§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONI rise, Sir, in pursuance of the notice which has been given by Her Majesty's Government, 1277 to ask leave to introduce a Bill of first-rate importance. I rise to ask leave to introduce a Bill for transferring from the East India Company to the Crown the government of Her Majesty's East Indian dominions. In making that proposal I feel myself bound, in the first place, to say that I do not do it in any spirit of hostility to the East India Company, or as meaning thereby to imply any blame or censure upon the administration of India under that corporation. I believe the East India Company has done many good things in India. I believe that its administration has been attended with great advantage to the population under its rule. And it is not on the ground of any delinquency on the part of the Company, but on the ground of the inconvenience and injurious character of the existing arrangements, that I propose this measure to the House. It is perhaps one of the most extraordinary facts in the history of mankind that these British Islands should have acquired such an extensive dominion in a remote part of the globe as that which we exercise over the continent of India. It is indeed remarkable that those regions, in which science and art may be said to have first dawned upon mankind, should now be subject to the rule of a people inhabiting islands which at a time, when these eastern regions enjoyed as high a civilization and as great prosperity as that age could offer, were in a state of utter barbarism. That is a remarkable circumstance; but still more remarkable is it that these extensive dominions should have been gained not by the power of a nation as a nation, but by an association of individuals, by a mercantile community, supported, indeed, to a certain degree by the power and resources of their country, but mainly indebted for success to their own energy and enterprise. These two circumstances are undoubtedly singular in the history of the world, but it is quite as remarkable, quite as singular, that a nation like this, in which the science of government is perhaps better understood than in any other, in which the principle of popular representation has so long been established, should have deliberately consigned to the care of a small body of commercial men the management of such extensive territories, such vast interests, and such numerous populations. One could easily imagine that a wilderness in the northern part of America, where nothing lives except fur-bearing animals and a few wild Indians but little removed from the 1278 lower creation, might be confined to a company whose chief functions should be to strip the running animals of their fur, and to keep the bipeds sober; but that a great country like this should deliberately consign to the management of a mere commercial company, of a set of irresponsible individuals, a great territory, occupied by different races, professing diverse religions and should place in their hands the determination of all the questions of peace and war and of international relations with independent princes, which must necessarily arise, is, I believe, a circumstance unexampled in the history of mankind. But this country never designedly did any such thing. The existing state of things grew up gradually from a very small beginning. The original settlers began with a factory, the factory grew into a fort, the fort expanded to a district, and the district to a province, and then came collisions with less civilized neighbours, injuries to be resented, attacks to be repelled, and conflicts which always ended in victory and extension of territory. So, gradually, from one transaction to another, grew up that state of things in which the East India Company found itself invested with vast commercial privileges and with most important political functions. This state of things continued up to the year 1784, when there was an infusion of responsibility in respect of its political-administrative functions into the affairs of the Company by the establishment of the Board of Control. Matters went on under this new arrangement for a number of years, during which the Company continued, subject to a slight interference from the Board of Control, to discharge its political functions, and at the same time to exercise all its commercial rights. One would have imagined that in a country like this that first step would have been followed up; that before anything else was done the reflective British nation would have pursued the course inaugurated in 1784, and that, as the effect of the measure then adopted was to limit to a certain degree the political functions of the Company, the next step would have been to take them away altogether, and to leave the Company in its original position as a trading association. However, it happens that in this country commercial matters often attract more attention and excite deeper interest than political affairs, and the next stop was, not to meddle further with the political functions of the Company, but to take away 1279 all the commercial privileges which originally constituted the foundation of its existence. Accordingly, in the year 1833 the Company altogether ceased to he a commercial association, and became, one may say, but a phantom of its original body. It lost the commercial character for which it was originally founded, and continued to be merely a political instrument, by means of which the administration of India was carried on. Now, Sir, I venture to think that the arrangement so made was a most inconvenient and most cumbrous arrangement. The principle of our political system is that all administrative functions should be accompanied by Ministerial responsibility—responsibility to Parliament, responsibility to public opinion, responsibility to the Crown; but in this case the chief functions in the government of India are committed to a body not responsible to Parliament, not appointed by the Crown, but elected by persons who have no more connection with India than consists in the simple possession of so much India Stock. I think that that of itself is a most objectionable arrangement. In this country we are slow to make changes. The indisposition to make changes is wise and useful. As a general: principle it is wise, and nations do themselves great mischief by rapid and ill-considered alterations of their institutions. But equally unwise and equally injurious is it to cling to existing arrangements simply because they exist, and not to admit changes which can be made with advantage to the nation. What can be more cumbrous than the existing system of Indian administration which is called by the name of the "double Government"? In the debates of 1853, when the last India Bill was passed, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) asked who was the Government of India, and to whom he was to! look as the authority responsible for the administration of that vast empire. Why, Sir, there is no responsibility, or rather there is a conflict of responsibility. The Directors possess a power paramount, as the right hon. Gentleman said, to everything else, the power of recalling the Governor General, by which any great system of policy may be at once interrupted. And they have this power, although the Governor General must have been appointed by the Crown, and the appointment sanctioned by the Directors. The functions of Government and the 1280 responsibility have been divided between the Directors, the Board of Control, and the Governor General in India; the Board of Control representing the Government of the day, responsible to this House, responsible to public opinion, appointed by the Crown, and exercising functions delegated by it; the Court of Directors, elected by the gentlemen and ladies who happen to he holders of India Stock, many of whom are totally ignorant of everything relating to Indian interests, and perhaps knowing nothing about Calcutta, Bombay, or Madras, except what they learn from the candidates for the directorship as to the presidency to which the cadetship is to belong which is promised in return for their votes. The Directors are undoubtedly, in general, men of great experience and knowledge of India, but they are elected by a body of persons who have no peculiar faculty for choosing persons qualified to govern a great empire in the East. Then comes the Governor General, invested with great, separate, and independent powers, and among these three authorities it is obvious that despatch and unity of purpose can hardly by possibility exist. I won't trouble the House by going into a detailed explanation of the method in which business is done, because it is very well known to those hon. Members, who have given their attention to Indian affairs, that before a despatch upon the most important matter can go out to India it has to oscillate between Cannon Row and the India House; that it is proposed by one party, altered by the other, altered again by the first, and sent I back to the other; and that the adventures of a despatch between these two extreme points of the metropolis are often as curious as those Adventures of a Guinea of which we have all read. It is obvious that this system of check and counter-check must be attended with great inconvenience to the public service, and be productive of great delay. Take, for example, a body of twenty gentlemen generally agreeing in their views, and make ten of them sit at the east end of the town and the other ten in Westminster. Propose to them any question of average difficulty and importance, and the probability is that the two parties will come to different conclusions, not being able to exchange opinions and arguments and to arrive at a common result. So it is with the Board of Control and the Court of Directors. The result in cases of mate- 1281 rial difference must necessarily be a middle term, satisfying the opinions of neither, carrying into effect the principle of neither, unsatisfactory therefore to both, and probably less advantageous to the public service than the opinion of either would have been had it been entirely adopted. Therefore, I say that this system of check and counter-check may be carried too far. There is no doubt that certain checks are requisite in every political machine; but you may multiply your checks and counter-checks to such an extent that the functions of the machine, which are intended only to be controlled, are paralyzed for every useful purpose. Then what, let me ask, is the position in which Her Majesty's Government stand in this House? When Indian questions are discussed, it is the constant habit of those who take part in the debate, criticizing and impugning what has been done, to hold Her Majesty's Government responsible for everything that occurs. But Her Majesty's Government cannot be fairly answerable for things over which they have not a perfect control, and which they cannot entirely direct. It frequently happens, indeed, that the Government of the day are made responsible for acts which were done without their consent, and probably in some cases much to their dissatisfaction. Take, for instance, a matter which has occupied the attention of the House, and which is to form part of the inquiries of the Committee which has been recently chosen—the hiring of vessels to carry troops to India. I will venture to say that a majority of hon. Gentlemen hero imagine that the Government is the authority by which those arrangements are made. Not in the least. The East India Company is chargeable with the expense of transporting troops to India; it is the Company which takes up the ships, and not the Government; and, though the opinion of the Government must naturally have weight with the Company, these arrangements are not made by the officers of the Government, but by the officers of the East India Company itself. I say, then, it is most desirable that this complicated machine should be simplified and reduced in fact and form to that which it is imagined to be, but which it practically is not. I may be asked why we take this moment for proposing a change of system. The inconveniences of different systems of administration are forced upon the attention of the Government and the country 1282 from time to time by peculiar emergencies. Thus the arrangements of the military departments had existed in time of peace, but, though many felt that the division of the Ordnance into separate departments and the distinction between the War Office and the office of the Secretary of State for War were inconvenient, it was not until the war in the Crimea made the Government more directly sensible of the disadvantages of that complicated system that we altered the arrangements, and it was by means of the alterations carried out during the Crimean war that the consolidation was effected, by means of which we were enabled to carry on the struggle with Russia with far greater promptitude, vigour, and success, than we should have been able to do if the old system had been continued. I say, then, that as far as regards the executive functions of the Indian Government at home, it is of the greatest importance to vest complete authority where the public have a right to think that complete responsibility should rest, and that whereas in this country there can be but one governing body responsible to the Crown, to Parliament, and to public opinion, consisting of the constitutional advisers of the Crown for the time being, so it is in accordance with the principles and practice of our constitution, as it would be in accordance with the best interests of the nation, that India, with all its vast and important interests, should be placed under the direct authority of the Crown, to be governed in the name of the Crown by the responsible Ministers of the Crown sitting in Parliament, and responsible to Parliament and the public for every part of their public conduct, instead of being, as now, mainly administered by a set of gentlemen who, however respectable, however competent for the discharge of the functions entrusted to them, are yet a totally irresponsible body, whose views and acts are seldom known to the public, and whether known or unknown, whether approved or disapproved, unless one of the Directors happens to have a seat in this House, are out of the range of Parliamentary discussion. Again, as regards our interests in India, I may state at once that the Bill which I am about to propose to the House is confined entirely and solely to a change in the administrative organization at home, and that we do not intend to make any alteration in the existing arrangements in India. In fact, if Parliament were to adopt the measure which we 1283 are about to propose, the only difference, as far as India is concerned, would be, that the next despatch would go out signed by the President and the Council for Indian affairs, instead of by the Court of Directors, and that the reply would be addressed to the President of the new Board, instead of to the Chairman of the body sitting in Leadenhall Street. Now, I believe there can be no doubt that, so far as the impression on the minds of the people of India is concerned, the name of the Sovereign of a great empire like this must be far more respected, far more calculated to produce moral and political impressions, than the name of a Company of merchants, however respectable and able they may be. We have to deal, in that country, with Princes, some ruling independently and some in a state of modified dependence upon us, and with feudal chiefs proud of their position, cherishing traditionary recollections of a wide empire, and of great Sovereigns to whom their ancestors owed allegiance. How can we expect such men to feel any great respect for a mere Company of merchants? The respect they feel, the allegiance they yield, would be increased tenfold if the one were given and the other tendered to the Sovereign of a great and mighty empire. I believe, in fact, that what gives force to the Company in India is not the fame or authority of the Company itself, but the knowledge which the people have that behind the Company, and strengthening it, is the power of the British empire, and that, although the ruler may be an officer of a commercial association in name, the real power which they have to look up to is the power of the Sovereign of this great country. I am, therefore, satisfied that the transfer of the government of India to the Crown would, as far as its effect upon the people of India is concerned, be equivalent to a large reinforcement of troops; that the impression which would be produced would be most advantageous, and would tend to consolidate and strengthen the moral and political influence of England in these vast regions of the world. What, then, is the arrangement which we are about to propose? We wish to alter things as little as we can consistently with the great object which we have in view. That object is to make the responsible advisers of the Crown answerable for the government of India as well as for that of all other possessions of the Crown beyond seas. We wish that the affairs of India should be administered by 1284 Ministers responsible to Parliament for the manner in which that country is governed. We propose, therefore, that the functions of the Court of Directors, and, of course, of the Court of Proprietors, shall cease; that there shall be substituted for those bodies a President, assisted by a Council for the Affairs of India; that that President, of course, shall be a member of the Government, and shall be the organ of the Cabinet with reference to all matters relating to India; but, as men who have distinguished themselves in public life in this country, and who are likely from time to time, as changes of Administration occur, to be placed at the head of that department, cannot be supposed to possess that detailed local knowledge which is essential to the wise government of the country, we propose that the President shall be assisted by a Council composed of persons named by the Crown, with the condition that they shall either have been Directors of the East India Company, have served for a certain period in India either in a civil or military capacity, or have resided there a certain number of years unconnected with the local administration. We propose that that Council shall consist of eight members, that the members shall be appointed for eight years, and that two shall retire by rotation every second year, in order that successive Administrations may have the means of renewing the Council from time to time by the introduction of persons returning from India with fresh knowledge and ideas. We think that while, on the one hand, the permanency of a Councillor for eight years will make him an independent adviser of the President, he will not, on the other, by being appointed for life, block up the way to the accession of other persons who may from time to time appear more capable of serving the country. Of course, as the proposal is to transfer to the Government of the day full responsibility for the management of Indian affairs, and as the President will be the organ of the Cabinet upon Indian matters, just as the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs are the organs of the Government in regard to the departments under their respective care, the decision of the President must be final in all matters which may be treated of in the Council. But, nevertheless, we propose that, if the Councillors differ in opinion from the President, they shall have the right to record that difference, together with their reasons, upon the 1285 Minutes of the Council, so as to be able to justify themselves afterwards for the advice they have given. The full power of the President, however, will not extend to matters involving increased expense to the Indian revenue; and, for purposes of that sort, it will be necessary that he shall have the concurrence of four Councillors to any proposals which he may have to submit. In the temporary absence of the President a Secretary of State will be able to act for him, and four members of the Council will be a quorum for the transaction of business. We propose that the Council shall have the power of distributing among themselves the business which comes to them, so as to allot different departments of business to different members of Council, who will, of course, make reports to the Council itself. We propose that the President shall be placed on the footing of a Secretary of State, and that the Councillors shall have a salary of £1,000 a year each. We propose that all powers now vested in the Court of Directors shall be transferred to this Council, and, therefore, that all appointments which have hitherto been made by the Court of Directors or by other parties subject to the approbation of the Crown, shall be made by the Crown direct. but that all appointments in India which" have hitherto been made by the local authorities shall continue to be made by those authorities; so that no part of the local Indian patronage will be transferred to the Government of this country. We propose that the President shall be able to appoint one Secretary, who shall be capable of sitting in this House. It will be convenient that a Cabinet Minister holding that situation shall have the assistance of a Secretary conversant with the business which may come under discussion; but we do not propose that the Councillors shall be capable of sitting in Parliament. We think there would be great inconvenience in such an arrangement; that they would become party men; that they would necessarily associate with one side or the other in this House, and that, with changes of Administration, the relations between the President and the Councillors might then become exceedingly embarrassing. One point which has always attracted the attention of those who have considered these matters, and which has created even a very considerable constitutional difficulty, in any attempt to decide what would be the best system of Government for India, has been the question of patronage. 1286 Many men have said that they think the "double Government" a cumbrous and antiquated machine, which ought to be done away with. That was the opinion in 1853 of a great number of those hon. Members who took part in the discussion, but it was always said, "How can we manage with the patronage? We do not wish to increase the patronage of the Government, and we fear that this transfer of power would greatly augment the patronage of the Home Government." Now, I have already said with regard to local appointments, all these appointments which have hitherto been made either by the Governor General or by other authorities in India, will continue exactly as before to be made by them, the members of the local Council being named by the Governor General instead of being named hence. An arrangement was made in 1853 by which all appointments to writerships were given up to open competition. That arrangement we shall of course maintain. Writerships, therefore, are beyond the range of patronage. The appointments to cadetships have hitherto been divided between members of the Court of Directors and the President of the Board of Control. What we propose is to leave the appointments to those cadetships as they have been hitherto. The reduction from the number of Directors to the number of Councillors will give somewhat more patronage to the Councillors, but the addition to the patronage of the President will be hardly perceptible. It must be remembered that hitherto we have had an enormous Native army, and it does not seem probable that, for the future, we shall keep up that force at the same strength. As regards the civil appointments, they will remain matters of public competition, and as regards appointments to cadetships, they will be made, as I have stated, with, probably, the additional condition that the cadets shall be appointed to probation in some military College, their final appointments to regiments depending on the efficiency of their studies. There is one condition which we propose to attach to this distribution of cadetships—viz., that a certain proportion of first appointments, which we cannot fix in a Bill, but which must be left to the discretion of the Council from time to time, shall be reserved for the sons of civil and military officers who have served in India. According to that arrangement it will be seen that no addition of patronage will devolve upon the Execu- 1287 tive Government of an amount which need excite the least constitutional jealousy on the part of the House of Commons. The army in India will consist, as heretofore, of Queen's troops, forming part of the regular army of this country, and local corps enlisted and confined to service in India. With regard to Queen's troops no change will he made. With regard to the others, they will be transferred to the Crown from the service of the Company, subject to the same conditions of service as those under which they were enlisted, and if they dislike that change I think in common justice, they will be entitled to their discharge. It is proposed, with regard to local military services, that the troops shall be paid out of the revenues of India, and that their services shall be limited to Asia so long as they are paid out of the Indian revenue. At present, I believe, the range of service for the Company's troops is co-extensive with the limits of the Company's charter, as far as any place eastward of the Cape. It is proposed that, if at any time a part of the local army shall be employed out of Asia, the troops shall then not be paid out of the Indian revenue. It will be left for this House to determine whether a force so employed shall be paid out of the revenue of this country, and whether their employment is consonant with what the interests of India may be. This will be a sufficient cheek against the employment of the Indian troops without the consent of Parliament. It is proposed that, whereas we transfer to this President of the Council the functions of the Court of Directors, and Board of Control, both of which will be abolished, the functions and powers of the secret Committee, which govern matters, involving great discretion and temporary secrecy, should be vested in the President, as representative of the responsible Minister of the Crown. But we propose that, in any case in which orders shall be sent to India involving the immediate commencement of hostilities, communications thereof shall be made to Parliament within one month, if Parliament be then sitting, or within one month after Parliament shall next meet. That interval will allow a sufficient time to elapse to prevent injury to the public service from the too early publication of orders so issued; while it will, at the same time, give Parliament an early opportunity of calling upon the Government for explanation of the causes which had led to such orders. Of course, 1288 it will be necessary that there should be an effective audit of the revenues of India and their application. It is required by this Bill that the revenue shall be applied solely for the purpose of government in India. It is proposed that an auditor shall be appointed, with the power of appointing assistant auditors, for the purpose of examining minutely the accounts of receipts and expenditure of Indian revenue, and that the accounts, when audited, shall be laid before Parliament for its consideration. Of course, power will be given to the President of the Council to issue to the Company such sums, as may be necessary to defray the expenditure required for paying their dividends and keeping their books, until the Company determine whethey will or will not avail themselves of the option given them of being paid in a certain time for their stock. This then, Sir, is, generally speaking, the outline of our measure. Of course, the details will come under the consideration of the House, if it should, as I trust it will, give us leave to bring in the Bill; and when the Bill shall be in the hands of hon. Members, they will then have to consider the details, such as I have described, as well as some other points, to which I have not thought it necessary to advert. But the question now to be considered is simply the great and large question, whether or not we shall transfer to the executive and responsible Ministers of the Crown the direction of the affairs of our Indian territories, or whether that direction shall be left, as heretofore, under the cumbrous and complicated system described as the "double government," which, in my opinion, is full of embarrassment, and not calculated to accomplish the purposes good government ought to have in view, and which, though continued heretofore, because no great events have called on Parliament to reconsider it, ought, I think, to be abolished without further delay. Now, I do not think I shall be met by any objections to this principle itself, because, when I recollect what has passed on former occasions in this House, and when I know what is the general opinion of the country on the point, I cannot persuade myself that we shall meet with any strong opposition to the general principle on which the measure is founded. When I look back to what passed in 1853, I find some of the leading Members of this House expressed strong opinions that the time must come, at no distant period, when an entire change 1289 ought to be made, and that the introduction of Government nominees into the East India Direction was only the first step to further and ulterior measures; and the only doubt was, whether a full measure ought not at that time to be adopted. But, whatever may have been the opinion of Parliament at that time, I am much mistaken as to the signs and indications of opinion in the country now if the nation at large has not made up its mind that this "double Government" ought to cease. I am convinced that this is the opinion of the country; and great disappointment would be felt if this House should negative the Bill upon an objection to the principle itself on which it is founded. We shall, no doubt, be met by a Motion for delay, and be told that this is not the time for discussing the measure; that India is unsettled; that we should wait until a better moment, a calmer period, and until the difficulties in India are over. Why, that plea for delay is invariably the plea set up by those who are anxious to oppose that which they cannot resist directly, but which they wish to get rid of by the intermediate policy of proposing delay. Why, Sir, what is the force of any argument of that kind? They say, "Do not alter the machine of Government at a time when India is unsettled and in difficulty, when you have not full and finally got rid of the mutiny, and when you have not entirely re-established authority in every part of the country." What docs that argument amount to when it is analyzed? It is said," Do not change your Government now, because there is in India that to be done which is difficult to be accomplished, and which, therefore, it might require great power to accomplish." Will, then, any man pretend that a single Government at home will not be a much more effectual instrument for the purpose than a double Government? Will any man pretend to tell me, that with a view to rapidity of discussion and execution, unity of purpose, and responsibility to the public, a Government administered by the responsible advisers of the Crown would not be a far more efficient instrument for everything to be done here than the existing conflict of checks and counter-cheeks, the system of previous communications and subsequent communications, of objections to a despatch and its transfer by cabs from one part of the town to another, by which delay was created, so that a despatch, which ought to go out to- 1290 morrow, might not go out for a month, or be ready until it was too late to send it out. Why, no reasonable man will venture to get up and tell the House that the present machine can be so effective and so powerful a machine for administration at home as the machine we propose to substitute for it. Will any man acquainted with India tell me that the name of the Company—which is now pretty well seen through by all the Natives in India—can have half, or the tenth part of the powerful influence the name of the Crown would carry with it? I declare it is nonsense to say that the Indian chiefs would not feel ten times more respect for the Rajah of England than for the name of any unknown Company. Well, then, I say, if we look to England, the machine we propose to substitute is a much more powerful machine, and if we look to India it is a machine infinitely more influential than the existing one. Then we are told that there is a state of difficulty in India, and what is the proposal of those who want delay? They say, that in order to overcome this difficulty, and to restore tranquillity in India, which we are told is a matter of great difficulty, and which will require great strength and power to effect, we should prolong the existence of the present weak instrument, instead of substituting for it a stronger, more powerful, and more effectual machine. In that argument there is no sense, I submit. However, we shall he told by some that the Government of India is a great mystery—that the unholy ought not to set foot in that temple—that the House of Commons should be kept aloof from any interference in Indian affairs—that if we transfer the Government to the Ministers responsible to Parliament, we shall have Indian affairs made the subject and plaything of party passions in this House, and, that great mischief would arise there from. I think that argument is founded on an overlooking of the fundamental principles of the British constitution. It is a reflection on the Parliamentary government. Why, Sir, what is there in the management of India which is not mainly dependent on those general principles of statesmanship, which men in public life in this country acquire here, and make the guidance of their conduct. I do not think so ill of this House as to imagine that it would be disposed, for factious purposes, or for the momentary triumph of party, to trifle with the great interests of the country as con- 1291 nected with the administration of our Indian affairs. I am accustomed to think that the Parliament of this country does comprise in itself as much administrative ability, and as much statesmanlike knowledge and science as are possessed by any number of men in any other country whatever; and I own, with all respect for the Court of Directors, that I cannot bring myself to think that the Parliament of England is less capable of wisely administering the great affairs of State in connection with India than the Court of Directors in Leadenhall Street. I am not afraid to trust Parliament with an insight into Indian affairs. I believe, on the contrary, that if things have not gone on so fast in India as they might have done—if the progress of improvement has been somewhat slower than might have been expected, that effect has arisen from the circumstance that the public of England at large were wholly ignorant of Indian affairs, and had turned away from them, being daunted by the complications they imagined them to be involved in; and because Parliament has never had face to face, in this and the other House, men personally and entirely responsible for the administration of Indian affairs. No doubt a good deal has been done in the way of substantial improvement of late years, but that which has been done I may venture to say has been entirely the result of debates in this and the other House of Parliament. And, so far from any discussion on India having worked evil in India, I believe that the greater part of those improvements which the East India Directors boast of in that publication, which has lately issued from Leadenhall Street, has been the result of pressure on the Indian administration by debates in Parliament and discussions in the public press. Therefore, so far from being alarmed at the consequences which may arise from bringing Indian affairs under the cognizance of Parliament, I believe that a great benefit to India, and through India to the British nation, will result there from. Therefore, I say, I see no reason, either on the score of principle or on the score of the augmentation of patronage, or on the score of time, or constitutional danger, why we should not at once pass the measure which it will be my duty to present to the House. Sir, I trust that Parliament will feel that great power is not given to nations without corresponding duties to be performed. We have, by an almost mira- 1292 culous train of events, been intrusted with the care of the destinies of 150 or 160 millions of men—with the government, directly or indirectly, of a vast empire larger in extent than the whole face of Europe, putting the Russian empire out of the question. That is a task which involves great responsibility. Do not imagine that it is the intention of Providence that England should possess that vast empire, and that we should have in our hand the destinies of that vast multitude of men, simply that we may send out to India the sons of gentlemen or of the middling classes to make a decent fortune to live on. That power has been entrusted to us for other and better purposes; and, without pointing to anything particular, I think it is the duty of this nation to use it in such a manner as to promote, as far as they can, the instruction, the enlightenment, and the civilization of those great populations which are now subject to our rule. We have lately had our attention called to scenes of barbarity in India, which would make any man shudder, but we are wholly irresponsible for those scones? If, during the century for which we have exercised power in India, we had used that power to enlighten and civilize the people, do you think their nature would not, in some measure at least, have been changed, and that the atrocious crimes which they have committed would not have been as repugnant to their feelings as they are to those of the people of this country? We ought to bear these things in mind—to remember that we have a great duty to fulfil in India, and I am sure that that duty will be best discharged if we commit its performance to the hands of men who will be accountable to Parliament for their conduct, and who feel themselves bound to acquaint the public of this country, step by step, with the arrangements which they make. I am confident, if Parliament should adopt the measure we are about to propose, that white on the one hand it will add to the strength of our position in India, while it will increase the power of this country, and render our influence more firm and secure, it will, on the other hand, enable us more efficiently to perform those important duties which, in my view, it was intended that we should discharge when the great Indian empire was transferred to our control. Sir, I beg to move for leave to bring in a Bill for the better Government of India.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, 1293 "That leave be given to bring in a Bill for the better Government of India."
MR. T. BARINGThe hesitation and reluctance with which I always address this House would be much increased by the sense of my incompetency adequately to perform the duty which I have undertaken did I not feel that the importance of the subject, by its overwhelming magnitude, far outweighs all personal considerations. The noble Lord has given utterance to a sentiment which I believe will meet with the full concurrence of all parties in this House, namely, that the great object of the Government and of the House ought to be to promote the welfare of our Indian fellow-subjects. In that opinion I, for one, fully concur, and it is because I believe the precipitation with which he is about to change the Government of India will not conduce to the welfare of a large class of our fellow-subjects in that empire, that I venture to move the Amendment which I have placed upon the table. It is unnecessary for me to follow the noble Lord through his description of the progress of the Government of the East India Company. I need not enter into any discussion as to the merits of the elective body—the Proprietors of the Company, or as to the mode in which cadetships have been distributed; but I must say in passing, that I think if the noble Lord had perused with care the evidence given before the Committee of 1853, he would not have charged canvassing candidates with an attempt to obtain seats in the Direction by the Promise of appointments. These are, however, matters of minor importance, and the great question now before the House is, not whether the existing Government of India is the very best that could be adopted—not whether you could change the Proprietary with advantage to the governing body—not whether you should hereafter have any change in your system of Indian Government; but it is simply and solely whether the present is the proper time for proposing such a legislative measure as the noble Lord now desires to submit to our consideration. The noble Lord says—"We make no change in the government in India;" but can any one maintain that any change in the system of home government, and especially so great a change as the noble Lord proposes, would not effect a material change in the Government of India? I will not trouble the House with extracts from reports to which every one 1294 has access, and which have been read by many of those whom I am addressing; but I may remind the House that, under the present system of Home Government, supreme power is vested in the President of the Board of Control, certain checks being placed in the hands of the Court of Directors, a body composed of eighteen persons, twelve of whom are elected by an independent constituency. Whether that constituency be good or not is another question; but no one will tell me you are not changing the Government of India when, instead of subjecting official despatches to the approval of a body of men, two-thirds of whom are independent, you transfer such revision or supervision to a body of eight men who are entirely dependent upon and appointed by the Crown. The noble Lord knows very well that this initiative—as it is called—of the East India Directors, subject to the correction and approval of the President of the Board of Control, forms the instructions upon which the Government of India act. I do not mean to say that cases may not occur, and have not often occurred, in which the Governor General of India, or the Governors of the Presidencies must act upon their own responsibility, without reference to instructions from home; but there is no doubt that if a Governor General, or the Governor of a Presidency, disobeys the directions emanating from a body, two-thirds of which are independent of the Government, he does so upon his own responsibility. I ask, then, whether it is no change in the Government of India to withdraw from a body the greater portion of whom are independent of the Crown the power of recalling the Governor General? Again, is there no change in the Government of India when, as the noble Lord says, all members of the Governor General's council are hereafter to be appointed by the Governor General himself, and the members of council in the different Presidencies are to be appointed by the Governors of those Presidencies? According to the existing system, while the Governor General is in reality appointed by the Crown, the members of the council are appointed by the Court of Directors. The change may be a proper one, but you should not endeavour to make the country believe that the assumption of this power by Her Majesty's Ministers will not change the Government of India. I think that no one who considers the plan of the noble Lord can deny that, whether it may 1295 work for good or for evil, it would effect a great change in the Government of India, not merely in the Home Department, but in India itself. This may be right, but that question must come under our consideration hereafter, if the noble Lord obtains leave to bring in his Bill. I beg to ask, however, whether this is the time for effecting such a change? The noble Lord has referred to a very cumbrous machine, in which he did not think it necessary to make any change until, as he says, a great exigency arose. The noble Lord had no complaint to make of the Government of the East India Company, until in a great and recent exigency some deficiencies were found in the operations of the Indian Government. Will the noble Lord state what those deficiencies were? Will Her Majesty's Government state whether they have been impeded in any of their measures by the Government of the East India Company? The noble Lord says that the use of the Queen's name in India would be equivalent to a large reinforcement of troops; but can he show that such an opinion has been given by a man like Sir Colin Campbell? Has he the authority of Lord Canning for stating that the use of Her Majesty's name would be most effective in restoring order and tranquillity in India? Will Her Majesty's Government state that they have the authority of any one of their officials, or of any body of men in India, in support of the plan proposed by the noble Lord? No, the only authority the noble Lord had to rely on is the petition from Calcutta, and I think he has exercised a wise discretion in not making use of that document. The noble Lord says that his Bill would effect no change in the Indian Government, or that if any change were made it would be very beneficial. Now, is the noble Lord sure—are the Government sure, from their knowledge of India, which may be more considerable than is possessed by the Directors of the Company—that in the present state of affairs the proposed change would not be regarded with great apprehension by the people of India? It has always been said that the Hindoos attach greater importance to names than to realities. If you change the name of the Government at a time like this will it not be supposed that you do it with a purpose? What apprehensions may not be raised in the minds of the Hindoos when the speech of the noble Lord is transmitted, as it will be, to India; a speech in which he tells 1296 them that we have a duty to perform which has not hitherto been performed efficiently or satisfactorily—the advancement of education and civilization, and the removal of all the obstructions which stand in the way of their improvement. When that speech arrives in India will not the Hindoos say that there is some object to be attained by the alteration of the name of the Government at this particular moment? Will they not apprehend that along with the change of name there is to be a change of policy also, that they are no longer to enjoy that toleration of their religious opinions, and that forbearance to their peculiar customs which have hitherto-been conceded to them by the Government. Is this the time to hazard such a change? You have a mutiny not yet terminated. It is generally believed, though I trust it is not the ease, that the Government have a great task before them before that mutiny is thoroughly put down; and it is certain; that when you have put it down a still greater task remains behind—the task of conciliation. A gap has been created between the two races, and it will be a long and difficult work to restore the mutual attachment and reliance which have hitherto existed between them. You have to restore the confidence of the Europeans, and you have to teach the Natives that, though they are subdued, they are not to-be crushed. Have you any information which will guide you as to the steps which are necessary for the work of conciliation when this mutiny is over? Have you any information as to the feelings of the Hindoo population at this moment? The House at large has none, and though Her Majesty's Government no doubt have every possible information which can be obtained at this moment, I followed the noble Lord in vain to discover what he believed to be necessary to this end. I could gather only that he thought the Queen's name would be a great reinforcement to our military strength, and that the change in the Government would convince the Hindoo population that we were about to be more active in the process of instructing and civilizing them. These were the two circumstances which the noble Lord chiefly relied on in support of his Bill. But in my opinion this measure, instead of promoting peace, may bring about bad feelings and distrust, and may create a doubt as to what your future course of policy is to be. For my own part, I avow myself totally ignorant at this moment of the measures which it will be 1297 necessary to adopt to bring India to its former state of tranquillity, and I believe that ignorance is very general. Hardly do I come across any man who docs not say, "Where can I learn something about India?—where can I inform myself as to the state of the country, the feelings of the people and the best form of Government?" My own doubt as to the time chosen for this change is very much increased by what has fallen from the noble Lord. He has no charge to bring against the Government of India. He does not ground his Bill on any impediment which the Court of Directors have thrown in the way of measures which he wished to adopt, or on any mismanagement by the present Government. He docs not make out any case of necessity arising from the special circumstances of the time, nor does he profess himself dissatisfied with the conduct of the East India Company since the Act of 1853, or with the working of that Bill, but he simply says the present Government is a cumbrous machine which it is high time to get rid of. He expected that there might be some difference of opinion as to the time, but to the principle of the Bill he does not see why there should be any opposition,—and as he said that he looked over to this side of the House. But when he talked of opposition as to principles, he ought to have looked towards the right hon. Gentleman by his side, who brought in and carried the Bill of 1853. What, I ask, then, has occurred since to change their opinions? I heard last night, with some surprise, a speech made by a Minister of the Crown, who was a Member of the Earl of Aberdeen's Cabinet also, as to the opinions of that Cabinet on the government of India. He stated, in very eloquent language, not only his objections to the present system, but that the Government of the Earl of Aberdeen had considered and discussed the project of transferring the administrative power from the Company to the Crown, and that circumstances had prevented its adoption. What those circumstances were I did not gather. He further stated that it was the opinion of the Government then that the result of the measure which they proposed must, sooner or later, be the extinction of the Company's powers. If the Government of that day did act with the intention of proposing, five years later, a complete transfer to the Crown of the powers which they then con- 1298 tinued to the Company, they acted under a mask, and they did not deal fairly with Parliament. They, however, went further than that. My right hon. Friend opposite (Sir Charles Wood), the then President of the Board of Control—in whose candour and integrity I have the highest confidence—in introducing the measure dilated upon the advantages of the checks secured by the double Government. He stated that he did not propose to fetter the hands of Parliament for any period whatever, but to leave us perfectly free to make whatever changes experience might show to be necessary, though at the same time he saw no reason for any such changes, nor why the government of India should not continue to be carried on under "this cumbrous machine," the double Government. If the Government did intend, five years afterwards, to make this change from the double Government—with its checks in many respects so advantageous, to the single power of the Crown—with a Council of eight nominated by the Government, and to hand over the functions of the Secret Committee to the President of the Board of Control, with the power of keeping a war secret from Parliament for a month, I should have said, "Do it at once, while India is in a state of tranquillity." And certainly, if such was their intention, it was as great a weakness in them to refrain from carrying it into effect as it is madness in them to make the attempt now, when it ought to be our duty to direct all our energies to the restoration of tranquillity. I now come to the Committees of 1852– 53. On those Committees were Members of the Earl of Aberdeen's Cabinet in both Houses. On the Committee of this House sat the President of the Board of Control, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Secretary of State for the Colonies. That Committee reported against any change in the Government; nor did any one of those right hon. Gentlemen suggest that the present Government of India was such a cumbrous machine, that when a time of emergency occurred it would break down. What has since changed their opinions? Will the President of the Board of Control toll us in what respect he has found the double Government disadvantageous to the public service in the present crisis? The only case we have heard of yet is the transport of troops to India. That subject has been referred to a Select Committee, and from the report of that Committee we 1299 shall learn who is responsible. But he will no doubt state to the House what are the cases in which his energies have been cramped, or his beneficent plans frustrated. The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty, when he brought in his Bill, reviewed the circumstances that had occurred since the introduction of the measure of 1833, and pointed out the progress which had been made in every respect since that time in India. Perhaps he will state what has been the progress since 1853. If he do not, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Control will do it, and it will be seen that the improvements which have been introduced have more than realized the expectations of the then President of the Board of Control. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies when a member of the Commission, in 1853, made any proposition for the transfer of the Government of India directly to the Crown; but he was well acquainted with the history of our Colonies, and he stated a short time ago, at a dinner of persons connected with the Australian interest, that we had found out that we could only govern our Colonies by not attempting to govern them at all, and by letting them alone. That was a wise and judicious sentiment; it is the consummation of a proper union between the mother country and a colony. Will he say that of India? Will he say that India can govern herself; or, looking at the history of the Crown influence in the Colonies, will he say that it has been so happily and successfully administered before legislation in the Colonies was introduced that he would now support a transfer of all the power in them, without check and control, except Parliamentary control, to a Secretary of State and a Council of nominees? He may have found out that the history of our Colonies would justify the change proposed in the Government of India; but so far as I have been able superficially to trace the history of colonial government, I find it, in some instances, the record of a dominant class, and of a trampled and trodden-out race—I find it the history of favouritism and jobbery—I find it the history of misgovernment and loss of colonies—and, so long as the union with the Government lasted, I find it the history of increasing discontent on the part of the colonists, and a history of increasing debt on the part of the mother country. Yet, that is what 1300 the noble Lord now proposes to force upon us in substitution of the double Government in India. I say that this is not the moment, having reference either to the re-establishment of our power in India, to the promotion of improvements, or to the state of public feeling, for making the substitution which the noble Lord proposes. It may be said that all these abuses are remedied now, that no party feeling enters into your appointments, that there are no political connections looked to, that there is no nominee or class interest, that the right man in the Colonies is always in the right place. That may be so; but I ask the House to compare, even in that respect, the appointments in India with those which have been made in the Colonies, and I venture to say that they need not fear the comparison so far as the employment of merit and the exclusion of incompetence afford a test. I remember that Viscount Hardinge said before the Committee, "We never know anything in India of a man's party or political opinions. I employed a distinguished officer for a long time on my staff who had been employed by the Earl of Ellenborough and others before him, and it was only at table accidentally that I discovered that he approached very much to what is called in England a great radical." Happy country, where the politics of a man are not known, and merit alone is the path to promotion. I am afraid that that happiness will not long continue under the new system. Once more I wish to impress upon the House my opinion that the change of name which is now proposed will be considered to be not without a moaning and influence in India. It will be regarded by the Natives as a change of the principles upon which, until now, they have always been governed. It is impossible, I think, to look at the discussions which have taken place and not to see that in England there is a growing wish to interfere with the religious feelings and habits, and, perhaps, prejudices of the Natives. I hope that I shall not be understood to wish to place any impediment in the way of the propagation of Christianity in India. I hope and believe that it will make its progress by its own merits, if not so rapidly, at all events more surely; but it is by conversion, and not by force applied or sanctioned by the Government, that I wish to see Christianity promoted. I fear, however, that the speeches which have been made in this country, the tone of our press, and the allusions which have 1301 been made even by some Members of the Government will convey,—since as was remarked by the Duke of Argyll in another place, every word printed here about India is studied by thousands in that country—the impression that the change in the name of the Government is not to be made without an object. Now, I have here a statement of what has been done in India since the measure of 1853. I find,
I do not say that no new improvements might with propriety be adopted; but when the noble Lord talks of delay being a great injury, I say that it will not put an end to the progress of improvement there. I did not catch from the noble Lord when he intended that this measure should be carried into operation, but I presume he means immediately that it becomes law, In another place one of the members of the Government stated that the great objection to the system was that it was an anomaly; but it appears to me, as Mr. Mill so ably stated in his evidence before the House of Lords, that it is not the double Government which is the real anomaly, but the possession of India by this country. Why, in every Government 1302 you may find anomalies—there are anomalies in despotic Governments, where one man sways the destinies of millions; and there are anomalies in democracies, where every man shares in the Government; but the real anomaly here is that you have a Government and a state of things unexampled. You have possession of an empire acquired and retained without having any similar event to act upon since the Roman empire was in the zenith of her glory; you have nothing to guide you, no precedent, no example. That being so, the noble Lord states that what you require is the influence of public opinion and Parliamentary control. No doubt, there are no better securities for good Government, as Mr. Mill says, than national representation and the free exorcise of public opinion. But national representation you cannot have at present in India, and the only influence of public opinion which you can have must be in England. Can you say, however, that this opinion is so enlightened and instructed in regard to the affairs of India, that the Government of India ought to be influenced by that opinion? We have every day instances of the impossibility of one country to form a correct judgment of the state or requirements of another country. We all know how impossible it is, for instance, for the English to form a correct judgment of the French nation, and also for the French to judge rightly of the English nation. How, then, is it possible that the public opinion of England, uninstructed and unenlightened about the different habits, religion, and principles of an alien race living 10,000 miles distant from this country, should have a beneficial action on the government of that race? The evils arising from a misunderstanding of our views, by the people of India, cannot be greater than those that would arise from our inability to understand what is necessary for the good government of that country. The action of public opinion upon our Legislature has not always secured contentment to our Colonies, and the danger from its false action will not be greater to India than to England herself. It is admitted that the American colonies were lost in consequence of that pressure of public opinion upon the Legislature of this country which is now proposed as a panacea for all the evils which exist in India. Indeed, I believe that it would have been a blessing to England if our Colonies had been at all times governed by 1303 a council of intelligent and independent men, such as that by which India has been hitherto governed. That council, direction, monopoly, double government, or call it what you may, knew what were the interests of India, and was able and willing to place a barrier between the exactions of party in this House and the true interests of the Indian people. I believe that it would have been a blessing to England if our Colonies had had a system of double government that would have checked the rashness, enlightened the ignorance, and tempered the obstinacy of the Colonial Government. The Council proposed by the noble Lord will, no doubt, be formed of intelligent men; but you cannot call it an independent Council. It would be a fiction to state that a Council nominated by the Crown was an independent Council. I know not whether it is intended to insert in the Bill the names of the first eight gentlemen who are to constitute the Council; hut the insertion, in Mr. Fox's Bill, of those who were to be the first Directors of the East India Company, was at least a semblance of deference to the judgment of the Legislature. We are not in possession of the information requisite to enable us to say what is the change that ought to be applied to the Government of India. It is premature to think of putting down the Indian Government before you have put down the Indian mutiny. Matters in India are in a state of transition, and no one can tell whether our rule will be strengthened or weakened by the contest now going on in that country. I implore the House, therefore, not to adopt the proposition of the noble Lord, before it knows what is the state of things in India, and what are the real wants of the Indian people. My right hon. relative the Member for Portsmouth (Sir F. Baring) stated, on a previous occasion, that the East India Company would shortly become a matter of history. If it be really the decree of this House, and the will of the nation, that that chapter of our East Indian history should be closed, the record, thank God, will still be open, and no Englishman, now or hereafter, will read that chapter without an honest feeling of national pride. It, no doubt, contains much to be deplored, and faults to be criticised; but the impartial reader will most probably perceive that the greater part of the evil therein recorded should be attributed rather to the habits of the ago than to the system of East Indian Government. He 1304 will read in that chapter records of unexampled success, energy, enterprise, and British perseverance. He will find therein related the steps by which British merchants became the possessors of a great empire. That chapter teems with records of deeds of heroism, gallantry, patriotism, and self-sacrifice which should for ever be an honour to the British soldier, and a glory to the very name of Englishman. It contains the lives of statesmen and administrators who, for intelligence, comprehensive views, and purity of intention, are unsurpassed by those of any other nation. It tells of men who, while they spent their lives in promoting the interests of England, had never lost sight of the welfare of India. Above all, it relates the history of a Government which did not destroy the population of the territory which it acquired, but won their respect and gratitude. God grant that the continuation of that history may present as bright or brighter pages! but may it not have to record that, at a moment of great trouble, the English Minister of the day to the difficulties of an unextinguished mutiny added the uncertainties of a change of government; let it not record that an English Parliament, guided by a public opinion which was ignorant of Indian affairs, imperilled an empire by its rash legislation; and, above all, let it not record that, by an act of this House, the fairest dominion of the Queen was converted into the shuttlecock of party.
- "1. The education of the Natives undertaken on the largest scale, by a great extension of the schools and colleges supported by Government; the foundation of three universities; and the introduction of grants in aid to private (including missionary) schools.
- "2. The police, the most peccant part of the existing system, fairly grappled with. Great improvements effected in Bombay, and new systems ordered or sanctioned in Bengal, Agra, and Madras, calculated to effect an entire revolution.
- "3. The reform of the revenue (ryotwar) system of the Madras territory actively commenced on the principles which have been tried with the most eminent success (see the Memorandum) in Bombay and Cuttack.
- "4. A code of civil and criminal procedure, the best in the world, actually made by the Commissioners in London, and now in progress through the Legislative Council of India. The Penal Code (Macaulay's) with the latest improvements also in progress through the Council.
- "5. Remarriage of widows legalized. The forfeiture of civil rights by change of religion abrogated.
- "6. No new great public work commenced in those four years, because those already in progress absorbed all the funds available. But the great canals, anicuts (or river embankments), and roads mentioned in the Memorandum have been carried on with redoubled vigour till stopped by recent circumstances; and, in the meantime, the minor works, both roads and works of irrigation, which have been constructed, or preparatory measures taken during this short period, in nearly every part of India, partly from the funds of the general treasury, partly from local funds, may be said to be countless."
§ Amendment proposed, to leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words, "it is not at present expedient to legislate for the Government of India," instead thereof.
§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
§ SIR ERSKINE PERRYsaid, that having at that moment upon the paper a notice of Motion involving exactly the same objects as those embraced by the Bill of the noble Lord, he could not concur in the reasons just advanced by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. T. Baring) against the introduction of that Bill. He felt the difficulty of following that hon. Gentleman, because there was no man in the House more able than he to give a powerful expression of his opinions; but on the present occasion he was much disappointed with the arguments he had advanced for the postponement of legislation. The Amendment had reference merely to the time at which this measure was proposed, but the 1305 whole of the hon. Gentleman's speech was directed against its principle. From beginning to end he eulogized the East India Company and the existing double Government. He had said that there was no authority to which the noble Lord could refer as affirming that the present was a fitting opportunity for legislating on Indian affairs; but no longer ago than yesterday, one of the highest authorities on India,—namely, the Earl of Ellenborough—had, with characteristic frankness, admitted that to substitute the Queen's name for the Company, and to establish an independent Council, would be pregnant with advantages. But this was the whole principle of the present Bill. So far from the present being an unfitting time, it was the very fittest that could have been selected. He (Sir E. Perry) indeed regretted that such a Bill as the present was not adopted in 1853, when the question of Indian government underwent a lengthy discussion in that House. It appeared that there were at that time divisions in the Cabinet, and it was consequently determined not to give the coup de grace to the Court of Directors at once, but to pave the way for the extinction of the Company at some future period. However, now that a rebellion had broken out in the country, and it was necessary to strengthen the hands of the Government in every possible way, the moment was most opportune for passing a measure which would enlarge and consolidate the power of the Executive. It was only in great emergencies that the time of Parliament and the attention of the country could be directed to Indian questions. The right hon. Member for Bucks (Mr. Disraeli) was so well aware of this fact that up to the breaking out of the Indian mutiny he had never taken a part in Indian discussions. That right hon. Gentleman, with his knowledge of Parliamentary habits and tastes, would not take up a subject that was caviare to the multitude. The third argument in favour of immediate legislation was that all the letters, publications, and newspapers coming from India clearly anticipated that some great change was about to take place. Under these circumstances the East India Company's Government had ceased to obtain that credit and respect from the inhabitants of India which it had long enjoyed. He remembered a curious book published many years ago, under the title of Parliamentary Logic, by Mr. Hamilton, once Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland, 1306 who, giving the results of forty years' experience in the English House of Commons, adduced as an illustration of Parliamentary tactics that where a measure was good, and the arguments in its favour were sound, its opponents must allege that the time was not suitable for its consideration. What were the objections to the present measure? It was said that a certain prestige attached to the name of the Company, and that if the Queen's name were substituted for it a fear and apprehension of change would come over the minds of the people of India, who were eminently conservative and averse to innovation. On the other hand, it was said that the mutineers would find matter for triumph in such a change; and they would be enabled to say, "we have achieved a great triumph; we have changed the form of government." The two arguments seemed to him to answer each other. Whether the mutineers might or might not like the change was to him a matter of entire indifference. If the Government became stronger by the alteration and better able to put them down, so much the better; and such a result would be a strong argument in its favour. The House ought then to proceed at once to the consideration of the measure now before it. The mere fact of such a proposal having been made by a Government, which had been long enough in office to know the working of the present machinery of the Government of India, was in itself a complete condemnation of the system, and tended to impair the efficacy of the existing mode of government for all future times. If inquiry were commenced and reform postponed, the power of the home Government would meanwhile be greatly impaired, and the little consideration which the East India Government now obtained from the English public would be immensely diminished. Every argument, in short, which he had heard convinced him that the present was the time of all others at which the House should proceed to a calm, dispassionate, and deliberate examination of the whole matter. If the noble Lord had brought in a good Bill to-night, let Parliament adopt it as soon as possible. If not, let them throw it out and with it the Government, so as to allow another set of Ministers to introduce another measure. He had had some advantages in forming a disinterested opinion of the Government of India. He had been in India for many years, but in an office, where he had nothing to hope and nothing 1307 to fear from the East India Company, and he was, therefore, not open to the taunt occasionally thrown out by advocates of the Court of Directors, that those who had resided in the East, and who now opposed the Company, were speaking under the influence of some personal grievance. He hoped, therefore, that he was an unprejudiced witness, and the conclusion he had come to was, that the East Indian Government was an effete, useless, and cumbrous machine. He did not stand there to bring in a Bill of indictment against the Company. He would not deny an assertion frequently made by their advocates, that the Indian Government had been animated by purer and more benevolent motives than any other Government that ever existed. His complaint was that their practice had not been in accordance with their principles. Their State papers were admirable, but when the opinions in them came to be acted upon, a totally different course was adopted; the reason of which was, that their papers were drawn up by their clerks, by Mill, and Macculloch, and Melville, but the voting lay with the Court of Directors. Take the subject of education, for example. Having had some experience as President of the Board of Education in the Presidency of Bombay, he was able to assert that the promotion of education in India was entirely owing to the interference of Parliament and to the participation in this country in the affairs of the East. It became his duty when in India to peruse a despatch upon the method to be pursued by the East India Company's servants in the promotion of education, and a more luminous and masterly body of instructions to an official body than this despatch, he never read. It bore the signatures of the Court of Directors, though it was understood to have been written by James Mill, and it wa3 regarded by the body over which he presided as the Magna Charta of their proceedings. It was, in short, full of great principles, and teemed with professions of a wise liberality. Acting on that despatch they laboured to spread the cause of education in India by the establishment of vernacular schools and otherwise, and after many years' labour they applied to the Board of Directors for a sum of £ 5,000 to assist them in their efforts. The application was strongly backed by the local Government. But would the House believe that this application to the Court was unnoticed for three years, and that 1308 at the end of that period they gave it a flat refusal? It was not, however, the business of those who supported the principle of the present Bill to attack the Board of Directors or bring an indictment against them. The House might sit for weeks and hear recriminations against the Directors, and against the Board of Control too—the friends of the one endeavouring to throw blame upon the other—but it would be to no purpose. He believed there were faults on both sides, and he was inclined to say of them, "A plague o' both your houses." The Board of Control and the Board of Directors, taken together, had not accomplished the objects which they were intended to effect. But it would be erroneous to infer from this that the Government of the Company, if uncontrolled, would be preferable. If they looked at what occurred in 1784, when the present system was first introduced, they would not say that the encomium passed on the Company by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. T. Baring) was at all deserved. In 1784 all parties concurred in condemning the Government of India as bad, venal, corrupt, and oppressive, and, what was worse, false and treacherous in its dealings with the native States. In the discussions that took place on the Bills of Fox and Pitt there was no controversy as to the misdeeds of the governing body in India, though the cry of chartered rights was echoed from one end of the country to the other, and a great deal was said of the amount of patronage that would be vested in the Crown. It was well known that Mr. Pitt contemplated placing the whole government of India under the direct control of the Crown, and that, though he proposed to do so gradually, his ultimate object was to do it as effectually as was now proposed in the Bill of the noble Lord. He himself thus stated the principle of his Bill to the House:—
The political concerns of this country in India—that is, the civil and military governments of India, the political establishments, the political system, the collection of the revenue, and, to give it one short and general definition, the imperial dominion of our territories in the East—ought to be placed under other control than that of the Company of merchants in Leadenhall Street… The first business, then, was to take care that this should be made an effectual control; I and it was his clear idea that this control could not with safety or propriety be placed in any other hands than those of the genuine and legitimate executive power of the constitution.In another part of his speech in order to 1309 show what the control should be, he observed, "the degree of control should amount to the government of the civil and military concerns and of the revenue." After that Bill passed it was found inoperative in giving to the Executive Government all the control over the Company that was contemplated, but from time to time Acts of the Legislature had been passed supplying the deficiency, and the course of legislation had at length left the Court of Directors a mere caput mortuum, with no power whatever. As things now stood the Queen's Government had all the political power with respect to India, but not the responsibility. He did not know a single instance of a President of the Board of Control having been called over the coals for any act of his Government, and he thought the noble Lord deserved thanks for having introduced a Bill which would give no more power to the Government, but which would fix them with the responsibility. It was a fact that up to this moment Parliament did not know on whom the responsibility rested for the Affghan war, which had been condemned on all hands. It was thought, some years ago, that the responsibility lay with a right hon. Friend of his who claimed it as his own; but at the India House the other day it was stated by a gentleman, formerly a member of the Council of India, that the war was commenced by authority of the Government in India. When an event such as that, which some regarded as a great crime and a great disaster, occurred, there was no one Minister to bear the responsibility, and it was impossible not to look on such a state of matters as very unsatisfactory. The hon. Member for Huntingdon complained that the Secret Committee was done away with, but what an objectionable institution that Secret Committee was.
MR. BARINGsaid, his complaint was that the duties of the Secret Committee were to be transferred to a Secretary of State.
§ SIR ERSKINE PERRYThe Secret Committee was now bound to transmit the orders of the Board of Control, so that it was in fact the mere organ of the Government whenever orders were to be sent to India; but there was no possibility of bringing responsibility home to any one. By the Bill now proposed, however, all the orders of the Secretary of State would be laid before Parliament when required, and everything that was going on would be 1310 made known to the Members of that House. His hon. Friend compared our colonial misgovernment with the government of India by the Company, and this was one of the most favourite arguments of the opponents of the present measure. But in making this comparison they compared two things totally dissimilar. India was not a colony, and could never be one; there was no foot room in it for colonists from this country. There was a dependency of the British empire, however, that came in direct comparison with India, and that was the island of Ceylon. Ceylon was under the direct government of the Crown. He knew the island well, and was able to say, that notwithstanding the inferiority of the Cingalese to the Hindoos as a race, the improvement, the progress, and the civilization that had taken place there, under the Queen's Government, were infinitely greater than could be boasted of in India. He could well recollect the discussion which took place with regard to the conduct of Viscount Torrington, as Governor of Ceylon, and when it was proposed as a panacea for alleged evils to annex Ceylon to the territories of the East India Company. At that time he himself happened to be in Ceylon, and the outcry throughout the island at such a proposal was perfectly startling. The Cingalese admitted that there were defects in their system of government which might be amended, but they said that to hand them over to the rule of "John Company," as they called the Company of merchants in Leadenhall Street, would be to throw them into the fire at once. In the case generally of colonial Governments, up to a recent period when great and salutary changes had been made, no doubt there had been cases of favouritism and jobbing; but these cases which could not occur in India unless the British Parliament were to neglect its duty. What was it that had caused Indian patronage to be so well distributed, and had prevented jobbery and corruption? The Court of Directors could not be supposed to he less open to nepotism than any other body of men. The answer was simple; it was by the judicious interference of Parliament, which by statute had laid down certain restrictions and conditions regulating Indian patronage, which had prevented any great abuse of that patronage; and he could not believe that in the present century there was the slightest probability of a House of Com- 1311 mons agreeing to change the provisions of so wise a statute in a way which might cause the patronage to be distributed in a less careful manner. The administration of patronage was every day becoming more pure and more patriotic, and he considered, therefore, that the arguments founded upon alleged favouritism and abuse of patronage fell to the ground. Such being the views which he entertained, he would state the reasons which led him to think that the present was an opportune moment for entering into a discussion of the principles which ought to characterise British rule in the East. He himself was bound to say that he viewed with great apprehension the present state of our Indian empire, and his faculties were sharpened to the utmost to ascertain the truth with regard to it, for he himself had invested nearly all his fortune in Indian securities. He did not feel that apprehension so much from the extent to which the rebellion had attained—a rebellion which the advocates of the East India Company were still pleased to call a military mutiny—as from the doctrines openly preached by the Europeans in India, and by the European press in that country. There had been unfortunately displayed a truculent spirit, an indiscriminate demand for vengeance, and a total disregard for native interests, which was much more likely to endanger British rule in India than any outbreak which had as yet occurred. Lord Canning had earned immortal honour by refusing to act upon such doctrines, and the unpopularity to which he had been exposed had arisen from his determination to draw no line of demarcation between the European and the Native population of India. Lord Canning recognized the duty of holding an equal hand to all the well-affected, of whatever colour or creed, and of treating them upon an equal footing of justice, and one reason why he was glad that the present time was chosen for this discussion was, because he believed the result of it would be to show to the Natives of India that the feeling of the people of this country was in accordance with the general policy of Lord Canning. He was sure that the people of England would not be led away by any mere sordid considerations as to which particular class were to enjoy a few hundred official posts. They took a far higher view. What they desired was, to see the people of India prosperous, happy, and improving under our rule; what they wished 1312 was that the great principle of religious toleration and of equality before the law should be extended to every inhabitant of that dependency; and what they hoped was that in time the great truths of Christianity might be recognised throughout the Indian empire. It was because he believed that those great purposes would mainly be effected by the Bill of the noble Lord that he should give it his most hearty concurrence.
§ MR. MONCKTON MILNESsaid, that it appeared to him that the subject resolved itself into two questions—first, as to the principle of the Bill; and secondly, as to the opportuneness of the present moment for discussing it. The noble Lord had said that those who prominently put forward grounds for delay must be taken to object to the whole measure; but he would remind the noble Lord that, in the midst of a great war, a measure for Parliamentary Reform, proposed by a noble Lord, the Member for London, then a colleague of the noble Lord's, had been withdrawn, upon the ground that at such a period it was impossible that it could meet with full and ample discussion. Hon. Members who had lately come into Parliament, and had not before voted on Indian questions, might have no difficulty in approaching this discussion, and reconciling it with their former opinions. But he could not help remembering that in 1853 he had done all he could to support the Company, and had stated his conviction that the Government of that Company was, in all its essentials, a good and a right Government—that he had used all the influence he possessed to perpetuate that Government, and had, by Amendments which he induced the House to adopt, in some degree modified the changes which then took place. That being the case, he did not see how he could be called on to support the measure of his noble Friend, unless such arguments were presented as should induce him to change his opinions. Such arguments might possibly have been presented. It might have been shown that, in the great series of events lately occurring in India, the action of the double Government had been so dangerous, so injurious to the success of the English power in India, that it was necessary, whatever other advantages it might have, that it should be modified or abolished. He had waited with the greatest interest to see whether in the speech of his noble 1313 Friend a single case was brought forward which would prove to the satisfaction of any reasonable man that, in the progress of events in India, successful under Providence as they had been, that success had been checked or limited in any degree by the action of the double Government. Had the noble Lord been able to show that in any way the action of the double Government had contributed to that awful mutiny or rebellion in India—or that any reasonable man would be justified in thinking that, if the double Government had not existed, the mutiny or rebellion would not have taken place—in that case they might have been called upon to modify their previous judgments. But he had brought forward no such argument; and it was not possible for those who in 1853 had supported the government of the Company to abandon it at this moment. His feeling with regard to the double Government had always been very much modified by the consideration of the nature of our Government at home. He had always been very unwilling to substitute a charter for a constitution. The experience of Governments on the Continent showed how difficult it was even for the best-devised Government to work its way in the world and accomplish its own purposes when it proceeded from the theory of any statesman whatever, and not from the practical action of events. Therefore he had always looked mercifully on the shortcomings of the East India Company and of the Board of Control, believing that in both cases the intentions of the governors had been right, and that their imperfections should be rather attributed to the necessary defects of human nature. Now, they were to have a total change. A new charter was to be given by the noble Lord for the government of 160,000,000 of people. This charter was to be administered by this small free nation despotically over that immense portion of the globe. It was the saying of a very great statesman, Machiavelli, that in his experience republics had always proved very hard masters of their subject States; and he did not think that the sanction of the British people and the British constitution would be any security whatever that India would be more mercifully or securely governed by the despotism of an English Cabinet Minister than it had been by the double Government of the East India Company. It was proposed to substitute for the Company a Council of eight gentlemen, to be appointed by the Crown—men, 1314 therefore, in a certain degree, owing their position to the Government of the day, who were to advise the Indian Minister upon various points. But these so-called advisers were not to have any further power than that of recording their protest in a note. It did not appear even that they were to have the power of presenting those protests to Parliament. At any rate, none of them would have the privilege of stating in that House the counter case to that of the Indian Minister; and it would be interesting to know whether those protests would ever be allowed to see the light, in order that if the Minister and his Council were at issue on any great question, Parliament and the country should be put in possession of both sides of the case. And yet it was said that this was no change at all. The noble Lord not only took away the direct check afforded by the East India Company on the administration of the affairs of India, but he took away that indirect but hardly less valuable check which had always existed in the presence of some Directors in that House, who could state their case, if it happened to differ from that of the President of the Board of Control. He could not understand how it could be supposed that any man really conversant with the affairs of India could be induced to become a member of that Council. He could not believe that any one of the present Directors would submit to place himself in a position in which he must be either an East India clerk or an English sub-minister. It was said that though the patronage was to be vested in the Crown, it would be given by competition. He could not conceive that the President of the Indian Board would be as independent an authority in the distribution of patronage as that which now existed. A portion of the Indian patronage was to be intrusted ostensibly to the new Council; but when those gentlemen sat together in a room where the President of the Board of Control might at his pleasure pooh-pooh everything that they said, it was difficult to see how they could be regarded as an independent authority, even in the distribution of patronage. Though this matter might be managed in their name, there would always be the suspicion that the Minister's influence enabled him to overbear their authority by contriving adroit arrangements for the convenience of all parties. But his great objection to the measure was as to the time of its introduc- 1315 tion. The last speaker said that he should deem it a great glory to have taken part in contributing to this change of government on this occasion, but that he trusted that Indian affairs were not to be made matters of party politics more than they were now. Now, if they began by making this change itself a matter of party politics in that House, what an earnest was that of the party battles which would occur in future on Indian affairs! A little experience in that House had shown him what was the fate of colonies and dependencies when they came in contact with the party spirit of that House. He had heard the discussions on Ceylon and on Canada; in both cases he had seen great injustice committed, and he had unfortunately seen the interests of those mainly concerned continually subordinated to the interests and convenience of party warfare. The question of the government of Ceylon which was now put in contrast with the administration of their territories by the East India Company, was presented in such a way to the House that all but a total dissolution of all government in that island had been the effect of their strife; and with the exception of the present Colonial Secretary, Sir Charles Macarthy, not one official in Ceylon kept his place after that Parliamentary discussion. It was an awful danger to think of exposing the destiny of 160,000,000 of people to a system which would end in plunging their fate into the vortex of English party conflicts. He had waited with the greatest anxiety to hear from the noble Lord some plea for bringing forward his measure at this moment, but he had not advanced a single plea of the kind. Could that plea be the belief that the East India Company was at present unpopular with the people of England, and that it would be an advantage to the Government politically if they could abolish it? He could not believe that. He did not believe in the fact that the people of this country, when they came to reflect calmly upon the matter, would regard the East India Company with any feeling of dislike or alienation. They knew that the government of the East India Company had really been the government of themselves for themselves. It had been the government of India by the great middle classes of England, and by the real public opinion of this country, as expressed by its best and most glorious men. The Company had been free from all party bias and all political connection, 1316 It was the only Government in the world that he had ever known or heard of where it was not pretended that any favour was shown on a large scale except that which was due to merit and desert. It was said that the amount of patronage was exceedingly small, and that the system of open competition settled the question. He had opposed the introduction of that system in 1853; and he believed that before other ten years passed, a great many Members of that House would follow his example. He knew that that system was hardly ridden as a hobby by many innocent persons, and he had some estimable friends who were perfect Chinese on that matter. But he had reason to think that late events in India had shown that the best-trained boys did not always turn out the wisest men. Reference had been made to what the servants of the East India Company had been. Let the House look at what they now were, and do not let them commit the great injustice of destroying the government of the Company at the moment that its servants had shown themselves competent for the highest duties capable of the greatest sacrifices, an example of ability and endurance which had obliterated the unhappy memories of the Crimean war, and had shown what Englishmen could be and could do, when unaffected by false political conditions, and assisted by a Government accustomed to deal with dangers and unawed by the menace of calamity.
§ MR. W. VANSITTARTsaid, that having spent some of the best years of his life in India, and taking therefore naturally an interest in all that concerned the welfare of that country, he felt under some obligation to address the House on the subject under consideration. He would direct his observations for a moment to the petition presented to the House by the East India Company—a document of such singular ability that it must have made a profound sensation in every dispassionate mind who had perused it. He questioned whether such a body of petitioners had ever appeared at the bar of any legislative assembly. They challenged the most searching investigation into the whole of the circumstances connected with the mutiny in the Bengal army; and there was so much of truth, dignity, and justice in their appeal, that he could not believe that that House, actuated, as it had always been, by principles of the strictest honour and justice, would refuse to grant the inquiry. He himself for some time past had been of 1317 the opinion that such an inquiry was absolutely necessary and imperatively demanded, and that, if granted, the results of it, when placed before the House, would be of material advantage in enabling them to legislate on this important question. He, for one, was not prepared to admit that the East India Company were altogether to blame for past disasters in the government of India; on the contrary, he thought the House had had too many instances of the ignorant vagaries of the Presidents of the Board of Control to doubt that much of it was due to that quarter. He (Mr. Vansittart) repeated his earnest hope that before the contemplated change was made in the government an inquiry into the cause of the mutiny would take place, because he was satisfied that such an inquiry would disclose that one of the principal of those causes was the extremely insufficient means, as regarded European troops, placed at the disposal of the Indian Government for some years previous to and at the time of the outbreak. Would it be believed that there was actually but one European regiment stationed between Calcutta and Lucknow, and that was at Dina-pore, to protect a country extending over a distance of 610 miles, and embracing, besides a number of cities and chief towns, such as Cawnpore and Benares, the fortress and arsenal of Allahabad, which was the key of the lower Provinces, and in which were stored 35,000 stand of arms, nineteen lacs of rupees, and several heavy guns; and, had it not been for the indomitable courage of General Neill, with his handful of Madras Fusileers, supported by the exertions of Mr. F. Gubbins, Benares and Allahabad must inevitably have been lost to us. Again, in the whole country between Calcutta and Umballah, 1,100 miles in length, and from 250 to 300 miles wide, exclusive of the territories of the Rajah of Nagpore, Scindiah, and Holkar, there were but two European cavalry regiments and four regiments of infantry—one stationed at Dina-pore, one at Lucknow—the brave 32nd—and which was withdrawn from Cawnpore—one at Agra, one cavalry and one infantry regiment at Meerut, and one cavalry regiment at Umballah. There were no European troops at Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Gorruckpore, Fyzabad, and other important stations. Ever since they occupied Cawnpore, in 1803, they had one European regiment there, and one regiment of Dragoons besides. But would 1318 it be believed, such was the infatuation of the home authorities, that they withdrew three European regiments between 1854 and 1856; so that in the former period, before the annexation of Oude, there were twenty-one European regiments of infantry and two of cavalry in the Bengal Presidency, whereas in 1856 there were hut eighteen regiments of infantry and two of cavalry? And had but those three regiments been permitted to remain, one at Delhi, one at Cawnpore, and one at Bareilly, who could tell what amount of human suffering and misery which had since been inflicted on our countrymen and countrywomen would have been spared them? Who could say, indeed, but that they might possibly have been the means of nipping the rebellion itself in the bud? Again, from Lahore to Rangoon, a distance of 1,600 miles, with not less than 80,000,000 inhabitants, there were but eighteen battalions of infantry, of which seven were required to keep down the disarmed population of the Punjab. But in Oude, where the population was not disarmed—where there were 59,000 troops belonging to the King, and 246 mud forts, we kept but one European regiment, and that at the expense of the unfortunate and ill-fated station of Cawnpore. With regard to the 22nd, 96th, and 98th regiments, which were withdrawn from India in 1855, it might be said that they were wanted for the Crimean war. But there was abundant time, since the conclusion of that war, to send reinforcements to India. The Marquess of Dalhousie, and those who were conversant with the affairs of India, saw what would happen if, when the Court of Directors approved of the policy of the annexation of Oude, the Government neglected to send out the means of sustaining that policy. How did we anex Oude? By smuggling ourselves into the country, and practising upon a voluptuous King and court and a licentious soldiery. That was not the way that Sir Charles Napier overran and annexed Scinde, and that Viscount Hardinge and Lord Gough annexed the Punjab. The Marquess of Dalhousie's recommendations were not attended to, and the House had now before it the fruits of that insane policy of annexing kingdom after kingdom without a sufficient number of European troops to support it, in the magnificent provinces which, during the last few months, had been wrested from us, in the blood that had been spilt, and the treasure that had 1319 been plundered. Our brave generals—Havelock, Wheeler, Neill, and Nicholson—had lost their lives in upholding the honour and glory of England against fearful odds, and had obtained, by their deeds, the admiration not only of their own country, but of Europe and the whole world. But, in justice to those departed heroes, and to the surviving relatives of those who had been so foully outraged, mutilated, and murdered, he submitted that, before the House made any alteration in the mode of government, an inquiry should be instituted, under its auspices, into that insane policy of annexing kingdom after kingdom, unaided by an adequate number of European troops to sustain it, in order that they might know upon whom the blame of leaving the country so destitute of European troops was to be justly fixed. With regard to the double Government, he would not deny that great simplification might be necessary, and that the subdivision of authority and evasion of responsibility involved in it were objectionable. He thought it would be better to substitute in its place a responsible Minister, who could be interrogated as to acts, blamed for failures, and dismissed for faults; but it should be recollected that the Government of India was vested in the hands of the Governor General, who overshadowed, to a certain extent, the influence of the Board of Control; and he (Mr. Vansittart) thought, so long as that high office was administered by men with the distinguished ability of a Hastings, a Wellesley, an Ellenborough, or a Dalhousie, the evils of the double government had been much exaggerated. At all events, with the Jhansi, Bareilly, and Banda massacres unavenged—with the whole of Rohilcund and Central Asia in the hands of the rebels—with the shame of having to accept the services of Jung Bahadoor and 10,000 Ghoorkas—he maintained that this was not the proper time for legislating on the subject, and he therefore could not conscientiously vote in favour of the introduction of the Bill.
§ MR. AYRTONsaid, he did not approach the consideration of this subject for the first time. Neither was it the first occasion upon which he had expressed an opinion, for, having many years ago gone to India with every prejudice in favour of the Government of the East India Company—having, indeed, been the object of its patronage, although he had not availed himself of that favour, he had 1320 arrived at a conviction that the continuance of the Government in the name of the East India Company was not only inexpedient, but was almost impossible. In the last Session of Parliament before the events occurred which we all now deplored, he took occasion to state his belief that the substitution of the Government of the Crown for that of the Company was absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the loyalty of the people of India. He looked upon the continuance of the present mode of government as wholly incompatible with the least knowledge of political ideas among the people of India, for if there was any force in the moral influence of the style of a government, it was impossible to conceive anything more dishonourable, or more degrading to a people than to be ignored by the sovereign State of which it was a dependency, and to be turned over to the remnant of a joint-stock company. It was true, the East India Company was no longer a trading company, but if there were any prestige attaching to a Government, the prestige in this case was most degrading to the Natives of India. The East India Company had been eulogized for its long and successful administration of the Government of India, and it was now said that this country must show its right to exercise its sovereign power in India, instead of the East India Company being called upon to show by what right it continued to interfere in the government of that country. That pretension had been put forward in a solemn and deliberate manner in the petition that had been presented in the name of the East India Company, which he was glad to see was not signed by any Director, but was put forward under the common seal of the Company, and therefore came before them without the voucher of any personal responsibility. In that petition were set out grounds so utterly untrue, facts were alleged which, if correct, would tell strongly in the Company's favour, but which were at complete variance with truth, that it would be most improper to allow those representations to remain unnoticed. He did not think the petition merited the eulogiums it had received, except for its wonderful cleverness. Something beyond cleverness, however, was required in such a document. The East India Company had presumed to say that it had acquired the government of India entirely by its own means, without assistance from the British Crown or the people of this coun- 1321 try. It was astonishing how such an assertion could be made, when the three Presidencies to which the noble Lord had referred as the points whence radiated our power were acquired, or rather held, by the Company either by direct grant from, or by the aid of the Crown. Calcutta was conquered by the joint action of a small force of their own aided by Her Majesty's army and navy. The Presidency of Madras the Company held under the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, and Bombay under a treaty of the British Crown with Portugal. Such were the foundations of their territorial powers. But had the Company not received aid from this country in the maintenance of that power? Could it be forgotton that from 1813 to 1833 the Government of India was insolvent from year to year, and was only supported by the profits derived from a monopoly which it enjoyed at the expense of the people of this country? In that year, for the purpose of alarming the Government of that day, the East India Company stated that they had since 1813 derived £22,000,000 of money from that monopoly. And by whom was this money contributed? Why, as Mr. Grant said, it was paid by the people of this country as fully and as completely as if that sum had been granted by Parliament. It was obtained by a monopoly which raised the price of a commodity (a necessary of life) at the expense of every individual in this country. More than this, how often would the territories of the Company have been wrested from them had it not been for the effectual blockade between France and India maintained by the navy of England? Such was the character of the statements upon which the Company now demanded to be continued in their government. But, not content with this, they had the arrogance to tell the people of this country, or rather Parliament, that while the Government was losing provinces in America they, unaided, were extending our dominions in the East. Did it become the Company to inquire what was the cause of our losing America? Did not the Company go to the Government and say that they were insolvent, and did they not ask, as a means of extricating themselves from this position, that they might be allowed to send their tea to America, for it was their tea, and the destruction of it, which first produced the American war; and it did not become the East India Company, therefore, to take credit to themselves for the maintenance of an empire in India, while, at the 1322 same time, America was being lost to this country. But it was said that the Company had done great things for India. Was that true? On the contrary, all that had been done for India during the present century had been done, not by, but in spite of the East India Company. In 1813 they opposed with might and main the opening of the trade with India to the merchants of this country, and they got together evidence from all parties and all sides in favour of their views. They had demanded that things should remain as they were. They had brought forward evidence in support of their claim to exclusive trade; and what did they tell Parliament? They represented that there was something so inscrutable and unintelligible about the Natives of India that they could not be got to trade, or to extend the growth of cotton, or even to take the goods of this country at all, unless they were introduced through the East India Company. They had said that the trade would, by reason of some special causes affecting India, remain at the amount at which it then was, namely, at a million and a-half a year. But what had now become of the trade? Why, that trade which they had said would be ruined, if the private trader whom they called the interloper were let in, had risen to £23,000,000 a year. If it had been left to them it would have remained as it was, and no British subject would ever have been allowed to visit India and carry on an independent trade. Then when the question came as to the trade with China, the same story was told, and it was said that the whole power and destiny of this country in the East depended on maintaining things as they were, and that everything would be deranged if the freedom of British enterprise were allowed to penetrate into China; that the trade with China was incapable of extension and would be ruined by freer intercourse with that country. But what was the real state of facts? Why, at that time the whole of the trade on both sides had amounted only to two and a-half millions, while now it was eleven and a-half millions of money. Did it become the East India Company to say they had produced all the trade? Why, if it had been left to them the country would still have been paying the grievous prices for tea and oriental commodities which had been found so severe a tax on the poor. There was no truth in the assertion that the East India Com- 1323 pany had done everything great for India. Everything which deserved the name of great and good in connection with our Indian Empire had been done under the influence of Parliament, an influence which sprang from the public opinion of this country. Did it become the East India Directors to say that all political virtue rested in the recesses of the India House, and that no one out of their body ever interfered with the affairs of India from pure motives? He did not wish to reopen things which he hoped were passed. He was ready to believe that the price of public appointments was no longer known in the City of London, and that the patronage of the Company was exercised in accordance with the improved public morality of the country; but he knew enough of the past history of that patronage, he had heard enough about the banking accounts of the East India Directors, to say that it was better that they should not revive a consideration of these things, that they should stand upon the improved aspect of the present and should not challenge too strict an inquiry into the past. Then it was said that the Court of Directors was the most fit body in the world to administer this government. Could anything be more extravagantly absurd than that the President of the Board of Control, who was responsible to Parliament for the whole government of India, had not power to communicate with a single member of the Council which sat in Leadenhall Street. Very recently a member of that Council, who had passed almost his whole life in the Bengal Provinces, boasted that throughout this eventful time he had never communicated with the right hon. Gentleman upon the affairs of India. Could anything be more ridiculous? What was the use of a consultative Council if the person whom it was to advise was not at liberty to ascertain the opinions of each of its members? And what did the President of the Board of Control get from the India House? He got a resolution with opinions distilled into him through the medium of the Chairman, who was the organ of communication. The Chairman of the East India Company, in conveying a resolution to the Secretary of the Board of Control, might have to argue with him in favour of what was opposed to his own personal convictions. Such an occurrence was quite possible; and he might appeal to the experience of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Control whether such a case had not 1324 occurred within his tenure of office? But whether it had or not, what were they to think of a system which provided a Council to assist in carrying on the government, but a Council which had no communication with the responsible Minister, and the members of which so arranged that there should be no individual responsibility amongst them? But to form a just estimate of advice, we must know by whom it was given, what were the general views, feelings, interests, and prejudices of the adviser. Nothing was ever made known except the result of the deliberation of the Court, which was sometimes arrived at by a majority of one. Was that the sort of advice the Minister ought to have? Was that a system which ought to be continued for one hour? Was it compatible with a full measure of responsibility on the part of the President of the Board of Control, though quite compatible with no responsibility on the part of the Court of Directors? He did not entertain so exalted an estimate of human nature as to believe in the official capacity of any man who acted under a screen, and who took precautions that he personally should never be responsible for his conduct, even on questions involving the safety of our Indian empire. Such was the system which Parliament was now called upon to say should no longer exist; and when the Government had made up their minds to put an end to it, would any man hesitate to support them? It was to be regretted that former Governments had not felt themselves strong enough to face the powerful influence of the East India Company; but he was glad to find that, year by year, the Court of Directors had fallen in public opinion, and he rejoiced that it had at last fallen so low that the Government could now deal with this question upon clear principles of right, and in a comprehensive spirit, and do away with an anomaly which had been the disgrace of England from the first hour of its existence. The Court of Directors had been somewhat clever in sounding alarms; they had suggested that now was not the time to dispose of this question. For his own part, he thought that the delay had been too great, and that the sooner the change was effected the better. So far from the insurrection being a ground for delay, it was precisely the cause why the administration of India should be made more energetic and efficient in its action, and now was the time for remedying all defects, in order, if possible, 1325 to avoid that which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire had warned the House against—a prolongation of the war. At the time when the Company was depending for its existence on the naval and military forces of this country, the Minister of the Crown should be empowered to demand from the body advising in Leadenhall Street daily and hourly assistance and advice for his conduct on every question that could arise. It was precisely at this moment that the deficiencies of the administration would be felt, and it was now they ought to be remedied. The hon. Member for Reigate (Sir H. Rawlinson) had declared that the mere proclamation of the Queen's Government would be an event of the most incalculable moral effect in India, and many men well acquainted with India attached the greatest importance to this, which some hon. Members appeared to think was a mere change of name. The Native Princes, as had been sagaciously remarked by the noble Lord at the head of the Government, would feel exalted in their dignity when their treaties were no longer made with a joint-stock company, but with the Sovereign of England. They attached the greatest weight to what was here considered a shadow. It was a fact that the people of India regarded even the right of appeal to the Queen in Council as a great political right, as bringing them, as it were, directly under the surveillance of the Crown. To such an extent were these ideas carried in India, that in recent times we had seen a Prince who, thinking he had been injured, came over to this country, and offered his child to the Queen to be brought up as a Christian, under the impression that in return for such a peace-offering to the Sovereign of England he would receive justice at her hands. He (Mr. Ayrton) regretted that there should have been found, at the India House, men who could encourage such a proceeding, and, when a great religious principle was involved, countenance the transaction, that they might have the honour of taking part in the royal ceremony which it involved. As a further proof of the powerful moral influence of the Queen's name, they had lately seen a royal family and a Queen come to this country, no doubt under the impression that she would be allowed to go into the Queen's presence, and there receive the justice that was denied her by the Company. The Natives ascribed to this mighty 1326 Sovereign a power so transcendental that he believed, with the noble Lord at the head of the Government, a mere declaration that the intermediary Company was to be set aside, and that they were to come under the protecting influence of the Sovereign, would be tantamount to an army in aid of our forces in the East. Of course the effect of the change would depend a great deal on the manner in which it was carried out. Men influenced by the old traditions would be the less inclined to insure its success. He recollected the ferment in the Bombay army because an officer of the Queen's army had forgotten something due to the respect owing to the Company's army. One good effect of the Bill would be to put an end to all distinctions between the Queen's Court and the Company's Court—between the Queen's army and the Company's army—and bring them all under the direct and recognised sovereignty of the Crown. He had intended to have called attention to the document which had been circulated in conjunction with the petition of the Company; but he trusted that there would be such a feeling in favour of the Bill, and such an opinion of the unfounded character of the opposition raised by the Company, that it would become unnecessary to do so. He was prepared, however, to discuss any question of detail, and to show that the men who could write such a document, whatever might be their ability, were not fit to be entrusted with the administration of the Government of India unless they were brought under the direct moral influence of the people and Parliament of this country. That document made a statement as to the condition of the ryots. Did not the writer know that these ryots were taxed to the last farthing. [Colonel SYKES: No.] He did not mean that, literally, they had not a farthing—but that they had not a farthing of property, in the sense of the word, in this country; the Government took almost everything, and left the cultivator scarcely enough to support life. The document further stated that the tax on salt was the only tax the ryot had to pay; but the Government left him nothing to pay it with. Great credit was taken for the fact that in the Punjab, the only province in the north that remained faithful, the land revenue was only one-fifth of the gross profits of the land, its amount, in other portions of India, being from two-fifths to three -fifths of that produce; but what would have been 1327 the state of things if they had purchased peace in the rest of India at the same price? The whole Government would be insolvent. In the Punjab the income was only sufficient for the ordinary civil expenditure, and for the public works; all the army and general charges had to be borne by the surplus revenue of the provinces that were now in a state of insurrection. If they gave any man carte blanche to go to Bengal and declare that the revenue should be reduced to one-fifth of the produce, they might at once withdraw their army. He was informed that the wretched cultivators were sometimes reduced to such a state as to be obliged to eat the soil they tilled in order to keep off the cravings of starvation. He did not mean to say that that was a normal state of existence. [A laugh.] Hon. Members might laugh, but if they were familiar with the condition of the inhabitants of our Indian empire they would, he was assured, be fully prepared to bear testimony to the substantial accuracy of his statement. In the event of famine they perished on the spot from want of the means of removal. It was the duty of the Government to provide for such emergencies, when they proclaimed their right to take all the produce of the land except what they were pleased to consider a sufficient subsistence for the owner of the soil. These calamities could be foreseen, and ought to be guarded against, as was done in other countries under precisely analogous circumstances. He thought he had said enough to satisfy the House that there was no truth in the contention on the part of the East India Company that they bad produced all the good done in India; but he would make some observations on the details of the Bill. He did not give an unqualified adhesion to them all; he could not accept the proposed arrangement as to patronage as quite sufficient. He did not think the Court of Directors were entitled to any great credit in the question of patronage. They had the disposal, on an average, of 400 cadetships a year, and yet they never applied their patronage to any public purpose, nor listened to the claims of those who returned in sorrow and desolation from India. He did not refer to individual Directors; he spoke of the Court as a body. They treated their patronage as private property. If an application was made the answer was, it could not be entertained, go to an individual Director; so that the widow of some distinguished officer had to 1328 go from door to door until at length, perhaps, she might obtain her object from some Director who had exhausted all his private claims. The noble Lord had proposed a rule which would bring that matter under the cognizance and control of Parliament. The only difference he would suggest was, that instead of giving the appointment to the Council, with power to allot a certain share to the army, the number to be disposed of by the Council should be fixed, and all the rest given to the Indian army. There was another point of very great importance to which he trusted public attention would be directed when the Bill came on for discussion. The noble Lord had shadowed out a mode of checking the accounts and expenditure of India. He (Mr. Ayrton) could not see any just line of demarcation that could be drawn between the expenditure under the control of the Secretary of State for India and that of any other public department; and the best system of control would be to have the home expenditure brought before them in the shape of the Estimates. He believed that the step would be productive of as much advantage to India as those taken in 1833 and 1853. While, therefore, there were certain points of detail in the Bill of the noble Lord to which he could not assent, he felt bound to give to its principle a cordial support, in the belief that the practical operation of that principle, so far from placing the continuance of the Indian empire in doubt, would conduce to its relief from the difficulties that surrounded it, would bring it under the direct influence and control of the people and of Parliament, and commence a new career, by which the Government would in time to come, promote in equal degree the prosperity of the people of India and the advantages which this country ought to derive from its connection and intercourse with that part of Her Majesty's empire.
§ SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONEsaid, that there were two grounds which would induce him to vote against the first reading of this Bill. The first was that, instead of the powers of the Council being given to an independent responsible body drawn from those best acquainted with the subject, they would be transferred to an irresponsible body; for, although the members of the Council were, in the first instance, to be chosen from the Court of Directors, the office must eventually become a political one, given for party purposes. A stronger ground was, the time 1329 at which the Bill was introduced. He believed that it would have a very prejudicial effect in India if the question were brought forward and dealt with at that moment. There was a formidable struggle still going on in that country, and it was well known that the bulk of those engaged in it knew only so much as their leaders wished them to know. They had seen how slowly the effects of the fall of Delhi had penetrated through the country. For weeks and weeks the people would not believe that that event had taken place; and he had no doubt that, in some parts of the country, they did not even now believe that it had fallen. In the course of to-night's debate, Her Majesty's Colonies had been alluded to as being governed in a superior manner to the territories of the East India Company. He (Sir J. Elphinstone) happened to have some knowledge of one of those colonies, the Island of Ceylon; and whereas the East India Company had at this moment some 400 or 500 miles of railway in operation, and a very much greater extent than that in progress of construction, yet, although a railway was projected in Ceylon as far back as the year 1845, it was with the greatest difficulty that it had now at length been brought to the point of survey. Again, whilst the East India Company were taking into consideration the expediency and necessity of doing away with export duties altogether, as trammels upon commerce, and not in accordance with the spirit of the age, the Government of Ceylon had laid a duty of 2½ per cent on export produce, to pay for the projected railway. In the next place, if they looked at the various public offices in the Crown Colonies, where would they find them filled up with men like the Lawrences, the Outrams, and the other distinguished men who, by their actions in India, had shed such brilliancy and glory upon our country? Why Her Majesty's Government had sent out to Ceylon, as Colonial Secretary a gentleman who actually opposed the construction of a railway in the island; and he was the son-in-law of one of the Ministers! Look to Hong Kong. Did the government of the island confer any honour or credit upon this country? He believed that every man who had had an opportunity of seeing how India was governed must look with pride upon those pages of history which he feared were now going to be closed for ever; for, as soon as Her Majesty's Government began to exert over 1330 India that influence which they exercised over the other Colonies, from that moment he apprehended that India would be placed under the rule of a totally different description of men. He was surprised at hearing the noble Lord, in the closing part of his speech, say that we had governed India for 200 years, and that the Company were responsible for the causes of the mutiny. It was not a great many years since, that he (Sir J. Elphinstone) first went to India, about thirty-five or thirty-six years ago, and then we did not possess one-half the extent of territory in India that we do now. The territory of Delhi was acquired only in 1804; and since the year 1817 we had added Deccan, Scinde, Coorg, Cuttack, Chittagong, Pegu, Moulmein, the Punjab, and a variety of other parts of India, which, in acreable extent, were probably about three-fifths of the whole. He was astonished, therefore, that the noble Lord, who, in general, never opened his lips but to instruct and inform them, should, in a speech which must have been the result of much earnest thought, have committed himself to the utterance of such a palpable fallacy. Now he (Sir J. Elphinstone) did not think the House would pass the Bill in its present shape; it appeared to be so extensive a change, and so thoroughly and radically different from what had hitherto proved to be an excellent form of government. Taking the amount of work that had been, done in India during the last twenty years, and the great public works which were still going on there, and which must be carried to completion in a very short time, he was convinced that, when they looked back calmly upon the subject, it would be acknowledged that no Government which had been engaged at the same time in carrying on wars, and acquiring territory, had ever accomplished so much in so brief a period; and he trusted that those energetic and able men who had conducted the government of that country, and whose deeds had reflected such lustre over the arms and the politics of their country, would, if the Bill went to a second reading, receive a fair and honest hearing, and be allowed to clear themselves of the imputations which had been cast upon them, and to show that the mistakes which had been committed in the government of India had proceeded from the Government in this country, and not from the East India Company.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER*Sir, the hon. Member for Hunt- 1331 ingdon (Mr. T. Baring), who has taken the somewhat unusual course of moving an Amendment upon the Motion for leave to introduce this Bill, laid the foundation of his Amendment by presenting to the House an ably drawn and carefully considered petition from the East India Company. Now, Sir, I agree with the hon. Gentleman who lately addressed the House (Mr. Ayrton) that this petition has received fully as much praise as it deserves; for a public document of that kind ought, as he justly remarked, to be distinguished not merely by excellences of composition and style, but should be based on undeniable facts, and should present close and cogent reasoning. Now, there are two main assumptions which run through this document. One, which is perpetually obtruded on our attention, is that we owe to the East India Company—to their policy, to their resources, and to their energy—the acquisition of our Eastern empire; the other assumption is that the Government of the East India Company has been one of the best which the civilized world has produced—that it may be taken as a model and a pattern for the excellence of its administration above all other Governments. Now, before I advert to the remarks of the hon. Member (Mr. T. Baring) I wish to examine how far these two main allegations of the petition can be substantiated. First, as regards our owing to the East India Company the valuable acquisition of our Indian empire, I will not now stop to inquire whether that empire is of the value which is attributed to it. It certainly adds nothing to the wealth of the Government of England; and whether the fact of our exercising this high sovereignty contributes to the trade of this country is a matter of opinion. Those, however, who maintain that we owe an inexhaustible debt of gratitude for the supposed acquisition of India by the Company, are bound to show, if they can, that we derive great benefit from that empire. I wait to hear these proofs—hitherto, I confess, I have not been made acquainted with them; but I fully admit that, the Indian empire having been acquired, the Native Governments having been destroyed, and our Government having superseded them, we have incurred certain obligations towards the people of India which we are bound to fulfil. We have succeeded to the government of the Native States, and that government we are bound to administer to the best of our power. Even for the sake of 1332 the Natives of India we are bound to maintain it. I am not at all questioning the policy of maintaining our Indian empire; I only say that those persons who contend that we owe a deep debt of gratitude to the East India Company for acquiring that empire, if it can be proved that they did acquire it, must begin by showing that we derive from it those enormous advantages which it is supposed to have conferred upon us. But I wholly dispute the doctrine that it was by the policy of the Company that India was acquired. Every person who is acquainted with the history of our relations with India, will concede to me that it has been the invariable doctrine of the Court of Directors, of the Executive Government of this country, and of Parliament, that all wars and all territorial acquisitions in India should, if possible, be avoided. That, I maintain, has been the invariable policy of the Court of Directors from the commencement. When they were a mere trading body, they held that doctrine more peremptorily than they have done since they have become a governing body. It was in defiance, and spite of the injunctions of their employers at home,—it was through the energy of men like Clive, it was through the daring and successful rapacity of governors like Warren Hastings, that the first foundations of our Indian empire were laid. The Company had factories, they had forts, they had a small army, they had a treasury, they had commercial establishments in India, all which were at the disposal of their servants. From the very beginning those servants were an insubordinate and mutinous race. In spite of their employers they acquired territory. They were called upon to make remittances home. What was the easiest way of providing remittances? Why, to plunder a province. The Directors always held the same language—"Be just," they said, "be equitable, avoid war, avoid the acquisition of territory; but do not forget to send us our remittances home." The servants of the Company, at that time, divided from England by a voyage of five or six months, or even more, round the Cape of Good Hope, practically established their independence, and we find reiterated complaints in the early records of the Company of the invariable insubordination and disobedience of their own servants. I maintain then that the foundation of our Indian empire was laid in spite of 1333 the distinct, repeated, and peremptory instructions of the trading Directors in London not to acquire territory. Successive acquisitions were made by Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, and other men acting according to their own policy, and in spite of uniform directions from home. And what was the fate of those Indian conquerors when they returned to England? Take the case of Clive. Lord Clive returned enriched by a noble fortune, not acquired, I regret to say, by noble means. After a few years he was made the object of severe Parliamentary attacks and censures, under the vexation caused by which the put an end to his life. Such was the effect produced by English opinion upon the mind of the founder of our Indian empire, as he is called. Then take the case of Warren Hastings. We know the reception he met with. We know that this House came to a vote for his recall from India. The Directors were prepared to obey that vote, but the Proprietors refused to obey it. The Secretary of State of that day refused to send out the letter of the Proprietors confirming him in his government; and a few years after, on his return to England, he was made the object of that celebrated impeachment in which all the great and splendid talents of the day were employed in denouncing the crimes and misdemeanours of this eminent pro-consul. All the leading statesmen of that time in the House of Commons—Burke, Dundas, Lord North, Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, either were promoters of his accusation or acquiesced in its propriety, and he was placed on his trial by the common consent of Parliament and the country. Looking to all these facts, we must acknowledge it a mistake to suppose that it was the policy of the Court of Directors that gave to us our Indian empire. That empire resulted, in fact, from the irregular and insubordinate energy of some of their servants, using indeed the instruments which the constitution of the Company placed in their hands, but using them in defiance of the constant policy and repeated injunctions of the Directors.
Well, Sir, such was the state of things when the government practically passed out of the hands of the East India Company; for on this point I confess I am entirely at issue with the petition of the Company and the speech of the hon. Member for Huntingdon. Practically the government of India passed out of the hands 1334 of the Company in 1784, and from that time a series of governors appointed under the influence of the Executive Government at home, succeeded. The Governor General who may be said to be the second founder of our Indian empire was Lord Wellesley. He went out to India not by the nomination of the Court of Directors, but of the Executive Government. At this time he was under the restraint of a clause in an Act of Parliament passed expressly to prevent territorial acquisitions in India; and he evaded that Act by the system he introduced of subsidiary treaties. By that system the acquisition of territory was avoided; but the army, and consequently the real sovereignty of the country, passed under the power of the English Government. Lord Wellesley, like his predecessors, acted in evasion of the policy recommended not only by the legislation of Parliament, but repeatedly forced on his attention by the instructions of the Directors. When it suits the purpose of the friends of the Company to represent them as the friends of peace, they tell us that the Company always opposed the wars made by the Governors General. That is true. They have been, to their credit, in one sense the consistent opponents of territorial aggrandisement in India; but, then, if their policy had been carried into effect we should not have had the large Indian empire we now possess. I say that in the first instance we owed our Indian empire to the energetic daring of their servants and to that combination of qualities which distinguish Englishmen wherever they are placed. It was owing to these qualities in the individual servants of the Company that the foundation of our Indian empire was laid; and it was by subsequent Governors General, appointed by the Executive Government at Home, acting in evasion of the policy of the Directors and of Parliament, that territorial acquisitions were accomplished. Therefore, I dispute entirely the truth of the representation that we owe a debt of gratitude to the East India Company for the acquisition of our Indian empire.
I now come to the other point in the petition of the Company; namely, their claiming credit for having exercised their government in India in a manner to command universal admiration, and to render it a model for all Governments on the face of the earth. This is the manner in which the Company speak of themselves in the petition presented to this House— 1335
They feel complete assurance that the more attention is bestowed and the more light thrown upon India and its administration, the more evident it will become that the Government in which they have borne a part has been not only one of the purest in intention, but one of the most beneficent in act ever known among mankind.It must be acknowledged that the character which the Company bestow on themselves is not very remarkable for the moderation of its terms. Let us inquire how far this character rests on the evidence of facts. The Company may be said to have originated with respect to its power at the time of the union of the two Companies, which were consolidated in the reign of William III., and remained substantially a trading Company until the battle of Plassey was fought by Clive, who shortly after laid the foundations of the territorial sovereignty of Bengal, by the acquisition of the duannee? A few years after the Government of England began to make a claim on the Company for a share of their territorial acquisitions, and the Company came to a compromise with the Government, by which they were to pay an annual sum of money, instead of, as proposed by Lord Clive to Lord Chatham, the Crown taking possession of the territorial acquisitions. This state of things continued for a few years, until the abuses prevailing in the administration of the Company attracted the attention of the Legislature; and in 1773, under the Ministry of Lord North, was passed what was called the Regulating Act, by which Parliament first interfered with the local Government of India. By this measure it was attempted to place a control, not on the Company in London, but on the local Government in India. The members of the local Council in India were named in the Act of 1773. Five members were named, and three went out from England to conduct the local Government, two being at the time in India, one of whom was Warren Hastings. The result of that attempt at Parliamentary control was dissensions without end in the Council, duels between two of the members, and a conflict with the Supreme Court; and the experiment ended with a conviction on the part of Parliament that the endeavour to subject the local Government to direct Parliamentary control was a complete failure. I should observe, that by the Act of 1773 power was taken for the Secretary of State and the Board of Treasury to examine all the correspondence received in England from India. Even at that 1336 time the principle of Parliamentary control over the proceedings of the Company was established, and it is material for the House to observe the fact, inasmuch as an assumption is made in popular arguments that Parliament for the first time intefered to control the administration of the Company by the Act of 1784. That is a mistake, for by the Regulating Act of 1773 a control was taken for the Crown over the nomination of the members of the Council whenever any vacancies occurred; and power also was taken for the Secretary of State and the Board of Treasury to inspect all correspondence received from India. In a few years, however, it was found that those powers were not sufficient, and, in 1781, Lord North carried a Bill by which he enlarged the superintending authority of the Government, and enabled them to control the correspondence sent from the Board of Directors to the authorities in India. This was, in fact, the germ of the system which was afterwards promulgated in Mr. Pitt's Act of 1784. Notwithstanding these successive interferences of Parliamentary control, it was found that the administration of India did not improve—complaints multiplied; and Committees of the House were appointed in 1782 and 1783, who made a long succession of Reports, which any gentleman who may be curious to read old documents of that description will find included in four very large folio volumes, compared with which our modern blue books are quite puny and degenerate. The whole subject of the Indian administration was at that time investigated by two Committees of this House, one of them presided over by Mr. Burke and the other by Mr. Dundas, who was afterwards President of the Board of Control. Those Committees made, I believe, not less than seventeen Reports. I state that fact for the purpose of showing that, at the time to which I refer, the whole subject of Indian affairs underwent a most careful investigation by this House. Those, therefore, who suppose that the administration of the East India Company during the ten years from 1773 to 1784 was one course of uninterrupted prosperity must be singularly uninformed in the Parliamentary history of that period. I will take the liberty of reading an extract from Resolutions which were moved in this House in 1784 by Mr. Burke, in which he describes the result of these Parliamentary inquiries; and if it were necessary, if the truth of what I am now stating should be 1337 disputed, I could produce a multitude of passages from the Reports and from speeches made at that time which would support every one of the sweeping condemnations in the passage I am about to read. I ask the attention of the House to this summary of the investigations then made, inasmuch as I think it will show them how far the character which the Company give to themselves for their administration is true during the time when the administration was really that of the Company—when the pure, simple, unmixed management of the Company and their officers existed, with a very imperfect control, though with some control even then, on the part of the Executive Government. These are the terms of the Resolution moved by Mr. Burke in 1784:—The result of the Parliamentary inquiries has been that the East India Company was found totally corrupted and totally perverted from the purposes of its institution, whether political or commercial; that the powers of war and peace given by the Charter had been abused by kindling hostilities in every quarter for the purposes of rapine; that almost all the treaties of peace they have made have only given cause to so many breaches of public faith; that countries once the most flourishing are reduced to a state of indigence, decay, and depopulation, to the diminution of our strength, and to the infinite dishonour of our national character; that the laws of this kingdom are notoriously and almost in every instance despised; that the servants of the Company, by the purchase of qualifications to vote in the general Court, and, at length, by getting the Company itself deeply in their debt, have obtained the entire and absolute mastery in the body by which they ought to have been ruled and coerced. Thus their malversations in office are supported instead of being checked by the Company. The whole of the affairs of that body are reduced to a most perilous situation; and many millions of innocent and deserving men who are under the protection of this nation, and who ought to be protected by it, are oppressed by a most despotic and rapacious tyranny. The Company and their servants have strengthened themselves by this confederacy, they have set at defiance the authority and admonitions of this House employed to reform them; and when this House had selected certain principal delinquents, whom they declared it the duty of the Company to recall, the Company held out its legal privileges against all reformation, positively refused to recall them, and supported those who had fallen under the just censure of this House with new and stronger marks of approbation.Now, I affirm that this language, strong as it may sound at this moment to a House not familiar with the scenes of rapine, of extortion, and of every species of abomination which had been brought out in evidence before the Committees of 1782 and 1783, is a perfectly faithful representation of the opinions which prevailed in Parliament at that time with respect to the 1338 government of the East India Company. I most confidently maintain that this notion which has got abroad—this sentiment—of the great debt of gratitude which we owe to the East India Company is one that was not only entirely unknown, but most alien to the feelings of the generation who knew what the Company was before Parliament had interfered to control it. I do most confidently maintain that no civilized Government ever existed on the face of this earth which was more corrupt, more perfidious, and more rapacious than the Government of the East India Company from the years 1765 to 1784. That was the interval between the period when it first acquired territorial sovereignty and the time when it was placed under Parliamentary control. During that interval the Company exercised the functions of trader and governor in combination, with most imperfect control on the part of the Government and Parliament of this country; and I appeal most confidently to the records of Parliament, to the evidence in the reports and documents of this House, for conclusive proof damnatory of the character of the East India Company as a political body. With these documents before me, I confess that I cannot read without astonishment the character which the Company have bestowed upon themselves, founded as that character is, entirely upon their acts since the time when they were subjected to Par-liamentarysupervision—since the time when there has been a Board of Control to superintend the proceedings of the Directors in London—since the Governor General and the other Governors of India have been appointed, not by the Directors themselves, but by the Crown and Executive Government of this country, subject to public opinion and to Parliamentary responsibility. Now, all that can be said in favour of the Company dates from the year 1784. I challenge them to find one bright page in their annals during the whole period when they were not subject to Parliamentary control. It is by confounding the acts of two periods—by suppressing their conduct in bygone days, which have passed from the memory of the present generation, and the records of which are to be found chiefly in histories written by servants of the Company, and therefore not weighing with very great force on their misdoings—and by concentrating our vision upon subsequent times, when they had become a mere subordinate body acting under the control of the Executive Government,—that they are 1339 enabled to claim for themselves this extraordinary credit.Now, let us briefly follow the history of the Company from the year 1784. We know that before that time Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke—the latter of whom had been the chairman of one of the Committees to which I have referred—who was deeply impressed with the enormities of the Company's Government, and who, in the subsequent impeachment of Warren Hastings brought under the attention of the House of Lords, in speeches destined to be coeval with the English language, the misdeeds of the Governor whose acts he impugned—we know that Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke combined to frame the clauses of the first India Bill, which nearly annihilated the rule of the Company. There was not at that time any feeling of sympathy with the Company on the part of the people of this country; but the defeat of the measure was attributable to alarm respecting the Indian patronage, and to the belief that, as the Commissioners for India were named in the Bill, and were the partisans of the Executive Government, an unconstitutional power would be conferred upon them. Notwithstanding this prejudice, the Bill passed the House of Commons, but it was thrown out by the House of Lords, in consequence, as was believed, of the personal influence of the King, who took alarm at the independent authority which he thought would be conferred by the measure upon his Minister. The Bill was not defeated from any sympathy on the part of the country with the Company; but Mr. Pitt, with great dexterity, took advantage of the alarm which that measure excited, from the notion that Mr. Fox intended to avail himself improperly of the power which the Bill would have conferred upon the Government, and the Ministry were defeated. The Government fell; Mr. Pitt succeeded them, and he introduced that system of a mixed government which has lasted in a certain form down to the present day. Any gentleman who will take the trouble to read the speech in which Mr. Pitt introduced his measure will see that he laid it down as a principle that there was an overwhelming and imperative necessity for legislating upon the subject of India—that the public opinion of that time absolutely required that the East India Company should not be left to continue in the exercise of its uncontrolled powers. Mr. Pitt having thrown out the Government of Mr. Fox upon the previous 1340 Bill, left the East India Company ill the possession of its powers, both as respects the government and the trade, but he created a Board of Control which was to predominate in all respects over the acts of the Directors. Now the House will observe that the effect of the institution of that Board of Control was wholly to alter the character of the East India Company. Up to this time the East India Company, with the exception of those rudiments of Parliamentary interference which I have described, was a trading Company, exercising sovereign powers over certain provinces in India. The institution of the Board of Control, placed the East India Company at once, with respect to its governing powers, in a purely subordinate position. They were from that time bound to obey every order which the Board of Control chose to issue. They retained, no doubt, the initiative, and practically they continued to exercise great influence over the affairs of India, but legally and constitutionally they were reduced to perfect subordination, and they were placed completely under the control of this department of the Government. In 1793, Mr. Dundas, who was then President of the Board of Control, brought in a Bill of great length, in which he consolidated all the existing enactments on the subject of the Company, giving them greater definiteness and greater precision; and he brought to complete perfection the system of the double government originated in 1784. He renewed the Company's charter for twenty years; and in that condition it remained until the year 1813. In 1813 the opinions on the subject of free trade had spread more widely in the country, the impatience of the trading community at the double monopoly exercised by the East India Company made itself felt, and the Government of the day determined to propose the abolition of its monopoly of the trade with India, preserving, however, its monopoly of the China trade. That mighty change, so far as the East India Company were concerned, was introduced in 1813. They were not prohibited from trading with India; but their monopoly was gone. That, in fact, was the first great stone struck out of the edifice of the East India Company. They had originally been merely a trading Company; their sovereign powers had come incidentally; they acquired incidentally great territorial revenues; but their main and paramount character was 1341 that of traders. If the House of Commons of that day had acted under the influence of feelings which we are told now we ought to respect,—if it had been the belief of the Parliament of that time that a boundless debt of gratitude was owing to the East India Company for their acquisitions of territory in India,—can any one doubt that their trading monopoly would have been retained as one of the most precious flowers of their prerogative? Parliament, however, was bold enough to lay its profane hands on the ark of the East India Company, and they were deprived of the monopoly of the Indian trade. Deprived of the monopoly of the Indian trade, the Company was distanced by private traders, and I believe they exercised but little of their trading privileges after the time they lost their monopoly. But they retained the monopoly of the China trade for another twenty years. At last came the year 1833. In that year Mr. Charles Grant, now Lord Glenelg, was President of the Board of Control. In proposing the Bill of that year to the House of Commons he stated that the Government had two matters for consideration: one was whether the Company should retain their governing powers; the other, whether they should retain their trading powers. Some thought they should be deprived of both. The Government came to the conclusion that the whole of their trading powers should be abolished by law, that they should cease altogether to be a trading Company, and that not only should their monopoly of the China trade be abolished, but that they should be prohibited by law from trading either with India or with China; but he stated, however, that the Government did not propose to interfere with the governing powers of the Company, subject, of course, to the control of the Executive Government.
Observe the changes which the East India Company had then undergone under the legislation of Parliament. Having originally been only a trading Company—having acquired incidentally governing powers, their governing powers were first placed under the control of a Board of the Executive Government, so that they became only subordinate governors; but they retained their original capacity for trade. In 1833 they were prohibited by law from trading, so that by that time they had lost altogether their original functions as traders, and they retained only 1342 a portion of governing power in a subordinate capacity. That was the change which under the legislation of Parliament the character and power of the East India Company underwent. Be it remarked that it was a constant diminution of authority and power, and a perpetual invasion of their functions, under the authority of Parliament. Again in 1833, the sentimental view of the question was altogether overlooked—nothing was heard of the debt of gratitude due to the East India Company, but in consequence of more enlightened views on the subject of freedom of trade which then prevailed, as well as of representations of the mercantile classes, the whole trade of China and India was thrown open. The Company then obtained another lease of twenty years, expiring in 1853. During that time they were the mere ghost, as it were, of the former Company, which was once sovereign, and which once enjoyed the monopoly of great branches of trade; they became a mere governing body of Directors, all their trading power was gone, and the controlling power and the appointment of their principal officers were vested in the Executive. They continued in that inferior position for twenty years under the control of the Government in England, the Ministry sending out instructions, and all the principal authorities of India being appointed, not by the Company as originally, hut by Government. Then came the renewal of 1853. There was nothing in the circumstances of that time to call for interference. The twenty years had been tranquil, and the administration had gone on in a manner not to incur the censure of the House or of the Government; in a greatly improved spirit, owing, as I must maintain, in contradiction to the allegations which have been made, to the vigilance of Parliament and to the effective control of the India Board. But even under those favourable circumstances Parliament did not renew the Charter without further invasion of the original constitution of the Company. By the Act of that year one-third of the Court of Directors was formed of nominees of the Crown, so that only two-thirds remained to be elected by the proprietors of India Stock; and there was good reason for this alteration. When the East India Company existed as traders to the East Indies it was reasonable that persons who subscribed their money to the common stock, and advanced their capital to carry on their ventures to the East, should 1343 have a voice in the election of the Directors, exactly upon the same principle as applies to the direction of any other joint-stock company. It is the same principle by which shareholders of railway companies elect a board of Directors, or shareholders of the Bank of England, for example, elect the Directors of the Bank. But what was the position of the proprietors of East India Stock, with reference to the Government of India, after the Company had ceased to be a trading-Company? Any person may become an East India proprietor by purchase of stock in the open market, and there is therefore now no necessary connection between the members of the Court of Proprietors and the affairs of India. Originally the Proprietors were persons who had advanced capital for carrying on trade with India; but at present they are only proprietors of so many shares of a guaranteed stock, and the purchase of that stock gives them no more real connection with the affairs of India than the purchase of so much Three per Cent. Stock. The constituency which elect the Board of Directors is an accidental body, and has no real relation with the interests or Government of India. The Board of Directors themselves are the mere spectre and phantom of that body which used to carry on the whole trade with India and China, and the Proprietors are reduced to the condition of mere holders of an ordinary stock. This is the state to which successive legislative changes have brought that body. The fallacy which pervades the petition of the Company is this:—It speaks of the East India Company as one and indivisible—as if from the time of the battle of Plassey down to the last renewal of the Charter it had remained unchanged in character, functions, and influence. The truth is, that it has undergone as important changes during those 100 years as the English constitution between the Heptarchy and the reign of Queen Victoria. It is therefore the most transparent sophism—it is offering an insult to our understanding—to apply arguments founded upon the original and unchanged state of the Company to the Company in its modern and altered form.
The next question which we have to consider is, whether there is anything in the existing state of things which calls upon Parliament to acquiesce in the indefinite continuation of the present constitution of the East India Company? Be 1344 it observed, that from 1793—the previous renewals having been generally for shorter periods—the East India Company had been renewed by periods of twenty years. Prom 1793 its lease lasted till 1813; from that year it was renewed to 1833, and its third lease expired in 1853. But in that year Parliament did not seem inclined to grant a fourth twenty years' lease, and the manner in which the Company's existence was continued was by the prolongation of the Company "until Parliament should otherwise provide." Practically all Acts of Parliament are passed with that condition. The Habeas Corpu9 Act only lasts until Parliament shall otherwise provide. Therefore, although the Company might seem to be a loser in some respects by not obtaining a definite renewal for twenty years, yet practically by that provision it was renewed in perpetuity unless Parliament should otherwise determine. That is the statutory tenure of the Company, and the question now is, whether Parliament, looking to the existing state of affairs, should not "otherwise provide," and put an end to the present powers of the East India Company.
I entirely subscribe to that which was said by my noble Friend at the head of the Government, in introducing this subject—that there is no ground for imputing any blame to the East India Company with respect to the present insurrection. I do not believe it possible to show that any vigilance on the part of the Directors in London could have guarded against the occurrence of that mutiny, or that when it did occur it would have been possible to suppress it by measures more vigorous or rapid than those which have been taken. I do not in the smallest degree impute blame to the Directors of the East India Company for the existing state of things; but I maintain that the existing state of things has brought forcibly under the view of the Executive Government the clumsiness and inefficiency of the present form of the Home Government of India. It is a maxim in mechanics that nothing is stronger in a body than its weakest part. It is not at moments of calm and prosperity that defects in our institutions are discovered. It is only when the stress comes that we are able to try the strength of the vessel—it is in times of difficulty that we perceive the defects of our institutions, and I cannot conceive how hon. Gentlemen find it hard to comprehend that an institution should escape attention 1345 and be suffered to continue in a defective state at times of peace and quietude, but that the Government charged with the responsibility of affairs having discovered the weakness in the governmental system of India should come forward and ask that it should be strengthened in moments of danger. The East India Company may talk of their independent powers and their own resources, but they cannot regard the Home Government at least as otherwise than created exclusively by Parliament; for let me remind the Company, as regards their Home Government, they are but as the breath of the nostrils of Parliament. They enjoy no power but that which Parliament has conferred upon them, defined and circumscribed by innumerable restrictions and limits. The Home Government of India is a compound body, formed of the supreme controlling power of the India Board and the subordinate agency of the Directors sitting in Leadenhall Street. These two bodies act and react upon each other in. a manner defined by Act of Parliament. There is nothing in this compound machine which Parliament may not at any moment remodel; and the whole experience of that system shows that it is embarrassed by needless delays, that it encourages procrastination, divides responsibility, and throws obscurity on the seat of power. It will hardly be disputed that wherever Parliament confers power it always intends to annex to it responsibility; but I affirm that the converse of this proposition also is true, and that if Parliament wishes to exact responsibility it must also concentrate power. Why is it that Parliament has always a difficulty in following up responsibility with respect to Indian administration? It is because the seat of power, and consequently of responsibility, is indistinct. Something is wrong. Parliament asks who are to blame? What does the President of the Board of Control say? He tells you that the matter was brought under the consideration of the Court of Directors; the Court took some time considering it; their views were not distinct, so that the opportunity for action was lost; or a reference was made by them to the Governor General, and the answer was delayed. If you go to the Court of Directors, they will say that the matter was referred to the President of the India Board; they will perhaps declare he did not give a very clear answer, that there was a difference of opinion between them, discussion arose, and 1346 in the meantime the opportunity was lost. This is the way in which Parliament is met when it seeks to hold some one responsible for the administration of India. Without any unkindly feeling towards the two hon. Gentlemen (Mr. Mangles and Sir F. Currie) who are Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors—my intercourse with whom has been of the most amicable description, and I regret very much that any measure which I should support should be in any way personally displeasing either to the hon. Member for Guildford or to the Vice Chairman, Sir P. Currie—I cannot but think that it would be far more satisfactory to Parliament if they were able distinctly to fix upon an executive authority in this country a clear responsibility for every act of Indian administration. On these grounds I think it desirable that the present system should be abrogated, and that instead of having one authority sitting in Cannon Row and another in Leadenhall Street, the two should be brought together, and a Council for India framed in the manner proposed by my noble Friend (Viscount Palmerston). The hon. Gentleman the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. T. Baring) objects to that plan, and maintains that the Council will not be an independent body, in as much as the members will be appointed by the Crown, and therefore cannot be in the same independent position as the present Direction. Let us look more closely at that objection. In the first place, one-third of the Directors are already nominated by the Crown. But the whole Court of Directors is in a perfectly dependent and subordinate position; they have no power whatever of making any remonstrances they may offer effectual. It is not as if they were a co-ordinate power with the Board of Control—like that of the House of Lords with the House of Commons, each of which exercises an authority which acts and re-acts upon the other by an equality of privileges; for, in the case of the East India Company and the Board of Control, the one body is subordinate to the other, and it is an abuse of language to talk of the independent authority of the Court of Directors when it can be completely over-ruled by the action of the Board of Control. It is true that we propose that the members of this Council should be nominated by the Crown. Nevertheless, we impose strict qualifications upon the persons chosen; they will hold their office for a term of years, and during good 1347 behaviour; they must be men of mature judgment, who have been in India, and are of competent fortune—altogether we take measures which will, I believe, secure that the members of the Council shall not be such more mutes—such humble dependents and followers of the President as the hon. Member supposes. Looking at the character of English gentlemen in such a position, who have generally a strong sense of duty and a strong disposition where they have a clear opinion to express that opinion freely, I do think that the members of the Council, as we propose to constitute it, would give independent advice to the President; and that advice would, moreover, be given by them individually, Instead of being shut up within the walls of the India-house, their proceedings never coming before the public, and never reaching the ears of the President of the Board, they would have access to him singly, they would bring their individual opinions to bear upon him, and I believe that more useful and effective advice would be tendered to the Executive by a Council thus composed than by the so-called independent body as it now exists.
Another argument which is constantly repeated is that the present system acts as a sort of blind to Parliament, and that the confusion of vision which is occasioned by the uncertainty of the seat of responsibility, and by the difficulty which Parliament has in finding it out, makes it dangerous and unsafe for Parliament to interfere. That is an argument which has considerable weight with a large number of people, although I do not expect to hear it stated in distinct terms in this House, because it is not flattering to Members to be told that it is not safe to trust them with such an authority. The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. T. Baring) alluded to that argument when he said that he hoped never to see the day when India would be made the shuttlecock of party. Now I believe that if questions relating to India come to be discussed in earnest and with vigour, we must resign ourselves to the conviction that these questions will occasionally become the shuttlecock of party. It is one of the conditions of our institutions. But let me remind the hon. Gentleman and the indiscreet advocates of the East India Company who urge that topic, that if any great improvements were introduced into the very corrupt and very rapacious go- 1348 vernment which that Company exercised previous to the year 1784, it was in consequence of factious debates in this House—it was in consequence of the vigilant examination of Committees of this House—it was in consequence of the impeachment of high-handed delinquents who had plundered the provinces of India, that this amelioration was brought about. I am quite aware that power such as this House exercises is liable to be abused; but if I know anything of the character of this House, it is that they understand better than any deliberative Assembly ever did before the limits which bound the useful exercise of their authority. We have seen experiments of constitutional Governments on the Continent in which deliberative Assemblies, dazzled by the possession of a power new to them, have lost their equilibrium and have attempted to do things which it is impossible for a body of men to do with success. It is the character of this House, on the contrary, in the conduct of public affairs, to understand the extent to which its powers can be beneficially exercised. This House, too, has had a lesson with respect to the difficulty of understanding Indian administration within the last eight months. They have seen that men who have grown gray in the conduct of Indian affairs—who are acquainted with the Native languages, and who have an accurate knowledge of the character, the customs, and the religion of the people of India, were completely at fault—were caught sleeping—were unable, even when the events had occurred, to interpret them, or to say what was the true cause of their occurrence. It is my belief that the Members of this House will be so free from presumption and arrogance; I think that they possess such an amount of wise modesty, that, looking to what has lately occurred in India, they will not be in a hurry to seize the reins into their hands, or to snatch the helm from persons who have proved that they can safely be trusted with Indian affairs, and who, by their knowledge and experience, are calculated to exercise a beneficial influence upon the administration of the empire. I am, therefore, far from sharing in the alarms about making India the shuttle-cock of faction. I look with great satisfaction to the prospect of a more stringent and attentive scrutiny of Indian affairs by this House; I wish to see the responsibility for Indian administration concentrated within a 1349 narrow sphere; I wish to see that responsibility under the clear control of this House, and I do not doubt that the result of the change will be an improvement in the government of India. I do not expect that this House will undertake to pronounce with confidence on difficult questions of Indian policy without due inquiry, and without the advice of judges competent to lead them to a safe conclusion; or that they will hasten to overthrow existing establishments to subvert the customs and prejudices of the Natives, to sweep away their religious institutes, or to violate those wholesome maxims of conservative administration which the East India Company, much to their credit, have hitherto pretty generally observed.
I must apologise to the House for the length of time during which I have trespassed upon them. There is one point, however, upon which I have a few words to say—the question of patronage. It was the rock on which Mr. Fox's India Bill was wrecked, and it has always been considered the great obstacle in the way of Indian improvement. People said, "There is no Government that we can trust with the Indian patronage; it is a means of corruption too dangerous to beconfided to any Minister, and we will maintain this anomalous Company in existence because it solves the problem of keeping the patronage of India out of the hands of Government." This is the sort of argument which seems to induce many persons to desire the maintenance of the East India Company. Now, hero let mo observe that with regard to the whole of the civil service the Bill which I trust will shortly be on our table makes no alteration. By the Act of 1853 the whole of the admissions to the civil service are thrown open to competition, and that most valuable part of the Indian patronage is beyond the reach of either Directoral or Ministerial corruption. With regard to the appointments to the principal offices in India no alteration is made. The Governorships remain untouched. As to the Members of Council, they are at present appointed by the Court of Directors; but the Bill which my noble Friend desires to introduce proposes to transfer those appointments to the Governors of the Presidencies. I have heard some observations as to the danger of making that change; but the choice lay between conferring the appointments on the Crown or giving them to the Governors of the Presidencies. If we had merely 1350 proposed to transfer the appointments in India to the Crown it would have been said that we were seeking to make this change simply to increase the power and influence of the Government. That part of the Bill which relates to these appointments is not a vital part of it, and it can hereafter undergo discussion if objected to. There remains the question of the cadetships. They are now in the gift of the Directors. They are by law conferred on the majority of the Court of Directors. The practice, I believe, is to divide them among the individual Directors. My noble Friend proposes to confer them upon the majority of the Council. If the Council should think fit they may distribute them among themselves severally, as is now done by the Directors; but, whatever course they may adopt, there will be no increase of the patronage of the Government; and therefore, looking at the high offices in the civil service, and in the law, and the writer-ships and the cadetships, being thus disposed of, it cannot be said that the effect of the Bill will be to confer any increase of patronage on the Crown. Before I dismiss the subject, I must be permitted to say that I cannot coincide with the views of those who think that the existing Government of India is to be maintained in a particular form, and that the power of the Directors is to be continued merely for the purpose of distributing the patronage amongst particular classes of the English community. I should wish to see the cadetships, and all other appointments in India, in whosoever gift they may be, distributed to persons the most worthy to receive them, and to exercise their powers in the manner most conducive to the happiness of the Natives of India. I cannot hear without regret the arguments of those who maintain that the patronage of India is the heritage of the people of England—that it is something to be distributed among Englishmen for their own benefit, without reference to the Government of India, and as if the interests and feelings of the Natives of India were to be left wholly out of the question. with regard to the arguments which have been used in reference to the time at which this Bill is brought forward, I cannot persuade myself but that the House, in voting upon this question, will found its opinion on the merits of my noble Friend's proposition—that they will decide by considering the present state of the government of India, and how it may best be improved— 1351 and that they will not allow themselves to be turned aside by the dilatory arguments which have been used by the hon. Member for Huntingdon. He has met this Motion, not by a negative, but by moving that it is not at present expedient to legislate for the Government of India, If he had said, "I maintain that the present form of the government of India is good, and that the present division between the Board of Control and the Board of Directors ought to be coeval with the British Constitution, and is an admirable composition fur the home Government of India," I could understand his arguments. But I cannot understand a gentleman coming forward and saying, "Here is a plan proposed by the Government for the abolition of the East India Company, and the transfer of its powers to the Crown; I am not prepared to say that the present system is one which ought to be made permanent, but I ask you to postpone your decision upon the question." Is it possible to conceive a more inconvenient state of things than that which would arise if his Amendment were carried? Here you have a measure of the Government virtually brought before Parliament—because, although the exact clauses may not be presented to the House, nevertheless the statement of my noble Friend has laid clearly before the House all its main features. The friends and advocates of the Company have not the courage to say, "We think that the present form of Government ought to be continned," even for a few years; they will not go the length of saying that it ought to be continued for the shortest period of time, nor express their opinion of its excellence; but they simply say, "This is an inconvenient moment for coming to a decision." Arguments of that sort can lead to no satisfactory result. They do not place the East India Company upon a firm foundation, or remove those apprehensions which the people of this country entertain as to the Government of India, and which will be removed if this Bill should pass into a law. The hon. Gentleman would leave everything relating to that subject in an uncertain and equivocal state; and I cannot persuade myself that it will be possible for him to induce the House to agree to his Amendment, which neither affirms nor denies the desirableness of introducing the Bill proposed by my noble Friend. It is a most unusual course to refuse the Government permission to lay upon the table of the House a Bill embody- 1352 ing their views upon any of the great questions of the day, particularly when the question is such a one as the present, and to which the Government have necessarily devoted much, and almost continual, attention for several consecutive months. If this Bill had been introduced into the House of Lords instead of the House of Commons, it would have been the privilege of any member of the Government, without asking permission of the House, to lay it upon the table. But that which is done by privilege in the House of Lords can only be done by consent in the House of Commons—a rule which in our more busy assembly may be convenient for the despatch of business—but it would be a most unprecedented exercise of the privileges of this House, if permission were refused to lay upon the table for consideration a Bill upon this important subject. The question which we have now to consider is, not whether we shall assent to the principles of the Bill, but whether permission shall be given to my noble Friend to submit its provisions to the consideration of the House. I cannot but anticipate that the House, discarding all party and political views upon a question in which such vast interests are concerned, will permit this measure, which leaves intact the machinery of the Government of India—to be introduced.
There is one part of my noble Friend's speech which has been misunderstood by the hon. Gentleman. He argued as if the proposition of my noble Friend would make changes in the Government of India. Undoubtedly, if we did not believe that this Bill would improve the government of India, we should not ask the House to permit its introduction; but what my noble Friend stated, and what I believe to be true, is that it makes no alteration in the machinery of the local Government of India. It leaves everything exactly as it is. It alters the name under which the powers are exercised, but it leaves the governors of provinces, their councils, the civil servants, the courts of justice, the financial administration, the collection of revenue, and in fact all the local institutions and regulations, precisely as they now are. That is what my noble Friend meant when he said it would not interfere with the local Government of India. It will consolidate the home Government in this country. That is a change which can be effected very simply and under our immediate inspec- 1353 tion. It endangers no interests in India—on the contrary, it necessarily creates both the appearance and reality of strength; and there is no reason whatever, why, looking at the circumstances in which we are placed, and at the provisions of the Bill, this should not be regarded as an opportune occasion for its introduction.
MR. MANGLESsaid, he came down to the House without the slightest intention of opening his lips that evening, and when he did speak he intended to have confined himself to that part of the question which had been brought forward by his hon. Friend opposite—namely, whether or not this was the proper time for bringing the question forward. But after the very able speech of his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and especially that portion of it in which he spoke so very unequivocally of the early administration of the Company, he could not remain without offering a few words to the House in opposition to the statements the right hon. Gentleman had made. Although they all knew the great historical attainments of his right hon. Friend, and how difficult it must be to attempt to answer him on the spur of the moment, yet there were some of his statements which appeared to him (Mr. Mangles) so glaringly opposed to the facts, that he could not refrain from making some attempt to answer them. In the first place, the right hon. Gentleman expressed some doubts whether India was of any advantage to this country, and whether the trade of India might not not have been as great at this moment if India had remained in the hands of Native Princes; but no one who knew India would express such doubts. Under their rule the whole of the lower Provinces of Bengal would not have been covered with indigo as they were, nor would tea have been cultivated to such a degree as to promise shortly to become an article of large exportation from India. The reason it is not so already was, that the tea was so good that it was bought up in India at prices which could not be obtained here. There were also many other articles of trade and commerce which the interference of the Native Princes would have completely intercepted by their vexatious transit duties and other tedious obstructions. It was, in fact, impossible for any one who understands these matters to believe that the trade of India would be the same if the country had remained under the dominion of the Native Princes. When the right hon. Gentleman 1354 affected to doubt whether England derived any direct advantage from the possession of India, he must have forgotton the sum of from £3,000,000 to £5,000,000 which was sent to this country, not as tribute, but as a necessary consequence of the dominion of India. This sum was devoted to the payment of the dividends on East India Stock, to retired allowances to officers of the Civil Service, to the half-pay of the Army, to the Government for the Queen's troops in India, for military stores, &c. This sum of nearly £5,000,000 per annum, although not a tribute, was yet in the nature of a tribute which was poured into the coffers of this country over and above the returns derived from our trade with India. The right hon. Gentleman also denied the statement in the Petition of the Company, that the dominions of India had been acquired by the East India Company. He said that the Company had always been opposed to those conquests which had added province after province to our dominions. Now he (Mr. Mangles) questioned that as an historical fact. No doubt, the Company had always opposed conquests which brought no addition to their revenue, but rather added to the amount of their debts. His right hon. Friend had illustrated his arguments by an example which had quite startled him (Mr. Mangles). The right hon. Gentleman had pointed out how the great conquerors of India—Clive and Warren Hastings—had been treated when they returned to England. He expected that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have shown that it was the Company, who were said to be so hostile to their acquisitions in India, who had persecuted these governors. But no such thing. It was Parliament, and not the East India Company, that had persecuted Clive and Warren Hastings. The argument was that the Company were inimical to conquest, but certainly it was an historical fact that it was the Parliament of England who drove Clive to suicide by their persecution, and who reduced Hastings to poverty by their protracted impeachment. Nor was it correct to say that the Company had found fault with Lord Wellesley for his conquests, except that the course he pursued had brought him into such pecuniary difficulties that it was almost impossible to carry on the Government. It was on record that during his administration, that during his conquests the Company had been unable to borrow money at Madras, and that the 1355 civil servants of the Company, being nine months in arrear with their salaries, were obliged to send their silver spoons to the bazaar to raise the means of procuring the necessaries of life. His right hon. Friend had also referred to the government of India before Parliament assumed a share in it, and he had challenged the East India Government to show one bright page in their annals prior to the time when the government of India had been placed under Parliamentary control. Now, be (Mr. Mangles) had only his memory to help him, and yet, he thought that the history of India would show that there had been good government before that period, and that many great reforms had been accomplished—reforms no doubt rendered necessary by the abuses and enormities committed. But let the House remember the state of English morality at that time, when the slave trade was flourishing, and when so many political abuses were rampant. Let them recollect the trading justices, the Fleet parsons and their time, to what was done by Clive in 1765. What had been said of Lord Clive when he went out in 1765 to take the government of Bengal? Lord Macaulay described in glowing terms his conduct on that occasion. He said—
Clive redeemed his pledge. He remained in India about a year and a-half; and in a short time effected one of the most extensive, difficult, and salutary reforms that ever was accomplished by a statesman. He had it in his power to triple his splendid fortune; to connive at abuses, while pretending to put them down; to conciliate the good will of all the English in India by giving up to their rapacity a helpless and timid race, who knew not where lay the island which sent forth their oppressors, and whose complaints had little chance of being heard across 15,000 miles of ocean. …. But he had chosen the good part, he called up all the force of his mind for battle far harder than that of Plassey. At first success seemed hopeless, but soon all obstacles began to bend before that iron courage and that reluctant will. The receiving of presents from the Natives was strictly prohibited. The private trade of the servants of the Company was put down.The noble Lord in another part said—From Olive's third visit to India dates the purity of the administration of our Eastern empire. When he landed at Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a place to which Englishmen were sent to get rich, by any means, in the shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and unsparing war on that gigantic system of oppression, extortion, and corruption…If the reproach of the Company and its servants have been taken away; if in India the yoke of foreign masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter than that of any Native dynasty, if to that gang of public robbers, which formerly spread terror through the whole plain of Bengal, has succeeded a body of functionaries not more highly distinguished by ability 1356 and diligence, than by integrity, disinterestedness, and public spirit; if we now see such men as Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, after leading victorious armies, after making and deposing Kings, return, proud of their honourable poverty, from a land which once held out to every greedy factor the hope of boundless wealth, the praise is in no small degree due to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of conquerors. But it is found on a better list, in the list of those who have done and suffered much for the happiness of mankind.Was not that a bright page in the history of India. The same historian says of Hastings:—His internal administration with all its blemishes, gives him a title to be considered one of the most remarkable men in our history. He dissolved the double Government—" [A laugh.]Yes, as the noble Lord went on to explain—He transferred the direction of affairs to English hands. Out of frightful anarchy he educed at, least a rude and imperfect order.The man who educed order out of anarchy certainly deserved some credit; and yet these were events which took place during the period when the East India Company were acting without any control of Parliament. After the challenge of the right hon. Gentleman, he was anxious to say a few words as to the time which the Government had chosen for the introduction of this measure. They had brought it forward while the mutiny was still raging in Bengal. He was no alarmist. He had never doubted that, under Providence, the mutiny would be put down by our army; but it was not yet put down, and he feared it would not be suppressed so speedily as some persons imagined. The greater part of Oude was still in the hands of the mutineers, and so was Rohilcund; and in such circumstances he contended that the present was a most inopportune time to propose so great a change as this. The change in the home Government could not but react upon India, and he feared that the effect upon the Native mind would be very injurious. There was only one part of the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Devonport (Sir E. Perry) to which he could give his cordial assent, and that was where he spoke with generous warmth of the conduct of Lord Canning, and the misconduct of those who had assailed Lord Canning with abuse for standing forward as the protector and defender of the Native population. His hon. and learned Friend spoke with just warmth of the "truculent conduct" of those who were calling for indiscriminate vengeance in India; but the inference which his hon. and learned Friend drew from the behaviour of these persons was just the reverse of that 1357 which he (Mr. Mangles) had drawn from it. His hon. and learned Friend said the change proposed by the Government would have a most salutary effect in strengthening the position of Lord Canning and putting down the line of conduct against which he had so strongly protested; but his belief was that the effect produced would be precisely the contrary. The very men who had shown this violence towards the Native population, who had denounced every Mahomedan in the country as a traitor to the British Government, and who had reviled the Governor General for his efforts to protect the loyal Natives, were those who had petitioned the Queen and that House to abolish the rule of the East India Company. Now, would not the loyal Natives of India at once see that these two courses had been taken by the same men? Would they not see that they had petitioned for the abolition of the power of the Company, and that an end should be put to the rule of Lord Canning because he had protected them against the violence of his own countrymen? and would they not say, "If these men have been successful in putting down the Company they will be equally successful in keeping us in a state of oppression, and in reducing Bengal to the condition of the slaves in the Southern States of America?" He wished, before sitting down, to say a few words on what he would call, for brevity's sake, the missionary question, though he approached it with diffidence and unwillingness. For those who in this country took an interest in this part of the question, and for the missionaries labouring in India, he had the highest respect. He admitted frankly that the Government of India in former times went much too far in their patronage of the follies, lies, and abominations of the idolatrous practices of India; but, on the other hand, he must say that it would be highly disadvantageous if the line of conduct recommended by many, who disapproved the conduct of the Government, were to he adopted. Their zeal had far outrun their discretion, and if the line of conduct they recommended was to be acted on by the Government the pacification of j India would be next to an impossibility, and the result would be nearly as bad, if the people of India were induced to suppose that such a line of conduct would be pursued. He repeated that in former times they went too far in offering salutes to ceremonies and processions, in giving money by Legislative enactment for the support of 1358 idols, for prayers offered up by idolatrous priests for rains, and other proceedings of a similar kind; and he had no hesitation in saying that in this respect a great sin had been committed. But the whole course of the Government in that respect had been entirely changed. One by one, and indeed by scores at a time, these undue concessions had been given up. It must not be supposed that all they had granted for those objects could be withdrawn without exciting considerable jealousy and suspicion among the people; but did he on that account say they ought not to be withdrawn? The very contrary. They must bear the consequences of their own misconduct, and he would say, whatever the hazard might be, that those undue concessions ought every one to be withdrawn. They must, however, be careful lest in their determination to withdraw from those concessions to a false religion they did not create the impression that they were about to commence undue aggression upon the religion of the people. [Mr. KINNAIRD: Hear!] His hon. Friend would, he was sure, be the last man to make undue aggressions on any one. In the private communications he had had with him and those with whom he usually acted, he must say that more good sense and moderation he had never met than that which fell from their lips; but when the clergy got this subject into the pulpit and laymen on to the platform, the state of things was very different. In an address to Her Majesty issued by the Church Missionary Society they expressed their hope that the "existing policy will be no longer professed or maintained," and they protested against what they called "the system of neutrality" that had been followed in India. He would not further advert to that point, but would again observe that for many years the policy of the East India Government had been to draw back, not by any means by slow degrees, from those undue concessions that had been made to idolatry. If, however, the change proposed by the Government was to take place while the pulpit and the platform were ringing with demands for a "change of policy," he thought there was reason to fear the consequences that might follow. It was mo9t desirable that a change such as that proposed by the noble Lord should be made, if made at all, at a time when India was tranquil, when the minds of the people were not alienated from each other, and especially when the Native population were 1359 not distracted by the apprehension that their religious opinions were to be strongly and violently interfered with.
§ Debate adjourned till Monday next.