friend has brought before you the motion of this day. It is to
perpetuate the abuses which are subverting the fabric of your empire,
that the motion is opposed. It is, therefore, with reason (and if he has
power to carry himself through, I commend his prudence) that the right
honorable gentleman makes his stand at the very outset, and boldly
refuses all Parliamentary information. Let him admit but one step
towards inquiry, and he is undone. You must be ignorant, or he cannot be
safe. But before his curtain is let down, and the shades of eternal
night shall veil our Eastern dominions from our view, permit me, Sir, to
avail myself of the means which were furnished in anxious and
inquisitive times to demonstrate out of this single act of the present
minister what advantages you are to derive from permitting the greatest
concern of this nation to be separated from the cognizance, and exempted
even out of the competence, of Parliament. The greatest body of your
revenue, your most numerous armies, your most important commerce, the
richest sources of your public credit, (contrary to every idea of the
known, settled policy of England,) are on the point of being converted
into a mystery of state. You are going to have one half of the globe hid
even from the common liberal curiosity of an English gentleman. Here a
grand revolution commences. Mark the period, and mark the circumstances.
In most of the capital changes that are recorded in the principles and
system of any government, a public benefit of some kind or other has
been pretended. The revolution commenced in something plausible, in
something which carried the appearance at least of punishment of
delinquency or correction of abuse. But here, in the very moment of the
conversion of a department of British government into an Indian mystery,
and in the very act in which the change commences, a corrupt private
interest is set up in direct opposition to the necessities of the
nation. A diversion is made of millions of the public money from the
public treasury to a private purse. It is not into secret negotiations