HL Deb 08 May 1856 vol 142 cc207-15

THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE rose to ask, whether Her Majesty's Government had sanctioned the grant of a pension of £5,000 a year, chargeable upon the revenues of India, to the Marquess of Dalhousie, and to move for copies of any correspondence relating thereto? He did not object to the eminent services of Lord Dalhousie being acknowledged in any way Government and Parliament thought proper; but, considering the position in which the Court of Directors stood, he thought it was unconstitutional in them to grant away the revenue of India in this way, and equally unconstitutional in the Government to sanction it. It was an assumption of power beyond that which could be exercised, even by the Queen in Council, for it must be remembered, that the revenues of India belonged to this country and not to the Company. Their dividends were not affected by charges upon it. A liberal arrangement had been made to pay off their capital, and, meanwhile, to pay a fixed dividend, and the late Act declared that the British territories in India were continued under the Government of the Company only until Parliament should otherwise provide. The Government of India might be taken at any time out of their hands, and, therefore, to give a pension of £5,000 without the consent of Parliament was alike presumptuous and unconstitutional. If the late Governor General of India was entitled to a pension—which he did not now question—let it be voted in the usual way, out of the public funds. A Colonial Governor might return from the snows of Canada or the burning sun of Sierra Leone, after a service of ten or twenty years, with broken and shattered health; but the State gave him nothing, and there was no Court of Directors to vote him a pension. The pensions awarded to Ministers of State at home did not in any case exceed £2,000; and Lord John Russell had publicly stated that he never came under pecuniary obligations to any man until he became Prime Minister. That distinguished statesman was a remarkable instance of the manner in which it was the policy of the country to deal with its civil servants. He had served the country out of office for a long course of years; he had subsequently filled almost all the great offices of State, including that of the First Minister of the Crown; and yet nobody had ever proposed to confer a special pension upon him. So contrary was it, indeed, to the policy and feelings of public men that pensions should be given for civil services that, although two of those placed by Parliament at the disposal of the Crown, of £2,000 each, were now vacant, no person had come forward to claim them. When statesmen at home were treated in that way upon principle, he thought it was monstrous that the Court of Directors, the President of the Board of Control agreeing with them, or even the President of the Board of Control, the Court of Directors agreeing with him, should grant to a Governor General such a pension as was never offered to the highest personages in England. He expressed no opinion whatever upon the services of Lord Dalhousie; but there was no reason why Parliament should not vote whatever sum of money it pleased in reward of those services. What he complained of was an abuse of power on the part of the Court of Directors—an abuse for which he denied there was any precedent. The cases of Lord Wellesley and Lord Moira certainly afforded none. At that time, the revenues of India were the property of the East India Company, and, moreover, the Marquess of Wellesley had been entitled to a sum exceeding £100,000 of prize money, arising from the treasures found in Seringapatam, which he refused to receive; and it was in consideration of that, as well as of his great services as Governor General, that the East India Company voted him a pension of £5,000 for twelve years. In the case of Lord Moira, the Company had saved £140,000 by the union of the Commandership in Chief with the Governor Generalship. The pensions awarded to Lord Hardinge and Lord Gough bore no analogy to the present case, those pensions having been granted specifically for military services, and accompanied by elevation to the peerage. Moreover, the present state of the finances of India afforded little justification for such a gift, there being a deficit of £2,000,000 upon the revenue and expenditure of the last year—a condition of things which appeared to be becoming permanent. The system, of assessment pursued by the Indian Government forbade us to expect the slightest increase of land revenues, and the Reports of Parliamentary Committees showed that torture was obliged to be resorted to in order to wring from the unfortunate ryot such paltry contributions as 5½d. Did it become the body who raised its revenue in that mode to vote it away in pensions of £5,000 a year wholly without precedent? Some pecuniary compensation might properly enough have been awarded to the survivors of the wretched victims of the inhuman tax-gatherer; but that was not for a moment thought of by those who proposed this liberal and munificent grant—a grant which, he admitted, might have been very proper if contributed from funds belonging to those who recommended it. Without entering into any comparison between the administration of Lord Dalhousie and that of other Governors General, it was nevertheless to be desired that the Court of Directors should show as much appreciation of the services of men who devoted themselves to the social amelioration of India as they had evinced for the exertions of those who added to their territory and increased their political power. From the days of Lord Clive down to the present time no name connected with India was more distinguished than that of Lord William Bentinck, one of the most precious results of whose administration was the abolition of the suttee, and whose services might indeed have been well deserving of a pension. But a grant like the one under consideration, flying in the face of the recognized policy of this country and the deliberate judgment of Parliament, was wholly unwarrantable, and the Ministers of the Crown ought to refuse it their sanction. The noble Marquess concluded by moving— That there be laid before this House, Copies of any Correspondence or previous Communication which may have passed between the Board of Control and the East India Company with respect to the Grant of a Pension of £5,000 a Year chargeable upon the Revenues of India to The Marquess of Dalhousie.

EARL GRANVILLE

My Lords, the very able statement of the noble Marquess raises two questions; first, whether it be legally competent for the Court of Directors to grant this pension; and next, whether the grant be expedient? I could hardly follow his argument on the first point; but I understood him to assert that, because certain words were introduced into an Act of Parliament determining that the existing constitution of the Indian Government should continue until the Legislature otherwise provided, the East India Company has now no power to give a pension like the present. But in this the noble Marquess is mistaken, because under the Continuing Act all the powers of the Company remain in force until altered by the Legislature. It is clear that this Act may, like any other, he repealed whenever Parliament thinks fit; but until it is repealed, it cannot be fairly contended that the powers it confers cease to have validity. Next, the noble Marquess says that if these pensions may be legally given to the Marquess of Dalhousie they may with equal legality be given to any one else. I believe that to be so—with this proviso, however, that they shall be subject to the very same conditions under which the pension has been given to Lord Dalhousie. Those conditions are that the pensions shall receive the sanction of two general Courts of Proprietors, that they shall be reported to the President of the Board of Control, who also shall signify his approval of them, and that, the warrants conferring them shall be presented to both Houses of Parliament within one month of the day on which the grants were made. As regards the question of expediency, the noble Marquess has himself borne testimony to the signal ability, sagacity, and judgment of Lord Dalhousie. It is not an easy matter for any Englishman to resist the temptation of referring in the language of enthusiastic commendation to the splendid talents and brilliant services of one of the ablest statesmen that this country has produced—a man of singular energy and capacity, whose vigour of mind has not been impaired, but whose powers of body have been completely shattered by the anxious and arduous toils in which he has for years been engaged. Abstaining, however, from the discussion of any such topics, I will content myself with reminding the noble Marquess that the President of the Board of Control is the Minister whose duty it is when he receives a report from the Court of Directors and Proprietors on the subject of a pension, carefully to consider all the reasons urged in favour of the grant, and to offer any suggestions that may occur to him on the subject. Regard being had to this fact, I do not know that, speaking in my official character as a member of the Government, it is competent for me to make any further observations on this question. The noble Marquess has asked for correspondence between the Government and the Court of Directors, but there is none. After the matter has been submitted to the two Courts of Proprietors and then to the Board of Control, there will be correspondence; but at the present moment there is no correspondence in existence.

The EARL OF ALBEMARLE

expressed his satisfaction that the question of the pension was not as yet irrevocably determined. He had no bias, political or personal, to induce him to support the Motion of the noble Marquess; he had never in his life seen Lord Dalhousie, and of his political opinions he knew nothing. He had heard, indeed, that the noble Marquess was claimed alike by the "Carleton" and the "Reform;" but how the fact might be he had not the slightest idea. For the talents of the noble Marquess he had a profound admiration, but he wished those talents to be available for the country, which they could not be if their possessor were to lie under the imputation of being the salaried advocate of an irresponsible Company, which must at no remote day be placed upon its trial, and on which it might be the duty of the noble Marquess to sit in judgment. If the proposed pension were to be derived from the revenues of this country, the matter might safely be left to the representatives of the people in the other House of Parliament; but such was not the fact. It was to be extracted from the revenues of the people of India, and he (the Earl of Albemarle) was there to plead the cause of those who had no representatives and but few friends. £5,000 in England was equivalent to £16,000 in India, and when the pecuniary ability of the contributors in both countries was taken into account, how different did the case appear! In England we had a free and opulent people bestowing their money as they pleased; in India, a set of miserable slaves from whom the taxes were extorted by tortures that made humanity shudder. A glance at the Blue-book presented to Parliament on the subject of torture in India would suffice to show that it was for defalcation in the most paltry sums—sums not exceeding two, five, ten, and twenty shillings—that the Natives of that country were compelled to endure the most terrific agony. The ability of the people of India to pay taxes had not kept pace with the population. The taxes had risen twenty-three per cent; but if they had kept pace with the increase of population they ought to have been sixty-five per cent. This proposition to grant a pension out of the impoverished resources of India was another flagrant proof of the mal-ad-ministration of the East India Company; and to whom was this pension proposed to be paid? To a Governor-General of India, under whose sway the system of torture had been continued. He would protest on the part of the people of India against the manner in which their funds were squandered.

THE EARL OF HARROWBY

asked, upon what authority the noble Earl assumed that this pension had been sanctioned by the Government? The noble Earl must have heard the declaration of his noble Friend (Earl Granville) that he declined to give an opinion upon the subject; and yet, notwithstanding that declaration, up got the noble Earl and made a violent invective against the Government and against the East India Company, upon the assumption that this measure had already been carried into effect—whereas, in fact, it had not as yet even come under their consideration. It was not fair on the part of the noble Earl to bring all these matters of torture to bear upon such discussions. Let the noble Earl say, if he pleased, that it was not a wise thing to grant this pension; but what business had the noble Earl to say that this was a torture tax? It was not fair, when discussing the merits of the late Governor General of India, to import into that discussion a question of that kind, and to mix up the reputation of the Marquess of Dalhousie with all the horrible atrocities which had been recently disclosed to Parliament, and the public. The noble Earl must know that those things had not taken place with the sanction either of the Government of India or of the East India Company—he must know that they had taken place without the knowledge of Lord Dalhousie. It was not right that the noble Earl should make an attack of this kind, when he knew that the other side could not be heard, and when he must be aware that they were gagged until the question of granting a pension had been decided elsewhere. Parliament had pointed out the way in which these acts were to be done. In the first place, the pension must be proposed and approved by the East India Company, and it must then be sanctioned by the Board of Control, and not till then would the question come before Parliament and the Government. Was it fair, then, to bring charges against the Governor General on the assumption of this pension being granted, even before any preliminary steps had been taken on the subject? If he had spken with undue warmth on this occasion he begged his noble Friend's pardon, but he did not think it fair that the name of a man of such high character as that of the late Governor General of India should have such imputations cast upon it, and that charges of this kind should be bandied about before it was possible for that noble Marquess in any way to defend himself.

LORD PANMURE

said, he should not have offered a single observation on this subject, had it not been that his noble Friend (the Earl of Albemarle) had assumed the authority of speaking in the name of the people of India. Now, he ventured to say that the manner in which the people of India, the real people of India, parted with his noble Friend the late Governor General when he left India, was far better evidence as to their feelings with reference to his administration of the affairs of India, than any knowledge which the noble Earl could possess on that point, upon any authority which he could adduce. Deeply concerned as he was in the honour of Lord Dalhousie, he accepted this movement of the East India Company not as the mere settlement of the question, but as a recognition of services rendered to that Company and to that body whom they represented by Lord Dalhousie during his administration. He (Lord Panmure) knew the honourable and noble feelings of that man, too well, to believe, that if he thought one atom of the sum proposed to be granted to him would come from the Natives of India in the manner described by the noble Earl, he would be the first to repudiate and reject every anna of that grant. The noble Earl had expressed his gratification that this proposition was not a fait accompli. With his knowledge of Indian affairs, he must have known that the proposition originated with the Court of Directors; the noble Earl must have known that the proposal of a pension required the approval of the Court of Proprietors; and also the sanction of a second Court of Proprietors upon the Report. Therefore, when this thing was thus hanging in the balance, he ought to have known that it was so, and not to have assumed any doubt upon the subject. The proposition was in the first place to be referred, as it were, to the Commons of India—to those who represented India and had the care of their concerns. They would judge, and in the first instance, decide upon it; after which, it would be referred to the Board of Control, which, with a free and unbiassed mind, would give its decision; and then the question would be ripe for the consideration of Parliament.

THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE

begged to say, in explanation, that he had not discussed the merits of Lord Dalhousie; nor had he given any opinion as to the granting of a pension to the late Governor General of India. On the contrary, he distinctly said that he would guard himself against saying, whether such a pension should be granted by the Court of Directors or not. But what he did say was this, that he questioned whether the Court of Directors should make such a grant before the pleasure of Parliament was signified; and he had contended that the present was a more fitting time for discussing the question than after the granting of the pension, when it would be too late to remedy what had been done.

EARL GRANVILLE

explained that he did not object to any question being brought forward on any subject by an independent Peer, but he did not think that the noble Marquess had exercised a sound discretion in introducing this subject to the notice of their Lordships. After the answer which had been given by the Government, he would ask whether it was necessary that the noble Earl (the Earl of Albemarle) should go into a lengthened statistical statement, and introduce the question of torture, which appealed to the feelings and was calculated to lead their Lordships' attention away from the real question at issue? When the noble Earl, dwelling upon that subject, said that a pension was to be given to the very Governor General under whom the system of torture had been continued, he thought that such a statement justified a little warmth on the part of his noble Friend (the Earl of Harrowby), who, in common with most of their Lordships, was a real admirer of the high character of the Marquess of Dalhousie.

THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE

explained that it was not his intention to associate the name of the noble Marquess with the system of torture.

Motion (by leave of the House) withdrawn.

House adjourned till To-morrow.