He had also an interview with Lord North; and that amiable man and good-natured minister seems to have succeeded in appeasing, to a certain degree, his irritated feelings. "Lord North," says he[183], "when I saw him, seemed industriously to avoid entering upon the subject of India affairs; and I do verily believe, from sheer indolence of temper, he wishes to leave every thing to Providence and the Directors; and that he means nothing more by the meeting of Parliament[184], than to enable the Company to find money to discharge the demands that are at present made upon them. However, it behoves me to be prepared for every thing; for which purpose, you will perhaps say, I have been building castles in the air. Enclosed I send you a sketch of my ideas, which, I flatter myself, might be carried into execution by an able, steady, and upright minister. I don't wish to take you from your other business unnecessarily, but I wish you would take this sketch in hand, and methodise it. I would have you dwell fully and strongly upon the present situation of our affairs in India, and show, beyond a possibility of refutation, the approaching ruin of our possessions in the East, if vigorous measures be not speedily pursued. Your own experience and knowledge, added to my sentiments, expressed both in my speech and in the political paper laid before Lord North, will enable you to make a great progress in this matter; and upon my arrival in town what is wanting may be supplied. I will not patiently stand by, and see a great empire, acquired by great abilities, perseverance, and resolution, lost by ignorance and indolence. If Administration should think proper to see our affairs abroad in the same light as I do, 'tis well. If not, I shall have done my duty. Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat, may with a vengeance be applied to the Court of Directors appointing M(onckton) and five of their own body Supervisors. Private letters from India give a most dreadful account of the luxury, dissipation, and extravagance of Bengal."
It should seem that the plan here mentioned was afterwards prepared and presented to Lord North. It is dated the 24th of November, two days before the opening of Parliament. It embraces the whole system of Indian Government at home and abroad, and must have been a valuable contribution[185] at a moment when Parliament was called, for the express purpose of considering the state of the Company's concerns.
In December, the same year, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Montgomeryshire.
Meanwhile, the Parliament had hardly risen for the summer, when the difficulties in the Company's affairs which have been alluded to, became too great to be concealed. Though the Directors had long suffered inconvenience from the want of funds, the first unsurmountable difficulty in the means of discharging the demands on them was said to be observed by their cashier in the beginning of July, 1772. This he communicated to Mr. Sulivan; a Committee of Treasury was called, and there was laid before them an estimate of the probable receipts and payments for the months of July, August, September, and October, when it appeared that they could command only 954,200l., to meet demands amounting to 2,247,200l., leaving a deficiency of 1,293,000l. On the 15th of July it was resolved to apply to the Bank for a loan of 400,000l. for two months, which was granted; and, on the 29th of July, a further loan of 300,000l. was asked, but only 200,000l. received. At a Committee of Treasury, held on the 11th of August 1772, the Chairman and Deputy Chairman acquainted the Members, that they had waited on Lord North to present to his Lordship the state of the Company's affairs, and had represented that the sum of near 1,000,000l. sterling would be necessary to be borrowed to carry on the circulation of the Company's affairs, and that of this million about 500,000l. would be left undischarged in the month of March following, when the whole produce of the September sale would probably be received.[186] The first Lord of the Treasury is said to have received their proposals with dryness and reserve, and referred them to Parliament for satisfaction. They had once more recourse to the plan of appointing supervisors, with full powers for the regulation of their affairs abroad; and after various delays, six gentlemen[187] were named, who agreed to accept the difficult and invidious office.
Ministers, in these circumstances, and when called upon to sanction a loan of such an amount, could not avoid taking a direct share in the affairs of the Company. The Parliament was called before the holidays, for the express purpose of adopting some efficient measures to recover their affairs from the confusion into which they had fallen. His Majesty, in his speech from the throne, on the 26th of November, observed, "When I received information of the difficulties in which the Company appears to be involved, I determined to give you an early opportunity of informing yourselves fully of the true state of their affairs, and of making such provisions for the common benefit and security of all the various interests concerned as you shall find best adapted to the exigencies of the case."
The necessity of some remedy was sufficiently plain; but there was a deficiency of knowledge and of facts. The Minister now clearly perceived, from the line of inquiry into which the Select Committee had deviated, and the temper of some of the members, that their labours, whatever other effects they might have, were not likely to afford such information as would enable Parliament, in the present exigency, to regulate or even to understand the Company's affairs. Lord North, the same day on which the Address was voted, after adverting to the distressed situation of the Company, a distress which he ascribed chiefly to the complicated union of civil and political power with their commercial affairs, expressed his conviction that, embarrassed as they were for the moment, they were still in full health, and, with a temporary assistance, fully able to meet and discharge all their engagements; that, by the measure which he had to propose, their secret and confidential transactions would be known but to a few, so that no unfair advantage could be taken. He concluded by moving that, for the better ascertaining the real condition of the Company's affairs, a Committee of Secresy be appointed to inquire into the state of the East India Company; and for that purpose to inspect the books and accounts of the said Company, and to report to the House what they find material therein, in respect to the debts, credits, and effects of the Company; as also to the management and present situation of the Company's affairs, together with their observations thereupon. It was also referred to them to report their opinion of the steps taken by the Company of sending out Supervisors.
In the debate that ensued, Colonel Burgoyne thought it necessary to vindicate the late Committee from the aspersions which he imagined had been thrown on it by insinuations that the present embarrassed state of the Company's affairs was in any degree to be attributed to the mode of inquiry that it had adopted: he expatiated largely on what the Committee had done, and with much warmth affirmed, from his own knowledge, that their inquiries would disclose such a scene of iniquity, rapine, and injustice, such unheard-of cruelties, such violations of every rule of morality, religion, and good government, as were never before discovered; that in the whole investigation he could not find a sound spot whereon to lay his finger, it being all one mass of the most unheard-of villanies, and the most notorious corruption. That, if the proposed Committee was intended to supersede former inquiry, he could look upon it in no other light than a design to protect the guilty, and serve the purpose of stockjobbing. Lord North said, that he did not mean to impede the revival of the Select Committee. His motion was agreed to, and a Committee of thirteen appointed. The Select Committee of last year was also continued.
In a few days the new appointed Secret Committee, in consequence of the reference made to them, gave in a Special Report, recommending that a Bill should be brought in to restrain the Company, for a limited time, from sending out Supervisors. The rapidity with which this recommendation was produced, drew from Mr. Burke the observation, that "Ministers, finding that the Select Committee of last year, a lawful wife publicly avowed, was barren, and had produced nothing, had taken a neat little snug one, which they called a Secret Committee, and that this was her first-born. Indeed," added he, "from the singular expedition of this extraordinary delivery, I am apt to think she was pregnant before wedlock." The Bill, when introduced, was violently opposed, as oppressive and unconstitutional; and supported on the grounds of the mixed nature of the Company, which was not merely a trading corporation, but a political body, an union of the merchant and magistrate; and that the appointment of Supervisors was really an interference with the Parliament, which was busily engaged in investigating the abuses, that the commission professed to be intended to correct. The East India Company were heard against it by Counsel. Mr. Burke opposed the Bill with his usual exuberance of reason and wit: he said, that the arguments of the Counsel must have left conviction on the mind of every gentleman who retained the least regard to national faith. He ridiculed the inefficiency of the two Committees then sitting. "One (the Select Committee) has been so slow in their motions, that the Company have given up, long since, all hopes of redress from them; and the other, (the Secret) has gone on altogether so rapidly, that they do not know where they will stop. Like the fly of a jack, the latter has gone, hey-go-mad! the other, like the ponderous lead at the other end; and in that manner, Sir, have roasted the East India Company." He charged the Minister with supineness, who, though himself the cause of the ruin of the Company, had done nothing, but came to the House to ask them to do what was his business. That, in 1767, an inquiry into the affairs of the Company was set on foot; that Parliament sat day after day for forty-one days, and broke up without doing any thing at all. "It was near about that period," he continued, "that a discovery was made that the India Company had obtained an acquisition of great wealth. It seems, Sir, that a lady of great fortune in India, who had been ungenerously dealt with by her stewards, was unlucky enough to engage the attention of Parliament, who, perhaps envious of the booty being divided without their having any share, paid their addresses to the lady, but whether to her person or fortune you must determine; for, Sir, they were very eager to embrace her; they pretended to rescue her from the rapacity of her stewards, yet, as soon as they touched the very good fortune of 400,000l. per annum, they left the lady to destruction. In this manner, Sir, the last Parliament acted; and, after pretending to redress the grievances of the Company, got up, after forty-one days' painful and laborious sitting, without coming to any conclusion at all. What has the Select Committee of this Parliament been, but a mock inquiry?" Sir William Meredith, who was a Member of that Committee, retorted Mr. Burke's comparison not unhappily. "He compares the two Committees," said he, "to a jack; the Secret one is like the flier of a jack, the other like the weight. I agree with him in the simile, but draw a very different conclusion. Sir, between the heavy ponderous weight at one end, and the quick motion of the flier, the dish is prepared, and rendered fit for digestion." In the course of the debate, Lord Clive observed, "I will trespass upon the indulgence of the House but a few moments. I am sorry, Sir, to find the India Company contending with Parliament, because, whenever their rights to territorial possessions are examined into, they will be disputed, and the Crown become the actual possessor of them. No man, Sir, has been more liberally rewarded by the Company than I have been; and though the learned sages of the law have very ably argued the cause of their clients, yet, Sir, I feel myself influenced by motives which they cannot feel, gratitude and interest; and Sir, if ever I should be forgetful of the one, which God forbid, the other would teach me to attend to the affairs of the Company. Sir, I consider the interests of the nation and the Company as inseparable; and, with respect to the Supervisors, I was and continue to be against it; but at the same time, I consider this Bill as an exertion, indeed, of parliamentary authority, yet extremely necessary; and I could wish that the Company had met this House half way, instead of petitioning, and quarrelling with the mouth that is to feed them. With respect to the gentlemen nominated for the supervision, they are themselves the best judges, whether their abilities and integrity are equal to the important service in which they were to engage. Had they, Sir, known the East Indies as well as I do, they would shudder at the bare idea of such a perplexing and difficult service. The most rigid integrity, with the greatest disinterestedness,—the greatest abilities with resolution and perseverance,—must be united in the man or men who undertake to reform the accumulating evils which exist in Bengal, and which threaten to involve the nation and the Company in one common ruin." The Bill was carried by a large majority, and finally passed both Houses.
It would seem as if the Court of Directors had resolved, that whenever their affairs came before Parliament, they should, as far as depended on them, contrive to find Lord Clive employment in his private concerns. When the bill of last session was to be proposed, certain heavy charges had been brought up against him, and hung out as a terror. When the present session was about to open, and much attention expected to be paid to Indian affairs, Lord Clive, on the 4th November, received an intimation from the Court of Directors, that they had taken the opinions of counsel relative to the loss sustained by the Company from the payment of the balances due to the renters of salt-pans in Bengal, out of their treasury; the commission received by him upon the revenues of Bengal, after his departure thence; and the interest due on sums paid for duties on salt, betle-nut, and tobacco; and were advised that he, and the rest of the gentlemen concerned in the payment of these balances, were liable to make good the same; that they were accountable for interest on the duties on salt, &c., and that his Lordship was not entitled to the commission on the revenues; and therefore calling upon him to make good those demands, but expressing an earnest wish for an amicable adjustment, to save the expense and disagreeable circumstances of a suit in equity. After many delays in procuring even a statement of the amount of the demands thus intended to be made on him, his Lordship agreed to refer the whole to arbitrators, as they desired, and named on his side Mr. Madocks, an eminent counsel; when the Directors insisted that the referees should be merchant arbitrators; Lord Clive, with every appearance of reason, contended that the differences between them consisted of questions of law and government; and that, had they been commercial, a lawyer was not an improper arbitrator: in short, that they were receding from their own proposal; which gave reason to suspect that what they had in view was, not a decision, but a lawsuit. His Lordship judged correctly, for the Directors ordered a suit to be instituted.[188]
Early in the year 1773, the Court of Directors, seeing the Company's concerns more and more burthened on every side, and having no means of answering the demands upon them, were compelled to apply to Government for a loan of 1,500,000l., for four years. This measure placed them, if possible, more completely than ever in the hands of the Ministry; and the Parliament, for the next four months, was entirely occupied with a series of motions, reports, and petitions, connected with their affairs. The debates of that period, which are very important, belong rather to the history of the East India Company and of the times, than to the Memoirs of Lord Clive. In the line of his politics being decidedly opposed to the measures of the Directors, which he considered as fatal to the prosperity of the Company, and being of opinion that their territorial acquisitions must be held as being acquired for the State, he generally voted with the Minister, but without joining his party.