each other. So far from
violence being the general characteristic of the proceedings of
Parliament, whatever the beginnings of any Parliamentary process may be,
its general fault in the end is, that it is found incomplete and
ineffectual.

[67] The purpose of the misrepresentation being now completely answered,
there is no doubt but the committee in this Parliament, appointed by the
ministers themselves, will justify the grounds upon which the last
Parliament proceeded, and will lay open to the world the dreadful state
of the Company's affairs, and the grossness of their own calumnies upon
this head. By delay the new assembly is come into the disgraceful
situation of allowing a dividend of eight per cent by act of Parliament,
without the least matter before them to justify the granting of any
dividend at all.

[68] This will be evident to those who consider the number and
description of Directors and servants of the East India Company chosen
into the present Parliament. The light in which the present ministers
hold the labors of the House of Commons in searching into the disorders
in the Indian administration, and all its endeavors for the reformation
of the government there, without any distinction of times, or of the
persons concerned, will appear from the following extract from a speech
of the present Lord Chancellor. After making a high-flown panegyric on
those whom the House of Commons had condemned by their resolutions, he
said:--"Let us not be misled by reports from committees of _another_
House, to which, I again repeat, _I pay as much attention as I would do
to the history of Robinson Crusoe,_ Let the conduct of the East India
Company be fairly and fully inquired into. Let it be acquitted or
condemned by evidence brought to the bar of the House. Without entering
very deeply into the subject, let me reply in a few words to an
observation which fell from a noble and learned lord, that the Company's
finances are distressed, and that they owe at this moment a million
sterling to the nation. When such a charge is brought, will Parliament
in its justice forget that the Company is restricted from employing
_that credit which its great and flourishing situation_ gives to it?"

END OF VOL. II.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable
Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12), by Edmund Burke

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF BURKE, VOL. 2 ***

***** This file sho