CHAPTER XXIII.

AFFAIRS OF INDIA TO 1793.

So much has been said in reference to the government of India, that it may be convenient to pursue the subject to the period of the renewal of the Charter in 1793.

The policy of Mr. Pitt, in respect to the government of India, has been well described by Mr. Mill. In speaking of Mr. Pitt's India Bill, he says, " In passing that law two objects were very naturally pursued. To avoid the imputation of what was represented as the heinous guilt of Mr. Fox's bill, it was necessary that the principal part of the power should appear to remain in the hands of the Directors. For ministerial advantage it was necessary that it should in reality be all taken away. Minds drenched with terrors. are easily deceived. Mr. Fox's bill threatened the Directors with evils which, to them at any rate, were not imaginary; and with much art, and singular success, other men were generally made to believe that it was fraught with mischief to the nation. Mr. Pitt's bill professed to differ from that of his rival chiefly in this very point--that while the one destroyed the power of the Directors, the other left it almost entire. The double purpose of the Minister was obtained by leaving them the forms, while the substance was taken away. In the temper into which the mind of the nation had been artfully brought, the deception was

easily passed, and vague and ambiguous language was the instrument. The terms in which the functions of the Board of Control were described implied, in their most obvious import, no great deduction from the former power of the Directors. They were susceptible of an interpretation which took away the whole."*

Whatever might be the motives of the Minister, it was on this foundation that his measures for extending the operation and enlarging the scope of his India Bill were erected.

In 1786 Mr. Pitt proposed that the Governor-General in Council should have the power of ordering any measure to be adopted in spite of the opposition of the whole of his council; who were, however, to be at liberty to record their dissent-in other words, to protest against the decision. He also proposed to enable the Directors and the Crown to give to the same person the powers of Governor-General and

Commander-in-Chief. It cannot be denied that these powers gave additional vigour to the Indian Government; but as the Crown would have the nomination of the Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief, they pro tanto diminished the influence of the Directors, and their servants in India. It is true that this measure was adopted in accordance with the opinion of Lord Cornwallis, who had recently arrived in India as GovernorGeneral.

A bolder step was taken in 1787. As the Directors hesitated to place on the Indian establishment three regiments, whose services they did not require, Parliament was asked to sanction a measure by which the Board of Control would have the power of adding at will to the military force of

* Mill's "British India," vol. v. p. 85.

the Crown in India, and of appropriating every rupee of Indian revenue to such services as they might think useful. It was proposed to do this by a bill declaratory of the meaning of the Act of 1784. It was in vain that Mr. Baring and others declared that the Directors would not have agreed to the Act of 1784 if they had so understood it. The mask had been worn long enough; Mr. Pitt was in haste to throw it aside, and to appear in the character of dictator, which he had unjustly attributed to Mr. Fox. As his followers, however, demurred to taking a road the very reverse of that by which they had been led to victory, the Minister consented to limit his power by three restrictions:-1st. The number of the King's troops in India was not to be increased beyond a certain amount without the consent of the Directors. 2nd and 3rd. No salary and no new pecuniary burthen was to be imposed on the finances of the Company by the Crown without a similar consent. Thus amended the bill passed.

In 1793 the period for the renewal of the Charter arrived. The application of the existing law had been found too convenient to admit, in the opinion of the Ministers, of fundamental change. Mr. Dundas, with an eloquence far inferior to that of Mr. Fox, Mr. Burke, or Mr. Pitt, but with a worldly sagacity superior to that of any one of the three, marshalled in order all the objections, difficulties, obstacles, and complications that lay in the way of either separating the trade from the government, or depriving the Company both of the exclusive trade and of the government. No writer on politics, he said, has thought that an empire can be well governed by a commercial association; no writer on commercial economy has thought that trade ought to be shackled by exclusive privilege. But the wisdom of

Parliament would hardly surrender practical advantages for benefits that may be imaginary, or relinquish a positive good in possession for a probable one in anticipation. The separation of the trade from the government might let in rivals who would disturb our empire; the substitution of Imperial rule for that of the Company might alarm the natives, who, though subject to the supreme sway of the Directors, still obeyed the nominal sovereignty of their own princes. "Would the attempt to unhinge their opinions be liberal, or would it be just? Lord Clive, to whom we owe our empire in India, with a discernment and a wisdom equal to his valour, laid the foundations for consolidating the British power in Asia by entwining his laurels round the opinions and prejudices of the subjugated natives." Whatever may be thought of the metaphors of unhinging opinions and entwining laurels round prejudices, there was much practical sense in this objection to change. He had consulted, he went on to say, Mr. Hastings, Mr. Barwell, Sir John Clavering, Mr. Francis, Col. Monson, Sir William Chambers, and Sir Elijah Impey on the subject of the executive, the judicial, and the legislative powers. Had he found that these able men agreed in opinion, it would have been an inducement to build a system upon them; but from their differences he drew the conclusion that it was safer to rest on the existing system. Proceeding to the Home Government, he frankly avowed that the Court of Directors had often listened to the recommendations of the Executive Government; but he thought that, if the Indian patronage were vested in the Crown, the weight of it would be too great in the balance of our Constitution. Thus cunningly did this sagacious Minister contrive to secure indirectly the patronage of India to him

self and his party, while he still frightened the nation with fear of the phantom which had made it rush for safety into the arms of Mr. Pitt. He pointed out the advantages of the Act of 1784: "The Company could no longer oppress the natives by an unjustifiable augmentation of revenue, because the affairs of India were under the immediate control of the Executive power. The Company could no longer augment their investments by despoiling the natives of the fruits of their industry, because the tenures on which the lands were held were rendered permanent, and the taxes on the produce of arts and manufactures were known and fixed. The Company could no longer make war to gratify the avarice and ambition of their servants, because their servants were now made responsible to their superiors, and these to the decisions of a British Parliament. The present system of governing India, both abroad and at home, has been found adequate to the objects both of war and peace."

The rest of this very able speech was devoted to the development and enforcement of these views. Instead of a member of Privy Council, holding some other lucrative office, he now proposed that there should be a permanent head of the Board of Control.

Mr. Francis, in the course of a long speech in opposition to the plan, said, "Look through the whole of the right honourable gentleman's system, and you will see that the pervading essence and principle of it is, in every instance, to divide the ostensible from the real power, and to make one of them a cloak and shelter for the other." These few words convey the whole substance and meaning of the scheme of power of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas.

On the third reading, and on the question that the bill. do pass, Mr. Fox opposed it on the ground stated by Mr.