ion in India. The first of these legislative
measures was Lord North's Regulating Act, which was passed in 1773, just
eight years after the East India Company had acquired for the first time
the right of revenue and civil administration over vast territories in
Bengal and in the Madras "Northern Circars," and thereby taken over the
duties of government in respect of a great native population, absolutely
alien in race, in religion, and in customs. Lord North's Act did not
attack directly the problem of Indian government, but it sought to
facilitate its solution by the East India Company itself by reforming
its constitution at home, where the jealousies and intrigues of rival
factions in the Board of Directors had often reached the dimensions of a
public scandal, and by centralising the Company's authority in India,
where, as the result of recent developments which had now established
the centre of British gravity in Bengal, the post of Governor-General
was created for the Bengal Presidency and invested with powers of
control over the other Presidencies, Madras and Bombay, which had
hitherto enjoyed a status of practical equality. At the same time an
attempt was made to strengthen control from home by enjoining upon the
Governor-General to keep the Board of Directors in London fully informed
and to abide by its instructions, whilst a check was placed upon the
executive authority in Bengal by the creation of a Supreme Court in
Calcutta from which the present High Court is descended.

The defect of this legislation--a defect inherent to the situation in
India itself--was the dualism it created by endeavouring to enforce
Parliamentary restraints upon a Company which derived its title to
government over the greater part of its possessions from the
irresponsible despotism of the Moghul emperors. The Company was thus
made to serve two masters, and at the same time it remained essentially
a great trading corporation whose commercial and fiscal interests were
always liable to conflict, and sometimes did conflict, with its duties
towards both masters. The total collapse of the Moghul Empire removed
before long one of the ambiguities of this situation, but the other
endured in a greater or less degree until the East India Company itself
disappeared, though every subsequent measure of Indian legislation at
home tended to bring the Indian executive more and more fully under the
control of the home Government.

Eleven years later Pit