The House of Commons had not been able to devise a method by which the redress of grievances could be effected through the authors of those grievances; nor could they imagine how corruptions could be purified by the corrupters and the corrupted; nor do we now conceive how any reformation can proceed from the known abettors and supporters of the persons who have been guilty of the misdemeanors which Parliament has reprobated, and who for their own ill purposes have given countenance to a false and delusive state of the Company’s affairs, fabricated to mislead Parliament and to impose upon the nation.[67]

Your Commons feel, with a just resentment, the inadequate estimate which your ministers have formed of the importance of this great concern.  They call on us to act upon the principles of those who have not inquired into the subject, and to condemn those who with the most laudable diligence have examined and scrutinized every part of it.  The deliberations of Parliament have been broken; the season of the year is unfavorable; many of us are new members, who must be wholly unacquainted with the subject, which lies remote from the ordinary course of general information.

We are cautioned against an infringement of the Constitution; and it is impossible to know what the secret advisers of the crown, who have driven out the late ministers for their conduct in Parliament, and have dissolved the late Parliament for a pretended attack upon prerogative, will consider as such an infringement.  We are not furnished with a rule, the observance of which can make us safe from the resentment of the crown, even by an implicit obedience to the dictates of the ministers who have advised that speech; we know not how soon those ministers may be disavowed, and how soon the members of this House, for our very agreement with them, may be considered as objects of his Majesty’s displeasure.  Until by his Majesty’s goodness and wisdom the late example is completely done away, we are not free.

We are well aware, in providing for the affairs of the East, with what an adult strength of abuse, and of wealth and influence growing out of that abuse, his Majesty’s Commons had, in the last Parliament, and still have, to struggle.  We are sensible that the influence of that wealth, in a much larger degree and measure than at any former period, may have penetrated into the very quarter from whence alone any real reformation can be expected.[68]

If, therefore, in the arduous affairs recommended to us, our proceedings should be ill adapted, feeble, and ineffectual,—­if no delinquency should be prevented, and no delinquent should be called to account,—­if every person should be caressed, promoted, and raised in power, in proportion to the enormity of his offences,—­if no relief should be given to any of the natives unjustly dispossessed of their rights, jurisdictions, and properties,—­if no cruel and unjust exactions should be forborne,—­if