undoubtedly to remain where the constitution had placed all power, in the executive government of the country. The management of the commerce he meant to leave with the company. The patronage should be separate from the executive government: but be it given where it would, he should propose regulations that would essentially curtail and diminish it, so as to render it as little dangerous as possible. The patronage, however, he would trust with no political set of men whatever. Let it be in India, it would be free from corruption then, and when exercised under the restrictions aud limitations he should propose, could, he flattered himself, be attended with no bad consequences.

He enlarged upon these points considerably; and then said, from what he had stated, the House would doubtless observe, that the bill he meant to move for leave to bring in, was not different from former bills that he had stated to the House. The great point of it, as far as he had opened it, was the appointment of a separate department of board of control, to whom all dispatches should be transmitted, and who should be responsible for what they did, and for what they did not do; who should blink nothing; who should be obliged to act upon every question that came before them; who should not shew any indulgence or partiality, or be guilty of procrastination; who should not have the plea of other business, or in fine, on any pretence, or in any other way whatever, put off or delay the duties of their office. This institution, though certainly new, was not charged with new duties; because the same powers of control had been given to the secretaries of state by various acts of parliament, but unfortunately they had never been exercised, having been suffered to remain dormant. He wished, therefore, to put it out of the power of that degree of laziness natural to office, any longer to defeat the public interest, by the institution of a board necessarily active and efficient. He was aware that many persons, who in general disliked, as much as he had done, the violence of the measures proposed in another bill, approved the idea of making the board of commissioners, to be instituted under the authority of that. bill, permanent. He was not of this opinion; sure he was, that

the permanency of such a board as that bill proposed to institute, would have added to the mischiefs of it. Such a board would have been in itself a deviation from the principles of the constitution, and its permanency would have involved it in contradictions to the executive government that must have been attended with great public inconvenience. An institution to control the government of India must be either totally independent of the executive government of this country, or it must be subordinate to it. Ought the administration of the day to have no connection with what was going on? Let it be remembered that a permanent board might be hostile to those who held the government at the time; a view of it, which, he trusted, would sufficiently prove, that an actual independent permanency in any such board would be an evil. The existing government ought to be, to a degree, permanent; but the Indian department must not be independent of that: he meant, therefore, to give it a ground of dependence, upon which all the various departments had a natural and legitimate dependency; viz. upon the executive government. Every government that had no other object than the public good, that was conscious of acting upon no other principles than such as were perfectly constitutional, that was swayed by no motives of a personal, an interested, or an ambitious nature, but which possessed a sufficient share of the confidence of the sovereign, of parliament, and of the people at large, would, from its conduct, be permanent; and the Indian government would be so of course. Having said this, he animadverted on the danger of once departing from the constitution, by appointing such a commission as the bill that had passed that House, but which had been rejected by the lords in the last parliament, authorised. He remarked, if the practice once obtained, there was no saying to what extent it might be carried, or how often the precedent might be multiplied: admitting it to pass in the instance of the late bill, they might have proceeded to separate and tear away all the departments from the crown, and put them one after another into so many parliamentary commissions.

reasons that had been urged to prove that the company's directors ought not to be excluded from an insight of the papers of the commissioners, he was willing so far to give way to the arguments of that nature, as to permit the court of directors to see the papers of the commissioners; but they were to have no power of objecting the decision of the commissioners must be final and binding upon the directors. He meant also to invest the commissioners with a power to originate measures, as well as to revise, correct, alter, and control those of the company: but with regard to such measures as the commissioners originated, the company were to be obliged to carry them into execution. This, he observed, took nothing from the company; since, in fact, it was nothing more than the power to put a negative on their measures, and the power of altering them, acting in another way. With respect to the appointment of the commissioners, he said, it was meant to be the same as that of persons holding great offices, viz. at the nomination of the crown. It was intended that the board should consist of none but privy counsellors; but the board should create no increase of officers, nor impose any new burdens, since he trusted there could be found persons enough who held offices of large emolument, but no great employment, whose leisure would amply allow of their undertaking the duty in question. And this circumstance, he observed, would have a good effect for the future, in rendering it necessary for ministers, when, by way of providing for their families, they appointed to offices hitherto considered as sinecures, to have some other consideration of the ability of the person about to be appointed to fill it a consideration that could not but occasion the description of offices to which he was alluding, to be well filled for the future. The principal powers of this board, he recapitulated, would consist in directing what political objects the company's servants were to pursue, and in recalling such as did not pay obedience to such directions, or be able togivevery satisfactory reasons to shew that circumstances rendered disobedience a virtue. The board would be strictly a board of control: it would have no power to appoint, nor any patronage; consequently it could have no motive to deviate from its duty.

Thus much, the House would see, related solely to the government at home. With regard to the government abroad, the first and leading ideas would be to limit the subsisting patronage, and to produce an unity of system, by investing the supreme government, to be seated in Bengal, with an effectual control over every other presidency, and by investing that supreme government with executive power, and with the disposition of offices in India; but to make it a matter less invidious, and to prevent the possibility of abuse, gradation and succession should be established as the invariable rule, except in very extraordinary cases; with a view to which, there must be lodged in the supreme government, as in every other executive power, a discretion, which every man must see was actually necessary to be vested in an executive power, acting at such an extreme distance from the seat of the supreme government of all, but which was nevertheless to be subject to the control of the board of superintendency to be established here at home, whose orders in this, as in every other case, the government of India must obey. Though Bengal was designed to be the supreme government, it was not to be the source of influence: that being as much as possible guarded against by the regulations designed to make a part of the bill. The officers of the government of Bengal were intended to be left to the nomination of the court of directors, subject to the negative of the crown; and the court of directors were to have the nomination of the officers of all the subordinate governments, excepting only of the commanderin-chief, who, for various reasons, would remain to be appointed by the crown. He said, it might possibly be argued, that if the crown nominated the commander-in-chief, and had a negative upon the rest of the appointments, all the patronage remained in the hands of government at home. This, however, was far from being the case; the patronage of great appointments not being the sort of patronage for the public to entertain a jealousy about, and the other patronage being diffused and placed in Bengal, the influence from it was considerably weakened and diminished; add to this, all officers going by gradation and succession, would be a forcible check upon the patronage, and tend greatly

Having discussed this matter very fully, Mr. Pitt proceeded to state, that much would depend on the manner of administering the government in India, and that his endeavours should be directed to enforce clear and simple principles, as those from which alone a good government could arise. The first and principal object would be to take care to prevent the government from being ambitious and bent on conquest. Propensities of that nature had already involved India in great expenses, and cost much bloodshed. These, therefore, ought most studiously to be avoided. Commerce was our object, and with a view to its extension, a pacific system should prevail, and a system of defence and conciliation. The government there ought, therefore, in an especial manner to avoid wars, or entering into alliances likely - to create wars. At the same time that he said this, he did not mean to carry the idea so far as to suggest, that the British government in India was not to pay a due regard to self-defence, to guard against sudden hostilities from the neighbouring powers, and, whenever there was reason to expect an attack, to be in a state of preparation. This was undoubtedly and indispensably necessary; but whenever such circumstances occurred, the executive power in India was not to content itself with acting there, as the nature of the case might require; it was also to send immediate advice home of what had happened, what measures had been taken in consequence of it, and of what farther measures were intended to be pursued. He mentioned also the institution of a tribunal to take cognizance of such matters, and state how far such a tribunal should be empowered to act without instructions from home. He next said, that the situation of the Indian princes, in connection with our government, and of the number of individuals living immediately under our government, were objects that ought to be the subject of an enquiry. debts due from one Indian prince to another, over whom we had any influence, such as the claims of the Nabob of Arcot upon the Rajah of Tanjore, ought undoubtedly to be settled on a permanent footing: this, and the debts of the natives tributary to us, ought also to be the subjects of enquiry. Another object of inves tigation, and an object of considerable delicacy, was the preten

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