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Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes Assessment of the Act: The Act appointed a Governor-General but shackled him with a Council that
might reduce him to impotence as was actually the case with Warren Hastings from 1774 to 1776
when he was almost uniformly outvoted in the Council. The Act established a Supreme Court of
Justice but made no attempt accurately to define the field of its jurisdiction, specify the law it was to
administer or draw a line of demarcation between its functions and those of the Council. The Act was
a compromise throughout and intentionally vague in many of its provisions. It did not openly assert
the sovereignty of the British Crown or invade the titular authority of the Nawab of Bengal. The Act
had “neither given the state a definite control over the Company nor the Directors a definite control
over their servants, nor the Governor-General a definite control over his Council nor the Calcutta
Presidency a definite control over Madras and Bombay.” The Act was based on the theory of checks
and balances. In actual practice it broke down under the stress of Indian circumstances and its own
inherent defects. Hence the chief defects of the new system inaugurated by the Act were: (i) the
unworkable relations which it established between the Governor-General and his Council,(ii) the
anomalous relations between the new Supreme Court administering English law, and the country
courts already existing in Bengal. The Council and the Court were ranged in two hostile camps set
against each other on the borderland of debatable jurisdictions. The Governor-General-in-Council
could make no laws that the judges did not condescend to notice. There was the serious lacuna in the
Act of a supreme legislative authority nearer than England to arbitrate in these quarrels and to mark
off the proper sphere of the executive and judicial departments, (iii) The insufficient authority of the
Governor-General-in-Council over the other Presidencies. In all these respects the system broke down
completely when put to operation.
Importance of the Act: It must be said for the Regulating Act that it was the first serious attempt
made by a European power to organise government in a far-off country inhabited by a civilised
people. There were no European colonists here as in North American administration among whom
could easily work the type of institutions functioning in the mother country. Unlike South America
again Indian territories of the East India Company did not represent an undeveloped country. Thus
“the Regulating Act tried to sail in an unchartered sea. It left the details of administration in India to
the devices of the Company. It tried, however, to organise an honest and efficient supreme authority
in Bengal, at Madras and at Bombay. To provide against the abuse of their powers by the servants of
the Company, it set up a Supreme Court of Judicature at Calcutta. In England no public servant was
then above the law, he was accountable for whatever he did to ordinary courts. The Act in short was
a well-meant attempt to introduce a better system of government but being designed in ignorance of
the real nature of the problem it was a total failure and only added to Hastings’ difficulties instead of
strengthening his hands.”
The Regulating Act was in operation for eleven years till it was superseded by the Pitt’s Act of 1784.
Warren Hastings was the only Governor-General who had to administer India under it.
Pitt’s India Act, 1784
Circumstances Leading to the Passing of the Act: In 1781 as in 1772, both a Select and a Secret
Committee were appointed to go into the affairs of the Company. The former (the Select Committee)
investigated the relations between the Supreme Court and the Council in Bengal, the latter (the Secret
Committee) the causes of the Maratha War. The voluminous reports they presented were freely used
as arsenals for weapons against the Company by party orators in Parliament. Parliamentary
interference in the affairs of the Company was obviously once again called for, especially when the
Directors of the Company were obliged openly to confess that the war had beggared them and to
apply to the State for another loan of a million pounds. After a measure drafted by Dundas, Chairman
of the Secret Committee, had been rejected, Fox introduced his India Bill in Parliament. The measure
was really inspired by Burke and, behind him, by Philip Francis. This bill sought to transfer all the
political and military powers of the Company to a Board of Seven Commissioners to be nominated in
the first instance by Parliament and afterwards by the Crown, and all its commercial powers to a
subordinate body of nine Assistant Directors who were ultimately to be nominated by the holder of
East India stock, though they too in the first instance were to be appointed by Parliament. The bill if
it had been passed would in effect have swept aside the Company as a political power and brought

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