and the Commissioner first named in the patent to be the President. The Commissioners never now sit as a Board, though it appears that in former times they did so, and minutes of the attendance of Mr. Dundas, Mr. Pitt, and others exist. Subsequently, when there were two paid junior Commissioners, there were occasional meetings; but since the only paid Commissioner has been the President, no Board has been held. The President is regarded as acting on his own responsibility. The fiction of a "Board" is however still kept up, by the signature of one of the ex-officio Members, being, in conformity with the law, attached to all documents recording the decisions of the President. The chief powers of the Board are now as follow:1. The supervision of all financial measures of the Courts of Directors. 2. The revision of all their correspondence. 3. The exercise of veto, in the name of the Crown, on the patronage of certain appointments above specified, and the absolute patronage of certain other appointments, as of the Indian Bishops and the Judges of the Supreme Courts. 4. The right of recalling or dismissing, in the name of the Crown, any officer or servant of the Company in India. Two Secretaries were, by statute 3 and 4 Will. IV. cap. 85, attached to the Board; one of whom is a Member of the House of Commons, and liable to lose his office when the Administration by whom he was appointed lose theirs-the other Secretary being a permanent official. The business coming before the Board is divided among six Departments : 1. Revenue, embracing all matters relating to the assessment and collection of the revenues of India. 2. Finance and accounts, taking cognisance of the public expenditure, remittances, and the management of mints in India. 3. Military. 4. Marine and Ecclesiastical. 5. Political. 6. Judicial and Legislative. These departments are all placed under the supervision of the two Secretaries, three being committed to each Secretary; and to each of the Departments are attached a senior clerk, an assistant clerk, and junior clerks. There is also a Secret Department in the Board of Control for the purpose of carrying on written and oral communications with the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors. The latter class of communications are for the most part carried on through the President personally; in the former he is assisted by a senior clerk, and occasionally by the Secretaries of the Board. It appears that on the arrival of secret dispatches from India, the copy intended for the Board is sent to the senior clerk in the Secret Department, who prepares a précis of all the letters and enclosures, which he lays before the President, who thereupon gives him instructions, oral or written, for the prepara Mode of transact ing business adopted by the tion of an answer, or sometimes drafts one himself. It is then copied in official form and transmitted to the Secret Committee at the East India House. The salary of the President (having been changed five times since the first constitution of the Board in 1784,) now stands at 50007. per annum. The establishment consists (in addition to the two Secretaries) of about thirty clerks, and is maintained at an average annual cost of about 30,000l. per annum. The present Constitution of the Court of Directors and that of the Board of Control having been thus briefly described, it remains to explain the mode by which the powers given to the latter over the proceedings of the former are exercised. In the ordinary transaction of the business of the Home Government of India, for the purposes of that intercommunication which takes place between the Court and the Board, the former are represented Directors ordinarily by the Chairman and Deputy Chairman, the latter by the President. Court of and the Board of This complicated system of mutual check and intervention is nowhere more clearly described than in the evidence given by Mr. Waterfield and Sir James Melvill before the Parliamentary Committees of 1852. That evidence, as condensed in the analysis subsequently printed, is as follows: Each dispatch from India is laid before the Court of Directors, to which body all dispatches are addressed. They arrive in duplicate, one copy being for the Court, one for the Board. When a dispatch comes from India it is accompanied by a collection of papers bearing upon the subject, which collection contains the former correspondence relating to it, and the present proceedings of the Government upon it. The dispatch comes to the Secretary's office, and from it is immediately transferred to the department to which it relates. In that department an abstract of the contents of the dispatch is made; this is lithographed, and copies of it are sent to the Chairman and DeputyChairman, and the members of the Committee having the superintendence of the department to which the dispatch relates. The officer in charge of that department then communicates with the Chairman and Deputy upon the dispatch, and, in cases in which the subjects are not mere routine, receives instructions as to the tenor of the reply. A draft answer is then prepared, and submitted with the collections to the Chairman and the Deputy; they confer together, and with the officer, upon the subject; and when the draft conforms to their views, they place their initials upon it as the authority for its being sent to the President of the Board, in what is technically called "P. C.;" that is to say, previous communication. When the "previous communication" is received from the India House, it is referred, with the accompanying "collections," to the senior clerk of the department to which it may belong. It is his duty to make himself acquainted with the contents of the papers, and the previous communication" is then, with the notes and comments of the clerk, laid before the Secretary under whom the particular department has been 66 placed. He reads these papers, and, if not satisfied with them, he refers to the "collections." Having formed his opinion, he expresses it in writing; and the papers are, with that opinion, submitted to the President. The President in like manner reads the " previous communication," and the notes and comments, and, if necessary, refers to the "collections." Having considered these various papers, he gives his decision; that decision may be entire approval of the "previous communication;" the cancelling of it, on the ground that it is not advisable to give any opinion on the subject; the substitution of other paragraphs in place of those proposed; or the partial alteration of them, in greater or less degree. The "previous communication" is returned to the clerk, in order that the President's decision may be carried into effect, and it is then sent back to the Chairman, together with the "collections." The "previous communication," in fact, is merely a suggestion of the way in which the Chairman and Deputy think that the dispatch or letter should be answered; so the alterations made in the "previous communication" by the President are merely suggestions back again to the Chairman and Deputy of the way in which the President thinks that the draft should stand. There is nothing authoritative till the proposed dispatch is in the form of a draft what is considered on both sides merely a sugpasses gestion. If the "previous communication" be returned unaltered, the draft is immediately submitted to the Committec of the Court having superintendence t; |