§ THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE moved for Returns connected with the land-tax of Bengal, Behar, Orissa, and Benares; of Indian officers employed in civil and political duties in 1847 and 1855; of the covenanted civil servants in actual employ in 1834, 1847, and 1855; of the same absent on furlough; of their total number, and their salaries. The noble Marquess said that he did not move for the Returns with the view of eliciting any expression of opinion on the subject at the present period of the Session, but in the hope that the Government of India would receive the full consideration of Parliament in the next Session. The first Return for which he had moved was, in fact, a return of the number of estates confiscated to the Government. He would not go into the question of how far those confiscations could be defended on the ground of public morality. All he asked was a return of the number confiscated, and he hoped he would not be told that the Return was too lengthy to be made. With regard to the civil service, he understood the Governor General had been obliged, in consequence of the paucity of civil servants, to call upon officers of the Indian army to perform civil and political duties. This was a fact which concerned the efficiency of the army as well as the civil service, and another question also arose—namely, whether officers of Her Majesty's army were not entitled to perform those duties as well as officers of the Indian army. The result of the present system was, that judicial functions were given to men who did not know the language of the persons whom they had to try, and that a boy from Hailey-bury, who was entered as an assistant, really found himself with authority to administer judicial functions. All he asked was, that the House should know how many of these officers there were. He begged also to move that the Return of the law expenditure in England of the East India Company since the year 1853, ordered to be laid before the House on the 16th June, be made forthwith. He believed it would be found that the law expenses of the East India Company in England were something monstrous, and would reveal a spirit of litigation which was not 1422 creditable on the part of a sovereign Power towards those whose territory and revenues had become absorbed in the possessions of the Crown. He believed the number of appeals would not be nearly so great if the Courts of India were tolerably well constituted, or if a spirit of litigation and oppression did not exist which induced the civil servants of the Company to commence proceedings, and involve the Indian Government in lawsuits that few of the natives were able to resist. In many of these cases the East India Company had been signally, and, he might say, disgracefully worsted. If there was no objection, he would likewise move for copies of any Minute of the East Indian Government in 1834, specifying the terms and conditions of the allowance to be made to the deposed Rajah of Coorg. He could not understand upon what ground it was that the East India Company required this deposed Prince to spend his income in India. His stipend amounted to the paltry sum of £448 per annum, less than was paid by the Company for a dinner at the London Tavern, or for a fee to counsel for arguing an appeal. The sum was even less than the salary of the Directors, and it was impossible to arrive at any other conclusion than this, that the Company wanted this gentleman to be turned out of the country, in order that he might not be able to prosecute his legal suit against them.
THE DUKE OF ARGYLLsaid, that he had stated on a former occasion that the Government did not feel itself called upon to defend the course which had been taken by the East India Company. It happened with respect to the payment of pensions, that the law and constitution had entrusted the East India Company with a very large discretion, and this was a point on which the Government had no right to interfere. This prince had obtained leave for a year, and at the expiration of that period the Company had required him to return to India.
§ Returns ordered to be laid before the House.