CHAPTER XVIII.
Lord Chatham proposes to examine the East India Company’s Affairs.—His unaccountable conduct.—More signs of weakness in the Cabinet.—Negotiation with the Duke of Bedford.—Bill of Indemnity.—Debates on the East India Question.—Attack on Lord Chatham in the House of Lords by the Duke of Richmond.
These petty politics were soon absorbed in the consideration of a more momentous and more arduous affair. Restrained as Lord Chatham’s genius was by the tranquillity of Europe, and impeded as his plan had been by his own want of conduct, his soul was still expanding itself towards greater objects. With indignation, he beheld three Indian provinces, an empire themselves, in the hands of a company of merchants, who, authorized by their charter to traffic on the coast, had usurped so mighty a portion of his dominions from the Prince who permitted their commerce with his subjects. By what horrid treachery, fraud, violence, and blood the Company’s servants had stridden to such aggrandizement, was not a question a Minister was likely to ask. It is the cool humane man, who had no power to punish and redress such crimes, who alone reasons on the manner how, and the right by which such acquisitions are obtained. The stupendous fortunes created by individuals struck more forcibly on the political eye of Lord Chatham. Above any view of sharing the plunder himself, he saw a prey that tempted him to make it more his country’s. By threats to intimidate the Company, and incline them to offer largely towards the necessities of Government, was the least part of his idea. Such a tribute would stand in the place of new taxes, or relieve the debts on the Civil List: could he induce the Parliament to think the Company had exceeded the powers of their charter, the whole property of their territorial acquisitions might be deemed forfeited to the Crown; this would be a bribe with which few Ministers could purchase the smiles of their master. Nor could common sense find a flaw in the reasoning. Could it be intended, what country ever meant by granting a charter for trading and building forts to secure their magazines, say, even by allowing them to defend themselves against open hostilities; could it be understood, I ask, that such a charter gave up the dominion of whole provinces to a set of private merchants—of three provinces more ample than the extent of the country which bestowed the charter? The event could not be foreseen—it could not be foretold by prophecy’s wildest imagination; but if common sense could not answer the question, self-interest could. What! invade property!—those two words, Invasion of property, branched into every subtlety that law could furnish. And as it has been well said,[305] that in England all abuses are freeholds, most of those that had property in the East India Company, most of those who had any other property, and all who enjoyed any property by abuses, took the alarm; and they who desired to obstruct any measures of Government, were sedulous not to let the panic cool.
But if the plan was great and bold, the execution was mean and unworthy of the conception. The man who traced the design, shrank from it himself; and having tossed it into the world, left it to be carried through by other hands. He grew mysterious; he would not declare what he wished—Parliament must decide—but his anger awaited those who should even decline guessing at his purpose. I feel while I write that I shall scarce be credited: yet both words and matter cannot be more strictly true. Lord Chatham would not utter his will or wish; yet neither obstacles nor remonstrance could extort a syllable of relaxation from him; but I must take the matter a little higher, and relate it more historically.
So early as the 28th of August the Cabinet Council had sent for the Governors of the East India Company, and advised them to be prepared, for Parliament would certainly inquire into the state of their acquisitions in Bengal. The Governors asked if the Administration intended to carry the affair thither? They were told that the Ministers had not determined to proceed so far, but did not mean to preclude themselves from doing so. Thus the affair had been left. The Company were to be alarmed; the nation to be tempted to look into the matter. The Company, no doubt, were alarmed accordingly; but the nation with folded arms awaited the event, not apt of late to forerun Ministers in what they declare they meditate themselves.
In this uncommunicated state the dictator had left the business, and the Parliament had met without his assigning their departments in the action to any of the Ministers—not to the Duke of Grafton himself, the head of the Treasury, and who, though as a peer not qualified to conduct the plan through the House of Commons, yet was the person who must superintend and transact an affair which, whether in a greater or less proportion, was ultimately to centre in the revenue, had he disclosed how far he meant or wished to go. In the mean time had intervened the episode of Lord Edgcumbe; and Conway, the acting Minister in the House of Commons, had been disgusted. Never officious to thrust himself into business, and now indisposed to the great projector, he neither was ambitious to receive orders, nor forward to apply for them at the fountain-head; yet being well disposed to the plan, and, at least, too much versed in business, not to know the propriety of digesting so very daring a scheme before it was thrown into the House of Commons, where, had there been no men of ill intention, still a rude design must create confusion and impediment, he had pressed earnestly to have it well considered in Council, before it was introduced into Parliament. His prayers and remonstrances were vain; and though Lord Chatham depended on him for the conduct of the Ministerial part, he would not deign to impart a ray of instruction. There was another man still more necessary perhaps to the progress of a scheme of a monied nature; and that was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townshend. But him Lord Chatham neither trusted nor considered but as the mere slave of his orders. Be it so: yet could it be imagined that instead of employing either Secretary of State or Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Minister should have consigned his darling scheme to a private man—and that man the most absurd, and of as little weight as any member in the House of Commons? So the fact was, and so must I recount it. But ere the project was opened, it was known that the versatile genius of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was playing tricks and endeavouring to obstruct the measure yet in embryo. Conway, zealous for extracting some national advantage from the prosperous state of the Company’s affairs, laboured to surmount Townshend’s objections, and assembled a council at his own house to debate the point with him. Lord Chatham flamed at the notice of Townshend’s adverse conduct, and vowed himself would resign, or Townshend should be turned out; and he resented Conway’s interfering to serve him without his direction. Yet, ere the business came to any conclusion, Townshend exhibited many doubts; though for once his inconsistencies and treachery were not solely dictated by unsteadiness. It became known that his frequent fluctuations in the course of the affair were so many wiles to raise or lower the stock in which he was dealing, and which the Chancellor of the Exchequer could supremely agitate and depress as he pleased.
On the 25th the plan was first intimated to the House by Lord Chatham’s confident, Alderman Beckford, who moved to take into consideration the state of the East India Company’s affairs. Men were amazed to see a machine of such magnitude entrusted to so wild a charioteer. Wedderburne and Charles Yorke opposed the motion. The Whigs deserted Mr. Conway who supported it, by the mouth of their spokesman, Lord John Cavendish, though he paid profuse compliments to the latter. Burke and Grenville appeared as opponents, too, and the violation of property was sounded high. Yet the motion was carried by 129 to 76, Charles Townshend speaking for it, and the Duke of Bedford’s friends staying away.[306] The wind, however, of this transaction, and the dissensions that had sprung up from the dismission of Lord Edgcumbe, brought Lord Temple back to town. Grenville painted the East Indian business to Rigby as a mine in which Lord Chatham must blow himself up; and that idea was impressed more deeply by Lord Northington, who said to Lord Gower, “There are four parties, Bute’s, Bedford’s, Rockingham’s, and Chatham’s, and we (the last) are the weakest of the four.”
On the 27th of November the Duke of Portland, Lord Scarborough, Lord Besborough, and Lord Monson resigned their employments. The King immediately appointed Lord Hertford Lord Chamberlain; but told him that, knowing his brother’s delicacy on the preferment of his relations, he had hidden the stick and key, while Mr. Conway, who had just been with him, was in the closet.
This defection of the Rockingham party, of whom scarce a dozen[307] remained in connection with the Court, reduced Lord Chatham, who had defeated his own purpose of dividing them, to look out for new strength. There remained Lord Bute’s and the Duke of Bedford’s factions. He approached towards both; but so coldly, and with such limited steps, that he acquired neither, and fixed the last in more open opposition. By preferring a few of the Favourite’s creatures, he drew odium on himself, without doing enough to engage their real attachment, the very rock on which his predecessors had split, though their more reluctant offers having arrived too late, they had escaped the imputation of stooping to servile conditions. Lord Chatham’s conduct towards the Bedfords was as void of dexterity as his treatment of the Rockingham party.