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system as ours; it has subsisted in all such governments; and perhaps it is necessary. But to those who oppose it, it is extremely essential that their manner of conducting it incur not a suspicion of their motives. If they appear to oppose from disappointment, from mortification, from pique, from whim, the people will be against them. If they oppose from publick principle, from love of their country rather than hatred to administration, from evident conviction of the badness of measures, and a full persuasion that in their resistance to men, they are aiming at the publick welfare, the people will be with them. We opposed upon these principles, and the people were with us; if we are opposed upon other principles, they will not be against us. Much labour has been employed to infuse a prejudice upon the present subject; and I have the satisfaction to believe, that the labour has been fruitless; (making a reasonable exception for the mistakes of the uninformed, the first impressions of novelty, and the natural result of deliberate malice) we desire to be tried by the test of this bill, and risk our character upon the issue: confiding thoroughly in the good sense, the justice, and the spirit of Englishmen. Not lofty sounds, nor selected epithets, nor passionate declamation in this house, nor all the sordid efforts of interested men out of this house (of men whose acts in the East have branded the British name, and whose ill-gotten opulence, working through a thousand channels to delude and debauch the publick understanding) can odium upon this measure, or draw an obloquy upon the authors of it. We have been tried in the cause of the publick; and until we desert that cause, we are assured of publick confidence and protection.

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The honourable gentleman* has supposed for me a soliloquy, and has put into my mouth some things which I do not think are likely to be attributed to me: he insinuates that I was incited by avarice, or ambi. tion, or party spirit. I have failings in common

Mr. Powys.

with every human being, beside my own peculiar faults: but of avarice I have indeed held myself guiltless. My abuse has been, for many years, even the profession of several people; it was their traffick, their livelihood; yet until this moment I knew not that avarice was in the catalogue of the sins imputed to me. Ambition I confess I have, but not ambition upon a narrow bottom, or built upon paltry principles. If, from the devotion of my life to political objects, if from the direction of my industry to the attainment of some knowledge of the constitution, and the true interests of the British empire, the ambition of taking no mean part in those acts that elevate nations, and make a people happy, be criminal, that ambition I acknowledge. And as to party spiritthat I feel it, that I have been ever under its impulse, and that I ever shall, is what I proclaim to the world. That I am one of a party, a party never known to sacrifice the interests, or barter the liberties of the nation for mercenary purposes, for personal emolument or honours; a party linked together upon principles which comprehend whatever is dear and most precious to freemen, and essential to a free constitu tion, is my pride and my boast.

The honourable gentleman has given me one assertion, which it is my pride to make: he says that I am connected with a number of the first families in the country. Yes, sir, I have a peculiar glory that a body of men renowned for their ancestry, important for their possessions, distinguished for their personal worth, with all that is valuable to men at stake, here. ditary fortunes and hereditary honours, deem me worthy of their confidence. With such men Iam something without them, nothing. My reliance is upon their good opinion; and in that respect, perhaps, I am fortunate. Although I have a just confidence in my own integrity, yet as I am but man, perhaps it is well that I have no choice but between my own eternal disgrace and a faithful discharge of my publick duty, whilst these kind of men are overseers of my conduct, whilst men whose uprightness of heart and

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spotless honour are even proverbial in the country,* are the vigils of my deeds, it is a pledge to the publick for the purity and rectitude of my conduct. The prosperity and honour of the country are blended with the prosperity and honour of these illustrious persons. They have so much at stake, that if the country falls, they fall with it; and to countenance any thing against its interest, would be a suicide upon themselves. The good opinion and protection of these men is a security to the nation for my behaviour, because if I lose them, I lose my all.

Having said so much upon the extraneous subjects introduced by the honourable gentleman into the debate, I shall proceed to make some observations upon the business in question. When the learned gentleman brought in his bill last year, the house saw its frightful features with just horrour; but a very good method was adopted to soften the terrours of the extravagant power that bill vested in the governour general. The name of a noble lord,† was sent forth at the same time, whose great character lent a grace to a proposition, which, destitute of such an advantage, could not be listened to for one moment. Now, sir, observe how differently we have acted upon the same occasion.

Earl Fitzwilliam has been spoken of here this day, in those terms of admiration with which his name is always mentioned. Take notice, however, that we did not avail ourselves of the fame of his virtue and abilities in passing this bill through the house.

If such a thing were to have taken place as the institution of an Indian secretaryship (according to the suggestions of some gentlemen) this noble lord would certainly have been the very person whom, for my part, I should have advised his majesty to invest with that office. Yet, although his erect mind and spotless honour would have held forth to the publick the fullest confidence of a faithful execution of its duties, the objections in regard to influence upon a remova

* Looking at lord John Cavendish.

† Lord Cornwallis.

ble officer, are tenfold in comparison with the present scheme. The house must now see, that with all the benefits we might derive from that noble lord's character that although his name would have imparted a sanctity, an ornament, and an honour to the bill, we ushered it in without that ceremony, to stand or fall by its own intrinsick merits, neither shielding it under the reputation, nor gracing it under the mantle, of any man's virtue. Our merit will be more in this, when the names of those are known whom we mean to propose to this house, to execute this commission.* I will not-I will not name them; the bill shall stand or fall by its own merits, without aid or injury from their character. An honourable gentleman has said these commissioners will be made up of our "adherents and creatures." Sir, there is nothing more easy than to use disparaging terms; yet I should have thought the name of earl Fitzwilliam would have given a fair presumption that the colleagues we shall recommend to this house for the co-execution of this business with that noble lord, will not be of a description to merit these unhandsome epithets. I assure the honourable gentleman they are not. I assure him they are not men whose faculties of corrupting, or whose corruptibility, will give any alarm to this house, or to this country: they are men whose private and publick characters stand high and untainted; who are not likely to countenance depredation, or par. ticipate the spoils of rapacity. They are not men to screen delinquency, or to pollute the service by disgraceful appointments. Would such men as earl Fitzwilliam suffer unbecoming appointments to be made? Is earl Fitzwilliam a man likely to do the dirty work of a minister? If they, for instance, were to nominate a Paul Benfield to go to India in the supreme council, would earl Fitzwilliam subscribe to his appointment? This is the benefit of having a commission of high honour, chary of reputation, noble and

* Name them said Mr. Arden, across the house.

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pure in their sentiments, who are superiour to the little jobs and traffick of political intrigue.

But this bill, sir, presumes not upon the probity of the men; it looks to the future possibility of dissimilar successours, and to the morality of the present commissioners, who are merely human, and therefore not incapable of alteration. Under all the caution of this bill, with the responsibility it imposes, I will take. upon me to say, that if the aggregate body of this board determined to use all its power for the purpose of corruption, this house, and the people at large, would have less to dread from them, in the way of influence, than from a few Asiaticks who would probably be displaced in consequence of this arrangement, some of whom will return to this country with a million, some with seven hundred thousand, some with five, beside the three or four hundred thousand of others, who are cut off in their career by the hand of fate. An inundation of such wealth is far more dangerous than any influence that is likely to spring from a plan of government so constituted as this proposed

whether the operation of such a mass of wealth be considered in its probable effects, upon the principles of the members of this house, or the manners of the people at large, more especially when a reflection that Orientalists are in general the most exemplary class of people in their morals, and in their deportment the most moderate, and corresponding with the distinction of their high birth and family, furnishes a very reasonable presumption, that the expenditure of their money will be much about as honourable as its acquirement.

I shall now, sir, conclude my speech with a few words upon the opinion of the right honourable gentleman. He says, "he will stake his character upon the danger of this bill." I meet him in his own phrase, and oppose him, character to character; I risk my all upon the excellence of this bill; I risk upon it whatever is most dear to me, whatever men

* Mr. Pitt.

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