Nor was the great political end proposed in the formation of a superintending Council over all the Presidencies better answered than that of an inquiry into corruptions and abuses. The several Presidencies have acted in a great degree upon their own separate authority; and as little of unity, concert, or regular system has appeared in their conduct as was ever known before this institution. India is, indeed, so vast a country, and the settlements are so divided, that their intercourse with each other is liable to as many delays and difficulties as the intercourse between distant and separate states. But one evil may possibly have arisen from an attempt to produce an union, which, though undoubtedly to be aimed at, is opposed in some degree by the unalterable nature of their situation,--that it has taught the servants rather to look to a superior among themselves than to their common superiors. This evil, growing out of the abuse of the principle of subordination, can only be corrected by a very strict enforcement of authority over that part of the chain of dependence which is next to the original power. [Sidenote: Powers given to the ministers of the crown.] That which your Committee considers as the fifth and last of the capital objects of the act, and as the binding regulation of the whole, is the introduction (then for the first time) of the ministers of the crown into the affairs of the Company. The state claiming a concern and share of property in the Company's profits, the servants of the crown were presumed the more likely to preserve with a scrupulous attention the sources of the great revenues which they were to administer, and for the rise and fall of which they were to render an account. The interference of government was introduced by this act in two ways: one by a control, in effect by a share, in the appointment to vacancies in the Supreme Council. The act provided that his Majesty's approbation should be had to the persons named to that duty. Partaking thus in the patronage of the Company, administration was bound to an attention to the characters and capacities of the persons employed in that high trust. The other part of their interference was by way of inspection. By this right of inspection, everything in the Company's correspondence from India, which related to the civil or military affairs and government of the Company, was directed by the act to be within fourteen days after the receipt laid before the Secretary of State, and everything that related to the management of the revenues was to be laid before the Commissioners of the Treasury. In fact, both description of these papers have been generally communicated to that board. [Sidenote: Defects in the plan.]