BOOK IV. of October, 1773; those which concerned the foreign administration not till the 1st of August, 1774.*

1773.

Effects of the change.

The defects of the government; 1. in

Practical statesmen are commonly, notwithstanding the airs with which they assume to themselves the monopoly of political wisdom, but mole-eyed legislators. The present was on a level with their usual ignorant and abortive experiments. In one respect it fulfilled the purpose very completely for which it was intended. It fell into the current of that policy which for many reasons has been running with perfect regularity and considerable strength to diminish the influence of numbers in affairs of government, and reduce every thing as much as possible to the oligarchical state.

For the rest; it had not so much as a tendency to remove the principal evils to which it pretended to find a remedy; and it created some evils of the greatest magnitude which previously had no existence.

The evils in question were-I. Such as had their operation in India; and II. Such as had their operation in England.

India, 2. Eng- I. Those which had their operation in India might all be ranked under two heads; 1. The absorption of more than the revenues by expense; and 2. The plunder and oppression of the people.

The motives

to good conduct by the servants in

India not increased.

The only parts of the new constitution which had a direct influence upon the government in India, were-1. The new appointment and powers of the Governorgeneral and Council; and 2. The supreme Court of Judicature.

1. The mode of appointing public functionaries, and the extent of their power, distinct from the motives to good or evil conduct which operate upon them in the discharge of their functions, are evidently of no avail. Upon the Governor and Council in India the motives to evil conduct, and the scope for its exercise, were, if not augmented by the new regulations, at any rate not impaired. † As ingenuity may be challenged to refute this pro

* See 13 Geo. III. c. 63, and 13 Geo. III. c. 64.

+ They were previously debarred from the acceptance of presents, and the Governor from trade. Reliance for probity was placed, as it is so commonly placed, on the greatness of the salaries; as if there was a point of saturation in cupidity; as if the great power which great salaries confer was not the most effectual of all instruments for the undue acquisition of more ; and the most effectual of all instruments for covering such acquisition from inquiry or punishment. In as far, then, as the prospect of impunity is a motive, and it is one of the strongest, so far great salaries do not take from, they add to the temptations to corruption. Even Burke, upon this particular, remarked, that "ample salaries removed the necessity indeed, but by no means the inducements, to corruption and oppression." See Ninth Report of the Select Committee,

position, it follows, that from this branch of the arrangement no good was CHAP. IX. derived.*

1773.

cature not

end.

2. The Supreme Court of Judicature was intended to supply the limited The new judipowers of criminal jurisdiction, which, in their ancient commercial capacity, calculated to had been committed to the Company. The terrors of law, brought nearer home answer its to the inferior servants of the Company, and those who enjoyed their protection, might have restrained in some degree their subordinate oppressions. But it was easy to see that the operations of the supreme functionaries in India must remain exempt from the control of the Supreme Court; otherwise, that court became itself the government. This consequence was not sufficiently foreseen; and the vague and indefinite powers assigned to the judicatory, introduced immediately, between the Governor General and the Judges, those struggles which threatened the existence of English authority.

So long, on the other hand, as the Governor General and Council remained exempt from the control of law, the great oppressors were safe; and, from the community of interests, and the necessity of mutual compliance and mutual concealment between the high offenders and the low, impunity was pretty well secured to the class.

The grand source, however, of mischief to the natives, in the jurisprudential plan, was the unfortunate inattention of its authors to the general principles of law; detached from its accidental and national forms. As the vulgar of every nation think their language the natural one, and all others arbitrary and artificial; so, a large mass of Englishmen consider English law as the pure extract of reason, adapted to the exigencies of human nature itself: Ignorant that, for the greater part, it is arbitrary, technical, and ill-adapted to the general ends which it is intended to serve; that it has more of singularity, and less capacity of adaptation to the state of other nations, than any scheme of law, to be found in any other civilized country. Yet this whole system, the British parliament, or British ministry, transplanted to Bengal exactly as it stood; and imagined that they had amply provided for the administration of justice in India, But the English law, which in general has neither definition nor words to guide the discretion or circumscribe the license of the Judge, presented neither rule nor analogy in cases totally altered by diversity of ideas, manners, and pre-existing

* That part of the regulations which subjected to the Bengal Council the other Presidencies in matters of peace and war with foreign states, had some effect, though not without drawbacks, in giving unity to the international proceedings of the Company: With the goodness or badness of the internal government, it had nothing to do.

1773.

Book IV. rights; and the violent efforts which were made to bend the rights of the natives to a conformity with the English laws, for the purpose of extending jurisdiction, and gratifying a pedantic and mechanical attachment to the arbi trary forms of the Westminster courts, produced more injustice and oppression, and excited more alarm, than probably was experienced, through the whole of its duration, from the imperfection of the previous powers of law and judicature.*

The only

means em

moving the

defects in

nister.

II. If, towards the amelioration of the government in India, the new effort ployed for re- in legislation performed no more than this; it injured, rather than improved, the condition of both the Company and the natives. Against the government at England, was home, the only objection, of any real moment, was, its inefficiency, as the dependance upon the Mi- ruling power, to produce, by means of its servants, a good government in India, or, what in this case was meant by good government, a large surplus of revenue or treasure to England, without oppression to the natives. The total change which was effected in the constitution of the Company pretended to have for its End the improvement and perfection of the Company in that respect: And it employed as its whole and only Means, dependance upon the Minister.

Imperfection

dient.

If the Minister had more knowledge of the affairs of India, more leisure to of this expe- devote to their management, and more interest in their being well managed, this was an improvement. If he had less knowledge; less leisure; and, far above all, if his interest was likely to be most promoted by that system of patronage which creates dependance, and which is at irreconcilable enmity with the very principle of good government, the change was wholly the reverse. How dependence upon the Minister was to render the agents of government more faithful and economical stewards of the revenues in India, or less disposed to accumulate wealth at the expense of the prostrate natives, it is not easy to

* Mr. Burke, in the Ninth Report of the Select Committee, in 1783, says, "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 as 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.-So far as your Committee have been able to dis cover, 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."

make appear: In regard to responsibility, or eventual punishment, the only CHAP. IX. caution was, to act in concert with the minister; and then they were out of all 1773. comparison more assured of impunity than ever.

pendance

upon the Mi

only effect.

From dependance upon the Court of Proprietors by annual elections, to ren- Proof that deder the Directors in a great degree independent of their constituents by elections in four years, gave them greater powers, and hence motives, to pursue their nister was the own interests at the expense of the Proprietors; but that it should increase their interest in the good government of India, and hence their motives for exertion to procure it, is impossible.

To diminish the number of votes in the Court of Proprietors, and confine the power to the rich, was contrived, it was said, to render that assembly less tumultuous. But tumultuousness, in itself, is not an evil. It is evil only when it has a tendency to produce evil effects. What is more tumultuous than a public market, a theatre, or a church? To know the merit then of a reform of tumultuousness, we ought to know the specific evils which the tumultuousness in question produced. In the case of the East India Company, the authors of the measure failed in exhibiting any mischievous effects; though by their reform they unquestionably created a field for other effects of a very pernicious description. “If tumult and disorder," as was well remarked by an illustrious Committee of the Commons House, "were lessened by reducing the number of Proprietors, private cabal and intrigue were facilitated at least in an equal degree; and it is cabal and corruption, rather than disorder and confusion, that are most to be dreaded in transacting the affairs of India; "* that are most to be dreaded in transacting the affairs of every country under the sun.

The virtues of a Court of Proprietors, as of every political body, are intelligence and probity. The owner of 500l. stock was just as likely to be intelligent as the the owner of 1000l. But a small number of men are much more easily corrupted than a large; and, where the matter of corruption operates, much more sure of being corrupt. †

To the grand complaint against the Court of Proprietors, that being filled by the servants of the Company who had returned loaded to Europe with illgotten wealth it proved a barrier against exposure and punishment, the amount

* Ninth Report of the Select Committee, in 1783.

+ "The whole of the regulations concerning the Court of Proprietors relied upon two principles, which have often proved fallacious; namely, that small numbers were a security against faction and disorder; and, that integrity of conduct would follow the greater property." Ninth Report, ut supra.

BOOK IV. of the qualification provided no sort of remedy, but rather facilitated and con firmed the abuse.

1773.

As soon as ever the management of the East India Company's affairs became a source of great patronage and power, it necessarily followed that stock was generally held for the promotion of interests of much greater value than the dividend. It was distributed mostly among three great classes of Proprietors; 1. Those who aspired to a share in the Direction, and who were careful to possess themselves of whatever share of stock was calculated to strengthen their influence; 2. The large class of those who were competitors for the Company's favours and employment, all those concerned in the immense supply of their shipping and goods, constituting a considerable proportion of the ship-owners and tradesmen in London, who strengthened their influence with the great customer, by the number of votes which they could assure to the Directors in the General Court; 3. Those who aspired to contracts with the Treasury, Admiralty, and Ordnance, and clerks in public offices, who discovered that one ground of influence with the Minister, was to have votes at his disposal in the East India Proprietary Court.*

By every thing which tended to lessen the number of voting Proprietors, the force of all these sinister interests was increased. The only expedient which had a tendency to counteract them, was to render such Proprietors as numerous as possible. This would have promoted the interests of the public, but not those of the minister; the interests of the many, but not those of the few.†

Voting by One part of the ancient constitution, for the preservation of which the ballot; where useful; where authors of the present reform were condemned by the Select Committee of

hurtful.

* This is pretty nearly the description of the East India Proprietary which is given by the Committee of the House of Commons. See Ninth Report of the Select Committee in 1783.

+ It was urged by the Minister, that by raising the qualification from 500l. to 1000%, the value of the dividend would govern the Proprietor more than that of the vote; with what sincerity, or what discernment, it is easy to see. Burke, moreover, very justly remarked, that this pecuniary interest might be most effectually served by some signal misdemeanour, which should produce a great immediate advantage, though productive of ultimate ruin. " Accordingly," he adds, "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." He added, with obvious truth, "The Indian Proprietor 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." Ninth Report, ut supra.