The Pitt’s India Act (1784)

• The East India Company Act 1784, also known as Pitt’s India Act, was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain intended to address the shortcomings of the Regulating Act of 1773 by bringing the East India Company’s rule in India under the control of the British Government.
  • Pitt the Younger became the youngest Prime Minister of England in 1783 at the age of 24.
  • Pitt was an outstanding administrator who worked for efficiency and reform, bringing in a new generation of outstanding administrators.

Background:

• British Government enacted the Regulating Act in 1773 to control the activities of the Company.
  • The Act set up a system whereby it supervised the work of the Company but did not take power for itself.
  • The Act had proven to be a failure within a few years and the British government decided to take a more active role in the affairs of the Company.
• In 1781, both a Select and a Secret Committee were appointed to go into the affairs of the Company.
  • The Select Committee investigated the relations between the Supreme Court and the Council in Bengal.
  • 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 once again called for, especially when the Directors of the Company accepted that the war had beggared them and applied to the State for another loan of a million pounds.
• Pitt’s India Act established the system of dual control of India by the government of Great Britain and the British East India Company. These changes continued till 1858.

Provisions of the 1784 Act:

• The Company’s territorial possessions were not touched, only its public affairs and its administration in India were brought under more direct government control.
• With the Pitts India Act of 1784, East India Company’s political functions were differentiated from its commercial activities.
• In political matters, the company which was till now working as somewhat sovereign was made directly subordinate to the British government. To enable this, a Board of Commissioners was created, which was called Board of Control.
  • Members of this Board of Control:
    • 6 people viz.
      • the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
      • the Secretary of State, and
      • four Privy Councilors, nominated by the King
  • The Secretary of the State was entitled as the President of the Board of Control.
  • The Board of control was empowered to control all matters of civil or military government or revenues.
    • Board of Control would “superintend, direct and control all acts, operations and concerns” related to “the civil or military government or revenues of the British territorial possessions in the East Indies”.
  • The board was given full access to the company’s records. It had the powers to send Governors to India and full authority to alter them.
  • Result of creation of Board of Control:
    • The Pitts India Act 1734 actually provided for a joint government of the company and British crown in India. So now, the fate of India People would decide the company and the British Government (indirectly).
    • The Company was to be represented by the Court of Directors and the Crown was represented by the Board of Control.
    • There was a secret committee of the 3 Directors, which had to transmit the orders of the Board to India.
      • This Secret Committee was to work as a link between the Board of control and the Court of Directors.
    • 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.
    • 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 dispatches 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 Court of Directors retained their patronage and their right of dismissing their servants.
• In India:
  • The government of India was placed under the governor general and a council of three, thus giving greater power to the former.
  • The Governor General’s council was now reduced to 3 members, one of whom was to be the commander-in-chief of the King’s army in India.
    • Act also modified the Councils of Madras and Bombay on the pattern of that of Bengal.
  • The Governor General was given the right of casting vote, in case the members present in a meeting of the council shall any time be equally divided in opinion.
    • 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.
    • Thus Calcutta becoming in effect, the capital of Company possessions in India.
    • The power of the governor general over presidencies was now enlarged and more clearly defined.
    • The governor general in council in his turn was subordinated to the Court of Directors and the Board of Control.
      • The Governor General Council was now under indirect control of the British Government through the Board of Control.
    • Thus a clear hierarchy of command and more direct parliamentary control over Indian administration was established.
  • 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.
• 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 Camatic 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.”
  • But this declaration was more honoured in breach than in observance in subsequent years.
  • It is true that for a short period after the passage of the Pitt’s India Act in 1784 there was parliamentary prohibition on imperial expansion, and the major thrust of the policy of the Board of Control and the East India Company during this time was to protect British possessions and promote trading interests through a careful balance of power between the Indian states, thus reducing imperial military liabilities.
  • But that cautious policy was jettisoned when Lord Wellesley arrived as governor general in 1798, with a dream of conquest and a lust for personal glory.
• Disclosing of Property:
  • All civil and military officers of the East India Company were ordered to provide the Court of Directors a full inventory of their property in India and in Britain within two months of their joining their posts.
  • Severe punishment was provisioned for corrupt officials.
• The constitution set up by Pitt’s India Act did not undergo any major changes until the end of the company’s rule in India in 1858.

Assessment of Pitts India Act 1784:

• Pitt’s India Act of 1784 brought about important changes in the constitution of the Company:
• 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 Parliamentary Board which lasted till 1858.
• The Act placed the civil and military government of the Company in due subordination to the Government in England.
• This Act removed many faults of Regulating Act 1773.
  • It ended an inappropriate division of authority in India by making the Governor-General supreme over the subordinate governments of Bombay and Madras.
  • By reducing Governor General Council’s members to three, it removed one of the shortcoming of Regulating Act 1773, as now Governor General found easier to get majority in any decision and in case of tie, he had final say.
• Pitt’s India Act settled the main lines of the Company’s Home and Indian Government down to 1858.
  • For e.g. the head of the Board was at first one of the Secretaries of State without special salary, but after 1793 a special President of the Board was appointed and this officer was ultimately responsible for the government of British India until he was succeeded in 1858 by the Secretary of State for India.
• The Act was a very skillful measure bearing all the marks of a political compromise.
  • Burke admitted that it was “as able and skillful a performance for its own purposes as ever issued from the wit of man.”
  • Pitt, as Sir Courtney Ilbert has pointed out, has done two things:
    • he had avoided the charge of conferring patronage on the Crown, and
    • the appearance of radically altering the Company and the Government in England.
• P.J. Marshall (1968) has argued that until 1784 (i.e., the passage of Pitt’s India Act), there was no conscious or consistent British policy for political conquest in India.
  • Authority at home remained divided between the Court of Directors of the East India Company and the tenuous regulatory power of the government, with no one seemingly interested in acquiring territories in India until 1784.
• The Act still had too many defects.
  • The first and foremost was the provision of two masters for the governor general the Court of Directors and the Board of Control-which gave virtual autonomy to the man on the spot.
  • The governor general could easily play his two masters one against another and act at his own discretion.
  • But on the other hand, a factious council and the inability of the governor general to override its decisions could often make him ineffective, particularly as his right to use the army had been curbed.
• The act was deemed a failure.
  • This was because; very soon it became apparent that the boundaries between government control and the company’s powers were nebulous and highly subjective.
  • The act divided the responsibility between the Board of Control, Court of Directors and the Governor General in Council but again, no boundaries could be fixed as they matter was subjective and not objective.
• The British Government felt obliged to respond to humanitarian calls for better treatment of local peoples in British-occupied territories. The Board of control was alleged for nepotism.

The Act of 1786

• In 1786, Pit brought another supplementary bill in the Parliament relating to India to convince Cornwallis to accept the Governor-Generalship in India.
• Cornwallis wanted to have the powers of both the Governor-General and the Commander-in-Chief. The new Act conceded this demand as Governor General was made Commander – in – Chief.
  • It resulted in Warren Hastings for the first time enjoying the two positions simultaneously.
  • An effective and authoritarian instrument of control was thus put in place, which continued till 1858 with only little modifications.”
• Governor General was also given power to override his Council in extraordinary cases on his own responsibility.