The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII | Page 8

ought to have been forbidden, at least to certain periods. If this had not been thought advisable, none in the higher departments of a suspected and decried government ought to have been kept in their posts, until an examination had rendered their proceedings clear, or until length of time had obliterated, by an even course of irreproachable conduct, the errors which so naturally grow out of a new power. But the policy adopted was different: it was to begin with examples. The cry against the abuses was strong and vehement throughout the whole nation, and the practice of presents was represented to be as general as it was mischievous. In such a case, indeed in any case, it seemed not to be a measure the most provident, without a great deal of previous inquiry, to place two persons, who from their situation must be the most exposed to such imputations, in the commission which was to inquire into their own conduct,--much less to place one of them at the head of that commission, and with a casting vote in case of an equality. The persons who could not be liable to that charge were, indeed, three to two; but any accidental difference of opinion, the death of any one of them or his occasional absence or sickness, threw the whole power into the hands of the other two, who were Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell, one the President, and the other high in the Council of that establishment on which the reform was to operate. Thus those who were liable to process as delinquents were in effect set over the reformers; and that did actually happen which might be expected to happen from so preposterous an arrangement: a stop was soon put to all inquiries into the capital abuses.
Nor was the great political end proposed in the formation of a superintending Council over all the Presidencies better answered than that of an inquiry into corruptions and abuses. The several Presidencies have acted in a great degree upon their own separate authority; and as little of unity, concert, or regular system has appeared in their conduct as was ever known before this institution. India is, indeed, so vast a country, and the settlements are so divided, that their intercourse with each other is liable to as many delays and difficulties as the intercourse between distant and separate states. But one evil may possibly have arisen from an attempt to produce an union, which, though undoubtedly to be aimed at, is opposed in some degree by the unalterable nature of their situation,--that it has taught the servants rather to look to a superior among themselves than to their common superiors. This evil, growing out of the abuse of the principle of subordination, can only be corrected by a very strict enforcement of authority over that part of the chain of dependence which is next to the original power.
[Sidenote: Powers given to the ministers of the crown.]
That which your Committee considers as the fifth and last of the capital objects of the act, and as the binding regulation of the whole, is the introduction (then for the first time) of the ministers of the crown into the affairs of the Company. The state claiming a concern and share of property in the Company's profits, the servants of the crown were presumed the more likely to preserve with a scrupulous attention the sources of the great revenues which they were to administer, and for the rise and fall of which they were to render an account.
The interference of government was introduced by this act in two ways: one by a control, in effect by a share, in the appointment to vacancies in the Supreme Council. The act provided that his Majesty's approbation should be had to the persons named to that duty. Partaking thus in the patronage of the Company, administration was bound to an attention to the characters and capacities of the persons employed in that high trust. The other part of their interference was by way of inspection. By this right of inspection, everything in the Company's correspondence from India, which related to the civil or military affairs and government of the Company, was directed by the act to be within fourteen days after the receipt laid before the Secretary of State, and everything that related to the management of the revenues was to be laid before the Commissioners of the Treasury. In fact, both description of these papers have been generally communicated to that board.
[Sidenote: Defects in the plan.]
It appears to your Committee that there were great and material defects in both parts of the plan. With regard to the approbation of persons nominated to the Supreme Council by the Court of Directors, no sufficient means were provided for carrying to