The third step they take is that of a _junior merchant_, in which they are obliged to serve three years more.

At that period they become _senior merchants_, which is the highest stage of advance in the Company's service,--a rank by which they had pretensions, before the year 1774, to the Council, to the succession of the Presidency, and to whatever other honors the Company has to bestow.
The Company had, in its early times, established factories in certain places; which factories by degrees grew to the name of Presidencies and Council, in proportion as the power and influence of the Company increased, and as the political began first to struggle with, and at length to predominate over, the mercantile.

In this form it continued till the year 1773, when the legislature broke in, for proper reasons urging them to it, upon that order of the service, and appointed to the superior department persons who had no title to that place under the ordinary usage of the service.

Mr.Hastings and Mr.Harwell, whatever other titles they might have had, held solely under the act of Parliament nominating them to that authority; but in all other respects, except where the act and other subsequent acts have not broken in upon it, the whole course of the service remains upon the ancient footing, that is, the commercial footing, as to the gradation and order of service.
Your Lordships see here a regular series of gradation, which requires eleven years before any persons can arrive at the highest trusts and situations.

You will therefore be astonished, when so long a probationary service was required, that effects very different from those to be expected from long probation have happened, and that in a much shorter time than those eleven years you have seen persons returning into this kingdom with affluent, with overbearing fortunes.