It is proper that his Majesty and all his people should be informed that the House of Commons have proceeded, with regard to the East India Company, with a degree of care, circumspection, and deliberation, which has not been equalled in the history of Parliamentary proceedings.  For sixteen years the state and condition of that body has never been wholly out of their view.  In the year 1767 the House took those objects into consideration, in a committee of the whole House.  The business was pursued in the following year.  In the year 1772 two committees were appointed for the same purpose, which examined into their affairs with much diligence, and made very ample reports.  In the year 1773 the proceedings were carried to an act of Parliament, which proved ineffectual to its purpose.  The oppressions and abuses in India have since rather increased than diminished, on account of the greatness of the temptations, and convenience of the opportunities, which got the better of the legislative provisions calculated against ill practices then in their beginnings; insomuch that, in 1781, two committees were again instituted, who have made seventeen reports.  It was upon the most minute, exact, and laborious collection and discussion of facts, that the late House of Commons proceeded in the reform which they attempted in the administration of India, but which has been frustrated by ways and means the most dishonorable to his Majesty’s government, and the most pernicious to the Constitution of this kingdom.  His Majesty was so sensible of the disorders in the Company’s administration, that the consideration of that subject was no less than six times recommended to this House in speeches from the throne.

The result of the Parliamentary inquiries has been, that the East India Company was found totally corrupted, and totally perverted from the purposes of its institution, whether political or commercial; that the powers of war and peace given by the charter had been abused, by kindling hostilities in every quarter for the purposes of rapine; that almost all the treaties of peace they have made have only given cause to so many breaches of public faith; that countries once the most flourishing are reduced to a state of indigence, decay, and depopulation, to the diminution of our strength, and to the infinite dishonor of our national character; that the laws of this kingdom are notoriously, and almost in every instance, despised; that the servants of the Company, by the purchase of qualifications to vote in the General Court, and, at length, by getting the Company itself deeply in their debt, have obtained the entire and absolute mastery in the body by which they ought to have been ruled and coerced.  Thus their malversations in office are supported, instead of being checked by the Company.  The whole of the affairs of that body are reduced to a most perilous situation; and many millions of innocent and deserving men, who are under the protection of this nation, and who ought