Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

tain qualities, Fox was the very reverse of the great Athenian; as to others, they had much in common. In whatever relates to the forms of oratory-symmetry, dig nity, grace, the working up of thought and language to their most perfect expression -Mr. Fox was not only inferior to Demosthenes, but wholly unlike him, having no rhetoric and no ideality; while, at the same time, in the structure of his understand ing, the modes of its operation, the soul and spirit which breathes throughout his elo quence, there was a striking resemblance. This will appear as we dwell for a mo ment on his leading peculiarities.

(1.) He had a luminous simplicity, which gave his speeches the most absolute unity of impression, however irregular might be their arrangement. No man ever kept the great points of his case more steadily and vividly before the minds of his audience.

(2.) He took every thing in the concrete. If he discussed principles, it was always in direct connection with the subject before him. Usually, however, he did not even discuss a subject-he grappled with an antagonist. Nothing gives such life and interest to a speech, or so delights an audience, as a direct contest of man with man (3.) He struck instantly at the heart of his subject. He was eager to meet his opponent at once on the real points at issue; and the moment of his greatest power was when he stated the argument against himself, with more force than his adversary or any other man could give it, and then seized it with the hand of a giant, tore it in pieces, and trampled it under foot.

(4.) His mode of enforcing a subject on the minds of his audience was to come back again and again to the strong points of his case. Mr. Pitt amplified when he wished to impress, Mr. Fox repeated. Demosthenes also repeated, but he had more adroitness in varying the mode of doing it. "Idem haud iisdem verbis."

(5.) He had rarely any preconceived method or arrangement of his thoughts. This was one of his greatest faults, in which he differed most from the Athenian artist. If it had not been for the unity of impression and feeling mentioned above, his strength would have been wasted in disconnected efforts.

(6.) Reasoning was his forte and his passion. But he was not a regular reasoner. In his eagerness to press forward, he threw away every thing he could part with, and compacted the rest into a single mass. Facts, principles, analogies, were all wrought together like the strands of a cable, and intermingled with wit, ridicule, or impassioned feeling. His arguments were usually personal in their nature, ad hominem, &c., and were brought home to his antagonist with stinging severity and force. (7.) He abounded in hits—those abrupt and startling turns of thought which rouse an audience, and give them more delight than the loftiest strains of eloquence. (8.) He was equally distinguished for his side blows, for keen and pungent remarks flashed out upon his antagonist in passing, as he pressed on with his argument. (9.) He was often dramatic, personating the character of his opponents or others, and carrying on a dialogue between them, which added greatly to the liveliness and force of his oratory.

(10.) He had astonishing dexterity in evading difficulties, and turning to his own advantage every thing that occurred in debate.

In nearly all these qualities he had a close resemblance to Demosthenes. In his language, Mr. Fox studied simplicity, strength, and boldness. "Give me an elegant Latin and a homely Saxon word," said he, "and I will always choose the latter." Another of his sayings was this: "Did the speech read well when reported? If so, it was a bad one." These two remarks give us the secret of his style as an orator. The life of Mr. Fox has this lesson for young men, that early habits of recklessness and vice can hardly fail to destroy the influence of the most splendid abilities and the most humane and generous dispositions. Though thirty-eight years in public life, he was in office only eighteen months.

SPEECH

OF MR. FOX ON THE BILL FOR VESTING THE AFFAIRS OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY IN TUE HANDS OF CERTAIN COMMISSIONERS, FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PROPRIETORS AND THE PUBLIC, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, DECEMBER 1, 1783.

INTRODUCTION.

THE reader is already acquainted with the leading provisions of this bill, which were stated in the introduction to Mr. Burke's speech on the same subject. It was intended to place all the concerns of the East India Company in the hands of the British government. It abolished the courts of Directors and Proprietors, and divided the duties of the former between two distinct Boards. The first, having the entire government of India, civil and military, with the appointment and removal of officers, was to consist of seven Commissioners or Directors, to be chosen first by Parliament, and afterward by the Crown, and removable only in consequence of an address to the King from one of the Houses of Parliament. The other, having the management of the Company's commercial concerns, was to consist of nine Assistant Directors, appointed in the first instance by Parliament, and afterward by a major vote of the proprietors at an open poll. The bill was to remain in force four years, until after the next general election; and was accompanied by another, containing a variety of excellent regulations for the removal of abuses in India.

The debate was long and vehement. Burke had delivered his splendid speech of four hours in length, pouring forth a flood of information on the subject of India, such as no other man in England could have communicated. Dundas had attacked the bill with all his acuteness, and his perfect acquaintance with Indian affairs. Mr. Pitt had followed, denouncing it as a violation of chartered rights, designed to create an "imperium in imperio," which would place Mr. Fox above the King's control, and promising to bring forward another proposal "which would answer all the exigencies of the case without the violence and danger of this measure." It was at the end of such a debate, after two o'clock in the morning, that Mr. Fox rose to speak; and probably not a man in the kingdom but himself could have obtained a hearing under such circumstances, much less have commanded the fixed attention of the House for nearly three hours longer, as he did in this speech.

As he spoke in reply, his object was not so much to dwell on the positive side of the argument, which he had already done at the second reading of the bill, as to obviate objections, to turn back the reasoning of his antagonists upon themselves, and especially to relieve his character from the odium which rested upon it in consequence of his coalition with Lord North. As a specimen of uncommon dexterity in this respect, and of bold, indignant retort upon his antagonists, it has a high order of merit.

SPEECH, &c.

SIR,-The necessity of my saying something upon the present occasion is so obvious to the House, that no apology will, I hope, be expected from me in troubling them even at so late an hour. I shall not enter much into a detail, or minute defense of the particulars of the bill before you, because few particular objections have been made. The opposition to it consists only in general reasonings, some of little application, and others totally aside from the point in ques

tion.

The bill has been combated through its past stages upon various principles; but, to the present moment, the House has not heard it canvass ed upon its own intrinsic merits. The debate to-night has turned chiefly upon two points, namely, violation of charter, and increase of influence; and upon both these points I shall say a few words.

The honorable gentleman, who opened the debate [Mr. Powis], first demands my attention;

1 Two o'clock in the morning.

[blocks in formation]

The honorable gentleman charges me with abandoning that cause, which, he says in terms of flattery, I had once so successfully asserted. I tell him, in reply, that if he were to search the history of my life, he would find that the period of it in which I struggled most for the real, substantial cause of liberty is this very moment that I am addressing you. Freedom, according to my conception of it, consists in the safe and sacred possession of a man's property, governed by laws defined and certain; with many personal privileges, natural, civil, and religious, which

he can not surrender without ruin to himself, | cover the inheritance of family maxims when and of which to be deprived by any other power they question the principles of the Revolution: is despotism. This bill, instead of subverting, but I have no scruple in subscribing to the artiis destined to stabilitate these principles; instead cles of that creed which produced it 3 Soverof narrowing the basis of freedom, it tends to eigns are sacred, and reverence is due to every enlarge it; instead of suppressing, its object is king; yet, with all my attachments to the person to infuse and circulate the spirit of liberty. of a first magistrate, had I lived in the reign of James the Second, I should most certainly have contributed my efforts, and borne part in those illustrious struggles which vindicated an empire from hereditary servitude, and recorded this val uable doctrine, that trust abused is revocable.

What is the most odious species of tyranny? Precisely that which this bill is meant to annihiiate. That a handful of men, free themselves, should exercise the most base and abominable despotism over millions of their fellow-creatures; that innocence should be the victim of oppression; that industry should toil for rapine; that the harmless laborer should sweat, not for his own benefit, but for the luxury and rapacity of tyrannic depredation; in a word, that thirty millions of men, gifted by Providence with the ordinary endowments of humanity, should groan under a system of despotism, unmatched in all the histories of the world? What is the end of all government? Certainly the happiness of the governed. Others may hold different opinions; but this is mine, and I proclaim it. What, then, are we to think of a government, whose good fortune is supposed to spring from the calamities of its subjects, whose aggrandizement grows out of the miseries of mankind? This is the kind of government exercised under the East India Company upon the natives of Hindostan; and the subversion of that infamous government is the main object of the bill in question.

Violation

Justified.

I. But in the progress of accomplishing this end, it is objected that the charter of the Comf charter pany should not be violated; and upon this point, sir, I shall deliver my opinion without disguise. A charter is a trust to one or more persons for some given benefit. If this trust be abused, if the benefit be not obtained, and that its failure arises from palpable guilt, or (what in this case is full as bad) from palpable ignorance or mismanagement, will any man gravely say that the trust should not be resumed and delivered to other hands ?—more especially in the case of the East India Company, whose manner of executing this trust, whose laxity and languor produced, and tend to produce consequences diametrically opposite to the ends of confiding that trust, and of the institution for which it was granted? I beg of gentlemen to be aware of the lengths to which their arguments upon the intangibility of this charter may . be carried. Every syllable virtually impeaches the establishment by which we sit in this House, in the enjoyment of this freedom, and of every other blessing of our government. Arguments of this kind are batteries against the main pillar of the British Constitution. Some men are consistent with their own private opinions, and dis

We have here one of Mr. Fox's peculiarities on which much of his force depends, viz., terse and rapid enumeratiou-the crowding of many particulars into one striking mass of thought. His enumerations, however, are not made like those of most men, for rhetorical effect; they are condensed arguments, as will be seen by analyzing this passage.

No man will tell me that a trust to a compa ny of merchants stands upon the solemn and sanctified ground by which a trust is committed to a monarch; I am, therefore, at a loss to reconcile the conduct of men who approve that re sumption of violated trust, which rescued and re-established our unparalleled and admirable Constitution with a thousand valuable improvements and advantages at the Revolution, and who, at this moment, rise up the champions of the East India Company's charter.* although the incapacity and incompetence of that Company to a due and adequate discharge of the trust deposited in them by that charter are themes of ridicule and contempt to all the world; and although, in consequence of their mismanagement, connivance, and imbecility, combined with the wickedness of their servants, the very name of an Englishman is detested, even to a proverb, throughout all Asia, and the national character is become degraded and dishonored. To rescue that name from odium, and redeem this character from disgrace, are some of the objects of the present bill; and gentlemen should, indeed, gravely weigh their opposition to a measure, which, with a thousand other points not less valuable, aims at the attainment of these objects.

Those who condemn the present bill as a violation of the chartered rights of the East India Company, condemn, on the same ground, I say again, the Revolution as a violation of the chartered rights of King James II. He, with as much reason, might have claimed the property

Johnson decides the question in the same way with Mr. Fox, in his Taxation no Tyranny. "A charter is a grant of certain powers or privileges giv en to a part of the community for the advantage of change or to revocation. Every act of government the whole; and is therefore liable, by its nature, to aims at public good. A charter, which experience has shown to be detrimental to the nation, is to be repealed; because general prosperity must always be preferred to particular interest. If a charter be used to evil purposes, it is forfeited, as the weapon is taken away which is injuriously employed."

Here is another characteristic of Mr. Fox, that

of turning defense into attack. The reader of Demosthenes will remember how uniformly the same thing is done by the great Athenian orator.

5 Mr. Fox gives us, thus early, one of those repe titions by which he was so much accustomed to enforce his reasonings. The statement, however, is finely varied by an expansion of the argument, and enlivened by that dramatic mode of presenting the thought, in which he so much delighted.

[ocr errors]

any that can be imputed to this bill; and de posits in one man an arbitrary power over mili ions, not in England, where the evil of this corrupt ministry could not be felt, but in the East Indies, the scene of every mischief, fraud, and violence. The learned gentleman's bill afforded the most extensive latitude for malversation; the bill before you guards against it with all

of dominion. But what was the language of the people? 'No, you have no property in dominion. Dominion was vested in you, as it is in every chief magistrate, for the benefit of the community to be governed. It was a sacred trust, delegated by compact. You have abused the trust; you have exercised dominion for the purposes of vexation and tyranny-not of comfort, protection, and good order, and we therefore re-imaginable precaution. Every line in both the sume the power which was originally ours. We recur to the first principles of all government, the will of the many; and it is our will that you shall no longer abuse your dominion." The case is the same with the East India Company's government over a territory, as it has been said by Mr. Burke, of two hundred and eighty thousand square miles in extent, nearly equal to all Christian Europe, and containing thirty millions of the human race. It matters not whether dominion arises from conquest or from compact. Conquest gives no right to the conqueror to be a tyrant; and it is no violation of right to abolish the authority which is misused.

bills, which I have had the honor to introduce, presumes the possibility of bad administration, for every word breathes suspicion. This bill supposes that men are but men. It confides in no integrity; it trusts no character; it inculcates the wisdom of a jealousy of power, and annexes responsibility, not only to every action, but even to the inaction of those who are to dispense it. The necessity of these provisions must be evident, when it is known that the dif ferent misfortunes of the Company have result. ed not more from what the servants did, than from what the masters did not.

To the probable effects of the learned gentleman's bill and this, I beg to call the attention of the House. Allowing, for argument's sake, to the Governor General of India, under the first-named bill [Mr. Dundas'], the most unlim

II. Having said so much upon the general Objections matter of the bill, I must beg leave to answered. make a few observations upon the remarks of particular gentlemen; and first of the learned gentleman over against me [Mr. Dun-ited and superior abilities, with soundness of das]. The learned gentleman has made a long, and, as he always does, an able speech; yet, translated into plain English, and disrobed of the dextrous ambiguity in which it has been enveloped, to what does it amount? To an establishment of the principles upon which this bill was founded, and an indirect confession of its necessity. He allows the frangibility of charters, when absolute occasion requires it; and admits that the charter of the Company should not prevent the adoption of a proper plan for the future government of India, if a proper plan can be achieved upon no other terms. The first of these admissions seems agreeable to the civil maxims of the learned gentleman's life, so far as a maxim can be traced in a political character so various and flexible; and to deny the second of these concessions was impossible even for the learned gentleman, with a staring reason upon your table to confront him if he attempted it. The learned gentleman's bill, and the bill before you, are grounded upon the same bottom, of abuse of trust, maladministration, debility, and incapacity in the Company and their servants. But the difference in the remedy is this: the learned gentleman's bill opens a door to an influence a hundred times more dangerous than A side blow of this kind, in passing, is peculiar ly characteristic of Mr. Fox.

7 Mr. Dundas, as a member of the Shelburne ministry, had brought in a bill on the subject about seven months before. This gave the Governor General of Bengal a controlling power over the other two presidencies; and authorized him, when he saw fit, to act on his own responsibility, in opposition to the

opinion of his own council. His bill also created a new Secretary of State for Indian affairs, with ample powers resembling, to a considerable extent, those of Mr Fox's commissioners.

heart, and integrity the most unquestionable; what good consequences could be reasonably expected from his extraordinary, extravagant, and unconstitutional power, under the tenure by which he held it? Were his projects the most enlarged, his systems the most wise and excellent which human skill could devise; what fair hopes could be entertained of their eventual success, when, perhaps, before he could enter upon the execution of any measure, he may be recalled in consequence of one of those changes in the administrations of this country, which have been so frequent for a few years, and which some good men wish to see every year? Exactly the same reasons which banish all rational hope of benefit from an Indian administration under the bill of the learned gentleman, justify the duration of the proposed commission. If the dispensers of the plan of governing India (a place from which the answer of a letter can not be expected in less than twelve months) have not greater stability in their situations than a British ministry, adieu to all hopes of rendering our Eastern territories of any real advantage to this country; adieu to every expectation of purging or purifying the Indian system, of re form, of improvement, of reviving confidence, of regulating the trade upon its proper principles, of

toring tranquillity, of re-establishing the

in comfort, and of securing the perpetu ity of these blessings by the cordial reconcile. ment of the Indians with their former tyrants upon fixed terms of amity, friendship, and fellowship. I will leave the House and the king. dom to judge which is best calculated to accom. plish those salutary ends; the bill of the learn ed gentleman, which leaves all to the discretion of one man, or the bill before you, which de

pends upon the duty of several men, who are in | must feel under the conviction with which he a state of daily account to this House, of hourly certainly gives this opinion; but I submit to evaccount to the ministers of the Crown, of occa-ery man who hears me, what would be the probsional account to the proprietors of East India stock, and who are allowed sufficient time to practice their plans, unaffected by every political fluctuation.

able comments of the other side of the House, had I proposed either the erection of an Indian secretary, or the annexation of the Indian business to the office which I hold?

But the learned gentleman wishes the appoint- In the assemblage of the learned gentleman's ment of an Indian Secretary of State in prefer- objections, there is one still more curious than ence to these commissioners. In all the learned those I have mentioned. He dislikes this bill gentleman's ideas on the government of India, because it establishes an imperium in imperio the notion of a new Secretary of State for the [one government within another]. In the course Indian department springs up, and seems to be of opposition to this measure, we have been facherished with the fondness of consanguinity.8 miliarized to hear certain sentiments and particBut that scheme strikes me as liable to a thou- ular words in this House, but directed, in reality, sand times more objections than the plan in agi- to other places [for the King]. I therefore take tation; nay, the learned gentleman had rather, it for granted that the learned gentleman has not it seems, the affairs of India were blended with so despicable an idea of the good sense of the the business of the office which I have the honor members, as to expect any more attention withir to hold. His good disposition toward me upon these walls to such a dogma than has been shown all occasions can not be doubted, and his sinceri- to the favorite phrase of his honorable friend near ty in this opinion is unquestionable. I beg the him [Mr. Pitt], who calls a bill which backs this House to attend to the reason which the learned sinking Company with the credit of the state a gentleman gives for this preference, and to see confiscation of their property! I would only the plights to which men even of his understand- wish to ask the learned gentleman if he really ing are reduced who must oppose. He laughs holds the understanding even of the multitude in at the responsibility of the Commissioners to this such contempt as to imagine this species of arHouse, who, in his judgment, will find means of gument can have the very slightest effect? The soothing and softening, and meliorating the mem- multitude know the fallacy of it as well as the bers into an oblivion of their maladministration. learned gentleman himself. They know that a What opinion has the learned gentleman of a dissolution of the East India Company has been Secretary of State? Does he think him so inert, wished for scores of years, by many good people so inactive, so incapable a creature, that, with all in this country, for the very reason that it was this vaunted patronage of the seven Commission- an imperium in imperio. Yet the learned geners in his own hands, the same means of sooth- tleman, with infinite gravity of face, tells you he ing, and softening, and meliorating, are thrown dislikes this bill, because it establishes this novel away upon him? The learned gentleman has and odious principle! Even a glance at this been for some years conversant with ministers; bill, compared with the present constitution of but his experience has taught him, it seems, to the Company, manifests the futility of this objec consider secretaries not only untainted and im- tion, and proves that the Company is, in its presmaculate, but innocent, harmless, and incapable!ent form, a thousand times more an imperium in In his time, secretaries were all purity, with every power of corruption in their hands; but so inflexibly attached to rigid rectitude, that no temptation could seduce them to employ that power for the purpose of corrupting, or, to use his own words, for soothing, or softening, or meliorating! The learned gentleman has formed his opinion of the simplicity and inaction of secretaries from that golden age of political probity when his own friends were in power, and when himself was every thing but a minister. This erroneous humanity of opinion arises from the learned gentleman's unsuspecting, unsullied nature, as well as from a commerce with only the best and purest ministers of this country, which has given him so favorable an impression of a Secretary of State that he thinks this patronage, so dangerous in the hands of seven Commissioners, perfectly safe in his hands. I leave to the learned gentleman that pleasure which his mind

imperio than the proposed Commissioners. The worst species of government is that which car. run counter to all the ends of its institution with impunity. Such exactly is the East India Company. No man can say that the Directors and proprietors have not, in numerous instances, merited severe infliction; yet who did ever think of a legal punishment for either body? Now the great feature of this bill is to render the Commissioners amenable, and to punish them upon delinquency.

The learned gentleman prides himself that his bill did not meddle with the commerce of the Company; and another gentleman, after acknowledging the folly of leaving the government in the hands of the Company, proposes to separate the commerce entirely from the dominburne, who was generally regarded as insincere and grasping. "His character," says a late writer, "was not simple; it was curiously artificial. Under the affectation of patriotism, he had a great craving for public honors. There was a vein of subtlety in his nature, and an appearance of insincerity in his man ner, which deprived him of the confidence of his as These bitter sarcasms were aimed at Lord Shel-sociates."-Age of Fox and Pitt, i., 107.

Had the Earl of Shelburne continued in power, it was understood that Mr. Dundas was to be the Indian secretary. Mr. Fox here stingingly alludes to this fact.

Go

« ПредишнаНапред »