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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 cover

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 341: EAST INDIA AFFAIRS.
By Edward Farr
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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.

EAST INDIA AFFAIRS.

It has been seen that a select committee had been appointed to consider the state of the British dominions. This committee, in the prosecution of this inquiry, not only discovered corruption, fraud, and injustice in every department of the Indian government, but that the company’s finances were in a ruinous condition. In order, therefore, to rescue the British name from disgrace, and to secure our territorial possessions in India, Sir Henry Fletcher introduced a bill for “suspending the payments of the company due to the exchequer, and enabling them to borrow the sum of £300,000 for their relief.” This bill, which was declared to be only a branch of a larger plan, passed both houses with very little opposition; an impression generally prevailing among peers and commoners, that unless relief was afforded, bankruptcy was inevitable. Thus works profusion.