The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12). Edmund Burke
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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.
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 as if it were a province in Great Britain. Your Committee have long had the constitution and conduct of this court before them, and they have not yet been able to discover very few instances (not one that appears to them of leading importance) of relief given to the natives against the corruptions or oppressions of British subjects in power,—though they do find one very strong and marked instance of the judges having employed an unwarrantable extension or application of the municipal law of England, to destroy a person of the highest rank among those natives whom they were sent to protect. One circumstance rendered the proceeding in this case fatal to all the good purposes for which the court had been established. The sufferer (the Rajah Nundcomar) appears, at the very time of this extraordinary prosecution, a discoverer of some particulars of illicit gain then charged upon Mr. Hastings, the Governor-General. Although in ordinary cases, and in some lesser instances of grievance, it is very probable that this court has done its duty, and has been, as every court must be, of some service, yet one example of this kind must do more towards deterring the natives from complaint, and consequently from the means of redress, than many decisions favorable to them, in the ordinary course of proceeding, can do for their encouragement and relief. So far as your Committee has been able to discover, the court has been generally terrible to the natives, and has distracted the government of the Company without substantially reforming any one of its abuses.
This court, which in its constitution seems not to have had sufficiently in view the necessities of the people for whose relief it was intended, and was, or thought itself, bound in some instances to too strict an adherence to the forms and rules of English practice, in others was framed upon principles perhaps too remote from the constitution of English tribunals. By the usual course of English practice, the far greater part of the redress to be obtained against oppressions of power is by process in the nature of civil actions. In these a trial by jury is a necessary part, with regard to the finding the offence and to the assessment of the damages. Both these were in the charter of justice left entirely to the judges. It was presumed, and not wholly without reason, that the British subjects were liable to fall into factions and combinations, in order to support themselves in the abuses of an authority of which every man might in his turn become a sharer. And with regard to the natives, it was presumed (perhaps a little too hastily) that they were not capable of sharing in the functions of jurors. But it was not foreseen that the judges were also liable to be engaged in the factions of the settlement,—and if they should ever happen to be so engaged, that the native people were then without that remedy which obviously lay in the chance that the court and jury, though both liable to bias, might not easily unite in the same identical act of injustice. Your Committee, on full inquiry, are of opinion that the use of juries is neither impracticable nor dangerous in Bengal.
Your Committee refer to their report made in the year 1781, for the manner in which this court, attempting to extend its jurisdiction, and falling with extreme severity on the native magistrates, a violent contest arose between the English judges and the English civil authority. This authority, calling in the military arm, (by a most dangerous example,) overpowered, and for a while suspended, the functions of the court; but at length those functions, which were suspended by the quarrel of the parties, were destroyed by their reconciliation, and by the arrangements made in consequence of it. By these the court was virtually annihilated; or if substantially it exists, it is to be apprehended it exists only for purposes very different from those of its institution.
The fourth object of the act of 1773 was the Council-General. This institution was intended to produce uniformity, consistency, and the effective coöperation of all the settlements in their common defence. By the ancient constitution of the Company's foreign settlements, they were each of them under the orders of a President or Chief, and a Council, more or fewer, according to the discretion of the Company. Among those, Parliament (probably on account of the largeness of the territorial acquisitions, rather than the conveniency of the situation) chose Bengal for the residence of the controlling power, and, dissolving the Presidency, appointed a new establishment, upon a plan somewhat similar to that which had prevailed before; but the number was smaller. This establishment was composed of a Governor-General and four Counsellors, all named in the act of Parliament. They were to hold their offices for five years, after which term the patronage was to revert to the Court of Directors. In the mean time such vacancies as should happen were to be filled by that court, with the concurrence of the crown. The first Governor-General and one of the Counsellors had been old servants of the Company; the others were new men.
On this new arrangement the Courts of Proprietors and Directors considered the details of commerce as not perfectly consistent with the enlarged sphere of duty and the reduced number of the Council. Therefore, to relieve them from this burden, they instituted a new office, called the Board of Trade, for the subordinate management of their commercial concerns, and appointed eleven of the senior servants to fill the commission.
Object of powers to Governor-General and Council. The powers given by the act to the new Governor-General and Council had for their direct object the kingdom of Bengal and its dependencies. Within that sphere (and it is not a small one) their authority extended over all the Company's concerns of whatever description. In matters of peace and war it seems to have been meant that the other Presidencies should be subordinate to their board. But the law is loose and defective, where it professes to restrain the subordinate Presidencies from making war without the consent and approbation of the Supreme Council. They are left free to act without it in cases of imminent necessity, or where they shall have received special orders from the Company. The first exception leaves it open to the subordinate to judge of the necessity of measures which, when taken, bind or involve the superior: the second refers a question of peace or war to two jurisdictions, which may give different judgments. In both instances cases in point have occurred.1 With regard to their local administration, their powers were exceedingly and dangerously loose and undetermined. Their powers were not given directly, but in words of reference, in which neither the objects related to nor the mode of the relation were sufficiently expressed. Their legislative and executive capacities were not so accurately drawn, and marked by such strong and penal lines of distinction, as to keep these capacities separate. Where legislative and merely executive powers were lodged in the same hands, the legislative, which is the larger and the more ready for all occasions, was constantly resorted to. The Governor-General and
See the Secret Committee's Reports on the Mahratta War.