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History of England, from the Accession of James the Second, the — Volume 5 by Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay
page 66 of 321 (20%)

The opposition to the scheme was vehement and pertinacious. The
Old Company presented petition after petition. The Tories, with
Seymour at their head, appealed both to the good faith and to the
compassion of Parliament. Much was said about the sanctity of the
existing Charter, and much about the tenderness due to the
numerous families which had, in reliance on that Charter,
invested their substance in India stock. On the other side there
was no want of plausible topics or of skill to use them. Was it
not strange that those who talked so much about the Charter
should have altogether overlooked the very clause of the Charter
on which the whole question turned? That clause expressly
reserved to the government power of revocation, after three
years' notice, if the Charter should not appear to be beneficial
to the public. The Charter had not been found beneficial to the
public; the three years' notice should be given; and in the year
1701 the revocation would take effect. What could be fairer? If
anybody was so weak as to imagine that the privileges of the Old
Company were perpetual, when the very instrument which created
those privileges expressly declared them to be terminable, what
right had he to blame the Parliament, which was bound to do the
best for the State, for not saving him, at the expense of the
State, from the natural punishment of his own folly? It was
evident that nothing was proposed inconsistent with strict
justice. And what right had the Old Company to more than strict
justice? These petitioners who implored the legislature to deal
indulgently with them in their adversity, how had they used their
boundless prosperity? Had not the India House recently been the
very den of corruption, the tainted spot from which the plague
had spread to the Court and the Council, to the House of Commons
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