THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDEwished to ask whether the sum of £500 lately subscribed by the Chairman of Directors of the East India Company in aid of the sufferers by inundations in France had been supplied by proprietors of East India Stock or had been taken from the public revenues of Her Majesty's possessions in India? and, in the latter case, whether subscriptions, grants, or gratuities, not exceeding £600, taken from Indian revenues, are subject to the control of Parliament or of Her Majesty's Government, or are limited by any fixed regulation? If that money was (as he suspected) to be paid from the public revenues of India, he must say that he regarded such a course as alike improper and unconstitutional. He was not to be understood as not sympathising with the sufferers in France, nor as condemning the raising of money by subscriptions in this country for their relief. He thought, on the contrary, that those subscriptions did honour to the 8 country; but he objected to the East India Company voting away money that belonged to England. He denied the authority of the Directors of that Company, composed of eighteen individuals, twelve of whom were elected by the Company themselves, to do what the Government of England had not the power to do. He understood that the Board of Directors claimed a right to expend sums not exceeding £600 without receiving the sanction of any authority, and based that claim upon the terms of the 88th section of the Act of 1813. It must, however, be remembered that in 1813 the revenues of India were the property of the East India Company, but since 1833 those revenues had passed from the hands of the Company and were now administered by the Indian Government. In the present case the purpose for which the money was voted could not be objected to, but, if the power claimed by the Board of Directors was yielded to them, they would have the power of voting sums to every charity in London, and at the same time of exercising their generosity, not at the expense of the East India Company, whose receipts would not be at all affected by them, but at the cost of the Indian Government, out of whose revenues those payments were to be made.
THE DUKE OF ARGYLLtrusted that his noble Friend would excuse him if he confined himself entirely to answering the questions put to him. The vote come to by the Court of Directors in aid of the sufferers by the recent inundations in France was, as his noble Friend suggested, to come out of the general revenues of India. The vote had received the sanction of the President of the Board of Control, who had it in his power to negative it, if he thought it expedient to do so. In regard to the other question of his noble Friend, he had to inform him that there were no abstract rules laid down upon the subject; but he believed it had been the custom of the East India Company from time to time to subscribe sums of money for various charitable objects. They did so under the powers of the Act to which his noble Friend referred, and he had never heard the legality of the practice doubted. His noble Friend had expressed an opinion that the East India Company ought not to have this power. He (the Duke of Argyll) differed entirely from him. He believed that Parliament had wisely left this power in the hands of the 9 East India Company. There was no doubt whatever of the existence of this power. He did not think that his noble Friend would question the legitimacy of the object for which the subscription was given, nor the wisdom of the President of the Board of Control in not negativing the vote come to by the East India Company, considering the circumstances of the case and our relations with France.
§ THE EARL OF ELLENBOROUGHsaid, that, as he understood the Act of Parliament, the concurrence of the President of the Board of Control in this grant of the Directors of the East India Company could not possibly have the effect of making it legal. It was not the relic of ancient power, it was a relic of ancient practice. Previous to the Act of 1833 the East India Company possessed the revenue of India as their own property, and they might then have justly and legally expended their money in such subscriptions as the one in question. But the Act of 1833 entirely changed the nature of their connection with India. All their property was taken from them; they had sold it for an annuity, and that annuity was to a certain degree guaranteed by Parliament. They, therefore, had no interest in India, except that given to them by the Act of 1833, and that Act made them trustees for the Crown, for the purpose of discharging the duties of the Government of India. They were trustees for that office only; and no expenditure made by them could he legal which was not clearly and evidently for the service of the Government of India. But could it be pretended that this subscription for the relief of the sufferers from the inundations in France was in any respect for the service of India? This expenditure was, therefore, illegal, and many of the expenses incurred by the Court of Directors were illegal, according to the strict interpretation of the Act of 1833. It was not, however, under any clause in the Act of 1833 that the Court of Directors would attempt to justify this application of their funds. By the Act of 1833 the Court of Directors were directed to submit to the Board of Control an estimate of the gross sum annually required for the payment of the salaries of the Court and of the officers and servants thereof, and of all other proper expenses either fixed or contingent. This sum might be varied from time to time. The Board of Control might refuse to acquiesce in the sum demanded, giving 10 their reasons for it; but the sum having been once granted, the Board could not interfere as to the manner in which it was to be expended. Now, many of these gross abuses and illegalities had been continued in consequence of the Court of Directors not having sent in new estimates of the annual expenses; and also in consequence of the Board of Control not having struck out, when such estimates were before them, expenses which might have been proper before the Act of 1833 was passed, but which were illegal subsequently to that Act. He thought it, therefore, possible that this sum of £500 might have been taken from a balance of the sum annually granted by the Board of Control for the expenses of the Court of Directors. But it was not merely to a subscription to assist the sufferers from the inundations of France, or to subscriptions to many excellent charities in this country, that he objected; but it was to the large expenses frequently incurred by the Court of Directors, which they ought no longer to be permitted to incur, that he entertained the strongest objections. What would their Lordships think of a Secretary of State of this country who, on the examination of the cadets at Sandhurst or at Woolwich, should invite forty or fifty officers to go down, undertaking to pay all their expenses, and giving them a magnificent dinner on their arrival? What would be thought of the noble Lord if he asked Parliament for a Vote to defray all this expenditure? Would the House of Commons tolerate an estimate of an expense incurred for such a purpose? Their Lordships knew they would not. Her Majesty's Ministers thought it necessary, on certain great occasions, to indulge in grand dinners by way of great demonstrations. The Members of the Government, at the commencement of the late war, thought it expedient to inaugurate that war by a grand dinner at the Reform Club, at which the most sanguine anticipations were expressed of an easy and brilliant victory—in which the naval department was most especially exalted; but he apprehended that the expense of that dinner never appeared in the naval estimates to be paid for by the country. Neither would the army estimates, he ventured to say, include the expense of the dinner to be given by the Secretary of War to Sir William Codrington, on his return from the Crimea. It was not for the benefit of the Government 11 of India that these expenses should be incurred. The service of that Government was not the object of such expenditure, and, therefore, it could not be considered legal. But the Court of Directors seemed to be of the same opinion as Louis XIV., and appeared to conceive that "they were the State." It was not the first time that he called the attention of her Majesty's Government to this subject, and he did earnestly entreat the Government to consider whether a Bill ought not to be brought in forthwith for the purpose of establishing an independent audit of the accounts of the East India Company. It was really too had that £23,000,000 should be expended, year after year, without any independent audit whatever—with no audit but that which was under the control and influence of the very persons by whom the money was expended. Parliament would not be acting honestly towards the people of India if it allowed this system to continue any longer. He, therefore, did trust that the Government would not allow this Session to pass without introducing a Bill for the purpose of putting an end to that most injurious system.