and fiscal interests were always liable to conflict, and sometimes did conflict, with its duties towards both masters.  The total collapse of the Moghul Empire removed before long one of the ambiguities of this situation, but the other endured in a greater or less degree until the East India Company itself disappeared, though every subsequent measure of Indian legislation at home tended to bring the Indian executive more and more fully under the control of the home Government.

Eleven years later Pitt’s famous Government of India Act of 1784 marked a very important step forward.  Another great war had been brought to an end by the Peace of Versailles in 1783, and whilst at its close we had lost the greater part of our North American Colonies, the genius of Warren Hastings had saved and consolidated British power in India.  It was easy to criticise, and if we are to judge in accordance with modern standards, it is doubtless right to condemn some of the devices to which he resorted in the course of the long struggle he was often left to wage with little or no help, and sometimes in the face of active obstruction from those who, at home and in India, should have been the first to support him.  Whatever his errors may have been, they were more than atoned for by the cruel persecution to which he was subjected whilst England was harvesting the fruits of his energy and courage.  Pitt’s Act was in fact the solemn consecration of all his greatest achievements, whilst it brought India into closer and more direct relationship with the Crown.  Not the least of the difficulties with which Hastings, the only Governor-General appointed by the East India Company, was confronted arose from frequent opposition in his own Council, where he was merely primus inter pares.  Pitt took care to provide against the recurrence of similar trouble in the future.  But having strengthened the Governor-General’s position, he took away the right of appointing him from the Company and transferred it to the Crown.  Nor was that all.  The Company itself was placed under the effective control of the Crown by the establishment in London of a Board of Control, of which the President was ultimately to develop into the Secretary of State for India, over the Courts of Directors and Proprietors.  In substance, if not in form, India was already becoming a Dependency of the British Crown.

Nor was Pitt’s Act concerned only with the relations of the Company to the Crown.  Its numerous and very drastic provisions for the prevention and punishment of the corruption and oppression which had become rampant amongst the Company’s servants after the grant of the Diwani testified to the determination of Parliament, whilst acquiescing in the extension of the British dominion, to uphold and enforce at the same time in the governance of Indian peoples the principle of justice for all to which the British people had gradually fought their way.  A strong impetus was thus given to the great reforms already