58 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
criticism of the Courts of Proprietors and Directors described in the last chapter is also very valuable. He posits that the interest of every proprietor of India stock, is by no means the same with that of the country ‘in the Government of which his vote gives him some influence and says, “This would be exactly true if those masters never had any other interest but that which belongs to them as proprietors of India stock. But they frequently have another of much greater importance. Frequently a man of great, sometimes even a man of moderate fortune, is willing to give thirteen or fourteen hundred pounds… merely for the influence which he expects to acquire by a vote in the Court of Proprietors. It gives him a share though not in the plunder, yet in the appointment of the plunderers of India. The Directors, though they make those appointments, being necessarily under the influence of the Court of Proprietors, which not only elects them, but sometimes overrules their appointments. A man of great or even of moderate fortune, provided he can enjoy this influence for a few years, and thereby get a certain number of his friends appointed to Employments in India, frequently cares little about the dividends which he can expect from so small a capital, or even about die improvement or loss of the capital itself upon which his vote is founded. About the prosperity or ruin of the great empire, in the Government of which that vote gives him a share, he seldom cares at all. No other sovereigns ever were, or from the nature of things ever could be, so perfectly indifferent, about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the improvements or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater part of the proprietors of such a merchantile company are, and necessarily must be.” [1]
This is perhaps a sweeping indictment of the administration of the company as a whole. It, however, holds true of the early rule of the company though the corruption was later gradually eliminated.
In the local or Supreme Government of India, the native inhabitants had no voice. They were barred from all high paid offices and had no scope beyond the position of a petty clerk.
- ‘ Wealth of Nations’ (Canner’s Ed.) Vol. II, p. 139 f.n.