Against the great, predominant, radical corruption of the Court of Proprietors the raising the qualification proved no sort of remedy.  The return of the Company’s servants into Europe poured in a constant supply of proprietors, whose ability to purchase the highest qualifications for themselves, their agents, and dependants could not be dubious.  And this latter description form a very considerable, and by far the most active and efficient part of that body.  To add to the votes, which is adding to the power in proportion to the wealth, of men whose very offences were supposed to consist in acts which lead to the acquisition of enormous riches, appears by no means a well-considered method of checking rapacity and oppression.  In proportion as these interests prevailed, the means of cabal, of concealment, and of corrupt confederacy became far more easy than before.  Accordingly, there was no fault with respect to the Company’s government over its servants, charged or chargeable on the General Court as it originally stood, of which since the reform it has not been notoriously guilty.  It was not, therefore, a matter of surprise to your Committee, that the General Court, so composed, has at length grown to such a degree of contempt both of its duty and of the permanent interest of the whole corporation as to put itself into open defiance of the salutary admonitions of this House, given for the purpose of asserting and enforcing the legal authority of their own body over their own servants.

The failure in this part of the reform of 1773 is not stated by your Committee as recommending a return to the ancient constitution of the Company, which was nearly as far as the new from containing any principle tending to the prevention or remedy of abuses,—­but to point out the probable failure of any future regulations which do not apply directly to the grievance, but which may be taken up as experiments to ascertain theories of the operation of councils formed of greater or lesser numbers, or such as shall be composed of men of more or less opulence, or of interests of newer or longer standing, or concerning the distribution of power to various descriptions or professions of men, or of the election to office by one authority rather than another.

[Sidenote:  Court of Directors.]

The second object of the act was the Court of Directors.  Under the arrangement of the year 1773 that court appeared to have its authority much strengthened.  It was made less dependent than formerly upon its constituents, the proprietary.  The duration of the Directors in office was rendered more permanent, and the tenure itself diversified by a varied and intricate rotation.  At the same time their authority was held high over their servants of all descriptions; and the only rule prescribed to the Council-General of Bengal, in the exercise of the large and ill-defined powers given to them, was that they were to yield obedience to the orders of the Court of Directors.