The East India Company had offered, in consideration of certain new advantages granted to them in their tea-trade, to pay four hundred thousand pounds a-year for three years to the Government; and though this sum was far below Lord Chatham’s first sanguine wishes, the impossibility of their affording more, or the impracticability of persuading Parliament to extort more, had brought the bargain nigh to a conclusion;--when, on the 6th of May, a general court of proprietors, where faction and speech-making were as rife as in the House of Commons itself, suddenly determined to treat themselves with the sweets of a dividend, before their funds should be tied up for the purposes of the treaty. The directors had foreseen and secretly insinuated this to the Ministers for prevention; but in the intemperance of the assembly, did not dare to avow the advice they had given. The dividend, so contrary to the faith of the treaty then pending with, and so contemptuous of, Parliament, was voted; and, as if themselves were accountable to none, they dismissed, without a hearing, five of their own servants, against whom there were grievous charges.
The indecency and insult of this proceeding raised high resentment in the House of Commons; and though Dempster and W. Burke, two of their own members, ventured to avow their own share of the criminality, justifying themselves as proprietors, (a character which surely, as judges, they ought to have avoided,) yet the moderation of Conway prevented the House from proceeding to rigour and censure, though he said with firmness, that if the Company should hang out the flag of defiance, he should be ready to meet it. The directors were ordered to give an account the next day of what had passed.
On the eighth the directors appeared at the bar of the House, and owned that they had disapproved of making a dividend in the present situation of their affairs, and pending the negotiation with Parliament. Dyson, on this, moved for leave to bring in a bill for regulating the making of dividends.