SPEECH, &c. MR. SPEAKER, THANK you for pointing to me. I really wished much to engage your attention in an early stage of the debate. I have been long very deeply, though perhaps ineffectually, engaged in the preliminary enquiries, which have continued without intermiffion for fome years. Though I have felt, with fome degree of fenfibility, the natural and inevitable impreffions of the feveral matters of fact, as they have been fucceffively disclof ed, I have not at any time attempted to trouble you on the merits of the fubject; and very little on any of the points which incidentally arofe in the courfe of our proceedings. But I should be forry to be found totally filent upon this day. Our inquiries are now come to their final iffue:—It is now to be determined whether the three years of laborious parliamentary refearch, whether the twenty years of patient Indian fuffering, are to produce a fubftantial reform in our eastern administration; or whether our knowledge of the grievances has abated our zeal for the correction of them, and our very enquiry into the evil was only a pretext to elude the remedy which is demanded from us by humanity, by juftice, and by every principle of true policy. Depend upon it, this business cannot be indifferent to our fame. It will turn out a matter of great difgrace or great glory to the whole British nation. We are on a confpicuous ftage, and the world marks our de meanour. I am therefore a little concerned to perceive the fpirit and temper in which the debate has been all along purfued upon one fide of the house. The declamation of the gentlemen who oppose the bill has been abundant and vehement; but they have been referved and even filent about the fitnefs or unfitnefs of the plan to attain the direct object it has in view. By fome gentlemen it is taken up (by way of exercise I prefume) as a point of law on a question of private property, and corporate franchife; by others it is regarded as the petty intrigue of a faction at court, and argued merely as it tends to fet this man a little higher, or that a little lower in fituation and power, All the void has been filled up with invectives against coalition; with allufions to the lofs of America; with the activity and inactivity of minifters. The total filence of these gentlemen concerning the interest and well-being of the people of India, and concerning the interest which this nation has in the com merce merce and revenues of that country, is a ftrong indication of the value which they fet upon these objects. It has been a little painful to me to observe the intrufion into this important debate of fuch company as que warranto, and mandamus, and certiorari; as if we were on a trial about mayors and aldermen, and capital burgeffes; or engaged in a fuit concerning the borough of Penryn, or Saltash, or St. Ives, or St. Mawes. Gentlemen have argued with as much heat and paffion, as if the firft things in the world were at stake; and their topicks are such, as belong only to matter of the lowest and meaneft litigation. It is not right, it is not worthy of us, in this manner to depreciate the value, to degrade the majefty, of this grave deliberation of policy and empire. For my part, I have thought myself bound, when a matter of this extraordinary weight came before me, not to consider (as some gentlemen are fo fond of doing) whether the bill originated from a fecretary of state for the home department, or from a fecretary for the foreign, from a minister of influence or a minifter of the people; from Jacob or from Efau.* I asked myself, and I asked myfelf nothing elfe, what part it was fit for a member of parliament, who has fupplied a medio * An allusion made by Mr. Powis. B 3 crity crity of talents by the extreme of diligence, and who has thought himself obliged, by the research of years, to wind himfelf into the inmost receffes. and labyrinths of the Indian detail, what part, I fay, it became fuch a member of parliament to take, when a minister of state, in conformity to a recommendation from the throne, has brought before us a fyftem for the better government of the territory and commerce of the eaft. In this light, and in this only, I will trouble you with my fentiments. It is not only agreed but demanded, by the right honourable gentleman,* and by those who act with him, that a whole fyftem ought to be produced; that it ought not to be an half measure; that it ought to be no palliative; but a legislative provifion, vigorous, fubftantial, and effective.I believe that no man who understands the fubject can doubt for a moment, that those must be the conditions of any thing deferving the name of a reform in the Indian government; that any thing short of them would not only be delufive, but, in this matter which admits no medium, noxious in the extreme. To all the conditions proposed by his adverfaries the mover of the bill perfectly agrees; and on his performance of them he refts his caufe. On the * Mr. Pitt. other other hand, not the least objection has been taken, with regard to the efficiency, the vigour, or the completeness of the scheme. I am therefore warranted to affume, as a thing admitted, that the bills accomplish what both fides of the houfe demand as effential. The end is completely anfwered, fo far as the direct and immediate object is concerned. But though there are no direct, yet there are various collateral objections made; objections from the effects which this plan of reform for Indian administration may have on the privileges of great publick bodies in England; from its probable influence on the constitutional rights, or on the freedom and integrity of the feveral branches of the legiflature. Before I answer these objections, I must beg leave to obferve, that if we are not able to contrive fome method of governing India well, which will not of neceffity become the means of governing Great Britain ill, a ground is laid for their eternal feparation; but none for facrificing the people of that country to our conftitution. I am however far from being perfuaded that any fuch incompa tibility of intereft does at all exift. On the contrary I am certain that every means, effectual to preferve India from oppreffion, is a guard to preferve the British conftitution from its worst cor |