ABSTRACT
By 1813 after more than fifty years of piecemeal experiment and im-provization solutions (some of them to last for a hundred years or more) had been found to many of the problems thrust upon Britain by vast conquests suddenly made in India. The impact of the new conquests on a delicately balanced political system had been largely neutralized. Those who had feared that Indian patronage would tip the scales in favour of the Crown or in favour of the politicians had for the most part been reassured by the survival of the East India Company, a nominally non-political body, as the distributor of patronage. State supervision of the Company’s rule in India could thus be exerted without the dire consequences to the constitution which had been so frequently prophesied. By 1813 the machinery of state supervision by regular parliamentary discussion and the examination and amendment of dispatches by the Board of Control was firmly established. The practical effectiveness of state supervision was of course a different matter. As was so often to be the case in the years ahead, Indian debates were already coming to be regarded as occasions on which self-confessed experts bandied jargon and statistics before a bored and thinly-attended House. The Presidency of the Board of Control was usually considered to be a second-rate office, often attracting second-rate politicians whose knowledge and application rarely matched those of Henry Dundas, although the deficiencies of the Presidents were to some extent to be remedied by a number of very able permanent officials.
