May 27.

On the 27th of May, the day appointed for the committee to sit again, upon the usual motion, that the Speaker do now leave the chair, the same was opposed by the attorneygeneral, on the ground that the next article, relative to the Patna cause, was at that time depending, and likely to come speedily to a hearing before the privy council. Mr. Anstruther said, he conceived the whole business to be a collusion between Sir Elijah Impey and the East India Company; and he stated the charge as criminal, because Sir Elijah Impey acting corruptly (he meant not from pecuniary motives) had overset the whole judicature of India, for the sake of extending his own jurisdiction. If it was really too late in the session to go through with the charge, he should think that a fit reason for putting it off; but he was far from being of opinion that such was the state of the case.-Mr. W. W. Grenville observed, that the honourable gentleman had just stated the strongest reason for putting off the charge, when he mentioned the lateness of the session. He said he did not admit the whole of Mr. Anstruther's reasoning, as he could not think there was any ground for the suspicion of collusion between the East India Company and Sir Elijah. He was of opinion that the charge ought not to come on, while it was going to another tribunal, though that circumstance, he admitted, by no means debarred the House from exercising its functions respecting the charges in future.

Mr. BURKE observed, that the whole reminded him of a story of Sir Robert Walpole, who, retiring from the fatigues of public business, desired his son to get him a book to read to him. The son asked him, on what subject? Should it be history? No, said Sir Robert, not history; there can be no truth in that. He admitted philosophical speculations, travels, and Pliny; but history, he said, could not be true. Mr. Burke applied this story to Mr. Grenville's argument, and talked about young statesmen, who were filled, as it were, with wine, and had all the body and strength of it; while older politicians were obliged to take up with the lees, which were somewhat

stale and sour. He next stated all the particulars of the Patna cause, in the investigation of which he had many years since taken a considerable part. The East India Company had originally brought it before that House, and with great earnestness had urged them to investigate it. The House had caught the Company's warmth, and felt with equal ardour. They took it up, and considered it as so outrageous and bad, that no appeal could be expected. An act was passed for the immediate relief of the magistrates of Patna, and the Company gave bond to have the cause heard before the privy council. Mr. Burke stated the manner in which the bill had been curtailed in the House, declaring that their noble had been reduced to ninepence. But, as a little practical good was better than mountains of speculative advantages, they had patiently submitted to hold fast by the remainder that was left of their bill. The East India Company, who had been so hot upon the business, grew cool directly afterwards. The first thing they did was to prevaricate, and leave the magistrates of Patna, who had been dragged some hundred miles before a jurisdiction they knew nothing of, to amuse themselves in prison, as they had been told in another place, by dancing in irons to the jingling of their chains, and to regale themselves with the perfumes of the common sewer of the prisons of Calcutta. The Company, Mr. Burke said, had made a false entry, and had altered their own record; they had been guilty of the grossest frauds and villanies to prevent the effect of their own petition, and had omitted to send the act out to India. And what had they done since? They had forfeited 30,000l. for the purpose of defeating a criminal charge against that criminal whom they had called upon the House to proceed against. Mr. Burke enlarged on these particulars, and applied the nonumque prematur in annum of Horace, to the nine years that had elapsed since the subject was first agitated, declaring, that nothing would make him add a tenth. He took up the cause for the sake of the rights of the magistrates of Patna, for a man

who was a magistrate before the dirty East India Company had any power over Patna. He alluded to the expression of a bit of wax hanging to a piece of parchment, as applied to a charter on which depended the lives of millions, and asked if they, the Commons of England, owed no more protection to India, and its injured inhabitants, than a company of merchants could give them? With regard to the lateness of the season, he owned, that many things had great weight when compared with that circumstance; but when it was considered that the Patna cause had been protracted for nine years, surely they would agree that the protractors, and not the miserable inhabitants of India, ought to be punished. He submitted it to the feelings of the House, whether, when magistrates had been dragged four hundred miles from their native place to be tried by laws to which they were strangers, and suffered to remain in prison, they did not merit attention? That House, he said, was no prison, although he knew it was not extremely well calculated for business in summer; yet in a case of such magnitude, ordinary considerations ought to give way, and they ought not to hold out to India, that Sir Elijah Impey, being one of their own colour, one of their gang, as it were, should upon this account be protected by them. Because the East India Company had delayed to do justice for nine years, that House ought not to prevaricate. For his part he would not; for no Horace had told him to keep his piece ten years.

Mr. Smith rose to exculpate himself from the aspersion which Mr. Burke had cast on the East India Company, declaring he had sat for many years amongst the directors, and with as good men as those with whom the right honourable gentleman had ever associated. He defied the right honourable gentleman to prove that the Company had been guilty of any prevarication, or of having attempted to screen any man from justice. Mr. Pitt said, that the subject had caused more warmth than it seemed to require. The honourable gentleman had told them, that they were not to trust to history, and a great many more things that had very little to do with the question.

As the cause was to go before the privy council, and as it was possible for the sentence to be affirmed, and as by next session they would know whether it came on or not, he thought it far more advisable to wait till then.

Mr. BURKE begged leave to contradict the right honourable gentleman, who had supposed him to have admitted, that the East India Company had requested to have the obligation upon them to give security for referring the sentence to the privy council, inserted in the act of 1781. He had said no such thing, but the contrary, affirming, that it had not been desired by the East India Company, nor by that House, but by the highest authority, the lord chancellor, at whose express request he had inserted the obligation on the Company in the bill. Mr. Burke desired the right honourable gentleman, who had proved so bad an historian, not to take upon himself the office of being his historian; declaring that he had rather trust to the Public Advertiser, the Morning Chronicle, or the Morning Post, as reporters of his speeches, though he did not consider them as the most faithful records. He complained of the right honourable gentleman's treatment of him, and said, the oppression of great parts and great powers was too much to be borne. It reminded him of a story of a Roman lady, who had married a man with a bad breath, and when he was dead the widow was asked how she could bear to live so long with a man who had a foul breath? The lady, who was a virgin when she married, had said in reply, that she thought all men's breath was the same. He had heard severe things from many ministers who sat in the place which the right honourable gentleman filled, but he had suffered more from the offensive and foul breath of the right honourable gentleman, than from that of any minister that had gone before him. The honourable gentleman over the way had boasted of sitting in as good company as ever he did. That was a bold word. The Marquis of Rockingham, Mr. Dowdeswell, the Duke of Portland, and Mr. Fox, were men not easily to be matched.

Sir Gilbert Elliot's motion was negatived, and the farther consideration of the charges was deferred till that day three months.

ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TTADE.

May 9.

DURING the present session, petitions were presented from

the two universities, and from several of the most considerable towns and corporations in the kingdom, praying for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. In the mean time his majesty's ministers thought it proper to institute an inquiry, before a committee of the privy council, into the facts and allegations contained in the representations of both parties upon the subject; and Mr. Wilberforce, to whom the conduct of the business in the House of Commons had been, by a sort of general consent, assigned, having been prevented, by the bad state of his health, from bringing it before the House, Mr. Pitt rose in his place, on the 9th of May, and, after mentioning this circumstance, moved, "That this House will, early in the next session of parliament, proceed to take into consideration the circumstances of the slave trade, complained of in the several petitions which have been presented to the House, and what may be fit to be done thereupon." He added, that previous to that time, the inquiry instituted before the privy council would be brought to such a state of maturity as to make it fit that the result of it should be laid before the House, to facilitate their investigation, and to enable them to proceed to a decision, founded equally upon principles of humanity, justice, and sound policy. The motion was warmly supported by Mr. Fox. Lord Penrhyn said, there were two descriptions of men, one, those who were concerned in the African trade; the other, the planters, whose characters had been blackened, and whose conduct had been grossly calumniated; both these descriptions of men wished anxiously that an inquiry might be instituted,