Mr. Pitt took a vigorous and decided part in opposing this bill. From him indeed and Dundas did it meet with almost the sole opposition it experienced in its passage through the House of Commons. Pitt attacked it in the first place as an infringement, or rather annihilation of the Company's charter; insisting that the charter was as clear and strong, and the right founded on it as well ascertained, as that of any chartered body in the kingdom; that the violation of the India Company's rights, glaringly unjust in itself, militated against the security of all chartered rights. He argued, that besides its injustice rospecting the Company, it would be dangerous to the constitution, by establishing an influence independent of the Legislature; an influence that, from its nature, would be under the controul of its creator, Mr. Fox. He did not hesitate to impute so unjust and so unconstitutional a plan to an ambitious desire of being perpetual dictator. Dundas coinciding with Pitt's idea, that the system was unjust and unconstitutional, and concurring

in his assignation of motives, entered into a detailed discussion of Fox's statement of the finances of the Company; insisting that their affairs were by no means in that desperate state which Fox alledged. The Proprietors and Directors of the East India Company petitioned the house not to pass a bill, operating as the confiscation of their property and annihilation of their charters, without proving specific delinquency that might merit the forfeiture of their privileges and property; asserting, that proved delinquency alone could justify such a bill, and desiring the charges and proofs might be brought forward. The people, in general, were strongly impressed by the arguments of the opposers of the bill, and the representation of those whose rights and property it appeared to affect. Burke made, at the second reading, a speech equal for eloquence to any he had ever produced; whether, however, in the accuracy of his information, in the justness of his conclusions, in the truth of what he advanced, and the wisdom of what he proposed, he

equalled his own efforts on other occasions, was not then so evident.

Burke admitted, to the fullest extent, that the charter of the East India Company had been sanctioned by the King and Parliament; that the Company had bought it, and honestly paid for it; and that they had every right to it, which such a sanction and such. a purchase could convey. Having granted this to the opponents of the bill, he maintained, that, notwithstanding that sanction and purchase, the proposed change ought to take place. He proceeded on the great and broad grounds of ethics, arguing that no special covenant, however sanctioned, can authorize a violation of the laws of morality; that if a covenant operates to the misery of mankind, to oppression and injustice, the gencral obligation to prevent wickedness is antecedent and superior to any special obligation to perform a covenant; that Parliament had sold all they had a right to sell; they had sold an exclusive privilege to trade, but not a privilege to rob and oppress; and.

that if what they sold for the purposes of commerce was made the instrument of oppression and pillage, it was their duty, as the guardians of the conduct and happiness, of all within the sphere of their influence and controul, to prevent so pernicious an operation. After laying down this as a fundamental principle, he proceeded to argue that there had been, and were, the most flagrant acts of oppression in India by the servants of the Company; that the whole system was oppressive from the beginning of the acquisition of territorial possession. He entered into a detail of the principal instances of pillage, rapine, violence, and despotism, attributed to the English, and dwelt with great energy and pathos on those acts of which he alledged Mr. Hastings to be guilty.

On this subject he brought forward the principal heads of what afterwards occupied so much of his attention in the prosecution of the Governor-General. His imagination, warming as he went along, figured to him,

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that the only monuments by which the ceedings of the British were distinguished, were waste and desolation. Other conquerors, he said, of every description, had left some monument either of state or beneficence behind them. If their passion or their avarice drove the Tartar hordes to acts of rapacity or tyranny, there had been time enough in the short life of man to repair the desolations of war by the acts of munificence and peace. But under the English government all this order was reversed. Our conquest there, after twenty years, was as crude as it had been the first day. The natives scarce knew what it was to see the grey head of an Englishman. Young men (almost boys) governed there, without society and without sympathy with the natives. They had no more social habits with the people than if they still resided in England; nor indeed any species of intercourse, but that which was necessary to the making a sudden fortune with a view to a remote settlement. Animated with all the avarice of age, and all the impetuosity of youth, they rolled in one