The ‘East India business’ would indeed provide the spark to ignite the coming conflagration. All were agreed that the methods by which Britain governed its Indian dominions must be reformed, but the disagreement about how to do so would be spectacular. In the days when ‘Diamond Pitt’ had made his fortune in Madras British affairs in India were controlled exclusively by the East India Company. Even then, the huge sums to be made from holding positions of influence in India made the Company’s affairs increasingly important in domestic British politics. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the designs of the French on developing an Indian empire made Indian affairs even more directly a matter of governmental concern. From 1751, when Robert Clive wrecked the plans of the French and succeeded in holding Arcot against an enemy army which outnumbered his by forty to one, British power and responsibilities in India grew rapidly. By 1754 Britain was sending regular troops to India rather than relying solely on those employed by the Company, and three years later Clive routed the French and their allies at the Battle of Plassey. In 1764 a hostile coalition of Indian Princes was similarly annihilated at the Battle of Buxar. Backed by conquering troops, the East India Company had acquired the power to nominate Indian rulers, depose local governments and expel foreign invasions. Originally established to conduct trade, the Company was now ruling an empire.
By the early 1770s the individuals within the East India Company controlled vast patronage and wealth, while the Company itself was virtually bankrupt as a result of taking on so many responsibilities at the same time as paying out huge dividends. In 1773 the government of Lord North introduced a Regulating Act to put the governing of British possessions in India more nearly within political control, creating a Governor General, a Council and a Supreme Court, and regulating the conduct of the Company’s business and behaviour. This system did not work, largely because the Council was usually at bitter loggerheads with the Governor General, Warren Hastings. In 1779, beset by internal divisions, Hastings had to face a wave of Indian revolts and the arrival of a new French fleet in the East at a time when no British reinforcements were available because of the war in America. He resolved the crisis with immense skill and ruthlessness, using, as one historian put it, ‘diplomacy, bribery, threats, force, audacity, and resolution’,6 demolishing every enemy and extending British power still further. In the process, and perhaps inevitably, he committed acts of retribution against enemies and paid vast sums of money to allies. Such tactics produced the desired result, but, when written down on paper in the House of Commons and examined by high-minded people who had never set foot in India, they seemed to have a doubtful ethical basis, to say the least.
In 1781 a Select Committee of the Commons was set up to investigate the judicial system of Bengal, numbering among its members Edmund Burke. Burke had become obsessed with Indian affairs, and would years later bring about the impeachment and trial of Warren Hastings. Now, as a member of the Fox—North government, he was able to frame a Bill which would bring true political control and accountability to Indian affairs. It was this Bill, the East India Bill, which an excited Charles James Fox presented to the House of Commons on 18 November 1783, a week after the opening of Parliament. And it was this Bill which, within a month, would bring down his government.
Ostensibly, the Bill was designed to separate the political and commercial functions of the Company. The key proposal was to create a Board of seven Commissioners, with great powers over the Company’s officers in India, and eight Assistants who would manage the Company’s commercial affairs. The Commissioners would be answerable to Parliament for their decisions, thereby creating the accountability hitherto missing. Crucially, they would also be appointed by Parliament. The Crown would neither appoint them, nor have the right to dismiss them. For Fox and Burke this proposal was perfectly natural: they had long criticised the extent of Crown patronage, and were clearly in favour of making the Company’s political actions accountable to Parliament. Surely, then, the Board must be appointed by Parliament. The storm of controversy this proposal would arouse lay in its practical effect: while Fox controlled the majority in Parliament these extremely powerful Commissioners would be nominated by him. Even if he left office thereafter, his appointees would still be in place, and because in practice their power would reach into commercial matters, they would control patronage and wealth on a scale which could rival that of the rest of the Kingdom combined.
We do not know whether this side-effect of the Bill was one of the principal objectives Fox and Burke had in mind, but we do know that they were alert to the controversy it would create. Fox said that the debates on the Bill would be ‘vigorous and hazardous’ and ‘of a very delicate nature’. Their strategy for getting it through was to take the moral high ground on Indian affairs, and to rush it through its parliamentary stages before concerted opposition to it could be mounted. In the opening debates on 18 and 27 November Fox argued that this business had forced itself upon him and upon the nation, since the ‘rapacity’ of the Company’s servants had produced ‘anarchy and confusion’. The government was called upon to save the Company from imminent bankruptcy. In the first debate Pitt responded that ‘Necessity was the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It was the argument of tyrants: it was the creed of slaves.’7 He called for more time to debate the Bill, and also for a ‘call of the House’ to take place two weeks later as, seeing his opportunity, he attempted to bring the country gentry to Parliament as soon as possible. Four days later he wrote to Rutland:
We are in the midst of a contest, and I think approaching to a crisis. The Bill which Fox has brought in relative to India will be, one way or other, decisive for or against the coalition. It is, I really think, the boldest and most unconstitutional measure ever attempted, transferring at one stroke, in spite of all charters and compacts, the immense patronage and influence of the East to Charles Fox, in or out of office. I think it will with difficulty, if at all, find its way through our House, and can never succeed in yours. Ministry trust all on this one die, and will probably fail … If you have any member within fifty or a hundred miles of you who cares for the Constitution or the country, pray send him to the House of Commons as quick as you can.8
Pitt was perceptive in his letter about the course events would now take, except in relation to the House of Commons, where he was far too optimistic: Fox was able to steamroller all before him. In the decisive Second Reading debate of 27 November, Pitt sought to whip up opposition with extreme language in denouncing the Bill – ‘One of the boldest, most unprecedented, most desperate and alarming attempts at the exercise of tyranny that ever disgraced the annals of this or any other country’9 – but found himself defeated at the end of the day by 229 votes to 120. A triumphant Fox had won the votes and the arguments. As the Bill passed rapidly through its remaining stages in the Commons, Burke delivered his great tribute to the leadership of Fox: ‘He is traduced and abused for his supposed motives. He will remember that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory; he will remember that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the nature and constitution of things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph … He is now on a great eminence, where the eyes of mankind are turned to him. He may live long, he may do much; but here is the summit, – he never can exceed what he does this day.’10 This was classic Burke, emotional, grandiloquent, and completely carried away with the feelings of the moment, but it demonstrated the exultation now arising in the ranks of the government’s supporters. With three-figure majorities behind them in the Commons, and the knowledge that any eighteenth-century government was seldom defeated in the Lords, they thought they were home and dry. On 3 December Fox was even emboldened to announce the names of the prospective Commissioners. Needless to say, these were all supporters of the Fox – North coalition, including Lord North’s eldest son. The Chairman was to be Earl Fitzwilliam, nephew of the deceased Rockingham and another grandee of the Whigs. It was said with some justice that all the nominees were better known at Brooks’s than in India. Despite this confirmation that the personal patronage of Fox and his allies would be vastly extended, the opposition in the Commons had been vanquished, and Pitt