The Press. — London, England, 1856-02-09 00:00:00

Irish Bar. But it would be an ill reward for his long and faithful services to push him from his seat. Certain legal functionaries of Ire land must be content to wait for their pro motion a little longer, as we find the Honour able Member for Westminster last night altered his motion so that it may be carried without having the effect which CHANCELLOR BRADY anticipated from it. FEBRUARY 9, 1856. OUR INDIAN REVENUE. THERE is hardly a richer country in the world than Turkey, unless it he Hiudoostan. It is most beautifully endowed with the harbours necessary for commerce, the food adapted for sustenance, and the products fitted to ex change for the manufactures of other lands. At the same time there is no country in the world, except perhaps India, in which so little advantage is taken of what Nature has done. The harbours are neglected—roads to them are left unmade. In the midst of a corn and fruit growing country there is frequent famine, and the trade is but a miserable fraction of that which might le carried on. The Government is poor, the revenue is scarcely a tittle of what it ought to be, and everything is left to go to rack and ruin. Ask people in England how this is, and they will tell you that it is the Mussulman religion that causes it all. Go to the spot, and you will find that it arises simply from this, that the whole revenue management of the country is in the hands of the Armenian Seraffs. The Sultan may wear the insignia of royalty on his tarbousch, re ceive ambassadors at audiences, and go in state to the mosque on Fridays ; but he is not the ruler of Turkey for all that. He is as dependent as a child upon the body who have the entire management of the accounts. How ever largely his Pachas may-talk in public. they are in private as completely the puppets of the Seraffs, who pull the strings, as the chairs at the India house are the puppets of their secretary, or as Sir CHARLES WOOD used, when President of the India Board, to be the puppet of Sir JAMES HOOO. The higher Turks are not insensible to the evils that arise from this state of things ; they do not fail to see how grossly their country is mismanaged ; they know that the public revenues are plun dered to enrich an interest that has no sym pathy with them. But whenever any attempt at reform is made the latter speedily quash it, partly by bribery, partly by secret influ ence, and partly by spreading the most exaggerated stories of the difficulty of collect ing the revenue, the intricacy of the accounts, and the impossibility of anyone undertaking the business who has not a large capital of his own to draw upon to replai'e the deficits which according to their showing annually take place. In the end such arguments always prevail. The Turk, one of Nature's gentlemen, is more given to spending than to saving, to fighting than to account-work. and sinks daily deeper and deeper into the slough from which he wants but energy and moral courage to extricate himself. We, too, have our Turkey, in the shape of India, neglected, plundered, and fast going to ruin. We, too, have our Seraffs in Leadenhall street, to whose mercies, notwithstanding all we have seen of them, we still commit it. MACAULAY, in his late volumes, tells the his tory of their early corruption, and of the sums which, after the Armenian practice, were so largely lavished on the Ministers of that day. The enormous Indian fortunes brought home towards the end of the last and in the be ginning of the present century show the use that was habitually made of the power which was thus obtained; and even now, though the opportunities be fewer, and the scandal therefore less, it is not uncommon to meet cases in which the money amassed in the ser vice in India, or while sitting in the Direction, or by Indian Government contracts, could only have been made in the most illegitimate of ways. Whenever the country, however, talks of inquiry, and thinks of change, the old Armenian arguments spring forth to the tip of every Director's tongue ; and we are told of difficulties so enormous that they alone can overcome them, and of deficits so vast that THE PRESS. they alone can meet them. It is true that the Directors as a body d o not a pp ear i n th e ordinary intercourse of society to be men of more than the average amount of human talent ; if anything, they most of them rather fall below it. Nor have they, for the chief part, any particular Indian experience to boast of, while some of them have never even visited that country. Then, again, when they enter the Direction they are not usually men of such large fortune as to possess any influence what ever upon the Money Market, and it is not easy to see, therefore, why the public should have less confidence in any other Smiths, Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons, than in those who at present grace the directorial roll. In point of fact, with the exception of some three or four, there are not any of them who have any influence, except in the way of patronage and contracts, even over the affairs which they are specially appointed to admi nister. Engaged in banking business, as di rectors of insurance companies, and in other speculations of various kinds, to which their position as East India Directors opens an easy path, they mostly devote but a few hours weekly to the affairs of India, and those are chiefly given to signing papers, without even previously reading them, which the clerks have drawn up and put before them. Mean time, the statesmen, the aristocracy, the gen try, the people of England, stand aloof, alarmed at the difficulties of an undertaking which really possesses no difficulties whatever beyond the imaginary ones which the Leaden. hall-street Armenians have the art to throw around it. While they thus look on with arms folded, the Indian deficit is daily increasing, and that at a rate which almost justifies the belief that there is something of real import in the chuckle with which one sometimes hears an India-house advocate tell his circ!* that there is little fear after all of interference, as the accounts will soon be in such a state of hopeless debt, entanglement, and confusion, as to make it impossible for any British states man in his senses to venture to take up the load. Under these circumstances we cannot but think that it would be difficult for the Crown and Parliament to do better than to adopt at once the suggestion of Lord ELLENBOROUGH to appoint an auditor of Indian accounts, who should be totally independent of the Company, as the auditor of the Exchequer in England is independent of the Treasury ; and that the same control over the moneys of the Company in England as is possessed over the moneys of the Company in India should be vested in the Indian Minister of the Crown. The latter arrangement would prevent the possibility of misapplying the moneys in England; the former would enable the public to have some reliable account of the Indian revenue collected and expended yearly. As it is, we have nothing but what the Directors themselves choose to put before us ; and if their accounts laid before Parliament are not more truthful than the statements they made on the subject of tor ture, they must be obviously valueless for every purpose but to mislead. Be this, how ever, as it may, the principle of an indepen dent audit of accounts is one so fully ad mitted in respect of every other company and of every other department of the State, that it is au anomaly to leave the audit of the India accounts in the Directors' own hands. Companies with an equally, or even more, respectable array of names on their Direction, are subjected to the inspection of auditors appointed by the Board of T►ade, and, as regards the accounts of the Exchequer, the check of an independent auditor has not been deemed degrading to our very highest nobility and gentry, from whom are always selected the first Ministers of the Crown. We cannot, therefore, think that a proposition so reasonable and necessary could meet with opposition from any party in the country, except that of the Directors who profit by the abuses of the present plan. The Armenians of Leadenhall-street and their friends would doubtless muster as strongly on the occasion as they could, but we begin to suspect that the reign of our English Armenians, like that of the Armenians of Turkey, will, before any very long time elapses, be a thing of the past. POLITICAL KITE -FLYING. Is certain sections of the commercial world, the practice is not unknown of creating ficti tious capital by a plentiful issue of " promises to pay." While the paper floats, the concern looks flourishing ; but when the promises are to be met, the prosperity vanishes. BCCKSTONE, in one of his farces, represented one of the kite-flying fraternity, and found himself melt ing so fast that he supposed there would soon bo nothing left of him but his suit of clothes. Had the suit been stolen, the parallel to tLe plight in which the Vice-President of the Board of Trade found himself last night would bo complete. The Government opened the session with wonderful pomp. No end of Reform Bills were to be introduced. Mr. LOWE was in particular to signalise himself by the breadth and liberality of his legislation. He took entire charge of the commercial law depart ment. PEEL and GLADSTONE were to be out done. The Partnership Bill passed last session was to be repealed this in favour of a much greater measure. The journal which cries him up in an especial manner, declared that the City was in raptures with his an nouncements. Last night his promised bill was laid on the table of the House, and a juster measure was taken of Mr. LOWE'S legis; lative capacity. In the Critic, Sir Fretful Plagiary objects to placing his play in the hands of managers who write themselves. " Egad, they may " serve your best thoughts as gipsies do stolen "children—disfigure them to make 'ern pass for their own." The amendments moved by Mr. CAIRNS to the Partnership Bill last session have been served in this way. We print Mr. LOWE'S boasted bill at full, and by the side of it place Mr. CAIRN'S amendments of last year, as we find them in the parliamentary paper : MIL LOWE'S BILL, JUST PRINTED. Whereas it is expedient to amend the Law relating to Partnership : Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the Au- thority of the same, as fol- lows :—. I. The Advance of Capital or Money to be used in any Trade or Undertaking not being the Trade of a Banker, upon a Contract with the Person carrying on such Trade or Undertaking that MII. CAIRNS' AMENDMENTS the Person making such Ad- .- vance shall receive a Share of the Profits or shall bear a Share of the Loss of the Trade or Undertaking, shall not, of itself, reader the Per making such Advance liable to Third Parties as a Partner in such Trade or OF LAST SESSION. Leave out Clauses IL to VII., both inclusive, and substitute the following Clauses. I. The Advance of Capital or Money to be used in any Trade or Undertaking, upon a Contract with the Person carrying on such Trade or Undertaking that the Person making such Advance shall be remunerated solely by a Share of the Profits of the Trade or Undertaking, shall not, of itself, constitute the Person making such Ad• vance a Partner in the Trade or Undertaking, or render him responsible as such. Undertaking. H. No Contract for the H. No Contract for the Remuneration of a Servant Remuneration of a Servant or Agent of any Person en- or Agent of any Persil) en gaged in any Trade or Un- gaged in any Tiale or Un dertaking by a Share of the dertaking by a Share of the Profits of such Trade or Profits of such Trade or Un- Undertaking shall, of itself, dertaking shall, of itself, render such Servant or Agent render such Servant or responsible as a Partner Agent responsible as a Part therein. ner therein. 111. In the Construction 111. In the Construction of this Act the Word " Per- of this Act the Words in the son" shall include a Part- Singular number shall ex nership, Firm, a Joint Stock tend to the Plural, and the Company, and a Corpora- Word " Person" shall in- Lion- dude a Firm, a Joint Stock Company, and a Corpora. tion. An amusing scene took place when Mr; CAIRNS rose to claim his stolen property. The Government had violently opposed Mr CAIRNS' amendments last year. They taunted the Op position with faction in taking the sense of the House upon them. The Premier "hl ustet ed " Mr. CAIRNS and his amendments down, and Mr. LOWE in every instance voted against the clauses he has now framed into a bill of his 123