The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 272: LORD NORTH’S PROPOSAL RESPECTING THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.

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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

LORD NORTH’S PROPOSAL RESPECTING THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.

On the 23rd of March, Lord North informed the house that the East India Company had made no satisfactory proposals for the renewal of their charter, and he moved that the speaker should give them three years’ notice, as ordered by act of parliament, previous to the dissolution of their monopoly; and that the sum of £4,200,000 due from the public to the company should be paid on the 25th of April, 1783, agreeably to the tenor of the said act. Fox inveighed against this measure, as tending to deprive us of our East Indian as well as our American possessions; but Lord North having represented that a new corporation might be formed, if the company did not offer a fair bargain to the public, his motion was carried without a division.