EAST INDIA AFFAIRS.
It has been seen that a select committee had been appointed to consider the state of the British dominions. This committee, in the prosecution of this inquiry, not only discovered corruption, fraud, and injustice in every department of the Indian government, but that the company’s finances were in a ruinous condition. In order, therefore, to rescue the British name from disgrace, and to secure our territorial possessions in India, Sir Henry Fletcher introduced a bill for “suspending the payments of the company due to the exchequer, and enabling them to borrow the sum of £300,000 for their relief.” This bill, which was declared to be only a branch of a larger plan, passed both houses with very little opposition; an impression generally prevailing among peers and commoners, that unless relief was afforded, bankruptcy was inevitable. Thus works profusion.
PETITION OF THE QUAKERS AGAINST THE SLAVE TRADE.
Towards the end of the session, a bill was introduced for regulating the trade of the African Company, in which there was a clause prohibiting its officers from exporting negroes. This encouraged the Quakers to present a petition for the total abolition of the slave trade: a petition that may be said to have laid the foundation of those generous and persevering exertions of gifted individuals, as Clarkson and Wilberforce, which finally succeeded in effecting the abolition of that loathsome traffic in the bones and sinews of man; which had for centuries been carried on without compunction.
SETTLEMENT ON THE PRINCE OF WALES.
On the 23rd of June, a message was delivered from the king to the house of commons, requesting means for a separate establishment for the Prince of Wales. The young prince had now attained his twenty-first year, and was of such extravagant habits, that his profusion was the talk of the nation. He was particularly intimate with Fox, and was linked in with the coalition ministry; and the Duke of Portland suggested to his majesty that a demand should be made of a hundred thousand a-year for his maintenance. The king, however, disliked the prince’s connexion with his present ministers, and therefore, he put his decided negative upon this proposal; asserting that he could not think of burthening his people with so large a grant, and encouraging his son in his extravagant habits. Ministers had bound themselves to procure this sum for their royal friend, but were obliged to submit to the king’s will; namely, that fifty thousand a-year should be allotted by himself out of the civil list, and that parliament should merely grant sixty thousand as an outfit. A vote to this effect was carried without opposition: the young prince giving a proof of his filial duty and public spirit, by signifying his desire that the king’s wish should be consulted, and his readiness to accept whatever he might think proper in his wisdom and goodness to grant. At the same time he continued his close intimacy with Fox, and gave all the countenance he could to a ministry which his majesty abhorred.