The committee of the Governor-General and Council appear to have closed their proceedings with several resolutions, which, with the answers given by Mr. Barwell as a defence, are inserted in the Appendix.  The whole are referred thither together, on account of the ample extent of the answer.  These papers will be found to throw considerable light not only on the points in question, but on the general administration of the Company’s revenues in Bengal.  On some passages in Mr. Barwell’s defence, or account of his conduct, your Committee offer the following remarks to the judgment of the House.

In his letter of the 23rd March, 1775, he says, that he engaged for Savagepoor in the persuasion of its being a very profitable farm.  In this place your Committee think it proper to state the 17th article of the regulations of the Committee of Circuit, formed in May, 1772, by the President and Council, of which Mr. Barwell was a member, together with their own observations thereupon.

17th.  “That no peshcar, banian, or other servant, of whatever denomination, of the collector, or relation or dependant of any such servant, be allowed to farm lands, nor directly or indirectly to hold a concern in any farm, nor to be security for any farmer; that the collector be strictly enjoined to prevent such practices; and that, if it shall be discovered that any one, under a false name, or any kind of collusion, hath found means to evade this order, he shall be subject to an heavy fine, proportionate to the amount of the farm, and the farm shall be re-let, or made khas:  and if it shall appear that the collector shall have countenanced, approved, or connived at a breach of this regulation, he shall stand ipso facto dismissed from his collectorship.  Neither shall any European, directly or indirectly, be permitted to rent lands in any part of the country.”

    Remark by the Board.

17th.  “If the collector, or any persons who partake of his authority, are permitted to be the farmers of the country, no other persons will dare to be their competitors:  of course they will obtain the farms on their own terms. It is not fit that the servants of the Company should be dealers with their masters. The collectors are checks on the farmers.  If they themselves turn farmers, what checks can be found for them?  What security will the Company have for their property, or where are the ryots to look for relief against oppressions?”

The reasons assigned for the preceding regulation seem to your Committee to be perfectly just; but they can by no means be reconciled to those which induced Mr. Barwell to engage in the salt farms of Selimabad and Savagepoor.  In the first place, his doing so is at length a direct and avowed, though at first a covert, violation of the public regulation, to which he was himself a party as a member of the government, as well as an act of disobedience to the Company’s positive orders on this subject.  In their General Letter of the 17th May, 1766, the Court of Directors say, “We positively order, that no covenanted servant, or Englishman residing under our protection, shall be suffered to hold any land for his own account, directly or indirectly, in his own name or that of others, or to be concerned in any farms or revenues whatsoever.”