quo warranto, and mandamus, and certiorari; as if we were on a trial about mayors and aldermen, and capital burgesses; or engaged in a suit concerning the borough of Penryn, or Saltash, or St. Ives, or St. Mawes. Gentlemen have argued with as much heat and passion, as if the first things in the world were at stake; and their topicks are such, as belong only to matter of the lowest and meanest litigation. It is not right, it is not worthy of us, in this manner to depreciate the value, to degrade the majesty of this grave deliberation of policy and empire. For my part, I have thought myself bound when a matter of this extraordinary weight came before me, not to consider (as some gentlemen are so fond of doing) whether the bill originated from a secretary of state for the home department, or from a secretary for the foreign; from a minister of influence or a minister of the people; from Jacob or from Esau.* I asked myself, and I asked myself nothing else, what part it was fit for a member of parliament, who has supplied a mediocrity of talents, by the extreme of diligence, and who has thought himself obliged, by the research of years, to wind himself into the inmost recesses and labyrinths of the Indian detail, what part, I say, it became such a member of parliament to take, when a minister of state, in conformity to a recommendation from the throne, has brought before us a system for the better government of the territory and commerce of the East. In this light, and in this only, I will trouble you with my sentiments. It is not only agreed but demanded, by the right honourable gentleman, and by those who act with him, that a whole system ought to be produced; that it ought not to be a half measure; that it ought to be no palliative; but a legislative provision, vigorous, substantial, and effective.-I believe that no man who understands the subject can doubt for a moment, that those must be the conditions of any thing deserving * An allusion made by Mr. Powis. † Mr. Pitt. the name of a reform in the Indian government; that any thing short of them would not only be delusive, but, in this matter, which admits no medium, noxious in the extreme. To all the conditions proposed by his adversaries the mover of the bill perfectly agrees; and on his performance of them he rests his cause. On the other hand, not the least objection has been taken, with regard to the efficiency, the vigour, or the completeness of the schéme. I am therefore warranted to assume, as a thing admitted, that the bills accomplish what both sides of the house demand as essential. The end is completely answered, so far as the direct and immediate object is concerned. But though there are no direct, yet there are various collateral objections made; objections from the effects which this plan of reform for Indian admini stration may have on the privileges of great publick bodies in England; from its probable influence on the constitutional rights, or on the freedom and integrity of the several branches of the legislature. Before I answer these objections, I must beg leave to observe, that if we are not able to contrive some method of governing India well, which will not of necessity become the means of governing Great Britain ill, a ground is laid for their eternal separation; but none for sacrificing the people of that country to our constitution. I am, however, far from being persuaded that any such incompatibility of interest does at all exist. On the contrary I am certain that every means, effectual to preserve India from oppression, is a guard to preserve the British constitution from its worst corruption. To show this, I will consider the objections, which I think are four. 1st. That the bill is an attack on the chartered 2dly. That it increases the influence of the crown. VOL. II. As to the first of these objections; I must observe that the phrase of "the chartered rights of men," is full of affectation; and very unusual in the discussion of privileges conferred by charters of the present description. But it is not difficult to discover what end that ambiguous mode of expression, so often reiterated, is meant to answer. The rights of men, that is to say, the natural rights of mankind, are indeed sacred things; and if any publick measure is proved mischievously to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, eyen if no charter at all could be set up against it. If these natural rights are further affirmed and declared by express covenants, if they are clearly defined and secured against chicane, against power, and authority, by written instruments and positive engagements, they are in a still better condition; they partake not only of the sanctity of the object so secured, but of that solemn publick faith itself, which secures an ob ject of such importance. Indeed this formal recognition, by the sovereign power, of an original right in the subject, can never be subverted, but by rooting up the holding radical principles of government, and even of society itself. The charters, which we call by distinction great, are publick instruments of this nature; I mean the charters of king John and king Henry the third. The things secured by these instruments may, without any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly called the chartered rights of men. These charters have made the very name of a charter dear to the heart of every Englishman.But, sir, there may be, and there are charters, not only different in nature, but formed on principles the very reverse of those of the great charter. Of this kind is the charter of the East India company. Magna Charta is a charter to restrain power, and to destroy monopoly. The East India charter is a charter to establish monopoly, and to create power. Political power and commercial monopoly are not the rights of men; and the rights to them derived from charters, it is fallacious and sophistical to call "the chartered rights of men." These chartered rights (to speak of such charters and of their ef fects in terms of the greatest possible moderation) do at least suspend the natural rights of mankind at large; and in their very frame and constitution are liable to fall into a direct violation of them. It is a charter of this latter description (that is to say a charter of power and monopoly) which is affected by the bill before you. The bill, sir, does, without question, affect it; it does affect it essentially and substantially. But having stated to you of what description the chartered rights are which this bill touches, I feel no difficulty at all in acknowledging the existence of those chartered rights, in their fullest extent. They belong to the company in the surest manner; and they are secured to that body by every sort of publick sanction. They are stamped by the faith of the king; they are stamped by the faith of parliament; they have been bought for money, for money honestly and fairly paid; they have been bought for valuable consideration, over and over again. I therefore freely admit to the East India company their claim to exclude their fellow subjects from the commerce of half the globe. I admit their claim to administer an annual territorial revenue of seven millions sterling; to command an army of sixty thousand men; and to dispose (under the control of a sovereign imperial discretion, and with the due observance of the natural and local law) of the lives and fortunes of thirty millions of their fellow creatures. All this they possess by charter and by acts of parliament (in my opinion) without a shadow of controversy. Those who carry the rights and claims of the company the furthest do not contend for more than this; and all this I freely grant. But granting all this, they must grant to me in my turn, that all political power which is set over men, and that all privilege claimed or exercised in exclusion of them, being wholly artificial, and for so much, a deroga tion from the natural equality of mankind at large, ought to be some way or other exercised ultimately for their benefit. If this is true with regard to every species of political dominion, and every description of commercial privilege, none of which can be original self derived rights, or grants for the mere private benefit of the holders, then such rights, or privileges, or whatever else you choose to call them, are all in the strictest sense a trust; and it is of the very essence of every trust to be rendered accountable; and even totally to cease, when it substantially varies from the purposes for which alone it could have a lawful existence. This I conceive, sir, to be true of trusts of power vested in the highest hands, and of such as seem to hold of no human creature. But about the application of this principle to subordinate derivative trusts, I do not see how a controversy can be maintained. To whom then would I make the East India company accountable? Why, to parliament to be sure; to parliament, from whom their trust was derived; to parliament, which alone is capable of comprehending the magnitude of its object, and its abuse; and alone capable of an effectual legislative remedy. The very charter, which is held out to exclude parliament from correcting malversation with regard to the high trust vested in the company, is the very thing which at once gives a title and imposes a duty on us to interfere with effect, wherever power and authority originating from ourselves are perverted from their purposes, and become instruments of wrong and violence. If parliament, sir, had nothing to do with this charter, we might have some sort of Epicurean excuse to stand aloof, indifferent spectators of what passes in the company's name in India and in Lon. don. But if we are the very cause of the evil, we are in a special manner engaged to the redress; and for us passively to bear with oppressions committed under the sanction of our own authority, is |