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ther under col. Popham, and a very con- | well-informed men thought he would be siderable detachment under col. Pearce, ruined by the contract. The fact howin the Carnatic. The explanations alluded ever was, that he very honourably and to by the right hon. gentleman were be- fairly acquired a fortune by it. Mr. Griffore the House, though not printed: he fith had the Patna contract; and Mr. Wildid not, however, desire to postpone the ton, a gentleman who lived in col. Mondecision of the question on that account; son's family, had the Bengal contract for another opportunity would offer, when he one year; before the close of that year trusted it would fully appear, that the the governor-general and council, without second bullock contract was a necessary advertising for proposals, gave it them on and an economical measure; whereas the the same terms for one year more; and first, being on such low terms, was merely then in 1777 it was given to Mr. Mackenzie a deception; the hon. gentleman (Mr. on the same terms, as a matter of favour, Francis) having himself allowed that bul- for three years: he had the Patna and locks had always been pressed on the Bengal contract. And now, the Major movement of any part of the army. said, he came to a circumstance which both the hon. baronet and the right hon. gentleman (Mr. Pitt) had totally omitted. The Court of Directors were undoubtedly well pleased, that by the attention of Mr. Hastings they had acquired a great revenue, from a source which never produced one before; but in their letter of Dec. 1778 they expressed their displeasure, that it had not a second time been put up to auction and given to the lowest bidder: this letter arrived in Bengal in Dec. 1779; but a transaction took place in May 1780, which was totally sunk on all sides. In Feb. 1780, a coalition took place between Mr. Hastings and Mr. Francis, which, the Major said, he was a little instrumental in bringing about, and had lamented it, since it had not gone on so happily as some other coalitions in this country. Mr. Mackenzie was the intimate friend of Mr. Francis, and in May 1780, having previously concerted the matter, he wrote a letter to the governor-general and council, requesting the opium contract for one year more, making four years. The order of the Directors was then before the governor-general and council for putting it up to auction: but was it noticed? No. The whole board, then consisting of Mr. Hastings, Mr. Francis, and Mr. Wheler, without a word of debate, without even an allusion to this order, gave it to Mr. Mackenzie. It was avowedly a matter of patronage at all times, and, as such, given

As to the opium contract, he would state that fairly and fully; it was a subject that could not, and should not, be misunderstood: it was a fact that opium always had been, and always must be, a monopoly in the time of the Mahomedan government it was a monopoly, and given to favoured individuals. From the time we acquired influence, it was a monopoly in the hands of the civil servants of the Company at Patna; not a secret monopoly, not a transaction committed in the dark, but as openly and avowedly taken, as a perquisite of office, as any fee attached to any patent office in this country-perfectly known to the government of Bengal, and perfectly known to the Court of Directors at home; so it continued till Mr. Hastings came to the government in April 1772. He was the first who made the Company participators in this monopoly; not in consequence of orders from home; but he himself created the revenue for them: and it appears by papers upon the table, that during his administration, though the Company gained above 500,000. by the monopoly, still it was a great advantage to individuals. The first year the Company took a certain number of chests to send to Balambangan at 400 rupees a chest; the second year they took all the produce of the province, for which they paid 320 rupees a chest. In 1775 the governor-general and council advertised for sealed proposals for furnish-away to a connexion of the hon. gentleing all the opium of Bengal and Bahar on the Company's account, and the contracts were given to the lowest of thirteen who sent in proposals. Here, then, was the fair price fixed: the hon. gentleman (Mr. Francis) declared, that he should be against concluding the contract on too low terms; and he well remembered, that Mr. Griffith's terms were so low, that many

man's, not to a friend of Mr. Hastings; and he trusted, that if Mr. Hastings was to be censured, the censure should begin from May 1780, when, with the Directors' orders before them Mr. Hastings, Mr. Wheler, and Mr. Francis, gave the contract to Mr. Mackenzie for one year, after he had held it for three. He neither wished to blink the question, nor to dis

avow, his opinion of it; for he thought so much merit was due to Mr. Hastings for creating such a revenue for the Company, that he should be excused for still thinking it a good thing to the person who held it.

He now came to the next stage of this contract, and he called the attention of Mr. Francis to a fact that he had been told lately by Mr. Sullivan, who had called upon him, of his own accord, to communicate every circumstance of this opium business, and had given him permission to state it. In Sept. 1780 Mr. Sullivan arrived in Bengal; in October, having been told, as the Major concluded, that the opium contract was a good thing, he asked Mr. Hastings to give him his interest for it on the same terms it was then held, at the expiration of Mr. Mackenzie's contract. Mr. Hastings told him he would, but that he was under an engagement to permit another gentleman to have a proportion of it: this gentleman was Mr. Tighlman, a relation of the hon. gentleman (Mr. Francis), who then lived in his family, and went home with him in the same ship. Mr. Sullivan, in consequence of this information, waited upon Mr. Tighlman, and agreed to give him 25,000 rupees for his share of the contract; for this sum Mr. Sullivan gave a bond, and at the end of a year paid the money to Messrs. Hay and Ducarell on Mr. Tighlman's account. Mr. Sullivan has declared, that Mr. Tighlman had assured him before his embarkation, that he had communicated the matter to Mr. Francis. The Major said he would leave the facts with the committee: the matter was notorious, that the opium contract was an affair of favour and patronage; a great revenue was created for the Company; but still a very good thing was left for the disposal of the government of Bengal; and he was confident the merit of creating such a revenue would weigh with the world against the demerit of not reducing the contract still lower than the lowest of thirteen offers. The Major said, he felt himself quite free to declare his opinion upon these contracts; he had no concern in any of them-nor in any transaction out of the line of his profession, except one, which was highly honourable, and advantageous to the Company, and would have been of some advantage to himself, if the Court of Directors had not undone the deed, by which the Company sustained a considerable loss: the transaction he alluded to was undertaken with

the hon. gentleman's concurrence and approbation, whose relation, Mr. Tighl man, had an equal share in it with himself. Mr. Francis adduced several passages from the minutes, to prove that Mr. Has tings, in regard to Mr. Belli's contract, had acted inconsistently with his own principles, and in direct opposition to his (Mr. Francis's) opinion of what was fit. He declared that he was ever against the infamous mode in which the opium contracts were given; that he had always pronounced his opinion against them; and that when it was first given to Mr. Mackenzie, he was absent a hundred miles from Calcutta. In regard to the circumstance of his relation, Mr. Tighlman's participation, he declared upon his honour, that he knew nothing of the circumstance until he came to England. He was not accessary to his obtaining it. Mr. Tighlman had the interest of Mr. Wheler, and through him he imagined that he obtained the promise from Mr. Hastings. As to himself, he dared Mr. Hastings and the Major to prove, that it was, in the most oblique way, through his means that Mr. Tighlman got the promise. His memory might not at all times furnish him with the clear circumstances of every fact suddenly started in debate; but on such points he had a stronger reliance than on his memory-he relied on his principles, which, during all the time he was in India, preserved him from any direct or indirect traffic of corruption, either for himself or others. But what would the House now say to the open confession made by the hon. major, that Mr. Hastings had given this contract away as a boon, for the purpose of influence? This was the most open and barefaced acknowledgment of corruption he had ever heard; and he left Mr. Hastings to thank the hon. member for the service he had rendered him by the declaration.

Major Scott said, he had the fact from Mr. Sullivan, and not from Mr. Hastings; and he declared, that he had meant nothing improper with respect to the hon. gentleman (Mr. Francis).

Mr. Le Mesurier spoke against the motion, but confessed that he could not defend the principles on which several of the contracts had been made.

Mr. Dempster said, he had attended very closely to the whole progress of the debate. He had not been able to collect that there was any direct charge of corruption against Mr. Hastings himself, or

that he had been benefited by putting money into his own pocket. With respect to Mr. Sullivan's contract, he denied that it had been given to that gentleman on account of his father being chairman of the Court of Directors, but in consequence of the very old intimacy which had taken place between them. The father had been in straits; the son had returned from Ireland, where he had resided for some time, and had disposed of a place which he held, to supply his father's wants. In this state he went out to India, and Mr. Hastings had provided for him. These facts he was well acquainted with, and he wished the committee to attend to them. He was also desirous that the committee might adjourn the consideration of the business till such time as it could consult the voluminous papers which had so recently been laid upon the table. As to the monopoly of opium, he was perfectly against it. Monopoly never produced any advantage; it weakened and depressed the spirit of mankind; in India it had been the cause of the worst effects, for the miserable ryots had often been obliged to destroy the rice which they had previously sown for the purpose of planting poppies.

Mr. Vansittart explained to Mr. Dempster, that a regulation had taken place in India fifteen years since, by which the inhabitants were not obliged to cultivate the poppy.

The Committee then divided on the question, that the words contained in Mr. Burke's amendment do stand part of the motion: Ayes, 66; Noes, 57:-Majority in favour of Mr. Burke's amendment, 9. The Committee then divided on the main question, including both Mr. Pitt and Burke's amendments: Ayes, 60; Noes, 26-Majority for the impeachment on the amended motion, 34.

Debate in the Commons on the Consolidation Bill.] March 7. Mr. Rose reported from the Committee of the whole House, to whom it was referred to take into consideration so much of his Majesty's Speech to both Houses, upon the 23rd of January last, as relates to simplifying the Public Accounts in the various branches of the Revenue, the Resolutions which the committee had come to. The said Resolutions (2537 in number) were then read and agreed to by the House; after which, Mr. Pitt moved, "That a Bill be brought in pursuant to the said Resolutions.”

Sir Grey Cooper observed, that in the debate on the Address to the Crown on the Commercial Treaty, he gave his opinion, which he was now more and more confirmed in, that the first, if not the sole object of that Address, was to pledge and bind that House, to the entire approbation of the whole Treaty, and to attempt to preclude any farther discussion of the principle on which it was founded, or any ulterior question on the detail of the tariff, and the other articles, to which the King, by his prerogative alone, could not give validity and effect: but whatever attempts might be made to bend the forms of parliamentary proceedings, to serve the purposes of a favourite measure, or a particular occasion, or to suprise that House into an approbation of a sudden project, he was persuaded that no address, contrivance, or management, could prevail so far as to alter the settled rules and orders, which, by the long and uniform practice of Parliament, were in such cases the law of the land, and which the House was, in its legislative capacity, bound to adhere to in all its proceedings, and particularly in the passing of bills. If this were so, whatever might be the view of those who proposed and supported the Address, he contended, that it was still competent for every member, in every stage of the proceeding, before the Bill for carrying the Treaty into execution should have passed the House, to state any doubts, or to offer any objections which he might continue to have to the whole or any part of the Treaty, or which he might have discovered since the Address was voted. But another impediment was about to be thrown in the way of the free discussion of this great and most important measure. The Resolutions which were voted in the committee of the whole House, appointed to consider of the Treaty, had since been referred to the committee for preparing the Resolutions for the basis of the Bill for simplifying and consolidating the duties of customs and excise. He felt it impossible to avoid condemning the manœuvre of endeavouring to swallow up the few Resolutions respecting the Commercial Treaty, in the multiplied consideration of 3700 Resolu tions, which would be produced by the plan for consolidating the customs. The former were as drops of water in the great ocean of the latter; and it might be said of them, in the language of the poet,

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Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto." Notwithstanding that, the Chancellor of

the Exchequer had given them a separate schedule, as a sort of plank to float upon. This separate schedule inclined him to hope that the tariff duties would have been brought before the House in a separate Bill; but he was sorry to find, by the motion of the right hon. gentleman, that this was not his intention. It seemed to him, that the continuing to keep the Resolutions for carrying the French Treaty into execution, blended, incorporated, and confounded in the same Bill, with the vast multitude which formed the Consolidation Bill, was an unfair and unparliamentary restraint on the freedom of voting. If it had not happened, by a singular and whimsical concurrence of circumstances, that in the same session, and almost at the same time, when this great innovation in the commerce of the kingdom was proposed to Parliament, the Bill, which had been long in contemplation, had not been brought forward for simplifying the collection, and consolidating the duties of customs, and as a basis and groundwork for which it became necessary to re-consider, re-cast, and re-vote the whole mass of duties, and to ascertain what integral sum should be demanded hereafter on each specific article imported, exported, or carried coastwise-if it had not been for this fortuitous circumstance, there must necessarily have been a separate and distinct Bill moved for rendering effectual the tariff of the French Treaty, and whatever other articles wanted the aid of Parliament to give them energy and effect. Advantage had been taken of this eventand, as it appeared to him, an unfair and unparliamentary advantage-to keep the Treaty as much as possible out of the sight and out of the mind of the House. The subject matter of opening a commercial intercourse with France on certain reciprocal stipulations, had no relation to, or connexion with, the matter of the Consolidation Bill, except in one point, and in so far as it respected the settlement of the duties which every article of commerce was to pay in future. That being done and adjusted, the subjects were perfectly different and unconnected. What had the policy or principle of a commercial treaty with France to do with a plan calculated for the ease of the merchants in making their entries and paying their duties? He was aware that it had been but too much practised in that House, to put together, in the same Bill, propositions and clauses which had no immediate relation to each t

other: he had always thought that bills, which were called hodge-podge bills, were contrary to the spirit of parliamentary order, and ought to be avoided as much as possible. But in those cases, the propositions taken separately were seldom liable to any objection in either House; yet, to do this in cases where it was known that one of the component parts of the Bill would be opposed in the progress, and that many members in that House, as well as the other, might wish to vote for the rejection of the French Treaty, though not in any respect to oppose, much less to reject the Consolidation Bill; it was in effect to prevent both Houses from exercising the privilege which they had, as branches of the Legislature, to give their dissent to a proposition of which they disapproved, which they could not freely do, if they must, by the same vote, reject a measure which they all considered to be of the highest public advantage. Under the circumstances of the case, both Houses stood nearly in the same predicament. That House could not, it was admitted, alter or amend any part of the tariff, except for the purpose of rejecting the Treaty; and therefore the restraint even in the case of that Bill, which was certainly a money bill, was equal in both Houses. Upon this grouud, he thought himself justified in moving an amendment to the motion, by inserting after the word bill,' the words or bills.'

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Mr. Rose contended, that it would be infinitely more convenient for the whole to go in one bill, than to divide the Resolutions respecting the French Treaty, and put them into distinct bills. Gentlemen would recollect, that as the laws now stood, the duties on the import of French goods, &c. were considerably higher than the duties on the import of the goods of other countries. Unless, therefore, the whole was put into one bill, there must necessarily be two new books of rates made out, and one printed to each bill; a circumstance which could not but be productive of the greatest inconvenience to the merchants, and to every person concerned in importation. On the other hand, the uniting the two subjects in one Bill would not, as had been suggested, preclude the freedom of debate, since every man would have full liberty to object to any one resolution.

Mr. Hussey observing that there should .be two bills, added, that unless very solid grounds of inconvenience to the mer

chants could be stated, he saw no reason why the bills should not be as distinct as the subjects were. The hon. gentleman had said, that if there were, then two books of rates must be printed, and one annexed to each bill. He saw no great force in that objection. If the mere expense of printing was thought an objection, it ought not, in his mind, to be of much weight in matters of such infinite importance as both of the subjects undoubtedly were. As to the idea of gentlemen having a right to object to any one resolution during the progress of the Bill, and take the sense of the House upon it, it appeared to him to be next to an impossibility; for who could attend a bill comprehending 3700 Resolutions through all its stages?

Mr. Sheridan remarked, that there was no reason why there should not be two bills: it was a mere pretence: the real cause of blending the two subjects was in order to preclude objections to the Resolutions relative to the French Treaty. With regard to the argument of difficulty and inconvenience which would arise if there were two bills, he denied that it had been made out. The only argument advanced had been, that, in such a case, there must be two different books of rates. What difficulty would that occasion? The book of rates was already made out, and consequently there would only be the trouble of making out a fresh copy.

Mr. Martin observed that, having given his vote in favour of the Treaty, he meant to support it, because he really believed it likely to be attended with beneficial consequences; but he thought there was so much weight in what had fallen from the hon. gentleman opposite, that unless some more substantial proof of the inconvenience which would arise from having two bills instead of one could be given, he must vote for the amendment.

The question being put, that the words or bills' be there inserted, the House divided:

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"His Majesty, being desirous of conferring a mark of his royal favour on sir John Skynner, knight, late Lord Chief Baron of his Majesty's Court of Exchequer, in consideration of his diligent and meritorious services, and of his faithful and upright conduct in the execution of that office, recommends it to his faithful Commons, to consider of enabling his Majesty to grant an annuity of 2000l. per annum, clear of all deductions whatever, to the said sir John Skynner, during the term of his natural life, to be paid out of his Majesty's Civil List Revenues. "G. R."

March 21. The House having resolved itself into a committee on the above Message,

Mr. Pitt solicited the attention of the House to a proposal which would, doubtless, meet a general concurrence, from the very high esteem in which the learned judge, on whose behalf it came, was universally considered from his uncommon talents and distinguished integrity. Sir John Skynner, late Chief Baron of the Exchequer, was now in an advanced period of life. The state of his health rendered it necessary for him to withdraw his services from that situation which he had so long and so eminently sustained; but the manner in which he did it, corresponded fully with the propriety of his general conduct. Having so ably filled this arduous post, he resigned on terms of such unprecedented liberality as was worthy of imitation, and should be remembered with his merits. Mr. Pitt now moved, "That the chairman be directed to move the House, that leave be given to bring in a Bill to enable his Majesty to grant a certain annuity to sir John Škynner, knight, late Lord Chief Baron of his Majesty's Court of Exchequer, in consideration of his diligent and meritorious services, and of his faithful and upright conduct in the execution of that office.'

Mr. Burke said, that having so frequently interfered in matters of supply, it might not be superfluous in him to observe, that there never came a proposal for a grant on better principles of acknowledged service and merit than the present; for, never was an office so exalted and laborious, filled with more diligence and integrity, and resigned with more dignity. [3 B]

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