property. On this scale, and on
some provisions to prevent occasional qualifications and splitting of
votes, the whole reformation rested.

[Sidenote: The ballot.]

[Sidenote: Indian interest.]

Several essential points, however, seem to have been omitted or
misunderstood. No regulation was made to abolish the pernicious custom
of voting by _ballot_, by means of which acts of the highest concern to
the Company and to the state might be done by individuals with perfect
impunity; and even the body itself might be subjected to a forfeiture of
all its privileges for defaults of persons who, so far from being under
control, could not be so much as known in any mode of legal cognizance.
Nothing was done or attempted to prevent the operation of the interest
of delinquent servants of the Company in the General Court, by which
they might even come to be their own judges, and, in effect, under
another description, to become the masters in that body which ought to
govern them. Nor was anything provided to secure the independency of the
proprietary body from the various exterior interests by which it might
be disturbed, and diverted from the conservation of that pecuniary
concern which the act laid down as the sole security for preventing a
collusion between the General Court and the powerful delinquent servants
in India. The whole of the regulations concerning the Court of
Proprietors relied upon two principles, which have often proved
fallacious: namely, that small numbers were a security against faction
and disorder; and that integrity of conduct would follow the greater
property. In no case could these principles be less depended upon than
in the affairs of the East India Company. However, by wholly cutting off
the lower, and adding to the power of the higher classes, it was
supposed that the higher would keep their money in that fund to make
profit,--that the vote would be a secondary consideration, and no more
than a guard to the property,--and that therefore any abuse which tended
to depreciate the value of their stock would be warmly resented by such
proprietors.

If the ill effects of every misdemeanor in the Company's servants were
to be _immediate_, and had a tendency to lower the value of the stock,
something might justly be expected from the pecuniary security taken by
the act. But from the then state of things, it was more than probable
that proceedings ruinous to the permanent interest of the Company might
comm