penetrated into the very quarter from whence alone any real reformation can be expected.*

If, therefore, in the arduous affairs recommended to us, our proceedings should be ill adapted, feeble, and ineffectual, if no delinquency should be prevented, and no delinquent should be called to account, if every person should be caressed, promoted, and raised in power, in proportion to the enormity of his offences, if no relief should be given to any of the natives unjustly dispossessed of their rights, jurisdictions, and properties, if no cruel and unjust exactions should be forborne, -if the source of no peculation or oppressive gain should be cut off,— if, by the omission of the opportunities that were in our hands, our Indian empire should fall into ruin irretrievable, and in its fall crush the credit and over-

*This will be evident to those who consider the number and description of Directors and servants of the East India Company chosen into the present Parliament. The light in which the present ministers hold the labors of the House of Commons in searching into the disorders in the Indian administration, and all its endeavors for the reformation of the government there, without any distinction of times, or of the persons concerned, will appear from the following extract from a speech of the present Lord Chancellor. After making a high-flown panegyric on those whom the House of Commons had condemned by their resolutions, he said :— :-"Let us not be misled by reports from committees of another House, to which, I again repeat, I pay as much attention as I would do to the history of Robinson Crusoe. Let the conduct of the East India Company be fairly and fully inquired into. Let it be acquitted or condemned by evidence brought to the bar of the House. Without entering very deeply into the subject, let me reply in a few words to an observation which fell from a noble and learned lord, that the Company's finances are distressed, and that they owe at this moment a million sterling to the nation. When such a charge is brought, will Parliament in its justice forget that the Company is restricted from employing that credit which its great and flourishing situation gives to it?"

whelm the revenues of this country, we stand acquitted to our honor and to our conscience, who have reluctantly seen the weightiest interests of our country, at times the most critical to its dignity and safety, rendered the sport of the inconsiderate and unmeasured ambition of individuals, and by that means the wisdom of his Majesty's government degraded in the public estimation, and the policy and character of this renowned nation rendered contemptible in the eyes of all Europe.

It passed in the negative.

END OF VOL. II.