THE affairs of the East India Company occupied but little of the attention of Parliament during this session. Mr R. Dundas, while president of the Board of ConFeb. 23. troul, moved for a renewal of the East India committee, and for the reappointment of the persons who had formerly composed it, excepting Mr T. Grenville and Mr Hobhouse, who requested to be excused on the score of inconvenience, and in whose place he proposed Lord Temple and Mr Heley Addington. Mr Creevey objected to this.. "The Board of Controul," he said, "had been formed on the report of the committee appointed by Lord Melville, and parliament would doubtless recollect how his lordship had come down session after session with congratulations to himself and to the country upon the prosperous state of our empire in the east, owing to his new system. Lord Castlereagh, who had been educated in his school, fol

lowed his steps exactly, and repeated his congratulations. In 1806, when Lord Morpeth had a seat at the board, a very different statement was produced. In the ensuing year the company petitioned that they might be allowed to borrow money upon their bonds; it was resisted, unless the company would consent to make a full disclosure of their affairs; this they promised in the following session, and accordingly the committee in question was appointed. House was aware of the extent and importance of the matter to be investigated. The whole causes of the disappointments experienced for such a long series of years, even the utility of the system of controul, might be called in question, as well as the conduct of all those connected with it. Possibly the conduct of the directors themselves ought to be arraigned; and yet the committee selected to inquire into these transactions were the very persons whose conduct might be called

in question, as connected with these transactions; and they were thus to sit in judgement upon themselves and their system. Never was such a mockery of inquiry! The person who proposed the committee and those of whom it was to be composed, was himself at the head of the Board of Controul, and nearly connected with its founder; and therefore it was to be presumed, that none of the committee could be so uncivil as to open their lips against that system, or deny its utility. And though Marquis Wellesley could not be on that committee, yet care was taken to place his connections there; Sir John Anstruther, who was his friend, and had been intimately connected with his system in his capacity of Chief Judge of Bengal, was to be the chairman! But then it might be said, that two of the directors were there. These directors were, however, suing the committee for money, something in the manner of paupers, and they were, out of doors, suing the right honourable gentleman (Mr Dundas) for a renewal of their charter. It was not probable, under these circumstances, that they would be very obstinate in their objections to whatever policy he should approve. But it might be said again, how could we get information on these subjects, unless the committee were composed of such as were most conversant with these matters? The best way to come at information, was by the examination of records and of witnesses. Those persons most capable of giving information might be examined by impartial, though unlearned persons, and much more good would result.” Upon this Sir A. Wellesley remarked, "that it would be rather an odd way of selecting a committee to chuse persons who were ignorant of

the business that was to come before them, to the exclusion of those who were informed upon the subject. He himself had been alluded to with sufficient personality; but he might appeal to the honourable gentleman himself as to the line of conduct he had pursued during the proceedings of the last committee. Of this he might be sure, that whenever the conduct of his noble brother came before the committee, the fullest and the most rigid inquiry into that conduct should at all times have his cordial support. He was fully prepared to prove, that the extension of our dominions in India had not been owing to any aggression on our part: how far it was to be followed up, was a question of a very different nature."

Mr W. Smith observed, "that the House ought rather to look for impartiality with the means of obtaining information, than for partiality however fully informed. If the persons appointed to try, in the present instance, were not only acquainted with the circumstances of the question, but were parties in it, it was in vain to say that they could be competent judges." Mr Whitbread pursued this reasoning farther. He protested against the principle of confidence in public men, and maintained that the constitutional principle was distrust,-distrust in all public men, be they who they may. "Sir Arthur," he said, " had told the House what he could prove; let him then go before the committee as a witness, not as a judge, in matters which he has prejudged already. But he was not the only objectionable person. Was the situation of war secretary such a sinecure, as that the noble lord who held it could be spared from that department to attend to the business of this committee? Could the chancellor

of the exchequer quit his official situation, as Sir Arthur had quitted the chief secretaryship for Ireland, to discharge the very important duties of a member of this committee? As for the directors and the members of the Board of Controul, they ought rather to be examined against each other as witnesses, than be suffered to preside as judges." Mr Peter Moore argued to the same end, upon a different view of the subject. The committee," he said," was a farce and mockery; for it would consist of two parties, who ought to be in permanent hostility with each other. The whole system of India had been wrong ever since the minister of the crown had interfered to set it right. The India Company were sufficient to do every thing that could be wished, but the Board of Controul would not permit it. While the whole play of dethroning princes and rajahs was carrying on, the main actors in that drama sent not a word of information to their masters the directors, but they continued in full correspondence with the Board of Controul, and now they were going to club their efforts for the purpose of blinding the public." Notwithstanding these objections the committee were reappointed; and a motion of Mr Creevey, that the exposition which had been laid before the last committee should be printed, was negatived without a division, Mr Dundas observing that when a committee was appointed, it was unusual to anticipate its report, by calling for any particular document before the time when the others were to be produced. He doubted not but that the committee would produce that and every other paper relating to the affairs of the company in due time.

Late in the session, Mr Prendergast moved for certain papers which

would prove, he said, that private merchants were very hardly treated by the directors, and that the directors had not fulfilled certain engagements which they had contracted for giving facility to the private trade. The complaint was shewn to be unfounded. The company having resisted the project of carrying home produce in India-built ships, engaged, in 1802, to furnish the private merchants with English-built ships, sub. ject to its regulations, at the low rate of 141. per ton. When the war commenced, orders were sent out to raise it to 201.; but upon a representation that it had been already signified to the private merchants that the rate would be only 14. for the year 1804, the directors acceded to it. As the war continued, the expence rose, but the rate was still within what the company paid; and, in fact, while the private merchants thought them. selves ill-used that the company did not supply them with vessels at the rate of 141. per ton, they were, as ship-owners, themselves letting ships to the company at from 191. to 211. Another complaint was, that in the years 1805 and 1806 no extra ships arrived in India, the vessels having been detained for political purposes. This of course was a circumstance which the company could not controul; but all that could be done in such a case was done, the private mer. chants were furnished with tonnage in the company's ships at the rate paid by the company. "With regard to the India trade," said Mr Howorth, " undoubtedly the restrictions and interruptions which have been imposed on the free merchants, and the extravagant price of freight demanded of them, have produced the effect of diverting the legitimate trade of India into clandestine courses, by

forcing a great part of British capital to pass under foreign flags. But it is rather unfair to charge the directors with making this exorbitant demand for freight, for whatever blame may attach to the expensive system under which they act, it surely could not be reasonably expected that they should give facilities to the free merchants, and promote their objects, by charging a lower rate of freight than the company were paying, at a certain loss to themselves. Whenever a corrective shall be applied to the abuses of the Indian trade, it will probably be found to consist in enabling the British merchants to bring their own ships, subject however to the supervision and controul of the East India Company, to be freighted and refreighted, to be imported and exported through their offices, the goods and merchandize to be deposited in their warehouses, in short, in a system, which will enable the British merchant and natives under British protection, to trade upon equal terms with the merchants of every other country: Do this, and you will bring the whole trade of India into the Thames, and for this plain reason-if the terms were equal, the security would be infinitely greater.'

Mr Howorth then adverted to a far more momentous subject. "Various letters," said he, "which I have = received from India, concur in stating the discontents of the Company's officers, and the disaffection of the native troops. This is principally attributed to a system of foisting king's officers into the native corps, persons unacquainted with their language, and unused to their customs. At Bombay it was intended to mount additional cavalry, and it was ordered to be officered by king's officers from Madras. This excited such re.

sentment on the part of the Company's officers, and such discontent among the native troops, to whom their officers were endeared by long services, and with whom, for their gallant conduct at Bhurtpoor, they had received the thanks of Lord Lake, that Mr Duncan, the governor of Bombay, prudently withheld the publication of the order, and remonstrated with the government of Bengal on the subject. It has also been stated to me, that an order has been issued for drafting off annually from every grenadier battalion 12 picked men, in order to form a crack corps. I had hoped that the mutiny at Vellore, at the same time that it afforded an awful, would also have afforded an instructive lesson, of the absurdity of enforcing British regulations upon Indian armies. On

that occasion the lives of near a thousand men, of whom upwards of two hundred were British soldiers, were sacrificed to a turban and a whisker; if that pernicious folly had not been stopped, your whole native army would have been lost by it. If such a lesson and such an example be disregarded, are you equally indifferent about the consequence? I am sorry to observe, that in this house very few know what is doing in India, and I fear very few care."

Mr Dundas replied, that as to the practices respecting the troops, he had good reason to believe that Mr Howorth was mistaken. Of the discontents he said nothing; and the papers which were moved for were granted without opposition.

A subject of more general interest arose, when the committee which had branched off from the inquiry into the Duke of York's conduct made their report upon the existence of corrupt practices in the appointment

of writers or cadets. They reported, that patronage of various descriptions had become an article of traffic; that an opinion of the generality of such practices was prevalent to a still greater extent; and that fraudulent agents had availed themselves of this belief, to the injury of the credulous and unwary, and to the discredit of those in whose hands the disposal of offices islodged. As to the means of prevent ing such practices, it never could be adviseable, they said, without absolute necessity, to add new offences to the long catalogue already enumerated in the penal statutes, nor was it wise to diminish the sanctity of oaths, by resorting to them upon all occasions. When solemn declarations have been habitually disregarded, little reliance could be placed upon the sanction of any other species of asseveration, and we know but too well that an oath might come to be considered merely as part of the official form by which an appointment is conferred. Little fear of detection, they added, was enter tained, where transactions were in their nature private and confidential; for our notions of honour, by a singular perverseness, attached a stronger degree of obligation to the performance of such engagements, upon the very ground of their illegality. The obvious mode of preventing the traffic in patronage was to take away all inducement to it, and this could only be attained by making the hazard greater than the temptation. Upon this principle the rules of the company were founded In 1779 they had passed a resolution enabling the Court of Directors to dismiss any person whose appointment had been procured by undue means. This resolution had never been enforced by example, because no case of corruption had been discovered till the pre

sent inquiry. The immediate consequence of what had now been brought to light must be, that a certain number of persons in the service of the company would be instantly deprived of their employments, recalled from India, and declared incapable of again receiving any appointment under the company. The money paid for procuring their situations would be absolutely lost, without any possibility of recovery; and those who had either imprudently or corruptly been concerned in obtaining what they conceived to be benefits for their relatives or friends, would find that they had done the greatest injury to those whom they desired to serve. Hard as some of these cases must be, and innocent and ignorant as many of the young men nominated under these circumstances probably were of the undue means by which their appointments were acquired, the committee were of opinion, that nothing but a strict adherence to the rule laid down by the Court of Directors could put a stop to the continuance of such abuses.

In pursuance of this opinion the directors issued an order for the peremptory recal of all those persons whose appointments appeared by the evidence before the committee to have been procured by illegal means. The exceeding cruelty of this measure excited considerable opposition at the India House. The young men, it was represented, who were thus to be ruined, were innocent probably, and even ignorant, of the transaction for which they were to suffer; no criminality could attach to them, even if the act of purchase were criminal; nor was it to be supposed that the friends who had negociated for them could be aware that there was any thing illegal in purchasing what they