COMMITTEE.—FIFTH RESOLUTION.

HC Deb 14 June 1858 vol 150 cc2018-86

Order for Committee read.

House in Committee.

LORD STANLEY

said, it now became his duty to move the fifth Resolution, which was as follows:— That, with a view to the efficiency and independence of the Council, it is expedient that it should be partly nominated and partly elected. The Committee had the other evening decided without a division, that the Minister for India should have the assistance of a Council. In coming to that decision the Committee undoubtedly intended that that Council should be not merely nominal but real, and that its Members should be assistants to the Minister and not a mere screen or pretence. But if the Council were to be a reality, it must possess substantial independence, and not only that, but it must be known to have that character. How far, then, would it be possible for a Council formed upon the principle of nomination, as proposed by the Bill of the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton, to possess that attribute of independence? The principle of nomination, as he understood it, might be applied under three several modifications. It was possible to nominate for life, or, what was practically the same thing, during good behaviour, as proposed by the noble Lord the Member for London; it was possible to nominate for a long term of years without the power of re-election; or it was possible, as proposed in the Bill of the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton, to nominate for a comparatively short term, the Government having the bower of nominating the same persons a second time. With regard to the first of these propositions—nomination for life, or during good behaviour— there could be no doubt that it did to a great extent, secure that independence which was desired. Upon that score, therefore, he found no fault with the proposition in question. It placed a member of the Council relatively to the Government that appointed him, and to ail succeeding Governments, very much in the position that was occupied by a Judge upon the bench. But the objection which, in his view, applied forcibly to the system was, that out of a Council of twelve or fifteen Members nominated for life there would always be a certain proportion who, from mental or physical infirmities, would be incapable of performing their duty in a satisfactory manner. He might be told that that did not necessarily follow, because it was an objection which, if it applied at all, would be applicable to the Judges, and that the efficiency of the Judges never was impugned. He must point out, however, that there was a material distinction between the nature of the duties which devolved upon the Judges and upon the Members of the proposed Council. A Judge was brought constantly and prominently before the eye of the public. He must be able to go circuit. He must be able to attend eight or nine hours a day, and often for many days to- gether, in a court of justice. He must during that time give his undivided attention to close reasoning upon difficult and complicated subjects. He must deliver his judgments orally, and in the presence of one of the most vigilant, critical, and intellectual audiences before which any person could appear—the members of the Bar of England. All these were circumstances arising out of the prominent position which a Judge occupied, which made it almost certain that, in the event of his becoming physically or mentally disabled for the duties of his post, his infirmities would become the subject of public notice and general comment. Popular opinion and the advice, perhaps, of friends would be brought to bear upon him; and even he himself— although in such cases the sufferer was usually the last to perceive his own infirmities—would find that he could not for a long period discharge the judicial duties in a wholly incompetent and unsatisfactory manner without attracting public attention, and becoming painfully conscious of his own defects. That check against the continuance in the judicial office of a man who had become incapable, was one which would not, and could not, exist in the case of an Indian Councillor. His duty was performed in private, and so long as he could attend a meeting in a private room, — so long as he could look over papers and go through the form of transacting business,—so long, however much his faculty for labour might be impaired or his judgment weakened, he would be able to go through the semblance of discharging the duties allotted to him, and he would not become conscious that the time had come when he should be replaced by a younger and an abler man. He thought, therefore, that under the system of life nominations—desirable in some respects as it undoubtedly was—two grave objections would arise. In the first place, they would be obliged to place upon the Council a greater number of members than need otherwise be nominated, in order to make allowance for two or three who might be past their work; and, in the next place, if the Council were divided, as it ought to be, into committees, it was likely that important posts in one or more of those committees might be filled by men who were incapacitated from duty to the exclusion of those who would be more capable. These were the objections which he entertained to the principle of nomination for life. As to the next modification of the principle— namely, nomination for a long fixed term, but without the power of re-election, it appeared to him to be inexpedient in practice on account of the different manner in which a rule of that kind would operate on persons of different ages. If they nominated for a long fixed term—say for twelve years —a man of forty, he would be excluded from the further performance of his duties at an age when for all deliberative purposes his intellect would be in its maturity. On the other hand, if they appointed a man who had gone through a long course of laborious public duty, or who was of weak health and of advanced age, for an equally lengthened period, it was probable that he would be incapacitated for duty before he closed his term. He would, nevertheless, feel himself bound in honour to continue in the performance of his functions so long as his term of office endured. They would, therefore, under that system of nomination for a long term, without re-election, incur the double inconvenience of shutting out from the service of the public men who were in the fullest vigour of their faculties, and of retaining in the public service men who were incapable. Moreover, an appointment for a long fixed term would not afford the same guarantee for the independence of the Councillors as an appointment for life, inasmuch as, while a man appointed for life has nothing more to look for in the way of promotion; a man, it might be not further advanced in years, who might hold an office of that kind for ten or twelve years, would, though incapable of re-nomination, look forward to be rewarded for his subservience to the Minister by an appointment in some other capacity. He now came to the third manner in which the principle of nomination might be applied—namely, nomination for short terms, with a power of renomination, being that recommended by the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton. That mode of nomination had been so frequently discussed that he would simply repeat what he had said before in that House,—that, practically, the office of a Councillor would be a position of far greater dependence upon the Minister than that of a clerk in any of the public offices, because though, theoretically, a clerk might be removed by any Minister, yet, practically, he well knew that so long as he could perform his duties and was guilty of no misconduct, he held his office for life; whereas a Councillor knew that his term of office would shortly expire, and that his reappointment would depend entirely upon the favour of the Minister. However little considerations of that kind might affect men of high honour and public spirit in the way of rendering them subservient, yet such men might be injuriously affected in another respect; because any man in such a position, however much inclined to support the policy of the Minister, would naturally feel that if that policy were unpopular, he was exposing himself to the risk of misconstruction, and that he would be charged with supporting it against his conscience for the sake of obtaining his nomination a second time. It should also be borne in mind that men of eminent abilities and distinguished position would not be willing to accept office on those conditions. Those were the three methods of nomination; and if the Committee were to fall back upon any of them, he did not hesitate to say that the first, on the whole, appeared to him to be that which presented the fewest inconveniences. But before they consented to accept any one of them, he thought the Committee ought deliberately to consider whether no other means were available for the appointment of at least a portion of the Council. If the Committee were inclined to enter into that consideration, it would probably not be forgotten that in proposing the principle of election as a substitute for that of nomination with regard to a part of the Council, they made no innovation on the actual practice, but were merely building upon existing foundations and using instruments already at hand. He believed it was agreed on all hands that if a satisfactory constituency could be found, that method of appointment would be the most satisfactory of all. No doubt the difficulty was in the attempt to find such a constituency. And here he wished to state distinctly that in proposing to the Committee what was called the elective principle, he did not at all confound it with the principle of representation. They must, he thought, fairly admit that anything in the nature of a representation of Indian interests in this country was utterly impracticable. If the representative principle, as such, were ever to be introduced into the Government of India, it must be introduced in India itself, not here. He did not propose the principle of election on the ground of representation —he put it forward simply as an alternative means, which they would do well to consider; as a means by which men of eminence and independence might be induced to enter the Council. The only question on which he need enter was that respecting the nature of the constituency to be adopted. He presumed that if any such constituency were to be formed, the Committee would be inclined in the first place to accept that which already existed—namely, the Court of Proprietors. To that Court might be added a large number of persons who were interested, indirectly no doubt, but still interested, in the general prosperity of India—he meant those who were concerned in industrial enterprises connected with India. He found that the number of proprietors entitled to vote was between 1,600 and 1,700. The holders of India stock and shares amounted to about 2,600. In addition to these, as supplying the third element for the proposed constituency, he would suggest that the retired officers in the various branches of the civil and military services in India, and who were now residing in this country after more than ten years' service in India— amounting in round numbers to between 2,600 and 2,700—should vote in the election of part of the Council. A small number of the officers of the civil and military services home on furlough, after more than ten years' service, might by parity of rights fairly claim to vote. Adding the whole of these classes together, the constituency would, he believed, amount to between 7,000 and 8,000 votes. So far as numbers went, he thought no fault could be found with such a constituency. He need say nothing as to the intelligence of such a constituency, because the Committee was in possession of information sufficient to enable it to form its own judgment; but this at least he would say, that such a constituency would embody a large amount of personal interest in Indian affairs, and of knowledge of Indian administration, and what might be regarded as of not less importance—an entire freedom from political bias. If the elective principle were to be adopted, that was the constituency which he should suggest to the Committee.

Motion made and Question proposed,— That with a view to the efficiency and independence of the Council, it is expedient that it should be partly nominated and partly elected,

LORD JOHN RUSSELL

said, the noble Lord had made a very fair statement to the Committee on this important subject, but which did not require any very length- ened argument. They had, on the one hand, this suggestion of the noble Lord, and on the other hand they had the proposition of the appointment of the Council by the Crown—a mode of appointment which the Government themselves adopted for part of the Council. It was the regular and constitutional mode of appointment in this monarchy that when appointments to the Executive were made they should be made by the Crown on the recommendation of the responsible Minister of the Crown. When appointments of this kind were made, whether of Judges or other executive officers, everybody knew from whom the appointment emanated, and by whom advice was given to the Crown. If an incompetent person was appointed, the Prime Minister or the head of the department from whom the appointment issued was responsible. There was therefore a constitutional security of responsibility when an unfit appointment was made. By the Act of 1853 a certain number of appointments to the East India Board were given to the Crown. Five appointments were made under that Act, and no one that he was aware of, found fault with the selection made by the responsible Minister of the Crown. At all events, the late President of the Board of Control, although opposed to the Government by whom they were made, had not found fault with the selection, nor had the colleagues of those gentlemen at the India Board. He did not know that it had ever been said that the appointments of Judges, the heads of the revenue and customs departments had been unduly made; and for this reason, that the Minister of the Crown felt that a heavy responsibility rested on him if an improper selection had been made. And if there was less probability, as the noble Lord thought, of a Judge continuing beyond his years in office, because he exercised his functions in the face of the public, there was the more danger if a Judge who did so continue should preside, for instance, at a criminal trial. The noble Lord pointed out some of the objections to nomination. Objections might of course be made to any mode of appointment, but in all these things they must only balance convenience and inconvenience. He did not think that nomination during good behaviour, or for a longer or shorter term of years, which was the mode of nomination at first chosen by the present Government themselves with regard to ten out of the eighteen members of the Council, would be open to such incon- venience and so injurious as the mode now proposed by the Government. It was one thing to keep up the old machinery when the old machinery existed, and he could understand persons maintaining that there was danger in changing a form of government which had been long established, and which, however anomalous in its character, had in many respects worked well. That would be an argument which he could well understand against any change at all; but, as it had been determined that a change should be made, he ventured to think that that change should be complete, and that it was injurious to attempt to dovetail the old system with the new. It was proposed by the Government that the Proprietors of India stock should have a voice in the election. Now, there was a consistency and identity of interests in the old system, when the East India Proprietors were traders, and flourished as trade prospered, and decayed as trade decayed. At that time there was some reason why the Proprietors should have the power of choosing the Directors. But when, in 1833, this system ceased, and the Proprietors of East India stock had their dividends secured to them in such a manner that the prosperity or failure of the Indian trade hardly affected their position, the position of the East Indian Proprietors became very different. They had a 3 per cent stock in this country, the value of which depended very much on the prosperity of the country, but no man would say that the Proprietors of the 3 per cent stock should elect a certain number of the Cabinet of this country. There would be quite as much incongruity and absurdity in making the Proprietors of East India stock elect a part of the Indian Council. The holders of railway stock appeared to him as little fitted to be electors of the Council as the Proprietors of East India stock. They never were known to have taken any part in the government of India; they were guaranteed the money they had advanced, they had no direct interest in the government of India, and whatever interest they had might be supposed to lie in the direction of imposing greater burdens so as to secure good dividends to themselves. With regard to the retired commissioned officers resident in this country, some of that class might take an interest in the affairs of India, but the greater part of them, though they had been resident in India, or served in India, did not possess much information beyond the particular district in which they resided, and that as to any general judgment of the affairs of India they need have none whatever. The noble Lord ought also to recollect that of the 1,600 or 1,700 Proprietors of East India stock, 400 were ladies. He had no great objection to the introduction of that feature, but it was a novel principle to introduce into the government of India. The House had already decided that the system of governing India should be changed, and he should consider it a bad augury for good government in the future if they took those who had been heretofore the nominators of the government of India as the future constituency of India. The Committee should consider the evil which would follow from the proposition. The Directors would have the same share of patronage that they heretofore had. Persons of very great weight very much objected to the mode of paying the Directors by patronage. Lord W. Bentinck, Lord Macaulay, and Mr. Trevelyan, persons of great Indian experience, protested against their being paid by patronage; and he saw by the papers of that day that Sir J. Lawrence was of opinion that all appointments in India, whether civil or military, should be made by competitive examination. He (Lord J. Russell) came to the conclusion that, if the noble Lord succeeded in his proposition of naming ten out of the fifteen, or eight or six, out of the members of the Council by means of this representative body, he would be giving rise to a system of corruption which would be very injurious to the future interest of India. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that this body was so numerous and so separate that canvassing would not take place; but there would be means found out of circulating letters and engaging the votes of the constituency; and there was danger that the patronage of the members would be distributed amongst the constituency that elected them. For his own part, he would have the Council nominated by the Crown, and the patronage in the hands of a Minister of the Crown, who would be responsible to Parliament for his disposal of it. Whether the members of the Council should be appointed during good behaviour or for a long or short period of years, he was satisfied that the mode of appointment ought not to be by election, and he should therefore move that it was expedient that the Council be nominated by the Crown.

Amendment proposed,— To leave out front the first word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "it is expedient that the Members of the Council be appointed by her Majesty.

SIR JAMES GRAHAM

Sir, I should be sorry to stand between the hon. and learned Gentleman (Sir ERSKINE PERRY who had risen at the same time), and the Committee, but I can assure him I shall not long occupy their attention. The noble Lord has expressed his opinion that it is desirable not to prolong discussion, and that the question before us lies within a narrow compass. I have hitherto shown the sincerity with which I entertain the same desire by abstaining from intimating any opinion on this question, but as I am now called upon to vote, I wish shortly to state my views on the matter. Three times I have consistently and deliberately voted—first with the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. T. Baring), next with the noble Lord the Member for South Durham (Lord H. Vane), and then with my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford (Mr. Gladstone)—affirming that the moment is most inopportune for changing the present system. My noble Friend has just reminded us that the decision of the House has been taken more than once on this subject. But notwithstanding that decision, I must still pause before consenting to the change now proposed, both with reference to the time at which it is proposed, and to its extent. Though I do not wish to re-argue a question which a majority has decided, still 1 must remember that authorities of the greatest weight, both with respect to the proposed change and the moment for making it, are opposed to the step you are now about to take. First of all, the Earl of Ellenborough, the Governor General selected by Sir R. Peel, and not particularly attached to the Court of Directors, did declare on a former occasion, prior to his taking office, that the change at that time was inexpedient. I have not the means of knowing wha thet Marquess of Dalhousie's opinion is on the subject, but I believe confidently that it is opposed to this change. But whatever may be the opinion of the Earl of Ellenborough or the Marquess of Dalhousie, I entertain a very decided opinion that on such a question the deliberate opinion of Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone is one most entitled to our careful consideration, and I have reason to know, that he also objects to this change. With reference to the past, I shall say no more. With respect to the present, I do not wish to take a gloomy view of affairs in India; but I cannot forget that the mutiny is not yet quelled. I am afraid that in the Upper Provinces our military operations are only commencing, and that there are in those Provinces as many men in arms against us as at the beginning of the campaign. I have been struck with some remarkable expressions in the correspondence of the Bombay and Bengal newspapers, and in the letters of The Times correspondent. Somewhat graphic, they correctly describe the success of our arms. First, our progress is compared to a vessel which, in gliding through the sea, cuts the waters indeed, but the waves close in again behind her, leaving not a trace of her passage remaining. Another metaphor used in the same correspondence likens the progress of our arms to a blast of wind passing over the standing corn. The effect is transient and evanescent, the nodding grain raising its head again the moment the force under which it bent is past away. We know, too, that, though we have taken an immense number of the enemy's guns, he still shows no lack of ammunition and no lack of arms—plainly proving that there has been for a long time a concealment of guns and of materiel of war going on, the hoarded store being brought forth on this occasion to meet the emergency of settled hostilities against the British rule. The counsels of rashness and of fear are the most dangerous counsels by which a nation can be guided. To unship her rudder in a gale of wind is the greatest disaster that could befall the storm-beaten vessel; it is an experiment which is never tried designedly. When the horses run away, the first impulse of some is to seize the reins from the hands of the coachman. But that is not presence of mind—it is the dictate of fear, of rashness, and imprudence. Whenever a State totters to its fall—whenever an empire shakes, you will always find those who are the least able to build up and to save, are most swift to pull down and destroy. Still I admit, as matters now stand, the decision of the majority must be accepted. The question then occurs, what do you desire? Is it your object to constitute a Council which is more likely to give confidence and efficiency to the Executive than that which now exists? The hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright) appears to be the axis on which the political globe of the House revolves at this moment. If that is so, I think the noble Lord opposite (the Member for Tiverton) and myself may be said to be the antipodes, because when the noble Lord is in league with the hon. Member for Birmingham, I am unfortunately opposed to him, but when the noble Lord differs from the hon. Member I am generally his supporter. On this occasion the hon. Member for Birmingham has been most frank with regard to his intentions. He says he desires to constitute a Council as unlike the Court of Directors as possible; and the noble Lord on Friday night declared that he cordially supported him in that view. First of all, let me remark that up to this time the Court of Directors have had no accuser here. It is an Oriental custom sometimes to drown one's victim in milk, and sometimes to smother him in a feather bed. And here the Court of Directors, being without an accuser, are smothered with compliments. Like the victim of old about to be sacrificed, the same hands which deck its head with flowers and with garlands are employed to lay it low and to destroy it. So far from wishing to make the new Council as unlike the Court of Directors as possible, my desire is, since there is to be a change, to reduce that change to a minimum and to make the Council as like the Court of Directors as possible. Without meaning to offer any empty compliment, I think that of all men in this House there is not one whose authority on this question is more entitled to consideration than the right hon. Member for Halifax (Sir C. Wood). I was associated with that right hon. Gentleman in Lord Aberdeen's Government when, as President of the Board of Control, he prepared a measure on this subject. I also had the honour to be associated with Lord Glenelg in a Committee of the Cabinet, under Earl Grey's Government in 1833, when we had the assistance of Lord Macaulay and Sir J. Mackintosh in framing a measure for the government of India. In that very year the commercial character of the East India Company ceased; and yet the Committee of the Cabinet came to the unanimous conclusion, which was adopted by the Government of Earl Grey, that it was inexpedient to change the Government of India, or to take the political power from the Court of Directors. All the arguments about the Court of Proprietors having ceased to be a trading body were then considered and disposed of. I understand the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Halifax was of opinion that a Council nominated by the Crown was indispensable to control the Government of India The right hon. Gentleman also said—I hope he will not withdraw it—that a better Council than the Court of Directors it was impossible to have. True, the right hon Member for Radnor (Sir G. C. Lewis) and the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton differ from the right hon. Gentleman, and have declared the machinery of the Court to be cumbrous, inefficient, and productive of delay. But where is the proof of that? I believe that the Report of the Transport Committee will show that the delay and the errors which have arisen with respect to that service, did not arise with the Court. The right hon. Gentleman (Sir G. C. Lewis) brought a mechanical illustration to his aid, and said that no machinery was stronger than its weakest part. Now, without offence to the right hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Vernon Smith), I believe it yet remains to be ascertained which was the weakest part of the Government of India. Was the weakest part in Cannon Row or in Leadenhall Street? I am not prepared to say that the weakest part of the machine was in Leadenhall Street. But, coming back to the point immediately under our consideration, I say that, compelled to make a change under circumstances so doubtful and so alarming, I am desirous that that change should be the smallest that is consistent with the decision to which the House has already come. We have resolved that the government of India shall be transferred to the Crown; we have resolved that there shall be a Council; and now the question presents itself, how shall that Council be constituted? Now, so far from thinking it desirable that the change, whatever it may be, should bear the semblance of being part of a great and enlarged design, I believe it would be a recommendation of the change that it should be small, and that it should be no complete reversal of that which exists. A great and extensive change would operate, as I fear, most unfavourably on the minds of the Natives of India. Let it be that, as yet, the disturbances in that country have arisen from a military mutiny; but if, unhappily, the necessary severity which must be employed in the punishment of that mutiny should operate unfavourably on the native mind of India, it would be a most unfortunate circumstance that they should believe there has been a great change in the government of their country, as administer- ed in England, such as might lead to a reversal of the policy which has hitherto been pursued under our rule. The East India Company, whatever may be the faults with which it is charged, is imbued with a knowledge of the social habits of India—is imbued with sympathies with the Natives—is imbued with a kindly feeling towards their prejudices, and even with a tolerant spirit towards their religion; and if the Native mind in India should be brought to believe that a great change has taken place in the Government here, amounting to a reversal of our past policy, my fear is, that what is now but a military mutiny may very easily be converted into a struggle of races, and into a conflict between blacks and whites, and that the alienation of an entire people may lead to the loss of a great empire. I contend that it is quite possible to make a considerable change, and yet one which, to use the expression of the noble Lord—an expression employed by him not so much in the way of recommendation as of assent—I contend that it is quite possible to build on old foundations, and yet attain all the results which you desire to accomplish. I am almost afraid to state in detail the view which I am disposed to take of this subject, but I think it right to lay it fairly before the Committee. I am inclined to think that, upon the whole, it would be well that the Council should consist of between twelve and fifteen members, according to the proposal which the Committee has already adopted. I believe that the members of the Council should be nominated in the Bill. I believe that they should hold office during good behaviour. I also think that a large portion of the existing Court of Directors should be the persons at present selected and nominated to compose the Council. I am further of opinion that they should have assigned to them an ample retiring allowance in the shape of a pension, and that, in consequence of the advanced age at which many of them would probably receive their appointments, they should be entitled to that allowance after a comparatively limited period of service, say eight or ten years. It appears to me that their salaries ought to be ample—to amount to at least £1,500 a year; and I cannot help thinking, in opposition to the opinion of my noble Friend (Lord J. Russell), that they ought not to be allowed to sit in Parliament. I believe that a Secret Committee ought to be appointed in the Council, if you wish to ensure both promptitude and efficiency. I do not see how you can dispense with a Secret Committee. I am persuaded that without the assistance which such a body would give to the President of the Council, it would be impossible for him to discharge the business of his office as promptly as the same business is now performed by the President of the Board of Control. My noble Friend (Lord J. Russell) is of opinion that all the members of the Council should be Privy Councillors, but I think it will be sufficient if that dignity is confined to the three members of the Secret Committee. But my experience of the working of the existing system, under which the members of the Court of Directors are eligible to seats in Parliament, does not lead me to think it would be desirable that the same principle should be adopted in the case of the proposed new Councillors, and that the possibility should thus arise of their being brought into antagonism in this House with their official chief. With respect to the question of patronage, it is to be observed, that the appointments of the Governor General, of the Governors of the Presidencies, and of the Commander in Chief, will be vested in the Crown, while the appointments to seats in Council in India are to be given to the Presidents of the respective Councils. It must be remembered that a very large portion of the difficulty of the patronage question has already been solved. The whole of the first civil appointments are now by regulation made matter of open and public competition; and it seems to me that that principle ought certainly to be extended to the first commissions in the Artillery and in the Engineers. As regards the remainder of the patronage, I must say that I do not see the least objection to allowing the nominations to remain with the Minister of the day and his Council, in very much the same proportion as that which now exists among those who conduct the home Government of India, the nominees being of course subject to an examination for the purpose of ascertaining that they are qualified to fill the offices to which they are appointed. I may be wrong, but I have a strong opinion that a plan such as that I have just sketched would work well. It would be that minimum of change which I think really desirable, while it would, I believe, effect all the great objects which we are anxious to secure. Entertaining these views, I have now to decide what shall be my vote on the special Motion under the consideration of the Com- mittee. The principle of election enters into the constitution of the present Court of Directors; I have already stated that I should recommend that a very large portion of the members of that Court should be taken as the new Councillors to be nominated in the Bill, and to that extent there would be, in the first instance, an admixture of the principle of election and of nomination in the formation of the Council. But I am bound to say, that I am not prepared to carry the principle of election any further. I shall be ready to vote for the present Resolution as it now stands in the sense in which I have explained it. But I shall not be able to vote for the seventh Resolution in its present form. I do not wish to perpetuate the principle of election as it at present exists. From communications which I have held with persons of the highest authority, such, for instance, as the late Lord William Bentinck and the late Viscount Hardinge, I have reason to believe that the system of canvassing which has prevailed under the existing mode of electing Directors has been so disagreeable to the tastes and feelings of many high-minded men who would be peculiarly well qualified to fill that office, that they declined to take the steps necessary for ensuring their nomination. I fear that an extension of the constituency would greatly aggravate that evil. I am afraid it would aggravate it in such a degree that first-rate men coming from India would not undergo the increased difficulties of a canvass at a time when the dignity of the office was lowered. I do not wish to say anything harsh with respect to canvassing; but facts have come under my knowledge in reference to the pressure put upon candidates for the directorship of the Hon. East India Company in reference to their patronage, which leads me to think that persons seeking that office must either be ready to undergo a painful sacrifice of their own feelings and of the interests of their friends, or must enter into engagements in some instances not consistent with purity of administration. With regard to the mode of filling up vacancies in the Council, I have to state that I hold very decided opinions upon that point. I believe you ought not to carry the principle of nomination by the Crown into full and absolute effect. After careful consideration I adopt the opinion of my noble Friend Earl Grey upon that subject; and I think that the best course you could take would be, that as vacancies occur, the President and the Council should agree on three names to be submitted to the Crown for selection; that those names should be laid before the two Houses of Parliament for a fixed period—say a month—and that no nomination should be complete until it had received the concurrence of both Houses. That scheme would combine the principle of election and nomination; and in that sense I am prepared to vote for this Resolution; but I must add, that if you do not establish an effective Council, exercising a control over the Indian Minister, I shall be driven in hopeless despair to the opposite alternative and to the creation of a Minister who shall alone be responsible for the Government of India, with subordinates of the highest character and station amply paid. It cannot be denied—however anomalous it may appear—that the actual Government of India has hitherto been mainly conducted in all its great features and most important out lines—subject, of course, to the occasional control of the Minister of the day—by gentlemen who were never in India. I believe that virtually Sir James Melvill, Mr. Philip Melvill, the late and the present Mr. Mill, Mr. Kaye, and Mr. Dickinson, are the men who in the main have worked the labouring oar in this great concern, and have been most successful in conducting the Government of India. I am by no means certain that it would not be better to have a single responsible Minister, receiving the assistance of able secretaries and clerks, than to establish a Council which shall exercise no moral control. I do not want to see a sham and inefficient Council, the Members of which shall be dependent on the power of the Government of the day, and who, like young ravens, will be opening their mouths to be fed by the Minister of the day when the time for their re-appointment conies round. But rather than be driven to the maximum of change I am desirous of trying the minimum of change, in the first instance, at all events. By proceeding in piecemeal fashion you may feel your way, and you may from time to time introduce such further alterations in your administrative system as good policy and experience may require. I say that the Court of Directors, with its experience of India, with its knowledge of the subject with which it has had to deal, would be, as I think, the best medium for introducing hereafter ulterior changes with the least risk of alienat- ing public opinion in India, and with the most regard to the feelings, the prejudices, and the interests of the Natives of that country; I believe this would be the best plan you could, under present circumstances, adopt. We have arrived at a period when we cannot safely halt between two opinions. You must either make the smallest change which circumstances require, or you must go the whole length of creating a Minister with agents removable at the pleasure of the Crown, not lightly removable, but on the same footing as the Under Secretaries. I am ashamed to have troubled the Committee at such length. My excuse for having done so is that I have not troubled them before. I will now only repeat that I shall, with the view I have described, vote for this Resolution; but that I cannot give the seventh Resolution my support.

SIR GEORGE LEWIS

said, all the discussions upon these Resolutions had necessarily given to these debates a desultory character, inasmuch as upon each proceeding there had been brought again and again under discussion the same thing; the debates had reverted to the question of the general policy of the change which the House was invited to undertake. His right hon. Friend had just discussed the expediency of making any change at all, but he (Sir G. C. Lewis) would not revive that question. His right hon. Friend had also referred to the opinion which he expressed on a former occasion, that the existing constitution of the East India Company was cumbrous and inefficient, but that opinion did not apply particularly to the constitution of the Court of Directors. The objection which he made was to the operation of the Board of Control upon the Court of Directors. Mr. Pitt created an independent body to operate upon the Court of Directors, the very essence of the Board of Control being that it was not brought into individual communication with the members of the Court of Directors, and never corresponded with the Governor General or other authorities in India. It seemed to him that that constitution was essentially vicious, and that it was desirable the President of the Board of Control should correspond directly with the Governor General, and if necessary with the other Governors in India, and should be brought into personal communication with the Council by which he was to be assisted. The question which the Committee had now to consider was what should be the mode of appointment of the Council which they had agreed to associate with the Indian Minister. He adhered to the opinion that great advantages might be expected to accrue from the existence of a consultative Council. Hon. Gentlemen who had taken a part in colonial discussions would be aware that the nomination of a Council to aid the Colonial Minister had often been suggested, and had only failed on account of the heterogeneous nature of our Colonies, which rendered it impossible to combine their representatives in a common course of action. No person ventured to say, however, that if it had been possible to create a consultative Council to assist the Colonial Minister, the subject ought not to have been taken into serious consideration. Now, in the case of India the constitution of a homogeneous Council was practicable, because persons who had served in different parts of the Indian peninsula could sit together as members of one body, and could combine to aid any Minister with their advice. As to the question immediately before them, he would follow the argument of the noble Lord (Lord Stanley), who had stated it very clearly and fairly. He had divided it into two parts—the mode of appointing the nominated and the elected portions of the Council. The question they had to decide was, whether the Council should consist entirely of members to be nominated by the Crown, or whether it should be composed partly of members so nominated and partly of members to be elected by a constituency. The Government proposed that a portion of the Council should be nominated by the Crown, and a portion elected by a constituency. The Resolution was,— That the members of the elected portion of the Council shall be chosen by a constituency composed of persons who have previously held military commissions or civil appointments in India, in Her Majesty's service or in that of the Government of India, or who may possess a direct interest, to an amount to be specified, in some property charged or secured on the revenues or territories of India. His noble Friend the Member for the City proposed, on the other hand, that all the members of the Council should be nominated by the Crown for life, but holding their offices only during good behaviour. The proposition of the late Government was, that the members of Council should be appointed by the Crown, that their term of service should be eight years, that during that time they should hold their offices only during good behaviour, and that at the end of the specified period they should go out unless re-appointed by the Crown. The object of fixing a term was, that as there was no power to award a superannuation, the members would otherwise hold an office after they became unfit for service. The noble Lord (Lord Stanley) had now suggested that the Councillors should be appointed for life, and hold office during good behaviour. He had no objection to that principle, provided the Government had power to make a superannuation allowance when members of the Council became unfit to perform their duties. Deafness had been deemed a sufficient reason for the retirement of Judges, but it had been found very difficult, even with the security of publicity in the discharge of the duties of the office, to induce Judges to retire who had sustained the loss of more important organs. The principle of election, however, was that on which their vote would now turn. The noble had, with great candour, admitted that the principle of representation was altogether inapplicable to such a Council. He merely recommended the plan as a mode of solving a difficulty. The Committee must, therefore, recollect that all the popular argument in favour of an elective Council entirely failed. Taxation and representation ought always to go together. In this case the taxpayers were the people of India; but the proposed constituency would be the tax-eaters, the retired servants of the Company, and the Proprietors of India Stock receiving dividends guaranteed on the revenues of India. There was therefore no popular principle involved in this proposal; it was merely suggested as a mode of solving the difficulty. There were at present about 1,600 Proprietors of East India Stock, of whom one-quarter were ladies. No doubt they were the present constituents of the Directors, but when they were laying the foundation of a new and permanent system it ought not to be the mere continuation of a defective principle, The only principle on which it could be proposed to give them the power of election was, that they had a direct interest in the proper management of the revenues of India. East India Stock, however, was now nothing but an imaginary quantity, the capital of six millions was long since expended, and the Proprietors were nothing more than creditors of India having a charge on the revenues; they were merely guaranteed creditors, and their interest in the good government of India was the most remote that could possibly be. If they were to have votes there was no reason why they should not extend a similar right to all creditors of the Indian Government, all persons holding any portion of the Indian debt. A very large portion of the Indian debt was now held in India—297 millions of rupees by Europeans and 164 millions by Natives, or £29,000,000 and £16,000,000; and if the principle of the Resolution then before the House were approved, there was no ground why these creditors should be excluded from the new constituency. There was another important point which they must bear in mind in reference to this question— that was, the present position of the holders of East India Stock. As the law now stood, if after August 1854 the Company shall be deprived of the possession and government of India, the Proprietors are entitled to demand within twelve months that the stock shall be redeemed at the rate of £200 for each £100 capital; after April 1874, the Government were entitled to redeem it on the same terms. If the Proprietors were to make the demand there would not be the slightest difficulty in complying with it, and the transaction won d be advantageous to the public. The time must come when it would be for the advantage of either the Government or Proprietors that it should be paid off. Both contingencies were provided for, and therefore the Proprietors must, under the existing law, soon cease to be; and thus, at the very moment they were about to die a natural death, it was proposed to make them the foundation of a new sytem. Well, then, the noble Lord proposed the addition of members of railway companies, and other public works executed in India, to the Proprietors of India Stock; in other words, he proposed to create an elective body consisting of some seven or eight thousand persons, scattered over the face of England, of Europe, and of India. He (Sir G. C. Lewis) was at a loss to conceive what advantages were to arise from the creation, for the first time, of a constituency so heterogeneous, so unprecedented, and apparently without any of the conditions which an elective body ought to present; and he thought the Committee must see that the simplest system, and that which would secure the greatest responsibility to Parliament, was that of having the whole Council nominated by the Crown. The noble Lord (Lord Stanley), however, said that the constituency which he proposed would combine two qualifications—know- ledge of Indian administration and freedom from political bias. The shareholders of the Great Western Railway, of the Great Leviathan, or of any joint-stock bank, would equally possess the qualification of freedom from political bias; and so also perhaps would the first thousand names in the Court Guide. As to knowledge, he would ask the noble Lord whether a shareholder in an Indian railway necessarily possessed any knowledge of Indian affairs?

LORD STANLEY

explained that he had never said so. When he spoke of knowledge of Indian affairs he alluded to the retired civil and military officers who would form a large portion of the constituency. He spoke of the shareholders merely as having a material interest in India; he said nothing about their knowledge.

SIR GEORGE LEWIS

said, he was bound to take the noble Lord's denial, but still he thought that the Resolution as to the elected portion of the proposed Council would prove a failure. He had no objection to the insertion of words in the Resolution making those who had held the office of Directors eligible to the new Council, but he did not understand that the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle, in advocating the transformation of the present Court into the Council, meant to perpetuate the system of election by which a certain proportion of that body were now appointed. To set the principles of nomination and election at work side by side in the new system would be in some sort to perpetuate the double Government, and he hoped the Committee would decide in favour of the simple system of entire nomination by the Crown.

SIR ERSKINE PERRY

said, he agreed with the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir James Graham) in the reasons which he had so forcibly urged against the principle of election, as it was proposed to be applied to the future Government of India; but he regretted to observe that the right hon. Baronet's vote was not to coincide with the opinions he expressed, for he was about to vote that the Council should be partly nominative and partly elective. He must also observe that he dissented from many of the opinions the right hon. Baronet had expressed on other points. He had stated that he desired to effect the smallest possible change, and had thus put himself into opposition with both the late and the present Government, both of whom had endeavoured to intro- duce a large and comprehensive measure. The right hon. Baronet had also openly expressed his desire to resuscitate the Court of Directors in another form, only diminished by three in number. Now to such a proposition he (Sir E. Perry) must express his most determined opposition. No one questioned the personal ability of the Directors; but no one could deny that the present cumbrous system was most intolerable. In the question before the House, the constitution of a Council formed the leading feature, but to consider this, the functions of the future Council formed a most important element; and, therefore, he (Sir E. Perry) on the very day when the Bill of the Government was introduced, asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what the functions of the proposed Council were to be? The answer given was one which he must say did not show a very intimate knowledge of the subject, for it amounted to this— that they were to do everything. That was a very general expression, and did not convey any definite idea to the House. Even the noble Lord (Lord Stanley) the present President of the Board of Control, whom he was very glad to see in that place, had not given any specific information on the subject. He presumed their functions were to be very much those of the present Board of Directors. Now the House had been, he thought, misled over and over again in the course of these discussions, as to the supposed importance of the functions exercised by the Court of Directors. It was supposed that the Court of Directors were the real governing bodies; but the fact was that the great leading minds that presided at the India House were not the Directors, but their very able Secretaries Mr. John Stuart Mill and Sir James Melvill; and if the Government should act upon the idea of forming a Council of fifteen members, in the way suggested by the right hon. Baronet, the Secretaries assigned to the different departments would be the actual advisers of the Minister. But in fact neither the Court of Directors nor their Secretaries were the real governing body — the real governing body was in India, and they had it on the authority of Mr. Mill himself before the Indian Committee, that there were few acts of the Government of India which it was possible for the authorities here to set aside when they were once done. The power and independence of the Court of Directors had been lauded to a fulsome extent; but he would ask, had they ever, during the course of the present century, exhibited those qualities in opposition to the Minister of the day? They had indeed recalled Lord Ellenborough, which he admitted was a wise, honest, and independent act: but that was a solitary instance; and as to the policy of annexation, which more than any other had caused the present outbreak, they had never been seen to offer opposition either to the Board of Control or to the authorities in India. With regard to the elective portion of the Council, did the House know what was the course of proceeding for obtaining a seat in the Indian directorate? Persons canvassed sometimes for ten or eleven years for that honour, and spent a large sum of money. Did the noble Lord suppose that when the office was that of Councillor instead of Director, with the chance of a seat in the Privy Council, that the motives would be weaker to obtain a seat in it? It was singular enough that he could get no one to tell him what it was proposed should be the functions discharged by the Councillors. But although no information was vouchsafed upon that point, there were some functions of vast importance which it was evident they might and ought hereafter to exercise. There were great principles connected with the administration of justice, which they would have to consider, the admission of Natives to positions of honour and emolument, as a means of engaging the sympathies and interests of the educated and influential classes with Government, the constitution of the civil service and the position of independent British settlers whom it was so desirable to attract to that country. Another most important function that a Council might fulfill would be to sit as a tribunal to which the Native Princes of India could appeal, when they conceived themselves injured. All these matters needed an independent Council free from all class prejudices. But if such were to be a portion of the functions of the new Council, the Court of Directors would be of all persons the worst for that purpose, and yet it was evident that the new Council as proposed by the right hon. Baronet (Sir J. Graham) would be almost identical with the old Court of Directors, and would be governed by all the same opinions in favour of an exclusive civil service, and by all the same views of traditional policy which have hitherto prevailed. Then with regard to numbers, such a Council ought to be composed of the most distinguished, able, and impartial men whom Her Majesty could select. On casting his eye over the men who were fit to compose that Council, he could not find more than six or eight individuals competent by qualification and force of character to have weight in their relations with the Minister, and it therefore seemed to him that fifteen would be far too large. He had come to the deliberate conclusion that delay in legislating for India would be a most fatal step, notwithstanding what had been said by the right hon. Baronet. He thought that both the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton and the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had encouraged the arguments for delay by trumpetting forth the great praise which they had given to the Court of Directors. For men naturally asked if the East India Company rule so wisely, why make any alteration? But the people of England had come to a widely different conclusion. They believed that the Company's Government had completely broken down, and that they were so wholly unacquainted with what was going on in India that even their ablest servants were heard in this House persisting against all evidence that the anarchy and rebellion in India were a mere military mutiny. The popular voice therefore demanded an introduction of the Queen's Government as the only way to remedy the great evils which now afflicted the Indian empire. In the discussions which had been raised upon Indian subjects he had noticed that it had been too often assumed that the Natives were so weak a race that they must necessary fall under the role of a stronger power; and sometimes they were spoken of as though they were only fit to be helots and beasts of burden. It was time that the people of England should be undeceived on that point, as well as upon the more dangerous doctrine put forward by a certain class of religionists in this country, who were for treating India in respect to missionary efforts as if it were a small island in the South Seas. In any future system of government for India it would be important above all things to impress the Natives with the fact, that we intended to carry into operation in India all those principles of religious toleration which we enjoyed in this country. He professed himself sanguine as to the future of India, provided we governed it on principles of civil and religious liberty; but if the doctrines of those zealots whose petitions were accumulating on our table praying for the State's interference to promote Christianity were carried out, combined with the modern doctrines of annexation, resumption, and roving commissions of inquiry into every man's title to his land, India was not safe a day. He implored the House, therefore, while framing a new system, to adhere to those principles which had rendered the names of Elphinstone and Metcalfe venerated both by the Hindoo and Mussulman population, and while introducing changes, never to forget that we were dealing with an intelligent race of ancient civilization, equally alive to their own interests, equally attached to their own customs, institutions, and religion as ourselves.

MR. SIDNEY HERBERT

said, when he voted the other night for the larger number of the Council which was proposed he did so on the presumption that the Council would be divided into Committees, doing much the same work that was now performed by the Court of Directors. It appeared to him that if they did not do that, they would be useless as a Council. He did not believe that men who were not engaged in the work of practical administration themselves, would be competent to advise the Secretary of State in an administration the responsibility of which fell upon him. But now came the question, how the Council was to be constituted? They had before them the plan of the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton, by which the Council was to be nominated by the Crown for fixed periods; they had also the plan of the noble Lord who sat near him (Lord J. Russell), by which the Council was to be nominated by the Crown, and to servo during good behaviour —an arrangement which was, in his opinion, far less objectionable than the preceding one; and lastly, they had the plan of the noble Lord opposite (Lord Stanley), who preferred that the Council should be partly elective and partly nominative. Now, in speaking of election, he must say he was very much struck with the extreme fairness of the statement made by the noble Lord the President of the Board of Control. It was one of the most remarkable qualities of the speeches of that noble Lord that he did not seek to cover anything, but laid bare all the difficulties which occurred to his own mind — and this made him (Mr. S. Herbert) attach the more importance to what he said. Thus with regard to the principle of election, he admitted with characteristic candour, that it involved practical difficulties, while he spoke of its advantages. He had cautioned the Committee against con- founding election and representation, with regard to his proposition. It was true that they were perfectly different things, and the remarks of the noble Lord showed that election without representation was possible. He recollected a story which was told very humorously by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a work which he published some years ago on the British constitution. The right hon. Gentleman described an English traveller who went to the then Pasha of Eypt to explain to him the nature of the English Government, and that the House of Commons was elected on certain principles. On a subsequent interview the Pasha said, "I have been thinking over what you said, and I am determined to adopt the same system in Egypt." The traveller, quite startled, exclaimed, "Where are you to find the population fit to elect the members who are to constitute this Parliament?" "Oh," said the Pasha, "I foresee no difficulty; I am determined to elect the Members myself." And the Pasha thereupon presented a list of such men in Egypt as he thought most competent from their knowledge of commerce and agriculture, and by their education and position, to form the Parliament of Egypt. That was representation without election. Now, in this country election was regarded as a means to an end. So far from its being a good in itself, in it they put up with everything that was bad in order to secure representation; it was attended with corruption, extravagance, animosities, and hatred, but they bore all these because by election they secured representation. But if they adopted the proposition before the Committee, he feared that they would have all the evils of election without the advantages of representation. They knew the amount of canvassing, and he might say the amount of corruption, practised now to get a seat at the Board of Directors, and it was most advisable to do away with it in respect to the new Indian Council. What was wanted was a Council which would not only be independent, but so strong in its independence that it would not be suspected; and the objection he felt to the plan of the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton was, that under it a Councillor would always be liable to the suspicion of a want of independence. He thought the plan which met in the greatest degree the difficulties of the case was that of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle. He thought there would be a great safeguard in the selection of three names by the President of the Council for the nomination by the Crown whenever a vacancy occurred, and that an additional security would be afforded by the placing of the names on the table of that House a month before the nomination was to take place. But now came the question how they were to get at the plan of his right hon. Friend. He hoped his right hon. Friend, or what he should prefer, the Government would place on the notice paper Resolutions showing how it was proposed that the plan should be carried out; for he confessed it appeared to him that, so far from the adoption of the Resolution before the Committee being a step towards that, it would be a step in the contrary direction. The Resolutions of the Government must be read according to this interpretation. The meaning was that a portion of that Council should be nominated and others elected, whilst his right hon. Friend seemed to desire that all of them should be nominated by a process which in the first instance was partly nominative and partly elective. He confessed he saw his way while voting for the Resolution in the sense of the noble Lord (Lord Stanley), but he could not exactly comprehend the kind of constituency which his right hon. Friend intended should elect the Council he proposed. He would therefore support the proposition of his noble Friend the Member for London hoping that the Government would adopt the other suggestion submitted to it that evening, which he thought would have the effect of solving many of the difficulties with which the question generally was now involved.

MR. WILLOUGHBY

said, it was with the most unaffected diffidence he addressed the Committee upon the important question before them, after they had heard so many able and eloquent addresses from the most distinguished Members of the House. The objections raised by the hon. and learned Member for Devonport (Sir E. Perry) in one part of his speech, were, he (Mr. Willoughby) thought, most satisfactorily answered by the great authorities which he quoted in another portion of his address. At no time since this country became connected with India, have the interests of India, as contradistinguished from those of England, been in such peril as upon the present occasion. Those interests, it is true, when properly considered, are identical, but in practice they frequently clash. On all former occasions, legislation for India has been preceded by full and impartial inquiry before Select Committees, in which all interests were represented. On all previous occasions, moreover, Parliament has been divided into two great parties—the one attacking and the other defending the interests of India, and the rights and privileges of the Natives of India were carefully guarded and protected. Now, however, by an extraordinary complication of parties, all were united in the same object, and to have arrived at the same conclusion, that some change in the Government of India is absolutely necessary. He need scarcely say that upon the Council of India would mainly depend the good or bad government of the country. The person who filled the high office of Minister for the department of India might be the most able and competent man in the world, but there was no security for his permanent tenure of office, for if there were an adverse vote in that House, he would be compelled to go out with the rest of the Administration; in fact, he might remind the House that they had had three Presidents of the Board of Control within the last four months. The Council, therefore, upon which so much depended, should consist of persons of knowledge, experience, and independence. He did not mean by independence that they should overrule the Minister of State; but he meant that degree of independence that would enable them to apply all the knowledge they possessed to the proper performance of their duties, undeterred by the frowns and unseduced by the smiles of the Minister. Three modes had been suggested for the creation of this Council. Her Majesty's Government in the first instance proposed that the Council should be partly nominated and partly elected. The noble Lord the Member for London proposed that they should be wholly nominated, and bold office for life; and thirdly, the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton proposed that the Council should be wholly nominated, that they should be few in number, and that they should be appointed only for a brief term of years. There was a fourth proposition made to-night by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle, which, on the short consideration he had been able to give to it, appeared exceedingly plausible, and better than any of the other three; but, as it was not then formally before the Committee, it could not be properly discussed. Of the three proposals before the Committee, he confessed he preferred that of the noble Lord the President of the Board of Control to that of the noble Lord the Member for London; and he pre- ferred the latter to the proposal of the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton. In addition, the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield (Mr. Roebuck) had made a suggestion that there should be no Council at all—a proposition which would reduce the government of India to what was formerly the system of administration for the Colonies, an event which he thought no one in his senses would wish to see. They should look across the Atlantic, and take warning. What is the use of history, but to teach us by past experience lessons of wisdom and prudence? Does our colonial history afford any encouragement to apply the principles of colonial government to India? Was not the government, or rather misgovernment of our Colonies, until very lately, a byword and reproach? Is Canada and its rebellions no warning? Is the Cape of Good Hope and its Caffre insurrections no warning? Is not Australia, even with its rich gold fields, no warning? For have we not there, by a faulty land system, sown the seeds of discord and dissension, and divided the people into two contending parties, with clashing interests. I admit matters have, of late years, much improved; but how has this improvement been effected? Why, as the late Secretary for the Colonies, the right hon. Member for Taunton, has informed you, by the discovery that the best mode of governing our Colonies was to cease to govern them, to leave them alone, and permit them to govern themselves. Unfortunately we cannot adopt this principle in India. Everything in India was expected from the Government, and what in other countries was performed by the people themselves must in India be performed by the Government, or be left undone. Although many complaints had been made of their leaving India without the advantage of municipal institutions, he could testify to the fact that strenuous efforts had been made in vain to introduce effective municipal institutions into Calcutta, Bombay, and other parts of India. The materials for self-government in India do not now exist, and cannot suddenly be created. On this subject I will take the liberty of citing an authority which will have great weight in this House, and more particularly I should think with Gentlemen who sit on the opposite benches. In the debates on the India Bill, in 1853, the late Mr. Joseph Hume thus expressed himself in opposition to any attempt to govern India as a colony:— Some hon. Members seemed to desire to place India on the same footing as our other colonies, but no one could have attended to the history of the last twenty years without observing that whilst in almost every one of our colonies there had been open rebellion in consequence of misgovernment and mismanagement, in India peace and order had been maintained. Was that accident, or was it the result of good management? For his part, he attributed it in no small degree to the care and attention of the Court of Directors, and he should be sorry indeed to see the colonial system of Government applied to India."— [Hansard, v. 5, p. 1345.] He was glad to hear it stated that there was no intention to increase the powers possessed by the President of the India Board under the contemplated changes— that, in fact, that functionary would exercise the same powers then as he now possessed, and more particularly that his power over the purse is not to be greater than is now exercised by the President of the Board of Control. Leaving out of consideration the control now exercised by the Court of Directors over the revenues of India, amounting nearly to thirty millions per annum, a control which in some shape or another must continue to be exercised, the home expenditure last year amounted to £2,623,744 and what were the existing checks as to that expenditure? At present the Court of Directors could not authorize any expenditure without the sanction of the Board of Control, and all grants and gratuities beyond a certain amount, were submitted to the Court of Proprietors for confirmation. Another class of demands were those made by Her Majesty's Treasury and by the War Department. When the War took place in Affghanistan, the expense, amounting to about fifteen millions, was defrayed from the revenues of India, although that was undertaken by Her Majesty's Government chiefly for European objects, and India had also borne large expenses on account of the wars with China and with Persia. It is in such cases that Imperial interests so frequently clash with those of India, and the House will remember the discussions which occurred, regarding the expenses of the war in China, ending in a compromise effected by the Court of Directors and the payment by Her Majesty's Government of a considerable portion of the expenses of that war. The issue might have been different had the originating, prosecution, and decision of the claim depended on a Secretary of State, himself a Member of the cabinet, against whom the claim was preferred. He had already stated what he considered should be the qualifications of the Councillors. They should be men of weight and interest in the country. On account of the quantity of work which they would have to perform, he should have preferred the original proposition of from twelve to eighteen members. The Government, however, appeared to have decided upon the number fifteen, and he would, therefore, accept it. He did not say that fifteen should be the permanent number, for by some improved arrangements, whereby the system of Government would be more simplified, a smaller number might at some future time be sufficient. He thought, however, it would be safer to adopt the larger number, inasmuch as it would be easier to reduce that number if required than to increase it. He thought that the council should be numerous on account of the great amount of work to be done; and he did not agree with the right hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Vernon Smith) that the duties now performed by Committees should be intrusted to heads of departments, for it was quite impossible for any man to be aquainted with the laws and customs of all the Presidencies upon any particular point, such as the revenue, judicial, police systems; and it was very desirable that each Committee should, if possible, comprise one or more Members acquainted with each Presidency. For accidental circumstances, the Presidency of Madras was not now represented in the present Court of Directors, and difficulties often arose when they required information upon any subject connected with that Presidency, Although, however, he approved of the representative system prescribed by Lord Ellenborough's Bill, he thought it was carried too far. When a vacancy occurred—he did not think a first-rate man should be rejected merely because he had not served in a particular part of India, and that an inferior man should be preferred. It would be sufficient for the Government to keep the general object in view, and to select the person who, under all circumstances, was likely to prove the most efficient. He thought also that each Committee should be responsible for the working of their particular department, and that only important matters should be referred to the full Council. Each Committee should have access to the proceedings of the other Committees, and should have the power of consulting the President, whose decision, except in special cases provided for in the Act, he being responsible, would be final. It was very desirable that a Vice- President should be appointed, as it could not be expected that the President would always be able to attend the meetings of the Council, which he thought should be held periodically, once a week or oftener. It appeared to him to be unnecessary that Her Majesty's army should be specially represented in the Council, because there was no chance of their interests being ever neglected at the Horse Guards He preferred the title of President in Council to that of President and Council, but that was a matter of detail which could be cont sidered hereafter. An account of all annuities and pensions should be furnished annually to Parliament, as it was now to the proprietors. The members of the Council should be required to devote their whole time to the duties of their office, and be excluded from holding any other, except those of a purely honorary character. The question of salary was of secondary importance, With respect to the exclusion of members of the Council from Parliament, much might be said on both sides. On the one hand there was the danger of partizanship; on the other the advantage of that House having all the available knowledge and experience in connection with the Government of India. Their absence would be felt when Committees on Indian topics were appointed, and, on the whole, he (Mr. Willoughby) thought the proposed exclusion was unadvisable. Although difficulties might attend the carrying out of the elective principle, he believed it was the only mode by which the independence of the members of the Council could be secured. Those members who were to be elected should be chosen by men who had an interest in India. If they made it a condition that the constituency should be composed of persons who have served ten years and upwards in India, they would no doubt get a very strong constituency. As to what the right hon. Member for South Wilts (Mr. S. Herbert) had said, about votes being created for election purposes, by transfering stock, that could not be, for the stock must have been held for a year. The hon. Member for West Surrey (Mr. Drummond) had the other night read a vast number of extracts from a book thirty years old, written by Sir. F. Shore. One of the most pleasing features of the Indian service was independence of thought, and action, and writing, and the author of that book was himself, a civil servant of the Company. He himself had read it twenty-five years ago, and he trusted with profit; but what he complained of was that the hon. Member led his hearers to suppose that the abuses noticed by the author were supported and countenanced by the Indian Government. That was not so. He would read to the Committee an extract from Mr. J. Mill's work on the History of India, premising that it was well known that that author was no friend of the Company and not very partial to the Directors. He said: To communicate the whole of the impression made upon a mind which has taken a survey of the Government of India by the East Inbia Company, more completely through the whole field of its action than was ever taken before, and which was not spared to bring forward into the same light the unfavourable and the favourable points; it may be necessary to statethat in regard to intention, I know no Government either in past or present times, that can be placed equally high with that of the East India Company— that I can hardly point out an occasion on which the schemes they have adopted, and even the particular measures they promised, were not by themselves considered as conducive to the welfare of the people whom they governed—that I know no Government which has on all occasions shown so much of a disposition to make sacrifices of its own interests to the interests of the people whom it governed, and which has in fact made so many and important sacrifices—that if the East India Company have been so little successful in ameliorating the practical operation of their Government, it has been owing chiefly to the disadvantage of their situation, distant a voyage of several months from the scene of action, and to that imperfect knowledge which was common to them with almost all their countrymen; but that they have never erred so much as when, distrusting their own knowledge, they have followed the directions of men whom they unhappily thought wiser than themselves—namely, practical statesmen and lawyers —and that lastly, in the highly important point of the servants or subordinate agents of Government there is nothing in the world to be compared with the East India Company, whose servants as a body have not only exhibited a portion of talent which forms a contrast with that of the ill-chosen instruments of other Governments, but have, except in some remarkable instances as that of the loan transactions with the Nawab of Arcot, maintained a virtue which under the temptations of their situation is worthy of the highest applause."—[Mill's History of India.] As to the assertion that the correspondence between the authorities in India and the home Government was needlessly voluminous, he might refer to the authority of Captain Basil Hall, who gave it as his opinion that requiring the local authorities to send home a copy of all public documents acted as a must useful and as the only efficient check upon the administration of affairs in India. The hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright) had said on a previous occasion that the screw of the Government was perpetual, that they left nothing but a handful of rice to the Natives. Now as to the Bengal Presidency there was no country more lightly taxed under Lord Cornwallis' permanent settlements, and as regards Bombay, with which he was personally acquainted, he could say that for the last twenty years reduction of the assessment had been going on; and not only that, but leases for thirty years were given, coupled with the favourable condition that the tenant might throw up his land whilst the Government had not the option of raising his rent. This, however, is a large question upon which he (Mr. Willoughby) could not now fully enter. He should vote for the Resolution of the President of the Board of Control, unless the Government should entertain favourably the proposition of the right hon. Member for Carlisle (Sir J. Graham), which he preferred.

MR. LIDDELL

said, he had listened to the sagacious and statesmanlike speech of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle with the greatest attention. He did not think that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wilts had treated the proposition of the right hon. Baronet quite fairly, because when commenting upon it he left out of view an important portion of it, namely, that when vacancies occurred in future, the elective principle was to go on, by means of the body electing the successors of those whose seats were vacated. By that means they got rid of the cumbrous difficulty of creating a constituent body. The whole of the complicated scheme now proposed for the Government of India would centre in the Minister who must necessarily have the control over the machinery for that purpose. This would lead to an immense increase in the patronage at his disposal, and this circumstance afforded an additional reason why they should not sacrifice anything that acted as a moral check upon his exercise of that patronage. There was one subject, however, which had not been alluded to in the course of this discussion—they had not yet been told in what way the local councils of India were to be appointed. He hoped the noble President of the Board of Control would give some explanation on that point before the debate closed. In conclusion, he denied the assertion of Sir Erskine Perry that the double Government, as it at present existed, had broken down in any department of Government whatever.

VISCOUNT GODERICH

said, he was not sure whether they were not fighting with a shadow, for it was not very clear whether the Government were inclined to press their own Resolution or whether they would not in the end adopt the suggestion made by the right hon. Member for Carlisle (Sir J. Graham.) He would, however, address himself to the Resolution as it now stood; and with regard to it he thought the House was in great danger of being led away by a specious term. They heard a great deal about the necessity of the Council being independent, and any one entering the House without a knowledge of their former deliberations would have thought that the independence insisted on meant a power to control the Minister or to suspend his independent action. He was quite sure that was not the opinion of Her Majesty's Ministers. Let the Committee consider what they had already done. They had already adopted a Resolution that the Government of India should be transferred to the Crown, and should be conducted by a responsible Minister. They had further determined that the Minister should be assisted by a Council. Surely, then, it was their duty to take care that in the construction of the proposed Council they did not lose sight of the complete responsibility of the Minister. For his own part he would have supported the Motion of the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Roebuck), that there should be no Council at all, if it had not been for the consideration that with our forms of Parliamentary government India would often be placed under the control of a Minister who had not a special or intimate knowledge of Indian affairs. He trusted, indeed, that no future Government would ever hesitate to appoint to the government of India one of the ablest and wisest of its Members; but it was too much to expect that that Minister, however able, would always be distinguished by special Indian information. He was, therefore, in favour of assisting him with a Council, so that, if he were afterwards called to account in Parliament for anything that went wrong, he might not be able to plead ignorance. But it would be altogether inconsistent with all they had done if that Council was to be placed in any other position than that of being enabled to offer advice which the Minister was to have the power of accepting or rejecting. If that were so, he did not think that the independence of the Council was a matter of so much importance as was represented, and the main thing to be attended to in its construction was, how to surround the Minister with persons who would give him the best and most reliable advice. Well, then, was a Council elected by such a constituency as that sketched out by the noble Lord, likely to be composed of the best men that could be obtained? Was this machinery likely to supply as good a Council as nomination? To get at the reply to that inquiry they must look to the composition and character of the constituency by whom the Council was to be elected. Election was no doubt a sounding name, and it might be supposed likely to attract hon. Members on this side of the House; but the noble Lord opposite had manfully given up the advantage to be derived from that course when he admitted that election did not generally imply representation, whatever the machinery to be employed for that purpose. When his noble Friend (Lord Stanley) proposed to give votes for members of council to the existing Court of Proprietors and to officers who had served in India, either in the civil or military departments, for a term of years, it appeared to him that his noble Friend was only going back again to the existing state of things, which had been generally condemned. He might quote his noble Friend against himself, for in 1857 his noble Friend declared he had never heard a single argument in favour of the retention of the Court of Proprietors, and that as a body they had no knowledge and no interest in Indian affairs. And yet it was to these persons and to others like them that he now proposed to entrust the election of a considerable portion of the Indian Council. At present, moreover, the Court of Proprietors had certain advantages which were denied to the proposed constituency. They were in the habit of meeting—they had papers on Indian subjects laid before them—they deliberated on Indian affairs, with the benefit of the advice and direction of the Directors. But all these advantages were to be denied to the new constituency, so that the new system would retain all the vices with none of the advantages of the old. In short all the best part of this machinery, was to be swept, away, and the bare right of voting only retained, leaving open all the abuses arising out of canvassing a large and scattered body of Proprietors, amongst whom there was a considerable number of old ladies. In the next place, why should the shareholders in Indian railways form a portion of the constituency? It was said the security of their dividends would give them an interest in the good government of the country, but he doubted whether that interest would always coincide with the interest of the Natives. Who would trust the election of Members of that House to the shareholders in the Great Northern and the London and North Western Railways? Then the retired civil and military servants of the East India Company were to have the right of voting. He did not wish to say a word in disparagement of the civil servants. They had produced some of the greatest statesmen who had done honour to this country, but they were an exclusive body. The nominative portion of the Council would be chosen from among them. They possessed already the power of administration in India itself, and he did not think it wise to increase their influence by making the retired military and civil servants of the East India Company and the Crown the constituency to elect the other portion of the Council. He doubted whether captains and subalterns who had served ten years in India would make a very good constituency, and he also wished to ask whether the privilege was to be extended to officers of the Queen's army who had served there for the same period. The noble Lord told them that he was inclined to abolish the Secret Committee, and to allow the functions usually discharged by that body to be performed by the Council at large. If that were so, the importance of a seat in the Council would be considerably enhanced; and he doubted how far it would be prudent to entrust the most delicate and the most secret questions connected with war and peace to the knowledge of men elected by such a constituency as this, In truth, the proposition rested on what he must call a confusion of ideas. It seemed to him that, according to the principles of the constitution, election had nothing to do with the Executive, though it was proposed here that election should appoint to a place in the Executive, and that place involving close and confidental relations with the Minister of the Crown. On the other hand, the principle of nomination had for some time been a practice without any complaints being made as to its results. He therefore could not but think that placing the nomination of the Councillors in the hands of the Minister would be far better than placing them at the disposal of this constituency. The Minister would nominate his officers, few in number—and he wished they had been fewer—in the face of the pnblic; and he had the strongest possible inducement to nominate the best men he could find. A Minister might not care about nominating an inefficient man to an office which was far removed from himself, but the case was different when the inefficient man was to be constantly at his elbow, to whom he must himself constantly turn for information. In such a case no Minister would be fool enough—let alone higher considerations—to appoint a weak and inefficient man. He doubted whether the best men coming home from India would put themselves to the trouble of an election. They had all heard of men canvassing for seven or ten years under the present system, but that would be as nothing compared with the labour of going through the proposed constituency, which was calculated to be composed of 7,000 electors, scattered over the whole of the United Kingdom, and even over foreign countries. But there was another question which had been lost sight of. What share was the home Government of India to take in Indian affairs? The noble Lord said they would still be called upon to go through an enormous mass of Indian papers. For his own part, he thought the only sound principle to act upon was to leave questions of detail to be settled in India itself; and his great fear of an independent Council was, that they would be intermeddling with the details of Indian questions, which ought to be left to the discretion of the government in India. Let the Government look out for the best man they could get for Governor General. Let them give him their whole confidence; if he lost it, do not abuse him, but recall him; but while he remained let them exercise over him only a general superintendence. On these grounds it was impossible for him to vote for the Resolution of his noble Friend, although he suspected the Committee could not be asked to divide upon it.

MR. BAILLIE

said, the argument of the noble Lord who had just addressed the Committee, if it had any weight, amounted to this — that the Government ought not to select for the Council any member of the Court of Directors, because they had been elected by a constituency totally unfit to be entrusted with the duty. The noble Lord and the right hon. Baronet the Member for Radnor (Sir G. Lewis) had discussed the question upon the supposition that the constituency would be composed of men without interest in the good government of India. But he would like to know who could have a greater interest in the good government of a country than men who had invested their money in it, and who, if the country was badly governed and a rebellion were to ensue, ran the risk of loosing all that they had invested. The same observations applied to the civil and military officers who would have in addition all the interest in India that was derived from old recollections and associations. He maintained that it would be impossible to propose a constituency more fitted for the purpose than that which Her Majesty's Government had proposed. He complained that the hon. Member for Devonport (Sir E. Perry) had departed from the question before the House to abuse the Court of Directors, all the brains of which, he said, were to be found in their clerks and secretaries. That was mere personal abuse; and for his part he could only hope that the Council about to be established would prove as efficient servants as the Court of Directors had done. The noble Lord who had last spoke had raised the objection that able men returning from India would not go through the annoyances of a canvass. But he apprehended that the greater number of distinguished men returning from India would be selected by the Government, and that the constituencies were intended to elect what might be called the English element in the Council—men who, without having been necessarily in India, had yet paid great attention to Indian affairs, and such men, he apprehended, would be very useful in the Council. Then the noble Lord thought that the number of the councillors might with advantage be reduced, because he thought that much of the supervision of detail that had been gone through might be omitted. He (Mr. Baillie) maintained, on the other hand, that it would be impossible to secure good government in India unless the most accurate details were transmitted home and gone over by the Council. On no other conditions could the Indian Minister be fairly expected to be responsible for what was done in that country. Civilians were necessarily sent out to rule India with despotic powers, and there would be no security that those powers would not be abused unless they were obliged to give a full account in writing of everything which they did. An illustration of this occurred to himself very lately. A despatch lately arrived at the Board of Control giving a flourishing account of the condition of our new province of Pegu—the revenue was increasing, and so was the cultivation and exportation of rice, the staple produce of the country. But along with this there was mentioned an anecdote which he confessed filled him with horror. It appeared that part of the revenue was derived from a poll tax, imposed, no doubt, by the former Government. Time collector mentioned in his despatch that a poor man being pressed for the payment of this poll tax, and being unable to pay, went and sold his children for a few rupees, with which he paid the Government tax. That incident was worth all the rest of the despatch, for it gave an insight into the real state of the country; and that insight they would not have had unless their agents there were obliged to send home for revision the most minute matters of detail. On these grounds, then, he thought the Resolution was entitled to the support of the House.

MR. VERNON SMITH

said, that on this Resolution, as on the others, they had heard a great deal of extraneous matter, nor had the hon. Gentleman the Member for Devonport (Sir E. Perry) been the first to offend on that point, the example having been set him by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir J. Graham). The right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle ought, according to the principles which he laid down, to have come to an entirely different conclusion. He fully concurred in the observations which had been made as to the fairness with which the noble Lord the President of the Board of Control laid his opinions before the Committee; Ids speeches were entirely free from personalities; such, unhappily, was not the case with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carlisle. The real question at issue, however, in these discussions on the nominative and elective principles was to secure the most independent Council. Nevertheless, in striving to obtain an independent they must take care not to create an obstructive Council. He could not see that gentlemen who were nominated would be in any sense dependent on the Minister to that degree of baseness which some hon. Members seemed to expect. The only advantage which a Councillor could look for from the Minister was his reappointment at the end of his term, and it could not be supposed that if a great question of Indian policy should arise just as the end of his term was approaching, any Councillor would for the sake of agreeing with the Minister, and so getting reappointed, give advice contrary to his knowledge and conscience. For some time past a portion of the Court of Directors had been nominated by the Crown, but no one ventured to say that the nominated members had been less independent than the elected Members. When this Indian question was brought on the expiration of the term of office of the hon. Member for Leominster was approaching, but for all that lie both spoke and voted against the introduction of the Indian Bill of the late Government. The election by means of a constituency was universally condemned. It was stated by one Director of the East India Company, now a Member of that House, that his canvass for a seat in the direction lasted seven years, and cost £2,238. Sir H. Maddock and Sir C. Metcalfe, both eminently qualified for a seat in the Direction, refused to canvass the present constituency. Sir C. Metcalfe told him that, anxious as he was for public employment, nothing could induce him to go through the humiliation of such a canvass. The next constituency that had been suggested was that of the railway shareholders. But the interest of the people of India was to have low railway fares, while the interest of the shareholders was to have high prices; and no one would presume to say that the railway shareholders, as a class, had any knowledge of India. The next and last suggestion was, that retired Indian servants should have votes in the election of the Council. But the objection to this proposal had been well described by the hon. Member for Leominster in his evidence as making the servants appoint the masters. These retired servants had no interest except in the receipt of their pension, and the House would do well to consider what would be likely to take place upon a canvass of either of the two last-named bodies of electors. When a gentleman presented himself for election, a railway shareholder might say, "We want an additional guarantee of one per cent. We have four, but we want five, and unless you promise to give us five per cent., I will vote against you." In the other event of the pensioners forming the constituency, as cases were continually arising about the pension fund and the increase or diminution of pensions, the electors might promise to vote for candidates if they would lend themselves to such or such a job. It was the impossibility of finding a constituency that led his noble Friend (Viscount Palmerston) to adopt the principle of nomination. He would, therefore, caution the committee not to resort to a vicious system of election for the purpose of escaping from the principle of nomination.

MR. CUMMING BRUCE

said, that the noble Lord, the Member for London, had laid great stress on the responsibility of the Minister supporting the plan of nomination by the Crown, but he was greatly afraid that such a responsibility could not be evoked without giving rise to violent party feelings in that House on Indian questions. They had lately seen how the spirit of cabal and the doctrine of Ministerial responsibility had given rise to a debate which ended in the dismissal from office of one of the men best qualified to fill it. The same spirit had been shown by the manner in which two nights had also been occupied in discussing a post-prandial speech made by a County Member in addressing his constituents. Sir C. Metcalfe had recorded it as his opinion that the real danger in the government of India would be felt when party spirit in the House of Commons first acted directly on the affairs of India. He wished to see a Council which should give such confidence to Parliament and such assistance to the Minister as should prevent recourse being had to ulterior proceedings. They were called upon now to affirm the principle of election in the Council, but not to decide as to the details in the mode of election. He had no fear as to the proper government of India, so far as regarded the selection of proper members for the Council, while the noble Lord remained at the Board of Control, as he believed that he would exercise an unprejudiced and impartial judgment. But quieter times might induce the usual apathy upon all Indian questions, and if this country again suffered under the misfortune of a Whig Government, a Council might be nominated upon the principle of an irresponsible system of centralization, leading to jobbery and corruption. He thought it desirable, therefore, that there should be some check upon the Minister, and he might be brought under a moral responsibility to the Council, partly by election and partly by a permanent system. He would suggest to the noble Lord another source from which some useful members of the Council might be derived. India must be governed in India; but it was of the greatest advantage to connect the home and local Governments of India. It had been suggested to him by an officer of great experience in the Indian service—and he begged to offer the suggestion to the noble Lord—that some, perhaps four, members of the Council, might be chosen by the Governors of the four different Presidencies and possessions in India. He thought that such men would form a most useful element in the Council, and that it would not be difficult to obtain them, provided they were allowed to retain their rank and pensions. The retired Indian officers in this country would, in his opinion, form a useful body of electors for members of the Council. It was a mistake to suppose that the elective principle was opposed to the monarchical principle. He certainly never expected to hear it stated in a House which elected its own Speaker, and of which the Members were elected, that such a principle was opposed to the monarchical element. At present some of the members of the Court of Directors were elected, and no one could say the elective members did not act under a full sense of their duty. He could not, therefore, attach the slightest importance to that argument, and he thought that the elective principle would have the excellent practical effect of directing the public attention periodically to the affairs of India. A good deal had been said about the Court of Directors; but he felt satisfied that that body had had no share in any of those proceedings which had led to the recent mutiny in India; the blame, on the contrary, attached to the Board of Control. All the great authorities had declared that such annexations and confiscations as those of Scinde and of Oude had shaken the confidence of the people of India in the justness of our rule. Against that system of annexation the Court of Directors had constantly protested, but it had been forced upon them by the Board of Control, and he warned the Committee that unless it were stopped in time it would deprive us altogether of our Indian dominions. He hoped, indeed, that it had already received a sufficient check; for in that very despatch of the Earl of Ellenborough's which had excited so much notice, and in some quarters so much disapprobation, there was an indication that the Government at home were beginning to take a different view of the policy of annexation, and were about to return to right and sound principle of government. He desired to see an efficient, instructed, and independent Council. The plan of the noble Lord would not secure an efficient or instructed Council, and would be absolutely fatal to its independence. The plan of the Government was infinitely better than either the plan of the noble Lord the Member for London or the plan of the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton. The noble Lord the Member for London had been prolific of suggestions to the Government since they commenced legislating for India; but he trusted the noble Lord the President of the Board of Control would not accede to the suggestion which the noble Lord had made that night.

COLONEL SYKES

said, that if anything could have reconciled him to the dangerous and impolitic transfer about to be made, it would have been the declaration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other night, that the duties of the Council would be substantially those now performed by the Court of Directors—that the Council would revise the Indian legislation, virtually initiate measures, control the finances, and, in short, be the responsible administrators of the affairs of India. If the right hon. Gentleman adhered to that declaration India might be safe—at least its finances would. There would be a check upon the Minister, as, without the consent of his Council, he could not order the disbursement of money. But would the Government give the Council the power of acting with the same independence as the Court of Directors had done in the case of the Oude bankers and their agents in this country? Those agents got hold of the then President of the Board of Control, who directed the Court to send instructions to India to cause the Vizier of Oude to pay a large sum of money; but his decision was resisted by the Court of Directors. The President of the Board of Control then applied for a mandamus to compel the Directors to obey; but they resolved to go to prison rather than lend themselves to an act of injustice and oppression, and the President of the Board of Control not daring to face public discussion and opinion, the mandamus was abandoned, and the Visier of Oude was saved from being plundered. The same thing might occur again with an irresponsible Minister; for a Minister was only responsible to that House when the Prime Minister happened not to have a majority. In case he had a majority, he always protected his colleague. To talk of Ministerial responsi- bility, then, was a mockery and a delusion. For instance, the question of the justice of the deposition of the Rajah of Sattarah could never be brought to an issue in the House by the late Mr. Hume, though he tried it Session after Session, Of course, when the Government was in a minority, which was an anomaly, that could not go on, but which happened to exist at present, the opponents of the Ministry could compel the Government to throw overboard, Jonas-like, a colleague, as had recently been done; but this was an abnormal condition, and practically a Ministry could always protect a colleague against party assaults. With regard to the question before them—how the new Council of fifteen—he wished it had been eighteen—was to be elected, he would say a few words. Five of the present Court of Directors were nominated by the Crown, the other thirteen were elected by the Proprietors of East India Stock, a body which was vituperated and decried in a very extraordinary manner. They had been called old women because there happened to be some 200 females amongst the 1,700 holders of East India stock. A good ninny of these were young ladies, whom, as the holders of £1,000 worth of stock, worth from £2,300 to £2,700 sterling, many young gentlemen would be glad to become acquainted with. The other 1,500 electors were mostly persons connected by business or service with India, but some were country gentlemen, and would it be said that they were inferior to £10 householders who sent honourable Gentlemen to this House? They had for many years sent their representatives to the Court of Directors; and, judged by the character of the persons selected by them, could any person say that they failed in sending properly qualified men as their representatives? At this moment the Court of Directors consisted of six military men, six civil servants, three bankers, and two lawyers, one of whom they had had experience of in that House, and whose ability was unquestioned, and one naval man. There had been no failure on the part of the constituent body. It had fulfilled its trusts. Why, then, should it be thrown overboard? It had been objected that he himself had been seven years canvassing, and that he had spent £2,000. That was true, but that £2,000 was spent not in bringing electors or paying for their coming to the poll, but in the expenses of personal journeys and in the cost of clerks and committee rooms at two contested elections, and was spread over seven years He had been elected at last, and having been fortunate enough to gain the confidence of the proprietary body he had since been elected three times without any contest or expense at all. It had been insinuated that the holders of East India stock bartered their votes for patronage. Such a charge could only originate in the baseness of the minds of those who made it. During the whole of his canvass he had but one proposition of that kind made to him, and he instantly turned his back on the person who made it in such a way that he never saw him afterwards. He saw no reason therefore why the proposed Council should not be elected by a constituent body. The question of patronage had been raised. It had been suggested that it should be taken away from the Council and thrown open to competition. Those who were acquinted with India knew that a mere intellectual education was not always the best recommendation for a soldier. He was an advocate for competitive examination to a certain extent, but he thought that every man should be examined with a view to the special profession which he was to follow. The man who got a first-class for proficiency in the dead languages at Oxford or Cambridge might be deficient in the qualities requisite to make a good civil servant. So the cadet might be a very good scholar but a very poor soldier, from the want of professional knowledge and training. He had no objection to half the patronage being put up to public competition, but he thought the other half should be left in the hands of the Council. The patronage of the Court of Directors was at present distributed among the sons of deserving officers, civil servants, clergymen and others, and he thought it would be wise to leave half the patronage in the hands of the Council, to be distributed in the same way—the nominees, as at present, undergoing a severe examination to prove that they had the education of gentlemen; but if the whole of the patronage were put up to competition, those officers who were obliged to spend their lives in India, and whose children were in England, would be deprived of the spontaneous patronage which they now had from the Directors. He feared that the disturbance of the existing system arose more from a lust of patronage than from a desire to promote the public interests; but the question was, if the proposition of the noble Lord (Lord Stanley) were not carried, what would be the best measure to substitute for it? He was disposed to approve the appointment of councillors for life, and in case of a vacancy, the suggestion that the members of the Council should submit three names to the Minister of the day, out of which to select one for the vacancy, appeared to him a reasonable one. So, also, with regard to the higher class of appointments in India, the safest plan—the plan which would expose the Minister of the day to the least odium—would be that which permitted the Council to recommend to him persons from whom a selection should be made. With regard to the army, was the army of India to be placed under the Council? The Indian army was different in every respect from the Royal Army in its constitution, and it would be impossible to amalgamate it with the Queen's Army. No doubt could be entertained of the loyalty of the Indian army; but it would be a permanent force not contingent upon an annual mutiny Act, and be at the entire disposal of the Crown, which means the Minister of the day, involving, therefore, a great constitutional question; and though not a very probable yet a possible ease might arise of 5,000 or 6,000 men being landed in England from India to settle a party dispute. He trusted the noble Lord would not abandon the proposition he put before them that evening.

LORD STANLEY

said, he thought that the Committee would expect him to say a few words in explanation before the discussion was brought to a close. He had at an early period of the evening pointed out his objection to the principle of exclusive nomination, and he had asked the Committee to consider as an alternative the possibility of adopting an elective principle with regard to a portion of the Council. He had felt bound also to meet the inquiry as to how constituencies were to be provided if that principle were admitted. That was a question which must be answered, but which did not admit an answer altogether satisfactory. In attempting to answer it, he had sketched out those constituencies which had been introduced in the Bill which had been brought in by the Government, with the exception of the proposal relating to one class which had met with general disapproval. Nevertheless he had never meant to pledge the Government to the constituency he suggested. He did not deny the difficulty which existed in the way of any plan of that sort. The difficulty was real and grave, and all that he wished to show was, that notwithstanding the objectious which had been stated and the difficulties which had been pointed out, the principle of partial election was one which deserved consideration, and that there did exist materials of some kind, out of which a constituency might be constructed. However, at present it was not necessary that they should travel beyond the letter of the Resolution before the Committee, which was in effect that the Council should be partly nominated and partly elected. The meaning and intention of time words were clear, and he had declared distinctly and positively that the principle of election did not involve the principle of representation. What he meant was simply this, that some check should be devised on the principle of an exclusive and uncontrolled nomination by the Minister of the Crown; and if that check were provided, it mattered little by what means they arrived at it. An independent Council was the end; the election of the Council was only one of the methods in which it was hoped that end might be attained. Various propositions had been made in the course of the debate; but the one suggested by the right hon. Baronet (Sir J. Graham) really involved the principle of election, because it provided that every Member of the Council should be in some sense elected, subject to the approval of the Crown. That proposition was some what complicated in its details; and he (the noble Lord) must not be understood as expressing the assent of the Government to it; but what he meant to say was, that that proposition, or any proposition of an analogous character, did undoubtedly fall within the scope and words of the Resolution now before the Committee; so that the Government in proposing that Resolution had not pledged themselves against the adoption of the right hon. Gentleman's expedient, or any other expedient of a similar kind, provided that it should be found practical in its working. Nor would the Committee pledge themselves by this Resolution to any particular constituency, or to any constituency at all, if upon the whole the inconvenience of it should exceed the advantage it offered. It was simply the expression of a desire that some check should be placed upon the election of some of the Council, and that there might not be an entire and uncontrolled nomination on the part of time Crown. Let the selection be made in any way the Committee chose; all the Government desired was, that there should be some other party consulted besides the Minister of the Crown.

VISCOUNT PALMERSTON

said, that after hearing the original statement of the noble Lord (Lord Stanley) he was not surprised that he should have felt the force of the grave objections to the constituency he then shadowed forth which had been raised in the course of the debate. He however, could not concur with the noble Lord in thinking that the proposition of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir J. Graham) was the best mode of solving the difficulty and of obviating those objections. Indeed, the speech and the vote of the right hon. Baronet appeared hardly in harmony. The right hon. Baronet argued against the principle of election, and then proposed to vote for a Resolution embodying that principle, getting out of the dilemma by proposing that the Crown should nominate for the Council persons who in their capacity as Directors had been elected. That surely was rather a strain upon language. The right Baronet also suggested that the Council should in the first instance be taken from the present Court of Directors. That surely was a matter of discretion on the part of the Crown, supposing the principle of appointment or nomination should be adopted in preference to election. The proposition to fill up vacancies was that the Minister was to submit three names to the Crown, from which one was to be selected. But how was the Crown to make a selection, except upon the advice of the responsible Minister, the President of the Indian Council? According to that arrangement the President was to select three names, from which he was to advise the Crown to select one. But, assuming the Indian Minister was to be excluded from the selection, or that he was only to have one voice out of fifteen, it was plain that it merely amounted to the principle of self-election, which had been condemned by Parliament in the case of municipal elections. To adopt that principle, however, would be retrogressive, which could not have been expected from a Government that prided itself upon its progressive advances, nor from the right hon. Baronet, who piqued himself upon his progressive views. He, therefore, could not concur in the arrangement proposed by his right hon. Friend, but would submit some considerations respect- ing questions of election and nomination. He begged the noble Lord and the Government to remember that we happily lived under a constitutional monarchy and not under a republic. The principle of a constitutional monarchy was that each act of administration should have a responsible adviser. It was now proposed to form a Council to share the administration of India, not appointed by any responsible adviser of the Crown, nor elected by any body responsible to Parliament, and consequently irresponsible. That would be departing from the fundamental principle of the British constitution; and while the House was ask to abolish the Court of Directors because it was to a certain degree irresponsible, it was also asked to re-establish that body in the shape of a portion of a Council not appointed by any responsible adviser of the Crown, nor elected by any constituency represented in that House. If that principle was a good one, it should be generally applied, and the whole Council should be so selected. The right hon. Baronet had certainly met that objection by proposing that all vacancies should be filled up in that manner. In so doing he abolished the arrangement now existing as to the Court of Directors by the Act of 1853, to which the right hon. Baronet was a party, and by which a portion of the Court of Directors was to be appointed by the Crown. If that were not to be the case, they came back to the objection that the Council would consist of Members differently created—some appointed by the Crown, some selected by the Council itself. He (Viscount Palmerston) could see nothing but inconvenience and confusion in the arrangement. It was vicious in principle, and would be inconvenient in practice. The noble Lord the Member for the West Riding (Viscount Goderich) had pointed out that the Council about to be established was to advise, and not to overrule, the Minister. The House had determined to transfer the Government of India from the Court of Directors to a responsible Minister of the Crown. How could such a Minister be responsible if he were to be thwarted and overruled by men appointed by a different power from that by which he had chosen? But if the Minister was to be paramount over these matters, what was the use of this distinction between the different methods by which the Councillors were to be appointed? Was it likely the Councillors could have better opportunities of judging of the fitness of those who shall fill up vacancies than the responsible Ministers of the Crown? The Councillors would not be responsible; they might select, by concert among themselves, the names of three very inefficient men, and according to the plan of the right hon. Baronet the Crown would be obliged to elect one of their number. There was no security that the persons so proposed would be qualified to give the advice and assistance which the Council were intended to afford. He would really conjure the House to recollect that they were peculiarly the guardians of constitutional principles. Those who proposed a measure in Parliament were bound to frame it in harmony with those principles, one of the most important of which was, that all those who were connected with the Executive Government should be appointed by the responsible advisers of the Crown. Would any man pretend that the appointment of a Judge to administer the law of the land was of less importance to the interests of the country than the selection of one of the twelve or fifteen Councillors who were to assist the Indian Minister? Yet they did not place the choice of their Judges in the hands of his fellow members of the judicial bench. Why, then, should the Councillors of the Minister for India be self-elected, instead of being chosen like all other executive functionaries by the responsible advisers of the Crown? The right hon. Baronet opposite and himself were no doubt the antipodes of each other on some of these questions. Rather than not have a Council perfectly independent the right hon. Baronet would prefer continuing the present system. For his own part he thought it would be better to leave the present system in existence until Parliament was better advised than to establish a Council, which would be a permanent source of inconvenience to the public service.

MR. GLADSTONE

said, he regretted that the proposition made by his right hon. Friend (Sir J. Graham) early in the evening had met so unkindly a reception at the hands of the noble Lord (Viscount Palmerston); because no impartial man could have observed the course of that discussion without being aware that very strong objections indeed were entertained by large portions of the Committee, to both of the extreme principles which they had chiefly before them, namely, election by an extended constituency on the one hand, and pure nomination by the Crown on the other. Though the whole of the last speech of the President of the Board of Control had been received with the respect and favour which it deserved, yet the warm feeling of the Committee had been especially evoked at two particular points in it. The one was the point at which the noble Lord had stated with great impartiality and candour, the great, if not insuperable difficulty of any attempt to apply the principle of popular election; and the other was, when he urged his objections to the principle of uncontrolled nomination by the Crown. His own strong impression was that the more they came to sift these two systems the more unwilling would they become to adopt either the one or the other of them. The principle of election not having been brought before them that night in a definite form, he would not dwell on the difficulty of creating popular constituencies, for what his right hon. Friend the Member for Wiltshire (Mr. S. Herbert) had correctly termed "election without representation." With regard to nomination by the Crown, though he could understand how many persons of authority had been led to favour that proposal, yet the objections to it were of a nature that would be felt more and more strongly in proportion as they proceeded with that discussion. For himself, he was sufficiently old fashioned to object to the wholesale addition they were about to make, by the establishment of fifteen dignified and highly salaried officers, whose appointment should be in the gift of the Crown, to the patronage of the Minister of the day. But important as was that consideration with respect to the increased power to be put into the hands of the Minister for operating on that House, that was after all but a secondary matter, because the principal question was—how were they to reconcile simple nomination by the Crown with the independence, the efficiency, and the weight of the Council? That independence must not be a nominal independence, but must be combined with weight and efficiency, and to attain its object it must also be an independence free from suspicion. It was, however, impossible to secure an independence both effective and free from suspicion if they adopted the principle of the late Government's Bill, which proposed to appoint the members of the Council simply by the will of the Crown, and to make them subject to removal in consequence of that will after the lapse of a few years. No doubt, in dealing with a nominative Council the late Government had nothing before them but a choice between extreme difficulties. If, on the one hand, they were appointed to hold office during good behaviour, there would be considerable apprehension lest these high and dignified positions should lapse into something in the nature of comfortable sinecures. Nor was it less to be feared that they might find themselves loaded with a number of persons, who, if not orignally incompetent, might have become so in the course of years, or from the failure of health and strength, but who, nevertheless, would naturally cling to their situations in consequence of the tenure of good behaviour. And though something might be done to obviate this objection by providing retiring allowances after a short term of office—a proposition which involved weighty considerations peculiar to itself— yet the other difficulties connected with nomination by the Crown could not be overcome. A different plan had been suggested by his right hon. Friend, that had met with a reception that night from the independent Members of the House, which formed, on the whole, a very fair augury of its ultimate acceptance and adoption. The objections stated to it by the noble Viscount were not such as a perfectly calm and dispassionate judgment would ratify. The noble Viscount said it was improper that these Councillors should be appointed by any other authority than the Crown, on the ground that all acts of Government under a constitutional monarchy ought to be done by a responsible Minister. That, however, was not a principle that could be absolutely admitted. No doubt all acts of Government which it was necessary to intrust to the Executive were to be done by a responsible Minister, who could be called to account for them. But surely, there was another principle quite as characteristic, not only of constitutional monarchies, but of all free countries, and that was, opposition to the unnecessary centralization of the governing power, and the creation of secondary and local authorities for local and municipal purposes. And it was a great thing achieved on the part of freedom if they could sometimes keep out of the hands of the Executive, and therefore in some degree out of the range of Ministerial responsibility, acts of Government which appertained nevertheless to the general system of administration. If they travelled across the Channel they would find the central authority doing a thousand things which in this country were not within the responsibility of the Minister, but were executed by the instrumentality of secondary powers. The question, then, was, not whether they should apply a single and absolute constitutional dogma as an objection to the proposal of his right hon. Friend, but whether they could devise a good working and practical system, and one which at the same time should not interfere with the full responsibility of the Indian Minister for all acts which he was called on to perform. It was not to thwart, overrule, and hamper the Minister that they were to give him an independent Council; it was to secure the full expression of conscientious opinion from the most competent and best informed persons, and persons, too, possessing adequate authority — not indeed, an authority to set aside the final decision of the Minister after full deliberation, but to place their views before him in such a shape as might give them the greatest claim to his attention—a claim second only to that of his own mature judgment, formed after he had allowed full weight to their representations. The proposal of his right hon. Friend had not been formally prepared for the consideration of the House in all its details in the same manner as if he had been in the exercise of official power. As he understood that proposal, however, the principle which it involved was that the judgment of the Council should be allowed to operate in the selection or election, whichever they chose to call it, of a certain number of names, out of which the Crown might make such a choice as it might deem expedient. But it was contended that the Council might select the names of persons who would be totally unfitted for the performance of the important functions which they would be called upon to discharge. If, however, the Committee should deem it necessary, to anticipate such a dereliction of its public duty upon the part of the Council, there could not be the slightest objection to arm the Crown with the power of rejecting those names which might be submitted to its consideration, should they be manifestly unfit for the purpose for which they had been selected. Nobody could labour under the apprehension that such a power on the part of the Crown would be abused, and there would, moreover, be the additional safeguard that the choice of the Crown would be subject to the control of Parliament. For his right hon. Friend proposed to take an excellent provision from the Bill of Mr. Fox—that the members of the Council should be liable to removal from office on an address from either House of Parliament. Therefore the appointment of Commissioners for the management of the affairs of India would thus rest in the first place with the Council, who would present certain names for the approval of the Sovereign, and with respect to whom all that the Committee had to bear in mind was, that they were a well selected body of men for the purpose of presenting those names;—in the second place with the Crown, upon which the duty would devolve of choosing the best men out of the names which might be laid before it; and in the third and last place with the Houses' of Parliament, to whose consideration the choice of the Crown would be submitted, and which, in the event of there being gross unfitness in the case of the appointments made, might interfere for the protection of the public interests, and by means of an address to the Crown, provide that such appointments might be cancelled. His right hon. Friend was not in a position at that moment to call upon the Committee to come to a decision upon a proposition of that description, and he regretted that such was the case, because he felt assured that the Committee would find objections, to the pure and unmixed proposals of the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton, upon the one side, and that of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, upon the other, constantly presenting themselves, while he entertained no doubt that the soundness of the principle, of which his right hon. Friend near him was the advocate, was calculated to insure for it increasing support, as well upon its own positive merits as because it furnished a means of evading a difficulty from which he saw no other mode of escape. Having said thus much with respect to the proposition of his right hon. Friend, he might be permitted shortly to state the course which he should feel it to be his duty to take in regard to the question upon which they were about to be called upon to come to a decision. The noble Viscount had said it was plain how the matter stood, but he Mr. Gladstone was free to confess that he had not the power of putting the question in a form exactly adapted to express the opinion of the Committee. But as far as lie could understand the position in which they were placed, the Committee had before them two forms of question; the one embracing the principle of absolute and unmitigated nomination, the other, if considered largely and liberally, involving, in addition, an element somewhat distinct and apart from the power of the Crown. Now, he, as well as his right hon. Friend the Member for Wiltshire (Mr. S. Herbert), was perfectly conscious of the difficulty in which the Committee were placed in coming to a decision between those two propositions; but lie could not at the same time help thinking that the safer course to take would be to vote for the Resolution which asserted a sort of mixed principle than for the Amendment, which asserted a principle pure and unmixed. He might, however, observe that it would be extremely convenient, as well as conducive to the public interests, that Her Majesty's Ministers should hold the question over until the next occasion upon which the Committee met; but if they should not assent to the adoption of that course, but should proceed to a division, then, not because he deemed the Resolution the most convenient form of giving expression to the views which he himself entertained, but because he looked upon it as the lesser of two difficulties, he should deem it his duty to record his vote in its favour.

MR. ROEBUCK

said, he could not think that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) had given a very correct description of the motive and effect of the Resolution. What was the real state of the case? The proposition of the noble Lord (Lord Stanley) was, that the Council should consist of two parts, one of which was elective, and the other nominated by the Crown. The proposal of the noble Viscount (Viscount Palmerston), on the other hand, was, that the whole of the Council should be nominated by the Crown, by which every consideration of election was done away with. In addition to these plans they had the suggestion of a private Member, the right hon. Baronet. This was that the Council itself should first of all be selected from the Court of Directors, and that afterwards the Council itself should select three names, one of which should be chosen by the Crown. Supposing the Council to be elected for life, they would be utterly and entirely responsible, and the same would happen if they were chosen for any long term of years. Then what followed? They would have this responsible Council electing members, in the case of a vacancy, as irresponsible as themselves. It was a slur on the House to say that the Minister was not responsible. If he did wrong he could be punished; but, supposing the Council did wrong, there was no means of punishing them; therefore they were adopting the very worst mode of selecting the Government of India in every step they took. Appointment by the Crown meant appointment by the Minister, which, it its turn, meant responsibility to that House; and, therefore in the last resort, supposing that course adopted, the Council would be appointed by them. But there was a certain class of politicians who hated responsibility to the House, and were always casting about for the means of getting out of that difficulty. Never was there a better plan devised than the appointment of a Council who would be responsible to nobody, and they might depend upon it that, if they adopted it, they would have a Government for India utterly irresponsible; there was no getting out of that. Let the world at once understand what they were discussing. It was because this was a mode of evading responsibility that he should vote against it.

SIR FRANCIS BARING

said, that the fair and candid explanation of the noble Lord the President of the Board of Control had relieved his mind of a great difficulty. As he understood that explanation, it appeared that the Committee in voting for the Resolution would not only not be pledging themselves to any particular form of constitution in the case of the proposed Council, but that the question which the Resolution raised was, whether the Council should be solely appointed by the Crown, or whether some means might not be found of electing such a body independent of the Crown. Now, the great objection which he had felt to the Resolution, that it would bind the Committee too strongly to a particular constitution was by that explanation removed. As to the proposal of his right hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle, it could, he feared, hardly be said to be fairly before the Committee. The proposition of his right hon. Friend struck him as a fair way of getting out of a difficulty. For himself, he never remembered a question surrounded by more serious difficulty, or on which more might not be said against every proposal which could be brought before the House. His noble Friend (Viscount Palmerston) called upon the Committee on constitutional grounds to interfere in favour of the great principle of responsibility. The great difficulty was, however, that you had to govern India, not constitutionally, but arbitrarily. His noble Friend might talk of the constitution, but what was the authority which they were going to place in the hands of the Secretary of State for India? On questions of peace or war that Minister would certainly be checked by the Cabinet. But take the army, for example. The Secretary for War in this country was obliged to obtain the authority of Parliament for every penny he spent; the Mutiny Bill operated as a check; and if he spent more than was thought necessary, he had the Treasury down upon him. The Secretary for India, however, might raise as many men as he could, might pay them what he pleased, and was subject to no control whatever. He would have the same power over the Indian finances, and would exercise the authority possessed by the present Board of Control, by the Board of Directors, and the proprietary body. If, then, these unconstitutional powers existed, no surprise ought to be felt if they stepped a little out of the common way in order to secure an independent Council. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Sidney Herbert) had told an amusing story about the Pasha of Egypt, who, hearing from an English gentleman a description of our House of Commons, said next day that he thought the idea so remarkably good that he intended to establish a House of Commons himself, but, as the system of election seemed rather troublesome, he added that he should nominate all the Members. Now, this was exactly what he wanted to prevent the Secretary for India from doing. His noble Friend (Viscount Palmerston) said that he objected to see part of the Council nominated and part elected. But his noble Friend had surely forgotten he was a party to the present constitution of the Board, some of whom were nominated by the Crown and others elected.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL

said, he hoped the Committee, before they divided, would come to a clear understanding with respect to what they were dividing about. The proposition which the Government had first made was intelligible enough, but the noble Lord had found himself in an embarrassing position of not being able to arrive at the exact result he desired. Wishing to frame a scheme by which a part of the Council might be elected, independently of the Crown, he called on the Committee to affirm by the seventh Resolution that principle. When, however, he came to apply that principle, he found himself in a position which he (Lord J. Russell) could understand, as he had found himself in the same condition—he found that when he sought to establish an independent electoral constituency, he could not arrive at a result perfectly satisfactory. And from the mode in which the noble Lord expressed himself as a Minister of the Crown, it was obvious that he placed no reliance upon the proposition he had made to the Committee. Then a new grammar had to be applied to this Resolution, because none of our old English grammars would serve the purpose. The Resolution said, that the Council was to be partly nominated and partly elected. Every one understood by that that part of the Council was to be nominated by the Crown, and that another portion of it was to be elected by somebody afterwards to be fixed upon. His right hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle, however, had made an entirely new proposition, namely, that the Council should form one body, which should be partly elected and partly nominated, and he reconciled his proposition with the Resolution by saying that if a gentleman was elected by proprietors of India stock, and afterwards nominated by the Crown, then he was a person who had been partly elected and partly nominated. That was completely to change the proposition before the Committee. He (Lord J. Russell) must really ask that some definite proposition should be placed before it. If, in spite of the misgivings of the noble Lord the President of the Board of Control, who had stated his doubts so candidly, the Committee determined that some of the members of the Council should be elected, let them say so; and on the other hand, if they saw any reason for considering the proposition of his right hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle, let them demand that it should he put into a tangible shape and be submitted to them in such a form as would enable them to pass a judgment upon it. But it appeared to him most unwise and most disingenuous to affirm a proposition which had one sense for one hon. Member, and another for another hon. Member. That would be to affirm a proposition which had no clear meaning whatever, and he hoped the Committee would arrive at no conclusion whatever upon it. He did not wish to re-argue the question of nomination as against election, or of the nomination of members to hold their office during good behaviour; all he wanted was, that there should be a clear proposition submitted to them. Did the Minister of the Crown adopt his right hon. Friend's proposition or not? Were they of opinion that such a proposition would form a sound basis on which to legislate? He did not conceal the inherent difficulties of the question, or deny that even in spite of the very sound objection made by his noble Friend the Member for Tiverton, that proposal might be a way out of the difficulties, though, to his mind, it was a very objectionable one, for if it were adopted, he believed the Council would be a jobbing one. At all events, if they came to a division, it ought to be upon a question which meant the same thing to every hon. Member. [Cries of "Oh!"] As hon. Gentlemen interrupted him, he would repeat, that according to some hon. Members the Resolution before the Committee meant there should be an electoral body consisting partly of proprietors of East India stock, partly of proprietors of railway stock, and partly of officers who had served in India. Another proposal was, that three members should be submitted to the Crown, of whom it should choose one, and the construction placed upon that by the right hon. Gentleman was, that the person so chosen was partly elected and partly nominated. Those were two clear and distinct propositions; and therefore he was justified in saying, that if they passed this Resolution they would be passing what meant one thing to one man, and another thing to another. He admitted there were many difficulties connected with the question, but let them not endeavour by a dishonest paltering between two propositions to escape those difficulties.

SIR JAMES GRAHAM

said, he wished to explain. His noble Friend had used very hard terms respecting the course he had taken on that occasion.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL

begged pardon. He did not mean to use any harsh language.

SIR JAMES GRAHAM

said, the noble Lord was so forcible in his expressions that he did not see the force with which they fell. He had described the proposal he had ventured to sketch out as a possible outline of the measure to be adopted as unwise and disingenuous, and at the end of his speech he had used the word "dishonest." The noble Lord the Member for Tiverton also accused him of making a play upon words. He did not think his proposal deserved such description. The question before the Committee was simply whether the words "partly nominated, partly elected," should stand part of the Resolution. The noble Lord proposed to insert a declaration that the Council should be wholly nominated. If they had arrived at a foregone conclusion that the Council should be wholly nominated they would vote with the noble Lord, but against him if they believed the principle of election should be introduced at all. He (Sir J. Graham) did not sustain his proposition on the ground that the Court of Directors was already partly nominated and partly elected, but on the ground that, after the nomination by the House should have taken effect, vacancies should be filled up on the elective principle—election by the Council itself. The noble Lord the Member for Tiverton had sought at once to give the proposal the bad name of self election. He did not think, however, that that term was applicable, as the members of the Council would hold their office either, as he should prefer, during good behaviour or for a term to be fixed, and they would only present for nomination, as vacancies should occur, the names, not of themselves, but of other persons. Now he hoped the Committee would agree to that proposition. He had never ventured to propose any Resolutions; he had not interfered with the proposals of others, or given any opinion until this evening. He had never commented on the measure of the noble Lord, a measure open to comment; and he had not put forward what he had to offer till the present time. He should be sorry if the Government should pledge itself at once to the scheme, the outlines only of which he had suggested. He thought it might be premature now either to reject or to adopt it. The Resolution they were now about to vote did not, as he considered, in the slightest degree pledge the Committee to the adoption of the proposal—it merely had the effect of rejecting the proposal of the noble Lord.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL

explained that he did not mean to apply to the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman the term "disingenuous." He said that as the right hon. Gentleman attached to it one meaning, and the Ministers of the Crown another, it would be disingenuous to adopt it without a distinct understanding as to what it really did mean.

SIR CHARLES WOOD

said, that what fell from the right hon. Member for Carlisle as to the effect of the vote they were about to give was not quite correct. The effect of carrying the Resolution proposed by the Government would not be simply to reject the proposition that the Council should be entirely nominated by the Crown. If they voted that the Council should be partly nominated and partly elected, they might vote for the proposition of the noble Lord the President of the Board of Control, but they would certainly not affirm that of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carlisle. He would suggest the postponement of the consideration of this Resolution.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, he did not rise to defend the right hon. Member for Carlisle, who was always sufficiently able to defend himself, but he wished to defend the Committee itself from a charge of disingenuousness, because if there was one thing which had characterized the proceedings of the Committee more than another, it was the bonâ fide spirit with which it had from the first discussed the Resolutions. Every suggestion from either side of the House likely to advance the object had been entertained with respect. He did not think that the noble Lord the Member for London had fairly placed before the Committee the issue which they were now going to decide. The noble Lord called upon the Government to declare whether they were in favour of the proposition of the right hon. Member for Carlisle, or whether they were in favour of that mentioned by the President of the Board of Control in his first speech. Now, what the noble Lord had a right to do was to call upon them to state whether they were going to ask the Committee to give an opinion on the fifth Resolution. When these Resolutions were first drawn, by the common consent of the House it was felt to be convenient that they should decide upon point after point, without necessarily connecting them together; and although his noble Friend in his first observations this evening adverted to other Resolutions, and taking as he did a generel view of the subject, had expressed the opinion of the Government generally, and although other Members of the Committee, like the right hon. Member for Carlisle, had freely offered their suggestions, still they must not forget that the issue really at stake was the fifth Resolution. They were not to decide upon suggestions, however ingeniously made by members of the Com- mittee in the course of the discussion, or on general remarks made by the President of the Board of Control, but they were to decide on the fifth Resolution, and that Resolution declared, that with a view to the efficiency of the Council it was expedient that the Council should be partly nominated and partly elected. Now, in asking the Committee to assent to that Resolution, no one for a moment contended that they were bound to support the seventh, any more than they were hound to support the suggestion of the right hon. Member for Carlisle. And, indeed, the President of the Board of Control, when he introduced the fifth Resolution, spoke of the seventh in no dictatorial tone, in no tone by which the Government were pledged. Therefore he maintained that they had only acted in unison with the general wishes of the Committee in discussing every point separately; and that in deciding on this point they were not bound to any other. His opinion was that if they voted in favour of this Resolution, and against the Amendment of the noble Lord, they should greatly advance the progress of their proceedings. All that they wished to pledge the Committee to by this Resolution was that the Council should be formed of mixed elements, and if the Committee approved of the general principle, the discussion of the evening would by no means be without fruitful results.

MR. GLADSTONE

said, he apprehended that in point of form they were not called upon to adopt the words of the fifth Resolution. The Resolution as put would be that certain words stand part of the question, as against the words proposed by his noble Friend the Member for London. That point decided, it would be competent for any one to move that the Chairman report progress, and thereupon at a future evening they might further discuss the terms of the Resolution.

Question put, "That the words 'with a view to the efficiency and independence of the Council,' stand part of the proposed Resolution."

The Committee divided:—Ayes 250; Noes 185: Majority 65.

List of the Ayes.
Adams, W. H.	Baring, A. H.
Adeane, H. J.	Baring, H. B.
Anderson, Sir J.	Baring, rt. hon. Sir F.T.
Archdall, Capt. M.	Baring, T.
Bagshaw, R. J.	Bernard, T.
Baillie, H. J.	Bernard, hon. Col.
Ball, E.	Barrow, W. H.

Bathurst, A. A.	Galway, Visct.
Baxter, W. E.	Gard, R. S.
Beach, W. W. B.	Gaskell, J. M.
Beecroft, G. S.	Gifford, Earl
Bennet, P.	Gladstone, rt. hon. W.
Bentinck, G. W. P.	Goddard, A. L.
Black, A.	Gore, W. R. O.
Blackburn, P.	Graham, rt. hon. Sir J.
Blake, J.	Greenall, G.
Blakemore, T. W. B.	Greene, J.
Boldero, Col.	Gregory, W. H.
Booth, Sir R. G.	Gregson, S.
Bovill, W.	Gray, Capt.
Bowyer, G.	Griffith, C. D.
Brady, J.	Hall, Gen.
Bramston, T. W.	Hamilton, Lord C.
Bridges, Sir B. W.	Hamilton, G. A.
Brocklehurst, J.	Hamilton, J. H.
Brown, W.	Hardy, G.
Bruce, Major C.	Hassard, M.
Bruen, H.	Hayes, Sir E.
Buller, Sir J. Y.	Heard, J. I.
Burghley, Lord	Henley, rt. hon. J. W.
Burrell, Sir C. M.	Hill, Lord E.
Cairns, Sir H. M'C.	Hill, hon. R. C.
Carden, Sir R. W.	Hodgson, W. N.
Carnac, Sir J. R.	Holford, R. S.
Cartwright, Col.	Hope, A. J. B. B,
Cayley, E. S.	Hopwood, J. T.
Cecil, Lord It.	Horsman, Rt. Hon. E.
Child, S.	Hotham, Lord
Christy, S.	Hume, W. W. F.
Clive, hon. R. W.	Hutt, W.
Close, M. C.	Ingestre, Visct.
Codrington, Sir W.	Ingham, R.
Cole, hon. H. A.	Inglis, J.
Colebrooke, Sir T. E.	Jermyn, Earl
Collins, T.	Johnstone, J. J. H.
Coote, Sir C. H.	Jones, David
Corbally, M. E.	Kelly, Sir F.
Corry, rt. hon. H. L.	Kerrison, Sir E. C.
Cox, W.	King, J. K.
Cross, R. A.	Kinglake, A. W.
Cubitt, Mr. Alderman	Knatchbull, W. F.
Curzon, Vict.	Knatchbull-Hugessen E
Dalglish, R.	Knight, F. W.
Denison, E.	Knightley, R.
Disraeli, rt. hon. B.	Knox, Col.
Dobbs, W. C.	Langton, W. G.
Dod, J. W.	Laslett, W.
Du Cane, C.	Lefroy, A.
Duke, Sir J.	Lennox, Lord H. G.
Duncombe, hon. A.	Liddell, hon. H. G.
Duncombe, hon. Col.	Lisburne, Earl of
Dundas, G.	Lockhart, A. E.
Dunlop, A. M.	Lopes, Sir M.
Du Pre, C. G.	Lovaine, Lord
Dutton, hon. R. H.	Lowther, hon. Col.
Egerton, Sir P. G.	Lyall, G.
Ellice, rt. hon. E.	Lygon, hon. F.
Ellice, E.	Lytton, rt. hn, Sir B.
Elphinstone, Sir J.	Macaulay, K.
Ennis, J.	MacEvoy, E.
Estcourt, rt. hon. T. H.	M'Clintock, J.
Euston Earl	Maguire, J. F.
Farquhar, Sir M.	Malins, R.
Fellowes, E.	Mangles, C. E.
Finlay, A. S.	Manners, Lord J.
FitzGerald, W. R. S.	March, Earl of
Forde, Col.	Marjoribanks, D. C.
Forester, rt. hon. Col.	Melgund, Visct.
Forster, Sir G.	Miles, W.
Gallwey, Sir W. P.	Miller, S. B.

Mills, A.	Smollett, A.
Milnes, R. M.	Somerset, Col.
Mitchell, T. A.	Spaight, J.
Montgomery, Sir G.	Spooner, R.
Moody, C. A.	Stanhope, J. B.
Morgan, O.	Stanley, Lord
Mowbray, rt. hon. J. R.	Stephenson, R.
Naas, Lord	Steuart, A.
Neeld, J.	Sturt, H. G.
Newport, Visct.	Sturt, N.
Nicoll, D.	Sullivan, M.
Nisbet, R. P.	Sykes, Col. W. B.
North, Col.	Talbot, C. R. M.
O'Donaghoe, The	Taylor, S. W.
Packe, C. W.	Tempest, Lord A. V.
Pakenham, Col.	Thompson, Gen.
Pakington, rt. hn. Sir J.	Tottenham, C.
Palk, L.	Trollope, rt. hon. Sir J.
Palmer, R.	Vance, J.
Palmer, R. W.	Vansittart, G. H.
Patten, Col. W.	Vansittart, W.
Paull, H.	Verner, Sir W.
Pease, H.	Verney, Sir H.
Peel, Sir R.	Waddington, H. S.
Peel, rt. hon. Gen.	Walcott, Adm.
Pennant, hon. Col.	Waldron, L.
Pevensey, Visct.	Walsh, Sir J.
Pigott, E.	Warren, S.
Powell, F. S.	Weguelin, T. M.
Proby, hn. G. L.	Welby, W. E.
Pugh, D.	Whatman, J.
Ramsay, Sir A.	White, J.
Rawlinson, Sir H. C.	Whiteside, rt. hon. J.
Repton, G. W. J.	Whitmore, H.
Ridley, G.	Willoughby, Sir H.
Robertson, P. F.	Willoughby, J. P.
Rushout, G.	Wise, J. A.
Rust, J.	Wortley, rt. hon. J. S.
Selater-Booth, G.	Wyld, J.
Scott, hon. F.	Wyndham, H.
Scott, Major	Wynn, Colonel
Seymer, H. K.	Wynne, W. W. E.
Sheridan, H. B.	Yorke, hon. E. T.
Smith, M. T.
Smith, A.	TELLERS.
Smith, Sir F.	Jolliffe, Sir W. G. H.
Smyth, Col.	Taylor, Col.

List of the NOES.
Agnew, Sir A.	Calcraft, J. H.
Akroyd, E.	Campbell, R. J. R.
Alcock, T.	Cavendish, hon. W.
Antrobus, E.	Cheetham, J.
Ashley, Lord	Churchill, Lord A. S.
Ayrton, A. S.	Clay, J.
Bagwell, J.	Clifford, C. C.
Baines, Rt. Hon. M. T.	Clifford, Col.
Baring, T. G.	Clive, G.
Beaumont, W. B.	Codrington, Gen.
Biddulph, R. M.	Cogan, W. H. F.
Bouverie, rt. hon. E. P.	Collier, R. P.
Bouverie, hon. P. P.	Coningham, W.
Brand, hon. H.	Conyngham, Lord F.
Briscoe, J. I.	Cowper, rt. hn. W. F.
Browne, Lord J. T.	Cowan, C.
Bruce, H. A.	Craufurd, E. H. J.
Buchanan, W.	Crawford, R. W.
Buckley, General	Crossley, F.
Buller, J. W.	Davey, R.
Bury, Viscount	Davie, Sir H. R. F.
Byng, hon. G.	Deasy, R.
Caird, J.	Denison, hn. W. H. F.

Dent, J. D.	Norreys, Sir D. J.
De Vere, S. E.	Norris, J. T.
Dillwyn, L. L.	O'Brien, P.
Dodson, J. G.	O'Connell, Capt. D.
Duff, M. E. G.	Ogilvy, Sir J.
Duff, Major, L. D. G.	Owen, Sir J.
Dunbar, Sir W.	Paget, C.
Duncan, Visct.	Paget, Lord C.
Dunkellin, Lord	Palmerston, Visct.
Dunne, M	Perry, Sir T. E.
Ebrington, Viscount	Philips, R. N.
Elliot, hon. J. E.	Pilkington, J.
Evans, T. W.	Pinney, Col.
Ewart, W.	Portman, hon. W. H. B.
Ewart, J. C.	Power, N.
Ewing, H. E. C.	Pryse, E. L.
Fagan, W.	Pritchard, J.
FitzGerald, rt. hon. J.D.	Puller, C. W. G.
Foljambe, F. J. S.	Raynham, Visct.
Forster, C.	Rebow, J. G.
Foster, W.O.	Ricardo, O.
Fortescue, hon. F. D.	Rich, H.
Fortescue, C. S.	Richardson, J.
Freestun, Col.	Robartes, T. J. A.
French, Col.	Roupell, W.
Gibson, rt. hon. T. M.	Russell, Lord J.
Gilpin, C.	Russell, H.
Goderich, Visct.	Russell, A.
Greenwood, J.	Salisbury, E. G.
Grey, R. W.	Sandon, Visct.
Gurdon, B.	Schneider, H. W.
Gurney, S.	Scrope, G. P.
Hadfield, G.	Seymour, H. D.
Ball, rt. hon. Sir B.	Shafto, R. D.
Hamilton, Capt.	Shelley, Sir J. V.
Hanbury, R.	Sheridan, R. B.
Hankey, T.	Smith, rt. hon. R. V.
Hanmer, Sir J.	Somerville, rt. hn. Sir W.
Harris, J. D.	Stapleton, J.
Hatchell, J. A.	Steel, J.
Hay, Lord J.	Stuart, Col.
Hayter, rt. hn. Sir W.G.	Tancred, H. W.
Headlam, T. E.	Thornhill, W. P.
Heneage, G. F.	Tite, W.
Herbert, rt. hon. H. A.	Tollemache, hon. F. J.
Herbert, rt. hon. S.	Tomline, G.
Hodson, K. D.	Traill, G.
Jervoise, Sir J. C.	Trelawny, Sir J. S.
Kershaw, J.	Trueman, C.
King, hn. P. J. L.	Turner, J. A.
King, E. B.	Villiers, rt. hon. C. P.
Kinglake, J. A.	Vivian, H. H.
Kingscote, R. N. F.	Vivian, hon. J. C. W.
Kinnaird, hon. A. F.	Warre, J. A.
Kirk, W.	Watkins, Col. L.
Langston, J. H.	Westhead, J. P. B.
Langton, H. G.	Whitbread, S.
Lewis, rt. hn. Sir G. C.	White, H.
Locke, Joseph	Williams, W.
Locke, John	Williams, Sir W. F.
Lowe, rt. hon. R.	Wilson, J.
Macarthy, A.	Wingfield, R. B.
Mackie, J.	Winnington, Sir T. E.
Mackinnon, W. A.	Wood, rt. hon. Sir C.
Martin, C. W.	Woods, W.
Martin, P. W.	Woods, H.
Massey, W. N.	Young, A. W.
Mills, T.
Moffatt, G.	TELLERS.
Monsell, rt. hon. W.	Roebuck, J. A.
Morris, D.	Lindsay, W. S.
Napier, Sir C.

Original Question again proposed.

VISCOUNT GODERICH

said, that as the Chancellor of the Exchequer had told the Committee that in voting in the division which had just taken place they would not, as they supposed when the discussion commenced, vote upon the question whether the Council should be appointed partly by election, but merely upon the question whether the Council should consist of mixed elements; and as the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle had made a proposition which a considerable number of hon. Members might be disposed to support, he hoped the Government would take time to consider that proposition, as well as to come to some determination as to what interpretation was to be put upon their own Resolution. He, therefore, moved that the Chairman report progress.

MR. BARROW

said, that, as a Member who found it inconvenient to come down to the House night after night to listen to the discussion of questions which had been debated over and over again, he should object to the postponement of the Resolution before the Committee. It had already been decided that the principle of election should enter into the constitution of the Council, and, not having any inclination to discuss the proposition of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle, which was a matter of detail that might be considered hereafter, he saw no reason why the Committee should not at once pronounce its judgment upon the Resolution submitted by the Government.

MR. RICH

said, he thought the Government should have time to consider the new phase which the question had assumed since the commencement of the discussion that evening.

Motion made and Question put, "That the Chairman do report progress, and ask leave to sit again."

The Committee divided:—Ayes 155; Noes 239: Majority 84.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL

said, that he thought it reasonable, in accordance with the suggestion of the right hon. Member for Oxford University, that they should have further time to consider the resolution. As it stood at present the Resolution did not appear to him to have any very definite meaning, and he should certainly say "No" to it, though he should not divide the House.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, he wished that, before they adjourned these proceedings, the Committee should clearly understand what they had done that night. They had declared by a large majority that they did not approve of the Council being entirely nominated by the Crown. As they had advanced so far, it was clear that the elements of the Council must be of a mixed nature, in deference to the decision of the Committee. The Resolution before them only called upon the Committee to sanction that principle, and he thought it was but reasonable, therefore, that it should be disposed of.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL

said, he wished to know whether the right hon. Gentleman intended to propose, at the next meeting of the House, the seventh Resolution?

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, the sixth Resolution would precede the seventh. At the next meeting of the Committee it would be the duty of the Government to offer a Resolution to carry into effect the Resolutions passed that night.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

House resumed.

Committee report progress; to sit again on Thursday at twelve o'clock.