William Pitt and national revival

by J. Holland Rose

From the charms of the French Court and the meshes of matrimonial schemes Pitt was suddenly called away. A special messenger bade him return at once to London. What he had all along hoped now came to pass. The King’s dislike of his Ministers had overcome all other feelings, and he now appealed to Pitt to free him from the toils of the Coalition. The friends spent twenty-four hours in a carriage, then suffered the usual miseries of a Channel passage, and reached London on 24th October.

The situation was serious. Though delivered from fear of war, the country was beset by many perils. Consols were on the decline. The state of Ireland was alarming. The Associations of Volunteers overshadowed the Government at Dublin, and seemed about to dictate terms to that at Westminster. Their attitude aroused keen resentment, seeing that the legislative independence of Ireland had been proclaimed to be the cure for all her evils. “What! (exclaimed Horace Walpole) Would they throw off our Parliament and yet amend it.” Worst of all, perhaps, was the almost complete indifference of Britons to the political situation. The same rather cynical observer had already noted that no one, except interested politicians, really cared who was in, or out of, office. His words deserve quotation:

Our levity is unlike that of the French. They turn everything into a jest, an epigram, or a ballad. We are not pleasant but violent, and yet remember nothing for a moment. This was not our character formerly.... Can the people be much attached to any man if they think well of none? Can they hate any man superlatively if they think ill of all? In my own opinion we have no positive character at present at all. We are not so bad as most great nations have been when sinking. We have no excessive vices, no raging animosities.[178]

The passage is interesting in more ways than one. Milton dubbed us fickle and alleged our insular situation as the cause.[179] Addison in one of his essays repeated the charge, which was perfectly natural early in the eighteenth century. Further, Horace Walpole’s criticism is remarkable as that of a shrewd observer during what he termed a time of “comfortable calm.” He saw the two leading nations, as it were, drifting sluggishly in a Sargasso Sea of politics after one storm; and they and he never suspected the approach of a far more terrible tempest. Neither in London nor Paris had any inspiring personality come to the front. Pitt had not fully emerged. Robespierre was intent on his briefs at Arras; the Corsican, who was to quicken the pulse of all peoples, still studied under the monks of Brienne; and Horace Walpole could therefore complain of the pettiness of politics, the aimless brawlings of Westminster, the lighter vagaries of Versailles, and the dullness of the world.

At London all was soon to change. Though Fox and North kept their majority solid on the question of the peace, yet they came to grief over a measure of almost equal importance. On 18th November, amidst scenes of unequalled excitement, Fox brought forward his India Bill; and on a question where vast patronage was at stake passions rose to fever heat. Indian affairs will be treated more fully in another chapter; and it must suffice to state here that the East India Company was in a deplorable condition, mainly owing to the war with Hyder Ali and the insubordination and rapacity of the Company’s servants, which led to abuses degrading to Britain and oppressive to the natives of India. According to the terms of North’s Regulating Act of 1773, Parliament had the right of intervention in all matters of high policy; but in one important question the Company had set its behests at naught. In April 1782 a vote of censure was passed on the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and the Company was requested to recall him. The Court of Directors issued an order to this effect; but the Court of Proprietors reversed their decision, and Hastings was left in a position ambiguous and irritating to all parties. Consequently dictates of policy and the interests of the nation compelled Parliament to assert its paramount authority.

But the manner of the intervention and the act itself were alike extraordinary. The new India Bill was the joint work of Fox and Burke with some aid from the law-officers of the Crown. It has often been said, on the scantiest of evidence, to have been framed mainly by Burke; but the clauses which abrograted the Charter of the East India Company and vested the control of Indian affairs chiefly in Parliament, bear the imprint of the mind of Fox rather than of the more cautious and conservative statesman.[180] In strict propriety the measure ought to have originated with Lord North. He privately expressed his approval, and then, alleging indisposition, stayed away from Parliament on the day of its introduction.[181]

Fox opened his case in a speech of great power. He dilated on the ills resulting from the disorders in the Company’s service, and, in particular, from the ambition of Warren Hastings. He then showed the tendency of the parliamentary reports on Indian affairs, and claimed that, in the virtual bankruptcy of the Company (which could not discharge its debts to the Crown), Parliament had the right to take the supreme control of its territories. We may pause here to notice that the Directors of the Company stoutly denied the assertion as to their bankruptcy, and claimed that, when its expenses were reduced to a peace footing, the Company’s creditors would be in a better position than any creditors in Europe.[182] Their printed report of 23rd January 1784 laid stress on the heavy charge involved by conquests in India “which the wisdom of the nation has given up for equivalents in other parts of the world.” It also claimed the payment of £260,687, the charge incurred by the Company for the maintenance of French prisoners in the Seven Years’ War. The Directors further stated that, if Government would check the very extensive smuggling in tea (an article which formed the most valuable of the monopolies of the Company), more than double the amount would be sold by legitimate means. These facts should be borne in mind, as the Company succeeded in spreading a conviction that the attack of Fox was unjust.

In the rest of his speech Fox detailed his proposals for effecting drastic changes in India, and explained the reasons for separating administrative affairs from purely mercantile affairs. Many authorities claimed that the territories of the Company belonged in reality to the Crown; others denied this claim. On one point all must agree, that the Crown could not possibly deal with “a remote and difficult trade.” Accordingly he sought to form “a mixed system of government, adapted to the mixed complexion of our interests in India.” For administrative work he proposed to establish a Board of seven commissioners, nominated by Parliament, for three or five years—four years was the term finally suggested—having full power to appoint and dismiss officers in India, and complete control over its government. The Board was to sit in London, “under the very eye of Parliament,” and the minutes of its meetings were to be open to inspection by Parliament. If this experiment succeeded, he proposed that in future the King should nominate the seven commissioners, and he was to fill up vacancies that might occur in the meantime. As for the mercantile interests of the Company, they were to be managed by a subordinate Board or Council, consisting of eight members chosen by Parliament from among the larger proprietors.

He further proposed to remedy the worst abuses in India in a second Bill which would abolish the holding of monopolies, such as that for opium, which had been jobbed away to the son of a former chairman of the Company. Security of tenure would be granted to the Zamindars, or native landlords, and the acceptance of presents by the Company’s servants in India—a fertile source of corruption and oppression—would be strictly forbidden. Fox admitted that the private influence of the Crown, even in its worst days, was nothing compared with that of the East India Company, and wisely abstained for the present from naming the seven commissioners whom he proposed to appoint.[183]

Here was the weak point of an otherwise excellent measure; and Pitt, towards whom all eyes were directed, fastened upon it. While admitting the urgent need of reform, he deprecated the abrogation of all the charters and privileges of an ancient Company under the plea of necessity. “Is not necessity,” he said, “the plea of every illegal exertion of power? Is not necessity the pretence of every usurpation? Necessity is the argument of tyrants: it is the creed of slaves.” Further, what evils must result if that formidable political weapon, the patronage of the Company, were transferred to the Ministers then in power, and finally to the Crown? On the one side it would tend to the grossest corruption, on the other, to despotism.[184]