other hand, the total loss of Bengal was not to be risked from views of hostility to the present Administration, whatever the conduct of men in 1767 might deserve. "Opposition is dead," he went on to say—here he folded his arms and inclined his head—"Opposition is dead, and I am left chief mourner over her bier; but let not this, I conjure you, be a motive for your grasping at more power; have no cousins, no younger brothers, no servile dependents to quarter upon the Company. Seek not power in your researches, aim not at the distribution of offices; you have already enough at your disposal; permit me to say that you have too much to answer any good purpose. By these means you carry all before you. We only come here to know the hour when you order your carriages to be ready." He concluded by urging the absolute necessity of settling the question that session, as the condition of India would not admit of further delay.[1]
With similar feelings Shelburne approached the discussion of the subject in the Upper House.
"After a very short debate on the first clause," he writes to Chatham,[2] "regarding the duration of the Direction, I divided for it without speaking. It was my intention to act in exactly the same manner, upon the same motives, when the qualification clause came on, though Lord Talbot as well as the Duke of Richmond made a slight opposition to it; but Lord Denbigh obliged me to change my plan of silence. In defending it he chose (with Lord Bute's proxy) to declare, that he was for raising the qualification of all the electors of England. I was thus necessitated to declare my abhorrence of such an alarming plan of policy and such injustice, and to state the true grounds upon which I conceived Parliament could alone proceed in such cases, as guardians of charters, whose objects must ever be held sacred; which in the borough of Shoreham was an honest election of representatives, in the case of the India Company an honest administration
