ommissioners of the
Treasury. The late House of Commons, finding bills to an immense amount
drawn upon that body by their servants abroad, and knowing their
circumstances to be exceedingly doubtful, came to a resolution
providently, cautioning the Lords of the Treasury against the acceptance
of these bills, until the House should otherwise direct. The Court Lords
then took occasion to declare against the resolution as illegal, by the
Commons undertaking to direct in the execution of a trust created by act
of Parliament. The House, justly alarmed at this resolution, which went
to the destruction of the whole of its superintending capacity, and
particularly in matters relative to its own province of money, directed
a committee to search the journals, and they found a regular series of
precedents, commencing from the remotest of those records, and carried
on to that day, by which it appeared that the House interfered, by an
authoritative advice and admonition, upon every act of executive
government without exception, and in many much stronger cases than that
which the Lords thought proper to quarrel with.

[64] "I observe, at the same time, that there is _no charge or
complaint_ suggested against my present ministers."--The King's Answer,
25th February, 1784, to the Address of the House of Common. _Vide_
Resolutions of the House of Commons, printed for Debrett, p. 31.

[65] The territorial possessions in the East Indies were acquired to the
Company, in virtue of grants from the Great Mogul, in the nature of
offices and jurisdictions, to be held under _him_, and dependent upon
_his_ crown, with the express condition of being obedient to orders from
_his_ court, and of paying an annual tribute to _his_ treasury. It is
true that no obedience is yielded to these orders, and for some time
past there has been no payment made of this tribute. But it is under a
grant so conditioned that they still hold. To subject the King of Great
Britain as tributary to a foreign power by the acts of his subjects; to
suppose the grant valid, and yet the condition void; to suppose it good
for the king, and insufficient for the Company; to suppose it an
interest divisible between the parties: these are some few of the many
legal difficulties to be surmounted, before the Common Law of England
can acknowledge the East India Company's Asiatic affairs to be a subject
matter of _prerogative_, so as to bring it within the verge of English
jurisprudence