In 1783, Edmund Burke MP addressed the House of Commons with an eloquent plea to strip the East India Company of its powers in India. He compared the Company unfavourably with the Mughal Emperors who, he said, behaved badly but put down roots in India, and consequently tempered their vices because they had to live among the people.

The British in India, said Burke, kept so aloof from the public that they were insulated from the effects of their own poor government. They took money out of the country but put nothing back in, neither bridges, nor schools nor even civic monuments, and might be dumb animals for all the good they had done there hitherto.

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