His opinions on the Indian question were veiled in impenetrable mystery. Committees were, however, appointed to examine into the state of the Company, and votes were passed that copies of their charters, their treaties with native princes, statements of their Indian revenues, and their correspondence with their servants in India, should be laid before the Committees. On a motion for printing these papers[142], the Directors being alarmed, presented a petition showing the dangers and inconveniences likely to result from making public some part of the papers, especially the private correspondence; when, after a warm debate, that part of the order was discharged. Almost every person of eminence who had been in India, or connected with it, was, however, examined on oath before the House of Lords.
These inquiries inevitably led to the important question of the Company's right to their territorial acquisitions, which a strong party insisted must belong to the Crown. "The Crown," says Mr. Dudley[143], the Chairman of the Directors, "claims a right to all the Company's acquisitions, possessions, and revenues that have been obtained by conquest, which the Cabinet Council, with Lord Chatham at their head, say is the case with respect to every thing we have got from the King, the Nabobs, or other princes of the country for some years past, both at Bengal and Madras."--"We have been, and still are under the dilemma of studying the wants of the Administration, for they themselves will not open their mouths to utter one syllable. They seem to me to determine in their own minds that the right is in the Crown; and, therefore, if the Company have a desire to preserve a share in it, they must acknowledge that right, and pay largely for it." In the numerous debates on Indian affairs that took place in the course of the session, Mr. Beckford, Colonel Barré, and Mr. Nugent pressed upon the Company, while Mr. George Grenville and Mr. Charles Yorke strongly supported its rights, and pleaded the injustice of making any demands upon it in consequence of its conquests, as long as the term of its charter was unexpired. The lawyers were, in general, in favour of the Company; but neither the Ministry nor the Directors wished the dry question of law to be decided: neither party were altogether prepared for its consequences; both rather wished for a compromise, as more favourable to their present ease and their future views. Sir Matthew Fetherstonehaugh, a considerable proprietor of India stock, in a letter to Lord Clive[144], describes some of these debates. "In a question like this," says he, "about the right of property and the forfeiture of a charter, one would have thought that the opinion of almost all the lawyers in the house might have been attended to; but they were called by Colonel Barré 'a sort of _heavy artillery_, which did very little execution;' for which the Master of the Rolls called him, instead of the _honourable_ gentleman, the _valiant_ gentleman. Mr. Grenville, on both days, defended the Company's rights with a force that was unanswerable, always declaring that, if the Company wanted the renewal of their term, or any other favour from the public, they should be made to pay for it in the best bargain which could be made for the public; but protesting against extorting money from them by the terror and threats of parliamentary power."--"But the finest piece of oratory was Mr. Burke's (late secretary to Lord Rockingham). After pointing out the ill effects which so violent a measure might have on the public credit; 'but, perhaps,' said he, 'this house is not the place where our reasons can be of any avail. The great person who is to determine on this question, may be a being far above our view; one so immeasurably high, that the greatest abilities (pointing to Mr. Townshend), or the most amiable dispositions that are to be found in this house (pointing to Mr. Conway), may not gain access to him; a being before whom 'thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers' (waving his hand all this time over the treasury bench, which he sat behind), 'all veil their faces with their wings.