to check private corruption;” and, lastly, it was proposed to establish a court of criminal judicature for the trial in England of certain classes of delinquents after their return from India.  The Judges of the court were to be men of the highest character; they were to be chosen by ballot, some being taken from the bench of judges, some from each House of Parliament.  And they were “not to be tied down to strict rules of evidence, but to be upon their oaths to give their judgments conscientiously, and to pronounce such judgment as the common law would warrant.”  Such a tribunal he admitted to be an innovation; but, “unless some new process were instituted, offences shocking to humanity, opposite to justice, and contrary to every principle of religion and morality, must continue to prevail, unchecked, uncontrolled, and unrestrained, and the necessity of the case outweighed the risk and the hazard of the innovation.”

These were the general outlines of the constitution which in 1784 the Parliament established for India, and the skill with which it was adapted to the very peculiar character of the settlements to be governed is sufficiently proved by the fact that it was maintained with very little alteration equally by Whig and Tory administrations for three-quarters of a century, till the great convulsion of the Mutiny compelled an entire alteration in the system, and the abolition of the governing powers of the Company, as we shall have occasion to relate in a subsequent chapter.  The principles which Pitt had laid down as the guiding maxims for the governors; the avoidance of ambitious views of conquest, the preservation of peace, and the limitation of the aims of the government to the encouragement and extension of commerce, were not equally adhered to.  Undoubtedly, in some instances, the wars in which, even during Pitt’s too short lifetime, the Indian government was engaged, came under his description of wars which were justifiable on the ground of self-defence—­wars undertaken for the preservation of what had been previously won or purchased, rather than for the acquisition of new territories at the expense of chiefs who had given us no provocation.  But for others, though professedly undertaken with a view only of anticipating hostile intentions, the development of which might possibly be reserved for a distant future, it is not easy to find a similar justification; and it may be feared that in more than one case governors-general, conscious of great abilities, have been too much inclined to adopt the pernicious maxim of Louis XIV., that the aggrandizement and extension of his dominions is the noblest object which a ruler of nations can have in view.  Yet, though unable on strictly moral grounds to justify all the warlike enterprises which make up so large a part of our subsequent Indian history, it is impossible, probably, for even the most rigid moralist to avoid some feelings of national pride in the genius of our countrymen, who in the short space