lessened by reducing the number of proprietors, private cabal and
intrigue are facilitated at least in an equal degree; and it is cabal
and corruption, rather than disorder and confusion, that was most to be
dreaded in transacting the affairs of India. Whilst the votes of the
smaller proprietors continued, a door was left open for the public sense
to enter into that society: since that door has been closed, the
proprietary has become, even more than formerly, an aggregate of private
interests, which subsist at the expense of the collective body. At the
moment of this revolution in the proprietary, as it might naturally be
expected, those who had either no very particular interest in their vote
or but a petty object to pursue immediately disqualified; but those who
were deeply interested in the Company's patronage, those who were
concerned in the supply of ships and of the other innumerable objects
required for their immense establishments, those who were engaged in
contracts with the Treasury, Admiralty, and Ordnance, together with the
clerks in public offices, found means of securing qualifications at the
enlarged standard. All these composed a much greater proportion than
formerly they had done of the proprietary body.

Against the great, predominant, radical corruption of the Court of
Proprietors the raising the qualification proved no sort of remedy. The
return of the Company's servants into Europe poured in a constant supply
of proprietors, whose ability to purchase the highest qualifications for
themselves, their agents, and dependants could not be dubious. And this
latter description form a very considerable, and by far the most active
and efficient part of that body. To add to the votes, which is adding to
the power in proportion to the wealth, of men whose very offences were
supposed to consist in acts which lead to the acquisition of enormous
riches, appears by no means a well-considered method of checking
rapacity and oppression. In proportion as these interests prevailed, the