Note 22 — Chapter II

A brief report of the debate is given from Lord Hardwicke’s Notes in the “Parliamentary History,” vol. xvi. p. 350, by which it appears that Lord Mansfield’s opposition was most decided and effective. He treated it as an unprecedented exertion of absolute power to set aside a legal act of private men legally empowered to dispose of their own property—they having neither violated the general principles of justice nor the bye-laws of the Company; their circumstances being amply adequate to the payment of the dividend: and he also insisted that stock-jobbing would be promoted by the bill, and left no doubt of his own impression that such was its sole object. These arguments are reproduced with great ability in the Protest, and have never been satisfactorily refuted. The insolvency of the Company—a ground afterwards abandoned by the Government—seems to be the only legitimate defence that could have been alleged for such an arbitrary act.—E.