essential and so urgent an article of their duty: on the other hand they knew, that, wholly corrupted as the company is, nothing effectual could be done to preserve that interest from ruin, without taking for a time the national objects of their trusts out of their hands; and then a cry would be industriously raised against the house of commons, as depriving British subjects of their legal privileges. The restraint, being plain and simple, must be easily understood by those who would be brought with great difficulty to comprehend the intricate detail of matters of fact, which render this suspension of the administration of India absolutely necessary on motives of justice, of policy, of publick honour, and publick safety.

The house of commons had not been able to devise a method, by which the redress of grievances could be effected through the authors of those grievances; nor could they imagine how corruptions could be purified by the corruptors and the corrupted; nor do we conceive, how any reformation can proceed from the known abettors and supporters of the persons who have been guilty of the misdemeanors which parliament has reprobated, and who for their own ill purposes have given countenance to a false and delusive state of the company's affairs, fabricated to mislead parliament, and to impose upon the nation.*

Your commons feel, with a just resentment, the inadequate estimate which your ministers have formed of the importance of this great concern. They call on us to act upon the principles of those who have not enquired into the subject; and to condemn those who, with the most laudable diligence, have examined and scrutinized every part of it. The deliberations of parliament have been broken; the season of the year is unfavourable ; many of us are new members, who must be wholly unacquainted with the subject, which lies remote from the ordinary course of general information.

We are cautioned against an infringement of the constitution; and it is impossible to know, what the secret advisers of the crown, who have driven out the late ministers for their conduct in parliament, and have dissolved the late parliament for a pretended attack upon prerogative, will consider as such an infringement. We are not furnished with a rule, the observance of which can make us safe from the resentment of the crown, even by an implicit obedience to the dictates of the ministers who have advised that speech: we know not how soon those ministers may be disavowed; and how soon the members of this house, for our very agreement with them, may be considered as objects of his majesty's displeasure. Until by his majesty's goodness and wisdom the late example is completely done away, we are not free.

We are well aware, in providing for the affairs of the East, with what an adult strength of abuse,

ness of their own calumnies upon this head. By delay the new assembly is come to this disgraceful situation of allowing a dividend of eight per cent. by act of parliament, without the least matter before them to justify the granting of any dividend at all.

and of wealth and influence growing out of that abuse, his majesty's commons had, in the last parliament, and we still have, to struggle. We are sensible that the influence of that wealth, in a much larger degree and measure than at any former period, may have penetrated into the very quarter from whence alone any real reformation can be expected.

If, therefore, in the arduous affairs recommended to us, our proceedings should be ill adapted, feeble, and ineffectual; if no delinquency should be prevented, and no delinquent should be called to account; if every person should be caressed, promoted, and raised in power, in proportion to the enormity of his offences; if no relief should be given to any of the natives unjustly dispossessed of their rights, jurisdictions, and properties; if no cruel and unjust exactions shall be forborne; if the

This will be evident to those who consider the number and description of directors and servants of the East India company, chosen into the present parliament. The light in which the present ministers hold the labours of the house of commons, in searching into the disorders in the Indian administration, and all its endeavours for the reformation of the government there, without any distinction of times, or of the persons concerned, will appear from the following extract from a speech of the present lord chancellor. After making a high-flown panegyrick on those whom the house of commons had condemned by their resolutions, he said "Let us not be misled by reports from "committees of another house, to which, I again repeat, I pay as

source of no peculation, or oppressive gain, should be cut off; if, by the omission of the opportunities that were in our hands, our Indian empire should fall into ruin irretrievable, and in its fall crush the credit, and overwhelm the revenues, of this country, we stand acquitted to our honour and to our conscience, who have reluctantly seen the weightiest interests of our country, at times the most critical to its dignity and safety, rendered the sport of the inconsiderate and unmeasured ambition of individuals, and by that means the wisdom of his majesty's government degraded in the publick estimation, and the policy and character of this renowned nation rendered contemptible in the eyes of all Europe.

It passed in the negative.

"much attention, as I would do to the history of Robinson Crusoe. "Let the conduct of the East-India company be fairly and fully "enquired into. Let it be acquitted or condemned by evidence "brought to the bar of the house. Without entering very deeply "into the subject, let me reply in a few words to an observation "which fell from a noble and learned lord, that the company's finances are distressed, and that they owe, at this moment, a million sterling, to the nation. When such a charge is brought, "will parliament in its justice forget that the company is restrict"ed from employing that credit, which its great and flourishing "situation gives to it?"

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44

MR. BURKE'S SPEECH

ON THE

MOTION MADE FOR PAPERS

RELATIVE TO THE DIRECTIONS FOR CHARGING

THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S PRIVATE DEBTS TO EUROPEANS, ON THE REVENUES OF THE CARNATICK.

FEBRUARY 28th, 1785.

WITH AN APPENDIX,

CONTAINING SEVERAL DOCUMENTS.

Ἐνταῦθα τί πράττειν ἐχρῆν ἄνδρα τῶν Πλάτωνος καὶ ̓Αριστοτέλους ζηλωτὴν δογμάτων; ἆρα περιορᾷν ἀνθρώπους ἀθλίους τοῖς κλέπταις ἐκδιδομένους, ἢ κατὰ δύναμιν αὐτοῖς ἀμύνειν, οἶμαι, ὡς ἤδη τὸ κύκνειον ἐξάδουσι διὰ τό θεομισές ἐργαστήριον τῶν τοιούτων ; Ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν αἰσχρὸν εἶναι δοκεῖ τοῦς μὲν χιλιάρχους, ὅταν λείπωσι τὴν τάξιν, καταδικάζειν τὴν δὲ ὑπὲρ ἀθλίων ἀνθρώπων ὑπολείπειν τάξιν, ὅταν δέη πρὸς κλέπτας ἀγωνίζεσθαι τοιούτους· καὶ ταῦτα τοῦ Θεοῦ συμμαχοῦντος ἡμῖν, ὥσπερ οὖν ἔταξεν. JULIANI Epist. 17.

the

ADVERTISEMENT.

The company had put him into possession of several great cities and magnificent castles. The good order of his affairs, his sense of personal dignity, his ideas of oriental splendour, and the habits of an Asiatick life, (to which, being a native of India, and a Mahometan, he had from his infancy been inured,) would naturally have led him to fix the seat of his government within his own dominions. Instead of this, he totally sequestered himself from his country; and, abandoning all appearance of state, he took up his residence in an ordinary house, which he purchased in the suburbs of the company's factory at Madras. that place he has lived, without removing one day from thence, for several years past. He has there continued a constant cabal with the company's servants, from the highest to the lowest ; creating, out of the ruins of the country, brilliant fortunes for those who will, and entirely destroying those who will not, be subservient to his pur

In

THAT the least informed reader of this speech may be enabled to enter fully into the spirit of the transaction, on occasion of which it was delivered, it may be proper to acquaint him, that among the princes dependent on this nation in the southern parts of India, the most considerable at present is commonly known by the title of the nabob of Arcot. This prince owed the establishment of his government, against the claims of his elder brother, as well as those of other competitors, to the arms and influence of the British East-India company. Being thus established in a considerable part of the dominions he now possesses, he began, about year 1765, to form, at the instigation (as he asserts) of the servants of the East-India company, a variety of designs for the further extension of his territories. Some years after, he carried his views to certain objects of interiour arrangement, of a very pernicious nature. None of these designs could be compassed without the aid of the company's arms; nor could those arms be employed consistently with an obedience to the com- An opinion prevailed, strongly confirmed by pany's orders. He was therefore advised to form several passages in his own letters, as well as by a a more secret, but an equally powerful, interest combination of circumstances forming a body of among the servants of that company, and among evidence which cannot be resisted, that very great others both at home and abroad. By engaging sums have been by him distributed, through a long them in his interests, the use of the company's course of years, to some of the company's servants. power might be obtained without their ostensible Besides these presumed payments in ready money, authority; the power might even be employed (of which, from the nature of the thing, the direct in defiance of the authority; if the case should proof is very difficult,) debts have at several perequire, as in truth it often did require, a proceed-riods been acknowledged to those gentlemen, to ing of that degree of boldness.

poses.

an immense amount; that is, to some millions of

sterling money. There is strong reason to suspect, that the body of these debts is wholly fictitious, and was never created by money bona fide lent. But even on a supposition that this vast sum was really advanced, it was impossible that the very reality of such an astonishing transaction should not cause some degree of alarm, and incite to some sort of enquiry.

It was not at all seemly, at a moment when the company itself was so distressed, as to require a suspension, by act of parliament, of the payment of bills drawn on them from India-and also a direct tax upon every house in England, in order to facilitate the vent of their goods, and to avoid instant insolvency-at that very moment that their servants should appear in so flourishing a condition, as, besides ten millions of other demands on their masters, to be entitled to claim a debt of three or four millions more from the territorial revenue of one of their dependent princes.

where they found those materials deficient, they should order the presidency of Fort St. George [Madras] to complete the enquiry.

The court of directors applied themselves to the execution of the trust reposed in them. They first examined into the amount of the debt, which they computed, at compound interest, to be 2,945,6007. sterling. Whether their mode of computation, either of the original sums, or the amount on compound interest, was exact, that is, whether they took the interest too high, or the several capitals too low, is not material. On whatever principle any of the calculations was made up, none of them found the debt to differ from the recital of the act, which asserted, that the sums claimed were very large." The last head of these debts the directors compute at 2,465,6801. sterling. Of the existence of this debt the directors heard nothing until 1776, and they say, that," although they had repeatedly "written to the nabob of Arcot, and to their servants, respecting the debt, yet they had never been able to trace the origin thereof, or to obtain any satisfactory information on the 'subject."

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The ostensible pecuniary transactions of the nabob of Arcot, with very private persons, are so enormous, that they evidently set aside every pretence of policy, which might induce a prudent" government in some instances to wink at ordinary loose practice in ill-managed departments. No The court of directors, after stating the circumcaution could be too great in handling this mat- stances under which the debts appeared to them ter; no scrutiny too exact. It was evidently the to have been contracted, add as follows: "For interest, and as evidently at least in the power, of" these reasons we should have thought it our the creditors, by admitting secret participation in this dark and undefined concern, to spread corruption to the greatest and the most alarming

extent.

These facts relative to the debts were so notorious, the opinion of their being a principal source of the disorders of the British government in India was so undisputed and universal, that there was no party, no description of men in parliament, who did not think themselves bound, if not in honour and conscience, at least in common decency, to institute a vigorous enquiry into the very bottom of the business, before they admitted any part of that vast and suspicious charge to be laid upon an exhausted country. Every plan concurred in directing such an enquiry; in order that whatever was discovered to be corrupt, fraudulent, or oppressive, should lead to a due animadversion on the offenders; and if any thing fair and equitable in its origin should be found (nobody suspected that much, comparatively speaking, would be so found) it might be provided for; in due subordination, however, to the ease of the subject, and the service of the state.

These were the alleged grounds for an enquiry, settled in all the bills brought into parliament relative to India, and there were I think no less than four of them. By the bill, commonly called Mr. Pitt's bill, the enquiry was specially, and by express words, committed to the court of directors, without any reserve for the interference of any other person or persons whatsoever. It was ordered that they should make the enquiry into the origin and justice of these debts, as far as the materials in their possession enabled them to proceed; and

"duty to enquire very minutely into those debts,

even if the act of parliament had been silent on "the subject, before we concurred in any measure "for their payment. But with the positive in"junctions of the act before us, to examine into "their nature and origin, we are indispensably "bound to direct such an enquiry to be insti"tuted." They then order the president and council of Madras to enter into a full-examination, &c. &c.

The directors, having drawn up their order to the presidency on these principles, communicated the draught of the general letter in which those orders were contained to the board of his majesty's ministers, and other servants lately constituted by Mr. Pitt's East-India act. These ministers, who had just carried through parliament the bill ordering a specifick enquiry, immediately drew up another letter, on a principle directly opposite to that which was prescribed by the act of parliament, and followed by the directors. In these second orders, all idea of an enquiry into the justice and origin of the pretended debts, particularly of the last, the greatest, and the most obnoxious to suspicion, is abandoned. They are all admitted and established without any investigation whatsoever; except some private conference with the agents of the claimants is to pass for an investigation; and a fund for their discharge is assigned and set apart out of the revenues of the Carnatick. -To this arrangement in favour of their servants, servants suspected of corruption, and convicted of disobedience, the directors of the East-India company were ordered to set their hands, asserting it to arise from their own conviction and opinion, in

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