If the Directors are known to devolve the whole cognizance of the offences charged on their servants so highly situated upon the Supreme Court, an excuse will be furnished, if already it has not been furnished, to the Directors for declining the use of their own proper political power and authority in examining into and animadverting on the conduct of their servants.  Their true character, as strict masters and vigilant governors, will merge in that of prosecutors.  Their force and energy will evaporate in tedious and intricate processes,—­in lawsuits which can never end, and which are to be carried on by the very dependants of those who are under prosecution.  On their part, these servants will decline giving satisfaction to their masters, because they are already before another tribunal; and thus, by shifting responsibility from hand to hand, a confederacy to defeat the whole spirit of the law, and to remove all real restraints on their actions, may be in time formed between the servants, Directors, prosecutors, and court.  Of this great danger your Committee will take farther notice in another place.

No notice whatever appears to have been taken of the Company’s orders in Bengal till the 11th of January, 1779, when Mr. Barwell moved, that the claim made upon him by the Court of Directors should be submitted to the Company’s lawyers, and that they should be perfectly instructed to prosecute upon it.  In his minute of that date he says, “that the state of his health had long since rendered it necessary for him to return to Europe.”

Your Committee observe that he continued in Bengal another year.  He says, “that he had hitherto waited for the arrival of Sir John Day, the Company’s advocate; but as the season was now far advanced, he wished to bring the trial speedily to issue.”

In this minute he retracts his original engagement to submit himself to the judgment of the Court of Directors, “and to account to them for the last shilling he had received”:  he says, “that no merit had been given him for the offer; that a most unjustifiable advantage had been attempted to be made of it, by first declining it and descending to abuse, and then giving orders upon it as if it had been rejected, when called upon by him in the person of his agent to bring home the charge of delinquency.”

Mr. Barwell’s reflections on the proceedings of the Court of Directors are not altogether clearly expressed; nor does it appear distinctly to what facts he alludes.  He asserts that a most unjustifiable advantage had been attempted to be made of his offer.  The fact is, the Court of Directors have nowhere declined accepting it; on the contrary, they caution the Governor-General and Council about the manner of receiving the tender of the money which they expect him to make.  They say nothing of any call made on them by Mr. Barwell’s agent in England; nor does it appear to your Committee that they “have descended to abuse.”  They have a right, and it is their duty, to express, in distinct and appropriated terms, their sense of all blamable conduct in their servants.