But your Committee find that this principle has been for some years very little attended to.  Before the passing the act of 1773, the professed purpose of which was to secure a better subordination in the Company’s servants, such was the firmness with which the Court of Directors maintained their authority, that they displaced Governor Cartier, confessedly a meritorious servant, for disobedience of orders, although his case was not a great deal more than a question by whom the orders were to be obeyed.[12] Yet the Directors were so sensible of the necessity of a punctual and literal obedience, that, conceiving their orders went to the parties who were to obey, as well as to the act to be done, they proceeded with a strictness that, in all cases except that of their peculiar government, might well be considered as rigorous.  But in proportion as the necessity of enforcing obedience grew stronger and more urgent, and in proportion to the magnitude and importance of the objects affected by disobedience, this rigor has been relaxed.  Acts of disobedience have not only grown frequent, but systematic; and they have appeared in such instances, and are manifested in such a manner, as to amount, in the Company’s servants, to little less than absolute independence, against which, on the part of the Directors, there is no struggle, and hardly so much as a protest to preserve a claim.

Before your Committee proceed to offer to the House their remarks on the most distinguished of these instances, the particulars of which they have already reported, they deem it necessary to enter into some detail of a transaction equally extraordinary and important, though not yet brought into the view of Parliament, which appears to have laid the foundation of the principal abuses that ensued, as well as to have given strength and encouragement to those that existed.  To this transaction, and to the conclusions naturally deducible from it, your Committee attribute that general spirit of disobedience and independence which has since prevailed in the government of Bengal.

Your Committee find that in the year 1775 Mr. Lauchlan Macleane was sent into England as agent to the Nabob of Arcot and to Mr. Hastings.  The conduct of Mr. Hastings, in assisting to extirpate, for a sum of money to be paid to the Company, the innocent nation of the Rohillas, had drawn upon him the censure of the Court of Directors, and the unanimous censure of the Court of Proprietors.  The former had even resolved to prepare an application to his Majesty for Mr. Hastings’s dismission.

Another General Court was called on this proceeding.  Mr. Hastings was then openly supported by a majority of the Court of Proprietors, who professed to entertain a good opinion of his general ability and rectitude of intention, notwithstanding the unanimous censure passed upon him.  In that censure they therefore seemed disposed to acquiesce, without pushing the matter farther.  But, as the offence was far from