settling, upon principles of moderation and justice, according to the laws and constitution of India, the permanent rules by which their tributes, rents, and services shall be in future rendered and paid to the Company.

(40) The Directors shall take into their immediate consideration the establishments, civil and military, of their settlements in India, and give orders for every practicable retrenchment; and shall also require full and particular lists of all the offices and employments on the civil establishment of the Company in India, and of all the forces in the pay or service of the Company, together with the opinions of the respective governments and Presidencies, what method or system can be adopted for introducing a just and laudable economy in every branch of the civil and military departments : And the Court of Directors shall, as soon as may be, declare what offices, as well civil as military, will in their judgment be adequate to the support of the honour and dignity of this kingdom in the East Indies, and the safety, defence, and security of the British possessions there; and specify the rate of the salaries and emoluments to be hereafter allowed in respect thereof: And the Court of Directors are hereby required, within fourteen days after the commencement of every session of parliament, to bring before the two houses of parliament a perfect list of all offices, places, and employments, in the civil and military establishments, with the salaries and emoluments belonging thereto.

(41) Until the lists of the offices, places, and employments shall have been made the Court of Directors shall be prohibited from appointing or sending to India any new servant, civil or military, under the degrees of the Councillors and Commanders-in-Chief; and after such lists shall have been perfected and established, the Court of Directors shall in no wise appoint or send out any greater number of persons to be cadets or writers, or in any other capacity, than will be actually necessary, in addition to the persons on the spot, to keep up the proper complement contained in the said lists.

(42) From and after the commencement of this Act, all promotions as well civil as military, under the degrees of the respective Councillors and Commanders-in-Chief, shall be made according to seniority of appointment, in a regular progressive succession.

(43) From and after the passing of this Act, no person shall be capable of being appointed by the Court of Directors to the

East Indies, in the capacity of a writer or cadet, whose age shall be under fifteen years, or shall exceed the age of twentytwo years..

(44) All His Majesty's subjects are hereby declared to be amenable to all courts of justice (both in India and Great Britain) of competent jurisdiction to try offences committed in India, for all acts done in any of the territories of any native prince in the same manner as if the same had been done within the territories directly subject to the British government in India.

(The whole remainder of the Act is devoted to elaborate provisions for the prevention and punishment of corruption, misgovernment or disobedience on the part of servants of the Company. A few of the more striking clauses only are excerpted.)

(45) The demanding or receiving of any sum of money, or other valuable thing as a gift by any British subject holding any office under His Majesty or the Company in the East Indies, shall be deemed to be extortion, and shall be proceeded against and punished as such.

(52) And, for the remedying of the abuses which have prevailed in the collection of the revenues of the Company, be it further enacted, That every person (being a British born subject) who is authorised to collect the rents or revenues due to the Company, shall take and subscribe the following oath.

(55) Every person in the service of the Company in India, shall, within the space of two calendar months after his returning to Great Britain, deliver in upon oath, before the Lord Chief Baron of His Majesty's Court of Exchequer in England, duplicates of an exact inventory of all real and personal property as well in Europe as in Asia, or elsewhere, which such person was possessed of, at the time of his arrival in Great Britain. . .

(Clauses 56-62 relate to the stringent enforcement of this requirement, and impose severe penalties for evasion. Clauses 64-82 provide in an extraordinarily elaborate way for the prosecution of servants of the Company for misdemeanours in India, especially by the establishment of a Commission of members of both Houses of Parliament to deal with such charges. The procedure of this Quaestio Repetundarum is very minutely regulated.)

(83) Provided always, That nothing herein contained shall prejudice the rights or claims of the public, or the Company, respecting the said territorial acquisitions and revenues.

N

(84) And be it further enacted, That this Act shall take place and have commencement, in Great Britain, immediately after the same shall have received His Majesty's royal assent; and shall take place and have commencement, in the several Presidencies aforesaid, and in the territories thereunto belonging, from the first day of January, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-five.

65. INDEPENDENT POWERS OF GOVERNORS, 1793

(33 George III. Cap. XXXII.)

(The provision herein contained forms a sort of Appendix to the Act of 1784. The power of independent action which it confers on the Governor had been advocated by Warren Hastings (see above, No. 39), and demanded by Cornwallis.)

(10) And whereas it will tend greatly to the strength and security of the British possessions in India, and give energy, vigour and despatch to the measures and proceedings of the executive government within the respective presidencies, if the Governor-General of Fort William in Bengal, and the several Governors of Fort Saint George and Bombay, were vested with discretionary power of acting without the concurrence of their respective councils, or forbearing to act according to their opinions in cases of high importance, thereby subjecting themselves personally to answer to their country for so acting; be it enacted, that when any measure shall be proposed whereby the interests of the Company, or the safety or tranquillity of the British possessions in India, may in the judgment of the Governor-General, or of the said Governors respectively, be essentially affected, and the Governor-General, or such Governors respectively, shall be of opinion that it will be expedient either that the measure ought to be adopted or that the same ought to be suspended or wholly rejected, and the other members of such council shall dissent from such opinion, the Governor-General or such Governor, and the other members of the Council, shall forthwith mutually communicate in Council to each other, in writing, the reasons of their respective opinions; and if, after considering the same, the Governor and the other members of the Council shall retain their opinions, it shall be lawful for the Governor-General in the Supreme Council of Fort William, or either of the said Governors in their respective Councils, to make any order for suspending or rejecting the measure in part or in the whole,

or for adopting the measure; which order shall be signed as well by the Governor-General, or Governor, as by all the other members of the Council then present, and shall by virtue of this Act be as effectual as if all the other members had concurred.

THE WAR WITH TIPU SAHIB AND THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE

Absolute non-intervention in Indian politics, such as was contemplated by § 34 of the Act of 1784, proved to be impossible. Tipu Sahib of Mysore, who had been defeated with difficulty in 1781, made in 1789 an attack upon the Raja of Travancore, who was an ally of the Company. He was undoubtedly encouraged in this by the isolation of the Company, and its abstention from the exercise of that influence among the Indian powers which Hastings had so firmly wielded. Cornwallis was forced to recognise this "unavoidable inconvenience" of the "system of neutrality" (No. 66) and in order to deal with Tipu effectively, had to make an alliance with the Mahrattas and the Nizam. But in order to obtain their aid they had to be promised a guarantee against future vengeance from Tipu; and thus a Triple Alliance of the three powers, formally concluded at the end of the war (No. 70), became (in spite of § 34) a definite factor in Indian politics. Even with the aid of these allies Tipu was not easily overthrown (No. 67); and when he was beaten, Cornwallis found it necessary, as a safeguard for the future, to annex part of his territory, the two allies taking equal shares (No. 69). He hoped that the reduction of Tipu and the continued maintenance against him of the Triple Alliance would secure durable peace. But no provision had been made against the event of war between the allies. War between the Mahrattas and the Nizam broke out in the time of Cornwallis's successor, Sir John Shore.1 Faithful to the principle of non-intervention, Shore refused to protect the Nizam; with the results that he was completely defeated at Kurdla, 1795, and passed under Mahratta

1 Afterwards Lord Teignmouth.

control; that the power of the Mahrattas became more formidable than that of Tipu had ever been; and that the Nizam, and Tipu, and indeed all the states of India, lost all respect for and confidence in the British power. In the state of Indian politics, non-intervention was proved to be an impossible and disastrous policy.

66. THE NECESSITY OF A COMBINATION AGAINST TIPU

Earl Cornwallis to C. W. Malet, Esq.1

Feb. 28, 1790.

Some considerable advantages have no doubt been experienced by the system of neutrality, which the Legislature required of the Government in this country, but it has at the same time been attended with the unavoidable inconvenience of our being constantly exposed to the necessity of commencing a war, without having previously secured the assistance of efficient Allies.

The late outrageous infraction of the treaty of peace by Tipu, furnishes a case in point.

We could not suffer the dominions of the Raja of Travancore, who was included by name as our Ally in that treaty, to be ravaged or insulted, without being justly charged with pusillanimity or a flagrant breach of faith, and without dishonouring ourselves by that means in the view of all the powers in India; and as we have been almost daily obliged for several years past, to declare to the Mahrattas and to the Nizam, that we were precluded from contracting any new engagements with them for affording them aid against the injustice or ambition of Tipu, I must acknowledge that we cannot claim as a right the performance of those promises which the Mahrattas have repeatedly made to co-operate with us, whenever we should be forced into a war with that Prince.

My dependence upon the support of both those powers upon the present occasion is founded solely upon the expectation of their being guided by considerations of evident interest, to reduce the power of a Prince whose ambition knows no bounds, and from whom both of them have suffered numberless insults and injuries.

1 Representative of the Company at the Court of the Peshwa.