No More Learning

Which of the great mercantile
house that bought tea at Canton? Were the creditors to look to the
land revenues of India for their money? Or, were they entitled to put
executions into the warehouses behind Bishopsgate Street?

There were two ways of settling these questions--adjudication and
compromise. The difficulties of adjudication were great; I think
insuperable. Whatever acuteness and diligence could do has been done.
One person in particular, whose talents and industry peculiarly fitted
him for such investigations, and of whom I can never think without
regret, Mr Hyde Villiers, devoted himself to the examination with an
ardour and a perseverance, which, I believe, shortened a life most
valuable to his country and to his friends. The assistance of the most
skilful accountants has been called in. But the difficulties are such as
no accountant, however skilful, could possibly remove. The difficulties
are not arithmetical, but political. They arise from the constitution
of the Company, from the long and intimate union of the commercial and
imperial characters in one body. Suppose that the treasurer of a charity
were to mix up the money which he receives on account of the charity
with his own private rents and dividends, to pay the whole into his bank
to his own private account, to draw it out again by cheques in exactly
the same form when he wanted it for his private expenses, and when he
wanted it for the purposes of his public trust. Suppose that he were
to continue to act thus till he was himself ignorant whether he were
in advance or in arrear; and suppose that many years after his death a
question were to arise whether his estate were in debt to the charity
or the charity in debt to his estate. Such is the question which is
now before us, with this important difference; that the accounts of an
individual could not be in such a state unless he had been guilty of
fraud, or of that gross negligence which is scarcely less culpable than
fraud, and that the accounts of the Company were brought into this state
by circumstances of a very peculiar kind, by circumstances unparalleled
in the history of the world.

It is a mistake to suppose that the Company was a merely commercial body
till the middle of the last century. Commerce was its chief object; but
in order to enable it to pursue that object, it had been, like the other
Companies which were its rivals, like the Dutch India Company, like the
French India Company, invested from a very early period with political
functions. More than a hundred and twenty years ago, the Company was
in miniature precisely what it now is. It was intrusted with the very
highest prerogatives of sovereignty. It had its forts, and its white
captains, and its black sepoys; it had its civil and criminal tribunals;
it was authorised to proclaim martial law; it sent ambassadors to the
native governments, and concluded treaties with them; it was Zemindar of
several districts, and within those districts, like other Zemindars of
the first class, it exercised the powers of a sovereign, even to the
infliction of capital punishment on the Hindoos within its jurisdiction.
It is incorrect, therefore, to say, that the Company was at first a mere
trader, and has since become a sovereign. It was at first a great trader
and a petty prince. The political functions at first attracted little
notice, because they were merely auxiliary to the commercial functions.
By degrees, however, the political functions became more and more
important. The Zemindar became a great nabob, became sovereign of all
India; the two hundred sepoys became two hundred thousand. This change
was gradually wrought, and was not immediately comprehended. It was
natural that, while the political functions of the Company were merely
auxiliary to its commerce, the political accounts should have been mixed
up with the commercial accounts. It was equally natural that this mode
of keeping accounts, having once been established, should have remained
unaltered; and the more so, as the change in the situation of the
Company, though rapid, was not sudden. It is impossible to name any one
day, or any one year, as the day or the year when the Company became a
great potentate. It has been the fashion indeed to fix on the year 1765,
the year in which the Mogul issued a commission authorising the Company
to administer the revenues of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, as the precise
date of the accession of this singular body to sovereignty. I am utterly
at a loss to understand why this epoch should be selected. Long before
1765 the Company had the reality of political power. Long before that
year, they made a Nabob of Arcot; they made and unmade Nabobs of Bengal;
they humbled the Vizier of Oude; they braved the Emperor of Hindostan
himself; more than half the revenues of Bengal were, under one pretence
or another, administered by them. And after the grant, the Company was
not, in form and name, an independent power. It was merely a minister
of the Court of Delhi. Its coinage bore the name of Shah Alam. The
inscription which, down to the time of the Marquess of Hastings,
appeared on the seal of the Governor-General, declared that great
functionary to be the slave of the Mogul. Even to this day we have never
formally deposed the King of Delhi. The Company contents itself with
being Mayor of the Palace, while the Roi Faineant is suffered to play at
being a sovereign. In fact, it was considered, both by Lord Clive and
by Warren Hastings, as a point of policy to leave the character of
the Company thus undefined, in order that the English might treat the
princes in whose names they governed as realities or nonentities, just
as might be most convenient.

Thus the transformation of the Company from a trading body, which
possessed some sovereign prerogatives for the purposes of trade, into a
sovereign body, the trade of which was auxiliary to its sovereignty, was
effected by degrees and under disguise. It is not strange, therefore,
that the mercantile and political transactions of this great corporation
should be entangled together in inextricable complication. The
commercial investments have been purchased out of the revenues of the
empire. The expenses of war and government have been defrayed out of
the profits of the trade. Commerce and territory have contributed to
the improvement of the same spot of land, to the repairs of the same
building. Securities have been given in precisely the same form for
money which has been borrowed for purposes of State, and for money which
has been borrowed for purposes of traffic. It is easy, indeed,--and this
is a circumstance which has, I think, misled some gentlemen,--it is easy
to see what part of the assets of the Company appears in a commercial
form, and what part appears in a political or territorial form. But
this is not the question. Assets which are commercial in form may
be territorial as respects the right of property; assets which are
territorial in form may be commercial as respects the right of property.
A chest of tea is not necessarily commercial property; it may have
been bought out of the territorial revenue. A fort is not necessarily
territorial property; it may stand on ground which the Company bought a
hundred years ago out of their commercial profits. Adjudication, if by
adjudication be meant decision according to some known rule of law, was
out of the question. To leave matters like these to be determined by the
ordinary maxims of our civil jurisprudence would have been the height of
absurdity and injustice. For example, the home bond debt of the Company,
it is believed, was incurred partly for political and partly for
commercial purposes. But there is no evidence which would enable us to
assign to each branch its proper share. The bonds all run in the same
form; and a court of justice would, therefore, of course, either lay the
whole burthen on the proprietors, or lay the whole on the territory.
We have legal opinions, very respectable legal opinions, to the effect,
that in strictness of law the territory is not responsible, and that the
commercial assets are responsible for every farthing of the debts which
were incurred for the government and defence of India. But though this
may be, and I believe is, law, it is, I am sure, neither reason nor
justice. On the other hand, it is urged by the advocates of the Company,
that some valuable portions of the territory are the property of that
body in its commercial capacity; that Calcutta, for example, is the
private estate of the Company; that the Company holds the island of
Bombay, in free and common socage, as of the Manor of East Greenwich. I
will not pronounce any opinion on these points. I have considered them
enough to see that there is quite difficulty enough in them to exercise
all the ingenuity of all the lawyers in the kingdom for twenty
years. But the fact is, Sir, that the municipal law was not made for
controversies of this description. The existence of such a body as this
gigantic corporation, this political monster of two natures, subject in
one hemisphere, sovereign in another, had never been contemplated by the
legislators or judges of former ages. Nothing but grotesque absurdity
and atrocious injustice could have been the effect, if the claims and
liabilities of such a body had been settled according to the rules of
Westminster Hall, if the maxims of conveyancers had been applied to the
titles by which flourishing cities and provinces are held, or the maxims
of the law merchant to those promissory notes which are the securities
for a great National Debt, raised for the purpose of exterminating the
Pindarrees and humbling the Burmese.

It was, as I have said, absolutely impossible to bring the question
between commerce and territory to a satisfactory adjudication; and I
must add that, even if the difficulties which I have mentioned could
have been surmounted, even if there had been reason to hope that a
satisfactory adjudication could have been obtained, I should still
have wished to avoid that course. I think it desirable that the Company
should continue to have a share in the government of India; and it would
evidently have been impossible, pending a litigation between commerce
and territory, to leave any political power to the Company. It
would clearly have been the duty of those who were charged with the
superintendence of India, to be the patrons of India throughout that
momentous litigation, to scrutinise with the utmost severity every claim
which might be made on the Indian revenues, and to oppose, with energy
and perseverance, every such claim, unless its justice were manifest.
If the Company was to be engaged in a suit for many millions, in a suit
which might last for many years, against the Indian territory, could we
entrust the Company with the government of that territory? Could we put
the plaintiff in the situation of prochain ami of the defendant? Could
we appoint governors who would have an interest opposed in the most
direct manner to the interest of the governed, whose stock would have
been raised in value by every decision which added to the burthens of
their subjects, and depressed by every decision which diminished those
burthens? It would be absurd to suppose that they would efficiently
defend our Indian Empire against the claims which they were themselves
bringing against it; and it would be equally absurd to give the
government of the Indian Empire to those who could not be trusted to
defend its interests.

Seeing, then, that it was most difficult, if not wholly impossible, to
resort to adjudication between commerce and territory, seeing that,
if recourse were had to adjudication, it would be necessary to make a
complete revolution in the whole constitution of India, the Government
has proposed a compromise. That compromise, with some modifications
which did not in the slightest degree affect its principle, and which,
while they gave satisfaction to the Company, will eventually lay no
additional burthen on the territory, has been accepted. It has, like
all other compromises, been loudly censured by violent partisans on
both sides. It has been represented by some as far too favourable to the
Company, and by others as most unjust to the Company. Sir, I own that we
cannot prove that either of these accusations is unfounded. It is of the
very essence of our case that we should not be able to show that we have
assigned, either to commerce or to territory, its precise due. For our
principal reason for recommending a compromise was our full conviction
that it was absolutely impossible to ascertain with precision what was
due to commerce and what was due to territory. It is not strange that
some people should accuse us of robbing the Company, and others of
conferring a vast boon on the Company, at the expense of India: for
we have proposed a middle course, on the very ground that there was
a chance of a result much more favourable to the Company than our
arrangement, and a chance also of a result much less favourable. If the
questions pending between the Company and India had been decided as the
ardent supporters of the Company predicted, India would, if I calculate
rightly, have paid eleven millions more than she will now have to pay.
If those questions had been decided as some violent enemies of the
Company predicted, that great body would have been utterly ruined. The
very meaning of compromise is that each party gives up his chance of
complete success, in order to be secured against the chance of utter
failure. And, as men of sanguine minds always overrate the chances in
their own favour, every fair compromise is sure to be severely censured
on both sides. I conceive that, in a case so dark and complicated as
this, the compromise which we recommend is sufficiently vindicated, if
it cannot be proved to be unfair. We are not bound to prove it to be
fair. For it would have been unnecessary for us to resort to compromise
at all if we had been in possession of evidence which would have enabled
us to pronounce, with certainty, what claims were fair and what were
unfair. It seems to me that we have acted with due consideration for
every party. The dividend which we give to the proprietors is precisely
the same dividend which they have been receiving during forty years,
and which they have expected to receive permanently. The price of their
stock bears at present the same proportion to the price of other stock
which it bore four or five years ago, before the anxiety and excitement
which the late negotiations naturally produced had begun to operate.
As to the territory, on the other hand, it is true that, if the assets
which are now in a commercial form should not produce a fund sufficient
to pay the debts and dividend of the Company, the territory must stand
to the loss and pay the difference. But in return for taking this risk,
the territory obtains an immediate release from claims to the amount of
many millions. I certainly do not believe that all those claims
could have been substantiated; but I know that very able men think
differently. And, if only one-fourth of the sum demanded had been
awarded to the Company, India would have lost more than the largest
sum which, as it seems to me, she can possibly lose under the proposed
arrangement.

In a pecuniary point of view, therefore, I conceive that we can defend
the measure as it affects the territory. But to the territory the
pecuniary question is of secondary importance. If we have made a good
pecuniary bargain for India, but a bad political bargain, if we have
saved three or four millions to the finances of that country, and given
to it, at the same time, pernicious institutions, we shall indeed have
been practising a most ruinous parsimony. If, on the other hand, it
shall be found that we have added fifty or a hundred thousand pounds
a-year to the expenditure of an empire which yields a revenue of twenty
millions, but that we have at the same time secured to that empire, as
far as in us lies, the blessings of good government, we shall have no
reason to be ashamed of our profusion. I hope and believe that India
will have to pay nothing. But on the most unfavourable supposition that
can be made, she will not have to pay so much to the Company as she now
pays annually to a single state pageant, to the titular Nabob of Bengal,
for example, or the titular King of Delhi. What she pays to these
nominal princes, who, while they did anything, did mischief, and who
now do nothing, she may well consent to pay to her real rulers, if
she receives from them, in return, efficient protection and good
legislation.

We come then to the great question. Is it desirable to retain the
Company as an organ of government for India? I think that it is
desirable. The question is, I acknowledge, beset with difficulties. We
have to solve one of the hardest problems in politics. We are trying to
make brick without straw, to bring a clean thing out of an unclean,
to give a good government to a people to whom we cannot give a free
government. In this country, in any neighbouring country, it is easy to
frame securities against oppression. In Europe, you have the materials
of good government everywhere ready to your hands. The people are
everywhere perfectly competent to hold some share, not in every country
an equal share, but some share of political power. If the question were,
What is the best mode of securing good government in Europe? the merest
smatterer in politics would answer, representative institutions.
In India you cannot have representative institutions. Of all the
innumerable speculators who have offered their suggestions on Indian
politics, not a single one, as far as I know, however democratical his
opinions may be, has ever maintained the possibility of giving, at the
present time, such institutions to India. One gentleman, extremely
well acquainted with the affairs of our Eastern Empire, a most valuable
servant of the Company, and the author of a History of India, which,
though certainly not free from faults, is, I think, on the whole, the
greatest historical work which has appeared in our language since that
of Gibbon, I mean Mr Mill, was examined on this point. That gentleman
is well known to be a very bold and uncompromising politician. He has
written strongly, far too strongly I think, in favour of pure democracy.
He has gone so far as to maintain that no nation which has not a
representative legislature, chosen by universal suffrage, enjoys
security against oppression. But when he was asked before the Committee
of last year, whether he thought representative government practicable
in India, his answer was, "utterly out of the question. " This, then,
is the state in which we are. We have to frame a good government for
a country into which, by universal acknowledgment, we cannot introduce
those institutions which all our habits, which all the reasonings of
European philosophers, which all the history of our own part of the
world would lead us to consider as the one great security for good
government. We have to engraft on despotism those blessings which are
the natural fruits of liberty. In these circumstances, Sir, it behoves
us to be cautious, even to the verge of timidity. The light of political
science and of history are withdrawn: we are walking in darkness: we do
not distinctly see whither we are going. It is the wisdom of a man, so
situated, to feel his way, and not to plant his foot till he is well
assured that the ground before him is firm.

Some things, however, in the midst of this obscurity, I can see with
clearness. I can see, for example, that it is desirable that the
authority exercised in this country over the Indian government should be
divided between two bodies, between a minister or a board appointed by
the Crown, and some other body independent of the Crown. If India is
to be a dependency of England, to be at war with our enemies, to be at
peace with our allies, to be protected by the English navy from maritime
aggression, to have a portion of the English army mixed with its sepoys,
it plainly follows that the King, to whom the Constitution gives the
direction of foreign affairs, and the command of the military and naval
forces, ought to have a share in the direction of the Indian government.
Yet, on the other hand, that a revenue of twenty millions a year,
an army of two hundred thousand men, a civil service abounding with
lucrative situations, should be left to the disposal of the Crown
without any check whatever, is what no minister, I conceive, would
venture to propose. This House is indeed the check provided by the
Constitution on the abuse of the royal prerogative. But that this House
is, or is likely ever to be, an efficient check on abuses practised
in India, I altogether deny. We have, as I believe we all feel, quite
business enough. If we were to undertake the task of looking into Indian
affairs as we look into British affairs, if we were to have Indian
budgets and Indian estimates, if we were to go into the Indian currency
question and the Indian Bank Charter, if to our disputes about Belgium
and Holland, Don Pedro and Don Miguel, were to be added disputes about
the debts of the Guicowar and the disorders of Mysore, the ex-king of
the Afghans and the Maharajah Runjeet Sing; if we were to have one night
occupied by the embezzlements of the Benares mint, and another by the
panic in the Calcutta money market; if the questions of Suttee or no
Suttee, Pilgrim tax or no Pilgrim tax, Ryotwary or Zemindary, half Batta
or whole Batta, were to be debated at the same length at which we have
debated Church reform and the assessed taxes, twenty-four hours a day
and three hundred and sixty-five days a year would be too short a time
for the discharge of our duties. The House, it is plain, has not
the necessary time to settle these matters; nor has it the necessary
knowledge; nor has it the motives to acquire that knowledge. The late
change in its constitution has made it, I believe, a much more faithful
representative of the English people. But it is as far as ever from
being a representative of the Indian people. A broken head in Cold Bath
Fields produces a greater sensation among us than three pitched battles
in India. A few weeks ago we had to decide on a claim brought by an
individual against the revenues of India. If it had been an English
question the walls would scarcely have held the Members who would
have flocked to the division. It was an Indian question; and we could
scarcely, by dint of supplication, make a House. Even when my right
honourable friend, the President of the Board of Control, gave his able
and interesting explanation of the plan which he intended to propose for
the government of a hundred millions of human beings, the attendance was
not so large as I have often seen it on a turnpike bill or a railroad
bill.

I then take these things as proved, that the Crown must have a certain
authority over India, that there must be an efficient check on the
authority of the Crown, and that the House of Commons cannot be that
efficient check. We must then find some other body to perform that
important office. We have such a body, the Company. Shall we discard it?

It is true that the power of the Company is an anomaly in politics.
It is strange, very strange, that a joint-stock society of traders,
a society, the shares of which are daily passed from hand to hand,
a society, the component parts of which are perpetually changing, a
society, which, judging a priori from its constitution, we should
have said was as little fitted for imperial functions as the Merchant
Tailors' Company or the New River Company, should be intrusted with
the sovereignty of a larger population, the disposal of a larger
clear revenue, the command of a larger army, than are under the direct
management of the Executive Government of the United Kingdom. But
what constitution can we give to our Indian Empire which shall not
be strange, which shall not be anomalous? That Empire is itself the
strangest of all political anomalies. That a handful of adventurers from
an island in the Atlantic should have subjugated a vast country divided
from the place of their birth by half the globe; a country which at no
very distant period was merely the subject of fable to the nations of
Europe; a country never before violated by the most renowned of Western
conquerors; a country which Trajan never entered; a country lying beyond
the point where the phalanx of Alexander refused to proceed; that we
should govern a territory ten thousand miles from us, a territory larger
and more populous than France, Spain, Italy, and Germany put together, a
territory, the present clear revenue of which exceeds the present
clear revenue of any state in the world, France excepted; a territory
inhabited by men differing from us in race, colour, language, manners,
morals, religion; these are prodigies to which the world has seen
nothing similar. Reason is confounded. We interrogate the past in vain.
General rules are useless where the whole is one vast exception. The
Company is an anomaly; but it is part of a system where every thing is
anomaly. It is the strangest of all governments; but it is designed for
the strangest of all empires.

If we discard the Company, we must find a substitute: and, take what
substitute we may, we shall find ourselves unable to give any reason for
believing that the body which we have put in the room of the Company
is likely to acquit itself of its duties better than the Company.
Commissioners appointed by the King during pleasure would be no check on
the Crown; Commissioners appointed by the King or by Parliament for
life would always be appointed by the political party which might be
uppermost, and if a change of administration took place, would harass
the new Government with the most vexatious opposition. The plan
suggested by the right honourable Gentleman, the Member for
Montgomeryshire (Mr Charles Wynn. ), is I think the very worst that I
have ever heard. He would have Directors nominated every four years
by the Crown. Is it not plain that these Directors would always be
appointed from among the supporters of the Ministry for the time being;
that their situations would depend on the permanence of that Ministry;
that therefore all their power and patronage would be employed for the
purpose of propping that Ministry, and, in case of a change, for the
purpose of molesting those who might succeed to power; that they would
be subservient while their friends were in, and factious when their
friends were out? How would Lord Grey's Ministry have been situated if
the whole body of Directors had been nominated by the Duke of Wellington
in 1830. I mean no imputation on the Duke of Wellington. If the present
ministers had to nominate Directors for four years, they would, I have
no doubt, nominate men who would give no small trouble to the Duke
of Wellington if he were to return to office. What we want is a body
independent of the Government, and no more than independent; not a tool
of the Treasury, not a tool of the opposition. No new plan which I have
heard proposed would give us such a body. The Company, strange as its
constitution may be, is such a body. It is, as a corporation, neither
Whig nor Tory, neither high-church nor low-church. It cannot be charged
with having been for or against the Catholic Bill, for or against
the Reform Bill. It has constantly acted with a view not to English
politics, but to Indian politics. We have seen the country convulsed
by faction. We have seen Ministers driven from office by this House,
Parliament dissolved in anger, general elections of unprecedented
turbulence, debates of unprecedented interest. We have seen the two
branches of the Legislature placed in direct opposition to each other.
We have seen the advisers of the Crown dismissed one day, and brought
back the next day on the shoulders of the people. And amidst all these
agitating events the Company has preserved strict and unsuspected
neutrality. This is, I think an inestimable advantage, and it is an
advantage which we must altogether forego, if we consent to adopt any of
the schemes which I have heard proposed on the other side of the House.

We must judge of the Indian government, as of all other governments, by
its practical effects. According to the honourable Member for Sheffield,
India is ill governed; and the whole fault is with the Company.
Innumerable accusations, great and small, are brought by him against the
Directors. They are fond of war: they are fond of dominion: the taxation
is burthensome: the laws are undigested: the roads are rough: the post
goes on foot: and for everything the Company is answerable. From
the dethronement of the Mogul princes to the mishaps of Sir Charles
Metcalfe's courier, every disaster that has taken place in the East
during sixty years is laid to the charge of this Corporation. And the
inference is, that all the power which they possess ought to be taken
out of their hands, and transferred at once to the Crown.

Now, Sir, it seems to me that, for all the evils which the honourable
Gentleman has so pathetically recounted, the Ministers of the Crown are
as much to blame as the Company; nay, much more so: for the Board of
Control could, without the consent of the Directors, have redressed
those evils; and the Directors most certainly could not have redressed
them without the consent of the Board of Control. Take the case of that
frightful grievance which seems to have made the deepest impression on
the mind of the honourable Gentleman, the slowness of the mail. Why,
Sir, if my right honourable friend, the President of our Board thought
fit, he might direct me to write to the Court and require them to frame
a dispatch on that subject. If the Court disobeyed, he might himself
frame a dispatch ordering Lord William Bentinck to put the dawks
all over Bengal on horseback. If the Court refused to send out this
dispatch, the Board could apply to the King's Bench for a mandamus. If,
on the other hand, the Directors wished to accelerate the journeys of
the mail, and the Board were adverse to the project, the Directors could
do nothing at all. For all measures of internal policy the servants
of the King are at least as deeply responsible as the Company. For all
measures of foreign policy the servants of the King, and they alone are
responsible. I was surprised to hear the honourable Gentleman accuse the
Directors of insatiable ambition and rapacity, when he must know that
no act of aggression on any native state can be committed by the Company
without the sanction of the Board, and that, in fact, the Board has
repeatedly approved of warlike measures which were strenuously opposed
by the Company. He must know, in particular, that, during the energetic
and splendid administration of the Marquess of Wellesley, the company
was all for peace, and the Board all for conquest. If a line of conduct
which the honourable Gentleman thinks unjustifiable has been followed
by the Ministers of the Crown in spite of the remonstrances of
the Directors, this is surely a strange reason for turning off the
Directors, and giving the whole power unchecked to the Crown.

The honourable Member tells us that India, under the present system, is
not so rich and flourishing as she was two hundred years ago. Really,
Sir, I doubt whether we are in possession of sufficient data to enable
us to form a judgment on that point. But the matter is of little
importance. We ought to compare India under our government, not with
India under Acbar and his immediate successors, but with India as we
found it. The calamities through which that country passed during the
interval between the fall of the Mogul power and the establishment of
the English supremacy were sufficient to throw the people back whole
centuries. It would surely be unjust to say, that Alfred was a bad king
because Britain, under his government, was not so rich or so civilised
as in the time of the Romans.

In what state, then, did we find India? And what have we made India? We
found society throughout that vast country in a state to which history
scarcely furnishes a parallel.
The nearest parallel would, perhaps, be
the state of Europe during the fifth century. The Mogul empire in the
time of the successors of Aurungzebe, like the Roman empire in the time
of the successors of Theodosius, was sinking under the vices of a bad
internal administration, and under the assaults of barbarous invaders.
At Delhi, as at Ravenna, there was a mock sovereign, immured in a
gorgeous state prison. He was suffered to indulge in every sensual
pleasure. He was adored with servile prostrations. He assumed and
bestowed the most magnificent titles. But, in fact, he was a mere puppet
in the hands of some ambitious subject. While the Honorii and Augustuli
of the East, surrounded by their fawning eunuchs, reveled and dozed
without knowing or caring what might pass beyond the walls of their
palace gardens, the provinces had ceased to respect a government which
could neither punish nor protect them. Society was a chaos. Its restless
and shifting elements formed themselves every moment into some new
combination, which the next moment dissolved. In the course of a single
generation a hundred dynasties grew up, flourished, decayed, were
extinguished, were forgotten. Every adventurer who could muster a troop
of horse might aspire to a throne. Every palace was every year the scene
of conspiracies, treasons, revolutions, parricides. Meanwhile a rapid
succession of Alarics and Attilas passed over the defenceless empire.
A Persian invader penetrated to Delhi, and carried back in triumph
the most precious treasures of the House of Tamerlane. The Afghan soon
followed by the same track, to glean whatever the Persian had spared.
The Jauts established themselves on the Jumna. The Seiks devastated
Lahore. Every part of India, from Tanjore to the Himalayas, was laid
under contribution by the Mahrattas. The people were ground down to the
dust by the oppressor without and the oppressor within, by the robber
from whom the Nabob was unable to protect them, by the Nabob who took
whatever the robber had left to them. All the evils of despotism, and
all the evils of anarchy, pressed at once on that miserable race. They
knew nothing of government but its exactions. Desolation was in their
imperial cities, and famine all along the banks of their broad and
redundant rivers. It seemed that a few more years would suffice to
efface all traces of the opulence and civilisation of an earlier age.

Such was the state of India when the Company began to take part in the
disputes of its ephemeral sovereigns. About eighty years have elapsed
since we appeared as auxiliaries in a contest between two rival families
for the sovereignty of a small corner of the Peninsula. From that
moment commenced a great, a stupendous process, the reconstruction of a
decomposed society. Two generations have passed away; and the process is
complete. The scattered fragments of the empire of Aurungzebe have been
united in an empire stronger and more closely knit together than that
which Aurungzebe ruled. The power of the new sovereigns penetrates their
dominions more completely, and is far more implicitly obeyed, than was
that of the proudest princes of the Mogul dynasty.

It is true that the early history of this great revolution is chequered
with guilt and shame. It is true that the founders of our Indian Empire
too often abused the strength which they derived from superior energy
and superior knowledge. It is true that, with some of the highest
qualities of the race from which they sprang, they combined some of the
worst defects of the race over which they ruled. How should it have
been otherwise? Born in humble stations, accustomed to earn a slender
maintenance by obscure industry, they found themselves transformed in
a few months from clerks drudging over desks, or captains in marching
regiments, into statesmen and generals, with armies at their command,
with the revenues of kingdoms at their disposal, with power to make and
depose sovereigns at their pleasure. They were what it was natural that
men should be who had been raised by so rapid an ascent to so dizzy an
eminence, profuse and rapacious, imperious and corrupt.

It is true, then, that there was too much foundation for the
representations of those satirists and dramatists who held up the
character of the English Nabob to the derision and hatred of a former
generation. It is true that some disgraceful intrigues, some unjust
and cruel wars, some instances of odious perfidy and avarice, stain the
annals of our Eastern Empire. It is true that the duties of government
and legislation were long wholly neglected or carelessly performed. It
is true that when the conquerors at length began to apply themselves
in earnest to the discharge of their high functions, they committed the
errors natural to rulers who were but imperfectly acquainted with the
language and manners of their subjects. It is true that some plans,
which were dictated by the purest and most benevolent feelings have not
been attended by the desired success. It is true that India suffers to
this day from a heavy burden of taxation and from a defective system of
law. It is true, I fear, that in those states which are connected with
us by subsidiary alliance, all the evils of oriental despotism have
too frequently shown themselves in their most loathsome and destructive
form.

All this is true. Yet in the history and in the present state of our
Indian Empire I see ample reason for exultation and for a good hope.

I see that we have established order where we found confusion. I see
that the petty dynasties which were generated by the corruption of the
great Mahometan Empire, and which, a century ago, kept all India in
constant agitation, have been quelled by one overwhelming power. I see
that the predatory tribes, which, in the middle of the last century,
passed annually over the harvests of India with the destructive rapidity
of a hurricane, have quailed before the valour of a braver and sterner
race, have been vanquished, scattered, hunted to their strongholds, and
either extirpated by the English sword, or compelled to exchange the
pursuits of rapine for those of industry.

I look back for many years; and I see scarcely a trace of the vices
which blemished the splendid fame of the first conquerors of Bengal.
I see peace studiously preserved. I see faith inviolably maintained
towards feeble and dependent states. I see confidence gradually infused
into the minds of suspicious neighbours. I see the horrors of war
mitigated by the chivalrous and Christian spirit of Europe. I see
examples of moderation and clemency, such as I should seek in vain in
the annals of any other victorious and dominant nation. I see captive
tyrants, whose treachery and cruelty might have excused a severe
retribution, living in security, comfort, and dignity, under the
protection of the government which they laboured to destroy.

I see a large body of civil and military functionaries resembling in
nothing but capacity and valour those adventurers who, seventy years
ago, came hither, laden with wealth and infamy, to parade before our
fathers the plundered treasures of Bengal and Tanjore. I reflect with
pride that to the doubtful splendour which surrounds the memory of
Hastings and of Clive, we can oppose the spotless glory of Elphinstone
and Munro. I contemplate with reverence and delight the honourable
poverty which is the evidence of rectitude firmly maintained amidst
strong temptations. I rejoice to see my countrymen, after ruling
millions of subjects, after commanding victorious armies, after
dictating terms of peace at the gates of hostile capitals, after
administering the revenues of great provinces, after judging the causes
of wealthy Zemindars, after residing at the courts of tributary Kings,
return to their native land with no more than a decent competence.

I see a government anxiously bent on the public good. Even in its errors
I recognise a paternal feeling towards the great people committed to
its charge. I see toleration strictly maintained: yet I see bloody
and degrading superstitions gradually losing their power. I see the
morality, the philosophy, the taste of Europe, beginning to produce a
salutary effect on the hearts and understandings of our subjects. I see
the public mind of India, that public mind which we found debased
and contracted by the worst forms of political and religious tyranny,
expanding itself to just and noble views of the ends of government and
of the social duties of man.

I see evils: but I see the government actively employed in the work
of remedying those evils. The taxation is heavy; but the work of
retrenchment is unsparingly pursued. The mischiefs arising from the
system of subsidiary alliance are great: but the rulers of India are
fully aware of those mischiefs, and are engaged in guarding against
them. Wherever they now interfere for the purpose of supporting a native
government, they interfere also for the purpose of reforming it.

Seeing these things, then, am I prepared to discard the Company as
an organ of government? I am not. Assuredly I will never shrink from
innovation where I see reason to believe that innovation will
be improvement. That the present Government does not shrink from
innovations which it considers as improvements the bill now before the
House sufficiently shows. But surely the burden of the proof lies on the
innovators. They are bound to show that there is a fair probability
of obtaining some advantage before they call upon us to take up the
foundations of the Indian government. I have no superstitious veneration
for the Court of Directors or the Court of Proprietors. Find me a better
Council: find me a better constituent body: and I am ready for a change.
But of all the substitutes for the Company which have hitherto been
suggested, not one has been proved to be better than the Company; and
most of them I could, I think, easily prove to be worse. Circumstances
might force us to hazard a change. If the Company were to refuse to
accept of the government unless we would grant pecuniary terms which I
thought extravagant, or unless we gave up the clauses in this bill which
permit Europeans to hold landed property and natives to hold office, I
would take them at their word. But I will not discard them in the mere
rage of experiment.

Do I call the government of India a perfect government? Very far from
it. No nation can be perfectly well governed till it is competent to
govern itself. I compare the Indian government with other governments of
the same class, with despotisms, with military despotisms, with foreign
military despotisms; and I find none that approaches it in excellence.
I compare it with the government of the Roman provinces, with the
government of the Spanish colonies; and I am proud of my country and my
age. Here are a hundred millions of people under the absolute rule of
a few strangers, differing from them physically, differing from them
morally, mere Mamelukes, not born in the country which they rule,
not meaning to lay their bones in it. If you require me to make this
government as good as that of England, France, or the United States of
America, I own frankly that I can do no such thing. Reasoning a priori,
I should have come to the conclusion that such a government must be a
horrible tyranny. It is a source of constant amazement to me that it is
so good as I find it to be. I will not, therefore, in a case in which
I have neither principles nor precedents to guide me, pull down the
existing system on account of its theoretical defects. For I know that
any system which I could put in its place would be equally condemned by
theory, while it would not be equally sanctioned by experience.

Some change in the constitution of the Company was, as I have shown,
rendered inevitable by the opening of the China Trade; and it was
the duty of the Government to take care that the change should not
be prejudicial to India. There were many ways in which the compromise
between commerce and territory might have been effected. We might have
taken the assets, and paid a sum down, leaving the Company to invest
that sum as they chose. We might have offered English security with a
lower interest. We might have taken the course which the late ministers
designed to take. They would have left the Company in possession of the
means of carrying on its trade in competition with private merchants. My
firm belief is that, if this course had been taken, the Company must,
in a very few years, have abandoned the trade, or the trade would have
ruined the Company. It was not, however, solely or principally by regard
for the interest of the Company, or of English merchants generally, that
the Government was guided on this occasion. The course which appeared to
us the most likely to promote the interests of our Eastern Empire was to
make the proprietors of India stock creditors of the Indian territory.
Their interest will thus be in a great measure the same with the
interest of the people whom they are to rule. Their income will depend
on the revenues of their empire. The revenues of their empire
will depend on the manner in which the affairs of that empire are
administered. We furnish them with the strongest motives to watch over
the interests of the cultivator and the trader, to maintain peace, to
carry on with vigour the work of retrenchment, to detect and punish
extortion and corruption. Though they live at a distance from India,
though few of them have ever seen or may ever see the people whom they
rule, they will have a great stake in the happiness of their subjects.
If their misgovernment should produce disorder in the finances, they
will themselves feel the effects of that disorder in their own household
expenses. I believe this to be, next to a representative constitution,
the constitution which is the best security for good government. A
representative constitution India cannot at present have. And we have
therefore, I think, given her the best constitution of which she is
capable.

One word as to the new arrangement which we propose with respect to the
patronage. It is intended to introduce the principle of competition
in the disposal of writerships; and from this change I cannot but
anticipate the happiest results. The civil servants of the Company are
undoubtedly a highly respectable body of men; and in that body, as in
every large body, there are some persons of very eminent ability. I
rejoice most cordially to see this. I rejoice to see that the standard
of morality is so high in England, that intelligence is so generally
diffused through England, that young persons who are taken from the mass
of society, by favour and not by merit, and who are therefore only
fair samples of the mass, should, when placed in situations of high
importance, be so seldom found wanting. But it is not the less true that
India is entitled to the service of the best talents which England can
spare. That the average of intelligence and virtue is very high in
this country is matter for honest exultation. But it is no reason for
employing average men where you can obtain superior men. Consider
too, Sir, how rapidly the public mind of India is advancing, how much
attention is already paid by the higher classes of the natives to those
intellectual pursuits on the cultivation of which the superiority of
the European race to the rest of mankind principally depends. Surely,
in such circumstances, from motives of selfish policy, if from no higher
motive, we ought to fill the magistracies of our Eastern Empire with men
who may do honour to their country, with men who may represent the best
part of the English nation. This, Sir, is our object; and we believe
that by the plan which is now proposed this object will be attained. It
is proposed that for every vacancy in the civil service four candidates
shall be named, and the best candidate selected by examination. We
conceive that, under this system, the persons sent out will be young men
above par, young men superior either in talents or in diligence to the
mass. It is said, I know, that examinations in Latin, in Greek, and in
mathematics, are no tests of what men will prove to be in life. I am
perfectly aware that they are not infallible tests: but that they are
tests I confidently maintain. Look at every walk of life, at this House,
at the other House, at the Bar, at the Bench, at the Church, and see
whether it be not true that those who attain high distinction in the
world were generally men who were distinguished in their academic
career. Indeed, Sir, this objection would prove far too much even
for those who use it. It would prove that there is no use at all in
education. Why should we put boys out of their way? Why should we force
a lad, who would much rather fly a kite or trundle a hoop, to learn his
Latin Grammar? Why should we keep a young man to his Thucydides or his
Laplace, when he would much rather be shooting? Education would be mere
useless torture, if, at two or three and twenty, a man who had neglected
his studies were exactly on a par with a man who had applied himself to
them, exactly as likely to perform all the offices of public life with
credit to himself and with advantage to society. Whether the English
system of education be good or bad is not now the question. Perhaps I
may think that too much time is given to the ancient languages and
to the abstract sciences. But what then? Whatever be the languages,
whatever be the sciences, which it is, in any age or country, the
fashion to teach, the persons who become the greatest proficients in
those languages and those sciences will generally be the flower of
the youth, the most acute, the most industrious, the most ambitious
of honourable distinctions. If the Ptolemaic system were taught
at Cambridge instead of the Newtonian, the senior wrangler would
nevertheless be in general a superior man to the wooden spoon. If,
instead of learning Greek, we learned the Cherokee, the man who
understood the Cherokee best, who made the most correct and melodious
Cherokee verses, who comprehended most accurately the effect of the
Cherokee particles, would generally be a superior man to him who was
destitute of these accomplishments. If astrology were taught at our
Universities, the young man who cast nativities best would generally
turn out a superior man. If alchymy were taught, the young man who
showed most activity in the pursuit of the philosopher's stone would
generally turn out a superior man.

I will only add one other observation on this subject. Although I
am inclined to think that too exclusive an attention is paid in the
education of young English gentlemen to the dead languages, I conceive
that when you are choosing men to fill situations for which the very
first and most indispensable qualification is familiarity with foreign
languages, it would be difficult to find a better test of their fitness
than their classical acquirements.

Some persons have expressed doubts as to the possibility of procuring
fair examinations. I am quite sure that no person who has been either at
Cambridge or at Oxford can entertain such doubts. I feel, indeed, that I
ought to apologise for even noticing an objection so frivolous.

Next to the opening of the China trade, Sir, the change most eagerly
demanded by the English people was, that the restrictions on the
admission of Europeans to India should be removed. In this change there
are undoubtedly very great advantages. The chief advantage is, I think,
the improvement which the minds of our native subjects may be expected
to derive from free intercourse with a people far advanced beyond
themselves in intellectual cultivation. I cannot deny, however, that the
advantages are attended with some danger.

The danger is that the new comers, belonging to the ruling nation,
resembling in colour, in language, in manners, those who hold supreme
military and political power, and differing in all these respects from
the great mass of the population, may consider themselves as a superior
class, and may trample on the indigenous race. Hitherto there have been
strong restraints on Europeans resident in India. Licences were not
easily obtained. Those residents who were in the service of the Company
had obvious motives for conducting themselves with propriety. If they
incurred the serious displeasure of the Government, their hopes of
promotion were blighted. Even those who were not in the public service
were subject to the formidable power which the Government possessed of
banishing them at its pleasure.

The license of the Government will now no longer be necessary to persons
who desire to reside in the settled provinces of India. The power of
arbitrary deportation is withdrawn. Unless, therefore, we mean to leave
the natives exposed to the tyranny and insolence of every profligate
adventurer who may visit the East, we must place the European under
the same power which legislates for the Hindoo. No man loves political
freedom more than I. But a privilege enjoyed by a few individuals, in
the midst of a vast population who do not enjoy it, ought not to be
called freedom. It is tyranny. In the West Indies I have not the
least doubt that the existence of the Trial by Jury and of Legislative
Assemblies has tended to make the condition of the slaves worse than it
would otherwise have been. Or, to go to India itself for an instance,
though I fully believe that a mild penal code is better than a severe
penal code, the worst of all systems was surely that of having a mild
code for the Brahmins, who sprang from the head of the Creator, while
there was a severe code for the Sudras, who sprang from his feet. India
has suffered enough already from the distinction of castes, and from
the deeply rooted prejudices which that distinction has engendered. God
forbid that we should inflict on her the curse of a new caste, that we
should send her a new breed of Brahmins, authorised to treat all the
native population as Parias!

With a view to the prevention of this evil, we propose to give to the
Supreme Government the power of legislating for Europeans as well as for
natives. We propose that the regulations of the Government shall bind
the King's Court as they bind all other courts, and that registration
by the Judges of the King's Courts shall no longer be necessary to give
validity to those regulations within the towns of Calcutta, Madras, and
Bombay.

I could scarcely, Sir, believe my ears when I heard this part of our
plan condemned in another place. I should have thought that it would
have been received with peculiar favour in that quarter where it has met
with the most severe condemnation. What, at present, is the case? If the
Supreme Court and the Government differ on a question of jurisdiction,
or on a question of legislation within the towns which are the seats of
Government, there is absolutely no umpire but the Imperial Parliament.
The device of putting one wild elephant between two tame elephants was
ingenious: but it may not always be practicable. Suppose a tame elephant
between two wild elephants, or suppose that the whole herd should run
wild together. The thing is not without example. And is it not most
unjust and ridiculous that, on one side of a ditch, the edict of the
Governor General should have the force of law, and that on the other
side it should be of no effect unless registered by the Judges of the
Supreme Court? If the registration be a security for good legislation,
we are bound to give that security to all classes of our subjects. If
the registration be not a security for good legislation, why give it to
any? Is the system good? Extend it. Is it bad! Abolish it. But in the
name of common sense do not leave it as it is. It is as absurd as our
old law of sanctuary. The law which authorises imprisonment for debt
may be good or bad. But no man in his senses can approve of the ancient
system under which a debtor who might be arrested in Fleet Street was
safe as soon as he had scampered into Whitefriars. Just in the same way,
doubts may fairly be entertained about the expediency of allowing four
or five persons to make laws for India; but to allow them to make laws
for all India without the Mahratta ditch, and to except Calcutta, is the
height of absurdity.

I say, therefore, that either you must enlarge the power of the Supreme
Court, and give it a general veto on laws, or you must enlarge the
power of the Government, and make its regulations binding on all
Courts without distinction. The former course no person has ventured to
propose. To the latter course objections have been made; but objections
which to me, I must own, seem altogether frivolous.

It is acknowledged that of late years inconvenience has arisen from the
relation in which the Supreme Court stands to the Government. But, it is
said, that Court was originally instituted for the protection of natives
against Europeans. The wise course would therefore be to restore its
original character.

Now, Sir, the fact is, that the Supreme Court has never been so
mischievous as during the first ten years of its power, or so
respectable as it has lately been. Everybody who knows anything of its
early history knows, that, during a considerable time, it was the terror
of Bengal, the scourge of the native population, the screen of European
delinquents, a convenient tool of the Government for all purposes of
evil, an insurmountable obstacle to the Government in all undertakings
for the public good; that its proceedings were made up of pedantry,
cruelty, and corruption; that its disputes with the Government were at
one time on the point of breaking up the whole fabric of society; and
that a convulsion was averted only by the dexterous policy of Warren
Hastings, who at last bought off the opposition of the Chief Justice for
eight thousand pounds a year. It is notorious that, while the Supreme
Court opposed Hastings in all his best measures, it was a thoroughgoing
accomplice in his worst; that it took part in the most scandalous of
those proceedings which, fifty years ago, roused the indignation of
Parliament and of the country; that it assisted in the spoliation of the
princesses of Oude; that it passed sentence of death on Nuncomar. And
this is the Court which we are to restore from its present state of
degeneracy to its original purity. This is the protection which we are
to give to the natives against the Europeans. Sir, so far is it from
being true that the character of the Supreme Court has deteriorated,
that it has, perhaps, improved more than any other institution in India.
But the evil lies deep in the nature of the institution itself. The
judges have in our time deserved the greatest respect. Their judgment
and integrity have done much to mitigate the vices of the system.
The worst charge that can be brought against any of them is that of
pertinacity, disinterested, conscientious pertinacity, in error.