ompany contents itself with
being Mayor of the Palace, while the Roi Faineant is suffered to play at
being a sovereign. In fact, it was considered, both by Lord Clive and
by Warren Hastings, as a point of policy to leave the character of
the Company thus undefined, in order that the English might treat the
princes in whose names they governed as realities or nonentities, just
as might be most convenient.

Thus the transformation of the Company from a trading body, which
possessed some sovereign prerogatives for the purposes of trade, into a
sovereign body, the trade of which was auxiliary to its sovereignty, was
effected by degrees and under disguise. It is not strange, therefore,
that the mercantile and political transactions of this great corporation
should be entangled together in inextricable complication. The
commercial investments have been purchased out of the revenues of the
empire. The expenses of war and government have been defrayed out of
the profits of the trade. Commerce and territory have contributed to
the improvement of the same spot of land, to the repairs of the same
building. Securities have been given in precisely the same form for
money which has been borrowed for purposes of State, and for money which
has been borrowed for purposes of traffic. It is easy, indeed,--and this
is a circumstance which has, I think, misled some gentlemen,--it is easy
to see what part of the assets of the Company appears in a commercial
form, and what part appears in a political or territorial form. But
this is not the question. Assets which are commercial in form may
be territorial as respects the right of property; assets which are
territorial in form may be commercial as respects the right of property.
A chest of tea is not necessarily commercial property; it may have
been bought out of the territorial revenue. A fort is not necessarily
territorial property; it may stand on ground which the Company bought a
hundred years ago out of their commercial profits. Adjudication, if by
adjudication be meant decision according to some known rule of law, was
out of the question. To leave matters like these to be determined by the
ordinary maxims of our civil jurisprudence would have been the height of
absurdity and injustice. For example, the home bond debt of the Company,
it is believed, was incurred partly for political and partly for
commercial purposes. But there is no evidence which would enable us to
assign to each branch