Commons Sitting of 24 June 1856

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—3°Nawab of Surat Treaty; Sardinian Loan.

NAWAB OF SURAT TREATY BILL.
Order for Third Reading read.
Motion made and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."
SIR FITZROY KELLY, in moving the third reading of the Bill, said, that after the unanswerable speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford (Mr. Cardwell), in the debate on Wednesday last, no doubt could be entertained that the East India Company had bound themselves to pay an annuity to the Nawab of Surat and his heirs. The merits of the Bill were now fully before the House, and

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he thought no one could doubt that the Company were bound to pay the annuity to the heirs general of the Nawab, and that the present claimants were entitled to receive it. He had reason, after communicating with the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Board of Control (Mr. V. Smith) to believe that the East India Company were now the only parties who opposed the rights of the heirs of the Nawab, and the passing of the present Bill.
SIR JAMES HOGGsaid, he rose to move that the Bill should be read a third time that day three months. He could only say that if the Government had come to the conclusion which the hon. and learned Gentleman, the Member for East Suffolk, had intimated, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, for every Government for the last ten years had insisted upon a totally different view. Lord Ellenborough, Lord Hardinge, Lord Ripon, Lord Broughton, and the right hon. Baronet the present First Lord of the Admiralty (Sir C. Wood), had all held that this claim had no foundation, either in law or equity; and that if the claim was now conceded the effect would he to withhold the provision now made to those members of the late Nawab's family, whose rights as heirs general had been judicially declared. He had on previous occasions contended, and was prepared to contend again, that under the treaty these parties had no right to the Nawabship, and that it was never contemplated that they should have a right. His right hon. Friend (Mr. Cardwell) spoke of a compromise. He would tell the House what that compromise was, which, in his opinion, was—not to use a harsher term—most discreditable. It had been proposed that there should be given to the present claimant and the heirs general £15,000 a year for ever. The proposal of the Government was, that the present claimant should receive the £15,000 a year for his life, but that none of the collateral heirs were to participate in that arrangement. Both the Courts of Justice and the Legislature of India had declared that those collateral heirs were entitled, by the Mahomedan law, to the whole that had been assigned to them. He would ask the House what they would say if the East India Company, or if Her Majesty's Government, were to consent to rob those collateral heirs of their property? And yet the main point of the measure now before the House was to entirely ignore the rights of those collateral heirs. He
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knew that the House of Commons, like an individual, was apt to be acted upon by impulse, but if only time were given he knew that it always came right. The statement of his right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Committee (Mr. Card-well), the other evening, had its influence; and he was aware of the disadvantage of contending against the Report of that Committee. But there was no oral evidence before the Committee; there was nothing but written evidence, so that every hon. Member having those documents before him was as competent to form an opinion as to the meaning of the treaty as the five gentlemen of that Committee. The Committee were, no doubt, placed in a difficult position, by finding that they had referred to them a case which involved considerations of public interest. But the course they ought to have taken was to report those difficulties, and have left the matter to the House. They, however, very unfortunately, as he thought, proceeded to discuss and decide the case. They had given an opinion with respect to the construction of the treaty of 1800, which the Government of India had not asked them to do. It was assuredly going beyond the constitution to call upon the House of Commons to construe treaties. Upon the Report of that Committee, however, the present Bill came before the House. The House had been told that terms of compromise had been placed before the Court of Directors; but the Court of Directors would have nothing to do with it, because it was grossly unjust to absent parties. It was true he had given his support to the second reading of the Bill, for which he was now very sorry; but be had been coerced into doing so by the Government expressing a wish to support the second reading in Order that the matter might be afterwards in some other form arranged. He had been deceived, and he never would depend again upon anything so slippery as the support of Government. Lord Wellesley had been accused of being guilty of fraud and force in obtaining possession of Surat. The papers relating to that transaction were laid before the House of Commons in 1806, on the motion of Mr. Paul, who was the man who arraigned Lord Wellesley, and if the conduct of Lord Wellesley could then have been successfully assailed for the part he had taken with regard to the treaty of 1800, Mr. Paul would have been most ready, if he could, to convict Lord Wellesley. No proceed-

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ings, however, were taken in that House against Lord Wellesley in 1806, when the transaction was recent; and surely it was not for men fifty years after to come forward and assail that nobleman. Then, with respect to the treaty itself—between whom was that treaty made? It was a treaty between the East India Company and the Nawab of Surat—between two political powers for political purposes; and no one could contend that the word "heirs" in such a treaty referred to collateral heirs, and not to the persons who should succeed to the throne. Where there was a treaty between two Sovereign Powers in which the word "heirs" occurred, it must be construed to be a treaty between those who succeeded to the sovereign authority:—the word could never be construed to mean collateral heirs. What he contended for was, that this was a treaty between two political Powers, in which the one Power agreed to give £15,000 a year to the other Power to support and maintain him in his title and dignity; the person, therefore, who took the one must take the other, so dignity and the stipend went together; and when the dignity lapsed the stipend lapsed also, as a matter of course. He felt that he had trespassed upon the House too long; but, said the hon. and learned Gentleman, I think there is my excuse (pointing to the President of the Board of Control, who sat alone on the Treasury Bench)—"the last rose of summer." Every liberality had been shown to the family of the Nawab. Meer Jaffier Ali Khan, who originally received only £1,200 a year, had had that stipend increased by order of the Court of Directors to £2,400 a year; and the aggregate allowance to him and the family of the Nawab was 84,600 rupees a year. In the part he had taken in the debates on the subject, he felt that he had only done his duty, and from a conscientious conviction that the whole of the proceedings of the Governors General of India, of successive Boards of Control, and of the Court of Directors in the matter, had been sound and just.
Amendment proposed to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months."
MR. VERNON SMITHsaid, he certainly had not any feeling of shame for the part he had taken in endeavouring to bring this question to a close. It appeared to him that the arrangement he had proposed
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was one dictated by a desire to do justice to all parties. His hon. Friend had told the House that he had rested upon the slippery support of Government; but the greater part of the embarrassment which he (Mr. V. Smith) had felt had certainly arisen from his having rested upon the slippery support of the Court of Directors. Now his hon. Friend was very much in the habit of assuming that the East India Direction was himself, and that House was in the habit of attending to him as if he spoke on behalf of the whole Court. He (Mr. V. Smith) in his position had no means of communication with the Court of Directors, except by correspondence with the Chairman and Deputy Chairman, and he could state that in every step he had taken those gentlemen completely agreed. When the hon. Member for Honiton (Sir J. Hogg) taunted him with receding from the course taken by preceding Governments, did the hon. Gentleman mean to say that, when these questions were submitted to his judgment, he was not at liberty to form his own opinion upon them? In that case all discussion and deliberation would be futile. But he utterly repudiated the doctrine. The hon. Gentleman had spoken disdainfully of compromises, but the question now under consideration had been from the earliest time nothing but one of compromise by the Indian Government; and as a question of compromise he had seen no reason why it should not still be treated. But, after all, the whole subject lay in a small compass. The only point they had to consider was, whether it ought to be treated as a legal or as a political question. Now, he had always contended that it ought to be treated as a political question; and, therefore, it was that he dissented from the Gentlemen who sat upon the Committee, because they had looked upon the treaty as a legal question only. With regard to the rights of the parties, his opinion was that, although he did not think the Indian Government were legally bound to pay the stipend to the collateral heirs of the Nawab of Surat, yet he thought they ought to deal with his heirs and descendants in a spirit of the utmost liberality, which he certainly did not think they had done on the present occasion; and he in a former debate stated that, as far as he was concerned, he was willing to extend the bounty of the Indian Government to the full amount of £15,000 a year. As to the matter of compromise, he certainly did feel so strongly against

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the Bill being treated as a Private Bill, that he said, if the Bill could be withdrawn and the thing settled out of doors, it would be by far the better course; and that with the sanction of the Court of Directors that was what he was prepared to do. Having always endeavoured to carry on the Government of India in concurrence with the Court of Directors, he sent to the Chairman of that Court the terms of compromise which he was prepared to adopt; but the Court of Directors objected to the proposition. That proposed compromise was, in his view, nothing but an extension of a previous compromise. If the Court of Directors had been anxious to come to some decision upon the question they would have fairly stated it; but their rejection of his proposal was so complete that he had nothing to do but to consider the case as it stood. The hon. Member for Honiton said, on a former occasion, that the Government ought to settle the matter by sending out a despatch to India. There was no doubt the President of the Board of Control had the power to enjoin the Court of Directors to send out a despatch, but there was one subject which ought to be carefully guarded against, and that was the subject of money. He was not prepared to say that even upon that subject, if the President of the Board of Control was desirous of exercising his power, he could not do so; but he should be very unwilling to attempt to exercise that power unless it was perfectly clear that it was his undoubted right. As to its being the duty of the Government to oppose the Bill, he thought it would be a most hopeless attempt on the part of the Government; neither was he prepared to say, after a large majority of that House had supported it, that the Bill should be stopped and not proceed any further. It would go up to another assembly on whose judgment the hon. Gentleman could perhaps be more inclined to rely than on the judgment of the House of Commons. There the question might be re-argued. Upon the whole matter he could only say, on the part of the Government, that he had acted with the utmost frankness, his only desire being that the parties making this claim should be dealt with in a spirit of the utmost generosity, and he thought that the best course for him to adopt was to leave the matter with the House and suffer the Bill to pass without opposition.
MR. G. BUTTsaid, as a Member of the Committee, he fully concurred in the state-
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ment made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chairman of that Committee (Mr. Cardwell). Much which the hon. Baronet (Sir J. Hogg) had addressed to the House had nothing whatever to do with the question that was really before the House. What the House had to do was, to consider the construction to be put upon the treaty; and considering the representations made by Governor Duncan, upon the faith of which the treaty was signed; looking at his diary, and at the despatch of Lord Wellesley, it was impossible that any one could doubt, if this were a question between A and B, that the construction which the Committee had put upon the treaty was a correct one. It was idle to talk of the construction being different, because the situation of the parties might be different; the construction must be the same, whatever might be the position of the parties.
MR. LOWEsaid, he would offer no opinion on the question that had arisen between Meer Jaffier Ali Khan and the East India Company, but there was another question of great consequence to those concerned in it, and one which involved the reputation of British justice. The case was this—the Nawab died possessed of a considerable amount of personal property, which was taken possession of by the East India Company, and by an Act of the Legislative Council (whether wisely or not it was not his business at that time to argue), the Government of Bombay made a distribution of that estate, and the distribution so made was as final and conclusive, as a decision of the House of Lords would be in this country. The Government of Bombay gave half the property to the present claimant, Meer Jaffier Ali Khan, and distributed the other half among the widow and collateral relatives of the Nawab. The money, however, had not been paid to those parties, and the Committee now, by this Bill, re-opened the question, after those persons had acquired indefeasible rights, to let in Meer Jaffier Ali Khan—represented by able counsel—to appeal, and set up a claim before the Privy Council to the other half. He did not think it would be to the credit of that House if they were to take away the allowance from those poor and unfriended relatives of the Nawab.
THE SOLICITOR GENERALsaid, that the manner in which the East India Company had carried out the treaty which they had concluded with the late Nawab of

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Surat was a violation of all justice; for they had passed a measure which gave to their own servants the absolute right to decide on the extent of their obligations under the treaty, or of the manner in which the provision made under it should be distributed. All that the Bill now before them called upon the House to determine was simply whether the East India Company should fulfil their obligations, and whether there should be an independent tribunal having the power to enforce upon the East India Company the performance of those obligations. If any party had obtained a vested interest under any judgment, his rights would not be disturbed. All that the Bill proposed to do was for providing a means for ascertaining and enforcing the rights of claimants under the treaty with the late Nawab of Surat.
SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBYsaid, that the argument of the hon. and learned Solicitor General was a denial of legislative powers to the Indian Government. He (Sir H.Willoughby) thought that an agreement would be come to on this claim if the third reading of the Bill were postponed. He was very much opposed to haste in a matter of this kind, which involved very grave consequences. Let them not imagine that this was an isolated case. It was not, and in dealing with it the House should deal with general principles. His belief was, that if the third reading of the Bill were postponed, an agreement on the matter could be come to before the expiration of twenty-four hours.
MR. MANGLESsaid, that the hon. and learned Gentleman (the Solicitor General) had entirely misinterpreted the Act of the Indian Legislature in stating that it gave the East India Company, by their own servants, the power to decide on their own duties under the treaty. That Act referred alone to the distribution of the private property of the late Nawab, in which the East India Company had no interest. He thought that the right hon. Gentleman (the President of the Board of Control) had gone further than he was authorised by the Court of Directors in proposing the compromise which he had submitted to the House.
Question put—"That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
The House divided:—Ayes 213; Noes 28: Majority 185.
Main Question put, and agreed to.
Bill read 3°, and passed.
The House at Four o'clock adjourned till Six.
The House resumed at Six o'clock, when Mr. WILKINSON presented a petition signed by 177 registered and qualified electors of West Kent, complaining of the conduct of Mr. Ogle, the revising barrister, for not allowing costs in cases of frivolous objections, and praying for an alteration of the law.
Notice taken, that forty Members were not present; House counted, and forty Members not being present,
The House was adjourned at ten minutes after Six o'clock.