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made of his power and influence, while they lasted, he could alone attribute the cause of all those misfortunes to which he was used so constantly, so pathetically, but so unsuccessfully, to solicit the compassion of the House. Feeling, as he did, for the right honourable gentleman, he declared, that he should think it highly unbecoming in him to consider any of his transports, any of those extacies of a mind labouring under the aggravated load of disappointment and self-upbraiding which at present were his lot, as objects of any other emotion in his breast than that of pity, certainly not of resentment, nor even of contempt.

What the particular action or expression of countenance was, that had given such uneasiness to the right honourable gentleman, he could not well explain to the House, but he remembered, that at the time, it proceeded from no other impulse of his mind, than that of surprise at the singular adroitness with which he found a dry and insipid question of account converted into a subject for such sublime and spirited declamation, as that with which the House had just then been entertained; and he could not but think, that, considering all circumstances, there was great judgment in the change which the right honourable gentleman had made, as so much better adapted to his purposes, his talents, and his information. But though the right honourable gentleman had been so fortunate as to introduce a variety into the debate, well calculated to display the lustre of his oratorical capacity, he had unluckily hit upon a subject that in other respects did him but little credit. He wondered that the right honourable gentleman did not consider, that, in bringing back the recollection of the House to the object, on which he had some few days ago engaged their attention, he must also remind them of the event of that day's debate, and serve to imprint more lastingly on their minds the situation to which he had reduced himself by his conduct on that occasion - a situation, which, were it his case, he confessed he should himself look back to rather with humiliation and self-reproach, than with pride and exultation. But he admired the fortitude and philo

sophy with which the right honourable gentleman persisted in his favourite purpose, be it what it might, even though shame and disgrace stood in his way. He drew, however, a happy omen from the warmth with which he espoused the present motion, and from the affinity which was endeavoured to be established between it and the former motion, which had been thus irregularly alluded to; wishing that the consequence attending this attack on the credit of the East-India company, might be similar to that which had already followed the several reiterated attacks on the public credit of the nation, viz. a great and rapid increase in the value of the stocks. He lamented, therefore, that the argument of this day could not be known in India as speedily as that of the former was in England, because by that means the happy effects of it would in that quarter be no longer delayed. When he considered the latitude which the right honourable gentleman had given himself in the use of his expressions, and compared it with his extraordinary sensibility to a silent and almost imperceptible relaxation of features, he was inclined to suppose that the doctrine of the right honourable gentleman was, that a silent spectator ought to endeavour, by all possible means, to avoid even a look that might give offence, while he that was speaking had a right to consider himself as absolved from all the restraints of moderation, good manners, or even common decency.

With respect to the motion before the House, he was surprised to hear from the right honourable gentleman, that he had not expected any opposition to it, until the order had been given for strangers to withdraw; for if he had listened to the arguments of a right honourable friend of his behind him, he would have seen, that they were all founded on an idea that such an opposition was intended; and he would take upon him to say, that there never was a motion which merited an opposition more strongly than the present.

The two most obvious grounds for such a committee as was required, were either to ground on their report a charge of crimi * Mr. Burke.

nality against the court of directors, (and a very high degree of criminality it would be, if they should be found to have wilfully attempted to deceive the House in their statement of the resources and disbursements of the company,) or else to gratify an idle curiosity by an inquiry, which, when finished, would be wholly useless, and inapplicable to any desirable purpose. With respect to the directors being liable to any charge for an intentional mis-statement to the House, that, he observed, was entirely out of the question, as the statement, which was alleged to be fallacious, was not a positive account of disbursements already made, and resources at the time in being, but of what was expected to be the amount of both, in case a circumstance, which was at the time shortly to have been looked for, should take place, namely, the conclusion of a peace. That peace having been deferred for nearly a year beyond the period when it was expected to have taken place, had of course made a material difference between the fact and the hopes of the directors, by considerably increasing their disbursements, and diminishing their resources. From hence the inaccuracy of the account, and the innocence of the directors, were perfectly reconcileable to each other; for he presumed there was no gentleman would contend, that in a speculation of so uncertain and distant a nature as the affairs of the East-India company, there could be any criminality in being unable to foresee such accidental events, as might naturally take place to derange an estimate calculated without any view or prospect of such accidents. This being the case, he must conclude, that the other motive, (that of curiosity,) was that to which the House was indebted for the present motion. Such a motive as this he would by no means give way to, when by so doing he should involve any number of gentlemen in an unnecessary and troublesome inquiry. Such a curiosity as this, if once indulged, would still continue to gain ground and to increase, and at length, perhaps, the House would be applied to, to appoint a committee to consider and make their observations on every single dispatch that should arrive from India. Indeed, if this principle of curiosity formed any part of the system of parliamentary proceedings, he remembered a time

when it might have been applied with peculiar propriety: he thought there could not have offered a more interesting, nor a more curious object of such an inquiry, than "what were the motives upon which the right honourable gentleman and his friends had framed their celebrated plan of East-India regulation last year, and what might have been the effects naturally to be expected from thence, had it been carried into execution?" When it was considered to what a surprising extent the bold and aspiring authors of that plan had endeavoured to carry it; that it embraced the whole of the executive government, the whole of the patronage, and, in short, every political function of the company, and transferred them all to the right honourable gentleman, in such a manner as to have secured to himself and his friends a power over this country, as well as over that, which should have continued to last, until, by a few more such experiments on both, they had rendered either no longer worth the holding; when it was considered that it had been complained of, that one source of the calamities of the company procceded from the too great influence of patronage, and the abuses to which it had been made instrumental, and yet, that, to cure these abuses, that very influence from which they sprung was to be increased to such an extent, and modelled in such a manner, as to leave no hope of its not being used to much more dangerous purposes than any yet known, except from the acknowledged immaculacy of the hallowed hands in which it was to be placed:

under such circumstances, he contended, a parliamentary inquiry would have been a most interesting and beneficial experiment. He had, he said, in his hand, a list of the officers which that famous bill made removable at pleasure, a few of which he would mention to the House, in order that they might judge whether the universal opinion which that business had given rise to, of the evils likely to result from the increase of patronage, and the placing that patronage in dangerous hands, could be called, with any regard to the meaning of the word, a delusion-here he read, besides the governors and council, one place of 25,000l. per annum, one of 15,000, five of 10,000, five of 9,000, one of

7,500, four of 5,000, twenty-three of 3,000, and so on till he came to places of one thousand, which, he observed, were, in comparison with the others, so trifling, as hardly to be worth his mentioning.

There could, he said, be but one other motive for appointing · the committee, and that was, to discover the true state of the company's affairs, in order to give them such relief as they might appear to be in need of. If this was the idea on which it was suggested, he was surprised to find in the right honourable gentleman so very forward and unusual a liberality towards the company; for, setting aside the desperate attempts which he already had alluded to, on their interests, he had, since that period, made a most violent opposition to the granting of them that relief which they applied for in the last session of parliament; and now, when they demanded no such assistance, was he desirous of imposing it upon them against their consent, though he had so recently endeavoured to withhold it from them when they thought it necessary. Upon the whole, he concluded with saying, that if he had come down to the House perfectly uninformed on the subject, he should, notwithstanding, have learned enough from what he had already heard in the course of the debate, to be able to make up his mind as to the impropriety of appointing the committee; a measure that should therefore meet his most hearty negative.

The motion was negatived,

Ayes............... 45

Noes.............. 161

May 12. 1785.

THE House having resolved itself into a committee of the whole Hous on the commercial regulations proposed to be adopted between Great Britain and Ireland,

Mr. PITT opened the business by desiring that the resolution which he had formerly moved as the ground-work of the system of intercourse between the two countries, might be read:

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