§ Sir Thomas Turtonrose to bring forward his promised motion respecting the determination formed by the Court of East India Directors, to the peremptory recal of those persons whose appointments to India as Cadets and Writers were procured by corrupt or clandestine influence. The hon. bart. argued at length on what he termed the cruelty and injustice of not only recalling those persons from India, after years of faithful service, but totally ruining their future prospects, by declaring them incapable of being again employed in the East India Company's service; to the preparation for which, the whole education and study of their youth had been, devoted. Some of the persons who now became subject to this harsh sentence were young men of first-rate talents, who had carried out with them certificates of being the most accomplished proficients in the Eastern languages ever sent put from England. If any charge of criminality was fairly incurred in these cases, it was not by the parties doomed to be the victims, but by their friends who negotiated, and the Directors who procured their appointments; the persons themselves were not apprized that any risk was attached to these appointments, or that circumstances in the mode of their attainment might render them nugatory; of which it would have been no more than justice to apprize them, in order that they might have been induced to make minute and cautious in- 1072 quiry before they undertook the trouble and expence of a voyage to India, and devoted some of the best years of their youth to pursuits from which they must now be cut off, for facts of which they would receive the first intimation with the order for their recal. This determination he said, was founded upon a Resolution of a Report so long since as 1796. But even if the parties then injured were apprized of any law which made the places liable to forfeiture that were obtained by purchase or corrupt influence, it was not very natural for them to conceive the Company seriously intended the rigorous inforcement of such a law, when they every day saw advertisements in the public prints, for the open sale and purchase of such appointments, without any public or avowed discountenance from the Court of Directors. The hon. bart. concluded by moving, "That this house do not concur with the determination on the part of the Court in the Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Abuse of East-India Patronage, as far as it related to the immediate necessity of recalling, and declaring incapable of holding any future situations, those persons, who, though either innocent or ignorant of the means by which their situations were procured, would be thus visited by a measure of severity equally repugnant to British justice and the rights of humanity."
§ Mr. R. Dundasvindicated the conduct of the Court of Directors in the determination they had felt it their duly to adopt, however painful to their private feelings, but to which they were bound by every sense of official obligation. The hon. baronet was in an error when he stated that this determination of the Directors was founded upon an obsolete Resolution of 1796: for the Directors had long since resolved to pass over in amnesty all the appointments improperly obtained previously to that date. Equally erroneous was the hon. baronet's statement, that the public were not sufficiently apprized of the determination of the Directors upon this subject, or that any person could fairly plead ignorance in excuse; for not only had a positive act of parliament passed upon the subject, authorizing the court of directors to recal any of their servants in India whom they might see cause to recal; but so lately as the year 1806, they announced in the London Gazette, and in all the London and British provincial newspapers, the determination to annul every appointment in their service, which should 1073 appear to be obtained by clandestine or surreptitious means. But if, at the first moment that the Court of Directors, after a long and diligent inquiry, were enabled to discover the appointments thus improperly obtained, parliament was to interfere and prevent them from carrying into effect their resolution; and the offence was to pass with impunity in the only quarter where it could be punished with exemplary effect, it would be in vain for the Directors to pass any resolution, or lay down any law for the prevention of such abuses. For these reasons, not seeing the house of commons in any degree bound to adopt the proposition, he would, out of respect to the hon. baronet, rather than oppose him by a direct negative, move the previous question.
§ Mr. Bankesspoke in favour of the Report of the Committee, and thought that the house should pause before they would interfere with the Court of Directors. He called upon the house to recollect, that the act invested in the Court those powers which the present Resolution went to interfere with. He said that it was quite futile to make the provisions which had been made, if they were to be frittered away by excepting the sons of the persons who had purchased those situations. As, therefore, the motion appeared to him to have a tendency to interfere with the Court of Directors and the Act of Parliament, he should vote against the motion.
§ Mr. Windhamsaid that he could not help adverting to that subject upon which, on a former night, he had occasion to make some observations. He meant that sort of outrageous virtue, that, while it laid claim to immaculate purity for itself, went beyond all bounds in venting its vengeance against the alledged criminality of others. This was too much the principle in the present case. In this way of overdoing justice, gentlemen seemed to argue in the same way the great king of Prussia did; who, when a soldier in a fresh breeze had his hat blown oft^ had the soldier severely punished for this accident: and it certainly was observed afterwards, that whether the man was innocent or not, fewer hats fell off' afterwards. He, however, was not for arguing in this manner in Order to justify the punishing the innocent, which lie took to be impossible. And indeed, before any such absurd principle was resorted to, cuncta prius tentanda. Every means should be tried to get at the end desired, before they should adopt so 1074 harsh and unjust a mode as was suggested by the Report of the Committee. He should vote for the original motion.
§ Mr. Wallace,objected to the Resolution, because he could see no good to arise from it. The substantial object of the motion was to be relieved from the Resolution of the Directors, which the house could not effect by such a measure; and it would be most unconstitutional to attempt, by a Resolution of that house, to overawe the Directors in the due discharge of the duty vested solely in them by act of Parliament. It would, in fact, be to do away, by one branch of the legislature, what had been enacted by all the three branches, who had left the whole power of sending out and recalling their servants, entirely to the discretion of the Directors of the East India Company. The hon. baronet thought the Resolution of the Directors should at present be only prospective, but if that were to be the case, how could they, after what had passed, suppose that it would be more effectual than it had been on former occasions? He should therefore give it his negative.
§ Mr. Stephenspoke in favour of the motion. He said, that when this matter of the traffic in East India Patronage first came accidentally before the house, he had given it us his opinion, that the house, in appointing a Committee, went out of its province, and had no more business to interfere than they had with the conduct of the clerks of the Bank of England; but having once so far interfered, and the Committee, from feelings of a proper indignation, having expressed a strong opinion on the transaction, he thought it would be bat fair and reasonable in the house now to give their opinion on that part of the Report of the Committee, in order to neutralize the matter, and that the house might leave the question where they found it, and that the Directors might be at liberty to act as they thought proper after it. He coincided in opinion with Mr. Windham, and thought the Resolution of the hon. baronet not only an act of humanity, but of strict justice. He dwelt with considerable feeling on the hardship of ruining young men who had suffered the unspeakable torment of having torn themselves from their nearest and dearest relatives, friends, and from their native country, for the purpose of rising in the world; whose prospects would perhaps be just beginning to brighten upon them, when they would receive their recal, for 1075 an act done by their father or guardian, to which they were no parties, but altogether ignorant of any thing having been done amiss. Was it to the father who gave the money they were to be brought back? Alas! no—the father might be dead before their return, and it might be to the sorrowing arms of a widowed mother, who looked to him as the prop of her old age; or to those of destitute sisters, who would behold in him an object of beggary and ruin. He was a total stranger to all the parties who could be affected by the resolution of the Directors; but, from the circumstances he had mentioned, he could not refuse his support to the present motion.
Mr. Grant(the Chairman of the East India Company) went into an historical account of the proceedings of the Court of Directors since the year 1798, in which he enumerated the various reasons for entering into the Resolutions in 1799 and 1806, respecting the sale and traffic of East India Patronage, and said the Directors thought themselves bound to adhere to the letter as well as spirit of them. The power had been invested in them by the Committee, and if taken out of their hands it must weaken, and in the end destroy, the establishment. When the matter of there having been improper practices first came out before the house, it was very warmly taken up; a Committee was appointed to inquire into the business, and the daily papers teemed with comments and reflections, to the tendency of which the Directors could not be insensible. The learned gent, who spoke last had said, that he supported the motion because the Resolution proposed by it would neutralize the report of the Committee. He for his own part could not, however, see how it was so to operate; because the Directors did not form their Resolution on that Report, but from a conviction in their own minds that it was absolutely necessary. He had no authority from the Court to express their sentiments; but he could say for himself, that unless the opinion of the house should be peremptory and expressed as a kind of command on the Directors, he, for his own part, having acted from conscientious motives, and done what he thought the welfare and best interest of the Company required, could not alter his opinion on the subject. As to the argument of inhumanity, it certainly applied to the parents of the young men who are gone out, who knew they were acting 1076 wrong in giving money For such places, and by no means to the Court of Directors. He should therefore oppose the motion.
§ Mr. Fremantlesaid the Resolution was not meant to be imperative; it was no mandate, but merely the opinion of the house on the Report of one of its Committees. He thought the Resolution a very proper one, and called for not only as an act of humanity, but of strict justice, and as such it should have his vote.
The Chancellor of the Exchequerthought the motion, as worded, clearly told the Directors they had acted contrary not only to the principles of British justice, but also contrary to the common rights of humanity. He thought if the house adopted the Resolution, they ought to go further, and tell the Directors, that they have not only acted wrong, but must rescind their Resolution and blot it out of their book. The hon. baronet must, surely, mean that; or else, master as he had often proved himself to be of language, he would never have worded the motion as he had dons. The hon. baronet, and all those who supported the motion, had advanced the same arguments; had all contended there was not sufficient notice. He insisted on the contrary, that the Resolutions of 1799 and 1806, published as they had been in the Gazette, provincial papers, and in all the instructions of the Court of Directors, were fully sufficient. It had been said the house did not want to interfere with the powers of the Directors, but only to neutralize them. He thought the house could do no such thing, but that the effect must be what he had stated. The Directors had, in his opinion, fairly drawn the line; they had confined themselves to the facts last brought to light, and no one would suffer by the resolution but those who had used those illegal practices since 1806, which was no great length of time. For one, he thought the house ought not to interfere with the Directors, who had acted only in a responsible situation), in such a manner as to prevent the patronage of the Company from being abused. He must therefore oppose the motion.
Sir Samuel Romillysaw no impropriety in that he use coining to any Resolution upon a Report of their Committee; but he saw great injustice in the mode of procedure recommended for the recall of those gentlemen, whom they could not put into the same places here, of which they deprived them in India, though avowedly innocent of the offence they wished to put a 1077 stop to. Not to dwell upon the sacrifice of health, friends, and connections, which they had submitted to, the injustice itself was sufficiently flagrant without dwelling upon any other consideration; what, would they say of those legislators who should enact the punishment of the children of those offenders who had fled their country, in order to avoid the consequence of their crimes? The cases were parallel, for in the present instace they were going to punish the children for the offences of the father. But he confessed, he did not know how well to account for the great display of austere justice; gentleman on the other side seemed so ambitious to make, and in that house, too, in their places in parliament, and above all in that very session of parliament—a session in the course of which those austere notions of justice had been so softened down and accommodated to existing circumstances—a session in which there had been so much of generous allowance and clemency, and where such abundant room was made for the locus penitentiœ! [Hear! hear!] The offenders, to be sure, were rather of a higher order than that of a humble Cadet. But, surely such rigorous proceedings did not become that house in that instance against those avowedly innocent, when in a case in which a Secretary of State was the accused, they thought it right to go no farther in it, because it was possible that as he did not complete the crime, he might have haply repented before he would have completed it. If in that and other instances they thought it better to look rather to the future than the past, why should they think differently now? When even in the case of Mr. Beauchamp Hill, who was charged with receiving bribes, to connive at frauds in the revenue, they had thought it best to overlook what was gone by, upon what principle of consistency could they now adopt a course of such implacable severity towards the innocent.
The Attorney Generalsaid, he could not but think the opinion just given by his learned friend, had been adopted merely to introduce the observations he had made. He restated the arguments of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and said, the only question was, whether the house should by the Resolution, intimate to the Directors that they ought to rescind their Resolution. If this motion was adopted, it must have that effect; and he should therefore oppose it.
§ Mr. Peter Moorespoke shortly in favour of the motion. He said three Writerships had been disposed of. Who gave these Writerships? Mr. Thellusson. Who sold them? Mr. Woodford, his relation, to whom he gave them. Mr. Woodford had been obliged to leave the country, and Mr. Thellusson was turned out of the Direction. The Directors had punished those who were guilty, and they had done enough. Any thing more would be to visit the sins of the fathers on the children, and he should therefore vote for the motion.
§ Mr. Lushingtonwas so confident that the Cadets would suffer no injustice from the Court of Directors, that he would vote for the previous question.
Mr. Hutchinsonpaid a tribute to sir Samuel Romilly, and commented on the happy applications of that learned gentleman's great abilities, to the proceedings of that house during the present sessions.
§ Mr. H. Smithwas for the previous question.
§ Mr. N. Vansittartexpressed a wish that the Court of Directors would reconsider their determination.
§ Mr. H. Thorntonsaid, though the rule might in strictness be thought a harsh one, still as under the controul of the Directors it would experience relaxation, he thought the motion was unnecessary.
§ Sir T. Turtonthen replied. He said, that it was admitted that the rule ought to be relaxed, but if it was so harsh a one, why should it not rather be given up altogether? He denied that his Resolution had any tendency to interfere with the powers of the Court of Directors or with the acts of parliament. It was a Resolution upon a passage in a Report of their Committee, and it was every way competent for them to discuss and decide upon it.
The house then divided, when the Resolution of sir Thomas Turton was negatived, the numbers being,
| Ayes | 35 |
| Noes | 77 |
| Majority against it | 42 |