normities committed in India. In making such a declaration, the noble lord was not aware of the libel which be pronounced on an honourable friend of his, who was lately chief justice in India. Here Mr. Sheridan quoted a speech delivered at the time of Mr. Hastings's impeachment, by Mr. (now sir John) Anstruther, in which that gentleman dwelt on the enormities practised in India, and insisted on the necessity of investigation and punishment. But now the house was to understand, from the speech of the noble lord, that no governor in India, let his crimes be ever so great, was to have his conduct at all enquired into. He maintained, that the best way to hold out to the world that we practised no enormities, was to punish those who committed any. The noble marquis, whose conduct was now the subject of discussion, had lately made an observation, that the attack upon Copenhagen, and the seizure of the Danish fleet, was an event at which Englishmen ought to rejoice, because it would grieve Buonaparte. It was unwise in the noble marquis to make such a declaration; because he believed it to be entirely the reverse of what was the fact. He sincerely believed, that Buonaparte never felt more joy at any event than what this act of ours gave him. In that act he saw our character blended with his own. He found in it an indemnity for the past, and security for the future. The noble lord's code. of political morality was the worst he had ever heard broached in that house. His desultory term Will o' the Wisp speech had not put down a single argument advanced by his learned friend, to whom he felt grateful for the sentiments he delivered. He did not feel a wish to say any thing uncivil towards the noble lord, particularly so, after the very handsome manner in which the noble lord spoke of him the evening before last. But he should have supposed, had he not known his assiduity, the noble lord had never read the papers relative to this subject. He had said that Ally Hussein had forfeited his right to the throne, inasmuch as he inherited the treason of his father. He could never have been a party to a treason which had not been communicated to him, and with which the father had not been charged in his life time. He never knew a more monstrous attempt than this to impose on the credulity of the public. There was no analogy in this casc to that of the house of the Stuarts, in which a country chose its own magistrates, which every people had a right

7

to do; but here was an independant prince, who was anally; and what right had any man to say, that we should dismiss from the throne of his ancestors the lawful heir to that throne, against whom no charge whatever could be made? But what became of all this argument, when the; fact is, that Azeem ul Dowlah was put on the musnud over. the son of a person who was actually proved to be an chemy to the British interests? The noble lord shewed the grossest ignorance of the papers; for the very correspondence he referred to was carried on with the consent of the government of Madras (hear!). As to the cypher, he ap pealed to the honourable baronet who was chief justice in India, and would ask, if he would suffer a man to be convicted on such evidence (Sir John Anstruther signified that he would not), he was hapy to hear his honourable friend say he would not. Yet it was on such evidence, that an innocent young prince was deprived of his throne, and placed in a situation in which he lost his life. Mr. Sheridan then read some correspondence, in order to shew that the British government in India considered it as likely to be favourable to their interests, to have an intimate correspondence and connection carried on between the house of Arcot and the Mysore. It was attempted to jus tify this transaction, on the ground of state necessity. But this act of injustice and robbery could not be an ac re sulting from state necessity, because there existed no necessity for it, or at least none had been shewn, to ins Auence their decision. Here Mr. Sheridan read some papers, to shew the steady attachment of the nabob to the English; and he defied any governor to say, that there existed the slightest proof of the hostility of the father or the son, except what was extracted from the trash found at Seringa patam. The arguments that had been used to prove that the nabob was considered as a vassal to the India company, were as unjust as they were unfounded. The important documents on the table put that question out of all doubt, for it would appear by an address ac tually signed by his majesty, countersigned by lord Cornwallis, and addressed to the nabob, dated the 13th of May, 1790, that he was considered not only as an inde pendant sovereign, but actually called the "faithful ally and friend" of the British government in India. Here the right honourable gentleman read a long extract from VOL. III.-1898.

3 R

the address alluded to, from which it likewise appeared that the very first acre of ground the English became possessed of round Madras was acquired through the friendship of the nabob of Arcot; yet he argued, after such an unqualified declaration under his majesty's own hand, of the independancy of this prince, such degrading language was to be held out. Was it to be endured for one single moment, that the rights and laws of nations were to be thus trampled upon with impunity, merely upon the alleged policy of the measure? From a very patient perusal of the very important documents on the table, they established this proposition in his mind, that there was no ground whatever for any suspicion of the faithfulness of the nabob of Arcot and his son towards the British government. There was one part of this question which he could not but consider as a great dereliction of principle in the noble marquis. It was said that he took every possible care for the protection of Ally Hussein, the deposed nabob. Could it be thought for a momen', that the deposed nabob would be safe in the hands of a man who threatened him with instant death if he ever attempted to regain the throne of his father? From these circumstances he concluded, that the young nabob was not safe in those hands. He did not feel disposed even to enter into all the motives that might have actuated the noble marquis in his conduct, and he was less disposed to argue the accusation urged against him of his being actuated by pecuniary interests in his administration; but looking at his general conduct as a governor of India, he must say there was no parallel in the history of that country which presented so unbridled an instance of insatiable ambition. The sum total of what the country knew of his conduct as governor was, that he succeeded to the government after lord Cornwallis. He found India in a great and increasing state of prosperity. He found a system of equity and economy in the public expenditure, admirably calculated for the solidity of our establishment in that country. But when he left it, he left behind him an example of the most pernicious prodigality and profaseness; when he landed, he found a disposition in the company's servants to revere the laws, and to abide the decrees of his majesty; but when he Teft it, the utmost contempt prevailed of the laws and regulations of the company. When he went there, the

native powers of India placed the utmost confidence in the faith of the British government; but he left them en tertaining in their minds the most irreconcilable sentiments of disgust and enmity, on account of its treachery and oppression. In short, the result of the noble lord's ad ministration was this, that when he went to India, he found Great Britain without a foe, and when he depart ed, he left Great Britain without a friend. Upon these grounds he felt he was called upon to say thus much, not from any personal enmity to the noble marquis, but from a principal of preserving his own consistency. He took this opportunity of defending himself from the insinua tion thrown out by the noble lord (Castlereagh) in the commencement of his speech, that he had departed from principle in seeming to neglect the cause he had so strenu ously undertaken to advoca e on former occasions, by stating that his sentiments upon this subject had never been in the least altered from the first intimation he received of the oppression and tyrannous dethronement of the young nabob, and the subsequent information that arrived in this country of his murder. On that occasion his mind was so horrified by the atrocity of the act, that he resolved himself immediately to institute an enquity into the causes of so gross a violation of the laws of civilization and humanity. Circumstances, however, had prevented him from carrying the desired object completely into effect personally. He saw no prospect then of pursuing the investigation in that administration, and from these considerations he did not press it. He had, however, moved from time to time for a great number of documents, which must remove at once every suspicion of his having cooled in the cause. He concluded by declaring his fixed determination at all times never to shrink from the task he had imposed upon himself, of represent ing the noble marquis's conduct in the plain and unvar nished manner in which he fully persuaded himself the various documents on the table exhibited the circumstances of his administration to the country.

Mr. Fuller contended, that this was a most extraor dinary discussion, and made on the opposite side a question of party rather than of principle.

Dr. Lawrence supported the resolution. The propo sition of the noble lord, that this was held to be grave question by the house, might well be doubted, if they were

to judge from the manner in which they decided upon the evidence adduced in support of the charges against the noble marquis. Upon what principle it was that the house was to act in i.s decision upon this subject, he was at some Iss how to conjecture Although it might be argued in favour of the noble marquis, that he was not actuated by motives of pecuniary aggrandizement, yet there were a thousand other bad passions which might actuate a minister, equally as mischievous and destructive to the interests of a nation, as those connected with the most sordid Inotives. Inordinate ambition must on all hands be admitted, in a moral point of view to be the most pernicious of all the passions that actuated the human mind. That such was the motive of the noble marquis in his administration, must depend upon what degree of credit the house would attach to the evidence of the papers on the table. In his opinion, formed upon the consideration he had given to those documents, the accusations were unanswerable., Here the learned gentleman combated the arguments used to justify the policy adopted by this country towards the native powers of India. Nothing was more unjust and unprincipled, nothing was more opposite, not only to the laws of nations but those of nature, than the system of oppression practised upon the unfortunate nabob of Arcot; whose rights and privileges were violated upon the most unwarranted and unjust pretence of having broken a treaty, when, in fact, the most barefaced act of tyrannical policy obtruded itself throughout the whole transaction. He related the history of the first transactions of the British government with the nabob of Arcot, until the period of his contracting his debt with them, and detailed the various pretences urged by them for increasing that debt, which he considered as the overreaching principle which universally characterized the conduct of the India company's servants, and brought the narrative down to the period of their interposition in the affairs of the Carnatic, under the pretence of the discovery of the secret correspondence with the neighbouring potentates, for the purpose of forming a confederacy against the British interest. In considering the evidence in support of the allegation, that a violation of treaty was the ground of their interference, he contended that there was a previous determination of the government of India to adopt that measure long before any knowledge of such pretended