That his Majesty’s ministers, misled by their ambition, have endeavored, if possible, to form a faction in the country against the popular part of the Constitution; and have therefore thought proper to add to their slanderous accusation against a House of Parliament, relative to his Majesty’s prerogative, another of a different nature, calculated for the purpose of raising fears and jealousies among the corporate bodies of the kingdom, and of persuading uninformed persons belonging to those corporations to look to and to make addresses to them, as protectors of their rights, under their several charters, from the designs which they, without any ground, charged the then House of Commons to have formed against charters in general.  For this purpose they have not scrupled to assert that the exertion of his Majesty’s prerogative in the late precipitate change in his administration, and the dissolution of the late Parliament, were measures adopted in order to rescue the people and their rights out of the hands of the House of Commons, their representatives.

We trust that his Majesty’s subjects are not yet so far deluded as to believe that the charters, or that any other of their local or general privileges, can have a solid security in any place but where that security has always been looked for, and always found,—­in the House of Commons.  Miserable and precarious indeed would be the state of their franchises, if they were to find no defence but from that quarter from whence they have always been attacked![66] But the late House of Commons, in passing that bill, made no attack upon any powers or privileges, except such as a House of Commons has frequently attacked, and will attack, (and they trust, in the end, with their wonted success,)—­that is, upon those which are corruptly and oppressively administered; and this House do faithfully assure his Majesty, that we will correct, and, if necessary for the purpose, as far as in us lies, will wholly destroy, every species of power and authority exercised by British subjects to the oppression, wrong, and detriment of the people, and to the impoverishment and desolation of the countries subject to it.

The propagators of the calumnies against that House of Parliament have been indefatigable in exaggerating the supposed injury done to the East India Company by the suspension of the authorities which they have in every instance abused,—­as if power had been wrested by wrong and violence from just and prudent hands; but they have, with equal care, concealed the weighty grounds and reasons on which that House had adopted the most moderate of all possible expedients for rescuing the natives of India from oppression, and for saving the interests of the real and honest proprietors of their stock, as well as that great national, commercial concern, from imminent ruin.

The ministers aforesaid have also caused it to be reported that the House of Commons have confiscated the property of the East India Company.  It is the reverse of truth.  The whole management was a trust for the proprietors, under their own inspection, (and it was so provided for in the bill,) and under the inspection of Parliament.  That bill, so far from confiscating the Company’s property, was the only one which, for several years past, did not, in some shape or other, affect their property, or restrain them in the disposition of it.