their general administration in order, by means of a commission sent out to India with full powers to reach all guilty parties, would have left them to exercise their own patronage, entirely uncontrolled. Recognizing, however, in the Bill a genuine attempt at settling a difficult question, which admitted of no delay, and not seeing from what quarter any better proposals were to be expected with any chance of passing into law, he refused to join the opposition which the Rockingham Whigs, raising the cry of "the violation of charters," offered to the measure in both Houses of Parliament.
He soon found " that the only contest was between the Ministry and the friends of Lord Rockingham, who should be most active in protecting the guilty Directors and their servants; while the latter seemed determined to find no fault with any Ministry except that of 1767."[1] Burke made himself the especial champion of the Company. In strange contrast with his subsequent conduct on the trial of Warren Hastings, he declared that retribution would be the height of folly,[2] and demanded a general amnesty, from which apparently the Ministry of 1767 alone was to be excepted. Entirely unprovoked, and with the bad taste which so often disfigured his greatest oratorical efforts, he made a diatribe against Beckford, then no more, into the vehicle of an attack on Shelburne and Chatham for what had been done at the end of that year. The responsibility of the measures then pursued he attempted to fasten on them, though it was well known that Shelburne's colonial policy had been forced to yield to that of Townshend and the Bedfords. This was well stated in reply by Barré, whose intimate knowledge of Indian affairs had in 1765 made him in public estimation the rival of Clive for the Governorship of Bengal, and had twice recently brought him offers of Indian appointments, which he had as often refused.[3] The House when he rose was at once silent to hear him reply to Burke. He said
- ↑ Shelburne to Chatham, February 27th, 1773.
- ↑ See especially the two speeches at pp. 461 and 818, vol. xvii., Parliamentary History.
- ↑ See supra, p. 221, Shelburne to Chatham, April 13th, 1772; June 12th, 1773.
