The Press.
London, England, 1857-08-22 00:00:00

administer well the system which they inherited
from their wiser and more experienced pre-
decessors. They have roved themselves,
under trial, to be mediocrities, and something
worse.
In nothing is Mr. DISRAELI more to be
commended than for that close and practical
view of Indian affairs which Englishmen like
to mart with in grave emergencies. We
believe that the question of the s" ethics of
Indian empire " has suffered from the exag-
gerations of the assailants of WARREN HAST-
iNos. Those eminent persons laid themselves
open to the charge of being mere declaimers,
though many of their views were funda-
mentally sound. But Mr. DISRAELI has tried
the Anglo-Indian authorities by the system
which they were called upon to administer,
and which they have failed in wielding.
We are as convinced, as we are of any of the
fundamental truths in politics and morals, that
England can never continue the mode of
governing India which has prevailed up to the
present time. The system runs counter to
English ideas and to English interests. It
is entirely alien to our colonial system, where
self- government is established under a
variety of forms. It is also totally incon-
sistent with the working of our Constitution.
There is responsibility in every other depart-
ment of the State. The Crown, Parliament,
and even the British public itself, all exist
under mutual control, and a publicity that is
at once pervasive and permanent. But be-
tween the action of the Crown and Parliament
upon our huge Indian dependencies " the
Company " intervenes, and what " Chancery "
was once to an Englishman in search of equity
" the Company " is now to Anglo-India in
search of justice.
Thus, in probing the question of the " ethics
of empire in India," we are at once made to
feel that sooner or later the British public
mind must apply itself to the question of the
Company. We say emphatically that the more
the question is studied the more certainly will
it revert to the consideration of the Company.
The abstract question of our political right to
power in India may be safely put aside when
we recollect that if we had not been there
either our Dutch or French rivals, who dis-
puted our standing in the East, would have
held more or leas of territory in Hindostan.
If we left India to-morrow another ascendancy
of one kind or another would take our place ;
and this consideration makes mediocre offi-

cials callous to questions of right and wrong,
instead of quickening their energies to give
India the best administration that can be
devised.
In his spoken Indian essay of 1833, Mr.
MACAULAY panegyrised the Company, and
endeavoured to settle the question of ruling
India by saying, " if we discard the Company,
" we must find a substitute for the Company."
That is putting the question in an exaggerated
view; and what the House of Commons
recently admired so much in Mr. DISRAELI'S
humorous speech was that the Right Hon.
Gentleman avoided attacks either on the Com-
pany or on the Board of Control, as officially
constituted, and that he fixed attention on
the neglects of persons now in power, and on
the casehardened conceit which seems to have
benumbed the authorities in Calcutta. Mr.
DISRAELI made it plain, whether the system
as it stands be right or wrong, that it is badly
administered ; and as we try a man by the
measure of his conduct or abilities. so we have
now a right to try the authorities and " the
system" by their antecedents.
It is not twenty years since the plan of
having an Indian budget annually laid before
Parliament was ridiculed by rhetorical gentle-
men who proposed to leave everything to " the
Company. Well, we have now got an Indian
budget, and the practice is undoubtedly at-
tended with vast advantage, and will secure a
progressive attention to Indian questions.
We have thus squared in some measure the
Indian financial system with our English
practice. If the Royal Commission of In-
quiry, as suggested by Mr. DISRAELI, were
issued, we should be giving India the great
advantage of a closer linking with the Crown.
India wants the aliquid preestans a regale which
the great orator and statesman of Rome de-
clared to be necessary for the completion of