The Company has made it a fundamental part of their constitution, that almost their whole government shall be a written government.

Your Lordships will observe, in the course of the proceeding, the propriety of opening fully to you this circumstance in the government of India,--that is, that the Company's government is a government of writing, a government of record.

The strictest court of justice, in its proceeding, is not more, perhaps not so much a court of record as the India Company's executive service is, or ought to be, in all its proceedings.
In the first place, they oblige their servants to keep a journal or diary of all their transactions, public and private: they are bound to do this by an express covenant.

They oblige them, as a corrective upon that diary, to keep a letter-book, in which all their letters are to be regularly entered.

And they are bound by the same covenant to produce all those books upon requisition, although they should be mixed with affairs concerning their own private negotiations and transactions of commerce, or their closest and most retired concerns in private life.
But as the great corrective of all, they have contrived that every proceeding in public council shall be written,--no debates merely verbal.