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Unit 2: Consolidation of British Raj (1818-1843) and Development of Central Structure (1773-1863)

all political appointments under the control of a commission which was to be appointed in the first Notes
instance by Parliament and afterwards by the Crown. The chief advocates of this measure had ten
years earlier opposed North’s Act as an intolerable invasion of the right of property. The feature of
the Bill upon which the Opposition seized was the surrender of the immensely valuable patronage of
India to the Ministry or the Crown and Pitt thundered against it as the most desperate and alarming
attempt at the exercise of tyranny that ever disgraced the annals of any country. The Bill, however,
was passed in the House of Commons by large majorities only to be rejected in the House of Lords
through the intervention of George III. The Bill was thrown out and the Ministry— the coalition of
Fox and North—resigned. It may be observed in passing that for the first and the last time a British
Ministry was wrecked on an Indian issue. Pitt came into power and in January 1784 he moved for
leave to bring in his India Bill and leave was granted; even the second reading was taken but the Bill
was not destined to be put on the statute book for the new Ministry had to resign. Pitt’s new Parliament
met in May 1784. Following the lines laid down in his Bill of January, the new Bill was finally carried
in the House of Commons in July, and in the House of Lords in August 1784. Fox, throughout the
session, continued to refer to the superior merits of his own Bill. Pitt had taken the precaution of
neutralising the opposition of the English Company with the result that the measure was introduced
in parliament fortified and recommended by the consent of the Company. In essentials Fox’s and
Pitt’s measures were on the same lines except that the latter did not touch the patronage of the
Company.

Pitt himself pointed out that while Fox’s India Bill ensured a permanency of men, his Bill
ment a permanency of system.

Provisions of the Act: The Act of 1784 introduced changes mainly in the Company’s Home
Government in London. It greatly extended the control of the State over the company’s affairs. While
the patronage of the Company was left untouched, all civil, military and revenue affairs were to be
controlled by a Board popularly known as the Board of Control, consisting of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, one of the principal Secretaries of State and four members of the Privy Council appointed
by the King. A Secret Committee of three Directors was to be the channel through which important
orders of the Board were to be transmitted to India. The Court of Proprietors lost the right to rescind,
suspend or revoke any resolution of the Directors which was approved by the Board of Control.
In India, the chief government was placed in the hands of a Governor-General and Council of three.
The Governor-General was still left liable to be over-ridden by the Council but as the number of
Councillors was reduced to three, he, by the use of his casting vote, could always make his will
predominate if he had one supporter. Beyond this the Act of 1784 did not go. This defect was met in
the Act of 1793, whereby the Governor-General was empowered to disregard the majority in Council
provided he did so in a formal way accepting the responsibility of his own action. Under the Act of
1784 the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay were subordinated to the Governor-General and Council
of Bengal in all matters of diplomacy, revenue and war. Last but not the least, only covenanted
servants were in future to be appointed members of the Council of the Governor-General. The
experiment of appointing outsiders had proved calamitous.
Observations on the Act: Pitt’s India Act of 1784 brought about two important changes in the
constitution of the Company. First, it constituted a department of state in England known as the
Board of Control, whose special function was to control the policy of the Court of Directors, thus
introducing the Dual System of government by the Company and by a Parliamentry Board which
lasted till 1858. The Board of Control had no independent executive power. It had no patronage. Its
power was veiled; it had access to all the Company’s papers and its approval was necessary for all
despatches that were not purely commercial, and in case of emergency the Board could send its own
draft to the Secret Committee of the Directors to be signed and sent out in its name. The Act thus
placed the civil and military government of the Company in due subordination to the Government in

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