On this system an able servant of the Company, and high in their service, has recorded his opinion, and strongly expressed his sentiments.

Writing to the Court of Directors, he says, "It ought to be remembered, that the basis upon which you rose to power, and have been able to stand the shock of repeated convulsions, has been the accuracy and simplicity of mercantile method, which makes every transaction in your service and every expenditure a matter of record." My Lords, this method not only must produce to them, if strictly observed, a more accurate idea of the nature of their affairs and the nature of their expenditures, but it must afford them no trivial opportunity and means of knowing the true characters of their servants, their capacities, their ways of thinking, the turn and bias of their minds.

If well employed, and but a little improved, the East India Company possessed an advantage unknown before to the chief of a remote government.

In the most remote parts of the world, and in the minutest parts of a remote service, everything came before the principal with a domestic accuracy and local familiarity.

It was, in the power of a Director, sitting in London, to form an accurate judgment of every incident that happened upon the Ganges and the Gogra.
The use of this recorded system did not consist only in the facility of discovering what the nature of their affairs and the character and capacity of their servants was, but it furnished the means of detecting their misconduct, frequently of proving it too, and of producing the evidence of it judicially under their own hands.