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

• Madras and Bombay presidencies; Infanticide had already been declared illegal by Bangal Notes
Regulations of 1795 and 1804 but its strict enforcement was given due attention.
• In 1854 Sir Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control and later the first Secretary of State
for India, sent a comprehensive Despatch on Education to the Government of India in which he
recommended “a property articulated scheme of education from the primary school to the
University” for the whole of British India.
• The Act remodelled the constitution of the Company both in England and in India. In England
the right of vote in the Court of Proprietors was raised from £ 500 to £ 1,000. It was provided
that the Court of directors, hitherto elected every year, was henceforth to be elected for four
years. The number of Directors was fixed at 24, one-fourth retiring every year.
• In Bengal a collegiate government was created consisting of a Governor-General (President)
and four members of the Council. The vote of the majority was to bind the Council, the Governor-
General having a casting vote when there was an equal division of opinion. Three members of
the Council formed a quorum. The first Governor-General (Warren Hastings) and Councillors
(Philip Francis, Clavering, Monson and Barwell) were named in the Act. They were to hold
office for five years, and could be removed earlier only by the King on the recommendation of
the Court of Directors. Future appointments were to be made by the Company.
• The Act empowered the Crown to establish by charter a Supreme Court of Judicature, consisting
of a Chief Justice and three puisne judges. The Supreme Court was to be a Court of Equity and
of Common Law, a Court of Admiralty, and Ecclesiastical Court. All the public servants of the
Company were made amenable to its jurisdiction.
• 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, sefecify the law it was to
administer or draw a line of demarcation between its functions and those of the Council.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Among the most striking provisions of the Act was the prohibition not merely of all aggressive
wars in India but of all treaties of guarantee with Indian Princes like those with the nawabs of
Carnatic and Oudh on the ground that “to pursue schemes of conquest and extension of dominion
in India are measures repugnant to the wish, the honour and the policy of this nation.

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