No More Learning

Once admit that we are bound to inflict pain on a man
because he is not of our religion; and where are you to stop? Why stop
at the point fixed by my honourable friend rather than at the point
fixed by the honourable Member for Oldham (Mr Cobbett. ), who would make
the Jews incapable of holding land? And why stop at the point fixed by
the honourable Member for Oldham rather than at the point which would
have been fixed by a Spanish Inquisitor of the sixteenth century? When
once you enter on a course of persecution, I defy you to find any reason
for making a halt till you have reached the extreme point. When my
honourable friend tells us that he will allow the Jews to possess
property to any amount, but that he will not allow them to possess the
smallest political power, he holds contradictory language. Property
is power. The honourable Member for Oldham reasons better than my
honourable friend. The honourable Member for Oldham sees very clearly
that it is impossible to deprive a man of political power if you
suffer him to be the proprietor of half a county, and therefore very
consistently proposes to confiscate the landed estates of the Jews. But
even the honourable Member for Oldham does not go far enough. He has
not proposed to confiscate the personal property of the Jews. Yet it is
perfectly certain that any Jew who has a million may easily make himself
very important in the State. By such steps we pass from official power
to landed property, and from landed property to personal property, and
from property to liberty, and from liberty to life. In truth, those
persecutors who use the rack and the stake have much to say for
themselves. They are convinced that their end is good; and it must be
admitted that they employ means which are not unlikely to attain the
end. Religious dissent has repeatedly been put down by sanguinary
persecution. In that way the Albigenses were put down. In that way
Protestantism was suppressed in Spain and Italy, so that it has never
since reared its head. But I defy any body to produce an instance in
which disabilities such as we are now considering have produced any
other effect than that of making the sufferers angry and obstinate.
My honourable friend should either persecute to some purpose, or not
persecute at all. He dislikes the word persecution I know. He will not
admit that the Jews are persecuted. And yet I am confident that he would
rather be sent to the King's Bench Prison for three months, or be fined
a hundred pounds, than be subject to the disabilities under which the
Jews lie. How can he then say that to impose such disabilities is not
persecution, and that to fine and imprison is persecution? All his
reasoning consists in drawing arbitrary lines. What he does not wish to
inflict he calls persecution. What he does wish to inflict he will not
call persecution. What he takes from the Jews he calls political power.
What he is too good-natured to take from the Jews he will not call
political power. The Jew must not sit in Parliament: but he may be the
proprietor of all the ten pound houses in a borough. He may have more
fifty pound tenants than any peer in the kingdom. He may give the voters
treats to please their palates, and hire bands of gipsies to break their
heads, as if he were a Christian and a Marquess. All the rest of this
system is of a piece. The Jew may be a juryman, but not a judge. He
may decide issues of fact, but not issues of law. He may give a hundred
thousand pounds damages; but he may not in the most trivial case grant a
new trial. He may rule the money market: he may influence the
exchanges: he may be summoned to congresses of Emperors and Kings. Great
potentates, instead of negotiating a loan with him by tying him in a
chair and pulling out his grinders, may treat with him as with a great
potentate, and may postpone the declaring of war or the signing of a
treaty till they have conferred with him. All this is as it should
be: but he must not be a Privy Councillor. He must not be called Right
Honourable, for that is political power. And who is it that we are
trying to cheat in this way? Even Omniscience. Yes, Sir; we have been
gravely told that the Jews are under the divine displeasure, and that if
we give them political power God will visit us in judgment. Do we then
think that God cannot distinguish between substance and form? Does not
He know that, while we withhold from the Jews the semblance and name
of political power, we suffer them to possess the substance? The plain
truth is that my honourable friend is drawn in one direction by his
opinions, and in a directly opposite direction by his excellent heart.
He halts between two opinions. He tries to make a compromise between
principles which admit of no compromise. He goes a certain way in
intolerance. Then he stops, without being able to give a reason for
stopping. But I know the reason. It is his humanity. Those who formerly
dragged the Jew at a horse's tail, and singed his beard with blazing
furzebushes, were much worse men than my honourable friend; but they
were more consistent than he.

It has been said that it would be monstrous to see a Jew judge try a man
for blasphemy. In my opinion it is monstrous to see any judge try a man
for blasphemy under the present law. But, if the law on that subject
were in a sound state, I do not see why a conscientious Jew might not
try a blasphemer. Every man, I think, ought to be at liberty to discuss
the evidences of religion; but no man ought to be at liberty to force on
the unwilling ears and eyes of others sounds and sights which must cause
annoyance and irritation. The distinction is clear. I think it wrong to
punish a man for selling Paine's Age of Reason in a back-shop to those
who choose to buy, or for delivering a Deistical lecture in a private
room to those who choose to listen. But if a man exhibits at a window
in the Strand a hideous caricature of that which is an object of awe
and adoration to nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of
people who pass up and down that great thoroughfare; if a man in a place
of public resort applies opprobrious epithets to names held in reverence
by all Christians; such a man ought, in my opinion, to be severely
punished, not for differing from us in opinion, but for committing a
nuisance which gives us pain and disgust. He is no more entitled to
outrage our feelings by obtruding his impiety on us, and to say that
he is exercising his right of discussion, than to establish a yard for
butchering horses close to our houses, and to say that he is exercising
his right of property, or to run naked up and down the public streets,
and to say that he is exercising his right of locomotion. He has a right
of discussion, no doubt, as he has a right of property and a right of
locomotion. But he must use all his rights so as not to infringe the
rights of others.

These, Sir, are the principles on which I would frame the law of
blasphemy; and if the law were so framed, I am at a loss to understand
why a Jew might not enforce it as well as a Christian. I am not a Roman
Catholic; but if I were a judge at Malta, I should have no scruple about
punishing a bigoted Protestant who should burn the Pope in effigy before
the eyes of thousands of Roman Catholics. I am not a Mussulman; but if
I were a judge in India, I should have no scruple about punishing a
Christian who should pollute a mosque. Why, then, should I doubt that
a Jew, raised by his ability, learning, and integrity to the judicial
bench, would deal properly with any person who, in a Christian country,
should insult the Christian religion?

But, says my honourable friend, it has been prophesied that the Jews are
to be wanderers on the face of the earth, and that they are not to mix
on terms of equality with the people of the countries in which they
sojourn. Now, Sir, I am confident that I can demonstrate that this is
not the sense of any prophecy which is part of Holy Writ. For it is an
undoubted fact that, in the United States of America, Jewish citizens do
possess all the privileges possessed by Christian citizens. Therefore,
if the prophecies mean that the Jews never shall, during their
wanderings, be admitted by other nations to equal participation of
political rights, the prophecies are false. But the prophecies are
certainly not false. Therefore their meaning cannot be that which is
attributed to them by my honourable friend.

Another objection which has been made to this motion is that the Jews
look forward to the coming of a great deliverer, to their return to
Palestine, to the rebuilding of their Temple, to the revival of their
ancient worship, and that therefore they will always consider England,
not their country, but merely as their place of exile. But, surely, Sir,
it would be the grossest ignorance of human nature to imagine that the
anticipation of an event which is to happen at some time altogether
indefinite, of an event which has been vainly expected during many
centuries, of an event which even those who confidently expect that it
will happen do not confidently expect that they or their children or
their grandchildren will see, can ever occupy the minds of men to such
a degree as to make them regardless of what is near and present and
certain. Indeed Christians, as well as Jews, believe that the existing
order of things will come to an end. Many Christians believe that Jesus
will visibly reign on earth during a thousand years. Expositors of
prophecy have gone so far as to fix the year when the Millennial period
is to commence. The prevailing opinion is, I think, in favour of the
year 1866; but, according to some commentators, the time is close at
hand. Are we to exclude all millennarians from Parliament and office, on
the ground that they are impatiently looking forward to the miraculous
monarchy which is to supersede the present dynasty and the present
constitution of England, and that therefore they cannot be heartily
loyal to King William?

In one important point, Sir, my honourable friend, the Member for the
University of Oxford, must acknowledge that the Jewish religion is
of all erroneous religions the least mischievous. There is not the
slightest chance that the Jewish religion will spread. The Jew does not
wish to make proselytes. He may be said to reject them. He thinks it
almost culpable in one who does not belong to his race to presume to
belong to his religion. It is therefore not strange that a conversion
from Christianity to Judaism should be a rarer occurrence than a total
eclipse of the sun. There was one distinguished convert in the last
century, Lord George Gordon; and the history of his conversion
deserves to be remembered. For if ever there was a proselyte of whom a
proselytising sect would have been proud, it was Lord George; not only
because he was a man of high birth and rank; not only because he
had been a member of the legislature; but also because he had been
distinguished by the intolerance, nay, the ferocity, of his zeal for his
own form of Christianity. But was he allured into the Synagogue? Was he
even welcomed to it? No, sir; he was coldly and reluctantly permitted
to share the reproach and suffering of the chosen people; but he was
sternly shut out from their privileges. He underwent the painful rite
which their law enjoins. But when, on his deathbed, he begged hard to
be buried among them according to their ceremonial, he was told that
his request could not be granted. I understand that cry of "Hear. " It
reminds me that one of the arguments against this motion is that the
Jews are an unsocial people, that they draw close to each other, and
stand aloof from strangers. Really, Sir, it is amusing to compare
the manner in which the question of Catholic emancipation was argued
formerly by some gentlemen with the manner in which the question of Jew
emancipation is argued by the same gentlemen now. When the question
was about Catholic emancipation, the cry was, "See how restless, how
versatile, how encroaching, how insinuating, is the spirit of the
Church of Rome. See how her priests compass earth and sea to make one
proselyte, how indefatigably they toil, how attentively they study the
weak and strong parts of every character, how skilfully they employ
literature, arts, sciences, as engines for the propagation of their
faith. You find them in every region and under every disguise, collating
manuscripts in the Bodleian, fixing telescopes in the observatory of
Pekin, teaching the use of the plough and the spinning-wheel to the
savages of Paraguay. Will you give power to the members of a Church so
busy, so aggressive, so insatiable? " Well, now the question is about
people who never try to seduce any stranger to join them, and who do not
wish anybody to be of their faith who is not also of their blood. And
now you exclaim, "Will you give power to the members of a sect which
remains sullenly apart from other sects, which does not invite, nay,
which hardly ever admits neophytes? " The truth is, that bigotry will
never want a pretence. Whatever the sect be which it is proposed
to tolerate, the peculiarities of that sect will, for the time, be
pronounced by intolerant men to be the most odious and dangerous that
can be conceived. As to the Jews, that they are unsocial as respects
religion is true; and so much the better: for, surely, as Christians,
we cannot wish that they should bestir themselves to pervert us from
our own faith. But that the Jews would be unsocial members of the civil
community, if the civil community did its duty by them, has never been
proved. My right honourable friend who made the motion which we are
discussing has produced a great body of evidence to show that they have
been grossly misrepresented; and that evidence has not been refuted by
my honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford. But what
if it were true that the Jews are unsocial? What if it were true that
they do not regard England as their country? Would not the treatment
which they have undergone explain and excuse their antipathy to the
society in which they live? Has not similar antipathy often been felt
by persecuted Christians to the society which persecuted them? While
the bloody code of Elizabeth was enforced against the English Roman
Catholics, what was the patriotism of Roman Catholics? Oliver Cromwell
said that in his time they were Espaniolised. At a later period it
might have been said that they were Gallicised. It was the same with the
Calvinists. What more deadly enemies had France in the days of Louis
the Fourteenth than the persecuted Huguenots? But would any rational man
infer from these facts that either the Roman Catholic as such, or the
Calvinist as such, is incapable of loving the land of his birth? If
England were now invaded by Roman Catholics, how many English Roman
Catholics would go over to the invader? If France were now attacked by
a Protestant enemy, how many French Protestants would lend him help?
Why not try what effect would be produced on the Jews by that tolerant
policy which has made the English Roman Catholic a good Englishman, and
the French Calvinist a good Frenchman?

Another charge has been brought against the Jews, not by my honourable
friend the Member for the University of Oxford--he has too much learning
and too much good feeling to make such a charge--but by the honourable
Member for Oldham, who has, I am sorry to see, quitted his place. The
honourable Member for Oldham tells us that the Jews are naturally a mean
race, a sordid race, a money-getting race; that they are averse to all
honourable callings; that they neither sow nor reap; that they have
neither flocks nor herds; that usury is the only pursuit for which they
are fit; that they are destitute of all elevated and amiable sentiments.
Such, Sir, has in every age been the reasoning of bigots. They
never fail to plead in justification of persecution the vices which
persecution has engendered. England has been to the Jews less than half
a country; and we revile them because they do not feel for England more
than a half patriotism. We treat them as slaves, and wonder that they do
not regard us as brethren. We drive them to mean occupations, and then
reproach them for not embracing honourable professions. We long
forbade them to possess land; and we complain that they chiefly occupy
themselves in trade. We shut them out from all the paths of ambition;
and then we despise them for taking refuge in avarice. During many ages
we have, in all our dealings with them, abused our immense superiority
of force; and then we are disgusted because they have recourse to that
cunning which is the natural and universal defence of the weak against
the violence of the strong. But were they always a mere money-changing,
money-getting, money-hoarding race? Nobody knows better than my
honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford that there is
nothing in their national character which unfits them for the highest
duties of citizens. He knows that, in the infancy of civilisation, when
our island was as savage as New Guinea, when letters and arts were
still unknown to Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what
was afterwards the site of Rome, this contemned people had their
fenced cities and cedar palaces, their splendid Temple, their fleets of
merchant ships, their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen
and soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians and their
poets. What nation ever contended more manfully against overwhelming
odds for its independence and religion? What nation ever, in its last
agonies, gave such signal proofs of what may be accomplished by a
brave despair? And if, in the course of many centuries, the oppressed
descendants of warriors and sages have degenerated from the qualities of
their fathers, if, while excluded from the blessings of law, and bowed
down under the yoke of slavery, they have contracted some of the vices
of outlaws and of slaves, shall we consider this as matter of reproach
to them? Shall we not rather consider it as matter of shame and remorse
to ourselves? Let us do justice to them. Let us open to them the door of
the House of Commons. Let us open to them every career in which ability
and energy can be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presume
to say that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, no
heroism among the descendants of the Maccabees.

Sir, in supporting the motion of my honourable friend, I am, I firmly
believe, supporting the honour and the interests of the Christian
religion. I should think that I insulted that religion if I said that
it cannot stand unaided by intolerant laws. Without such laws it was
established, and without such laws it may be maintained. It triumphed
over the superstitions of the most refined and of the most savage
nations, over the graceful mythology of Greece and the bloody idolatry
of the Northern forests. It prevailed over the power and policy of
the Roman empire. It tamed the barbarians by whom that empire was
overthrown. But all these victories were gained not by the help of
intolerance, but in spite of the opposition of intolerance. The whole
history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from
persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally. May
she long continue to bless our country with her benignant influence,
strong in her sublime philosophy, strong in her spotless morality,
strong in those internal and external evidences to which the most
powerful and comprehensive of human intellects have yielded assent,
the last solace of those who have outlived every earthly hope, the last
restraint of those who are raised above every earthly fear! But let not
us, mistaking her character and her interests, fight the battle of truth
with the weapons of error, and endeavour to support by oppression that
religion which first taught the human race the great lesson of universal
charity.

*****




GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. (JULY 10, 1833) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS ON THE 10TH OF JULY 1833.

On Wednesday, the tenth of July 1833, Mr Charles Grant, President of the
Board of Control, moved that the Bill for effecting an arrangement with
the India Company, and for the better government of His Majesty's
Indian territories, should be read a second time. The motion was carried
without a division, but not without a long debate, in the course of
which the following Speech was made.

Having, while this bill was in preparation, enjoyed the fullest and
kindest confidence of my right honourable friend, the President of the
Board of Control, agreeing with him completely in all those views which
on a former occasion he so luminously and eloquently developed, having
shared his anxieties, and feeling that in some degree I share his
responsibility, I am naturally desirous to obtain the attention of
the House while I attempt to defend the principles of the proposed
arrangement. I wish that I could promise to be very brief; but the
subject is so extensive that I will only promise to condense what I have
to say as much as I can.

I rejoice, Sir, that I am completely dispensed, by the turn which our
debates have taken, from the necessity of saying anything in favour
of one part of our plan, the opening of the China trade. No voice, I
believe, has yet been raised here in support of the monopoly. On that
subject all public men of all parties seem to be agreed. The resolution
proposed by the Ministers has received the unanimous assent of both
Houses, and the approbation of the whole kingdom. I will not, therefore,
Sir, detain you by vindicating what no gentleman has yet ventured to
attack, but will proceed to call your attention to those effects which
this great commercial revolution necessarily produced on the system of
Indian government and finance.

The China trade is to be opened. Reason requires this. Public opinion
requires it. The Government of the Duke of Wellington felt the necessity
as strongly as the Government of Lord Grey. No Minister, Whig or
Tory, could have been found to propose a renewal of the monopoly.
No parliament, reformed or unreformed, would have listened to such a
proposition. But though the opening of the trade was a matter concerning
which the public had long made up its mind, the political consequences
which must necessarily follow from the opening of the trade seem to me
to be even now little understood. The language which I have heard in
almost every circle where the subject was discussed was this: "Take away
the monopoly, and leave the government of India to the Company:" a
very short and convenient way of settling one of the most complicated
questions that ever a legislature had to consider. The honourable
Member for Sheffield (Mr Buckingham. ), though not disposed to retain the
Company as an organ of government, has repeatedly used language which
proves that he shares in the general misconception. The fact is that
the abolition of the monopoly rendered it absolutely necessary to make a
fundamental change in the constitution of that great Corporation.

The Company had united in itself two characters, the character of trader
and the character of sovereign. Between the trader and the sovereign
there was a long and complicated account, almost every item of which
furnished matter for litigation. While the monopoly continued, indeed,
litigation was averted. The effect of the monopoly was, to satisfy the
claims both of commerce and of territory, at the expense of a third
party, the English people: to secure at once funds for the dividend of
the stockholder and funds for the government of the Indian Empire, by
means of a heavy tax on the tea consumed in this country. But, when the
third party would no longer bear this charge, all the great financial
questions which had, at the cost of that third party, been kept in
abeyance, were opened in an instant. The connection between the Company
in its mercantile capacity, and the same Company in its political
capacity, was dissolved. Even if the Company were permitted, as has been
suggested, to govern India, and at the same time to trade with China,
no advances would be made from the profits of its Chinese trade for
the support of its Indian government. It was in consideration of the
exclusive privilege that the Company had hitherto been required to make
those advances; it was by the exclusive privilege that the Company had
been enabled to make them. When that privilege was taken away, it would
be unreasonable in the legislature to impose such an obligation, and
impossible for the Company to fulfil it. The whole system of loans from
commerce to territory, and repayments from territory to commerce, must
cease. Each party must rest altogether on its own resources. It was
therefore absolutely necessary to ascertain what resources each party
possessed, to bring the long and intricate account between them to a
close, and to assign to each a fair portion of assets and liabilities.
There was vast property. How much of that property was applicable to
purposes of state? How much was applicable to a dividend? There were
debts to the amount of many millions. Which of these were the debts of
the government that ruled at Calcutta? 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.