PITT’S INDIA BILL.
In the midst of this popularity, Pitt brought forward his celebrated India Bill. This may be considered under three separate heads. 1. A new establishment at home, with powers extending over the affairs of the East India Company. 2. Regulations to be applied to India. 3. The erection of a court in England for the trial of offences committed in India.
The first of these heads consisted of a board of control, which was to be composed of six commissioners, holding the rank of privy-counsellors, and comprising the chancellor of the exchequer and one secretary of state; and four others holding offices of such emolument as precluded the necessity of a salary. The members of this board were to be appointed by the king, and removable at his pleasure; and they were authorised to check, superintend, and control the civil and military government, as well as the revenues of the company. It was their duty also to inspect and countersign all the despatches transmitted by the court of directors to the different presidencies. The directors were enjoined to pay all due obedience to the orders of this board, touching the civil and military government and revenues; but in case such orders should at any time in the opinion of the directors, relate to matters not connected with these points, they were left at liberty to appeal to his majesty in council, whose decision was to be final. In all cases of secrecy, and particularly such as related to peace or war with the native powers of India, the commissioners were to have the power of sending their orders to the local government of India, through a secret committee of the court of directors, which committee could in this case only be considered as the vehicle of instruction to the local authorities of India.
The regulations applicable to India related to the government. Pitt proposed that the government in each of the three stations should consist of a president and counsellors; that the president of Bengal should be governor-general; that the commander-in-chief should be one of the council, and next to the governor-general; and that the commander-in-chief at Madras and Bombay should take similar rank at each of those stations. The government of Bengal was to have control over the other presidencies, and the appointment of governors, commanders-in-chief, and other members of the council, was to be vested in the directors; they, together with the king, having the power of recalling the governor-general, as well as every other person employed by the company. All promotions, whether civil or military, were to be made according to seniority, and in progressive succession, unless for some urgent case to be transmitted to the directors; and each government was empowered to apprehend all persons guilty of carrying on an illicit correspondence, and either bring them to trial in India or send them to England. In order to prevent ambitious projects, the supreme government was not permitted to enter into an offensive treaty, or to make war, without the command of the directors, against any power which had not commenced, or given full proof of its intention to commence hostilities. Provisions were also inserted in this bill relative to the settlement of disputes with the Nabob of Arcot, and the redress of complaints of injustice and oppression, exercised against the Zemindars, or great hereditary landholders of India, who had either been dispossessed of their lands, or subjected to exorbitant demands, by the officers of the East India Company. This part of Pitt’s bill also regulated the ages at which writers and cadets should be appointed, as well as the number proper to be sent out; prohibited the acceptance of presents; and required that all servants of the company should, after the 1st of January, 1787, deliver an oath within two months after their arrival in England, respecting what part of their property was, and what was not, acquired in India.
In the third part of Pitt’s bill, he proposed that a high tribunal should be created for the trial of Indian delinquents, which tribunal was to consist of three judges, one from each court; of four peers, and six members of the House of Commons, who were authorised to act without appeal; to award, in case of conviction, fine or imprisonment; and to declare the party convicted incapable of again serving the company. No person, holding any office under the crown during pleasure, or who had ever been in the Indian service could become a member of this court.
Such were the three grand features of Pitt’s India Bill. As might have been expected, his opponents were sedulous in pointing out its defects. Burke, who had no mean share in the composition of Fox’s India Bill, the great outcry against which had been that it went to increase, in a most dangerous degree, the influence of the minister, said, that Pitt’s bill, in reality, vested in the crown an influence paramount to any that had been proposed by the bill of his opponent. On this subject, also, Fox remarked:—“By whom is this board of superintendants to be appointed? Is it not by his majesty? And is not this giving power to the sovereign for the ends of influence, and for the extension of that system of corruption which has been so justly reprobated? The last parliament, to their immortal honour, voted the increasing influence of the crown to be inconsistent with public liberty. The right honourable gentleman, in consequence of that vote, finds the influence probably unequal to the great objects of his administration. He is therefore willing to take the present opportunity of making his court where he knows our late doctrine will never be acceptable; and the plain language of the whole matter now is, that the patronage of India must be appended to the executive power of this country, which otherwise will not be able to cany on schemes hostile to the constitution, in opposition to the house of commons.” Fox objected to the bill on other grounds. He remarked, that the bill established a weak and inefficient government, by dividing its powers—to the one board belonged the privilege of ordering and contriving measures; to the other, that of carrying them into execution. Theories, he said, which did not connect men with measures, were not theories for this world: they were chimeras with which a recluse might divert his fancy, but they were not principles en which a statesman would found his system. He maintained, that by the negative vested in the commissioners, the chartered rights of the company, on which stress had been laid, were insidiously undermined and virtually annihilated. Founded on such heterogeneous principles, how, he asked, could such a government be other than the constant victim of internal distraction? As for the appeal allowed from the decisions of the board of control to the privy-council, that was only the appeal from the aggressor transformed into the character of a judge, and was therefore in the highest degree nugatory and ridiculous. Against the clauses of the bill respecting the Zemindars, Fox entered his strong protest. In his opinion they ought to be rated by a fixed rule of past periods, and not of a vague and indefinite future inquiry. He stigmatized the new tribunal as a screen for delinquents, and as a palpable and unconstitutional violation of the sacred right of a trial by jury. As no man was to be tried but on the accusation of the company or the attorney-general, he contended, that the delinquent had only to conciliate government in order to his remaining in perfect security. He would venture, he said, to pronounce this part of the general system of deception and delusion, a “bed of justice,” where justice would for ever sleep. With regard to the East India charter, Fox insisted that it was as much violated by this bill as by his own; but on this important point, at least, the difference was palpable and striking; for while Fox’s bill took away commerce from the company, the other left it solely in their hands. By Pitt’s bill, indeed, the management of their commercial concerns was guaranteed to them, and they were only divested of that political power which they had abused, and of that civil authority which for a series of years they had shown themselves to be incompetent to exercise, Many other objections were started, and during the progress of the bill through the house, several amendments were moved and adopted, but its main features were preserved, and the bill finally passed both houses with triumphant majorities. In the whole, twenty-one new clauses were added to the bill, which were distinguished by the letters of the alphabet; and Sheridan humourously suggested that three other clauses should be affixed, in order, as he observed, “to complete the horn-book of the present ministry;” The minority in the lords, in a protest, branded the bill as a measure ineffectual in its provisions, unconstitutional in its partial abolition of the trial by jury, and unjust in its inquisitorial spirit. But though Pitt’s scheme was not perfect, yet in many points of view it was preferable to that of Fox; and even its errors were magnified by the prejudice of party spirit.