pany's
records, as the Indian names of persons, of offices, of the tenure and
qualities of estates, and of all the varied branches of their intricate
revenue. This language is, indeed, of necessary use in the executive
departments of the Company's affairs; but it is not necessary to
Parliament. A language so foreign from all the ideas and habits of the
far greater part of the members of this House has a tendency to disgust
them with all sorts of inquiry concerning this subject. They are
fatigued into such a despair of ever obtaining a competent knowledge of
the transactions in India, that they are easily persuaded to remand them
back to that obscurity, mystery, and intrigue out of which they have
been forced upon public notice by the calamities arising from their
extreme mismanagement. This mismanagement has itself, as your Committee
conceive, in a great measure arisen from dark cabals, and secret
suggestions to persons in power, without a regular public inquiry into
the good or evil tendency of any measure, or into the merit or demerit
of any person intrusted with the Company's concerns.

[Sidenote: Present laws relating to the East India Company, and internal
and external policy.]

The plan adopted by your Committee is, first, to consider the law
regulating the East India Company, as it now stands,--and, secondly, to
inquire into the circumstances of the two great links of connection by
which the territorial possessions in India are united to this kingdom,
namely, the Company's commerce, and the government exercised under the
charter and under acts of Parliament. The last [first] of these objects,
the commerce, is taken in two points of view: the _external_, or the
direct trade between India and Europe, and the _internal_, that is to
say, the trade of Bengal, in all the articles of produce and manufacture
which furnish the Company's investment.

The government is considered by your Committee under the like
descriptions of internal and external. The internal regards the
communication between the Court of Directors and their servants in
India, the management of the revenue, the expenditure of public money,
the civil administration, the administration of justice, and the state
of the army. The external regards, first, the conduct and maxims of the
Company's government with respect to the native princes and people
dependent on the British authority,--and, next, the proceedings with
regard to those native powers which a