I therefore freely admit to the East-India their claim to exclude their
fellow-subjects from the commerce of half the globe. I admit their claim
to administer an annual territorial revenue of seven millions sterling;
to command an army of sixty thousand men; and to dispose (under the
control of a sovereign, imperial discretion, and with the due observance
of the natural and local law) of the lives and fortunes of thirty
millions of their fellow-creatures. All this they possess by charter,
and by acts of parliament (in my opinion), without a shadow of
controversy.
Those who carry the rights and claims of the company the furthest do not
contend for more than this; and all this I freely grant. But granting
all this, they must grant to me, in my turn, that all political power
which is set over men, and that all privilege claimed or exercised in
exclusion of them, being wholly artificial, and for so much a derogation
from the natural quality of mankind at large, ought to be some way or
other exercised ultimately for their benefit.
If this is true with regard to every species of political dominion,
and every description of commercial privilege, none of which can be
original, self-derived rights, or grants for the mere private benefit
of the holders, then such rights, or privileges, or whatever else you
choose to call them, are all in the strictest sense a TRUST; and it is
of the very essence of every trust to be rendered ACCOUNTABLE; and even
totally to CEASE, when it substantially varies from the purposes for
which alone it could have a lawful existence.
This I conceive, Sir, to be true of trusts of power vested in the
highest hands, and of such as seem to hold of no human creature. But
about the application of this principle to subordinate, DERIVATIVE
trusts, I do not see how a controversy can be maintained. To whom then
would I make the East-India Company accountable? Why, to parliament,
to be sure; to parliament, from which their trust was derived; to
parliament, which alone is capable of comprehending the magnitude of
its object, and its abuse; and alone capable of an effectual legislative
remedy. The very charter, which is held out to exclude parliament from
correcting malversation with regard to the high trust vested in the
company, is the very thing which at once gives a title and imposes on
us a duty to interfere with effect, wherever power and authority
originating from ourselves are perverted from their purposes, and become
instruments of wrong and violence. If parliament, Sir, had nothing to do
with this charter, we might have some sort of Epicurean excuse to stand
aloof, indifferent spectators of what passes in the company's name in
India and in London. But if we are the very cause of the evil, we are
in a special manner engaged to the redress; and for us passively to bear
with oppressions committed under the sanction of our own authority, is
in truth and reason for this house to be an active accomplice in the
abuse.
That the power, notoriously, grossly abused, has been bought from us is
very certain. But this circumstance, which is urged against the bill,
becomes an additional motive for our interference; lest we should
be thought to have sold the blood of millions of men, for the base
consideration of money. We sold, I admit, all that we had to sell; that
is, our authority, not our control. We had not a right to make a market
of our duties.
I ground myself therefore on this principle--that if the abuse is
proved, the contract is broken, and we re-enter into all our rights;
that is, into the exercise of all our duties. Our own authority is
indeed as much a trust originally, as the company's authority is a trust
derivatively; and it is the use we make of the resumed power that must
justify or condemn us in the resumption of it. When we have perfected
the plan laid before us by the right honourable mover, the world will
then see what it is we destroy, and what it is we create. By that test
we stand or fall; and by that test I trust that it will be found in
the issue, that we are going to supersede a charter abused to the full
extent of all the powers which it could abuse, and exercised in the
plenitude of despotism, tyranny, and corruption; and that in one and the
same plan, we provide a real chartered security for the RIGHTS OF MEN,
cruelly violated under that charter.
This bill, and those connected with it, are intended to form the magna
charta of Hindostan. Whatever the treaty of Westphalia is to the liberty
of the princes and free cities of the empire, and to the three religions
there professed; whatever the great charter, the statute of tallege, the
petition of right, and the declaration of right, are to Great Britain,
these bills are to the people of India. Of this benefit, I am certain,
their condition is capable; and when I know that they are capable of
more, my vote shall most assuredly be for our giving to the full extent
of their capacity of receiving; and no charter of dominion shall stand
as a bar in my way to their charter of safety and protection.
The strong admission I have made of the company's rights (I am conscious
of it) binds me to do a great deal. I do not presume to condemn those
who argue a priori, against the propriety of leaving such extensive
political powers in the hands of a company of merchants. I know much
is, and much more may be, said against such a system. But, with my
particular ideas and sentiments, I cannot go that way to work. I feel
an insuperable reluctance in giving my hand to destroy any established
institution of government, upon a theory, however plausible it may be.
My experience in life teaches me nothing clear upon the subject. I
have known merchants with the sentiments and the abilities of great
statesmen; and I have seen persons in the rank of statesmen, with
the conceptions and characters of pedlars. Indeed, my observation has
furnished me with nothing that is to be found in any habits of life or
education, which tends wholly to disqualify men for the functions of
government, but that by which the power of exercising those functions
is very frequently obtained, I mean a spirit and habits of low cabal
and intrigue; which I have never, in one instance, seen united with
a capacity for sound and manly policy. To justify us in taking the
administration of their affairs out of the hands of the East-India
Company, on my principles, I must see several conditions. 1st. The
object affected by the abuse should be great and important. 2nd. The
abuse affecting this great object ought to be a great abuse. 3rd. It
ought to be habitual, and not accidental. 4th. It ought to be utterly
incurable in the body as it now stands constituted. All this ought to
be made as visible to me as the light of the sun, before I should strike
off an atom of their charter.