Your Committee have also examined the
proceedings of the Court of Directors on all those instances of the
behavior of their servants that seemed to deserve, and did sometimes
attract, their immediate attention. They constantly find that the
negligence of the Court of Directors has kept pace with, and must
naturally have quickened, the growth of the practices which they have
condemned. Breach of duty abroad will always go hand in hand with
neglect of it at home. In general, the Court of Directors, though
sufficiently severe in censuring offences, and sometimes in punishing
those whom they have regarded as offenders of a lower rank, appear to
have suffered the most conspicuous and therefore the most dangerous
examples of disobedience and misconduct in the first department of their
service to pass with a feeble and ineffectual condemnation. In those
cases which they have deemed too apparent and too strong to be
disregarded even with safety to themselves, and against which their
heaviest displeasure has been declared, it appears to your Committee
that their interference, such as it was, had a mischievous rather than a
useful tendency.
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