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.