If the Directors are known to devolve the whole cognizance of the offences charged on their servants so highly situated upon the Supreme Court, an excuse will be furnished, if already it has not been furnished, to the Directors for declining the use of their own proper political power and authority in examining into and animadverting on the conduct of their servants. Their true character, as strict masters and vigilant governors, will merge in that of prosecutors. Their force and energy will evaporate in tedious and intricate processes,--in lawsuits which can never end, and which are to be carried on by the very dependants of those who are under prosecution. On their part, these servants will decline giving satisfaction to their masters, because they are already before another tribunal; and thus, by shifting responsibility from hand to hand, a confederacy to defeat the whole spirit of the law, and to remove all real restraints on their actions, may be in time formed between the servants, Directors, prosecutors, and court. Of this great danger your Committee will take farther notice in another place. No notice whatever appears to have been taken of the Company's orders in Bengal till the 11th of January, 1779, when Mr. Barwell moved, _that the claim made upon him by the Court of Directors should be submitted to the Company's lawyers, and that they should be perfectly instructed to prosecute upon it_. In his minute of that date he says, "_that the state of his health had long since rendered it necessary for him to return to Europe_." Your Committee observe that he continued in Bengal another year. He says, "that he had hitherto waited for the arrival of Sir John Day, the Company's advocate; but as the season was now far advanced, he wished to bring the trial speedily to issue." In this minute he retracts his original engagement to submit himself to the judgment of the Court of Directors, "and to account to them for the last shilling he had received": he says, "that no merit had been given him for the offer; that a most unjustifiable advantage had been attempted to be made of it, by first declining it and _descending to abuse_, and then giving orders upon it as if it had been rejected, when called upon by him in the person of his agent to bring home the charge of delinquency."