little of unity, concert, or regular system has appeared in their
conduct as was ever known before this institution. India is, indeed, so
vast a country, and the settlements are so divided, that their
intercourse with each other is liable to as many delays and difficulties
as the intercourse between distant and separate states. But one evil may
possibly have arisen from an attempt to produce an union, which, though
undoubtedly to be aimed at, is opposed in some degree by the unalterable
nature of their situation,--that it has taught the servants rather to
look to a superior among themselves than to their common superiors. This
evil, growing out of the abuse of the principle of subordination, can
only be corrected by a very strict enforcement of authority over that
part of the chain of dependence which is next to the original power.

[Sidenote: Powers given to the ministers of the crown.]

That which your Committee considers as the fifth and last of the capital
objects of the act, and as the binding regulation of the whole, is the
introduction (then for the first time) of the ministers of the crown
into the affairs of the Company. The state claiming a concern and share
of property in the Company's profits, the servants of the crown were
presumed the more likely to preserve with a scrupulous attention the
sources of the great revenues which they were to administer, and for the
rise and fall of which they were to render an account.

The interference of government was introduced by this act in two ways:
one by a control, in effect by a share, in the appointment to vacancies
in the Supreme Council. The act provided that his Majesty's approbation
should be had to the persons named to that duty. Partaking thus in the
patronage of the Company, administration was bound to an attention to
the characters and capacities of the persons employed in that high