Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/82

76 should recommend it to your serious consideration whether it would not be wiser, when you shall no longer have to contend with chartered rights, to tie their hands from doing material mischief, without meddling with their Imperial dignity or their power of naming writers, and not to encounter the furious clamour that will be raised against annexing the patronage of India to the influence of the Crown, except in cases of the most absolute necessity.

'That a Court of Directors formed of such materials as the present can never, when left to themselves, conduct any branch of the business of this country properly, I will readily admit; but under certain restrictions and when better constituted, it might prove an useful check on the ambitious or corrupt designs of some future minister. In order, however, to enable such Directors to do this negative good, or to prevent them doing much positive evil, they should have a circumscribed management of the whole, and not a permission to ruin uncontrolled the commercial advantages which Britain should derive from her Asiatic territories.

'It will, of course, have been represented to you that the India Company formerly was supported by its commerce alone, and that it was then richer than it is at present, and that when their Directors have no longer any business with governing empires, they may again become as thrifty merchants as heretofore.