Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/172

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CHAPTER IX
}} This seems the place to attempt some account of the English establishments through which India was held and administered in the first years of Lord Amherst's governorship; of the communities of planters, merchants, traders, which enjoyed the protection of the Company; and of the relations of those who laboured in the East with the supreme masters of fate at home.

The Charter under which the Company governed was the Act of 1793, slightly modified by that of 1813. The Directors were masters, subject always to the power of the Crown exercised through the Board of Commissioners. So in India there were three responsible Vicegerents—one for each presidency; but the Governor-General of Bengal had the primacy in theory and in fact. Sir Thomas Munro as Governor of Madras, or Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone as Governor of Bombay, had immediate concern for the internal affairs of those presidencies; but for the politics of India as a whole, the Governor and his Council at Fort William exercised conclusive authority. Dis-