HL Deb 13 May 1853 vol 127 cc298-315
The EARL of ALBEMARLE

presented a petition from inhabitants of the city of Manchester, in public meeting assembled, praying that the future government of India in this country should consist of a Minister and a Council, appointed by the Crown, and directly responsible to the Imperial Parliament. The noble Earl said, that, from private sources, he had learnt that the petition contained the sentiments not only of Manchester, but of the great majority of the population in the neighbourhood; and therefore came from a district which—London not excepted—was more virtually interested than any other part of Her Majesty's dominions in the material wellbeing of the people of India. The petitioners prayed for a reform in the home government of India, and expressed their opinion that the existing Government had not developed the resources of that country, and had not provided for the welfare of the inhabitants; they therefore prayed that the existing form of government might be abolished, and that in its room a Government directly responsible to Parliament might be substituted. He did not venture to anticipate what might be the scheme of government which the present Administration had announced their intention to submit to Parliament; but he must declare his conviction that no scheme of government would meet with the ap- proval of the public, unless the Government were made responsible, expeditious in the transaction of business, economical, and effectual. That the existing form of government possessed none of these properties was a fact upon which, he believed, all who had given any attention to the subject were agreed. He was aware that it had been contended by a writer of great ability, that the irresponsility of the existing Government was one of its chief merits, inasmuch as in consequence of it "a Radical seeking a victim might sometimes be at fault." Many instances, however, such as the affair of Baroda and others, might be cited to show that the injurious effects of this want of responsibility more than counterbalanced even the advantage which was to be gained by placing a Radical in search of a victim at fault. In the Baroda affair, the eighteen Directors differed in opinion from the President of the Board of Control; thirteen signed a protest, and that protest was afterwards published by the authority of Parliament. However, the President persisted, and ultimately a majority of the Court signed the order to which they had objected, and it was sent to India as their act, and as the expression of their sentiments. The petitioners thought that the government should be rendered more expeditious, and upon that point he thought there could be but one opinion. The delay arising from the perplexity of the double government, was an evil of the magnitude of which there could be no doubt. It took, generally, about six months to write a despatch; it took sometimes as many years to answer it; sometimes it was never answered at all. He wondered that the offices of Leadenhall-street and Cannon-row, spacious as they were, could contain all the long-winded Indian despatches, with all the duplicate and triplicate answers and other documents which had found their way there during the long period of seventy years. The noble Earl here quoted a passage from a recently published pamphlet of Dr. Buist upon this subject, in which he says— Every step which a Governor General takes must be explained to the people at home; a copy of every letter he writes or receives, or minute he makes, must be sent to London; a detailed narrative of everything that is said, written, or done by the supreme or subordinate Governments must be forwarded home to be commented on or criticised by 'the clever clerks' of Cannon Row or Leadenhall Street, who hold the nominal rulers of India in the most absolute subjection to their pens. So frightful is the minuteness insisted on that it becomes physically impossible for these gentlemen to peruse the documents on which they are supposed to decide. The papers sent by the Cape occupy close on 200 folio volumes annually, of from 500 to 1,000 pages, and a single revenue despatch is quoted by a late President of the Board of Control as having 45,000 pages of accompaniments! The from-ship-to-ship despatches, of the Bombay Government will annually print out to 60 volumes of 1,500 pages folio, or as much as would make 240 volumes 8vo. of ordinary-sized print! Then, as to the expense of the government in its present form; it was as costly as it was cumbrous. The home charges for salaries and contingencies were 172,695l., and the buildings were valued at 500,000l. Besides the secretariat of the India House, there were no fewer than three secretariats—the general one, the military one, and the examiner's office. The general office, with 96 persons, cost, in 1852, 46,947l.; the military office had 26 persons, and cost 11,575l.; while the examiner's office contained 49 persons, and cost 21,586l. To this department had lately been added a statistical one, consisting of six persons, and costing 3,396l. Thus, at the India House, we had a writing establishment consisting of 179 persons, at the yearly cost in mere salaries of 82,404l. Adding to this the establishment at the India Board, of an unknown number of secretaries and clerks, costing 24,886l., exclusive of the President, and the cost of the secretariat would come to the frightful sum of 107,290l. Here was an expenditure for mere writing which nearly doubled that of the three Imperial Secretariats of State (61,799l.) Another part of the question as regarded the financial government of India was the conduct of that Government, as agents upon the estate which had been under their management for seventy years. The accounts had been made up for sixty-seven years, and what did they show? In sixty-seven years 67,000,000l. had been added to the debt, being an average of 1,000,000l. annually. Of these 67,000,000l. about 20,000,000l. had been incurred since the renewal of the charter in 1833; and this was exclusive of the Burmese war, and of the expense attendant on the annexation of Pegu—a country that was not likely to pay its expenses for the next half century. The existence of this large debt might possibly without explanation be disputed. The Indian territorial debt was 50,000,000l.; the stock of the East India Company was nominally 6,000,000l., but, the interest being 10½ per cent, it was virtually 12,000,000l.; and the people of India were charged with an old commercial debt of the Company of about 5,000,000l.; the interest paid on these sums was not less than 3,000,000l. a year, or one-seventh part of the annual revenue of India, and it formed a first charge on the revenue of the country. The present form of government in India was framed seventy years ago, and for a totally different purpose from that to which it was at present applied, and could not be supposed to be fitted for the altered circumstances of both India and England. The East India Company were formerly a trading body, and were in possession of a monopoly of the whole trade of India, including within the term the whole trade between the east coast of Africa and the western coast of America. The East India Company had now ceased altogether to be a trading body, and had no more claim to India or to possessions in India than in any other part of Her Majesty's dominions—they had no more than a lien upon these territories for a comparatively small sum. During the past seventy years the population and commerce of India had vastly increased, and the present facilities of communication were such as could not be dreamt of in the early period to which he had referred. He asked, therefore—seeing all the circumstances were so different—why the Company should be reinvested with a power so preposterous as that which it possessed? In 1784 our exports to India amounted to 386,152l.; they were now 10,000,000l. The local trade of India in 1784 was a mere trifle, but the imports, exclusive of bullion, were now 35,000,000l., and the exports were 32,000,000l. The petitioners also stated that the administration of justice had been, and still was, exceedingly defective. On this point there was such a unanimous concurrence of opinion that it might be disposed of in a few words. There was no code of laws in India, though a Commission was appointed for that purpose by the Act of 1833. The baffled attempts of the Commission to frame that code had cost 170,000l. Eight Judges of the Queen's Courts administered justice to the inhabitants of Calcutta, Madras, and the eastern settlements. Their jurisdiction was confined to a population under 2,000,000—Calcutta, 500,000; Madras, 600,000; Bombay, 600,000; Penang, Singapore, and Malacca, 250,0000; total, 1,950,000. For the remaining 98,000,000, there were 100 European Judges, not one of whom had received a judicial education. Then the nature and mode of taxation was most oppressive; and the petitioners pointed out the operation of the land tax. Sixty years ago the land tax was settled in perpetuity, and by that Act the property of the real proprietors of the soil—the peasant cultivators—was entirely confiscated, and made over to the Zemindars, an hereditary body of collectors, for no earthly reason that could be assigned, except that the name of their office signified in Persian—not in their own language—"landowner," thus causing, as Sir H. Strachey said, "a greater revolution in the property of land than the invasion of foreign barbarians could have effected in the same time." This was the act of a benevolent man, the Marquess Cornwallis, and was done with the best intentions, though in utter ignorance of the tenure upon which land was held in India. The portion of the rent which the State claimed as their share amounted to 18s. in the pound, or nine-tenths of the rent; and having stated that, it was superfluous to say that in ton years the new landholders had disappeared, the greater portion of them being reduced to bankruptcy. To show the practical effect of this rackrenting system, he would call attention to the condition of the land revenue in the different provinces in the four years ending 1849–50, compared with the four years ending 1845–46. In Bengal, the falling off, in 1849–50, was 34,761l.; in Agra, the falling off was 325,163l.; in Bombay, the falling off was 14,726l.; and in Madras there was an increase of 242,130l.; but this increase in Madras was due to lapses and resumptions, quite independent of the ordinary land revenue of the Presidency. The petitioners next complained that the progress of the people in industry had been retarded. His noble Friend who was formerly Governor General of India (the Earl of Ellenborough), had stated, that we had in India "the noblest of soldiers, and the meanest of administrators." By these soldiers it was true that the people of India had been protected from foreign invasion, and in consequence of that protection they had greatly increased in numbers; but he was afraid that, while wages were just what they were seventy years ago, by maladministration, and from the want of a proper development of its resources, by these "meanest of administrators," the country was in a worse condition than before. According to the returns of population furnished from the East India House, the present population of our old provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, was 36,848,981—or about one-third more than that of the United Kingdom. This was very unequally distributed, for in some districts the rate per square mile was (Hooghly) 723; in another (Burdwan), no less than 833; while in a third (Chittagong), it was as low as 132. The average of the whole, however, gave a population per square mile of 330, which was one-third greater than that of the United Kingdom—namely, 216. He believed that the wages of rural labour were at present what they were seventy years ago—from 2d. to 3d., a-day, and that the price of rice and other bread corn, as well as salt, the main sustenance of the people, had risen, not fallen, and at best had continued stationary. He would read what he considered, from his own personal observation, to be an authentic statement of the condition of the peasantry of the richest part of India—the provinces just alluded to. It was from a periodical work published at Calcutta—the Calcutta Review, of which the conductor was commonly understood to be the author of an able and instructive work on our expedition to Affghanistan, which had been so generally read in this country:— To whatever part of Bengal we may go, the ryot will 'be found to live all his days on rice, and to go covered with a slight cotton cloth.' The profits which he makes are consumed in some way or other. The demands upon him are almost endless, and he must meet them one by one. This prevents the creation of capital, and prolongs the longevity of the Mahajani (or usurious or money-lending) system. The districts of Bengal are noted for fertility and exuberance of crops; and if the ryots could enjoy freedom and security, the country would exhibit a cheering spectacle. But their present condition is miserable, and appears to rouse no fellow-feeling, no sympathy, in those by whom they are surrounded. The monthly expense of a ryot is 1£ to 3 rupees; and if he has a family it must be proportionately higher. We do not believe that there are in all the districts five in every hundred whose whole annual profits exceed 100 rupees! (10l.) In many instances the earnings of a ryot are not sufficient for his family; and his wife and sons are obliged to betake themselves to some pursuit, and assist him with all they can get. He lives generally upon coarse rice and dholl (pulse); vegetables and fish would be luxuries. His dress consists of a bit of rag and a slender chudder (sheet); his bed is composed of a coarse mat and a pillow; his habitation a thatched roof; and his property a plough, two bullocks, one or two lotahs (brass pots), and some bijdhan. He toils 'from morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve;' and, despite this, he is a haggard, poverty-smitten, wretched creature. This is no exaggeration; even in ordinary seasons, and under ordinary circumstances, the ryots may often be seen fasting for days and nights for want of food. The inability of the ryot to better his degraded condition, in which he has been placed by the causes we have named, is increased by his mental debasement. Unprotected, harassed, and oppressed, he has been precluded from the genial rays of intellectuality. His mind is veiled in a thick gloom of ignorance. Thus far as regarded Bengal. The condition of the Madras peasant was faithfully portrayed in a petition presented some time ago by the noble Earl near him (the Earl of Ellenborough), from which be would take the liberty of reading a passage:— The unwillingness of the Company and the local Government to expend money on the construction of roads requisite for the interchange of traffic from province to province, and from the interior to the shipping ports along the coast, would be incredible if it were not a notorious and substantiable fact; and it is still worse that they should pretend the ryots ought to make them at their own expense, for, pressed down as they are by a heavy load of taxes, which renders them too poor to purchase company's salt for their miserable food of boiled rice and vegetables—the latter too frequently wild herbs, the spontaneous produce of the uncultivated earth; unable to supply themselves with clothes, beyond a piece of coarse cotton fabric, worth 2s., once in a twelvemonth, it is impossible for them to find the means or time for road making gratis, even if they possessed the skill requisite for the purpose; and your petitioners submit that it is the bounden duty of the State which reduces them to their miserable condition, and keeps them in it from charter to charter, to spend a far larger portion of the revenue upon the improvement of the country whence they are derived than it does at present. He happened to have in his possession two letters confirmatory of the statements contained in the petition from which he had just quoted. The letters were written by two thoroughly educated native gentlemen, who were capable of giving expression to their ideas in as correct language as could be employed by any of their Lordships. The first of these gentlemen, Lutchmenarusee Chuttyan, wrote as follows, under the date of Madras, January 24, 1853:— If a commission could be' obtained to take information in this country, all the more glaring complaints could be fully substantiated. We have tried to avoid exaggeration in our statements, but the evils alluded to are so great that nothing will convince people in Europe of their truth except the establishment of such commission. The second gentleman (Ramma Sawmy-a-Cherry), writing from Madras on the 26th of January, 1853, expressed himself thus:— The committee are of opinion that, could Parliament be prevailed upon to send out a commission to India, much good would arise therefrom; and they assure you, in such case, they will undertake to prove more than they have brought forward in the petition sent to you by last mail, which they hope has reached you ere this; and that you have had sufficient time to form an opinion of its contents, as to whether it contains exaggerated statements or plain facts capable of standing the fullest investigation. The petitioners stated that the public works in India were very inadequate for the purpose of communication by means of roads and navigation. Avoiding as much as possible travelling over ground which had been already trodden in the course of these discussions, he would now direct the attention of their Lordships to the state of railway communication in India. In Bengal private persons had embarked 1,000,000l. sterling for the construction of a railroad of 116 miles in length, which it was expected would be open in the course of the present month. In Bombay 500,000l. had been subscribed, and it was expected that 25 miles of railway would be completed in the course of the year. Now, this state of things might be contrasted with the railways of the Spanish island of Cuba, of which the area was but 43,412 miles, or about l–30th part of the area of India, and containing l–100th part of its population. Cuba possessed at present many railways, chiefly for the conveyance of goods. One of these, that of Cardenas, was 66 miles in length, the cost two million two hundred thousand dollars, which, in the first year, yielded eighteen thousand dollars, or 8 per cent. The deplorable effects resulting from the want of good means of internal communication were strikingly displayed in a circular of Messrs. Ritchie and Stuart, referring to the province of Kandeish. The circular said— The report of Captain Wingate, to which we allude, has reference to a contemplated survey and reassessment of the province of Candeish, which is contiguous to Berar. The vast importance of this measure will be judged of from the following statistics, which we extract from the report, and which will probably not be deemed out of place here, nor fail to be of interest, as showing how truly our trade with the interior may be said to be yet in its infancy. The whole province of Candeish contains 12,078 square miles, of which it is estimated that the arable portion is 9,772. Of this arable area 1,413 square miles are culti- vated, and 8,359 are lying waste. The population of the whole province was 785,991, according to a census taken in 1851. The number of villages in the whole province is 3,837, of which 1,079 are now uninhabited. The soil of Candeish is stated to be superior in fertility to, and yields heavier crops than, that of the Deccan and southern Mahratta country. Although so much of the country now lies in waste, the traces of a former industry are to be seen in the mango and tamarind trees, and the many ruined wells which are still to be met with in the neighbourhood of almost every village. Of the five-sixths of the arable land, the 5,000,000 of square acres now lying waste, Captain Wingate further remarks, nearly the whole is comparatively fertile, and suitable to the growth of exportable products, such as cotton, oil-seeds, &c. Now, let us see how the Government of India deals with the province. On the 30th of July, 1850, the Governor of Bombay appointed Mr. Haddock first assistant. This gentleman entered the Company's service in January, 1847, and consequently his experience of India affairs did not extend beyond a period of three years and a half. The second assistant, Mr. Doyley, appointed on the same day as Mr. Haddock, commenced his Indian career on the 27th of September, 1848, and, consequently, had the advantage of about fourteen months' knowledge of the county. Here then were two young gentlemen who had scarcely attained their majority placed in the uncontrolled charge of a district about a third of the size of the kingdom of Scotland. Their Lordships would, he was sure, be edified by the description of a journey from Bombay to Agra, undertaken in the early part of this year by an American traveller of the name of Taylor. The description was given by the adventurous traveller himself:— I left Bombay on the evening of the 3rd in the banghy cart which carries the mail as far as Dhoolia (whence it is despatched on horseback), and thence proceeds with the heavier packages to Indore. The fare is four annas per mile. The cart is merely a box on wheels, and can only accommodate one traveller at a time. For the greater part of the way to Dhoolia the road is tolerably good. The ascent to the Toll (Tull) Ghaut, in particular, is a splendid piece of engineering. Nevertheless, we did not average five miles an hour, since, though travelling day and night, with two brief halts, which the driver allowed me for meals, we did not reach Dhoolia, 215 miles from Bombay, until one o'clock on the morning of the 6th. Beyond Dhoolia my trials commenced. There is merely a cart road, and the soil, which is a rich black loam, is terribly cut up by the wheels during the rains, and was now baked into permanent roughness. We had such heavy seas to encounter, that we made three knots an hour with difficulty; and, after labour- ing along for twenty miles in this manner, the vessel foundered. In other words, the axle snapped in twain, and I was pitched into the road. I took my seat in the jungle for three hours, at the end of which time a bullock-cart was procured, in which I was conveyed to Seerpore. At Seerpore I was detained eighteen hours, waiting for the broken axle to be mended. This was done so skilfully, that, after proceeding five miles from that place it snapped again, and I was again pitched into the road. Another halt in the jungle succeeded, and towards evening a second cart was procured, in which I reached Palasneh about midnight, having made sixteen miles that day. The new cart was a hopeless cripple, and the box in which I sat had such a pitch forward that it was necessary to hold fast with both hands. The whole trip from Bombay was made in twelve days, but in only seven days' travelling time. I must confess, however, that my limbs were somewhat bruised, and my skin worn threadbare in various places. A little expense and attention directed to this route would greatly increase the comfort and safety of the traveller, and facilitate the communication between Bombay and the North-West Provinces. Compare Mr. Taylor's account of the roads in our own territories with that given by Mr. Jukes, naturalist of the Queen's surveying ship Fly, of the roads in Java. Mr. Jukes visited Java in 1844, and gave this account of his experience there:— We had four good little horses (from Batavia), and proceeded with considerable rapidity along an excellent level road, broad and hard, raised two or three feet above the level of the country, with an inferior road at the side for carts and waggons. The posthouses are each about six miles apart. At each is a large shed, stretching completely across the road, to shelter travellers from the sun while changing horses. A similar account was given in Ger-stacker's Five Years' Journey Bound the World.— Saturday, the 15th of November, 1851, the mail-coach for Buitenzorg started at 6 a.m. Four small but lively horses carried the easy and comfortable coach towards Buitenzorg, along the smooth, even road, through a perfect paradise of gardens and flowers. We were taken along at the rate of nine knots an hour, reaching Buitenzorg, 39 paalen or miles distant, towards 10 o'clock. The post road through Java is equal to the best of the kind I have ever seen in Germany, and seems to have been made in spite of a great many difficulties."—Vol. iii. pp. 197 to 199. The native rulers of India had uniformly recognised the importance of irrigation and the means of internal communication, and expended great sums of money in public works for the attainment of those objects. In the reign of Edward I., when England did not possess a single canal—when there were no roads except in the immediate neighbourhood of the capitals—when its agriculture was in the rudest state, and when the scanty population of the island did not raise sufficient food for its support—at that time Feroze Toghlak, in India, built 50 dams across rivers to promote navigation, erected 40 mosques, 30 colleges, 100 caravanserais, 30 reservoirs for irrigation, 100 hospitals, 100 public baths, and 150 bridges. At the time when the eastern monarchs were expending their resources in works of national utility—as, for example, in the reign of Acbar, the contemporary of our Elizabeth—the funds of the English Exchequer flowed into the pockets of individuals in the form of monopolies. Need he remind their Lordships of the bridge monopoly of the Earl of Oxford, the sweet wine monopoly of Sir Walter Raleigh, and the monopoly of gold and silver thread by Sir Giles Montpesson, the original of Sir Giles Overreach? To descend a little lower—while Charles I. was besieging his reluctant Commons for money to pay armies to be employed against themselves, Shah Jehan was paying his army out of the net profits of his canals. He could not avoid troubling their Lordships with one quotation more, which depicted the terrible consequences resulting from the neglect of public works by the Indian Government:— Famines occurring almost decennially, some of which within our time, have swept their millions. In 1833 50,000 persons perished in the month of September in Lucknow; at Khanpoor 1,200 died of want, and half a million sterling was subscribed by the bountiful to relieve the destitute; in Guntoor 250,000 human beings, 74,000 bullocks, 159,000 milch cattle, and 300,000 sheep and goats died of starvation; 50,000 people perished in Marwar; and in the north-west provinces half a million of human lives are supposed to have been lost. The living preyed upon the dead; mothers devoured their children, and the human imagination could scarcely picture the scenes of horror that pervaded the land. In 20 months' time a million and a half of people must have died of hunger, or of its immediate consequences. The direct pecuniary loss occasioned to Government by this single visitation exceeded 5,000,000l. sterling—a sum which would have gone far to avert the calamity from which it arose, had it been expended in constructing thoroughfares to connect the interior with the sea coast, or districts where scarcity prevailed, with those where human food was to be had in abundance, or on canals to bear forth to the soil, thirsty and barren for want of moisture, the unbounded supplies our rivers carry to the ocean. One word more, and he had done. If we needs must precipitately, and because precipitately ignorantly, legislate for British India, at least let us not foreclose this question. Let us not, as heretofore, grant another 20 years' lease of this vast farm, with its 100,000,000 head of human live stock; let us bear in mind that our Indian fellow subjects had rights as dear and as clear as our own; and let us not treat them as the mere adscripti glebœ of a Russian or Polish estate.

The EARL of ELLENBOROUGH

said, he had so often received their Lordships' indulgence in speaking upon the subject of India during the present Session, that he would not now trespass upon their attention for more than a few moments. He thought it right, however, to say a few words with respect to this petition, which was certainly one of great importance, coming as it did from so influential a body as the citizens of Manchester. He received such recruits to the good cause of Indian reform with great satisfaction. A striking change had certainly taken place in public opinion during the last fourteen months with respect to Indian government. The conclusions at which public opinion seemed to have arrived, had always been his conclusions. He had stated them when he had been examined before the Committee of the House of Commons—namely, that it would be desirable altogether to disconnect the East India Company from the Government of India, and to carry on that Government under the name and with the full authority of the Crown, by means of a President and a Council nominated by the Crown. That was the plan which he had recommended, and which he thought would tend to improve the Government of India, and to bestow greater happiness upon the Indian people. When he first spoke on the subject last year, he had not ventured to state the whole extent to which he was prepared to go, as he thought he should not receive sufficient support if he did so; but before the Committee it was his duty to open all his mind. His views were now stated to their full extent by the citizens of the most enlightened and—excepting the metropolis—the most populous city in England; but while he agreed generally with the conclusions of the petitioners, he thought it necessary to make one or two observations upon the statements from which those conclusions were drawn. He thought there was much exaggeration and misunderstanding in some of the statements in the petition. The petitioners stated that India had been left by its present Govern- ment in a state of extreme misery, which, was utterly disgraceful to its rulers. Whatever might be the defects in the form of the Government and in the internal administration of India, it would be most disgraceful if any country, administered, as India was, by a great body of enlightened English gentlemen, should be left in a state of extreme misery. But that which was considered misery in England, particularly at Manchester, was not, perhaps, considered misery in India. The people of that country took a different view from ourselves of the comforts necessary to existence. He had little doubt that at Manchester it was considered essential to a man's comfort that he should eat a great deal, and be extremely well clothed; but in India the less a man eat and the fewer clothes he had on, the better for him. They were told by a great moralist that all a man required was meat, clothes, and fire; but, in general, the people of India did not eat meat, they were few or no clothes, and only required fire for about half-an-hour in the day, for the purpose of cooking. Their wants were therefore extremely small compared with those of the gentlemen who resided at Manchester. He recollected the late Duke of Wellington saying to him that the only distinction between the rich and the poor man was, that the rich man was more cleanly and much warmer than the poor man. The Indian people had nothing to complain of in the matter of warmth, and, as far as his observation and knowledge went, they were more cleanly than the great majority of the middle classes of this country. The petitioners stated that under the British Government the progress of the people in industry and wealth had been retarded. When any of our provinces in India had come under their dominion, he apprehended that none of them could be considered to be in a state of progress; at best, they were in a stationary state. But the larger portion of those provinces when we had received them under our dominion were in a state of absolute desolation—a necessary consequence of the wars in which they had been engaged. Even in those provinces which were at that time in a comparatively prosperous state, a large extent of land had since been brought under cultivation; and in countries which were then in a state of desolation, there had been considerable progress, and great improvements had been effected in the condition of the people. This might certainly have arisen more out of the peaceful state of the country, and the extinction of the Mahratta power, than the co-operation of the Government. It was also said—and he regretted to say he had no doubt it was perfectly true—that the administration of justice in India was most defective. The law itself was defective, the judges were defective, and the police was defective. There were many natural causes for the defects in the administration of justice, which it was most desirable that Parliament should endeavour to remove; but he confessed his apprehension that, even under the most enlightened native Government, it would be extremely difficult to establish such an administration of justice in India as would satisfy the demands of the people of this country. He trusted that whatever could be done would be done, and he did not doubt that a great improvement would be effected. The petitioners next said that the whole of the taxation of India was oppressive. The chief method of taxation in the East had always been the taxation of the land; to which we, following the example of our predecessors, had adhered:—but there could be no doubt that in our desire to make improvements, we had, without a sufficient knowledge of the tenure of the land and the rights of individuals made great changes and done great wrong, and, by the general system of our revenue administration, gone far to destroy the higher classes of that country. We had altogether altered the state of society and the tenure of property. But, at the same time, although we had done this in ignorance, and in consequence of a want of consideration, still great improvements had been effected within the last twenty or thirty years. Before that time every description of oppressive mode of taxation had been in practice, and money had been extorted from the people by those who were in the service of the Government, Many of these abuses had been already removed. In 1835, he had urged in the strongest manner the immediate and total abolition of the transit duties throughout the whole of India. He had, in 1843, struck off 160 taxes by a single clause in one day. Then it was stated in the petition that the public works had been inadequate to the great purposes of irrigation, navigation, and communication. It was perfectly true that the roads were inadequate to the purpose of communica- tion. As regarded navigation there was something to be considered. For the purpose of forming canals for navigation it was necessary to have a constant flow of water, not in great quantities but nearly uniform, and this could hardly be found in any part of India. Although it might be obtained for the purpose of irrigation, it was not generally distributed over the country in such a manner as to make it possible to construct canals for navigation. He had expressed a doubt as to the expediency of making the Ganges Canal, dreading its effects upon the health of the inhabitants of its banks, and also its effect upon the navigation of the river above Allahabad. He had required that, if it were made, the surplus water only should be used for irrigation. There were also some points to be considered with regard to irrigation. If the Government undertook works of irrigation it could charge a considerable rent for the use of the water, and although the Government might make a great deal by irrigation, the people might not, as the increased value of the land would increase the amount of rent they would have to pay. Another point of importance was to be considered. It was, that wherever a canal was constructed, the universal result was the prevalence of malaria along its banks. He had inquired most carefully, and had found this to be the case along the whole line of the Jumna canal. At one point the sickness had become so great that it had been found necessary to remove all the troops; and during some months in the year the troops had been completely paralysed by the malaria that prevailed. He never heard that irrigation proceeding from tanks, which were, in fact, large lakes, caused the same injury as irrigation by means of canals. He thought it right to state these things; and though he entirely agreed in the conclusion to which the petitioners had come, he must say that some of their statements had been made without sufficient inquiry into the facts of the case, and without sufficient knowledge of the question. As to the general question he would say nothing. He trusted that in a few days, or at least in a very few weeks, his noble Friend opposite (the Earl of Aberdeen) would be enabled to place before them the plan of the present Administration for the future government of India. He thought his noble Friend was in a most fortunate and happy position. The change which had taken place in public opinion in this country enabled him, without the slightest apprehension of being met by any party feeling, to propose to Parliament, with the certainty of its being adopted, every reform which could be supported by reason and argument. Sir Robert Peel once told him that he thought the East India Company were stronger than the Government; but however true that might have been formerly, he was quite sure it was not so now, and therefore his noble Friend might, without the slightest difficulty, venture to propose everything which he thought right. He had heard the late Duke of Wellington use more than once the expression, "Let us take care to be in the right." Now, let his noble Friend take care to be in the right, and he might depend upon it that he would be able to carry the measures which he proposed. He trusted his noble Friend would take a large view of this great question—that he would not be content with confining his consideration to the present, but would look to futurity, and endeavour, so far as in him lay, with the assistance of Parliament, to establish a foundation for the permanent improvement of a great and powerful empire.

LORD WHARNCLIFFE

said, he saw no reason why any attempt to legislate on India in the present Session must be premature. Her Majesty's Government had nothing to do but to take care that the Bill that they proposed for the government of India, should be such as should be effectual for the purpose. The noble Earl on the cross benches expressed a hope that Her Majesty's Government would not legislate on this subject ignorantly, and, because ignorantly, precipitately. It was, undoubtedly, much to be wished that Her Majesty's Government should abstain from legislating ignorantly and precipitately on any subject; but, for his part, he saw no reason why, if they legislated this Session, they must necessarily legislate ignorantly or precipitately. It seemed to be assumed by all who found fault with Her Majesty's Government legislating in the present Session, that they must necessarily, in any legislation they proposed, embrace the whole extent of those questions which affected the government of India; and that therefore they had not at present sufficient information to enable them to legislate satisfactorily. But in his view this was a total misapprehension of the actual state of the question. If they looked to the matters which were brought before the notice of Parliament, and of the Committees, it would be easily seen that there was but a small portion of them that could be made the subject of legislation in the Imperial Parliament. The inquiry before the Committees had led to an unanimous conclusion, for instance, with regard to the judicial system in India; but when they looked to that, to the financial system and the revenue, and the several branches of the subject, they would find that there was but a small portion of these matters with which it would be possible to deal by Imperial legislation. What the Government had to do was this—with the evidence that was now before them, to provide an efficient form and frame of government in order to deal with those questions after it was established. If they accomplished that—if they brought in a Bill, going no further in the present instance than establishing a satisfactory and efficient form of government for the Indian department—most of these questions would be more satisfactorily disposed of by the agency and assistance of that department than they could possibly be without. There was one other point to which he would allude—the public works. It had been said that in all probability the increased amount of the exactions of the Government would go far to absorb the benefits that would be conferred on the country by the construction of public works; but the evidence on this subject removed any doubt as to those works being remunerative when they had been well executed. In one instance that had been alluded to, that of Tanjore, the annual expense of the works was not more than from 6,000l. to 8,000l. a year; and the revenue had been increased by them 170,000£. a year; while, at the same time, any one who knew the district, knew very well that it was the garden of Southern India. There could be no question that in most of these instances, although to the greatest extent perhaps in that particular case, there had been a profit derived to the Government of not less than 200 per cent. There were numberless cases in which from 20 to 60 per cent might be gained by Government by a little outlay; and that being the case, he could not conceive why Government should not execute more of these works, borrowing money, if necessary, for the purpose, which they could obtain for 4 or 5 per cent.

Petition referred to the Select Commit- tee on the Government of Indian Terri- tones.