by your Committee under this head were
observed in the regular service at home and abroad, the necessity of
superseding the regular service by strangers would be more rare; and
whenever the servants were so superseded, those who put forward other
candidates would be obliged to produce a strong plea of merit and
ability, which, in the judgment of mankind, ought to overpower
pretensions so authentically established, and so rigorously guarded from
abuse.

[Sidenote: Deficiency of powers to ministers of government.]

The second object, in this part of the plan, of the act of 1773, namely,
that of inspection by the ministers of the crown, appears not to have
been provided for, so as to draw the timely and productive attention of
the state on the grievances of the people of India, and on the abuses of
its government. By the Regulating Act, the ministers were enabled to
inspect one part of the correspondence, that which was received in
England, but not that which went outward. They might know something, but
that very imperfectly and unsystematically, of the state of affairs; but
they were neither authorized to advance nor to retard any measure taken
by the Directors in consequence of that state: they were not provided
even with sufficient means of knowing what any of these measures were.
And this imperfect information, together with the want of a direct call
to any specific duty, might have, in some degree, occasioned that
remissness which rendered even the imperfect powers originally given by
the act of 1773 the less efficient. This defect was in a great measure
remedied by a subsequent act; but that act was not passed until the year
1780.

[Sidenote: Disorders increased since 1773.]

Your Committee find that during the whole period which elapsed from 1773
to the commencement of 1782 disorders and abuses of every kind
multiplied. Wars contrary to policy and contrary to public faith were
carrying on in various parts of India. The allies, dependants, and
subjects of the Company were everywhere oppressed;[2] dissensions in the
Supreme Council prevailed, and continued for the greater part of that
time; the contests between the civil and judicial powers threatened that
issue to which they came at last, an armed resistance to the authority
of the king's court of justice; the orders which by an act of Parliament
the servants were bound to obey were avowedly and on principle
contemned; until at length the fatal effects of accumul