Hastings could now turn his thoughts to what was his constant object, the aggrandizement of our power in India, and his view seems to have been to enter into close alliances with the great Mahommedan Princes, the Nabob-Vizier of Oude and the Nizam of the Deccan, to render them dependent on the English by means of large subsidies, and by their assistance oppose an effectual barrier to the great and increasing power of the Mahrattas, whom he regarded as the most dangerous rivals to the English. Affairs in the dependent Presidency of Madras gave him an opportunity for carrying out this policy. Mismanagement and peculation had been as rife there as in Bengal. The Rajah of Tanjore, a Mahratta prince, had been dispossessed in favour of the Nabob of Arcot, an old ally of the English. This measure was disallowed by the directors at home. Lord Pigot was sent out as governor to re-establish the Rajah. The same struggle between the Governor and his Council as had been seen in Calcutta took place in Madras, but proceeded to even greater extremities. The Council arrested Lord Pigot, who died a prisoner in their hands. Thus the policy of restitution was crushed, and the claims of the Mahratta Rajah of Tanjore were neglected. In Bombay, too, constant disputes had arisen with the Mahratta chiefs of Poonah, so that the whole of that great confederacy was ready for war. To appreciate the importance of such a war, it must be remembered that the Mahrattas had spread over much of India. The descendants of Sivajee, like the descendants of most Indian conquerors, had sunk into rois fainéants at Satara, delegating their real power to their viceroy, called the Peishwa of Poonah, whose office was hereditary. Dependent offshoots of this power had established themselves in the hills of the Malwa under the great princes Sindia and Holkar; in Berar under a prince called the Bonslah, in Gujerat under the Guicowar, and in the extreme south in Tanjore; while bands of Mahratta horsemen had, as we have seen, seized upon Delhi, and expelled for a time Shah Allum, the Great Mogul, who had however made terms with them, and was now again seated upon his ancestral throne. With this vast power, already on bad terms with both the southern Presidencies, it was discovered that the French were intriguing. With his usual vigour Hastings was determined to forestall war, which he saw was inevitable. For this purpose, in spite of the opposition of his Council, an army was at once despatched southward to act through Bundelcund. The command was given to Colonel Goddard. But Hastings, who seldom acted a straightforward part, intrigued at the same time with the Bonslah and with Rajonaut Rao, a deposed Peishwa, now a refugee in Bombay. Upon the news that France and England had declared war, still further energy was infused into military affairs; and Chandernagore, near Calcutta, and Pondicherry, just south of Madras, two French settlements, were captured. The Mahratta war was not without its reverses. The Bombay army was surrounded near Poonah, and escaped only on ignominious terms; but Goddard upheld the honour of the English arms, and defeated Sindia and Holkar, while Captain Popham took the almost impregnable castle of Gwalior. The war was regarded as of sufficient importance to require the presence of the veteran General Sir Eyre Coote, who was despatched from England to take the command.

But all prospect of carrying out the ambitious schemes of Hastings for subjugating the Mahrattas was suddenly clouded. News arrived in 1780 that Hyder Ali, who had long been watching his opportunity, had pounced upon Madras. He saw the English engaged in a vast Indian war, he knew that their arms were not successful in America, he expected the speedy arrival of a large French force, his time had come at last, and he flung himself in irresistible numbers upon the Carnatic. The English were virtually taken by surprise; one army under Colonel Baylie was destroyed, a second under Sir Hector Munro saved itself by rapid flight. In a moment Hastings comprehended the new situation of affairs; the news reached Calcutta on the 23rd of September, on the 25th he was ready with a complete new plan of operations. He offered peace and alliance to the Mahrattas; he embarked all available troops for Madras; in virtue of the supremacy of Bengal, he ventured to suspend Whitewell, the incompetent Governor of Madras; he gave the command to Sir Eyre Coote, and sent also vast sums of money thither. It was to sustain this great effort, without if possible diminishing the gains of the Company, that Hastings committed the rest of those acts of oppression which were afterwards alleged against him. To supply the greed of his employers he had sold British troops to Conclusion of the Mysore war. destroy the Rohillas; in his great struggle for power he had strained the law in the case of Nuncomar; to support his Mahratta and Mysore wars he stooped to actions of injustice and cruelty. The return of Sir Eyre Coote re-established affairs at Madras, he won a great victory at Porta Novo and a second at Pollilore. The general peace in 1783 put a conclusion to the war, which had been continued by Tippoo upon the death of his father Hyder Ali. Hastings had succeeded in concluding a treaty with the Mahrattas, and had his hands free for carrying on with energy operations against Mysore, the Dutch, and the French fleet under De Suffren. All the Dutch settlements had been captured; five great indecisive battles had been fought between De Suffren and Sir Edward Hughes; but no striking advantages had been won over Tippoo, who had even met with some successes on the Malabar coast. With the European nations terms had been arranged in France; with Tippoo a peace was made on the conditions of the mutual restorations of conquest.

To return to the conduct of Hastings. On the first alarm of war with Hyder Ali, he had demanded troops from Cheyte Singh, the Rajah of Benares, as from a feudatory of the Empire. This demand was annually renewed, together with the customary tribute of £50,000. Upon this being delayed it was raised to £500,000. This was still unpaid when Hastings determined to make a personal visit to Benares. He entered the city with an absurdly inadequate guard, and put Cheyte Singh under arrest; an insurrection was the consequence, and Hastings was for a time confined to his house by the populace and in imminent danger of his life. Perfectly calm and unmoved in the midst of his dangers, he yielded not one step; he succeeded in letting the neighbouring troops hear of his danger; Major Popham came to his rescue, and routed the people of Benares; Cheyte Singh was driven from his country, a new rajah, with a much enlarged tribute, was put in his place; his fortress at Bidzegur and all his property was seized. Hastings at once proceeded to similar acts in Oude. He entered into a nefarious compact with the Nabob to rob his mother and grandmother of their money. These two ladies lived at Fyzabad, the ancient capital of Sujah Dowlah; his son, the reigning Nabob Asaph Ul Dowlah, Robbery of the Begums of Oude. had withdrawn to the new city of Lucknow. The Begums possessed large landed property and Sujah Dowlah's treasure; it was agreed between Hastings and Asaph Ul Dowlah that this should be taken from them, the landed property going to the Nabob, the money being received as payment for heavy arrears due from the Nabob to the English. A lengthened siege and partial famine did not effect the purpose of the plunderers; it was found necessary to seize, to imprison, to starve, and torture two aged eunuchs, the princesses' chief friends and ministers, before treasure to the amount of about a million could be wrung from them; the excuse alleged for such unmitigated wickedness was that the Begums had intrigued for an insurrection in Oude. Again Sir Elijah Impey was on the spot to give his voice in favour of Hastings when the rumours on which these charges were based were submitted to him.

Whatever excuses might be found for such actions, in the difficulties of Hastings' position and the peculiarity of Indian habits, it was certain that the condition and rights of a Company which had become a sovereign ruler, and was at once under the necessity of demanding a loan to avoid bankruptcy, and guilty of what could not but sound to English ears as acts of the Parliamentary inquiry. 1781. cruellest oppression, must form a chief topic of parliamentary discussion. Accordingly, in 1781, two committees had been formed to inquire into the affairs of India. Their reports were strongly condemnatory of the Company's government, and the Secretary of State for the time being accordingly demanded Hastings' recall. To this the directors, as by law they had a right to do, refused to listen, but the matter could not be Dundas's Bill. 1783. dropped, and immediately after the formation of the coalition ministry Mr. Dundas produced a Bill for the regulation of India. His view was that the Governor-General's power should be increased, and the office given to some great independent nobleman such as Lord Cornwallis. Not only was this Bill regarded as a party measure, and by no means of sufficient breadth for its object, but also it was felt that the subject was one which should be handled by Government itself. In pursuance Fox's India Bill. Nov. of this view, in the autumn session of the same year Fox brought forward his great India Bill. The faults to be remedied were sufficiently obvious; a trading company had by a strange turn of fortune become a governor of large provinces, and had again and again engaged in extensive wars. It was plain that the functions of the merchant and the governor were not only distinct but antagonistic. The claims of the proprietors for large dividends, and the duty of the directors to work for the financial benefit of their employers, was certain to blind them to acts of injustice which had a tendency to fill their coffers. The main principle of any great India Bill must have been the resumption by the Crown of its inherent Imperial rights, which it had suffered accidentally to fall into disuse. Accordingly, Fox proposed that all the authority which the Company had exercised should be transferred to a body of seven commissioners, nominated in Parliament and capable of holding office for four years, after which the vacancies occurring in that body were to be filled up by the Crown. To them, as trustees, was to be transferred also the whole property of the Company. But the management of this property and the commerce of the Company was placed in the hands of a subordinate council of directors, proprietors each of them of £2000 stock, acting under and subject to the orders of the superior council. The vacancies in the subordinate council were to be filled by the Court of proprietors. There were additional stipulations for the purpose of checking monopolies, the acceptance of presents, the hiring out of British forces, and changes in the tenure of land, regulations in fact attempting to remove the principal known abuses of the Indian Government. The Bill was a thorough and great Bill, and the magnitude of the subject, and the freedom which the Government enjoyed from any party pledges in the matter, should have raised it out of the sphere of party politics, Objections to it. but it was at once furiously assaulted. There were raised against it two objections, corresponding to the two councils which it proposed to erect. First, it was urged that it was incompatible with the dignity of the Crown that patronage so enormous as that of India should be vested even for a time in any hands but those of the King himself.[11] As Lord Thurlow said, when the Bill was before the House of Lords, "the King will in fact take the diadem with his own hands and place it on the head of Mr. Fox." What rendered this defect more glaring was, that the new committee was named in the Act, and that all seven members of it were strenuous supporters of the present administration, so that a fresh and overwhelming source of influence was secured to Mr. Fox's friends. It was urged, secondly, that even granting the necessity and wisdom of such a transference of political power, the establishment of the second council for the management of the commerce of the Company was a violent and unnecessary infraction of chartered rights. Bad financial management, as apart from their political conduct, could not be alleged against the Company, nor did it seem probable that commerce would be better managed under the direction of a parliamentary Committee, even though working through a subordinate council of merchants, than if left exclusively in mercantile hands; besides, no later than 1780, the charter of the Company had been renewed, and to deprive it of the superintendence of its own trade was a manifest breach of that charter. Such were the objections raised by the Opposition, and they were largely echoed in the country, where the coalition, as is generally the case in England, was highly unpopular. The feeling out of doors is shown by a well-known caricature which represents the triumphal procession of Carlo Fox Khan, crowned and riding on a state elephant. However, the Bill was triumphantly passed through the House of Commons, where the coalition majority was overwhelming.

But the King, who hated his ministers, and whose pride was touched in its tenderest point by this Bill, was determined that it should never become law; rather than suffer such indignity he would refuse his assent to the Bill, exerting a prerogative which had lain dormant since the reign of William III., or take refuge, as he was fond of threatening, in Hanover. He was saved from either alternative by a plan suggested to him by Lords Thurlow and Temple, The King procures its rejection. which, although open to the charge of being unconstitutional, prevented the Bill from passing the Upper House. These two noblemen, using the hereditary right of British Peers to advise their sovereign, drew up and laid before George a strong memorandum against the Bill, which they called "a plan to take more than half the royal power, and by that means disable his Majesty for the rest of his reign;" and Temple suggested that the Bill might be stopped in the House of Lords if the King would authorize him to express his wishes. The King upon this supplied him with a paper to show to any Lord he pleased. The purport of it was, that "his Majesty allowed Earl Temple to say that whoever voted for the India Bill was not only not his friend, but would be considered by him as an enemy, and if those words were not strong enough, Earl Temple might use whatever words he might deem stronger and more to the purpose." The effect of this intimation, acting upon the minds of waverers and of those who prided themselves in the name of King's friends, was to secure a majority against the Bill. On the 17th of December it was lost by nineteen votes, Lord Stormont, a member of the ministry voting against it. The King thus assumed the strange position of His conduct unconstitutional. the opponent of his own responsible ministers. In fact, he felt the power of the hated Whigs closing around him, and thought any measure justifiable which would free him from their grasp and enable him to assume that position which had been the constant aim of his policy. Moreover, he no doubt relied somewhat on the unpopularity excited by the coalition, and on the apparently unprincipled and factious conduct of the united leaders. That his conduct is incompatible with constitutional monarchy there can be no doubt. If he disliked his ministers' measures he had one straightforward course open to him;—he should have dismissed them; if their majority was overwhelming, he should have dissolved Parliament; if he could not command a majority in the new Parliament, he was bound to submit. An underhand opposition to ministers, who are alone responsible to the nation, is entirely destructive of that confidence which is necessary to the very existence of a constitutional monarchy. Of course the uproar raised in the House of Commons was great. Motion after motion condemnatory of the action of the King in the House of Lords was carried by great majorities. The ministry determined that the Ministers dismissed. responsibility of removing them should be left to the King, who, perceiving the necessary consequence of his late step, on the 18th of December, sent the under secretaries to tell the ministers they were dismissed, refusing even to see them personally.

The great Whig party and the great following of Lord North being thus removed from office, it became a question where a ministry was to be sought. The only party remaining was the little section of Chatham's followers, headed by the young Pitt, and reinforced by a portion of the Tories, with whom they may now be considered as incorporated, although for several years Pitt's policy was decidedly Liberal. To this youth of twenty-four the King appealed for assistance, Pitt accepts the Premiership. 1783. and, relying on his own genius, he had the audacity to accept the struggle, though conscious that he must be defeated on every division. There followed a scene unparalleled in parliamentary history. The Cabinet had to be drawn almost exclusively from the Upper House; Lord Thurlow became Chancellor, Earl Gower President of the Council, Duke of Rutland Privy Seal, Lord Carmarthen and Lord Sydney Secretaries of State, and Lord Howe First Lord of the Admiralty, and this, with Mr. Pitt himself, was the whole Cabinet. In the House of Commons he could rely only on Dundas and his cousin William Grenville. When the writ was moved for a new election for Appleby on Pitt's taking office, it was received with shouts of laughter; no pity or favour was extended to the new minister; Dundas could hardly get a hearing on ministerial business, motions of great importance were pressed on even though Pitt had not yet taken his seat, and so certain did Fox feel of restoration to office, that he wrote to a friend in Dublin Factious violence of the Opposition. 1784. that he would not dismiss one member of his household till after the 12th of January. On that day Pitt was to make his appearance as Prime Minister. An address had been delivered to the King praying against either an adjournment or dissolution, for this was the step which Fox's party chiefly feared. On a favourable reply to this address, short Christmas holidays had been allowed, and the House had to meet again on the 12th. In those few days Pitt had got ready an India Bill, but before he was allowed to produce it Fox had succeeded in carrying no less than five motions against the Government, one of them pointing to "unconstitutional abuse of his Majesty's sacred name." In spite of this Pitt produced his Bill, which was similar in character to the Bill he afterwards carried; it was lost by a majority of only twenty-one, which on its second reading was still further diminished to eight.

Things began to look a little more encouraging for the minister. He determined with great wisdom to give the Opposition rope, and urged them to constant violence by an obstinate refusal to say whether he meant to dissolve or not. The language of the Opposition had been so violent that the reaction was becoming strongly marked in the country. "It was a contest," said Dr. Johnson, "whether the nation should be ruled by the sceptre of George III. or by the tongue of Fox." All attempts at mediation failed, although many independent members attempted to effect it. Fox's hope was, that if Pitt continued to avoid dissolution the 25th of March would arrive without a new Parliament. On that day the Mutiny Bill expired, and he hoped by refusing to renew it to compel his rival to resign. But the tide had now fairly begun to turn; Pitt's bravery was exciting the sympathy of the people, while the unmeasured virulence of Fox and his party was constantly damaging them. Pitt, too, had won great admiration by refusing for himself, although his private means amounted to scarcely £300 a year, a rich sinecure called the Clerkship of the Pells. This, with a somewhat ironical pride, he had given to Colonel Barré in exchange for the pension which the Rockingham ministry had so scandalously given him. The threats that supplies should be stopped seemed to many moderate people factious and improper, and numerous addresses poured in from the Corporation of London and other towns. On the 8th of March Fox played what may be called his last card; he brought in a paper under the threatening title of "Representation to the King;" after many hours of debate it was passed by a majority Pitt's victory. of one only. It was plain that the victory of Pitt was secure and that the Opposition had ruined themselves. Accordingly, when on the next day the Mutiny Bill came on there was no opposition, and having by firmness and moderation fairly weathered the storm, Pitt on the 25th recommended the King to dissolve the Dissolution of Parliament and defeat of Whigs. 1784. Parliament. The elections made it evident that the feeling of the nation was entirely with Pitt; no less than 160 of Fox's friends lost their seats—"Fox's martyrs" they were jocosely called. Several great contests took place, the most notorious of which was that for Yorkshire, where Wilberforce was brought in triumphantly in opposition to the great territorial houses, and that for Westminster, where Fox himself stood against Lord Hood and his old colleague Wray, who had become a ministerialist. The poll was kept open forty days, amid scenes of indescribable excitement. For twenty-three days Fox was at the bottom of the poll, but at length the strenuous canvassing of his friends, added to the charms of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and other lady politicians, succeeded in placing him second on the list. As more votes however were registered than there were voters, obviously some fraud had been committed, and a scrutiny was granted. Meanwhile, as the Whigs held illegally, no return was made, Westminster was unrepresented, and room had to be made for Fox in the close borough of Kirkwall. It was not till the following session that Pitt, who, with some want of liberality, upheld the conduct of the High Bailiff in refusing the return, was defeated in the House on the subject. The representatives took their seats, and Fox got £2000 damages from the Bailiff.

The great party struggle of the last year, which had terminated in the utter discomfiture of the Whigs and the establishment of the new Tory party under Pitt, had not left much time for the real Pressing measures. requirements of the State. India, Ireland, the finances, parliamentary reform, were all matters which pressed for immediate attention. Firm in his parliamentary majority and in the support of the King, Pitt proceeded to handle them. The Pitt's Budget. finances were naturally in a bad condition at the close of an unsuccessful war. The funds were standing only at 56 or 57, the unfunded debt was upwards of £12,000,000, and there was a considerable deficiency in the Civil List. One of the principal sources of the revenue was destroyed by systematic smuggling of tea. Men of otherwise respectable character and considerable capital were embarked in this trade. Large vessels brought their tea, and lay off at some distance, distributing their cargoes to small vessels, which landed them here and there on the coast. Regular receiving-houses were established and lines of carriers which brought the tea to the towns. It was estimated that the smuggled tea was at least as much as that which paid duty. Pitt lowered the duty both for this article and for spirits, the other great smuggled commodity, so as to withdraw the temptation from the smugglers. The deficit was made up by a house and window tax; this is known as the Commutation Tax. An Act called the Hovering Act was also passed, which extended the limits of the authority of the revenue officers to four leagues from the coast. Half the unfunded debt Pitt funded, and made up the deficit, which he considered a little below a million, by taxes on various commodities. These arrangements though they show no great novelty, were much applauded at the time.

Having thus cleared the way for general legislation, Pitt proceeded to bring in his India Bill. It was very like the one which had been defeated the preceding year, and was probably chiefly the work of Dundas. The fate of Fox's Bills had shown the strength of the India House, while the necessity for some Government control was acknowledged by all parties. The present measure was therefore one of compromise. A new ministerial department was established which should exercise the whole political control of the Company; this was to be called the Board of Control. By it was laid the foundation of that system of double government which continued in force till 1858. All business was to be carried on in the name of the Company, which retained the whole patronage except the appointment of the commander-in-chief, and other higher functionaries, whose appointment was subject to the veto of the Crown; but the Board of Control absolutely dictated the political conduct of the Government. Thus the chartered rights of the Company were left untouched; the balance of influence was not upset by a sudden change of patronage; the Board of Control, being ministerial, passed in or out of office with the ministry, but India was secured against mercantile views of policy by its political management being withdrawn from the hands of a merchant company. It was certainly a less complete Bill than its predecessor, it could not be a permanent arrangement, but tided over the present difficulty, and was carried without serious opposition.

Much more difficult was the settlement of Ireland. The rational and patriotic demands of the volunteers, which had led to the legislation of 1780 and 1782, had been satisfied by those measures, but had been followed, as is always the case in Ireland, by agitation of a more revolutionary character. The leadership of the movement had passed from Grattan to Flood, rather a demagogue than a statesman, and the volunteers, a national and patriotic body, gradually dwindled to nothing, and in their place arose a clamorous and revolutionary democracy. The cry put forward was for parliamentary reform, the urgent necessity for which was indeed obvious. In a Parliament of 300, 116 seats were held by nominees of no more than 25 proprietors. The Government commanded 186 votes, pledged to them in exchange for the possession or hope of offices or pensions, 12 members were regarded as honest supporters of the Government, the regular Opposition was about 82, 30 Whig nominees, and 52 members of the popular party. To this Parliament Flood introduced a sweeping measure of reform. A scene Flood's democratic measure of reform. of wild uproar was the consequence, the Bill was thrown out by a large majority; no better success attended its reintroduction in a more moderate form. The mob rose in wild disorder, and acts of ferocious cruelty were perpetrated. The leader of this movement outside Parliament was Napper Tandy, an ironmonger, who did not scruple to intrigue with the Court of France. Some of the lower priests were also engaged on the popular side, but as Flood refused the franchise to the Catholics in his proposition, the main body held aloof from the movement. This state of disorder Pitt intended to improve by reforming the Parliament in a more practical and moderate manner and by commercial arrangements. All attempts at parliamentary reform had however to be abandoned; but the minister felt that before any vigorous measures could be adopted it was necessary to grant justice to the people. He determined therefore to complete the work of 1780, and to establish real commercial equality between England and Ireland. At the same Pitt's policy for Ireland. time he strongly held that equality of privilege implied equality of burdens. In accordance with this view eleven resolutions were brought into the Irish Parliament and accepted without much opposition. By these the restrictions of trade, which had already been removed as far as regarded Europe and the West Indies, would be removed in like manner with regard to the rest of the world; and with regard to imports, England and Ireland would become one nation, so that goods landed in Ireland could be re-imported into England without further duty. In exchange for this, all the hereditary income of the Crown, which was derived chiefly from customs, beyond the sum of £656,000 was to be applied to the support of the Imperial navy. Thus the money paid would bear a direct proportion to the advantages gained by Ireland by the extension of her trade. Pitt, sure of the economical soundness of the principles on which this Bill was based, only courted full discussion. He underrated Selfish commercial opposition. the selfishness of the commercial interest. On the resolutions being introduced to the English Parliament, the strongest opposition was raised by merchants and manufacturers, afraid of a fresh competitor; and Fox and Burke, the first of whom was confessedly ignorant of the laws of political economy, turned the opposition to their party purposes. The Bill had to be altered considerably, restrictions with regard to the Asiatic trade had to be continued, thus seriously diminishing the advantage granted to Ireland, while Pitt laid himself open to the charge of encroaching upon the newly-earned independence of that country by trying to establish the commercial superiority of England, since all this commercial legislation was to emanate from the English Parliament. The Whigs took immediate advantage of this error, and, unable to stop the Bill in the English Parliament, used all their eloquence to inflame the patriotic feeling of the Irish. The Bill in its changed form was therefore rejected in Dublin (August), and Pitt began to Pitt recognizes the necessity for a union. feel the necessity for that great measure which he completed eighteen years afterwards. If either true parliamentary reform was to be brought about or commercial equality to be established, not only legislative equality, but legislative union, it was plain, would be necessary.

This was not the only defeat which the ministry suffered. It was no more successful in its efforts at parliamentary reform in England. In fact, the interest felt in the question had begun to flag; it had been raised to its utmost by the separation between the representatives of the people and the people they represented, which had been so obvious during the administration of Grenville, and by Failure of Pitt's Reform Bill. the long and disastrous triumph of royal influence under Lord North. But Pitt's success rested entirely upon the will of the constituencies after the late dissolution, and the people were on the whole satisfied with their representation. But with Pitt, as with his father, the reform of Parliament had always been a favourite object; he now produced a Bill by which he hoped to win all parties to his side, but its very timidity weakened its popularity. He proposed to disfranchise thirty-six rotten boroughs, and to give the seventy-two seats thus gained to the counties and to London and Westminster. Thus far he was true to his old plan, but afraid of the opposition of borough proprietors, he consented to recognize as a part of the Constitution their rights of proprietorship, and designed to set apart a fund of £1,000,000 to satisfy the claims of the possessors of the boroughs which he wished to destroy. Such as it was the Bill was rejected by a majority of seventy, and Pitt regarded the question henceforward as settled against him. It is to be observed that all these measures, whether successful or not, were such as we should now speak of as Liberal measures.

The success of the Government in its financial schemes, on the other hand, was marked, although the arrangement which at this time excited most admiration has since been recognized as based upon an absurd fallacy. Alarmed at the great increase of the National Debt, and inspired with an honest wish to reduce it, Pitt produced his plan for a sinking fund. His taxes had been so successful, and the financial recovery of the nation at peace and under a firm Government had been such, that he found himself possessed of a surplus closely bordering on a million, and suggested that this million should annually be set aside and vested in commissioners to accumulate at compound interest. It was to be beyond the control of Government, and this fund with its accumulations was to be applied, as circumstances permitted, to the reduction of the debt. The principle is obviously sound as far as it goes, that is to say, what a nation saves it can clearly apply to the purpose of reducing its liabilities, but there the matter ends; there is and can be no peculiar and mysterious power in a sinking fund. But this was not seen by Pitt, or by those who approved of his plan, and when times of difficulty arose, the million went on year by year being religiously set aside, although not only one million, but many millions were yearly borrowed for the purpose of covering the current expenses of the year. Interest, and often much higher interest, was thus paid out on the one side in order that a less interest might be gained on the other. It was not till the year 1828 that this fallacy was finally exposed by Lord Grenville, who, strangely enough, had been the chairman of the committee who first recommended its adoption. It had however been virtually abandoned in 1807. Although Commercial treaty with France. Sept. 1786. he fell into this error, Pitt's financial views were generally broad; thus about this time he entered into a commercial treaty with France, by which, with some very few exceptions, prohibitory duties between the countries were repealed, a moderate tariff was established, and the famous Methuen Treaty with Portugal, which had almost excluded French wines, and changed the habits of the English nation, giving them a taste for the hot wines of the Peninsula, was abrogated. He also greatly simplified the custom duties, supplying their place in some instances with excise or customs levied inland, a most beneficial measure, but formerly so unpopular that it had almost proved fatal to the ministry of Walpole, the only great financial minister England had had during the century.

These measures, important as they were, excited little attention in comparison with the threatened impeachment of Warren Hastings. Though, as we have seen, censured, and almost recalled in 1781, the Governor-General had latterly retained his post unmolested, and came home in June 1785 on the natural expiration of his office. At home he was well received, but he had two vindictive enemies in the House of Commons, one, Edmund Burke, whose imagination had always been strongly drawn towards the majestic history of Hindostan, and whose hatred of oppression had been strongly fired by the accounts which had lately been received from India; the other, Philip Francis, the rancorous and defeated rival of the late Governor-General; and Hastings had scarcely arrived in England before Burke gave notice that he should call attention to his conduct. The feeling in England that Hastings had on the whole done a great work was so strong, that, although the ministry had shown him many marks of favour, it is possible that even Burke might have left him untouched had not his injudicious and wearisome agent, Major Scott, challenged inquiry. Burke accepted the challenge, and in April produced specific charges against him, based principally on his war with the Rohillas and on his conduct to Cheyte Singh and the Begums of Oude. Hastings, who was always unable to understand the feeling of the House of Commons, insisted on being personally heard at the bar, and wearied the House by reading a written document of enormous length, which occupied a day and a half in reading. On the first charge, however, with regard to the Rohilla war, a considerable majority was in his favour; it will be remembered that this belonged to the first period of his administration, and it was upon this that he had been already censured; but as Dundas, the original mover of the vote of censure, urged, with much show of right, the fault was an old one, and had been condoned by the subsequent appointment of Hastings as Governor-General. Hastings and his friends believed that his cause had gained the support of Government and was now secure. Great was their dismay when, upon the second charge with regard to Cheyte Singh, which Pitt supports them. was brought forward by Fox, Pitt rose and declared, that although he regarded Cheyte Singh as the vassal of the Bengal Empire, and liable to be called on for assistance, he could not but regard the infliction of a fine of £500,000 for the non-payment of £50,000 as ridiculously and shamefully exorbitant. On these grounds, he said, he should support the charge, all his friends voted with him, and Fox's resolution passed by a majority of forty. This entirely changed the aspect of affairs, but the lateness of the season (June 1786) rendered it necessary that the completion of the charges should be postponed till the next year. In the February of that year Sheridan, in a speech occupying five hours and forty minutes, produced the charge with regard to the Begums of Oude. So striking was this piece of oratory that it was deemed necessary to adjourn the House lest the excitement produced by it should prevent cool judgment of the matter. Again, and with the same result as Consequent impeachment. 1787. before, Pitt both spoke and voted in favour of the charge. On these and other charges Burke, in May, founded a resolution of impeachment, and proceeding to the Upper House, impeached the late Governor-General, who was taken into custody and admitted to bail. The trial did not actually begin till February 1788.

Another question which now arose, and which was in the next year to be of the greatest importance, was the conduct and character of the Prince of Wales. True to the traditions and customs of his family, he had allied himself to the enemies of his father, and not only in his political but in his domestic life had much outraged the King's feelings. From the respectable and somewhat repellant family life of the Court, the princes, one and all, took refuge in a disorderly and licentious life. The stern propriety of the father, and the somewhat unlovely rigidity of the mother, undid the work which their thoroughly domestic character should have done. The Prince of Wales had everything in his favour upon his entrance into life. Good-looking, of pleasant manners, of considerable ability, and views at all events nominally liberal, there was nothing to prevent his great popularity. Unfortunately the profligacy of his life, which the world might have pardoned, was the mark of a thoroughly depraved character, which led him into breaches of honour. This fault became very obvious in the year 1787. For some time he had been clamouring for the payment of his debts, and on the King's refusal to discharge them, he had in a huff reduced his establishment and pretended to live like a private gentleman. Meanwhile he had been entangled in an awkward love affair. Mrs. Fitzherbert, a Roman Catholic lady, had attracted his attention, and refused to listen to his advances unless he would marry her. This he did. Now, by the Act of Settlement, marriage with a Roman Catholic invalidated all claims to the throne, but by a second statute, the Royal Marriage Act, any marriage contracted without the royal consent was null. By pleading the second, the Prince could therefore avoid the action of the first, but by so doing was virtually taking away the character of his wife, and obviously evading the law. With this slur upon his character, he came to the Parliament for the payment of his debts. The charge against him was raised by Rolle, the member for Devonshire, and Fox, completely duped by his royal friend, was induced to give the fact a flat denial. The Prince completed his treachery by afterwards disavowing his instructions to Fox. Such conduct naturally produced a temporary coolness between them. After so strong a denial, however, it was impossible to refuse the Prince's demand, and his debts were paid, to the amount of £160,000.

The year was marked not only by the completion of old questions, but by the appearance of a new one. This was the question of the slave trade. The horrors of this trade had for many years been before the public, and the opposition to slavery had so far been organized, that it had been determined to assault—what it was believed might be overthrown without much difficulty—the actual trade in slaves, and leave the abolition of slavery itself for a future occasion. The horrors of the trade could scarcely be exaggerated. Ships built for the purpose were employed, in which the allowance of room for a slave was five feet and a half in length by one foot four inches in breadth. The extreme height between decks was five feet eight inches, but this was occupied by shelves, upon which the slaves were packed. Sixteen hours a day they remained below, chained to the deck, fed upon a pint of water and two feeds of horse beans. Such conditions of life, for weeks together, in the tropics, not being conducive to health, they were brought up and forced to jump upon the deck, under the influence of the whip, for the sake of exercise. If any difficulty arose, they were tossed overboard without scruple, and English law courts held underwriters answerable for such loss, as arising from the natural perils of the sea. No charge of murder, or even manslaughter, was ever dreamt of. These facts were elicited by a Parliamentary Committee, presided over by Whitbread, from witnesses who had previously described the excellent arrangements of the ships and the cheerful merry dancing of the slaves upon the voyage. Before any action could be taken upon these revelations, an event occurred which for a moment threatened the stability of the ministry.

In November, after some months of illness, the King was declared incapable of carrying on the business of the country. His illness assumed the form of insanity, and even if he should survive, as was thought doubtful, it seemed plain that a regency would be inevitable. The King's physicians, following the ignorant practice with regard to lunatics which obtained at that time, prescribed the strictest and most galling constraints, separated the King from his wife, refused him the use of knife and fork and razor, and intrusted him to coarse and cruel servants. Having by this means intensified the symptoms, they proceeded to pronounce them incurable. Fortunately for the King, Lady Harcourt was bold enough to recommend Dr. Willis, who, originally a clergyman, had for nearly thirty years been managing a private asylum for lunatics, where he had met with much success. On being summoned, he at once declared he could cure the King, and the Queen and Pitt placed him in his hands with implicit confidence. Thus when, after some prorogation, Parliament assembled in December, a committee which had examined the medical evidence expressed a hope of the King's recovery. Armed with this report, Pitt moved for an examination of precedents before arranging the regency, while Fox, forgetful of the Prince's late duplicity, and clutching eagerly at the power which seemed just within his grasp, asserted that precedents were useless, as "the heir-apparent had an inherent right to assume the reins of government." As Pitt immediately pointed out, this was to rob the Parliament of all power in the matter, although it had twice been regarded as competent to change the succession to the throne. The vehemence of the Whig party in fact overreached itself, and enabled Pitt, who firmly believed that he was on the point of being driven from office, with a somewhat ostentatious show of carelessness as to the favour of The Regency Bill. the future King or Regent, to produce a Bill nominating indeed the heir-apparent as the Regent, but under strict limitations. The principle he laid down was that, as the King would in all probability recover, he should, on resuming his functions, find things as little altered as possible. He therefore refused to the Prince of Wales the right of making Peers, or granting places, in reversion or for any term except during his Majesty's pleasure, while the care of the King's person and household was left in the Queen's power. Nothing, probably, but the feeling that the Prince was thoroughly immoral could have allowed Pitt to produce so stringent a Bill. It was not indeed passed, for the necessity of passing it was prevented by the recovery of the King. This had been the work of Dr. Willis, who, by mingled kindness and firmness, the removal of all the ridiculous restraints the King's doctors had laid upon him, had succeeded in restoring his self-respect and bringing him back almost to his usual state of sanity, although for some weeks longer he persistently believed, while showing the tenderest affection for the Queen, that he was deeply in love with one of the ladies of the Court.

Pitt's faithful adherence to George during his illness, and the firmness with which he had insisted on keeping things unchanged, though at the risk of total loss of favour for himself, bound the King Pre-eminence of Pitt. to him more closely than ever, and for many years to come his position was quite unassailable. Up to this time Pitt's policy had been enlarged and liberal in all directions. He had contrived to realize his father's plan, and resting on the authority of the Crown, but independent as a minister, had destroyed the monopoly of power so long held by the great Whig factions. This he had done without subserviency and without deserting the Liberal principles in which he had been trained, but he could not but feel that he rested primarily on the royal support, and insensibly his policy had become the royal policy, and he was pledged to support the influence of the Crown. This gradual and almost unobserved change was called into active exhibition by the events which were happening in Europe.

GEORGE III.—CONTINUED.

1789-1820.