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SPEECHES
_ON QUESTIONS OF PUBLIC POLICY_
BY
JOHN BRIGHT, M.P.
EDITED BY
JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
'BE JUST AND FEAR NOT'
SECOND EDITION
* * * * *
PREFACE.
The speeches which have been selected for publication in these volumes
possess a value, as examples of the art of public speaking, which no
person will be likely to underrate. Those who may differ from Mr.
Bright's theory of the public good will have no difficulty in
acknowledging the clearness of his diction, the skill with which he
arranges his arguments, the vigour of his style, the persuasiveness of
his reasoning, and above all, the perfect candour and sincerity with
which he expresses his political convictions.
It seems likely that the course of events in this country will lead
those, who may desire to possess influence in the conduct of public
affairs, to study the art of public speaking. If so, nothing which can
be found in English literature will aid the aspirant after this great
faculty more than the careful and reiterated perusal of the speeches
contained in these volumes. Tried indeed by the effect produced upon any
audience by their easy flow and perfect clearness, or analysed by any of
those systems of criticism which under the name of 'rhetoric' have been
saved to us from the learning of the ancient world, these speeches would
be admitted to satisfy either process.
This is not the occasion on which to point out the causes which confer
so great an artistic value on these compositions; which give them now,
and will give them hereafter, so high a place in English literature. At
the present time nearly a hundred millions of the earth's inhabitants
speak the English tongue. A century hence, and it will probably be the
speech of nearly half the inhabitants of the globe. I think that no
master of that language will occupy a loftier position than Mr. Bright;
that no speaker will teach with greater exactness the noblest and rarest
of the social arts, the art of clear and persuasive exposition. But
before this art can be attained (so said the greatest critic that the
world has known), it is necessary that the speaker should secure the
sympathies of his audience, should convince them of his statesmanship,
should show that he is free from any taint of self-interest or
dissimulation. These conditions of public trust still form, as
heretofore, in every country of free thought and free speech, the
foundation of a good reputation and of personal influence. It is with
the fact that such are the characteristics of my friend's eloquence,
that I have been strongly impressed in collecting and editing the
materials of these volumes.
Since the days of those men of renown who lived through the first half
of the seventeenth century, when the liveliest religious feeling was
joined to the loftiest patriotism, and men laboured for their conscience
and their country, England has witnessed no political career like that
of Cobden and Bright. Cobden's death was a great loss to his country,
for it occurred at a time when England could ill spare a conscientious
statesman. Nations, however, cannot be saved by the virtues, nor need
they be lost by the vices, of their public men. But Cobden's death was
an irreparable loss to his friends--most of all to the friend who had
been, in an incessant struggle for public duty and truth, of one heart
and of one purpose with him.
Those who have been familiar with Cobden's mind know how wide was his
knowledge, how true was his judgment of political events. The vast
majority of those who followed his public career had but a scanty
acquaintance with the resources of his sagacity and foresight. He spoke
to the people on a few subjects only. The wisdom of Free Trade; the
necessity of Parliamentary Reform; the dangerous tendency of those laws
which favour the accumulation of land in few hands; the urgent need for
a system of national education; the mischief of the mere military
spirit; the prudence of uniting communities by the multiplication of
international interests; the abandonment of the policy of diplomatic and
military intermeddling; the advocacy, in short, of the common good in
place of a spurious patriotism, of selfish, local, or class aims, formed
the subject of Cobden's public utterances. But his intimate friends, and
in particular his regular correspondents, were aware that his political
criticism was as general as it was accurate. The loss then of his wise
and lucid counsel was the greatest to the survivor of a personal and a
political friendship which was continued uninterruptedly through so long
and so active a career.
At the commencement of Mr. Bright's public life, the shortsighted
selfishness of a landlords' parliament was afflicting the United Kingdom
with a continuous dearth. Labour was starved, and capital was made
unproductive by the Corn-laws. The country was tied to a system by which
Great Britain and her Colonies deliberately chose the dearest market for
their purchases. In the same spirit, the price of freights was wilfully
heightened by the Navigation-laws. Important branches of home industry
were crippled by prying, vexatious, and wasteful excises. And this
system was conceived to be the highest wisdom; or at any rate, to be so
invincible a necessity that it could not be avoided or altered without
danger. The country, if it were to make its way, could make it only
because other nations were servile imitators of our commercial policy,
and, in the vain hope of retaliation, were hindering their own progress.
The foreign policy of Great Britain was suspicious and irritating, for
it was secret, busy, and meddling, insolent to the weak, conciliatory,
even truckling, to the strong. The very name of diplomacy is and has
been odious to English Liberals, for by means of it a reactionary
Government could check domestic reforms, and hinder the community of
nations indefinitely. The policy of the Foreign Office was constantly
directed towards embittering, if not embroiling, the relations between
this and other countries. It is difficult to account for these
intrigues, except on the ground that successive Governments were anxious
to maintain political and social anomalies at home, while they were
affecting to support 'the balance of power' abroad. The abandonment of
intervention in foreign politics was the beginning of agitation for
domestic reforms.
Perhaps no part of the public administration was worse than that of
India. The great Company had lost its monopoly of trade in the Eastern
seas, but retained its administrative powers over the subject races and
dependent princes of India. Its system of finance was wasteful and
oppressive. Its policy was that of aggression and annexation. In
practice, the Government was irresponsible. Nobody listened to Indian
affairs in Parliament, except on rare occasions, or for party purposes.
The Governor-General did as he pleased. The President of the Board of
Control did as he pleased. If the reader wishes to see how the former
acted, Mr. Cobden's pamphlet, 'How Wars are got up in India' will
enlighten him. If it be necessary to inquire what the policy of the
latter might be, the disastrous and disgraceful Affghan War is an
illustration. Never perhaps was a war commenced more recklessly. It is
certain that when loss and dishonour fell on the English arms, the
statesmen who recommended and insisted on the war tried to screen
themselves from just blame by the basest arts.
The internal resources of India were utterly neglected. The Company
collected part of its revenue from a land-tax, levied in the worst
shape. In order to secure an income through a monopoly, it constrained
the cultivation of certain drugs for which there was a foreign demand;
and neglected to encourage the cultivation of cotton, for which the home
demand was wellnigh boundless, and to which the Indian supply might be
made to correspond. The Company constructed neither road nor canal. It
did nothing towards maintaining the means of communication which even
the native governments had adopted. It suffered the ancient roads and
tanks to fall into decay. It neglected to educate the native gentry,
much more the people. In brief, the policy of the Company in dealing
with India was the policy of Old Spain with her Transatlantic
possessions, only that it was more jealous and illiberal.
Against these social and political evils, and many others which might be
enumerated, a very small body of true and resolute statesmen arrayed
themselves. Among these statesmen the most eminent were the two chiefs
of the Anti-Corn-law agitation. Never did men lead a hope which seemed
more forlorn. They had as opponents nearly the whole Upper House of
Parliament, a powerful and compact party in the Lower. The Established
Church was, of course, against them. The London newspapers, at that time
almost the only political power in the press, were against them. The
'educated' classes were against them. Many of the working people were
unfriendly to them, for the Chartists believed that the repeal of the
Corn-laws would lower the price of labour. After a long struggle they
gained the day; for an accident, the Irish famine, rendered a change in
the Corn-laws inevitable. But had it not been for the organization of
the League, the accident would have had no effect; for it is a rule in
the philosophy of politics that an accident is valuable only when the
machinery for making use of the accident is at hand. Calamities never
teach wisdom to fools, they render it possible that the wise should
avail themselves of the emergency.
A similar calamity, long foreseen by prudent men, caused the political
extinction of the East India Company. The joint action of the Board of
Control and the Directors led to the Indian mutiny. The suppression of
the Indian mutiny led to the suppression of the Leadenhall Street Divan.
Another calamity, also foreseen by statesmen, the outbreak of the
American Civil War, gave India commercial hope, and retrieved the
finances which the Company's rule had thrown into hopeless disorder.
I have selected the speeches contained in these two volumes, with a view
to supplying the public with the evidence on which Mr. Bright's friends
assert his right to a place in the front rank of English statesmen. I
suppose that there is no better evidence of statesmanship than
prescience; that no fuller confirmation of this evidence can be found
than in the popular acceptance of those principles which were once
unpopular and discredited. A short time since, Lord Derby said that Mr.
Bright was the real leader of the Opposition. It is true that he has
given great aid to that opposition which Lord Derby and his friends have
often encountered, and by which, to their great discredit, but to their
great advantage, they have been constantly defeated. If Lord Derby is in
the right, Mr. Bright is the leader of the People, while his Lordship
represents a party which is reckless because it is desperate. The policy
which Mr. Bright has advocated in these pages, and throughout a quarter
of a century, a policy from which he has never swerved, has at last been
accepted by the nation, despite the constant resistance of Lord Derby
and his friends. It embodies the national will, because it has attacked,
and in many cases vanquished, institutions and laws which have become
unpopular, because they have been manifestly mischievous and
destructive. No one knows better how conservative and tolerant is public
opinion in England towards traditional institutions, than Mr. Bright
does; or how indifferent the nation is to attacks on an untenable
practice and a bad law, until it awakens to the fact that the law or the
practice is ruinous.
Mr. Bright's political opinions have not been adopted because they were
popular. He was skilfully, and for a time successfully, maligned by Lord
Palmerston, on account of his persevering resistance to the policy of
the Russian War. But it is probable that the views he entertained at
that time will find more enduring acceptance than those which Lord
Palmerston and Lord Palmerston's colleagues promulgated, and that he has
done more to deface that Moloch, 'the balance of power,' than any other
man living. Shortly after the beginning of the Planters' War, almost all
the upper, and many of the middle classes, sympathized with the Slave-
owners' conspiracy. Everybody knows which side Mr. Bright took, and how
judicious and far-sighted he was in taking it. But everybody should
remember also how, when Mr. Bright pointed out the consequences likely
to ensue from the cruise of the _Alabama_, he was insulted by Mr.
Laird in the House of Commons; the Mr. Laird who launched the
_Alabama_, who has been the means of creating bitter enmity between
the people of this country and of the United States, and has contrived
to invest the unlawful speculation of a shipbuilder with the dignity of
an international difficulty, to make it the material for an unsettled
diplomatic question.
There are many social and political reforms, destined, it may be hoped,
to become matter of debate and action in a Reformed Parliament, towards
the accomplishment of which Mr. Bright has powerfully contributed. There
is that without which Reform is a fraud, the redistribution of seats;
that without which it is a sham, the ballot; that without which it is
possibly a danger, a system of national education, which should be, if
not compulsory, so cogently expedient that it cannot be rejected. There
is the great question of the distribution of land, its occupancy, and
its relief from that pestilent system of game preserving which robs the
farmer of his profit and the people of their home supplies. There is the
pacification of Ireland. The only consolation which can be gathered from
the condition of that unhappy country is, that reforms, which are highly
expedient in Great Britain, are vital in Ireland, and that they
therefore become familiar to the public mind. There is the development
of international amity and good-will, first between ourselves and the
people of our own race, next between all nations. There is the
recognition of public duty to inferior or subject races, a duty which
was grievously transgressed before and after the Indian mutiny, and has
been still more atrociously outraged in the Jamaica massacre. Upon these
and similar matters, no man who wishes to deserve the reputation of a
just and wise statesman,--in other words, to fulfil the highest and
greatest functions which man can render to man,--can find a worthier
study than the public career of an Englishman whose guiding principle
throughout his whole life has been his favourite motto, 'Be just and
fear not.'
I have divided the speeches contained in these volumes into groups. The
materials for selection are so abundant, that I have been constrained to
omit many a speech which is worthy of careful perusal. I have naturally
given prominence to those subjects with which Mr. Bright has been
especially identified, as, for example, India, America, Ireland, and
Parliamentary Reform. But nearly every topic of great public interest on
which Mr. Bright has spoken is represented in these volumes.
A statement of the views entertained by an eminent politician, who
wields a vast influence in the country, is always valuable. It is more
valuable when the utterances are profound, consistent, candid. It is
most valuable at a crisis when the people of these islands are invited
to take part in a contest where the broad principles of truth, honour,
and justice are arrayed on one side, and their victory is threatened by
those false cries, those reckless calumnies, those impudent evasions
which form the party weapons of desperate and unscrupulous men.
All the speeches in these volumes have been revised by Mr. Bright. The
Editor is responsible for their selection, for this Preface, and for the
Index at the close of the second volume.
JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS.
OXFORD, _June_ 30, 1868.
* * * * *
The Second Edition of these volumes is an exact reprint of the first,
certain obvious errors of the press only having been corrected.
OXFORD, _Dec_. 21, 1868.
* * * * *
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
INDIA.
I. House of Commons, June 3, 1853
II. House of Commons, June 24, 1858
III. House of Commons, May 20, 1858
IV. House of Commons, August 1, 1859
V. House of Commons, March 19, 1861
CANADA.
I. House of Commons, March 13, 1865
II. _The Canadian Fortifications_. House of Commons,
March 23, 1865
III. _The Canadian Confederation Scheme_. House of
Commons, February 28, 1867
AMERICA.
I. The _'Trent' Affair_. Rochdale, December 4, 1861
II. _The War and the Supply of Cotton_. Birmingham,
December 18, 1862
III. _Slavery and Secession_. Rochdale, February 3,
1863
IV. _The Struggle in America_. St. James's Hall,
March 26, 1863
V. London, June 16, 1863
VI. _Mr. Roebuck's Motion for Recognition of the
Southern Confederacy_. House of Commons,
June 30, 1863
VII. London, June 29, 1867
IRELAND.
I. _Maynooth Grand_. House of Commons, April 16,
1845
II. _Crime and Outrage Bill_. House of Commons,
December 13, 1847
III. _Employment of the Poor_. House of Commons,
August 25, 1848
IV. _Rate in Aid_. House of Commons, April 2,
1849
V. _Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill_. House of Commons,
February 17, 1866
VI. Dublin, October 30, 1866
VII. Dublin, November 2, 1866
VIII. House of Commons, March 14, 1868
IX. House of Commons, April 1, 1868
RUSSIA.
I. _War with Russia--The Queen's Message_. House
of Commons, March 31, 1854
II. _Enlistment of Foreigners' Bill_. House of Commons,
December 22, 1854
III. _Negotiations at Vienna_. House of Commons,
February 23, 1855
IV. _On the Prosecution of the Russian War_. House
of Commons, June 7, 1855
Letter of John Bright to Absalom Watkin on the Russian War
* * * * *
INDIA
I
HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 3, 1853.
_From Hansard_.
[The ministerial measure for the government of India was introduced by
Sir Charles Wood on June 3, 1853. The particulars of the Bill were as
follows: The Government proposed that for the future the relations
between the Directors and the Board of Control should be unchanged, but
that the constitution of the former should be altered and its patronage
curtailed. It reduced the number of the Members of the Court from
twenty-four to eighteen, of whom twelve were to be elected as before,
and six nominated by the Crown from Indian servants who had been ten
years in the service of the Crown or the Company. One-third of this
number was to go out every second year, but to be re-eligible.
Nominations by favour were to be abolished. The governorship of Bengal
was to be separated from the office of Governor-General. The legislative
council was to be improved and enlarged, the number to be twelve. The
Bill passed the House of Lords on June 13.]
I feel a considerable disadvantage in rising to address the House after
having listened for upwards of five hours to the speech of the right
hon. Gentleman. But the question is one, as the right hon. Gentleman has
said, of first-rate importance; and as I happen from a variety of
circumstances to have paid some attention to it, and to have formed some
strong opinions in regard to it, I am unwilling even that the Bill
should be brought in, or that this opportunity should pass, without
saying something, which will be partly in reply to the speech of the
right hon. Gentleman, and partly by way of comment on the plan which he
has submitted to the House. There is, as it appears to me, great
inconsistency between the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, and that
which he proposes should be done; because, really, if we take his speech
as a true and faithful statement of the condition of India, and of the
past proceedings of the Government in that country, our conviction must
be that the right hon. Gentleman will be greatly to be blamed in making
any alteration in that Government. At the same time, if it be not a
faithful portraiture of the Government, and of its transactions in
India, then what the right hon. Gentleman proposes to do in regard to
the home administration of that country is altogether insufficient for
the occasion. I cannot on the present occasion go into many of the
details on which the right hon. Gentleman has touched; but the
observations which I have to make will refer to matters of government,
and those will be confined chiefly to the organisation of the home
administration. I am not much surprised that the Government should have
taken what I will call a very unsatisfactory course with regard to the
measure they have propounded, because they evidently did not seem
exactly to know what they ought to do from the very first moment that
this question was brought before them. I do not allude to the whole of
the Treasury bench, but I refer particularly to the noble Lord (Lord J.
Russell), because he was at the head of the Government when this
question was first brought before them. Lord Broughton, then Sir John
Hobhouse, was at that time the President of the Board of Control, and he
was not in favour of a Committee to inquire into the past government and
present condition of India. Shortly afterwards, however, it was
considered by the noble Lord (Lord J. Russell) that it would be
desirable to have such a Committee appointed. A Committee was appointed,
and it sat.
But at the commencement of the present Session the noble Lord intimated
very distinctly, in answer to a question which I put to him, and which
seemed to make the noble Lord unnecessarily angry, that it was the
intention of the Government to legislate, and in such a way as to leave
the Indian Government almost entirely the same as it had hitherto been.
['No, no!'] Well, I thought that the noble Lord said so, and in
corroboration of that I may mention that the noble Lord quoted--and I
believe that it was the noble Lord's only authority--the opinion of the
right hon. Gentleman the Member for Stamford (Mr. Herries), who
considered that no material change was required in the constitution of
the home Indian Government. Well, when the noble Lord made that
announcement, considerable dissatisfaction was manifested on both sides
of the House, some hon. Members speaking in favour of a delay of one,
two, or three years, or declaring themselves strongly against the
present constitution of the Indian Government. However, from that time
to this, various rumours were afloat, and everybody was confident one
week that there would be no legislation, or only a postponement; in
another week it was thought that there was to be a very sweeping measure
(which last report, I must say, I never believed); and the week after
that people were again led to the conclusion that there would be a
measure introduced such as the one this night submitted to the House.
Again, it was understood so lately as last Saturday that there would be
no legislation on the subject, excepting a mere temporary measure for a
postponement. I confess that I was myself taken in by that announcement.
On Monday the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Danby Seymour) gave notice of a
question on the same subject, and he was requested not to ask it till
Tuesday. On Tuesday there was a Cabinet Council, and whether there was a
change of opinion then I know not, but I presume that there was. The
opinion that was confidently expressed on Saturday gave way to a new
opinion, and the noble Lord announced that legislation would be
proceeded with immediately. All this indicates that there was a good
deal of vacillation on the part of the Government. At last, however, has
come the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board
of Control. There were some good things in it, no doubt. I do not
suppose that any man could stand up, and go on speaking for five hours,
without saying something that was useful. But as to the main question on
which this matter rests, I do not believe that the plan which the
Government proposes to substitute will be one particle better than that
which exists at the present moment.
With regard to the question of patronage, I admit, so far as that goes,
that the plan proposed by the right hon. Gentleman will be an
improvement on the present system. But I do not understand that the
particular arrangement of the covenanted service is to be broken up at
all. That is a very important matter, because, although he might throw
open the nominations to the Indian service to the free competition of
all persons in this country, yet if, when these persons get out to
India, they are to become a covenanted service, as that service now is
constituted, and are to go on from beginning to end in a system of
promotion by seniority--and they are to be under pretty much the same
arrangement as at present--a great deal of the evil now existing will
remain; and the continuance of such a body as that will form a great bar
to what I am very anxious to see, namely, a very much wider employment
of the most intelligent and able men amongst the native population.
The right hon. Gentleman has, in fact, made a long speech wholly in
defence of the Indian Government; and I cannot avoid making some remarks
upon what he has stated because I wholly dissent from a large portion of
the observations which he has made. But the right hon. Gentleman, above
all things, dreads that this matter should be delayed. Now I will just
touch upon that point. The right hon. Gentleman has said that he has not
met any one who does not consider it highly desirable that the House
should legislate upon the subject of the Government of India this year;
and that it will be a great evil if such legislation is postponed. In
support of this view he produces a private letter from Lord Dalhousie
upon the subject. Now I do not consider such evidence as by any means
conclusive, because the House knows that Lord Dalhousie has been
connected with the system that now exists. That noble Earl is also
surrounded by persons who are themselves interested in maintaining the
present system. From his elevated position also in India--I do not mean
his location at Simlah--but from his being by his station removed from
the mass of the European population, and still more removed from the
native population, I do not think it at all likely that Lord Dalhousie
will be able to form a sounder opinion upon this question than persons
who have never been in India. In my opinion, no evil can possibly arise
from creating in the minds of the population of India a feeling that the
question of Indian Government is considered by the House of Commons to
be a grave and solemn question; and I solemnly believe that if the
decision on the question be delayed for two years, so as to enable
Parliament to make due inquiries as to the means of establishing a
better form of government in India, it will create in the minds of all
the intelligent natives of India a feeling of confidence and hope, and
that whatever may be done by them in the way of agitation will be rather
for the purpose of offering information in the most friendly and
generous spirit, than of creating opposition to any Government
legislation. However, the question of delay is one which the House in
all probability will be called upon to decide on another occasion.
But passing from that subject, I now come to the principle upon which
the right hon. Gentleman founded his Motion. The speech of I he right
hon. Gentleman was throughout that of an advocate of the Indian
Government, as at present constituted; and, if Mr. Melville had said
everything that could possibly be dragged into the case, he could not
have made it more clearly appear than the right hon. Gentleman has done
that the Government of India has been uniformly worthy of the confidence
of the country. My view of this matter, after a good deal of
observation, is, that the Indian Government, composed of two branches,
which the right hon. Gentleman does not propose to amalgamate into one,
is a Government of secrecy and irresponsibility to a degree that should
not be tolerated in a country like this, where we have a constitutional
and Parliamentary Government, I have not the least idea in any
observations which I may make either in this House or elsewhere of
bringing a charge against the East India Company--that is to say,
against any individual member of the Board of Directors, as if they were
anxious to misgovern India. I never had any such suspicion. I believe
that the twenty-four gentlemen who constitute the Board of Directors
would act just about as well as any other twenty-four persons elected by
the same process, acting under the same influences, and surrounded by
the same difficulties--having to act with another and independent body--
the Board of Control. Neither am I hostile to the Board of Control,
because I think that the duty imposed upon it is greater than any such
body can properly perform. The right hon. Gentleman, the enormous
labours of whose office could not be accomplished by any one man, coming
into office in December, and having to propose a new Government for
India in the month of May or June, must have found it extremely
difficult to make himself master of the question. But beyond this the
House should bear in mind, that during the last thirty years there has
been a new President of the Board of Control every two years. Nay, in
the course of last year there were no less than three Presidents of the
Board of Control. Thus that Board seems framed in such a manner as to
make it altogether impossible that any one man should be able to conduct
it in the way which it ought to be conducted. Beyond this, the President
of that Board has to act in conjunction with the Court of Directors.
Without saying anything which would impute blame to any party, it must
be obvious that two such bodies combined can never carry on the
government of India wisely, and in accordance with those principles
which have been found necessary in the government of this country. The
right hon. Gentleman has been obliged to admit that the theory of the
old Government of India was one which could not be defended, and that
everybody considers it ridiculous and childish. I am not at all certain
that the one that is going to be established is in any degree better. It
was in 1784 that this form of government was established, amid the fight
of factions. In 1813 it was continued for twenty-years longer, during a
time when the country was involved in desperate hostilities with France.
In 1833 another Bill, continuing that form of government, passed through
Parliament immediately after the hurricane which carried the Reform
Bill. All these circumstances rendered it difficult for the Government,
however honestly disposed, to pass the best measure for the government
of India. But all the difficulties which then existed appear to me
wholly to have vanished. Never has any question come before Parliament
more entirely free from a complication of that nature, or one which the
House has the opportunity of more quietly and calmly considering, than
the question now before them.
I should have been pleased if the right hon. Gentleman had given the
House the testimony of some two or three persons on his own side of the
question. But, as he has not done so, I will trouble the House by
referring to some authorities in support of my own views. I will first
refer to the work of Mr. Campbell, which has already been quoted by the
right hon. Gentleman. It is a very interesting book, and gives a great
deal of information. That writer says--
'The division of authority between the Board of Control and the
Court of Directors, the large number of directors, and the
peculiar system by which measures are originated in the Court,
sent for approval to the Board, then back again to the Court, and
so on, render all deliverances very slow and difficult; and when
a measure is discussed in India, the announcement that it has
been referred to the Court of Directors is often regarded as an
indefinite postponement. In fact, it is evident that (able and
experienced as are many of the individual directors) twenty-four
directors in one place, and a Board of Control in another, are
not likely very speedily to unite in one opinion upon any
doubtful point.'
That, I think, is likely to be the opinion of any man on the Government
of India. There is another authority to which I will refer, Mr. Kaye,
who has also written a very good book. It was actually distributed by
the Court of Directors; I have therefore a right to consider it a fair
representation of their views of what was done, especially as the
Chairman of the Court has given me a copy of the book. Mr. Kaye, in
referring to the double Government which existed in Bengal in 1772,
makes use of these expressions. When I first read them, I thought they
were a quotation from my own speeches:--
'But enlightened as were the instructions thus issued to the
supervisors, the supervision was wholly inadequate to the
requirements of the case. The double Government, as I have shown,
did not work well. It was altogether a sham and an imposture. It
was soon to be demolished at a blow.... The double Government
had, by this time, fulfilled its mission. It had introduced an
incredible amount of disorder and corruption into the State, and
of poverty and wretchedness among the people; it had embarrassed
our finances, and soiled our character, and was now to be openly
recognised as a failure.'
This is only as to Bengal. The following are the words he uses in
respect to the double Government at home:--
'In respect of all transactions with foreign Powers--all matters
bearing upon questions of peace and war--the President of the
Board of Control has authority to originate such measures as he
and his colleagues in the Ministry may consider expedient. In
such cases he acts presumedly in concert with the Secret
Committee of the Court of Directors--a body composed of the
chairman, deputy-chairman, and senior member of the Court. The
Secret Committee sign the despatches which emanate from the
Board, but they have no power to withhold or to alter them. They
have not even the power to record their dissent. In fact, the
functions of the Committee are only those which, to use the words
of a distinguished member of the Court (the late Mr. Tucker), who
deplored the mystery and the mockery of a system which obscures
responsibility and deludes public opinion, could as well be
performed "by a secretary and a seal."'
Further on he says--
'In judging of responsibility, we should remember that the whole
foreign policy of the East India Company is regulated by the
Board of Control; that in the solution of the most vital
questions--questions of peace and war--affecting the finances of
the country, and, therefore, the means of internal improvement,
the Court of Directors have no more power than the mayor and
aldermen of any corporate town. India depends less on the will of
the twenty-four than on one man's caprice--here to-day and gone
to-morrow--knocked over by a gust of Parliamentary uncertainty--
the mistaken tactics of a leader, or negligence of a whipper-in.
The past history of India is a history of revenue wasted and
domestic improvement obstructed by war.'
This is very much what I complain of. I admit the right of the East
India Company to complain of many things done by the Board of Control;
and I am of opinion, that if the House left the two bodies to combat one
another, they would at last come to an accurate perception of what they
both are. The East India Company accused the Board of Control of making
wars and squandering the revenue which the Company collected. But Mr.
Kaye said that Mr. Tucker deplored the mystery and the mockery of a
system which obscured responsibility and deluded public opinion. It is
because of this concealment, of this delusion practised upon public
opinion, of this evasion of public responsibility and Parliamentary
control, that you have a state of things in India which the hon. Member
for Guildford (Mr. Mangles) has described, when he says that the Company
manages the revenues, collects the taxes, and gets from
20,000,000_l_. to 30,000,000_l_. a-year, and nobody knows how
much more. But, whatever it is, such is the system of foreign policy
pursued by the Board of Control--that is to say, by the gentlemen who
drop down there for six or eight or twelve months, never beyond two
years--that, whatever revenues are collected, they are squandered on
unnecessary and ruinous wars, till the country is brought to a state of
embarrassment and threatened bankruptcy. That is the real point which
the House will have to consider.
With regard to some of the details of the Government plan, we should no
doubt all agree: but this question of divided responsibility, of
concealed responsibility, and of no responsibility whatever, that is the
real pith of the matter. The House should take care not to be diverted
from that question. [Mr. Mangles: 'Produce your own plan.'] An hon.
Gentleman has asked me to produce my plan. I will not comply with that
request, but will follow the example of a right hon. Gentleman, a great
authority in this House, who once said, when similarly challenged, that
he should produce his plan when he was called in. I believe that the
plan before the House to-night was concocted by the Board of Control and
the hon. Member for Guildford and his Colleagues I shall, therefore,
confine myself at present to the discussion of that plan. Some persons
are disposed very much (at least I am afraid so) to undervalue the
particular point which I am endeavouring to bring before the House; and
they seem to fancy that it does not much matter what shall be the form
of government in India, since the population of that country will always
be in a condition of great impoverishment and much suffering; and that
whatever is done must be done there, and that after all--after having
conquered 100,000,000 of people--it is not in our power to interfere for
the improvement of their condition. Mr. Kaye, in his book, commences the
first chapters with a very depreciating account of the character of the
Mogul Princes, with a view to show that the condition of the people of
India was at least as unfavourable under them as under British rule. I
will cite one or two cases from witnesses for whose testimony the right
hon. Gentleman (Sir C. Wood) must have respect. Mr. Marshman is a
gentleman who is well known as possessing a considerable amount of
information on Indian affairs, and has, I presume, come over on purpose
to give his evidence on the subject. He was editor of a newspaper which
was generally considered throughout India to be the organ of the
Government; in that newspaper, the _Friend of India_, bearing the
date 1st April, 1852, the following statement appears:--
'No one has ever attempted to contradict the fact that the
condition of the Bengal peasantry is almost as wretched and
degraded as it is possible to conceive--living in the most
miserable hovels, scarcely fit for a dog-kennel, covered with
tattered rags, and unable, in too many instances, to procure more
than a single meal a-day for himself and family. The Bengal ryot
knows nothing of the most ordinary comforts of life. We speak
without exaggeration when we affirm, that if the real condition
of those who raise the harvest, which yields between
3,000,000_l_. and 4,000,000_l_. a-year, was fully
known, it would make the ears of one who heard thereof tingle.'
It has been said that in the Bengal Presidency the natives are in a
better condition than in the other Presidencies; and I recollect that
when I served on the Cotton Committee the evidence taken before it being
confined to the Bombay and Madras Presidencies, it was then said that if
evidence had been taken about the Bengal Presidency it would have
appeared that the condition of the natives was better. But I believe
that it is very much the same in all the Presidencies. I must say that
it is my belief that if a country be found possessing a most fertile
soil, and capable of bearing every variety of production, and that,
notwithstanding, the people are in a state of extreme destitution and
suffering, the chances are that there is some fundamental error in the
government of that country. The people of India have been subjected by
us, and how to govern them in an efficient and beneficial manner is one
of the most important points for the consideration of the House. From
the Report of the Indian Cotton Committee it appears that nearly every
witness--and the witnesses were nearly all servants of the Company--gave
evidence as to the state of destitution in which the cultivators of the
soil lived. They were in such an abject condition that they were obliged
to give 40 or 50 per cent, to borrow money to enable them to put seed
into the ground. I can, if it were necessary, bring any amount of
evidence to prove the miserable condition of the cultivators, and that
in many places they have been compelled to part with their personal
ornaments. Gentlemen who have written upon their condition have drawn a
frightful picture, and have represented the persons employed to collect
the revenue as coming upon the unhappy cultivators like locusts, and
devouring everything. With regard to the consumption of salt, looking at
the _Friend of India_, of April 14, 1853, it appears that it is on
the decline. In the year 1849-50, the consumption was 205,517 tons; in
1850-51, 186,410 tons; and in 1851-2, 146,069 tons. Thus, in the short
period of three years, there has been a decrease in the consumption
amounting to 59,448 tons, which will involve a loss to the revenue of
416,136_l_. [Footnote: The _Friend of India_ was incorrect in
this statement the real decline in the consumption of salt was about
12,000 tons.] Salt is one of those articles that people in India will
use as much of as they can afford, and the diminution in the consumption
appears to me to be a decided proof of the declining condition of the
population, and that must affect adversely the revenue of the Indian
Government. Now there is another point to which the right hon. Gentleman
has slightly alluded; it is connected with the administration of
justice, and I will read from the _Friend of India_ a case
illustrative of the efficiency of the police. The statement is so
extraordinary that it would be incredible but for the circumstance of
its having appeared in such a respectable journal:--
'The affair itself is sufficiently uninteresting. A native
Zemindar had, or fancied he had, some paper rights over
certain lands occupied by a European planter, and, as a
necessary consequence, sent a body of armed retainers to
attack his factory. The European resisted in the same
fashion by calling out his retainers. There was a pitched
battle, and several persons were wounded, if not slain;
while the Darogah, the appointed guardian of the peace, sat
on the roof of a neighbouring hut and looked on with an
interest, the keenness of which was probably not diminished
by the fact of his own immunity from the pains and perils of
the conflict. There has been a judicial investigation, and
somebody will probably be punished, if not by actual
sentence, by the necessary disbursement of fees and
douceurs, but the evil will not be thereby suppressed or
even abated. The incident, trifling as it may appear--and
the fact that it is trifling is no slight evidence of a
disorganised state of society--is an epitome in small type
of our Bengal police history. On all sides, and in every
instance, we have the same picture--great offences, the
police indifferent or inefficient, judicial investigations
protracted till the sufferers regret that they did not
patiently endure the injury, and somebody punished, but no
visible abatement of the crime. The fact is, and it is
beginning at last to be acknowledged everywhere, except
perhaps at home, that Bengal does not need so much a
"reform" or reorganisation of the police, as a police, a
body of some kind, specially organised for the preservation
of order. Why the change is so long postponed, no one, not
familiar with the _arcana_ of Leadenhall-street and
Cannon-row, can readily explain.'
Mr. Marshman uses the expression, 'the incident, trifling as it may
appear;' but I will ask the House if they can conceive a state of
society in a country under the Government of England where a scene of
violence such as has been described could be considered trifling?
The right hon. Gentleman has, while admitting that the want of roads in
some districts of India is a great evil, endeavoured to show that a
great deal has been done to remedy the deficiency, and that on some
roads the mails travel as fast as ten miles an hour. Now, I believe that
if the speed were taken at five miles an hour, it would be nearer the
truth; and I will beg the House to excuse me if I read another extract
from the _Friend of India_ of April 14, 1853:--
'The Grand Trunk, however, is the only road upon which a
good speed has been attained, remarks being attached to all
of the remainder strongly indicative of the want of improved
means of communication. From Shergotty to Gyah, and Gyah to
Patna, for instance, the pace is four miles and a half an
hour; but then "the road is cutcha, and the slightest shower
of rain renders it puddly and impracticable for speedy
transit." From Patna to Benares the official account is the
same, but the rate increases at one stage to five miles and
a half. The southern roads are, however, in the worst
condition, the mails travelling to Jelazore at three miles
an hour, or less than a groom can walk; and even between
Calcutta and Baraset the rate rises to only four miles and a
half an hour, while everywhere we have such notices as "road
intersected by numerous unbridged rivers and nullahs," "road
has not been repaired for these many years," "road not
repaired for years," the "road in so bad a state, and so
much intersected by rivers and nullahs, that no great
improvement in the speed of the mails can be effected." And
yet the surplus Ferry Funds might, one would think, if
economically administered, be sufficient to pay at least for
the maintenance of the roads already in existence. New
roads, we fear, are hopeless until Parliament fixes a
_minimum_, which must be expended on them; and even
then it may be allowed to accumulate, as the Parliamentary
grant for education has done at Madras.'
The right hon. Gentleman has referred to the subject of irrigation; and
I hold in my hand an extract from the Report of the Commission which
inquired into the subject. The Report states that--
'The loss of revenue by the famine of 1832-33 is estimated at
least at 1,000,000_l_. sterling; the loss of property at a
far greater amount; of life, at 200,000 or 300,000; and of
cattle, at 200,000 at the lowest, in Guntore alone, besides the
ruin of 70,000 houses. The famine of the Northern Circars in
1833, and that of the north-western provinces of India at a later
period, prove with irresistible force that irrigation in this
country is properly a question, not of profit, but of existence.'