ence in great lucrative advantages. Against this evil large
pecuniary interests were rather the reverse of a remedy. Accordingly,
the Company's servants have ever since covered over the worst
oppressions of the people under their government, and the most cruel and
wanton ravages of all the neighboring countries, by holding out, and for
a time actually realizing, additions of revenue to the territorial funds
of the Company, and great quantities of valuable goods to their
investment.

[Sidenote: Proprietors.]

But this consideration of mere income, whatever weight it might have,
could not be the first object of a proprietor, in a body so
circumstanced. The East India Company is not, like the Bank of England,
a mere moneyed society for the sole purpose of the preservation or
improvement of their capital; and therefore every attempt to regulate it
upon the same principles must inevitably fail. When it is considered
that a certain share in the stock gives a share in the government of so
vast an empire, with such a boundless patronage, civil, military,
marine, commercial, and financial, in every department of which such
fortunes have been made as could be made nowhere else, it is impossible
not to perceive that capitals far superior to any qualifications
appointed to proprietors, or even to Directors, would readily be laid
out for a participation in that power. The India proprietor, therefore,
will always be, in the first instance, a politician; and the bolder his
enterprise, and the more corrupt his views, the less will be his
consideration of the price to be paid for compassing them. The new
regulations did not reduce the number so low as not to leave the
assembly still liable to all the disorder which might be supposed to
arise from multitude. But if the principle had been well established and
well executed, a much greater inconveniency grew out of the reform than
that which had attended the old abuse: for if tumult and disorder be
lessened by reducing the number of proprietors, private cabal and
intrigue are facilitated at least in an equal degree; and it is cabal
and corruption, rather than disorder and confusion, that was most to be
dreaded in transacting the affairs of India. Whilst the votes of the
smaller proprietors continued, a door was left open for the public sense
to enter into that society: since that door has been closed, the
proprietary has become, even more than formerly, an aggregate of private
interests,