The
first dealt in detail with matters of administration and may not
unfairly be said to have definitely forbidden in future most of the
characteristic acts of the Hastings administration.
first dealt in detail with matters of administration and may not
unfairly be said to have definitely forbidden in future most of the
characteristic acts of the Hastings administration.
Cambridge History of India - v5 - British India
The sinners were arrayed in white-robed in-
nocence;. their misdeeds were more than atoned for by an expiatory sacrifice
of the pecuniary kind. . . .
And again :
I have studied, God knows; hard I have studied, even to the making dogs'
ears of almost every statute book in the kingdom, and I now thus publicly and
solemnly declare that all you have been doing and all you are about to do, in
behalf of the East India Company, is impolitic, is unwise, and entirely repug-
nant to the letter as well as the spirit of the laws, the liberties, and the con-
stitution of this country. 1
Two acts of parliament were now passed. The first granted the
Company a loan of £1,400,000 at 4 per cent. on certain conditions.
The second was the important Regulating Act. The latter did three
things. It remodelled the constitution of the Company in India, and it
tentatively and incompletely subjected the Company to the super-
vision of the ministry and the subordinate presidencies to the super-
vision of the supreme government in Calcutta. The bill was fiercely
opposed by the Company and its friends. The Company's own
petition declared that the bill "will destroy every privilege which the
petitioners hold under the most sacred securities that subjects can
depend upon in this country". The act "under the colour of Regula-
tion, will annihilate at once the powers of the . . . Company, and
virtually transfer them to the Crown". 2 The City of London also
petitioned against the bill on the ground that “the privileges the City
of London enjoy stand on the same security as those of the East India
Company". 3 One of the directors in the House of Commons stigma-
tised the bill as "a medley of inconsistencies, dictated by tyranny,
1 Parliamentary History, XVII, 819-21, 835.
3 Idem, p. 889.
2 Idem, pp. 889-90.
2
## p. 189 (#217) ############################################
THE REGULATING ACT
189
2
yet bearing throughout each line the mark of ignorance". 1 Burke
described the principle of the measure as "an infringement of national
right, national faith, and national justice". But the bill was passed
by 131 to 21 votes in the Commons and by 74 to 17 in the Lords.
Its main provisions were as follows: The qualification for a vote in
the Court of Proprietors was raised from £500 to £1000 and was
restricted to those who had held their stock for at least twelve months.
Measures were taken to prevent the collusive transfer of stock, and
the consequent multiplying of votes. The directors were henceforth
to be elected for four years, and one-fourth of their number must
retire every year, remaining at least one year out of office. There
was to be a Governor-General of Bengal assisted by four councillors.
The vote of the majority was to bind the whole, the governor-general
having merely a casting vote when there was an equal division of
opinion. The governor-general and council were to have power to
superintend the subordinate presidencies in making war or peace.
The directors were to lay before the treasury all correspondence from
India dealing with the revenues; and before a secretary of state
everything dealing with civil or military administration. The first
governor-general and councillors, Warren Hastings, Clavering,
Monson, Barwell and Philip Francis, were named in the act. They
were to hold office for five years, and future appointments were to
be made by the Company. The act empowered the crown to establish
by charter a Supreme Court of Justice, consisting of a chief justice
and three puisne judges. Liberal salaries were granted, £25,000 to
the governor-general, £10,000 to each councillor and £ 8000 to the
chief justice.
Something by way of detailed criticism may now be attempted on
these clauses. The alteration in the voting qualification of the General
Court was introduced with a view to prevent the Company's servants,
when they returned from the East, from gaining an excessive influ-
ence over the directors. The raising of the qualification meant that
1246 of the smaller holders of stock were disqualified. It was generally
held that the clause failed to attain its object.
“The whole of the regulations concerning the Court of Proprietors”, said the
authors of the Ninth Report of the Select Committee of 1781, "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. " 3
There was certainly a good deal of point in the argument of those
who held that, by abolishing the vote of the £500 stock-holders, the
act punished the small proprietors, who could not split votes, and
rewarded those who could.
The change in the constitution of the court of directors was made
with the view of giving the members of the court greater security of
1 Parliamentary History, XVII, pp. 890-1.
2 Idem, p. 902.
8 Repurts from Committees of the House of Commons, vi, 46.
## p. 190 (#218) ############################################
190
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
tenure, lessening the temptation to secure votes by a corrupt dispensa-
tion of patronage, and encouraging a more continuous and consistent
policy at home and abroad. Hitherto the twenty-four directors were
elected each year, and might have been completely changed at each
election. As Clive once averred, they spent the first half of their
year of office in discharging the obligations by which they had pur-
chased their seats, and the other half in canvassing and preparing for
a new election. At the first election after the bill passed, six directors
were to be chosen for one year, six for two years, six for three years
and six for the full term of four years. In practice the six who
retired each year were always re-elected for the following year and
the effect therefore was as Kaye notes, “to constitute a body of thirty
directors, of whom six, forming a sort of non-effective list, go out
every year by rotation". 1 It was of course possible for the proprietors
at each election to have chosen six new members, but in practice
they never did so.
It was unfortunate that the governor-general was not given in
the last resort power to override his council. After 1786 this was
found to be necessary, and it has ever since remained a prerogative
of the governor-general. Hastings always felt deeply the restrictions
on his power and more than once declared that experience would
prove the governor-general must have this privilege in reserve. After
five years' experience of the working of the act, he writes in 1779 :
I would not continue. the pageant that I am for all the rewards and
honours that the king could give me. I am not Governor. All the means I
possess are those of preventing the rule from falling into worse hands than my
own. 2
And again :
What I have done has been by fits and intervals of power, if I may so
express it, and from the effects, let a judgement be formed of what this state
and its resources are capable of producing in hands more able and better supo"
ported. 3
It was not perhaps the fault of the framers of the act, for the
matter was very difficult to define, but the clause giving Calcutta
control over the subordinate presidencies worked badly. Calcutta was
given powers of superintending and controlling the subordinate
governments so far that the latter were not to commence hostilities
or make treaties without its consent, but then followed two exceptions
of disastrous latitude; namely, unless the case were one of such immi-
nent necessity as would make it dangerous to await the arrival of
orders, or unless the local government had received orders direct from
home. But the main reason probably was that the other presidencies
had been so long independent that it would take some time before a
tradition of loyalty to the supreme government could grow up.
1 Kaye,' The Administration of the East India Company, p. 123.
Gleig, op. cit. II, 274.
8 Idem, p. 309.
## p. 191 (#219) ############################################
THE REGULATING ACT
191
1
Hastings records his disappointment at the result of the act in this
respect.
"The act gives us a mere negative power and no more. It says the other
presidencies shall not make war nor treaties without the sanction of this govern-
nient, but carefully guards against every expression which can imply a power
to dictate what the other presidencies shall do. . . . Instead of uniting all the
powers of India, all the use we have hitherto made of this act of Parliament
has been to tease and embarrass. " ]
The clause empowering the crown to establish a Supreme Court of
Justice by charter was unhappily vague. It left undefined the field
of jurisdiction, the law to be administered and, above all, the relations
between the council and the court.
It is interesting to note, in view of what happened afterwards, that
when the names of the governor-general and councillors were inserted
in the act, Lord North recommended the name of Hastings "as a
person to whom nobody would object”. For the post of councillor
General Monckton's claims were advocated against Clavering's, but
the other names were accepted without any opposition. The dis-
sentient Lords recorded a protest against the appointment of executive
officers in parliament as plainly unconstitutional.
The Regulating Act was in operation for eleven years till it was
superseded by Pitt's act of 1784. Warren Hastings was the only
governor-general who had to administer India under it. After 1784
we have, as Sir Alfred Lyall has pointed out, a series of parliamentary
governors-general with wider powers and a more independent
position. The act was probably on the whole an honest attempt to
deal with a difficult problem, but it was open to many criticisms.
A speaker in the Commons in 1781 said of it not unfairly, “In the
mode of applying a reform, Parliament was precipitate and individuals
were intemperate". 3
Certain remedial and supplementary legislation followed on the
Regulating Act. It will be remembered that the governor-general
and council were appointed for five years. Their period of office
would therefore normally lapse in 1779. It also happened that by
the act of 1744 the Company's privileges were to determine in 1780
unless definitely extended. The position was a curious one; there
was a possibility of the government in India and the existence of the
Company at home coming to an end almost simultaneously. North, to
call attention to the legal position, moved in 1780 that the state debts
to the Company should be paid off (they amounted to £4,200,000)
and that formal notice should be given to the Company of its dis-
solution. The motion was made the excuse for an acrimonious attack
from the opposition. Fox asked “whether the Noble Lord was not
content with having lost America? Or was he determined not to
? Parliamentary History, XVII, 896.
1 Gleig, op. cit. a, 41-2.
3 Idem, XXI, 1194.
## p. 192 (#220) ############################################
192
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
quit the situation in which he stood, till he had reduced the dominions
of the Crown to the confines of Great Britain? " i Burke, with
characteristic violence, stigmatised the proposal to give notice to the
Company as “the most wicked, absurd, abandoned, profligate, mad,
and drunken intention that ever was formed”. 2 North replied coolly
that his motion was meant merely "as putting in a claim on the
behalf of the public, to the reversion of a right which undoubtedly
belonged to them, at that moment when it was especially proper that
it should be formally made”. 3 By acts of 1779 and 1780 the Company's
privileges were extended for a year and it was enacted that no changes
were to take place in the offices of governor-general and council at
Calcutta. As North had now for some time shown himself hostile to
Hastings, the reason for this reappointment is undoubtedly that given
by Gleig : "the Minister who had lost America, did not care to risk
the loss of India likewise, and therefore sought to represent matters
as great and prosperous there”. 4 A more permanent act was passed
in 1781. This act, besides other less important regulations, extended
the Company's privileges to three years' notice after 1 March, 1791,
and obliged it to submit to a secretary of state all dispatches proposed
to be sent to India relating to political, revenue and military matters.
The Company was also to pay £400,000 to the state in discharge of
all claims up to 1 March, 1781, to pay dividends out of its profits of
8 per cent. , and out of the remainder of its profits, if any, three-quarters
were to go to the state.
The year 1781 saw also the appointment of two more committees
of enquiry, one select, on the administration of justice in India,
presided over by Burke, and the other secret, on the causes of the war
in the Carnatic, presided over by Dundas. The first committee
resulted in the act of 1781 amending the constitution of the Supreme
Court, which will be dealt with later. Both committees poured forth
voluminous reports. Twelve were issued by the Select and six by
the Secret Committee. The ninth and eleventh reports of the Select
Committee were written by Burke himself. The friends of the Com-
pany naturally did not like them. Lord Thurlow in the House of Lords
said contemptuously that he paid as much attention to them as he
would do to the history of Robinson Crusoe. Johnstone in the Com-
mons on a motion for the printing of one of the reports declared that
he did not object to the publication of what was “frivolous, ridiculous,
and absurd, and fit only to be presented on such a day as this” (it
happened to be 1st April). He accused the majority of the committee
of "heat and violence, . . . passion and prejudice”. 5. Burke angrily
defended the committees; "their conduct", he said, “had been an
instance of the most extraordinary perseverance, and the most steady
and patient assiduity, that perhaps ever had occurred”. Though
1 Parliamentary History, xvi, p. 310.
2 Idem, XXI, 313.
8 Idem, p. 312.
4 Gleig, op. cit. II, 469.
o Parliamentary History, XXIII, 715-16.
6. Idem, p. 717.
## p. 193 (#221) ############################################
HASTINGS'S RECALL DEMANDED
193
the reports undoubtedly display a certain amount of prejudice, yet
they have often been unduly neglected by the historian, and their
value as a storehouse of facts and documents is considerable. At any
rate their effect at the time upon parliament and the nation was very
great. In April, 1782, Dundas moved that the reports of the Secret
Committee should be referred to a committee of the whole house and
followed this up by a long series of forty-five resolutions condemning
many of the principles and practices of the Indian administration as
censured in the reports. But the attempt of the Commons at discipli. .
nary action proved a dismal failure. Bills of pains and penalties were
introduced against Sir Thomas Rumbold and Whitehill, ex-governors
of Madras, but these bills after long discussion were finally dropped
in 1783 because it proved impossible to keep a quorum in the House
to discuss them. Mill says most unfairly that Rumbold "consented
to accept of impunity without acquittal". 1 Rumbold, on the contrary,
had repeatedly urged that it was unfair to him not to come to a
definite verdict, and as late as June, 1783, implored the House in
God's name to "put an end to the business speedily, and either send
him to condemnation or acquittal". But a stroke was now aimed
at greater game. On 30 May, 1782, the Commons resolved that it was
the duty of the directors to pursue all legal and effectual means,
i. e. by representation to the crown, to recall Hastings and Hornby,
governor of Bombay, for “having, in sundry instances, acted in a
manner repugnant to the honour and policy of this nation, and thereby
brought great calamities on India, and enormous expenses on the
East India Company"3 According to the Regulating Act, Hastings
was only removable by the crown on representation from the court
of directors. The Commons therefore could only constitutionally
adopt the roundabout course of calling upon the directors to approach
the crown.
An extraordinary concatenation of events followed,
illustrating the cumbrousness of the state's semi-control of the Com-
pany. In reply to the House of Commons the General Court on 19
June, 1782, passed a resolution of contemptuous defiance against the
recall of Mr. Hastings merely in compliance with a vote of one house
of the legislature. The directors, however, who naturally in their
position of greater responsibility did not find it so easy to flout the
government, decided on 2 October reluctantly by a small majority
after holding eleven meetings that they would approach the crown
for his recall. Scott told Hastings that the governor and deputy-
governor carried the vote against him, "the two chairs are against
you”,4 and declares that the Company's solicitor had shown him the
draft of a resolution by which the directors hoped to soften the blow
as much as possible. The resolution, after acknowledging Hastings's
many very great and meritorious, services, declared
1 Mill, The History of British India, rv, 532.
2 Parliamentary History, XXI, 985.
8 Idem, p. 75
Gleię, op. cit. 2, 485.
4
13
## p. 194 (#222) ############################################
194
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
that in no one act of his government hath he been actuated by a corrupt motive,
nor is he suspected of peculation; but it is resolved by this court that Warren
Hastings Esq. hath formed wrong opinions upon points of great political im-
portance, and that he hath acted upon those opinions so as to bring great
distress upon this Company. 1
But the letter of recall was never sent, for the General Court by a
large majority rescinded the resolution of the directors. The govern-
ment upon this refused to pass for transmission to India the dispatch
drawn up by the directors informing Hastings of this series of occur-
rences, though of course everyone was aware that unofficially he
would be cognisant of the whole of them. This strange imbroglio
showed three
things : first that the hold of Hastings on the allegiance
of the proprietors, whom indeed he was wont to call his constituents,
was very strong; secondly, that the Company still possessed a large
measure of practical independence; and thirdly, that the clause in
the act of 1781 making it necessary to submit outward dispatches to
the secretary of state was liable to result in a rather ludicrous
deadlock.
Things could obviously not be left in this inconclusive and un-
satisfactory state. The Regulating Act had clearly broken down. It
had neither given the state a definite control over the Company, nor
the directors a definite control over their servants, nor the governor-
general a definite control over his council, nor the Calcutta Presidency
a definite control over Madras and Bombay. The whole question was
reopened in 1783, for the Company in March was again obliged to
petition for financial relief, and the country as a whole was inclined
to agree with Burke that “the relief and reformation of the Company
must go together. The Company had flown in the face of Parliament”. 2
Three successive proposals were put forward, those namely of
Dundas, Fox and Pitt. Dundas introduced his bill in April, 1783.
Its main provisions were : That the crown should have power to
recall the principal servants of the Company (the power was thus no
longer to be consequent on representations from the directors); that
the control of Bengal over the other presidencies should be increased;
that the governor-general should have the power of acting on his
own responsibility in opposition to the opinions of his council, and
also be empowered, if necessary, to hold the office of commander-
in-chief; that the displaced zamindars in Bengal, i. e. those displaced
by the results of the quinquennial settlement, should be restored.
The bill was obviously aiming everywhere at centralisation. It
strengthened the power of the crown over the governor-general and
the control of the governor-general both over his own council and
the subordinate governments. It is from this aspect that Malcolm
called it a
Bill for appointing a person who, under the high title of Governor-Generai
i Gleig, op. cit. II, 493.
2 Parliamentary History, XXIII, 647.
## p. 195 (#223) ############################################
FOX'S BILLS
196
and Captain-General, should exercise in his own person (under certain checks)
complete authority and control over British India. 1
In his introductory speech Dundas already pointed to the desirability
of appointing Cornwallis governor-general by a strong panegyric
on his character :
that man, of whom all men and all parties were lavish in commendation. A
man of family, of fortune, and the most unsullied reputation. On the vir-
tues of this man the late ministry built, and justly built, all their hopes of the
salvation of our dying interests in Asia. Here there was no broken fortune to
be mended, here was no avarice to be gratified. Here was no beggarly mush-
room kindred to be provided for-no crew of hungry followers gaping to be
gorged. 2
But as Dundas was now in opposition there was no chance of his bill
becoming law, and after its introduction it was allowed to drop.
On 18 November, 1783, Fox introduced his two famous bills.
The
first dealt in detail with matters of administration and may not
unfairly be said to have definitely forbidden in future most of the
characteristic acts of the Hastings administration. The second and
better known bill gave the Company a new constitution. In the
preliminary debates Pitt himself had clamoured for a bill "not of
temporary palliation or timorous expedients; but vigorous and
effectual, suited to the magnitude, the importance and the alarming
exigency of the case”. The bill was in some respects vigorous and
effectual enough. It proposed entirely to sweep away both the court
of directors and the court of proprietors and to set up two bodies :
(1) seven commissioners, or directors, to administer the revenues and
territories of India and to appoint or dismiss all persons in the Com-
pany's service. They were to be named in the act and were irremovable
except on an address from either house of parliament. Vacancies
were to be filled by the crown. Fox's reason for this last provision was
that he felt already the inconvenience of Parliamentary appointments; for at
present the Governor-General of Bengal, deriving_under an Act of Parliament,
seemed to disavow any power in the Court of Proprietors, Directors, or the
King himself to remove him. 3
The board was to sit in London and parliament was to have oppor-
tunity to inspect the minutes of its proceedings. This was no doubt to
meet the criticism that the commissioners were given too independent
a power. (2) Nine assistant direr'ors (eight in the original draft) were
to be ncminated in the act from the proprietors with the largest
holdings in the Company. They were to be appointed for five years,
and vacancies were filled by the court of proprietors.
The debates on the bills took up a very large measure of parlia-
mentary time and are of great interest. The bills were bitterly opposed
by the Company and all the Indian interest. Fox, with his usual lack
of political astuteness, had failed to make any terms with the Com-
1 Malcolm, Political History of India, 1, 37.
? Parliamentary History, XXIII, 759.
8 Idem, p. 1201.
## p. 196 (#224) ############################################
196
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
pany, or to take it into his confidence. He avowedly based the
necessity for the measure upon the Company's "extreme distress and
the embarrassed state of their affairs”, his bill “was the only possible
means of averting and preventing the final and complete destruction
of the Company's interests”. It was patent to all the world, as
Malcolm says, that Fox's seven commissioners were "to act like
trustees to a bankrupt house of commerce", and it was this charge of
insolvency that the Company and its friends particularly resented.
It was indeed clear that Fox, who never really understood finance,
had largely failed to grasp the pecuniary position of the Company,
which, as one of its supporters in parliament declared, "so far from
being bankrupt, had but a very trifling mortgage on a very fine
estate”. 3 In contrasting his bill with that of Dundas, Fox declared
the latter "aimed at lodging an absolute and despotic power of gov-
ernment in India. This provided a controllable government; but it
a
was a powerful government, and it was at home”. 4 He admitted that
his bill “was a child not of choice, but of necessity”. He was willing
at present to leave the question of the right to territorial possessions
undecided. The measure was to set up “a mixed system of govern.
ment, adapted . . . to the mixed complexion of our interests in India”. O
He met the charge of giving patronage to the crown, or rather to
ministers, by the pertinent question, "What great officer had been
appointed, but by the advice and influence of Ministers? And ought
they to have been otherwise? " ? But he did nothing to smooth the
passage of the bill by his fierce onslaught on the existing government
of India, which he described as “a system of despotism unmatched
in all the histories of the world". Nor could he refrain from fierce
invective against the governor-general,
a man who, by disobeying the orders of his employers, had made himself so
great as to be now able to mix in every question of State, and make every
measure of government a personal point in which he had a share. 9
Both the virulence and the honesty-however mistaken-of his detes-
tation of Hastings shine out clearly in his final speech on the bill.
The Indian people, he cried, “in spite of every exertion both of the legis-
lature and Court of Directors, groan under the scourge, the extortion, and the
massacre, of a cruel and desperate man, whom in my conscience and from my
heart I detest and execrate" 10
Burke delivered one of the greatest of all his speeches in support
of the bill. Wraxall, who was no particular friend of his, declared that
it was the finest speech delivered in the House of Commons while he
was a member of it. 11 Indeed, though the orator's language was
7
Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1188.
2 Malcolm, Political History of India, I, 40.
3 Parliamentary History, XXI, 1212. •
5 Idem, p. 1262.
6 Idem, p. 1200.
8 Idem, p. 1407.
° Idem, pp. 1274-5.
11 Wraxall, Historical Memoirs, iv, 567-8.
4 Idem, p. 1276.
7 Idem, p. 1277.
10 Idem, XXIV, 221.
## p. 197 (#225) ############################################
BURKE'S SPEECH
197
surcharged with passion and emotion, there is no doubt that he struck
some shrewd blows at the defects of the Company's administration
and testified his own sincere if unbalanced devotion to what he
conceived to be the wrongs of the Indian peoples. He spoke of him-
self with a certain proud humility as
a member of Parliament, who has supplied a mediocrity of talents by the
extreme of diligence, and who has thought himself obliged, by the research of
years, to wind himself into the inmost recesses and labyrinths of the India
detail. 1
And again :
Our Indian government is in its best state a grievance. It is necessary that
the correctives should be uncommonly vigorous; and the work of men sanguine,
warm, and even impassioned in the cause. "
As long as he remains on the abstract plane of political philosophy,
his treatment of his subject is lofty and unimpeachable :
If we are not able to contrive some method of governing India well, which
will not of necessity become the means of governing Great Britain ill, a ground
is laid for their eternal separation; but none for sacrificing the people of that
country to our constitution. . . . I am certain that every means, effectual to
preserve India from oppression, is a guard to preserve the British constitution
from its worst corruption. 3
He would have none of the doctrine that it was impossible to act
owing to the chartered rights of the Company. Monopolistic rights,
granted by a legislature, are something very different from natural
rights. The Company's rights were indeed “stamped by the faith of
the King . . . stamped by the faith of Parliament”, but if abuse was
proved, they must be recalled :
All political power which is set over men, and all privilege, claimed or
exercised in exclusion of them, being wholly artificial, and for so much a dero-
gation from the natural equality of mankind at large, ought to be some way
or other exercised ultimately for their benefit . . . such rights, or privileges
are all, in the strictest sense, a trust; and it is of the very essence of every trust
to be rendered accountable; and even totally to cease, when it substantially varies
from the purposes for which alone it could have a lawful existence. . . . 4
But his indignation too often hurried him into invective. The Com-
pany's government was “one of the most corrupt and destructive
tyrannies, that probably ever existed in the world”. 5
There is not a single prince, state, or potentate, great or small, in India,
with whom they have come into contact, whom they have not sold; . . . there
is not a single treaty they have ever made, which they have not broken;
there is not a single prince, or state, who ever put any trust in the Company,
who is not utterly ruined.
i Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1313.
? Idem, pp. 1334 9.
3 Idem, p. 1314.
4 Idem, pp. 1316-17.
5 Idem, p. 1376.
8. Idem, p. 1322.
## p. 198 (#226) ############################################
198
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
The speech contains the famous passage on the Company's servants,
how
animated with all the avarice of age, and all the impetuosity of youth, they roll
in one after another; wave after wave; and there is nothing before the eyes of
the natives but an endless, hopeless, prospect of new flights of birds of prey and
passage, with appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually
wasting. Their prey is lodged in England; and the cries of India are given
to seas and winds, to be blown about in every breaking-up of the monsoon,
over a remote and unhearing ocean. 1
It is the fashion to discount such a passage as mere rhetoric and
prejudice, but it is after all its universality and its total want of relief
that makes it misleading. To prove the large residuum of truth behind
the burning words, we need only cite the evidence of Warren Hastings
himself. In the first year of his governor-generalship he wrote:
Will you believe that the boys of the service are the sovereigns of the
country, under the unmeaning title of supervisors, collectors of the revenue,
administrators of justice, and rulers, heavy rulers of the people? ?
and eight years later, after all his attempted reforms, he speaks in a
moment of unwonted candour of the sphere of his administration as :
a system charged with expensive establishments, and precluded by the multi-
tude of dependents and the curse of patronage, from reformation; a government
debilitated by the various habits of inveterate licentiqusness. A country op-
pressed by private rapacity, and deprived of its vital resources by the enorm-
ous quantities of current specie annually exported in the remittance of private
fortunes. :. . 3
Are these admissions of the administrator at all at variance with the
terrible invective of the orator?
It is, however, clear that what really ruined the bill was the
tremendous unpopularity of the Fox and North coalition. Most of
the speakers hardly made any attempt to discuss it on its merits at
all, but were never tired of reflecting obliquely on the recent amal-
gamation of the two statesmen. One member suggested that Hastings
and Francis should be associated in the government of India, “and
thus make a new coalition". 4 Fox at last was stung into a protest :
The coalition is a fruitful topic; and the power of traducing it, which
the weakest and meanest creatures in the country enjoy and exercise, is of
course equally vested in men of rank and parts, though every man of parts and
rank would not be apt to participate in the privilege. 5
Generally speaking, the language of Fox's opponents seems to modern
ears grotesque and insincere. Grenville, for instance, said that the
aim of the bill was "no less than to erect a despotic system which
might crush the free constitution of England”. 6 Pitt's attack was the
most effective, though he, too, when he described the bill as “one of
1 Parliamentary History, XXII, 1334-4 2 Gleig, op. cit. I, 234.
3 Idem, II, 329.
4 Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1308.
5 Idem, p. 1422.
6 Idem, p. 1225.
## p. 199 (#227) ############################################
FOX'S COMMISSIONERS
199
1
the boldest, most unprecedented, most desperate and alarming
attempts at the exercise of tyranny, that ever disgraced the annals of
this or any other country",1 was yielding to the unreal histrionic
atmosphere of the debate. Apart from this, he dwelt mainly on the
danger of conferring the patronage of India on the nominees of a
party, and the want of co-operation between the seven commissioners
and the cabinet. The former were
a small junto, politically connected, established in a manner independent of
the crown, by whom India was to be converted into one vast political engine,
an engine that might be brought to bear against the independence of this house. ?
Jenkinson put the same point more temperately when he objected to
the bill as "setting up within the realm a species of executive govern-
ment, independent of the check or control of the Crown”. ? There
was undoubtedly some truth in this, and seven commissioners did
not appear to be properly subordinated to the imperial government;
but it must be remembered, first, that there was no easy solution of
the problem, and if Pitt afterwards succeeded in solving it, he was
able to profit by Fox's errors and experiments.
The government found it difficult to meet the charge that they
were destroying the East India Company. Burke declared that their
aim was to cure not to kill. In sly allusion to this metaphor, Wilber-
force compared the seven directors and eight assistant directors to
seven physicians and eight apothecaries come to put the patient to
death secundum artem.
The commissioners nominated were Lord Fitzwilliam, F. Mon-
tagưe, Sir Henry Fletcher, R. Gregory, Colonel North, Viscount
Lewisham and Sir Gilbert Elliot. Professor Holland Rose declares
that all these were partisans of Fox or North. “If Fox and North”,
he says, “had chosen the seven commissioners fairly from among all
three parties, the mouth of gainsayers would have been stopped. ” 5
This seems inherently reasonable and probable, but it would not
appear from the parliamentary debates that this particular point was
made by any one of the opponents of the bill. In his final speech Fox
answered his critics and ended by declaring :
I risk my all upon the excellence of this Bill; I risk upon it whatever is
most dear to me, whatever men most value, the character of integrity, of
talents, of honour, of present reputation and future fame; these, and whatever
else is precious to me, I stake upon the constitutional safety, the enlarged policy,
the equity and the wisdom of this measure. 6
The words proved true in a sense perhaps other than he had intended.
He had indeed risked—and lost-almost the whole of his future career
upon his ill-fated measure.
The bill was passed in the Commons by 208 to 108, but was
1 Idem, p. 1279.
2 Idem, XXIV, 411.
3 Idem, XXIII, 1238.
4 Idem. 1247. 5 G. Holland Rose, Life of William Pitt, Part 1, p. 146.
6 Parliamentary History, XXII, 1433.
## p. 200 (#228) ############################################
200
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
defeated in the Lords by nineteen votes through the daring inter-
vention of George III, who was determined to stick at nothing in his
efforts to free himself from the hated control of the Coalition. He
had consulted Lord Temple and commissioned him to show to the
peers a letter in which he stated that he would regard anyone who
voted for the bill as "not only not his friend, but his enemy”. The
ministry was dismissed on 18 December.
Pitt came into office and brought in his India bill, January, 1784.
It was treated contemptuously by the opposition, who still had a large
majority in the Commons. But Fox made his terrible tactical mistake
of opposing a dissolution; his only chance was to appeal to the country
as soon as possible in the hope that popular disapproval of the king's
unconstitutional action might counteract the unpopularity of the
Coalition. Instead of this he resisted every suggestion of such a
course, and so enabled Pitt to display to the world his wonderful skill
and adroitness in holding his enemies at bay. At the right moment
Pitt dissolved parliament, came back with a triumphant majority,
reintroduced his bill with some slight modifications and passed it in
August, 1784. The act established six "Commissioners for the Affairs
of India" popularly known as the Board of Control. They were to
consist of the chancellor of the exchequer, a secretary of state and
four privy councillors appointed by the king and holding office during
pleasure. They were unpaid, for Pitt hoped that "there could be
found persons enough who held offices of large emolument, but nu
great employment, whose leisure would amply allow of their under-
taking the duty in question”. ! The secretary of state was to preside;
failing him the chancellor of the exchequer, and failing him the
senior of the four privy councillors. Urgent or secret orders of the
commissioners might be transmitted to India through a secret com-
mittee of directors, and the court of proprietors was deprived of any
right to annul or suspend any resolution of the directors approved by
the board. The government of India was placed in the hands of a
governor-general and council of three, and the subordinate presi-
dencies were made definitely subject to Bengal in all questions of
war, revenue and diplomacy. Only covenanted servants were in
future to be appointed members of council. The experiment of ap-
pointing outsiders had been too calamitous.
It is interesting to note how largely Pitt had profited both by the
experience under the Regulating Act and by the criticism directed
against Fox's India bills. In his introductory speech 'he compares
his own bill with that of his rival, as
affording as vigorous a system of control, with less possibility of influence,-
securing the possessions of the East to the public, without confiscating the pro-
perty of the Company; and beneficially changing the nature of this defective
government without entrenching on the chartered rights of men. 2
i Parliamentary History, XXIV,
1093.
2 Idem, pp. 319-20.
## p. 201 (#229) ############################################
THE BOARD OF CONTROL
201
The Board of Control obviously represented Fox's seven commis-
sioners, but there is a fundamental difference. They do not stand
apart as an independent executive body, they are linked up with the
government of the day, for the two most important members at least
change with each ministry. Further, they had no patronage, and did
not appoint or dismiss the Company's servants in India. In other
respects, though their power was veiled, it was nearly as extensive as
that of Fox's commissioners, for they had access to all the Company's
papers and their approval was required for all dispatches relating to
other than commercial business. In case of emergency they could
send their own drafts to the secret committee of the directors, to be
signed and sent out in the name of the Company. This secret com-
mittee was a curious device by which the court of directors kept a
show of independence though liable to the complete control of the
board. According to the act, it was to consist of not more than three
directors. In practice, it nearly always consisted of two, the chairman
and the deputy chairman of the court. Clearly the ultimate direction
had passed to the cabinet, and when Pitt was pressed to the point,
he frankly and openly acknowledged it, the public control of India
"could not, with safety or propriety, be placed in any other hands
than those of the genuine and legitimate executive power of the
constitution". 1 The directors were mainly satisfied, because they
were left with the patronage and the right of dismissing their servants.
They had recognised that something would have to be sacrificed,
and they might well be satisfied with what they had been allowed to
retain. For, though Fox declared that "if ever a charter was com-
pletely and totally annulled, it was the charter of the East India
Company by the present bill”,? and that "it worked upon the Com-
pany's rights by slow and gradual sap”,9 yet, besides the patronage,
the directors were left with considerable powers of revision and
initiation. As Mill says:
The power is considerable which appears to remain in the hands of the directors
whenever there is not a strong motive to interfere with business of detail,
there is always a strong motive to let it alone. There yet has never been any
great motive to the Board of Control to interfere. Of the power which the
directors retain, much is inseparable from the management of detail. 4
In any case Pitt had taken the wise precaution of neutralising, as far
as possible, opposition from the Company.
"In proposing", he said, a new system of government and regulation, he
did not disdain to consult with those, who, having the greatest stake in the
matter to be new-modelled, were likely to be the best capable of giving him
advice. He acknowledged the enormous transgressions of acting with their con-
sent, rather than by violence; He had not dared to digest a bill without
consultation. ” 5
1 Idem, p. 322.
nocence;. their misdeeds were more than atoned for by an expiatory sacrifice
of the pecuniary kind. . . .
And again :
I have studied, God knows; hard I have studied, even to the making dogs'
ears of almost every statute book in the kingdom, and I now thus publicly and
solemnly declare that all you have been doing and all you are about to do, in
behalf of the East India Company, is impolitic, is unwise, and entirely repug-
nant to the letter as well as the spirit of the laws, the liberties, and the con-
stitution of this country. 1
Two acts of parliament were now passed. The first granted the
Company a loan of £1,400,000 at 4 per cent. on certain conditions.
The second was the important Regulating Act. The latter did three
things. It remodelled the constitution of the Company in India, and it
tentatively and incompletely subjected the Company to the super-
vision of the ministry and the subordinate presidencies to the super-
vision of the supreme government in Calcutta. The bill was fiercely
opposed by the Company and its friends. The Company's own
petition declared that the bill "will destroy every privilege which the
petitioners hold under the most sacred securities that subjects can
depend upon in this country". The act "under the colour of Regula-
tion, will annihilate at once the powers of the . . . Company, and
virtually transfer them to the Crown". 2 The City of London also
petitioned against the bill on the ground that “the privileges the City
of London enjoy stand on the same security as those of the East India
Company". 3 One of the directors in the House of Commons stigma-
tised the bill as "a medley of inconsistencies, dictated by tyranny,
1 Parliamentary History, XVII, 819-21, 835.
3 Idem, p. 889.
2 Idem, pp. 889-90.
2
## p. 189 (#217) ############################################
THE REGULATING ACT
189
2
yet bearing throughout each line the mark of ignorance". 1 Burke
described the principle of the measure as "an infringement of national
right, national faith, and national justice". But the bill was passed
by 131 to 21 votes in the Commons and by 74 to 17 in the Lords.
Its main provisions were as follows: The qualification for a vote in
the Court of Proprietors was raised from £500 to £1000 and was
restricted to those who had held their stock for at least twelve months.
Measures were taken to prevent the collusive transfer of stock, and
the consequent multiplying of votes. The directors were henceforth
to be elected for four years, and one-fourth of their number must
retire every year, remaining at least one year out of office. There
was to be a Governor-General of Bengal assisted by four councillors.
The vote of the majority was to bind the whole, the governor-general
having merely a casting vote when there was an equal division of
opinion. The governor-general and council were to have power to
superintend the subordinate presidencies in making war or peace.
The directors were to lay before the treasury all correspondence from
India dealing with the revenues; and before a secretary of state
everything dealing with civil or military administration. The first
governor-general and councillors, Warren Hastings, Clavering,
Monson, Barwell and Philip Francis, were named in the act. They
were to hold office for five years, and future appointments were to
be made by the Company. The act empowered the crown to establish
by charter a Supreme Court of Justice, consisting of a chief justice
and three puisne judges. Liberal salaries were granted, £25,000 to
the governor-general, £10,000 to each councillor and £ 8000 to the
chief justice.
Something by way of detailed criticism may now be attempted on
these clauses. The alteration in the voting qualification of the General
Court was introduced with a view to prevent the Company's servants,
when they returned from the East, from gaining an excessive influ-
ence over the directors. The raising of the qualification meant that
1246 of the smaller holders of stock were disqualified. It was generally
held that the clause failed to attain its object.
“The whole of the regulations concerning the Court of Proprietors”, said the
authors of the Ninth Report of the Select Committee of 1781, "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. " 3
There was certainly a good deal of point in the argument of those
who held that, by abolishing the vote of the £500 stock-holders, the
act punished the small proprietors, who could not split votes, and
rewarded those who could.
The change in the constitution of the court of directors was made
with the view of giving the members of the court greater security of
1 Parliamentary History, XVII, pp. 890-1.
2 Idem, p. 902.
8 Repurts from Committees of the House of Commons, vi, 46.
## p. 190 (#218) ############################################
190
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
tenure, lessening the temptation to secure votes by a corrupt dispensa-
tion of patronage, and encouraging a more continuous and consistent
policy at home and abroad. Hitherto the twenty-four directors were
elected each year, and might have been completely changed at each
election. As Clive once averred, they spent the first half of their
year of office in discharging the obligations by which they had pur-
chased their seats, and the other half in canvassing and preparing for
a new election. At the first election after the bill passed, six directors
were to be chosen for one year, six for two years, six for three years
and six for the full term of four years. In practice the six who
retired each year were always re-elected for the following year and
the effect therefore was as Kaye notes, “to constitute a body of thirty
directors, of whom six, forming a sort of non-effective list, go out
every year by rotation". 1 It was of course possible for the proprietors
at each election to have chosen six new members, but in practice
they never did so.
It was unfortunate that the governor-general was not given in
the last resort power to override his council. After 1786 this was
found to be necessary, and it has ever since remained a prerogative
of the governor-general. Hastings always felt deeply the restrictions
on his power and more than once declared that experience would
prove the governor-general must have this privilege in reserve. After
five years' experience of the working of the act, he writes in 1779 :
I would not continue. the pageant that I am for all the rewards and
honours that the king could give me. I am not Governor. All the means I
possess are those of preventing the rule from falling into worse hands than my
own. 2
And again :
What I have done has been by fits and intervals of power, if I may so
express it, and from the effects, let a judgement be formed of what this state
and its resources are capable of producing in hands more able and better supo"
ported. 3
It was not perhaps the fault of the framers of the act, for the
matter was very difficult to define, but the clause giving Calcutta
control over the subordinate presidencies worked badly. Calcutta was
given powers of superintending and controlling the subordinate
governments so far that the latter were not to commence hostilities
or make treaties without its consent, but then followed two exceptions
of disastrous latitude; namely, unless the case were one of such immi-
nent necessity as would make it dangerous to await the arrival of
orders, or unless the local government had received orders direct from
home. But the main reason probably was that the other presidencies
had been so long independent that it would take some time before a
tradition of loyalty to the supreme government could grow up.
1 Kaye,' The Administration of the East India Company, p. 123.
Gleig, op. cit. II, 274.
8 Idem, p. 309.
## p. 191 (#219) ############################################
THE REGULATING ACT
191
1
Hastings records his disappointment at the result of the act in this
respect.
"The act gives us a mere negative power and no more. It says the other
presidencies shall not make war nor treaties without the sanction of this govern-
nient, but carefully guards against every expression which can imply a power
to dictate what the other presidencies shall do. . . . Instead of uniting all the
powers of India, all the use we have hitherto made of this act of Parliament
has been to tease and embarrass. " ]
The clause empowering the crown to establish a Supreme Court of
Justice by charter was unhappily vague. It left undefined the field
of jurisdiction, the law to be administered and, above all, the relations
between the council and the court.
It is interesting to note, in view of what happened afterwards, that
when the names of the governor-general and councillors were inserted
in the act, Lord North recommended the name of Hastings "as a
person to whom nobody would object”. For the post of councillor
General Monckton's claims were advocated against Clavering's, but
the other names were accepted without any opposition. The dis-
sentient Lords recorded a protest against the appointment of executive
officers in parliament as plainly unconstitutional.
The Regulating Act was in operation for eleven years till it was
superseded by Pitt's act of 1784. Warren Hastings was the only
governor-general who had to administer India under it. After 1784
we have, as Sir Alfred Lyall has pointed out, a series of parliamentary
governors-general with wider powers and a more independent
position. The act was probably on the whole an honest attempt to
deal with a difficult problem, but it was open to many criticisms.
A speaker in the Commons in 1781 said of it not unfairly, “In the
mode of applying a reform, Parliament was precipitate and individuals
were intemperate". 3
Certain remedial and supplementary legislation followed on the
Regulating Act. It will be remembered that the governor-general
and council were appointed for five years. Their period of office
would therefore normally lapse in 1779. It also happened that by
the act of 1744 the Company's privileges were to determine in 1780
unless definitely extended. The position was a curious one; there
was a possibility of the government in India and the existence of the
Company at home coming to an end almost simultaneously. North, to
call attention to the legal position, moved in 1780 that the state debts
to the Company should be paid off (they amounted to £4,200,000)
and that formal notice should be given to the Company of its dis-
solution. The motion was made the excuse for an acrimonious attack
from the opposition. Fox asked “whether the Noble Lord was not
content with having lost America? Or was he determined not to
? Parliamentary History, XVII, 896.
1 Gleig, op. cit. a, 41-2.
3 Idem, XXI, 1194.
## p. 192 (#220) ############################################
192
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
quit the situation in which he stood, till he had reduced the dominions
of the Crown to the confines of Great Britain? " i Burke, with
characteristic violence, stigmatised the proposal to give notice to the
Company as “the most wicked, absurd, abandoned, profligate, mad,
and drunken intention that ever was formed”. 2 North replied coolly
that his motion was meant merely "as putting in a claim on the
behalf of the public, to the reversion of a right which undoubtedly
belonged to them, at that moment when it was especially proper that
it should be formally made”. 3 By acts of 1779 and 1780 the Company's
privileges were extended for a year and it was enacted that no changes
were to take place in the offices of governor-general and council at
Calcutta. As North had now for some time shown himself hostile to
Hastings, the reason for this reappointment is undoubtedly that given
by Gleig : "the Minister who had lost America, did not care to risk
the loss of India likewise, and therefore sought to represent matters
as great and prosperous there”. 4 A more permanent act was passed
in 1781. This act, besides other less important regulations, extended
the Company's privileges to three years' notice after 1 March, 1791,
and obliged it to submit to a secretary of state all dispatches proposed
to be sent to India relating to political, revenue and military matters.
The Company was also to pay £400,000 to the state in discharge of
all claims up to 1 March, 1781, to pay dividends out of its profits of
8 per cent. , and out of the remainder of its profits, if any, three-quarters
were to go to the state.
The year 1781 saw also the appointment of two more committees
of enquiry, one select, on the administration of justice in India,
presided over by Burke, and the other secret, on the causes of the war
in the Carnatic, presided over by Dundas. The first committee
resulted in the act of 1781 amending the constitution of the Supreme
Court, which will be dealt with later. Both committees poured forth
voluminous reports. Twelve were issued by the Select and six by
the Secret Committee. The ninth and eleventh reports of the Select
Committee were written by Burke himself. The friends of the Com-
pany naturally did not like them. Lord Thurlow in the House of Lords
said contemptuously that he paid as much attention to them as he
would do to the history of Robinson Crusoe. Johnstone in the Com-
mons on a motion for the printing of one of the reports declared that
he did not object to the publication of what was “frivolous, ridiculous,
and absurd, and fit only to be presented on such a day as this” (it
happened to be 1st April). He accused the majority of the committee
of "heat and violence, . . . passion and prejudice”. 5. Burke angrily
defended the committees; "their conduct", he said, “had been an
instance of the most extraordinary perseverance, and the most steady
and patient assiduity, that perhaps ever had occurred”. Though
1 Parliamentary History, xvi, p. 310.
2 Idem, XXI, 313.
8 Idem, p. 312.
4 Gleig, op. cit. II, 469.
o Parliamentary History, XXIII, 715-16.
6. Idem, p. 717.
## p. 193 (#221) ############################################
HASTINGS'S RECALL DEMANDED
193
the reports undoubtedly display a certain amount of prejudice, yet
they have often been unduly neglected by the historian, and their
value as a storehouse of facts and documents is considerable. At any
rate their effect at the time upon parliament and the nation was very
great. In April, 1782, Dundas moved that the reports of the Secret
Committee should be referred to a committee of the whole house and
followed this up by a long series of forty-five resolutions condemning
many of the principles and practices of the Indian administration as
censured in the reports. But the attempt of the Commons at discipli. .
nary action proved a dismal failure. Bills of pains and penalties were
introduced against Sir Thomas Rumbold and Whitehill, ex-governors
of Madras, but these bills after long discussion were finally dropped
in 1783 because it proved impossible to keep a quorum in the House
to discuss them. Mill says most unfairly that Rumbold "consented
to accept of impunity without acquittal". 1 Rumbold, on the contrary,
had repeatedly urged that it was unfair to him not to come to a
definite verdict, and as late as June, 1783, implored the House in
God's name to "put an end to the business speedily, and either send
him to condemnation or acquittal". But a stroke was now aimed
at greater game. On 30 May, 1782, the Commons resolved that it was
the duty of the directors to pursue all legal and effectual means,
i. e. by representation to the crown, to recall Hastings and Hornby,
governor of Bombay, for “having, in sundry instances, acted in a
manner repugnant to the honour and policy of this nation, and thereby
brought great calamities on India, and enormous expenses on the
East India Company"3 According to the Regulating Act, Hastings
was only removable by the crown on representation from the court
of directors. The Commons therefore could only constitutionally
adopt the roundabout course of calling upon the directors to approach
the crown.
An extraordinary concatenation of events followed,
illustrating the cumbrousness of the state's semi-control of the Com-
pany. In reply to the House of Commons the General Court on 19
June, 1782, passed a resolution of contemptuous defiance against the
recall of Mr. Hastings merely in compliance with a vote of one house
of the legislature. The directors, however, who naturally in their
position of greater responsibility did not find it so easy to flout the
government, decided on 2 October reluctantly by a small majority
after holding eleven meetings that they would approach the crown
for his recall. Scott told Hastings that the governor and deputy-
governor carried the vote against him, "the two chairs are against
you”,4 and declares that the Company's solicitor had shown him the
draft of a resolution by which the directors hoped to soften the blow
as much as possible. The resolution, after acknowledging Hastings's
many very great and meritorious, services, declared
1 Mill, The History of British India, rv, 532.
2 Parliamentary History, XXI, 985.
8 Idem, p. 75
Gleię, op. cit. 2, 485.
4
13
## p. 194 (#222) ############################################
194
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
that in no one act of his government hath he been actuated by a corrupt motive,
nor is he suspected of peculation; but it is resolved by this court that Warren
Hastings Esq. hath formed wrong opinions upon points of great political im-
portance, and that he hath acted upon those opinions so as to bring great
distress upon this Company. 1
But the letter of recall was never sent, for the General Court by a
large majority rescinded the resolution of the directors. The govern-
ment upon this refused to pass for transmission to India the dispatch
drawn up by the directors informing Hastings of this series of occur-
rences, though of course everyone was aware that unofficially he
would be cognisant of the whole of them. This strange imbroglio
showed three
things : first that the hold of Hastings on the allegiance
of the proprietors, whom indeed he was wont to call his constituents,
was very strong; secondly, that the Company still possessed a large
measure of practical independence; and thirdly, that the clause in
the act of 1781 making it necessary to submit outward dispatches to
the secretary of state was liable to result in a rather ludicrous
deadlock.
Things could obviously not be left in this inconclusive and un-
satisfactory state. The Regulating Act had clearly broken down. It
had neither given the state a definite control over the Company, nor
the directors a definite control over their servants, nor the governor-
general a definite control over his council, nor the Calcutta Presidency
a definite control over Madras and Bombay. The whole question was
reopened in 1783, for the Company in March was again obliged to
petition for financial relief, and the country as a whole was inclined
to agree with Burke that “the relief and reformation of the Company
must go together. The Company had flown in the face of Parliament”. 2
Three successive proposals were put forward, those namely of
Dundas, Fox and Pitt. Dundas introduced his bill in April, 1783.
Its main provisions were : That the crown should have power to
recall the principal servants of the Company (the power was thus no
longer to be consequent on representations from the directors); that
the control of Bengal over the other presidencies should be increased;
that the governor-general should have the power of acting on his
own responsibility in opposition to the opinions of his council, and
also be empowered, if necessary, to hold the office of commander-
in-chief; that the displaced zamindars in Bengal, i. e. those displaced
by the results of the quinquennial settlement, should be restored.
The bill was obviously aiming everywhere at centralisation. It
strengthened the power of the crown over the governor-general and
the control of the governor-general both over his own council and
the subordinate governments. It is from this aspect that Malcolm
called it a
Bill for appointing a person who, under the high title of Governor-Generai
i Gleig, op. cit. II, 493.
2 Parliamentary History, XXIII, 647.
## p. 195 (#223) ############################################
FOX'S BILLS
196
and Captain-General, should exercise in his own person (under certain checks)
complete authority and control over British India. 1
In his introductory speech Dundas already pointed to the desirability
of appointing Cornwallis governor-general by a strong panegyric
on his character :
that man, of whom all men and all parties were lavish in commendation. A
man of family, of fortune, and the most unsullied reputation. On the vir-
tues of this man the late ministry built, and justly built, all their hopes of the
salvation of our dying interests in Asia. Here there was no broken fortune to
be mended, here was no avarice to be gratified. Here was no beggarly mush-
room kindred to be provided for-no crew of hungry followers gaping to be
gorged. 2
But as Dundas was now in opposition there was no chance of his bill
becoming law, and after its introduction it was allowed to drop.
On 18 November, 1783, Fox introduced his two famous bills.
The
first dealt in detail with matters of administration and may not
unfairly be said to have definitely forbidden in future most of the
characteristic acts of the Hastings administration. The second and
better known bill gave the Company a new constitution. In the
preliminary debates Pitt himself had clamoured for a bill "not of
temporary palliation or timorous expedients; but vigorous and
effectual, suited to the magnitude, the importance and the alarming
exigency of the case”. The bill was in some respects vigorous and
effectual enough. It proposed entirely to sweep away both the court
of directors and the court of proprietors and to set up two bodies :
(1) seven commissioners, or directors, to administer the revenues and
territories of India and to appoint or dismiss all persons in the Com-
pany's service. They were to be named in the act and were irremovable
except on an address from either house of parliament. Vacancies
were to be filled by the crown. Fox's reason for this last provision was
that he felt already the inconvenience of Parliamentary appointments; for at
present the Governor-General of Bengal, deriving_under an Act of Parliament,
seemed to disavow any power in the Court of Proprietors, Directors, or the
King himself to remove him. 3
The board was to sit in London and parliament was to have oppor-
tunity to inspect the minutes of its proceedings. This was no doubt to
meet the criticism that the commissioners were given too independent
a power. (2) Nine assistant direr'ors (eight in the original draft) were
to be ncminated in the act from the proprietors with the largest
holdings in the Company. They were to be appointed for five years,
and vacancies were filled by the court of proprietors.
The debates on the bills took up a very large measure of parlia-
mentary time and are of great interest. The bills were bitterly opposed
by the Company and all the Indian interest. Fox, with his usual lack
of political astuteness, had failed to make any terms with the Com-
1 Malcolm, Political History of India, 1, 37.
? Parliamentary History, XXIII, 759.
8 Idem, p. 1201.
## p. 196 (#224) ############################################
196
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
pany, or to take it into his confidence. He avowedly based the
necessity for the measure upon the Company's "extreme distress and
the embarrassed state of their affairs”, his bill “was the only possible
means of averting and preventing the final and complete destruction
of the Company's interests”. It was patent to all the world, as
Malcolm says, that Fox's seven commissioners were "to act like
trustees to a bankrupt house of commerce", and it was this charge of
insolvency that the Company and its friends particularly resented.
It was indeed clear that Fox, who never really understood finance,
had largely failed to grasp the pecuniary position of the Company,
which, as one of its supporters in parliament declared, "so far from
being bankrupt, had but a very trifling mortgage on a very fine
estate”. 3 In contrasting his bill with that of Dundas, Fox declared
the latter "aimed at lodging an absolute and despotic power of gov-
ernment in India. This provided a controllable government; but it
a
was a powerful government, and it was at home”. 4 He admitted that
his bill “was a child not of choice, but of necessity”. He was willing
at present to leave the question of the right to territorial possessions
undecided. The measure was to set up “a mixed system of govern.
ment, adapted . . . to the mixed complexion of our interests in India”. O
He met the charge of giving patronage to the crown, or rather to
ministers, by the pertinent question, "What great officer had been
appointed, but by the advice and influence of Ministers? And ought
they to have been otherwise? " ? But he did nothing to smooth the
passage of the bill by his fierce onslaught on the existing government
of India, which he described as “a system of despotism unmatched
in all the histories of the world". Nor could he refrain from fierce
invective against the governor-general,
a man who, by disobeying the orders of his employers, had made himself so
great as to be now able to mix in every question of State, and make every
measure of government a personal point in which he had a share. 9
Both the virulence and the honesty-however mistaken-of his detes-
tation of Hastings shine out clearly in his final speech on the bill.
The Indian people, he cried, “in spite of every exertion both of the legis-
lature and Court of Directors, groan under the scourge, the extortion, and the
massacre, of a cruel and desperate man, whom in my conscience and from my
heart I detest and execrate" 10
Burke delivered one of the greatest of all his speeches in support
of the bill. Wraxall, who was no particular friend of his, declared that
it was the finest speech delivered in the House of Commons while he
was a member of it. 11 Indeed, though the orator's language was
7
Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1188.
2 Malcolm, Political History of India, I, 40.
3 Parliamentary History, XXI, 1212. •
5 Idem, p. 1262.
6 Idem, p. 1200.
8 Idem, p. 1407.
° Idem, pp. 1274-5.
11 Wraxall, Historical Memoirs, iv, 567-8.
4 Idem, p. 1276.
7 Idem, p. 1277.
10 Idem, XXIV, 221.
## p. 197 (#225) ############################################
BURKE'S SPEECH
197
surcharged with passion and emotion, there is no doubt that he struck
some shrewd blows at the defects of the Company's administration
and testified his own sincere if unbalanced devotion to what he
conceived to be the wrongs of the Indian peoples. He spoke of him-
self with a certain proud humility as
a member of Parliament, who has supplied a mediocrity of talents by the
extreme of diligence, and who has thought himself obliged, by the research of
years, to wind himself into the inmost recesses and labyrinths of the India
detail. 1
And again :
Our Indian government is in its best state a grievance. It is necessary that
the correctives should be uncommonly vigorous; and the work of men sanguine,
warm, and even impassioned in the cause. "
As long as he remains on the abstract plane of political philosophy,
his treatment of his subject is lofty and unimpeachable :
If we are not able to contrive some method of governing India well, which
will not of necessity become the means of governing Great Britain ill, a ground
is laid for their eternal separation; but none for sacrificing the people of that
country to our constitution. . . . I am certain that every means, effectual to
preserve India from oppression, is a guard to preserve the British constitution
from its worst corruption. 3
He would have none of the doctrine that it was impossible to act
owing to the chartered rights of the Company. Monopolistic rights,
granted by a legislature, are something very different from natural
rights. The Company's rights were indeed “stamped by the faith of
the King . . . stamped by the faith of Parliament”, but if abuse was
proved, they must be recalled :
All political power which is set over men, and all privilege, claimed or
exercised in exclusion of them, being wholly artificial, and for so much a dero-
gation from the natural equality of mankind at large, ought to be some way
or other exercised ultimately for their benefit . . . such rights, or privileges
are all, in the strictest sense, a trust; and it is of the very essence of every trust
to be rendered accountable; and even totally to cease, when it substantially varies
from the purposes for which alone it could have a lawful existence. . . . 4
But his indignation too often hurried him into invective. The Com-
pany's government was “one of the most corrupt and destructive
tyrannies, that probably ever existed in the world”. 5
There is not a single prince, state, or potentate, great or small, in India,
with whom they have come into contact, whom they have not sold; . . . there
is not a single treaty they have ever made, which they have not broken;
there is not a single prince, or state, who ever put any trust in the Company,
who is not utterly ruined.
i Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1313.
? Idem, pp. 1334 9.
3 Idem, p. 1314.
4 Idem, pp. 1316-17.
5 Idem, p. 1376.
8. Idem, p. 1322.
## p. 198 (#226) ############################################
198
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
The speech contains the famous passage on the Company's servants,
how
animated with all the avarice of age, and all the impetuosity of youth, they roll
in one after another; wave after wave; and there is nothing before the eyes of
the natives but an endless, hopeless, prospect of new flights of birds of prey and
passage, with appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually
wasting. Their prey is lodged in England; and the cries of India are given
to seas and winds, to be blown about in every breaking-up of the monsoon,
over a remote and unhearing ocean. 1
It is the fashion to discount such a passage as mere rhetoric and
prejudice, but it is after all its universality and its total want of relief
that makes it misleading. To prove the large residuum of truth behind
the burning words, we need only cite the evidence of Warren Hastings
himself. In the first year of his governor-generalship he wrote:
Will you believe that the boys of the service are the sovereigns of the
country, under the unmeaning title of supervisors, collectors of the revenue,
administrators of justice, and rulers, heavy rulers of the people? ?
and eight years later, after all his attempted reforms, he speaks in a
moment of unwonted candour of the sphere of his administration as :
a system charged with expensive establishments, and precluded by the multi-
tude of dependents and the curse of patronage, from reformation; a government
debilitated by the various habits of inveterate licentiqusness. A country op-
pressed by private rapacity, and deprived of its vital resources by the enorm-
ous quantities of current specie annually exported in the remittance of private
fortunes. :. . 3
Are these admissions of the administrator at all at variance with the
terrible invective of the orator?
It is, however, clear that what really ruined the bill was the
tremendous unpopularity of the Fox and North coalition. Most of
the speakers hardly made any attempt to discuss it on its merits at
all, but were never tired of reflecting obliquely on the recent amal-
gamation of the two statesmen. One member suggested that Hastings
and Francis should be associated in the government of India, “and
thus make a new coalition". 4 Fox at last was stung into a protest :
The coalition is a fruitful topic; and the power of traducing it, which
the weakest and meanest creatures in the country enjoy and exercise, is of
course equally vested in men of rank and parts, though every man of parts and
rank would not be apt to participate in the privilege. 5
Generally speaking, the language of Fox's opponents seems to modern
ears grotesque and insincere. Grenville, for instance, said that the
aim of the bill was "no less than to erect a despotic system which
might crush the free constitution of England”. 6 Pitt's attack was the
most effective, though he, too, when he described the bill as “one of
1 Parliamentary History, XXII, 1334-4 2 Gleig, op. cit. I, 234.
3 Idem, II, 329.
4 Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1308.
5 Idem, p. 1422.
6 Idem, p. 1225.
## p. 199 (#227) ############################################
FOX'S COMMISSIONERS
199
1
the boldest, most unprecedented, most desperate and alarming
attempts at the exercise of tyranny, that ever disgraced the annals of
this or any other country",1 was yielding to the unreal histrionic
atmosphere of the debate. Apart from this, he dwelt mainly on the
danger of conferring the patronage of India on the nominees of a
party, and the want of co-operation between the seven commissioners
and the cabinet. The former were
a small junto, politically connected, established in a manner independent of
the crown, by whom India was to be converted into one vast political engine,
an engine that might be brought to bear against the independence of this house. ?
Jenkinson put the same point more temperately when he objected to
the bill as "setting up within the realm a species of executive govern-
ment, independent of the check or control of the Crown”. ? There
was undoubtedly some truth in this, and seven commissioners did
not appear to be properly subordinated to the imperial government;
but it must be remembered, first, that there was no easy solution of
the problem, and if Pitt afterwards succeeded in solving it, he was
able to profit by Fox's errors and experiments.
The government found it difficult to meet the charge that they
were destroying the East India Company. Burke declared that their
aim was to cure not to kill. In sly allusion to this metaphor, Wilber-
force compared the seven directors and eight assistant directors to
seven physicians and eight apothecaries come to put the patient to
death secundum artem.
The commissioners nominated were Lord Fitzwilliam, F. Mon-
tagưe, Sir Henry Fletcher, R. Gregory, Colonel North, Viscount
Lewisham and Sir Gilbert Elliot. Professor Holland Rose declares
that all these were partisans of Fox or North. “If Fox and North”,
he says, “had chosen the seven commissioners fairly from among all
three parties, the mouth of gainsayers would have been stopped. ” 5
This seems inherently reasonable and probable, but it would not
appear from the parliamentary debates that this particular point was
made by any one of the opponents of the bill. In his final speech Fox
answered his critics and ended by declaring :
I risk my all upon the excellence of this Bill; I risk upon it whatever is
most dear to me, whatever men most value, the character of integrity, of
talents, of honour, of present reputation and future fame; these, and whatever
else is precious to me, I stake upon the constitutional safety, the enlarged policy,
the equity and the wisdom of this measure. 6
The words proved true in a sense perhaps other than he had intended.
He had indeed risked—and lost-almost the whole of his future career
upon his ill-fated measure.
The bill was passed in the Commons by 208 to 108, but was
1 Idem, p. 1279.
2 Idem, XXIV, 411.
3 Idem, XXIII, 1238.
4 Idem. 1247. 5 G. Holland Rose, Life of William Pitt, Part 1, p. 146.
6 Parliamentary History, XXII, 1433.
## p. 200 (#228) ############################################
200
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
defeated in the Lords by nineteen votes through the daring inter-
vention of George III, who was determined to stick at nothing in his
efforts to free himself from the hated control of the Coalition. He
had consulted Lord Temple and commissioned him to show to the
peers a letter in which he stated that he would regard anyone who
voted for the bill as "not only not his friend, but his enemy”. The
ministry was dismissed on 18 December.
Pitt came into office and brought in his India bill, January, 1784.
It was treated contemptuously by the opposition, who still had a large
majority in the Commons. But Fox made his terrible tactical mistake
of opposing a dissolution; his only chance was to appeal to the country
as soon as possible in the hope that popular disapproval of the king's
unconstitutional action might counteract the unpopularity of the
Coalition. Instead of this he resisted every suggestion of such a
course, and so enabled Pitt to display to the world his wonderful skill
and adroitness in holding his enemies at bay. At the right moment
Pitt dissolved parliament, came back with a triumphant majority,
reintroduced his bill with some slight modifications and passed it in
August, 1784. The act established six "Commissioners for the Affairs
of India" popularly known as the Board of Control. They were to
consist of the chancellor of the exchequer, a secretary of state and
four privy councillors appointed by the king and holding office during
pleasure. They were unpaid, for Pitt hoped that "there could be
found persons enough who held offices of large emolument, but nu
great employment, whose leisure would amply allow of their under-
taking the duty in question”. ! The secretary of state was to preside;
failing him the chancellor of the exchequer, and failing him the
senior of the four privy councillors. Urgent or secret orders of the
commissioners might be transmitted to India through a secret com-
mittee of directors, and the court of proprietors was deprived of any
right to annul or suspend any resolution of the directors approved by
the board. The government of India was placed in the hands of a
governor-general and council of three, and the subordinate presi-
dencies were made definitely subject to Bengal in all questions of
war, revenue and diplomacy. Only covenanted servants were in
future to be appointed members of council. The experiment of ap-
pointing outsiders had been too calamitous.
It is interesting to note how largely Pitt had profited both by the
experience under the Regulating Act and by the criticism directed
against Fox's India bills. In his introductory speech 'he compares
his own bill with that of his rival, as
affording as vigorous a system of control, with less possibility of influence,-
securing the possessions of the East to the public, without confiscating the pro-
perty of the Company; and beneficially changing the nature of this defective
government without entrenching on the chartered rights of men. 2
i Parliamentary History, XXIV,
1093.
2 Idem, pp. 319-20.
## p. 201 (#229) ############################################
THE BOARD OF CONTROL
201
The Board of Control obviously represented Fox's seven commis-
sioners, but there is a fundamental difference. They do not stand
apart as an independent executive body, they are linked up with the
government of the day, for the two most important members at least
change with each ministry. Further, they had no patronage, and did
not appoint or dismiss the Company's servants in India. In other
respects, though their power was veiled, it was nearly as extensive as
that of Fox's commissioners, for they had access to all the Company's
papers and their approval was required for all dispatches relating to
other than commercial business. In case of emergency they could
send their own drafts to the secret committee of the directors, to be
signed and sent out in the name of the Company. This secret com-
mittee was a curious device by which the court of directors kept a
show of independence though liable to the complete control of the
board. According to the act, it was to consist of not more than three
directors. In practice, it nearly always consisted of two, the chairman
and the deputy chairman of the court. Clearly the ultimate direction
had passed to the cabinet, and when Pitt was pressed to the point,
he frankly and openly acknowledged it, the public control of India
"could not, with safety or propriety, be placed in any other hands
than those of the genuine and legitimate executive power of the
constitution". 1 The directors were mainly satisfied, because they
were left with the patronage and the right of dismissing their servants.
They had recognised that something would have to be sacrificed,
and they might well be satisfied with what they had been allowed to
retain. For, though Fox declared that "if ever a charter was com-
pletely and totally annulled, it was the charter of the East India
Company by the present bill”,? and that "it worked upon the Com-
pany's rights by slow and gradual sap”,9 yet, besides the patronage,
the directors were left with considerable powers of revision and
initiation. As Mill says:
The power is considerable which appears to remain in the hands of the directors
whenever there is not a strong motive to interfere with business of detail,
there is always a strong motive to let it alone. There yet has never been any
great motive to the Board of Control to interfere. Of the power which the
directors retain, much is inseparable from the management of detail. 4
In any case Pitt had taken the wise precaution of neutralising, as far
as possible, opposition from the Company.
"In proposing", he said, a new system of government and regulation, he
did not disdain to consult with those, who, having the greatest stake in the
matter to be new-modelled, were likely to be the best capable of giving him
advice. He acknowledged the enormous transgressions of acting with their con-
sent, rather than by violence; He had not dared to digest a bill without
consultation. ” 5
1 Idem, p. 322.
