That which your Committee considers as the fifth and last of the capital objects of the act, and as the binding regulation of the whole, is the introduction (then for the first time) of the ministers of the crown into the affairs of the Company.  The state claiming a concern and share of property in the Company’s profits, the servants of the crown were presumed the more likely to preserve with a scrupulous attention the sources of the great revenues which they were to administer, and for the rise and fall of which they were to render an account.

The interference of government was introduced by this act in two ways:  one by a control, in effect by a share, in the appointment to vacancies in the Supreme Council.  The act provided that his Majesty’s approbation should be had to the persons named to that duty.  Partaking thus in the patronage of the Company, administration was bound to an attention to the characters and capacities of the persons employed in that high trust.  The other part of their interference was by way of inspection.  By this right of inspection, everything in the Company’s correspondence from India, which related to the civil or military affairs and government of the Company, was directed by the act to be within fourteen days after the receipt laid before the Secretary of State, and everything that related to the management of the revenues was to be laid before the Commissioners of the Treasury.  In fact, both description of these papers have been generally communicated to that board.

[Sidenote:  Defects in the plan.]

It appears to your Committee that there were great and material defects in both parts of the plan.  With regard to the approbation of persons nominated to the Supreme Council by the Court of Directors, no sufficient means were provided for carrying to his Majesty, along with the nomination, the particulars in the conduct of those who had been in the service before, which might render them proper objects of approbation or rejection.  The India House possesses an office of record capable of furnishing, in almost all cases, materials for judging on the behavior of the servants in their progress from the lowest to the highest stations; and the whole discipline of the service, civil and military, must depend upon an examination of these records inseparably attending every application for an appointment to the highest stations.  But in the present state of the nomination the ministers of the crown are not furnished with the proper means of exercising the power of control intended by the law, even if they were scrupulously attentive to the use of it.  There are modes of proceeding favorable to neglect.  Others excite inquiry and stimulate to vigilance.

[Sidenote:  Proposition to remedy them.]