Sitting of 10 May 1811

PETITION OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.
A Petition of the United Company of merchants of England trading to the East Indies, was presented and read; setting forth; "That, by an act of the 37th year of his present Majesty, to enable the said company to raise money by further increasing their capital stock, and to extend the provisions existing respecting the present stock of the Company to the said increased stock; after reciting, that the affairs of the petitioners required a permanent advance of a considerable sum of money beyond what the petitioners could raise under the powers then vested in them by law, they are authorised and empowered to raise money by enlarging their then capital stock or fund of 6,000,000 l, to any sum or sums not exceeding the further sum of 2,000,000 l. capital stock, so that their whole capital stock should not exceed the capital sum of 8,000,000 l; and that, by an act passed in the 47th year of his present Majesty, to enable the East, India Company to raise money upon bond instead of increasing their capital stock, after reciting the said act of the 37th year of his Majesty, and that the petitioners had not then enlarged their capital stock under and by virtue of the powers contained in the last-mentioned act, it is enacted that it should be lawful to and for the petitioners, by and with the approbation and consent of the board of commissioners for the affairs of India for the time being, at any time or times thereafter, to borrow upon bonds, to be issued under their common seal, any further sum or sums of money not exceeding, in the whole, the sum of 2,000,000 l. over and above such sum and sums as the petitioners could then lawfully raise on their bonds, and to apply the money so to be borrowed and raised for such purposes as under and by virtue of the said act of the 37th year of his, Majesty the money to be raised by enlarging the capital stock of the petitioners was

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applicable; and by the said act it is provided that when the petitioners should nave raised any part of the money which they were thereby authorised to raise by bond, then, so long as such further bond, debt, or any part thereof, should continue, all the money thereafter to be raised, by enlarging the capital stock of the petitioners under and by virtue of the act passed in the 37th year of his Majesty, should be applied towards the reduction of the bond debt of the petitioners until it should be reduced to the sum which the petitioners might then lawfully raise by bond; and in case the petitioners should enlarge their capital stock under and by virtue of the act passed in the 37th year of his Majesty before they should have increased their bond debt under the authority of the act now in recital, that then the sum which they were thereby empowered to raise on bond should be reduced by the sum of 200 l. sterling in respect of every 100 l. capital stock so enlarged, and so in proportion for a greater or less amount of the capital stock which should have been created; and that, since the passing of the last-mentioned act, the petitioners, with such approbation and consent as therein is mentioned, have borrowed upon bonds issued under their common seal such further sum of money as they were thereby empowered to borrow and raise; but they have not yet increased their capital stock under and by virtue of the said act of the 37th year of his Majesty; and that a very considerable sum, part of the debts secured by the engagements of the petitioners in the East Indies, and which was incurred by reason of territorial and political expenses in that country, has lately been discharged in India by means of bills drawn by the governments of the petitioners in the East Indies upon the court of directors of the petitioners in London, and thereby it has become necessary for the petitioners to provide in this country a much larger sum of money than in the ordinary course of their transactions can arise from the sales of their goods and the other ordinary receipts and means of the petitioners; and they would be able to raise the money so wanted upon their own credit, either upon their bonds or by increasing their capital stock under the authority of the said act of the 37th year of his Majesty, or partly in one way and partly in the other, as from time to time may appear most expedient; But they cannot increase their bond debt
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without the authority of parliament; and if they were to increase their capital stock, the money to be raised thereby would be applicable under the existing provisions of the last-mentioned act, to discharge the bond debt raised under the authority thereof; and that the petitioners are obliged by law to make out their accounts of sales of goods and other matters in this country to the 1st day of March in every year, and therefore were unable to make out their accounts and estimates so as to ascertain the probable amount of the money they would have occasion to raise in the current year till after the time limited by the. House for receiving petitions for private Bills was expired; and therefore praying the House to permit the petitioners to present a petition for leave to bring in a Bill to enable them to raise a further sum of money upon bond instead of increasing their capital stock, and to alter some of the provisions in an act passed in the 47th year of his present Majesty relative thereto."
Ordered, That Leave be given to present a Petition as desired. Then the Said Petition was presented and read; and ordered to be referred to a Committee of the whole House for Monday next.

DISTILLERIES.
The House having gone into a Committee of Ways and Means,
The Chancellor of the Exchequersaid, he supposed he had sufficiently explained in his notice of yesterday the object of his present motion, which was to provide a substitute for the duties in the Distillation Bill, that lately failed in the other House. He had to propose that a duty should be imposed on spirits distilled from grain, equal to the duty proposed to be imposed on spirits distilled from sugar. It appeared that spirits distilled from grain were in greater favour with the people of this country than those distilled from sugar. He meant, then, to propose that a duty of 4½d. per gallon should be laid on corn wash, which would yield probably a sum not less than 400,000 l. To protect our home spirits, he should also move, that an additional sum be imposed on imported spirits from abroad, with the exception of rum, which would still, however, leave the duty on rum higher than that on other spirits. There was still a more difficult question to be settled, and that was the countervailing duties on spirits between Great Britain and Ireland. The great difficulty was between Scotland and Ireland; for the counter-

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vailing duty between Great Britain and Ireland did not apply altogether to Scotland, which differed materially from England, and differed with itself in the Highlands and Low Country, so that what would be a proper countervailing duty in one district could not be so in another. The duty of 4½d. per gallon of wash or spirits in England, amounting to 1s. 11¾d. on the gallon of spirits, might be balanced by a countervailing duty of 1s. 11¾d. on spirits from Ireland; but the difference of manufacture in Scotland rendering a smaller duty necessary, and in the Highlands of Scotland still smaller, the duty of 1s. 11¾d. from Ireland to England would be more than a countervailing duty on spirits imported into Scotland. He did not know well how to meet the difficulty respecting Scotland, which had now so decided an advantage over Ireland, but so far from having any thing like the indisposition to attend to the concerns of the latter coun-
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try, with which he had been charged, he was willing to attend to every suggestion from both sides of the House, and to adopt whatever should be most agreeable to their wishes.
Upon the subject of the countervailing duties, some conversation, took place, in which sir John Newport, Mr. Hutchinson, Mr. Foster, and Mr. Western, severally stated their sentiments.
Sir John Newportthought that, in order to do away the difficulties that occurred as to drawbacks, there ought to be a Bill to make every person, who claimed drawbacks, shew that he paid as much duty as the drawbacks claimed amounted to.
Mr. Hutchinsonsuggested, that there should be a Bill to enable the Scotch distillers to warehouse spirits in the same way as in Ireland.
The several Resolutions were agreed to, and the Report was ordered to be received on Monday.

INSOLVENT DEBTORS BILL.
Upon the motion for the House to resolve itself into a Committee upon this Bill,
Lord Ellanboroughsaid, he rose for the purpose of opposing this motion, because he was satisfied the Bill was composed of such mischievous and dangerous matter as would destroy the commercial credit of the country. To the common retail dealers in trade this Bill would be absolute destruction. The creditor was entirely neglected in its provisions, and he was sure that House ought, in all its legislative acts, particularly to attend to the honest and injured creditor. If this measure passed into a law, a debtor, whatever might be his conduct, provided it were not an offence coming under the description of obtaining goods by false pretences, which was made, in some instances, a transportable offence, would have the power of claiming the benefit of it, whereby he could remain no longer in prison than six months. Was it reasonable that debts generally contracted otherwise than criminally, should be subjected to so small a degree of punishment? in addressing himself to their lordships as landholders, he would put the case—suppose they had a tenant under a lease, and he were to injure the premises, hew down and destroy a family mansion, plough up an ancient pasture, and
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use means which rendered the whole estate sterile and barren; in short, if he were to commit to the greatest extent all the acts of voluntary waste, what would their lord ships think, when, by this Bill, after they had proceeded against him, and obtained damages, he could surrender his effects, and after remaining six months in prison, walk out of gaol and laugh at his creditor? The Bill in its principle was full of vicious objections, and be should therefore oppose the motion for going into a Committee.
The Earl of Moiradeclared, such was his respect for the opinion of his noble and learned friend, that he never rose in that House to state his sentiments in opposition to such an opinion, but he felt that diffidence which made him distrust his own judgment. But on a question of this nature he had gained such experience from turning his attention to it during a succession of years, that he felt himself confident of having some clear knowledge on the subject. Could their lordships say that there were not evils of great magnitude, which this Bill went to remove? No man would pretend to state, that the noble and learned lord who introduced the measure did not mean to have it understood, this was a measure which might not require future amendment? The Bill was not that which accorded with his own notions of what it ought to be, but that would not prevent him from giving it his firm support, for he was persuaded some measure of this description was absolutely due to the justice of our laws, and was confidently expected by the people of this country. All provisions of a legislative nature, when first made, to remove abuses or evils, were experiments, because at the time of framing a law it was impossible for human foresight to calculate all its consequences, or to anticipate all its collateral bearings. But after their entry on their journals of the evils, the abominable and oppressive grievances, which had arisen out of the present practice, that House was pledged to introduce this, or a similar measure, for the purpose of removing such evils; and if they should abandon every mode of putting an end to so much cruel oppression, their characters would' be covered with indelible disgrace in the eyes of the country. The present system or practice, he contended, was a mass of rubbish and of oppression, that, ought to be entirely removed; the soil ought to be removed from under it, before, any super-

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structure of justice could be erected on its foundations. Indeed it was a system contrary to all the general principles of our law, that an individual should have it in his power, at his own will and caprice, to hold in prison, for an unlimited time, one of his fellow-subjects. His noble and learned friend had certainly mistaken the object of the Committee; for he could assert, and assert it without a possibility of contradiction, that in that Committee the same regard was equally extended to the creditor and the debtor. But would his noble and learned friend say, that it could be any satisfaction to a creditor to hold the body of his debtor in perpetual confinement? The inconveniences of this act might and would be many, which was the consequence of all legal measures, when first provided. But even if all the fanciful evils stated by his noble and learned friend, should, contrary to every probability, really occur, yet it was fair to turn our attention to the other side; for, let all the evils suggested by the unlimited fancy of imagination be put into one scale, and then let all the oppression and cruelty contained in the report be put in the other, and the evils fancied by his noble and learned friend, taking them to be well founded, would be as a feather in the balance. It had been said how this Bill would apply in respect to a tenant committing waste upon an estate; still, that was stating a particular case; and granting such a case deserved a more severe punishment, for God's sake let us provide some other legislative remedy. But would their lordships, for such a solitary objection, resist the remedy which they had pledged themselves to afford to the unfortunate debtor? Why, the debtor was a rich man, and yet he fraudulently wronged his just creditor, by refusing payment, and going to prison; and in the rules of the King's Bench he often lived in affluence and luxury, till the poor creditor, for want of his money, was ruined, and came to a gaol. Let any man read the mass of oppression detailed in the Report of the Committee; it was such that, when he asserted its existence, during the zeal which had existed for twenty years in this cause, it was scarcely credible, because the facts were so enormous and so abominable, that they could scarcely be supposed to exist. Let any one read those facts detailed, and he would defy him to deny the necessity of some legislative provision to remove them; because, if he did, it would damn his cha-
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racter for ever. Without any disrespect to his noble and learned friend (whose opinion he should ever esteem, nor should any contention like the present ever alter the high regard he had for him,) he must press the necessity of some measure like the present, and for that reason he would, support this Bill; and he did enjoin his noble and learned friend to offer them his advice and assistance, whereby the Bill might be rendered more beneficial. The dirt and rubbish of the present system must be removed, otherwise no wholesome superstructure could be erected in its place; and he thought this Bill, though not what he wished it to be, would produce that happy effect. For these reasons he opposed the motion of his noble and learned friend.
The Lord Chancellordid not intend to support the motion, as he thought it was understood the Bill should pass the Committee, and the objection to its principle might be taken in a further stage. But, indeed, there were so many objectionable parts in the Bill, and he perceived so much difficulty in amending them, that although he was not averse to its principle, yet he was afraid when it should have gone through the Committee, and should have been re-committed again, it would not be that Bill which would permit him to give it his support, in order that it might pass into a law. The machinery was such as, in his opinion, could never operate; and if it could, as it now stood, it was not likely to give relief, without also doing injury. But he would recommend to his noble and learned friend to withdraw his motion, and having made his protest against the principle, he might oppose it in a future stage.
Lord Ellenboroughwas convinced of the purity and justice of the noble earl's disposition, which had led him so often to bring this matter before the House. He meant no sort of incivility to that noble earl, for whom he had so much respect, and he might say friendship; but he must repeat, that all his experience and observation convinced him of the impropriety of passing such a Bill. The clause by which six months' imprisonment might free the debtor from his obligations was particularly obnoxious. He, therefore, using a common phrase, would only say, that he had nothing farther to add; but that he now wished to wash his hands of the business. His own time and attention I would, perhaps, be better directed to the

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discharge of his various duties in another place. As for the Report of the Committee on the Journals, he knew very little of it, and he believed that to be the case with many other noble lords. He concluded by observing, that with respect to the tendency of that document, his noble friend might have the consolation offered to a person, who expressed in his latter days some apprehension lest his writings should do injury to posterity, when the friend of that person bid him be easy on that subject, for nobody had ever read them.
It was then ordered that the motion be withdrawn, and the House went into a Committee.
Earl Stanhopesaid, he did not approve of the present Bill, though he approved of the principle en which it was founded. The noble earl then suggested several amendments to the Bill, particularly one altering the time of confinement.
Lord Redesdaleopposed this Amendment, as being contrary to the general intention of the measure.
Earl Stanhopeobserved, he should not divide the House, because it would inform the public of their empty benches. Indeed, the House was so thin that he should not press his Amendment; but there was great defect in the machinery of this Bill, and the expenses were so great that it appeared to him like an oyster when it was opened; for the lawyer would eat the inside himself, and one of the shells would be left for the debtor and the other for the creditor. The noble earl, after suggesting some other defects, said, he should leave the Bill in the hands of the noble and learned lord, who might cook it as he pleased, but if he did not admit some alterations, it would not be cooked at all to his taste.
The Earl of Moirasuggested the propriety of avoiding debate, and for the present to let the Bill proceed through the Committee.
Earl Stanhopesaid there was one defect—it did not punish the parsons—the parsons would by this Bill be freed from the confinement imposed upon others.
The Bill then passed through the Committee.
Lord Grantleyintimated the difficulty of the present Bill passing into a law and as there was an expectation justly entertained by debtors, he recommended the propriety of introducing a common Insolvent Debtors' Bill.
Lord Redesdalesaid, it would depend how the House disposed of the present Bill; but he could assure the noble lord, there was not that difficulty of execution apprehended; and it would operate as a Bill of Insolvency, for most of its provisions were exactly similar to those of the last Insolvent Debtors' Bill.