and the course of conduct by which the natives of all ranks and orders
have been reduced to their present state of depression and misery.

Your Committee have endeavored to perform this task in plain and popular
language, knowing that nothing has alienated the House from inquiries
absolutely necessary for the performance of one of the most essential
of all its duties so much as the technical language of the Company's
records, as the Indian names of persons, of offices, of the tenure and
qualities of estates, and of all the varied branches of their intricate
revenue. This language is, indeed, of necessary use in the executive
departments of the Company's affairs; but it is not necessary to
Parliament. A language so foreign from all the ideas and habits of the
far greater part of the members of this House has a tendency to disgust
them with all sorts of inquiry concerning this subject. They are
fatigued into such a despair of ever obtaining a competent knowledge of
the transactions in India, that they are easily persuaded to remand them
back to that obscurity, mystery, and intrigue out of which they have
been forced upon public 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
suggestions to persons in power, without a regular public inquiry into
the good or evil tendency of any measure, or into the merit or demerit
of any person intrusted with the Company's concerns.

[Sidenote: Present laws relating to the East India Company, and 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
inquire into the circumstances of the two great links of connection by