The question is not, what injury you may do to the proprietors of India stock; for there are no such men to be injured.  If the active, ruling part of the Company, who form the General Court, who fill the offices and direct the measures, (the rest tell for nothing,) were persons who held their stock as a means of their subsistence, who in the part they took were only concerned in the government of India for the rise or fall of their dividend, it would be indeed a defective plan of policy.  The interest of the people who are governed by them would not be their primary object,—­perhaps a very small part of their consideration at all.  But then they might well be depended on, and perhaps more than persons in other respects preferable, for preventing the peculations of their servants to their own prejudice.  Such a body would not easily have left their trade as a spoil to the avarice of those who received their wages.  But now things are totally reversed.  The stock is of no value, whether it be the qualification of a Director or Proprietor; and it is impossible that it should.  A Director’s qualification may be worth about two thousand five hundred pounds,—­and the interest, at eight per cent, is about one hundred and sixty pounds a year.  Of what value is that, whether it rise to ten, or fall to six, or to nothing; to him whose son, before he is in Bengal two months, and before he descends the stops of the Council-Chamber, sells the grant of a single contract for forty thousand pounds?  Accordingly, the stock is bought up in qualifications.  The vote is not to protect the stock, but the stock is bought to acquire the vote; and the end of the vote is to cover and support, against justice, some man of power who has made an obnoxious fortune in India, or to maintain in power those who are actually employing it in the acquisition of such a fortune,—­and to avail themselves, in return, of his patronage, that he may shower the spoils of the East, “barbaric pearl and gold,” on them, their families, and dependants.  So that all the relations of the Company are not only changed, but inverted.  The servants in India are not appointed by the Directors, but the Directors are chosen by them.  The trade is carried on with their capitals.  To them the revenues of the country are mortgaged.  The seat of the supreme power is in Calcutta.  The house in Leadenhall Street is nothing more than a ’change for their agents, factors, and deputies to meet in, to take care of their affairs and support their interests,—­and this so avowedly, that we see the known agents of the delinquent servants marshalling and disciplining their forces, and the prime spokesmen in all their assemblies.

Everything has followed in this order, and according to the natural train of events.  I will close what I have to say on the incorrigible condition of the Company, by stating to you a few facts that will leave no doubt of the obstinacy of that corporation, and of their strength too, in resisting the reformation of their servants.  By these facts you will be enabled to discover the sole grounds upon which they are tenacious of their charter.