y,--intrusted with the most extensive
powers,--liable to the greatest temptations,--possessing the amplest
means of abuse,--ruling over a people guarded by no distinct or
well-ascertained privileges, whose language, manners, and radical
prejudices render not only redress, but all complaint on their part, a
matter of extreme difficulty,--such an administration, it is evident,
never can be made subservient to the interests of Great Britain, or even
tolerable to the natives, but by the strictest rigor in exacting
obedience to the commands of the authority lawfully set over it.

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 trans