The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII | Page 2

regulating the East India Company, as it now stands,--and, secondly, to inquire into the circumstances of the two great links of connection by which the territorial possessions in India are united to this kingdom, namely, the Company's commerce, and the government exercised under the charter and under acts of Parliament. The last [first] of these objects, the commerce, is taken in two points of view: the external, or the direct trade between India and Europe, and the internal, that is to say, the trade of Bengal, in all the articles of produce and manufacture which furnish the Company's investment.
The government is considered by your Committee under the like descriptions of internal and external. The internal regards the communication between the Court of Directors and their servants in India, the management of the revenue, the expenditure of public money, the civil administration, the administration of justice, and the state of the army. The external regards, first, the conduct and maxims of the Company's government with respect to the native princes and people dependent on the British authority,--and, next, the proceedings with regard to those native powers which are wholly independent of the Company. But your Committee's observations on the last division extend to those matters only which are not comprehended in the Report of the Committee of Secrecy. Under these heads, your Committee refer to the most leading particulars of abuse which prevail in the administration of India,--deviating only from this order where the abuses are of a complicated nature, and where one cannot be well considered independently of several others.
[Sidenote: Second attempt made by Parliament for a reformation.]
Your Committee observe, that this is the second attempt made by Parliament for the reformation of abuses in the Company's government. It appears, therefore, to them a necessary preliminary to this second undertaking, to consider the causes which, in their opinion, have produced the failure of the first,--that the defects of the original plan may be supplied, its errors corrected, and such useful regulations as were then adopted may be further explained, enlarged, and enforced.
[Sidenote: Proceedings of session 1773.]
The first design of this kind was formed in the session of the year 1773. In that year, Parliament, taking up the consideration of the affairs of India, through two of its committees collected a very great body of details concerning the interior economy of the Company's possessions, and concerning many particulars of abuse which prevailed at the time when those committees made their ample and instructive reports. But it does not appear that the body of regulations enacted in that year, that is, in the East India Act of the thirteenth of his Majesty's reign, were altogether grounded on that information, but were adopted rather on probable speculations and general ideas of good policy and good government. New establishments, civil and judicial, were therefore formed at a very great expense, and with much complexity of constitution. Checks and counter-checks of all kinds were contrived in the execution, as well as in the formation of this system, in which all the existing authorities of this kingdom had a share: for Parliament appointed the members of the presiding part of the new establishment, the Crown appointed the judicial, and the Company preserved the nomination of the other officers. So that, if the act has not fully answered its purposes, the failure cannot be attributed to any want of officers of every description, or to the deficiency of any mode of patronage in their appointment. The cause must be sought elsewhere.
[Sidenote: Powers and objects of act of 1773, and the effects thereof.]
The act had in its view (independently of several detached regulations) five fundamental objects.
1st. The reformation of the Court of Proprietors of the East India Company.
2ndly. A new model of the Court of Directors, and an enforcement of their authority over the servants abroad.
3rdly. The establishment of a court of justice capable of protecting the natives from the oppressions of British subjects.
4thly. The establishment of a general council, to be seated in Bengal, whose authority should, in many particulars, extend over all the British settlements in India.
5thly. To furnish the ministers of the crown with constant information concerning the whole of the Company's correspondence with India, in order that they might be enabled to inspect the conduct of the Directors and servants, and to watch over the execution of all parts of the act; that they might be furnished with 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