Another matter connected with the press engaged the house of commons for the most part of the remainder of the session of 1771. Parliament, as we have seen, was so constituted that occasions might and did arise on which the will of the people was not fairly represented. This constitutional difficulty was increased by the secrecy in which parliament shrouded its proceedings. Once useful as a means of securing freedom of debate, this secrecy was maintained as a matter of privilege after it had become useless and, indeed, pernicious. It was carried to an extreme point by the present parliament, the "unreported parliament" as it was called. Strangers were constantly made to withdraw from both houses, specially when a popular member of the opposition rose to speak. This caused a silly quarrel between the two houses in 1770, and either shut its doors against the members of the other. The publication of reports, forbidden by a standing order of 1762, had for some time been carried on under various disguises, and the reports, which were founded on scanty information, were often unfair and scurrilous. In February, 1771, Colonel Onslow complained of two newspapers which misrepresented his conduct in the house, and held him up to contempt by describing him as "little cocking George". Disregarding a warning from Burke as to the folly of entering into a quarrel with the press and attempting to keep its proceedings from the public, the house ordered the printers, Wheble and Thompson, to attend at the bar. The serjeant-at-arms failed to find them, and was jeered at by their workmen. A proclamation was then issued for their arrest. While this affair was pending several newspapers commented on the proceedings of the house, and attacked various members, and specially Onslow, describing him as "a paltry insignificant insect" and so on. On March 12 he moved to proceed against six other printers. The opposition, led by Dowdeswell, Burke, and Barré, made a determined stand. They divided the house twenty-three times, and it sat till 5 a.m. "Posterity," said Burke, "will bless the pertinaciousness of that day." Onslow's motion was carried; some of the printers were reprimanded, one, Miller, refused to attend.
The city reformers seized the opportunity of renewing their quarrel with the house. Wheble and Thompson were collusively arrested and were discharged, Wheble by alderman Wilkes and Thompson by alderman Oliver, as not being accused of any crime. Worse was to come. Miller was arrested by a messenger of the house, and gave the messenger in charge for assaulting him. Both were brought before Brass Crosby, the lord mayor, Wilkes, and Oliver; Miller was discharged, the messenger held to bail. The house ordered Crosby and Oliver, who were both members of it, to attend in their places, and Wilkes, who was at the bottom of the affair, at the bar. Wilkes refused to attend unless as member for Middlesex, and the house, with more discretion than valour, shrank from another conflict with him. The king, who was deeply interested in the quarrel, approved; he would, he said, "have nothing more to do with that devil Wilkes". Crosby and Oliver defended their conduct, and were committed to the Tower. During the proceedings an angry crowd interrupted the business of the house, pelted several members, roughly handled North and Charles Fox, who was conspicuous as a defender of privilege, and broke their carriages. The lord mayor and Oliver were visited in the Tower by Rockingham, Burke, and other members of the opposition. On their release, at the end of the session, on May 8, they were saluted by the cannon of the artillery company and by vociferous applause, and the city was illuminated. Proceedings against the messenger were stopped by the attorney-general. Though the house was victorious, its dignity suffered so greatly in the conflict that it forbore to follow up its victory. Burke's words proved true; for though the publication of debates was still held to be a breach of privilege, no further attempt was made to punish it. Soon after this dispute with the house of commons the city reformers quarrelled amongst themselves, and the party was split up.
THE ROYAL MARRIAGE ACT.
Though political disputes dulled the interest excited by theological questions in the earlier half of the century, the house of commons was invited on February 6, 1772, to abolish the subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles which was demanded of all clergymen and of all students matriculating at Oxford and Cambridge. The movement was connected with a tendency towards unitarianism, which, besides attracting many dissenters, exercised an influence within the Church. Some churchmen seceded; others, less decided, sought to be relieved of an unwelcome obligation. An association which met at the Feathers Tavern, in the Strand, sent a petition to the house signed by about two hundred and fifty men, clergy, doctors, and lawyers, praying to be relieved of subscription. The king was hostile to the petition, and North opposed it in moderate terms. Burke spoke against it with remarkable ability, pointing out that a standard of faith was necessary to insure order in the Church, and that subscription to the Bible would not, as the petitioners maintained, afford any criterion of belief. The petition was rejected by a large majority, though several members on both sides expressed a dislike to requiring subscription at the universities from youths who were not of an age to judge of such matters. The house, though it refused to allow clergymen to evade the formularies of their Church, was not averse from toleration. A bill to relieve dissenting ministers and teachers from subscription to certain of the articles, which was indeed rarely exacted, was carried in the commons with little opposition, but the king and the bishops were strongly opposed to it; the royal influence was used against it in the house of lords, which threw out the bill both in 1772 and 1773, and it did not become law until six years later.
The opposition was moribund. An annual motion was made for shortening the duration of parliaments; but it attracted little attention, and other questions which had lately agitated men's minds fell equally out of date. A momentary revival of political excitement was caused by a bill which affected the king personally. George had family troubles. His sister Caroline, Queen of Denmark, was accused of adultery and imprisoned; she was allowed to retire to Hanover, and remained there until her death. Soon after hearing of her daughter's disgrace the king's mother died of cancer. She had long ceased to have any political influence and was eminently charitable, yet the sufferings of her last days were exulted over by scribblers opposed to the court, and her funeral was hailed with the cheers of the city mob. About the same time one of George's brothers, the Duke of Cumberland, after disgracing him by his flagrant immorality, married Mrs. Horton, the widowed daughter of Lord Irnham, and sister of Luttrell, the Middlesex member; and the private marriage of another brother, the Duke of Gloucester, to the widow of Lord Waldegrave, a bastard daughter of Horace Walpole's brother, was publicly announced. George was deeply annoyed by these marriages and forbade the offenders to appear at court. At his wish the royal marriage bill was laid before parliament. By this act no descendant of George II. under the age of twenty-six can enter into a valid marriage without the sovereign's consent; nor above that age, should the sovereign's consent be withheld, except by giving a year's notice to the privy council, so that parliament may, if it chooses, forbid the marriage. The doctrine implied in this act, that the whole royal family forms a class apart from the rest of the nation, was foreign to English ideas and smacked rather of German than English royalty. Yet, whatever the effects of the act may have been on those most nearly concerned, they have been beneficial to the nation.
The bill excited much disapproval and was vigorously opposed in parliament. In the commons the preamble, which acknowledged the prerogative asserted by the crown, was passed only by a majority of thirty-six, and the bill was finally carried by 165 to 115. Among its opponents were Burke and Charles Fox, by that time a power in the house. No man probably has ever enjoyed greater popularity than Fox. His disposition was amiable and generous, his good nature inexhaustible, his heart full of warm and humane feelings. As a mere lad he had been initiated into vice by his father's folly; he drank, lived loosely, dressed extravagantly, and was an inveterate and most unlucky gambler; his losses were indeed too constant to be wholly due to ill-luck. At twenty-five he owed £140,000, which his father paid for him. He was a keen sportsman, and he cared for higher things than sport. He was accomplished, a lover of learning and art, and found unfailing pleasure in the masterpieces of Greek, Latin, English, French, Italian, and, in later days, Spanish literature. In parliament he had hitherto opposed all popular measures, sometimes with insolent flippancy. He was appointed a lord of the admiralty in 1770. He gradually came under Burke's influence and showed signs of remarkable talents in debate. His speeches were unprepared, his statement of a case was often made confusedly, but he was splendid in reply. His career as a statesman was marred, like his private character, by an utter lack of principle. His opposition to the royal marriage bill seems to have been a matter of private feeling. His father had united the plebeian family of Fox with a house descended from a royal bastard by a runaway marriage with Lady Caroline Lennox; and Charles was hot against a bill which annulled a marriage made without legal consent, and must have derived special satisfaction in opposing the wish to preserve the royal family from derogatory marriages on the part of the faithless lover of his favourite aunt, Lady Sarah. He resigned office, but re-entered the ministry the following December.
NORTH'S REGULATING ACT.
The strength of the ministry caused a stagnation in matters of domestic policy, and parliament turned its attention towards a settlement of the government of India. In 1772 the East India Company was on the verge of bankruptcy, owing chiefly to expensive wars, large pensions to native rulers, and the greed of the proprietors. The successes of Haidar in the Karnatic and the famine in Bengal sent down the price of stock, as we have seen, 60 per cent. The company applied to government for a loan of at least £1,000,000. North, with statesmanlike decision, seized the opportunity of asserting the right of the crown to the territorial revenue and of placing the government under the control of its ministers. The king upheld his policy. Select and secret committees were appointed by the commons to inquire into the condition of the company and of the British affairs in India. Acting on the recommendation of the secret committee, North foiled an attempt of the company to keep its affairs in its own hands by carrying a bill to restrain it from appointing supervisors in India. Burke violently opposed this and every step by which the territorial power of the company was brought into subjection to parliament. It was, indeed, with some justice that he urged that the violation of the royal charter held by the company was a dangerous precedent, that the claim to the territorial revenue was arbitrary, and that parliament had increased the company's distress by extorting from it the payment of £400,000 a year, and had done nothing for it in return. The case for the company was supported in both houses by the Rockingham party generally.
North was supreme in both houses, and, in June 1773, carried his regulating bill. The company received from government a loan of £1,400,000 at 4 per cent., its annual payment of £400,000 was remitted until the loan was repaid; its future dividends were restricted in amount, and its authority in accepting bills from India curtailed; it was to submit its accounts to the treasury, and to export British goods to a certain yearly value. In order to assist the company which had a large stock of tea on hand, it was agreed that it might export this tea direct and duty free to America, a decision which proved of momentous import. A court of supreme jurisdiction was created, consisting of a chief justice and three puisne judges, appointed by the crown and with fixed salaries. The governor of Bengal was made governor-general of British India and was to act with a council of four. The first governor-general, Warren Hastings, then governor of Bengal, and his council were appointed by the act; their successors were to be appointed by the directors and approved by the crown. All military and civil matters which came before the directors were to be submitted to the crown. No officer of the crown or of the company was to accept any presents. The act transferred the government of India from a trading company to the crown. Constitutionally, its weakest point was the appointment of executive officers in parliament; for all officers should be appointed by the crown, and its action should be subject to parliamentary check. As regards the arrangement of government, the act should have defined the relations between the supreme court and the council, and between the governor-general, the directors, and the crown, and should not have left the governor-general in a position to be overruled by his council.
During the debates on these measures the publication of the report of the select committee excited public feeling against the "nabobs," and specially against Clive, and a parliamentary inquiry was held into his conduct. Before the select committee he admitted and defended the deceit which he had practised on Omichand in 1757, and declared that he was justified in accepting enormous sums from Mír Jafar. They were as nothing compared to what he might have had; "Mr. Chairman," said he, "at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation". Resolutions condemning his conduct were moved by Burgoyne. He defended himself with force and dignity. Finally, after many debates, the house voted that he had through the power entrusted to him possessed himself of £234,000, refused to vote that he had abused his power, and voted instead that "he did at the same time render great and meritorious services to this country". The matter was not made a party question, and the decision was worthy of the assembly which pronounced it. The king, while fully acknowledging Clive's services, thought him guilty of "rapine," and disapproved of his virtual acquittal. Thurlow attacked, Wedderburn zealously defended him. The court party voted different ways. Physical suffering together with the strain of these proceedings affected Clive's mind, and he died by his own hand on November 22, 1774.