Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/268

228 sive property of a body corporate." And subsequently Burke, not being hostile to the Company at the time, described their possessions as "held in virtue of grants from the Delhi emperor, in the nature of offices and jurisdictions dependent on his crown; a very anomalous species of power and property quite unknown to the ancient constitution of England." The East India Company, he observed, had usually dealt in a spirit of equal negotiation with the government for the renewal of their charter; until the Minister (Lord North) set up the Crown's claim to their possessions with the original idea of extracting money to pay off the civil list debts, and Parliament asserted a judicial right to inquire into the question of title in order to alarm the Company.

Burke's view, then, was that the terrors of Parliamentary inquiry were hung over the Company mainly with the object of levying contributions for the Exchequer's benefit. There was much truth in this; and it was partly as a set-off against those contributions that the Company was licensed to export duty-free to North America the tea which the intractable colonists flung into Boston harbour. But Lord North, who now ruled both Houses with an overwhelming majority, was adverse to the Company; the Committees brought up condemnatory reports; and the Commons passed resolutions declaring that all acquisitions made under the influence of a military force, or by treaty with foreign princes, belonged of right to the state. A motion was made arraigning Clive's proceedings in Bengal as dis-