majority in the House of Peers; but as the majority there was but small, and threats are thrown out (in order to make it still smaller) against Peers, for exercising their indispensable distinctive prerogative duty of giving honest counsel to their King; and as the same majority, leagued to promote their own advancement and the ruin of the state, still exists and exults in the House of Commons; I doubt not but the same strange destructive measure will be resumed. It therefore becomes the business of every well-wisher to the prosperity of Britain, to oppose and to refute the specious nothings offered to blind and to conceal from the public the designs of a dark and fatal tendency attached to it; and I think it my duty, moreover, and a justice due to the creditors of the public in particular, at least, to such as shall adhere to me, to protest and enter my dissent in their name against any increase of the public debt, by the addition and incorporation of the debts of the East-India Company with those of the public, in any manner, whether openly, or by implication and management.

I now proceed to consider the reasons offered in vindication of the bill by which so daring a violation of every thing the laws hold most sacred was attempted.

The first plea that was insisted on, was, that the Company was bankrupt; but this argument defeats itself. If they are bankrupt, the law has provided a due course of proceeding: Ministers, or the Deputies of Ministers, are not the proper assignees to the bankrupt's estate: the trade is, moreover, by the civil death of the Company, open to every adventurer. But this pretext of bankruptcy is but a flimsy disguise easily seen through: Ministers are not so eager to obtain the administration of the affairs of a bankrupt: the virtuous majority in the House of Commons, increased without any visible cause, or known success, or advantage of any kind, real or pretended, obtained to the public from the cares of the late administration;—increased, I say, from a small doubtful few in the disapprobation of the peace, to a steady, triumphant majority of one hundred and fourteen in the business of the East-India Company; gives no note or appearance of a present bankruptcy in the Company's affairs; but to those that do not know the incorruptible integrity and disinterestedness of the British legislative bodies, gives an ugly hint and surmise of what is likely to happen in future. Of bankruptcy I need say no more; it confutes itself.

The next plea is humanity, and a wish to restore in India a better and a juster system of government, less rapacious, and less oppressive to the natives. This is certainly a fair and generous object; but how do the means correspond with the end, or, what solid proof have we that excesses do exist, or, at least, have been carried to the singular and unnatural extent each parliamentary declaimer is pleased to assign to them? Having forced the Company to bear a share in all the foolish wars Britain involved herself in, money must be found. The smooth swindling methods of funding, without giving the creditors adequate securities for either principal or interest, are not practicable in Cina. Self-preservation enforced the necessity of violence, more obnoxious in the beginning, but, perhaps, in the end, less ruinous than the soft, sly deceits of Europe. Those violent measures, palliated by the necessity of self-preservation, excepted, what remains but an ex parte charge, in Reports to the House of Commons, curious and voluminous indeed, but without confrontation of the accused, or any other necessary preliminary to condemnation, sought by private equity, or required by public justice? We have only an inform mass of matter, where disappointment, vanity, and malevolence, are too often prompted by management and design to