INDIA.]

THE REGULATING ACT.

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ingly, at the very commencement of the new Session, Lord North moved for, and carried, a Secret Committee of thirteen Members to be chosen by ballot, and to take into their consideration the whole state of the Company's affairs. At the same time he agreed that the Select Committee of the preceding Session should be revived.

The Directors, trembling at the prospect of inquiry by others, and eager, if they could, to stifle or suppress it by an inquiry of their own, had already passed a Resolution, to send out to India, at their sole expense, a new batch of Supervisors. But the alertness of the Secret Committee defeated this manœuvre. Within ten days a report to the House of Commons pointed out that the step designed by the Directors might prove a serious obstacle in the way of Parliament, and recommended therefore that Parliament should interpose to arrest it. A Bill was accordingly brought in, to restrain, for a limited time, the East India Company from appointing Supervisors in India. To this measure the Directors and their friends in the House offered all the opposition in their power. Burke, who was then upon their side, went so far as to exclaim, "Shame upon such proceedings! Here is an end to confidence and public "faith!" With better reason and more temper, Lord North disclaimed all grounds of personal hostility.

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"It

"is our wish," he said, "to make the East India Company a great and glorious Company, and settle it upon 66 a permanent foundation."* Under such patronage the Bill was passed by large majorities.

This Bill, however, could only be deemed, as a lawyer might have termed it, an arrest of judgment. Later during the same Session, in the spring of 1773, Lord North proposed and carried through, against all gainsayers, his own measure of reform. This, after it had passed, was commonly called the Regulating Act. In the first place, he granted to the Company a loan of 1,500,000l. for four years, and relieved them from the annual payment to the State of 400,000l. On the other hand, the Company was restrained from making any greater dividend than six per cent. until the loan should

* Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. pp. 561. and 567.

be repaid, or any greater dividend than eight per cent. until the public should have some participation in the profits. It was then enacted, that instead of annual elections of the whole number of Directors at the India House, six should go out of office each year, and none keep their seats longer than four years. At the same time, the qualification for a vote in each proprietor was raised from 500l. to 1000l., with more votes in proportion, up to four, to each proprietor of a larger sum.

In India, the Act provided that the Mayor's Court of Calcutta should be restricted in its jurisdiction to petty cases of trade, and that in its place should be constituted a Supreme Court, to consist of a Chief Justice, and three Puisne Judges, appointed by the Crown. The Governor of Bengal was henceforth to have authority over the other Presidencies, as Governor-General of India, but was himself to be controlled by his Council. In that Council, as previously, he was entitled only to a single or, in case of equality, a casting vote. It was proposed that these nominations should be made by Parliament, and continue for five years; after which they should revert to the Directors, but subject to the approbation of the Crown. In the progress therefore of the Bill through the Commons, the Members of the new Council were expressly named, so as to become a part of the enactment. Warren Hastings, who a year before had assumed the administration of Bengal, was appointed the first Governor-General. Another of the new Council, Richard Barwell, was already at his post; the new Members to be sent from England were General Clavering, the Hon. Colonel Monson, and Philip Francis.

Another clause of Lord North's Bill remitted the drawback on the East India Company's Teas—a step so little regarded at its outset, but so momentous in its consequences, and which has been fully treated in another place.* The Directors at the time were but little gratified with this boon, or any other, when compared with the curtailment of their previous powers. They declared, in a petition to the House, that they would rather forego the loan which they had solicited, than endure the con

*See vol. v. of this history, p. 318.

INDIA.]

PARLIAMENTARY ATTACKS.

239

ditions which the Minister imposed. But their late misgovernment had been such as to render, in Parliament at least, their adherents few and their lamentations disregarded.

In the course of these proceedings, both before the Committees and within the House, many a shaft was let fly at Lord Clive. Besides the public wrongs of which he stood accused, there was also, it may be feared, a feeling of personal envy at work against him. His vast wealth became a more striking mark for calumny when contrasted with the financial embarrassments of the Directors in whose service he had gained it. And his profusion, as ever happens, offended far more persons than it pleased. He had bought the noble seat of Claremont from the Duchess Dowager of Newcastle, and was improving it at lavish cost. He had so far invested money in the smaller boroughs that he could reckon on bringing into Parliament a retinue of six or seven friends and kinsmen.* Under such circumstances, the Select Committee, over which Burgoyne presided, made Clive their more especial object of attack. They drew forth into the light of day several transactions certainly not well formed to bear it, as the forgery of Admiral Watson's signature, and the fraud practised on Omichund. But at the same time they could not shut out the lustre of the great deeds he had performed. Clive himself was unsparingly questioned, and treated with slight regard. As he complains, in one of his speeches: "I, their hum"ble servant, the Baron of Plassey, have been examined 'by the Select Committee more like a sheep-stealer than 166 a Member of this House!" And he adds, with perfect truth: "I am sure, Sir, if I had any sore places about me they would have been found: they have probed me "to the bottom; no lenient plasters have been applied to "heal; no, Sir, they were all of the blister kind, pre"pared with Spanish flies, and other provocatives!"

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On this and some other occasions Clive spoke in his own defence in a frank and fearless spirit, with great energy of language, and, it would seem, with great effect

* Letter to Mr. Call, January 19. 1768. Malcolm's Life, vol. iii. p. 219.

upon the House. He was likewise happy in the friendship and assistance of Mr. Wedderburn, then SolicitorGeneral. It was in May, 1773, that the charges against him, till then vague and undefined, were brought forward as a vote of censure by Burgoyne. To the Government it became an open question. The Attorney-General spoke strongly on the side of the accusers. The SolicitorGeneral conducted the defence. A great number of placemen and King's Friends took the part of Clive, while the Prime Minister, Lord North, walked into the lobby against him. In the result, the first Resolutions of Burgoyne, alleging certain matters of fact that could scarcely be denied, were carried. But the next, which charged Lord Clive by name with having abused his powers, and set an evil example to the servants of the public, did not pass. At length, as the dawn was slowly breaking on the last of these long and stormy, and in many parts confused, debates, the House agreed almost unanimously to some words which Wedderburn moved: "That Robert Lord Clive did at the same time render "great and meritorious services to his country."

But

Such a vote might perhaps be deemed almost a verdict of acquittal. Certainly, at least, it showed a wise reluctance to condemn. It closed the whole case, and Clive had no further Parliamentary attack to fear. the previous taunts and injuries appear to have sunk deep into his haughty mind. Nor was a life of ease, however splendid, congenial to his active temper. In his sumptuous halls of Claremont, or beneath the stately cedars of his park, he was far less really happy than amidst his former toils and cares, on the tented plains of the Carnatic or in the council-chambers of Bengal. Moreover, through the climate of the tropics, his health was most grievously impaired. He had to undergo sharp and oft-recurring spasms of pain, for which opium only could afford him its treacherous and transitory aid. At length, in November 1774, at his house in Berkeley Square, this great man, for such he surely was, fell by his own hand. He was not yet fifty years of age; and the contest in North America was just then beginning to hold forth to him a new career of active exertion,-a new chaplet of honourable fame.

INDIA.]

DEATH OF CLIVE.

241

To the last, however, he appears to have retained his serene demeanour, and the stern dominion of his will. It so chanced, that a young lady, an attached friend of his family, was then upon a visit at his house in Berkeley Square, and sat, writing a letter, in one of its apartments. Seeing Lord Clive walk through, she called to him to come and mend her pen. Lord Clive obeyed her summons, and taking out his penknife fulfilled her request; after which, passing on to another chamber, he turned the same knife against himself. This tale, though traditional, has a high contemporary voucher. It was related by the Earl of Shelburne, afterwards the first Marquis of Lansdowne, to the person from whom I received it.