T U K W K A 1.T11 OJ' .' NATIONS. GO 1

From the nature of their situation too the servants mustlie more disposed to support with rigorous severity their owninterest against that of the country which they govern, thantheir masters can be to support theirs. The country belongsto their masters, who cannot avoid having some regard forthe interest of what belongs to them. But it does not be-long to the servants. The real interest of their masters, ifthey were capable of understanding it, is the same with thatof the country and it is from ignorance chiefly, and themeanness of mercantile prejudice, that they ever oppress it.But the real interest of the servants is by no means the samewith that of the country, and the most perfect informationwould not necessarily put an end to their oppressions. Theregulations accordingly which have been sent out from Eu­ rope , though they have been frequently weak, have uponmost occasions been well-meaning. More intelligence andperhaps less good-meaning has sometimes appeared in thoseestablished by the servants in India . It is a very singulargovernment in which every member of the administrationwishes to get out of the country, and consequently to havedone with the government, as soon as he can, and to whoseinterest, the day after he has left it and carried his wholefortune with him, it is perfectly indifferent though the wholecountry was swallowed up by an earthquake.

I mean not, however, by any thing which 1 have heresaid, to throw any odious imputation upon the general cha-racter of the servants of the East India company, and muchless upon that of any particular persons. It is the system ofgovernment, the situation in which they are placed, that Imean to censure; not the character of those who have actedin it. They acted as their situation naturally directed, andthey who have clamoured the loudest against them would,probably, not have acted better themselves. In war andnegotiation, the councils of Madras and Calcutta have uponseveral occasions conducted themselves with a resolutionand decisive wisdom which would have done honour to thesenate of Rome in the best days of that republic. Themembers of those councils, however, had been bred to pro-fessions very different from war and politics. But theirsituation alone, without education, experience, or even ex-

.* The interest of every proprietor of India stock, however, is by no means the same™'tn that Of the country in the government of winch his vote gives him some influence.

hook v. chap. j. part 3.

2 Q