sure and opportunity for looking into the state of our outlying property. The nation began to take stock of the vast accession to its estate beyond sea which had been won by its naval and military successes; and the novel sense of duty toward India was undoubtedly stimulated by a general feeling that a trading association had no business with the revenues of a great kingdom.
The urgency of the case and certain symptoms of rising popular indignation combined to press the government into active interference with the Company, whose financial embarrassments left them in no position to resist an inquiry ordered by the House of Commons, or to dispute the right of the nation to deal as it chose with their territorial acquisitions. They tried hard, then and afterwards, to shelter themselves from Parliamentary interposition under the shadow of the nominal sovereignty of the Delhi emperor, from whom they pretended to hold their land. In maintaining this doctrine they acted upon the advice of Lord Clive, who, although he accepted the Diwani in 1765 because the assumption of some kind of legitimate authority over Bengal was unavoidable, nevertheless still affirmed that for the Company to declare themselves politically independent was very far from expedient. Consequently, the law courts and the police were still in charge of native officers, superintended to some little extent by the Company's agents, but under separate judicial and executive departments which the Company did not undertake to administer.
