The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII | Page 3

matter to lay before Parliament from time
to time, according as the state of things should render regulation or
animadversion necessary.
[Sidenote: Court of Proprietors.]
[Sidenote: New qualification.]
The first object of the policy of this act was to improve the constitution
of the Court of Proprietors. In this case, as in almost all the rest, the
remedy was not applied directly to the disease. The complaint was, that
factions in the Court of Proprietors had shown, in several instances, a
disposition to support the servants of the Company against the just
coercion and legal prosecution of the Directors. Instead of applying a
corrective to the distemper, a change was proposed in the constitution.
By this reform, it was presumed that an interest would arise in the
General Court more independent in itself, and more connected with the
commercial prosperity of the Company. Under the new constitution, no
proprietor, not possessed of a thousand pounds capital stock, was
permitted to vote in the General Court: before the act, five hundred
pounds was a sufficient qualification for one vote; and no value gave
more. But as the lower classes were disabled, the power was increased
in the higher: proprietors of three thousand pounds were allowed two
votes; those of six thousand were entitled to three; ten thousand pounds
was made the qualification for four. The votes were thus regulated in
the scale and gradation of property. On this scale, and on some
provisions to prevent occasional qualifications and splitting of votes,

the whole reformation rested.
[Sidenote: The ballot.]
[Sidenote: Indian interest.]
Several essential points, however, seem to have been omitted or
misunderstood. No regulation was made to abolish the pernicious
custom of voting by ballot, by means of which acts of the highest
concern to the Company and to the state might be done by individuals
with perfect impunity; and even the body itself might be subjected to a
forfeiture of all its privileges for defaults of persons who, so far from
being under control, could not be so much as known in any mode of
legal cognizance. Nothing was done or attempted to prevent the
operation of the interest of delinquent servants of the Company in the
General Court, by which they might even come to be their own judges,
and, in effect, under another description, to become the masters in that
body which ought to govern them. Nor was anything provided to secure
the independency of the proprietary body from the various exterior
interests by which it might be disturbed, and diverted from the
conservation of that pecuniary concern which the act laid down as the
sole security for preventing a collusion between the General Court and
the powerful delinquent servants in India. 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. In no case could these principles be
less depended upon than in the affairs of the East India Company.
However, by wholly cutting off the lower, and adding to the power of
the higher classes, it was supposed that the higher would keep their
money in that fund to make profit,--that the vote would be a secondary
consideration, and no more than a guard to the property,--and that
therefore any abuse which tended to depreciate the value of their stock
would be warmly resented by such proprietors.
If the ill effects of every misdemeanor in the Company's servants 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 neighboring 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.
[Sidenote: Proprietors.]
But this consideration of mere income, whatever 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
moneyed 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