In order to enable the House to adopt the most proper means for regulating the British government in India, and for promoting the happiness of the natives who live under its authority or influence, your Committee hold it expedient to collect into distinct points of view the circumstances by which that government appears to them to be most essentially disordered, and to explain fully the principles of policy and the course of conduct by which the natives of all ranks and orders have been reduced to their present state of depression
and misery .