Francis. But the bill was carried, and so long as Mr. Dundas presided over the Board of Control a very effective government was established. Mr. Dundas, by his influence with the Directors, filled up vacancies in the Board from the list of his political friends in Scotland; his political friends become Directors, filled up appointments in India from their own relations and adherents in Scotland. Thus a very able and very harmonious Government was provided; Mr. Dundas could always influence the Directors; the Directors found their authority supported and maintained by Mr. Dundas. The cloak of an independent authority was still worn, but beneath that cloak was the dictatorial power, of which the reality belonged to Mr. Pitt, and of which the odium still clung to Mr. Fox.

In one very important point, however, the system of Mr. Dundas seems to me to have been preferable to that of Mr. Fox. It had been always contended by Mr. Fox that the seat of power must be at home; Mr. Dundas, on the other hand, as early as 1782, had maintained that the appointment of a Governor-General, at once able and honest, was the most efficient mode of correcting the disposition to unjust conquest and corrupt administration in India. When we consider the influence which a local authority must possess at a distance of five months' voyage from the seat of empire; when a decision made at Calcutta in January could hardly be reversed before the following December, if at all, we shall see reason to think that Mr. Dundas was right in his opinion. Nor did experience contradict his theory. In 1785 the office of Governor-General was offered to Lord Cornwallis, a man whose integrity was generally respected, whose military knowledge was considerable, and whose administrative

talents were of a very high order. Lord Cornwallis at first refused the office; but early in 1786 he accepted it, and, proceeding to India, remained there till 1793.

Lord Cornwallis acted upon the pacific policy recommended in the Act of 1784; but in 1790 he found it impossible to avoid a war with Tippoo, whose ambition led him to imagine that he could drive the English out of India. General Meadows, who was placed at the head of the army, attempted to signalize himself by a victory; but failing in his management of the war, he was replaced in the following year by Lord Cornwallis himself, who marched to Seringapatam, and signed a treaty under its walls. By this treaty Tippoo agreed to surrender half his dominions, to pay 3,600,000l., to release all his prisoners, and deliver two of his sons as hostages for the due performance of the conditions.

In his internal government Lord Cornwallis detected and punished the peculation and corruption of the Company's servants, especially in the matter of contracts. He set the example of a plain and frugal manner of living. "I am doing everything I can," he says, "to reform the Company's servants, to teach them to be more economical in their mode of living, and to look forward to a moderate competency; and I flatter myself I have not hitherto laboured in vain."*

This is not the place to speak of the Zemindarry settlement, a vast and intricate subject, upon which Lord Cornwallis legislated in a manner which has by turns been lauded as the wisest, and blamed as the most improvident of all modes of dealing with great interests.

Upon the whole, however, there is some reason for the boast

*"Life and Correspondence of Lord Cornwallis," vol. i.

of Mr. Dundas, so far as the Indian administration was concerned. "We never before," he writes to Lord Cornwallis in 1787, "had a Government of India, both at home and abroad, acting in perfect unison together on principles of perfect purity and integrity; the ingredients cannot fail to produce their consequent effects."*

* "Life and Correspondence of Lord Cornwallis,” vol. i. p. 280. I should be glad to make many more extracts from this valuable work. Two passages from a letter of Lord Cornwallis I will, however, add :—

"The splendid and corrupting objects of Lucknow and Benares are removed; and now I must look back to the conduct of former Directors, who knew that those shocking evils existed, but, instead of attempting to suppress them, were quarrelling whether their friends or those of Mr. Hastings should enjoy the plunder."

"I sincerely believe that, excepting Mr. Charles Grant, there is not one person in the list who would escape prosecution."-Vol. i. p. 306. Such were the evils which Mr. Fox was imprudent enough to endeavour to correct.

IN 1785 Mr. Pitt brought forward a specific plan of Parliamentary Reform. In the King's speech were these words, which were supposed to allude to that subject: "You may at all times depend on my hearty concurrence in every measure which can tend to alleviate our national burthens, to secure the true principles of the Constitution, and to promote the general welfare of my people."* But when called upon to explain the words in question, Mr. Pitt declared they were intended to guard against the introduction of such a measure as Mr. Fox's India Bill. He stated, however, that the Government business of the session would consist of three great measures: 1st. The Irish Commercial Propositions. 2nd. Parliamentary Reform. 3rd. Measures of Finance.

On the 18th of April Mr. Pitt proceeded to explain his plan. It was afterwards more fully developed in a memorandum circulated by Mr. Wyvill and the reformers of Yorkshire. It may be thus described :

:

1. That a million sterling should be placed in a fund for the purpose of purchasing seventy-six of the smallest boroughs. Should that number of boroughs not accept the sum assigned as their price, the fund to accumulate at com

* "Parliamentary History." Journals of the House of Commons.

pound interest till the temptation should be sufficient to ensure sellers.

2. Other sums to be applied to induce ten corporations to surrender their exclusive privileges, and four other boroughs to be induced to give up their privilege of returning members.

3. The seats thus obtained, amounting to one hundred, to be thus distributed. The first seventy-two to be given to counties and to the metropolis. The other eight, derived from small boroughs, to be transferred to Manchester, Birmingham, and other manufacturing towns. The twenty seats in the hands of corporations to be thrown open to the towns to which such corporations belonged.

4. The right of voting in counties to be extended to copyholders. The right of voting in the ten corporate towns, and the new manufacturing boroughs, to be vested in householders.

Such was the plan of Mr. Pitt, framed and matured in concert with the Yorkshire Reformers. It was not a very perfect plan; but was suited to a period when there was little excitement on the subject, when the nation was content with the county representation, and the manufacturing towns were yet insignificant in wealth and population in comparison to their present importance.

Mr. Pitt, in bringing forward his plan, thus defined a representative body: "An assembly freely elected, between whom and the mass of the people there was the closest union and most perfect sympathy." He concluded by asking "leave to bring in a bill to amend the representation of the people of England in Parliament.”

Mr. Fox, in supporting the motion, said he should have preferred a general resolution to a specific plan.