(unaccompanied with strong and evident reasons) of the lines of service, cannot operate as useful examples on those who serve the public in India.  These servants, beholding men who have been condemned for improper behavior to the Company in inferior civil stations elevated above them, or (what is less blamable, but still mischievous) persons without any distinguished civil talents taken from the subordinate situations of another line to their prejudice, will despair by any good behavior of ascending to the dignities of their own:  they will be led to improve, to the utmost advantage of their fortune, the lower stages of power, and will endeavor to make up in lucre what they can never hope to acquire in station.

The temporary appointment by Parliament of the Supreme Council of India arose from an opinion that the Company, at that time at least, was not in a condition or not disposed to a proper exercise of the privileges which they held under their charter.  It therefore behoved the Directors to be particularly attentive to their choice of Counsellors, on the expiration of the period during which their patronage had been suspended.  The duties of the Supreme Council had been reputed of so arduous a nature as to require even a legislative interposition.  They were called upon, by all possible care and impartiality, to justify Parliament at least as fully in the restoration of their privileges as the circumstances of the time had done in their suspension.

But interests have lately prevailed in the Court of Directors, which, by the violation of every rule, seemed to be resolved on the destruction of those privileges of which they were the natural guardians.  Every new power given has been made the source of a new abuse; and the acts of Parliament themselves, which provide but imperfectly for the prevention of the mischief, have, it is to be feared, made provisions (contrary, without doubt, to the intention of the legislature) which operate against the possibility of any cure in the ordinary course.

In the original institution of the Supreme Council, reasons may have existed against rendering the tenure of the Counsellors in their office precarious.  A plan of reform might have required the permanence of the persons who were just appointed by Parliament to execute it.  But the act of 1780 gave a duration coexistent with the statute itself to a Council not appointed by act of Parliament, nor chosen for any temporary or special purpose; by which means the servants in the highest situation, let their conduct be never so grossly criminal, cannot be removed, unless the Court of Directors and ministers of the crown can be found to concur in the same opinion of it.  The prevalence of the Indian factions in the Court of Directors and Court of Proprietors, and sometimes in the state itself, renders this agreement extremely difficult:  if the principal members of the Direction should be in a conspiracy with any principal servant