The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII | Page 4

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 was 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 proprietary 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 proprietary, 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 qualifications at
the enlarged standard. All these composed a much greater proportion
than formerly they had done of the proprietary 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 dependants 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 purpose of asserting and enforcing the legal

authority of their own body over their own servants.
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 operation 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.
[Sidenote: Court of Directors.]
The second object of the act was the 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 proprietary. The duration of the Directors in office