In the year 1780, an act of Parliament again made provision for the government of those territories for another four years, without any sort of reference to prerogative; nor was the least objection taken at the second, more than at the first of those periods, as if an infringement had been made upon the rights of the crown:  yet his Majesty’s ministers have thought fit to represent the late commission as an entire innovation on the Constitution, and the setting up a new order and estate in the nation, tending to the subversion of the monarchy itself.

If the government of the East Indies, other than by his Majesty’s prerogative, be in effect a fourth order in the commonwealth, this order has long existed; because the East India Company has for many years enjoyed it in the fullest extent, and does at this day enjoy the whole administration of those provinces, and the patronage to offices throughout that great empire, except as it is controlled by act of Parliament.

It was the ill condition and ill administration of the Company’s affairs which induced this House (merely as a temporary establishment) to vest the same powers which the Company did before possess, (and no other,) for a limited time, and under very strict directions, in proper hands, until they could be restored, or farther provision made concerning them.  It was therefore no creation whatever of a new power, but the removal of an old power, long since created, and then existing, from the management of those persons who had manifestly and dangerously abused their trust.  This House, which well knows the Parliamentary origin of all the Company’s powers and privileges, and is not ignorant or negligent of the authority which may vest those powers and privileges in others, if justice and the public safety so require, is conscious to itself that it no more creates a new order in the state, by making occasional trustees for the direction of the Company, than it originally did in giving a much more permanent trust to the Directors or to the General Court of that body.  The monopoly of the East India Company was a derogation from the general freedom of trade belonging to his Majesty’s people.  The powers of government, and of peace and war, are parts of prerogative of the highest order.  Of our competence to restrain the rights of all his subjects by act of Parliament, and to vest those high and eminent prerogatives even in a particular company of merchants, there has been no question.  We beg leave most humbly to claim as our right, and as a right which this House has always used, to frame such bills for the regulation of that commerce, and of the territories held by the East India Company, and everything relating to them, as to our discretion shall seem fit; and we assert and maintain that therein we follow, and do not innovate on, the Constitution.