"Such a tax, indeed, was not easily evaded, and could not be deemed oppressive, as it would only be once paid; but so great was the spirit of clamor against the tax on receipts, that he should not wonder if it extended to them; and that it should be asserted, that persons having paid the last debt,—the debt of nature,—government had resolved they should pay a receipt-tax, and have it stamped over their grave. Nay, with so extraordinary a degree of inveteracy were some Committees in the city, and elsewhere, actuated, that if a receipt-tax of the nature in question was enacted, he should not be greatly surprised if it were soon after published, that such Committees had unanimously resolved that they would never be buried, in order to avoid paying the tax; but had determined to lie above ground, or have their ashes consigned to family- urns, in the manner of the ancients."
He also took an active share in the discussions relative to the restoration of Powell and Bembridge to their offices by Mr. Burke:—a transaction which, without fixing any direct stigma upon that eminent man, subjected him, at least, to the unlucky suspicion of being less scrupulous in his notions of official purity, than became the party which he espoused or the principles of Reform that he inculcated.
Little as the Court was disposed, during the late reign, to retain Whigs in its service any longer than was absolutely necessary, it must be owned that neither did the latter, in general, take very courtier-like modes of continuing their connection with Royalty; but rather chose to meet the hostility of the Crown half-way, by some overt act of imprudence or courage, which at once brought the matter to an issue between them. Of this hardihood the India Bill of Mr. Fox was a remarkable example—and he was himself fully aware of the risk which he ran in proposing it. "He knew," he said, in his speech upon first bringing forward the question, "that the task he had that day set himself was extremely arduous and difficult; he knew that he had considerable risk in it; but when he took upon himself an office of responsibility, he had made up his mind to the situation and the danger of it."
Without agreeing with those who impute to Mr. Fox the extravagant design of investing himself, by means of this Bill, with a sort of perpetual Whig Dictatorship, independent of the will of the Crown, it must nevertheless be allowed that, together with the interests of India, which were the main object of this decisive measure, the future interests and influence of his own party were in no small degree provided for; and that a foundation was laid by it for their attainment of a more steady footing in power than, from the indisposition of the Court towards them, they had yet been able to accomplish. Regarding—as he well might, after so long an experience of Tory misrule—a government upon Whig principles as essential to the true interests of England, and hopeless of seeing the experiment at all fairly tried, as long as the political existence of the servants of the Crown was left dependent upon the caprice or treachery of their master, he would naturally welcome such an accession to the influence of the party as might strengthen their claims to power when out of office, and render their possession of it, when in, more secure and useful. These objects the Bill in question would have, no doubt, effected. By turning the Pactolus of Indian patronage into the territories of Whiggism, it would have attracted new swarms of settlers to that region,—the Court would have found itself outbid in the market,—and, however the principles of the party might eventually have fared, the party itself would have been so far triumphant. It was indeed, probably, the despair of ever obtaining admission for Whiggism, in its unalloyed state, into the councils of the Sovereign, that reconciled Mr. Fox to the rash step of debasing it down to the Court standard by the Coalition—and, having once gained possession of power by these means, he saw, in the splendid provisions of the India Bill, a chance of being able to transmit it as an heir-loom to his party, which, though conscious of the hazard, he was determined to try. If his intention, therefore, was, as his enemies say, to establish a Dictatorship in his own person, it was, at the worst, such a Dictatorship as the Romans sometimes created, for the purpose of averting the plague—and would have been directed merely against that pestilence of Toryism, under which the prosperity of England had, he thought, languished so long.
It was hardly, however, to be expected of Royalty,—even after the double humiliation which it had suffered, in being vanquished by rebels under one branch of the Coalition, and browbeaten into acknowledging their independence by the other—that it would tamely submit to such an undisguised invasion of its sanctuary; particularly when the intruders had contrived their operations so ill, as to array the people in hostility against them, as well as the Throne. Never was there an outcry against a ministry so general and decisive. Dismissed insultingly by the King on one side, they had to encounter the indignation of the people on the other; and, though the House of Commons, with a fidelity to fallen ministers sufficiently rare, stood by them for a time in a desperate struggle with their successors, the voice of the Royal Prerogative, like the horn of Astolpho, soon scattered the whole body in consternation among their constituents, "di qua, di la, di su, di giu," and the result was a complete and long-enjoyed triumph to the Throne and Mr. Pitt.
Though the name of Mr. Fox is indissolubly connected with this Bill, and though he bore it aloft, as fondly as Caesar did his own Commentaries, through all this troubled sea of opposition, it is to Mr. Burke that the first daring outline of the plan, as well as the chief materials for filling it up, are to be attributed,—whilst to Sir Arthur Pigot's able hand was entrusted the legal task of drawing the Bill. The intense interest which Burke took in the affairs of India had led him to lay in such stores of information on the subject, as naturally gave him the lead in all deliberations connected with it. His labors for the Select Committee, the Ninth Report of which is pregnant with his mighty mind, may be considered as the source and foundation of this Bill—while of the under-plot, which had in view the strengthening of the Whig interest, we find the germ in his "Thoughts on the present Discontents," where, in pointing out the advantage to England of being ruled by such a confederacy, he says, "In one of the most fortunate periods of our history, this country was governed by a connection; I mean the great connection of Whigs in the reign of Queen Anne."
Burke was, indeed, at this time the actuating spirit of the party—as he must have been of any party to which he attached himself. Keeping, as he did, the double engines of his genius and his industry incessantly in play over the minds of his more indolent colleagues, with an intentness of purpose that nothing could divert, and an impetuosity of temper that nothing could resist, it is not wonderful that he should have gained such an entire mastery over their wills, or that the party who obeyed him should so long have exhibited the mark of his rash spirit imprinted upon their measures. The yielding temper of Mr. Fox, together with his unbounded admiration of Burke, led him easily, in the first instance, to acquiesce in the views of his friend, and then the ardor of his own nature, and the self-kindling power of his eloquence, threw an earnestness and fire into his public enforcement of those views, which made even himself forget that they were but adopted from another, and impressed upon his hearers the conviction that they were all, and from the first, his own.
We read his speeches in defence of the India Bill with a sort of breathless anxiety, which no other political discourses, except those, perhaps, of Demosthenes, could produce. The importance of the stake which he risks—the boldness of his plan—the gallantry with which he flings himself into the struggle, and the frankness of personal feeling that breathes throughout—all throw around him an interest, like that which encircles a hero of romance; nor could the most candid autobiography that ever was written exhibit the whole character of the man more transparently through it.
The death of this ill-fated Ministry was worthy of its birth. Originating in a Coalition of Whigs and Tories, which compromised the principles of freedom, it was destroyed by a Coalition of King and People, which is even, perhaps, more dangerous to its practice. [Footnote: "This assumption (says Burke) of the Tribunitian power by the Sovereign was truly alarming. When Augustus Caesar modestly consented to become the Tribune of the people, Rome gave up into the hands of that prince the only remaining shield she had to protect her liberty. The Tribunitian power in this country, as in ancient Rome, was wisely kept distinct and separate from the executive power; in this government it was constitutionally lodged where it was naturally to be lodged, in the House of Commons; and to that House the people ought first to carry their complaints, even when they were directed against the measures of the House itself. But now the people were taught to pass by the door of the House of Commons and supplicate the Throne for the protection of their liberties."—Speech on moving his Representation to the King, in June, 1784.]
The conduct, indeed, of all estates and parties, during this short interval, was any thing but laudable. The leaven of the unlucky alliance with Lord North was but too visible in many of the measures of the Ministry—in the jobbing terms of the loan, the resistance to Mr. Pitt's plan of retrenchment, and the diminished numbers on the side of Parliamentary Reform. [Footnote: The consequences of this alloy were still more visible in Ireland. "The Coalition Ministry," says Mr. Hardy, "displayed itself in various employments—but there was no harmony. The old courtiers hated the new, and being more dexterous, were more successful." In stating that Lord Charlemont was but coldly received by the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Northington, Mr. Hardy adds, "It is to be presumed that some of the old Court, who in consequence of the Coalition had crept once more into favor, influenced his conduct in this particular.">[ On the other hand, Mr. Pitt and his party, in their eagerness for place, did not hesitate to avail themselves of the ambidexterous and unworthy trick of representing the India Bill to the people, as a Tory plan for the increase of Royal influence, and to the King, as a Whig conspiracy for the curtailment of it. The King himself, in his arbitrary interference with the deliberations of the Lords, and the Lords, in the prompt servility with which so many of them obeyed his bidding, gave specimens of their respective branches of the Constitution, by no means creditable—while finally the people, by the unanimous outcry with which they rose, in defence of the monopoly of Leadenhall Street and the sovereign will of the Court, proved how little of the "vox Dei" there may sometimes be in such clamor.