NINTH REPORT

From the SELECT COMMITTEE (of the House of Commons) appointed to take into consideration the state of the Administration of Justice in the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, and to report the same, as it shall appear to them, to the House; with their observations thereupon; and who were instructed to consider how the British Possessions in the East Indies may be held and governed with the greatest security and advantage to this Country; and by what means the happiness of the Native Inhabitants may be best promoted.―(25th June, 1783.)

gestions to persons in power, without a regular L-OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE OF THE COMPANY'S publick enquiry into the good or evil tendency of

AFFAIRS IN INDIA.

In order to enable the house to adopt the most proper means for regulating the British government in India, and for promoting the happiness of the natives, who live under its authority or influence, your committee hold it expedient to collect, into distinct points of view, the circumstances, by which that government appears to them to be most essentially disordered; and to explain fully the principles of policy, and the course of conduct, by which the natives of all ranks and orders have been reduced to their pre sent state of depression and misery:

any measure, or into the merit or demerit of any person intrusted with the company's concerns.

Present laws

relating to the

East India company, and

its internal

and external policy.

The plan adopted by your committee is, first, to consider the law regulating the East India company, as it now stands; and secondly, to enquire into the circumstances of the two great links of connexion, 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 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.

Your committee have endeavoured to perform this task in plain and popular language, knowing that nothing has alienated the house from enquiries, absolutely necessary for the performance of one of the most essential of all its duties, so much as the The government is considered by your comtechnical language of the company's records; as mittee under the like descriptions of internal and the Indian names of persons, of offices, of the tenure external. The internal regards the communication and qualities of estates, and of all the varied between the court of directors and their servants branches of their intricate revenue. This language in India; the management of the revenue; the exis, indeed, of necessary use in the executive depart-penditure of publick money; the civil adminisments of the company's affairs; but it is not neces-tration; the administration of justice; and the sary to parliament. A language, so foreign from state of the army. The external regards, first, all the ideas and habits of the far greater part of the conduct and maxims of the company's gothe members of this house, has a tendency to dis-vernment with respect to the native princes and gust them with all sorts of enquiry concerning this people dependent on the British authority: and subject. They are fatigued into such a despair of next, the proceedings with regard to those native ever obtaining a competent knowledge of the trans-powers, which are wholly independent of the actions in India, that they are easily persuaded to company. But your committee's observations on remand them back to that obscurity, mystery, and intrigue, out of which they have been forced upon publick notice by the calamities arising from their extreme mismanagement. This mismanagement has itself (as your committee conceive) in a great measure arisen from dark cabals, and secret sug

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.
Second at-

tion.

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.

The first object of the policy of this Court of Proact was to improve the constitution of prietors. 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 New qualifithe 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.

cation.

Your committee observe, that this tempt made is the second attempt made by parliaby parliament for a reforma- ment 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 errours corrected; and such useful regulations, as were then adopted, may be further explained, enlarged, and enforced. Proceedings of The first design of this kind was session 1773. 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 interiour 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 expence, 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 appoint- Several essential points, however, seem to have ed the members of the presiding part of the ney been omitted or misunderstood. No regulation establishment; the Crown appointed the judicial, was made to abolish the pernicious custom of and the company preserved the nomination of the voting by ballots by means of which, other officers. So that if the act has not fully acts of the highest concern to the answered its purposes, the failure cannot be attri- company, and to the state, might be done by inbuted to any want of officers of every description,dividuals with perfect impunity and even the or to the deficiency of any mode of patronage in body itself might be subjected to a forfeiture of all their appointment. The cause must be sought its privileges for defaults of persons, who, so far from being under control, could not be so much as The act had in its view (indepen-known in any mode of legal cognizance. Nothing objects of act dently of several detached regulations) was done, or attempted, to prevent the operation five fundamental objects: of the interest of delinquent servants of the company, in the general court, by which Indian interest. 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 any thing provided to secure the independency of the proprietory body from the various exteriour 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

elsewhere.

Powers and

of 1773, and the effects thereof.

1st. The reformation of the court of proprietors to the East India company: 2dly. A new model of the court of directors, and an enforcement of their authority over the

servants abroad :

3dly. The establishment of a court of justice capable of protecting the natives from the oppression 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

The ballot.

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 there-lution in the proprietory, as it might naturally be fore any abuse, which tended to depreciate the value of their stock, would be warmly resented by such proprietors.

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.

Court of

if they had not, in the mean time, been so modelled as to be entirely free from all ambition of that sort. From that period the orders of the court of directors became so habitually despised by their servants abroad, and to be so little regarded even by themselves, that this contempt of orders forms almost the whole subject-matter of the voluminous reports of two of your committees. If any doubt however remains concerning the cause of this fatal decline of the authority of the court of directors, no doubt whatsoever can remain of the fact itself, nor of the total failure of one of the great leading regulations of the act of 1773.

The third object was a new judicial Supreme arrangement; the chief purpose of court of judiwhich was to form a strong and solid cature. security for the natives against the wrongs and oppressions of British subjects resident in Bengal. An operose and expensive establishment of a supreme court was made, and charged upon the revenues of the country. The charter of justice was by the act left to the Crown, as well as the appointment of the magistrates. 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 pro

The second object of the act was directors. 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 proprietory. The duration of the directors in office was rendered more permanent, and the tenure itself diversified by a varied and intricate rotation. At the same time their authority was held high over their servants of all descriptions; and the only rule prescribed to the council general of Bengal, in the exercise of the large and ill-defined powers given to them, was, that they were to yield obedience to the orders of the court of directors. As to the court of directors itself, it was left with very little regulation. The custom of ballot, infinitely the most mischievous in a body possessed of all the ordinary executive powers, was still left; and your committee have found the ill effects of this practice in the course of their enquiries. Nothing was done to oblige the directors to attend to the promotion of their servants according to their rank and merits. In judg-perly ascertained according to the nature of the ing of those merits, nothing was done to bind them to any observation of what appeared on their records. Nothing was done to compel them to prosecution or complaint where delinquency became visible. The act indeed prescribed, that no servant of the company abroad should be eligible into the direction until two years after his return to England. But as this regulation rather presumes than provides for an enquiry into their conduct, a very ordinary neglect in the court of directors might easily defeat it, and a short remission might in this particular operate as a total indemnity. In fact, however, the servants have of late seldom attempted a seat in the direction; an attempt, which might possibly rouse a dormant spirit of enquiry; but satisfied with an interest in the proprietory, they have, through that name, brought the direction very much under their own controul.

As to the general authority of the court of directors, there is reason to apprehend, that on the whole it was somewhat degraded by the act, whose professed purpose was to exalt it; and that the only effect of the parliamentary sanction to their orders has been, that along with those orders the law of the land has been despised and trampled under foot. The directors were not suffered either to nominate or to remove those, whom they were empowered to instruct: from masters they were reduced to the situation of complainants; a situation, the imbecility of which no laws or regulations could wholly alter; and when the directors were afterwards restored in some degree to their ancient power, on the expiration of the lease given to their principal servants, it became impossible for them to recover any degree of their ancient respect, even

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 not 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: though they do find one very strong and marked instance of the judges having employed an unwarrantable extension or application of the municipal law of England, to destroy a person of the highest rank among those natives, whom they were sent to protect. One circumstance rendered the proceeding in this case fatal to all the good purposes, for which the court had been established. sufferer (the Rajah Nundcomar) appears, at the very time of this extraordinary prosecution, a discoverer of some particulars of illicit gain then charged upon Mr. Hastings, the governour general. Although in ordinary cases, and in some lesser instances of grievance, it is very probable, that this court has done its duty, and has been, as every court must be, of some service; yet one example of this kind must do more towards deterring the natives from complaint, and consequently from the means of redress, than many decisions favourable to them, in the ordinary course of proceeding, can do for their encouragement and relief. So far as your committee have been able to discover, 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.