erents in the country
should resent his employment of the swollen forces that were practically
if not technically under his command to compass the defeat of a bill
which, however inadequate, did at least endeavor to bring about a
much-needed improvement.

{230}

The great adventure of the Coalition Ministry, the deed by which it hoped
to justify its existence, and by which indeed it has earned its only
honorable title to remembrance, was the bill which is known to the world
as Fox's India Bill. If the extending influence of England in India was
a source of pride to the English people, it was also a source of grave
responsibility. The conditions under which that influence was exercised,
the weaknesses and inadequacies of the system by which the East India
Company exercised its semi-regal authority, were becoming more apparent
with every succeeding year to the small but steadily increasing number of
persons who took a serious and intelligent interest in Indian affairs. A
series of events, to be referred to later, had served to force into a
special prominence the difficulties and the dangers of the existing state
of affairs and to fasten the attention of thinkers upon the evils that
had resulted, and the evils that must yet result from its continuance.
To mitigate those evils in the present, and to minimize them in the
future, Fox, inspired and aided by Burke's splendid knowledge of Indian
affairs, worked out a measure which was confidently expected to
substitute order for disorder and reason for unreason. In the November
of 1783, Pitt addressed a challenge to the Ministry calling upon them to
bring forward some measure securing and improving the advantages to be
derived from England's Eastern possessions, some measure not of temporary
palliation and timorous expedients, but vigorous and effectual, suited to
the magnitude, the importance, and the alarming exigencies of the case.
Fox answered this challenge by asking leave to bring in a bill "for
vesting the affairs of the East India Company in the hands of certain
commissioners for the benefit of the proprietors and the public." At the
same time Fox asked leave to bring in another bill "for the better
government of the territorial possessions and dependencies in India."
These two bills, supplementing each other, formed, in the opinion of
those who framed and who advocated them, a simple, efficient, and
responsible plan for the better administration of England's India