If the ill effects of every misdemeanour in the Company's service were to be immediate, and had a tendency to lower the value of the stock, something might justly be expected from the pecuniary security taken by the act. But from the then state of things, it was more than probable, that proceedings, ruinous to the permanent interest of the Company, might commence in great lucrative advantages. Against this evil large pecuniary interests were rather the reverse of a remedy. Accordingly the Company's servants have ever since covered over the worst oppressions of the people under their government, and the most cruel and wanton ravages of all the neighbouring countries, by holding out, and for a time actually realizing, additions of revenue to the territorial funds of the Company, and great quantities of valuable goods to their investment.

But this consideration of mere income (whatProprietors. ever weight it might have) could not be the first object of a proprietor, in a body so circumstanced. The East-India Company is not like the Bank of England, a mere monied society for the sole purpose of the preservation or improvement of their capital: and therefore, every attempt to regulate it upon the same principles must inevitably fail. When it is considered, that a certain share in the stock gives a share in the government of so vast an empire, with such a boundless patronage, civil, military, marine, commercial, and financial, in every department of which such fortunes have been made, as could be made nowhere else, it is impossible not to perceive, that capitals, far superior to any qualifications appointed to proprietors, or even to directors, would readily be laid out for a participation in that power. The India proprietor, therefore, will always be, in the first instance, a politician; and the bolder his enterprise, and the more corrupt his views, the less will be his consideration of the price to be paid for compassing them. The new regulations did not reduce the number so low as not to leave the assembly still liable to all the disorder, which might be supposed to arise from multitude. But, if the principle had been well established, and well executed, a much greater inconveniency grew out of the reform than that which had attended the old abuse; for if tumult and disorder be lessened by reducing the number of proprietors,

private cabal and intrigue are facilitated, at least, in an equal degree; and it is cabal and corruption, rather than disorder and confusion, that were most to be dreaded in transacting the affairs of India. Whilst the votes of the smaller proprietors continued, a door was left open for the public sense to enter into that society: since that door has been closed, the proprietory has become (even more than formerly) an aggregate of private interests, which subsist at the expense of the collective body. At the moment of this revolution in the proprietory, as it might naturally be expected, those, who had either no very particular interest in their vote, or but a petty object to pursue, immediately disqualified; but those, who were deeply interested in the Company's patronage; those, who were concerned in the supply of ships, and of the other innumerable objects, required for their immense establishments; those, who were engaged in contracts with the treasury, admiralty, and ordnance, together with the clerks in public offices, found means of securing qualifica tions at the enlarged standard. All these composed a much greater proportion than formerly they had done of the proprietory body.

Against the great, predominant, radical corruption of the court of proprietors, the raising the qualification proved no sort of remedy. The return of the Company's servants into Europe poured in a constant supply of proprietors, whose ability to purchase the highest qualifications for themselves, their agents, and dependents, could not be dubious. And this latter description form a very considerable, and by far the most active and efficient, part of that body. To add to the votes, which is adding to the power, in proportion to the. wealth, of men, whose very offences were supposed to consist in acts, which lead to the acquisition of enormous riches, appears by no means a well-considered method of checking rapacity and oppression. In proportion as these interests prevailed, the means of cabal, of concealment, and of corrupt confederacy, became far more easy than before. Accordingly, there was no fault with respect to the Company's government over its servants, charged or chargeable on the general court as it originally stood, of which, since the reform, it has not been notoriously guilty. It was not, therefore, a matter of surprise to your committee, that the general

court, so composed, has at length grown to such a degree of contempt both of its duty and of the permanent interest of the whole corporation, as to put itself into open defiance of the salutary admonitions of this House, given for the pose of asserting and enforcing the legal authority of their own body over their own servants.

pur

The failure in this part of the reform of 1773 is not stated by your committee as recommending a return to the ancient constitution of the Company, which was nearly as far as the new from containing any principle tending to the prevention or remedy of abuses; but to point out the probable failure of any future regulations, which do not apply directly to the grievance, but which may be taken up as experiments to ascertain theories of the operations of councils formed of greater or lesser numbers, or such as shall be composed of men of more or less opulence, or of interests of newer or longer standing, or concerning the distribution of power to various descriptions or professions of men, or of the election to office by one authority, rather than another.

directors.

The second object of the act was the court of Court of directors. Under the arrangement of the year 1773, that court appeared to have its authority much strengthened. It was made less dependent than formerly upon its constituents the proprietory. The duration of the directors in office was rendered more permanent, and the tenure itself diversified by a varied and intricate rotation. At the same time their authority was held high over their servants of all descriptions; and the only rule prescribed to the council-general of Bengal, in the exercise of the large and ill-defined powers given to them, was, that they were to yield obedience to the orders of the court of directors. As to the court of directors itself, it was left with very little regulation. The custom of ballot, infinitely the most mischievous in a body possessed of all the ordinary executive powers, was still left; and your committee have found the ill effects of this practice in the course of their inquiries. Nothing was done to oblige the directors to attend to the promotion of their servants according to their rank and merits. In judging of those merits, nothing was done to bind them to any observation of what appeared on their records. Nothing was done to compel them to prosecution or

complaint where delinquency became visible. The act indeed prescribed, that no servant of the Company abroad should be eligible into the direction until two years after his return to England. But as this regulation rather presumes than provides for an inquiry into their conduct, a very ordinary neglect in the court of directors might easily defeat it, and a short remission might in this particular operate as a total indemnity. In fact, however, the servants have of late seldom attempted a seat in the direction; an attempt, which might possibly rouse a dormant spirit of inquiry; but satisfied with an interest in the proprietory, they have, through that name, brought the direction very much under their own control.

As to the general authority of the court of directors, there is reason to apprehend, that on the whole it was somewhat degraded by the act, whose professed purpose was to exalt it; and that the only effect of the parliamentary sanction to their orders has been, that along with those orders the law of the land has been despised and trampled under foot. The directors were not suffered either to nominate or to remove those, whom they were empowered to instruct: from masters they were reduced to the situation of complainants; a situation, the imbecility of which no laws or regulations could wholly alter; and when the directors were afterwards restored in some degree to their ancient power, on the expiration of the lease given to their principal servants, it became impossible for them to recover any degree of their ancient respect, even if they had not, in the mean time, been so modelled as to be entirely free from all ambition of that sort.

From that period the orders of the court of directors became so habitually despised by their servants abroad, and at length to be so little regarded even by themselves, that this contempt of orders forms almost the whole subject-matter of the voluminous reports of two of your committees. If any doubt however remains concerning the cause of this fatal decline of the authority of the court of directors, no doubt whatsoever can remain of the fact itself, nor of the total failure of one of the great leading regulations of the act of 1773.

Supreme

The third object was a new judicial arrangement; the chief purpose of which was to form court of judia strong and solid security for the natives against

cature.

the wrongs and oppressions of British subjects resident in Bengal. An operose and expensive establishment of a supreme court was made, and charged upon the revenues of the country. The charter of justice was by the act left to the crown, as well as the appointment of the magistrates. The defect in the institution seemed to be this; that no rule was laid down, either in the act or the charter, by which the court was to judge. No descriptions of offenders, or species of delinquency, were properly ascertained according to the nature of the place, or to the prevalent mode of abuse. Provision was made for the administration of justice in the remotest part of Hindostan, as if it were a province in Great Britain. Your committee have long had the constitution and conduct of this court before them; and they have not yet been able to discover very few instances (not one, that appears to them of leading importance) of relief given to the natives against the corruptions or oppressions of British subjects in power; though they do find one very strong and marked instance of the judges having employed an unwarrantable extension or application of the municipal law of England, to destroy a person of the highest rank among those natives, whom they were sent to protect. One circumstance rendered the proceeding in this case fatal to all the good purposes, for which the court had been established. The sufferer (the Rajah Nundcomar) appears, at the very time of this extraordinary prosecution, a discoverer of some particulars of illicit gain then charged upon Mr. Hastings, the governor-general. Although in ordinary cases, and in some lesser instances of grievance, it is very probable, that this court has done its duty, and has been, as every court must be, of some service; yet one example of this kind must do more towards deterring the natives from complaint, and consequently from the means of redress, than many decisions favourable to them, in the ordinary course of proceeding, can do for their encouragement and relief. So far as your committee have been able to discover, the court has been generally terrible to the natives, and has distracted the government of the Company, without substantially reforming any one of its abuses.

This court, which in its constitution seems not to have had sufficiently in view the necessities of the people, for whose relief it was intended, and was, or thought itself,