T1IK WEALTH OT NATIONS.

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though they make that appointment, being necessarily moreor less under the influence of the proprietors, who not onlyelect those directors, but sometimes over-rule the appoint-ments of their servants in India . Provided he can enjoy thisinfluence for a few years, and thereby provide for a certainnumber of his friends, he frequently cares little about the di-vidend ; or even about the value of the stock upon which hisvote is founded. About the prosperity of the great empire,in the government of which that vote gives him a share, heseldom cares at all. No other sovereigns ever were, or, fromthe nature of things, ever could be, so perfectly indifferentabout the happiness or misery of their subjects, the improve-ment or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of theiradministration; as, from irresistible moral causes, the greaterpart of the proprietors of such a mercantile company are,and necessarily must be. This indifference too was morelikely to be increased than diminished by some of the newregulations which were made in consequence of the parlia-mentary inquiry. By a resolution of the House of Commons ,for example, it was declared that when the fourteen hundredthousand pounds lent to the company by government shouldbe paid, and their bond-debts be reduced to fifteen hundredthousand pounds, they might then, and not till then, divideeight per cent, upon their capital; and that whatever re-mained of their revenues and nett profits at home, should bedivided into lour parts ; three of them to be paid into theexchequer for the use of the public, and the fourth to be re-served as a kind, either for the farther reduction of their bond-debts, or for the discharge of other contingent exigencies,which the company might labour under. But if the companywere bad stewards, and bad sovereigns, when the whole oftheir nett revenue and profits belonged to themselves, andwere at their own disposal, they were surely not likely to'bebetter when three-fourths of them were to belong to otherpeople, and the other fourth, though to be laid out for thebeuelit of the company, yet to be so, under the inspection,and with the approbation, of other people.

It might be more agreeable to the company that their ownservants and dependants should have either the pleasure ofwasting, or the profit of embezzling whatever surplus mightremain, after paying the proposed dividend of eight per cent^an that, it should come into the. hands of a set of people witliwhom those resolutions could scarce fail to set them, in some