in
the proprietary, they have, through that name, brought the direction
very much under their own control.

As to the general authority of the Court of Directors, there is reason
to apprehend that on the whole it was somewhat degraded by the act whose
professed purpose was to exalt it, and that the only effect of the
Parliamentary sanction to their orders has been, that along with those
orders the law of the land has been despised and trampled under foot.
The Directors were not suffered either to nominate or to remove those
whom they were empowered to instruct; from masters they were reduced to
the situation of complainants,--a situation the imbecility of which no
laws or regulations could wholly alter; and when the Directors were
afterwards restored in some degree to their ancient power, on the
expiration of the lease given to their principal servants, it became
impossible for them to recover any degree of their ancient respect, even
if they had not in the mean time been so modelled as to be entirely free
from all ambition of that sort.

From that period the orders of the Court of Directors became to be so
habitually despised by their servants abroad, and at length to be so
little regarded even by themselves, that this contempt of orders forms
almost the whole subject-matter of the voluminous reports of two of your
committees. If any doubt, however, remains concerning the cause of this
fatal decline of the authority of the Court of Directors, no doubt
whatsoever can remain of the fact itself, nor of the total failure of
one of the great leading regulations of the act of 1773.

[Sidenote: Supreme Court of Judicature.]

The third object was a new judicial arrangement, the chief purpose of
which was to form a strong and solid security for the natives against
the wrongs and oppressions of British subjects resident in Bengal. An
operose and expensive establishment of a Supreme Court was made, and
charged upon the revenues of the country. The charter of justice was by
the act left to the crown, as well as the appointment of the
magistrates. The defect in the institution seemed to be this,--that no
rule was laid down, either in the act or the charter, by which the court
was to judge. No descriptions of offenders or species of delinquency
were properly ascertained, according to the nature of the place, or to
the prevalent mode of abuse. Provision was made for the administration
of justice in the remotest part of Hindostan