DEBATES ON EAST INDIA MEASURES.
During the recess, the East India directors reduced their dividend to six per cent. This palliative, however, was of no avail, and they were obliged to pass a vote for applying to government for the loan of one million and a half to relieve them from their pecuniary difficulties. A petition to this effect was presented to parliament, and Lord North, after exculpating government from various insinuations regarding the annual payment of the company, moved a series of resolutions, tending to establish the grant of a loan as a matter of necessary policy, but not as a claim of right or justice. He proposed that £1,400,000 should be advanced, and that their dividends should be restricted to six per cent, till the whole was repaid, and afterwards to seven per cent, until their bond debt was reduced to £1,500,000. This passed without a division. At the same time, Lord North suggested some regulations as proper to prevent the recurrence of similar embarrassments, and to reform all abuses in the government of India. On a future day he moved that the company should be permitted to export tea to America free of all duty, which was accepted by the company as a great boon: they having at that time seventeen millions of pounds of tea in their warehouses in England. Finally, he proposed his grand plan for the regulation of their affairs, as well in India as in Europe. This plan provided that six directors should be elected annually, none holding their seats more than four years; that the stock for the qualification of an elector should be raised from five hundred to one thousand pounds, and possessed twelve months previous to an election; and that in lieu of the mayor’s court at Calcutta, a new tribunal should be established, consisting of a chief justice and three puisne judges appointed by the crown, a superiority being also given to Bengal over all the other presidencies. These latter resolutions occasioned warm debates, and met with vehement opposition, but they were all eventually carried, and a bill framed on them passed through both houses with overwhelming majorities. From this time the affairs of India are generally regarded as being lodged securely in the hands of government.