by the Company, is still insurance),—­the engagement for the Ordnance, limited in price, and irregular in payment,—­the charge of agency and management, through all its gradations and successions,—­when all these are taken into consideration, it may be found that the gain of the Company as traders will be far from compensating their loss as sovereigns.  A body like the East India Company can scarcely, in any circumstance, hope to carry on the details of such a business, from its commencement to its conclusion, with any degree of success.  In the subjoined estimate of profit and loss, the value of the commodity is stated at its invoice price at Calcutta.  But this affords no just estimate of the whole effect of a dealing, where the Company’s charge commences in the first rudiments of the manufacture, and not at the purchase at the place of sale and valuation:  for they [there?] may be heavy losses on the value at which the saltpetre is estimated, when, shipped off on their account, without any appearance in the account; and the inquiries of your Committee to find the charges on the saltpetre previous to the shipping have been fruitless.

BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA.

The other link by which India is bound to Great Britain is the government established there originally by the authority of the East India Company, and afterwards modified by Parliament by the acts of 1773 and 1780.  This system of government appears to your Committee to be at least as much disordered, and as much perverted from every good purpose for which lawful rule is established, as the trading system has been from every just principle of commerce.  Your Committee, in tracing the causes of this disorder through its effects, have first considered the government as it is constituted and managed within itself, beginning with its most essential and fundamental part, the order and discipline by which the supreme authority of this kingdom is maintained.

The British government in India being a subordinate and delegated power, it ought to be considered as a fundamental principle in such a system, that it is to be preserved in the strictest obedience to the government at home.  Administration in India, at an immense distance from the seat of the supreme authority,—­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.