INDIA. (Hansard, 2 June 1853)

§ The EARL of ALBEMARLE

presented a petition from inhabitants of Bristol, praying that the permanent legislation for the future government of India may be postponed until the inquiries before the Committees of both Houses of Parliament shall have been completed. His Lordship said, it was not necessary that he should enter into the grievances which had been alleged as a reason for postponing legislation on this subject. It was admitted by every one that justice had been maladmin-istered—that public works had been neglected—that the police were insufficient—that the public debt had increased, and that the revenue had been diminishing. To one point only he would call their Lordships' attention as a reason for postponing legislation this year, and that was to the question of the material condition of the people of India, and the necessity for inquiry whether the East India Company had performed that most important duty of all Governments—to take due care of the prosperity and welfare of the people. On that subject, though the petitions from India had stated specifically numerous heavy grievances by which their material prosperity had been affected, and 1035 though a mass of evidence in various publications had been adduced in support of their complaints, they had not one official document of any sort to disprove or confirm any of the statements made in those petitions. There was a statistical department, and that department cost the East India Company 3,266l. a year, being one-twenty-eighth more than a similar department in the Home Office; and yet there was not one document which had proceeded from that office to enable Parliament to understand what really was the material condition of the people of India. In the next place, there had been laid before the Committees of both Houses of Parliament documents amounting to 4,300 folio pages, without one word to give any clue as to the actual condition of the people of India. In that laboured apology for the East India Company, known by the name of the History of the East India Company, not one argument was stated on this subject. All that had been attempted anywhere—and particularly in that apology, which common rumour said was concocted in Leadenhall-street—had been to say that the people of India were not worse off than they were under our predecessors in the East—in other words, that we were content to place our civilisation on a par with the barbarism of Northern Asia, as represented by the Mahomedan conquerors of India; that we, the Christians of the nineteenth century, were content to say that we had not handled our subjects more harshly than the Mahomedans of the sixteenth century. But he believed it would be found that we could not afford to be measured even by that low standard. He believed that in many instances our treatment of the people was worse than that of the Mogul conquerors of India. He believed that the land tax was higher—he knew that it was much more rigorously exacted, and more in violation of the feelings of the people of India, than by the Moguls who preceded us. Again, the salt tax was four times what it was under their rule; but he would not trouble their Lordships with details. He thought this question one of the most important that could occupy the attention of the Government, and that was quite sufficient in his mind to bear out the prayer of the petition to postpone legislation, unless the measure of the Government, to be brought forward tomorrow, was very different from what he feared it would turn out to be—because giving his noble Friends in the Government 1036 the fullest credit, admiring as he did their administrative talents, he could not conceive how, during the short time they had been in office, they could have prepared a Bill sufficient to meet the material and important interests involved in this question.