CHAP.
XX.

Debates about the trade with India.

virtues and charms of Mary conquered the first place in her
husband's affection. But he still, in difficult conjunctures,
frequently applied to Elizabeth Villiers for advice and assist-
ance. She now implored Shrewsbury to reconsider his deter-
mination, and not to throw away the opportunity of uniting
the Whig party for ever. Wharton and Russell wrote to the
same effect. In reply came flimsy and unmeaning excuses:
"I am not qualified for a court life: I am unequal to a place
which requires much exertion: I do not quite agree with any
party in the State: in short, I am unfit for the world: I
want to travel: I want to see Spain."
"* These were mere
pretences. Had Shrewsbury spoken the whole truth, he
would have said that he had, in an evil hour, been false to
the cause of that Revolution in which he had borne so great
a part, that he had entered into engagements of which he
repented, but from which he knew not how to extricate him-
self, and that, while he remained under those engagements,
he was unwilling to enter into the service of the existing
government. Marlborough, Godolphin, and Russell, indeed,
had no scruple about corresponding with one King while
holding office under the other. But Shrewsbury had, what
was wanting to Marlborough, Godolphin, and Russell, a con-
science, a conscience which indeed too often failed to restrain
him from doing wrong, but which never failed to punish him.
In consequence of his refusal to accept the Seals, the
ministerial arrangements which the King had planned were
not carried into entire effect till the end of the session.
Meanwhile the proceedings of the two Houses had been
highly interesting and important.

Soon after the Parliament met, the attention of the Commons was again called to the state of the trade with India; and the charter which had just been granted to the Old Company was laid before them. They would probably have been disposed to sanction the new arrangement, which, in truth, differed little from that which they had themselves suggested not many months before, if the Directors had acted with prudence. But the Directors, from the day on which they had obtained their charter, had persecuted the interlopers without mercy, and had quite forgotten that it was one thing to persecute interlopers in the Eastern Seas, and another to persecute them in the port of London. Hitherto the war of the monopolists against the private trade had been

* See the letters written at this time and Shrewsbury, in the Shrewsbury Cor by Elizabeth Villiers, Wharton, Russell respondence.

carried on at the distance of fifteen thousand miles from England. If harsh things were done, the English public did not see them done, and did not hear of them till long after they had been done; nor was it by any means easy to ascertain at Westminster who had been right and who had been wrong in a dispute which had arisen three or four years before at Moorshedabad or Canton. With incredible rashness the Directors determined, at the very moment when the fate of their Company was in the balance, to give the people of this country a near view of the most odious features of the monopoly. Some wealthy merchants of London had equipped a fine ship named the Redbridge. Her crew was numerous, her cargo of immense value. Her papers had been made out for Alicant: but there was some reason to suspect that she was really bound for the countries lying beyond the Cape of Good Hope. She was stopped by the Admiralty, in obedience to an order which the Company obtained from the Privy Council, doubtless by the help of the Lord President. Every day that she lay in the Thames caused a heavy expense to the owners. The indignation in the City was great and general. The Company maintained that from the legality of the monopoly the legality of the detention necessarily followed. The public turned the argument round, and, being firmly convinced that the detention was illegal, drew the inference that the monopoly must be illegal too. The dispute was at the height when the Parliament met. Petitions on both sides were speedily laid on the table of the Commons; and it was resolved that these petitions should be taken into consideration by a Committee of the whole House. The first question on which the conflicting parties tried their strength was the choice of a chairThe enemies of the Old Company proposed Papillon, once the closest ally and subsequently the keenest opponent of Child, and carried their point by a hundred and thirty eight votes to a hundred and six. The Committee proceeded to enquire by what authority the Redbridge had been stopped. One of her owners, Gilbert Heathcote, a rich merchant and a stanch Whig, appeared at the bar as a witness. He was asked whether he would venture to deny that the ship had really been fitted out for the Indian trade. "It is no sin that I know of," he answered, "to trade with India; and I shall trade with India till I am restrained by Act of Parliament." Papillon reported that, in the opinion of the Committee, the detention of the Redbridge was illegal. The question was then put, that the House would agree with the

man.

CHAP.

XX.

CHAP.
XX.

Committee. The friends of the Old Company ventured on a second division, and were defeated by a hundred and seventyone votes to a hundred and twenty-five.*

The blow was quickly followed up. A few days later it was moved that all subjects of England had equal right to trade to the East Indies unless prohibited by Act of Parliament; and the supporters of the Old Company, sensible that they were in a minority, suffered the motion to pass without a division.t

This memorable vote settled the most important of those constitutional questions which had been left unsettled by the Bill of Rights. It has ever since been held to be the sound. doctrine that no power but that of the whole legislature can give to any person or to any society an exclusive privilege of trading to any part of the world.

The opinion of the great majority of the House of Commons was that the Indian trade could be advantageously carried on only by means of a joint stock and a monopoly. It might therefore have been expected that the resolution which destroyed the monopoly of the Old Company would have been immediately followed by a law granting a monopoly to the New Company. No such law, however, was passed. The Old Company, though not strong enough to defend its own privileges, was able, with the help of its Tory friends, to prevent the rival association from obtaining similar privileges. The consequence was that, during some years, there was nominally a free trade with India. In fact, the trade still lay under severe restrictions. The private adventurer found indeed no difficulty in sailing from England: but his situation was as perilous as ever when he had turned the Cape of Good Hope. Whatever respect might be paid to a vote of the House of Commons by public functionaries in London, such a vote was, at Bombay or Calcutta, much less regarded than a private letter from Child; and Child still continued to fight the battle with unbroken spirit. He sent out to the factories of the Company orders that no indulgence should be shown to the intruders. For the House of Commons and for its resolutions he expressed the bitterest contempt. "Be guided by my instructions," he wrote, "and not by the nonsense of a few ignorant country gentlemen who have hardly wit enough to manage their own private affairs, and who know nothing at all about questions of trade." It appears that his directions were obeyed. Everywhere in the East, during this period of +Ibid. Jan. 11. 1693

*Commons' Journals, Jan. 6. 8. 1693.

XX.

anarchy, the servant of the Company and the independent CHAP. merchant waged war on each other, accused each other of piracy, and tried by every artifice to exasperate the Mogul government against each other.*

The three great constitutional questions of the preceding year were, in this year, again brought under the consideration of Parliament. In the first week of the session, a Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of High Treason, a Triennial Bill, and a Place Bill were laid on the table of the House of Commons.

of Trials

None of these bills became a law. The first passed the Bill for the Commons, but was unfavourably received by the Peers. Regulation William took so much interest in the question that he came in cases of down to the House of Lords, not in his crown and robes, but Treason. in the ordinary dress of a gentleman, and sate through the whole debate on the second reading. Caermarthen spoke of the dangers to which the State was at that time exposed, and entreated his brethren not to give, at such a moment, impunity to traitors. He was powerfully supported by two eminent orators, who had, during some years, been on the uncourtly side of every question, but who, in this session, showed a disposition to strengthen the hands of the government, Halifax and Mulgrave. Marlborough, Rochester, and Nottingham spoke for the bill: but the general feeling was so clearly against them that they did not venture to divide. It is probable, however, that the reasons urged by Caermarthen were not the reasons which chiefly swayed his hearers. The Peers were fully determined that the bill should not pass without a clause altering the constitution of the Court of the Lord High Steward: they knew that the Lower House was as fully determined not to pass such a clause: and they thought it better that what must happen at last should happen speedily, and without a quarrel.+

The fate of the Triennial Bill confounded all the calcula- Triennial tions of the best informed politicians of that time, and may Bill. therefore well seem extraordinary to us. During the recess, that bill had been described in numerous pamphlets, written for the most part by persons zealous for the Revolution and for popular principles of government, as the one thing

* Hamilton's New Account.

The bill I found in the Archives of the Lords. Its history I learned from the Journals of the two Houses, from a passage in the Diary of Narcissus Lut

trell and from two letters to the States

Feb. 27.
March 9.

1694, the

General, both dated on
day after the debate in the Lords. One of
these letters is from Van Citters; the
other, which contains fuller information,
is from L'Hermitage.

76

XX.

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP. needful, as the universal cure for the distemper On the first, second, and third readings in the I mons, no division took place. The Whigs were The Tories seemed to be acquiescent. It was ur the King, though he had used his Veto for t giving the Houses an opportunity of reconsiderin had no intention of offering a pertinacious oppo wishes. But Seymour, with a cunning which lo had matured, after deferring the conflict to the snatched the victory from his adversaries, wh most secure. When the Speaker held up the bill and put the question whether it should pass, th hundred and forty-six, the Ayes only a hundre six.* Some eager Whigs flattered themselve defeat was the effect of a surprise, and might Within three days, therefore, Monmouth, the and restless man in the whole party, brought in House a bill substantially the same with that strangely miscarried in the Lower. The Peer bill very expeditiously, and sent it down to t But in the Commons it found no favour. Ma who professed to wish that the duration of parlia be limited, resented the interference of the here of the legislature in a matter which peculiarly elective branch. The subject, they said, is one cially belongs to us: we have considered it: we a decision; and it is scarcely parliamentary, i most indelicate, in their Lordships, to call upon that decision. The question now is, not whethe of parliaments ought to be limited, but whether submit our judgment to the authority of the undo, at their bidding, what we did only a fortnig animosity with which the patrician order was inflamed by the arts and the eloquence of Seym contained a definition of the words, "to hold a This definition was scrutinised with extreme jeal

* Commons' Journals, Nov. 28. 1693; Grey's Debates. L'Hermitage fully expected that the bill would pass, and that the royal assent would not be withheld. On November 17. he wrote to the States General, "Il paroist dans toute la chambre beaucoup de passion à faire passer ce bil." On . he says that the division on the passing" n'a pas causé une

Dec. 8.

point fixe sur les idées mer des émotions du paroist quelquefois de qui semblent devoir qui, peu de tems ap That Seymour was th the opposition to the the once celebrated phlet of that year.