away whenever they were contrary to justice. If the present was to be considered as a new case, old precedents should not be brought against it. Trial by jury, and other valuable privileges, ought not to be done away without a hearing. No man should be proceeded against without permitting him to speak in his own vindication. There was no country, no government in the world, however despotic, but admitted the petitions of individuals; eveņ the grand seignior, when going to mosque, received petitions from the meanest of his subjects; and he should entertain no high opinion of his piety, if such petitions were refused.

Mr. Dundas was of opinion, that there were many reasons for refusing to comply with the prayer of the petition. With regard to the acts referred to, so fully was he convinced of their propriety, that he would readily expatiate on that theme for a day, for two days, or for a week, if so long it pleased the honourable gentlemen opposite to him to continue their objections to the tenour of those acts.

Mr. BURKE said, he had not the smallest doubt but that the right honourable gentleman would find a peculiar degree of pleasure in defending the justice of those acts; it was a theme which was confessedly dictated by self-love; but when the right honourable gentleman talked of his being particularly pledged, it included no more than this modest assertion that the measure must be just, because he was the minister of India. But with respect to the present objections to the measure, if the language of the petition was displeasing to the right honourable gentleman as coming from men in arms, that might possibly have been a good reason for rejecting the petition; but when it was once received, that objection was of course given up, and it now mattered not whether they originally came, in the language of Milton, "beseeching, or besieging," they were now entitled to a hearing. He was not at all surprised to hear that gentlemen going out to India, had approved

of these acts. Those who had favours to ask, were easily persuaded; and those, who perhaps could not go out but through the interest of that right honourable gentleman, would readily yield their conviction to his arguments; eloquent as he was by nature, there was then a superior eloquence in his situation, a persuasion in his official rank, which few adventurers so situated could withstand. The House, however, was not now to deliberate on the opinions of gentlemen going to India, but on the complaints of those who were already in that country, and whose supplications were poured out to them for hearing and redress.

Mr. Dundas denied that the opinion of any gentleman on these acts had been extorted or perverted by his situation, as he had no power to send out any person in any office to India.

Mr. BURKE replied, that though the right honourable gentleman might not be possessed of any direct power to that end, yet all who knew his influence with the court of directors must own that indirectly he might effect a great deal; or, if this was denied, he was certainly possessed of a power nearly equivalent that of instantly recalling any person who met his displeasure.

The motion was agreed to..

February 27.

THE House went into a committee on the Bengal petitions, for the repeal of the East India judicature bill. After the counsel had retired from the bar, Mr. Dempster said, that on the next open day he should move for leave to bring in a bill to repeal the said bill, agreeably to the prayer of the petitions. Mr. Pitt observed, that there was sufficient time for the honourable gentleman to make his motion, and that instead of waiting for an open day, he ought to avail himself of the present day, which was kept open merely to accommodate him, though other very important business had been postponed for that

purpose. It was absurd, after having had the benefit of counsel, for the committee to adjourn immediately, as it were in order to forget the arguments of the counsel, before they should come to a vote upon the subject. Mr. Dempster answered, that his reason for deferring his motion was the thinness of the House. He then moved, "That the chairman report progress, and ask leave to sit again." Upon which, Mr. Pitt moved, by way of amendment, "That the chairman do leave the chair."

Mr. BURKE contended, that a great deal of argument might still be adduced in favour of the original motion. It gave him great concern to find that British subjects in India were not to be permitted to enjoy the same privileges which British subjects in England enjoyed. If they were to be deprived of their freedom, if English mouths and English pens were not to be allowed to be exercised in favour of oppressed natives, those natives must lose their freedom entirely, and no complaint against persons in office could ever be preferred with effect, so as to reach the knowledge and challenge the inquiry of the parliament of Great Britain, because the acts petitioned against put it in the power of the governor-general to seize and imprison every British subject who should presume particularly to state the variety of oppressions under which a native might unfortunately languish.

Major Scott said, that as to the government of Bengal, it had ever been, and it ever must be despotic.

Mr. BURKE maintained, that the worst that could be said of any government was, that it was despotic. If the British government established in India was despotic, so far from its being the best possible government for the country, all circumstances considered, it must be the worst, because of the infinite distance of India from the seat of supreme authority. If Englishmen in India were deprived of their rights and privileges, a total end was put to freedom in India, since an Englishman who suffered his liberties to be taken from him without cause and without resistance on

his part, was an Englishman depraved, fit and ready not only to enslave himself, but to enslave others. It was natural, he observed, for men in power to feel an inclination to exercise that power tyrannically, and even to the enslaving of those subordinate to their authority; but it was the province of freemen to detect them; and when the freedom of Englishmen in India was taken from them, those in power there might with impunity carry into execution against the miserable natives whatever plans of slavery their arbitrary and unfeeling dispositions might suggest.

The amendment was agreed to.

March 19.

THIS day Mr. Dempster moved for leave to bring in a bill to explain and amend the East India Judicature Acts. He contended, that as trial by jury was the birth-right of every British subject, no man, no assembly, had any right to take away such privilege, unless by the consent, and on the application of the parties themselves; and he declared it to be no justification whatever for that House to assert, that it gave the parties so disfranchised a better thing in lieu of that which they took away. He reprobated the ground of necessity as a plea for the abolition of trial by jury in the case in question, and asserted, that no such necessity could be proved to have existed. After the motion had been supported by Mr. Francis, and opposed by the solicitor-general, principally on the ground, that a common jury, composed of common individuals, were not competent to decide upon cases of delinquency in India, likely to arise in future,

Mr. BURKE declared, that he entertained a profound respect for the information which the honourable and learned gentleman had it in his power to give, and he felt that great weight was due to his opinion. He could not, however, but observe, that poor, ignorant, unlettered laymen, like himself, had not, lately at least, derived any assistance from the honourable and learned gentleman in

conducting the important prosecution in which they had been for some time engaged, and that the House had not paid any very great deference to the advice and judgment of the honourable and learned gentleman, when he had declared himself adverse to their proceedings against Mr. Hastings. Mr. Burke animadverted on the solicitor-general's declaration, that a common jury, composed of common individuals, were not competent to decide upon cases of delinquency in India, likely to arise in future. He said, that much as he respected that House, he could not conceive, that the instant any man entered the doors of it, he became, as it were, gifted with a degree of knowledge and a fund of liberality superior to that possessed by people without doors. He hoped, that generally speaking, that House represented the understandings as well as the individuals of the mass of the people, and that there was nothing so distinguished in the intellects of members of parliament, as to mark them out from their constituents, as the only proper persons to be trusted with the reputation and property of those who might hereafter be brought to trial for any part of their conduct in India.

The honourable and learned gentleman, whom, from what he had said, he should hold himself entitled to consider as the author of the act of 1786, had rested the justification of the bill on experience, and not on the loose ground of speculation and experiment. That was undoubtedly the true ground for any great measure to stand upon; but he should examine a little how far the experience referred to would warrant the inferences which the honourable and learned gentleman had drawn from it. With regard, then, to the trials alluded to by the honourable and learned gentleman - that between the Armenians and Governor Verelst, and that in the case of the seizure of Lord Pigot- they rather, in his mind, proved the competency of juries to try East India causes than any thing else. In the former, large damages had been given: but then, perhaps, as the honourable and learned gentleman had found so much fault with the verdict, the jury were incom