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

MR. MACAULAY AND THE EAST INDIA

COMPANY.

AT the present time, when everybody can
think or talk of nothing else but India, it
might seem desirable to obtain the cool and
philosophical opinion of some accurate ob-
server and deep thinker on Indian questions.
Mr. MACAULAY has had Oriental experiences,
and he has also held office under the Com-
pany. He was also Secretary to the "Board of
Control," and he has written essays on CLIvE and
WARREN HASTINGS. Mr. MACAULAY is agreat po-
popular author; his style rivets and fascinates
numerous readers, and he has as great a com-
mand of knowledge as of language. For many
years, also, he aspired to the name of a states-
man, and his speeches on India were amongst
his most careful performances.
In quoting Mr. MACAULAY on this subject
we are made to feel what all his critics have
observed, that his speeches are like essays,
while his essays often read like speeches.
With the pen in his hand Mr. MACAULAY is as
vehement in words as an orator r oused by an
applauding audience ; and when upon his legs
in the House of Commons he often spoke dis-
sertations of as much depth as if he were
reciting a history. We meet with these pecu-
liarities iu his speeches on India.

In 1833, under Lord GREY'S Cabinet, Mr.
MACAULAY delivered a most elaborate address
on the history and character of the East India
Company. It was spoken to empty benches,
and an assembly like the House of Commons
could scarcely be expected to sit out such an
elaborate dissertation, which was more suited
for the Professor's Chair of History at Cam
bridge than for the old chapel of St. Stephen's.
Yet Speaker MANNERS SerroN estimated the
speech as one of the finest that had for many
years been heard in Parliament. Mr. MACAULAY
treated the Company as a " potentate," and
actually spoke of its " sovereignty." He thus
described the Mttjesty of the East India Com-
pany :

It is impossible to fix on 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 to fix on the year 1765,
the year in which the Company received from the Mogul a
commission authonsing them to administer the revenues
of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, as the precise date of their
sovereignty. I am utterly at a has to understand why
this period 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, as Lord Clive
stated, were. under one pretence or another, administered
by them. And after the grant, the Company was not, in
form an l name, an independent power. It was merely a
minister of the Court• of Delhi. Its coinage bore the name
of Shah Alum. The inscription which, till the time of
Lord 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.

This is fine rhetoric, but faulty logic. No
one can say that the East India Company is a
"sovereign" power, and the use of the word
by Mr. MACAULAY is calculated to mislead.
The East India Company is an association of
merchants, traders, and capitalists, each and
all of whom are subjects of Queen VICTORIA
One might as well talk of the sovereignty of
the Bank of England. The East India Com-
pany is, after all, a derivative body, and can-
not be argued for as an original and substan-
tive power of State. We admit its antiquity,
and its claims from long prescription. We
recognise the high value of its privileges, and
its enormous influence cannot possibly be
denied. But the use of the word "sovereignty"
is certainly inapplicable to the Company, and
any moral problem which commences with
that misused word, must receive a fallacious
solution.

When Mr. MACAULAY spoke his India speech
of 1833, the question then, as now, was asked,
" How are we to rule India?" It was an age
of large views, and loose thinking. Reform
was rushed after with revolutionary speed.
A prodigious domestic change had been
effected in the constitution of the British Par-
liament. The House of Peers and the Church
were attacked, and capitalists were alarmed.
In such times it was not likely that the ear
of the public could be obtained for a careful
and practical treatment of the great Indian
question. It was felt, also, by many, that
Parliament had committed itself at the end of
the last centu►y by its impeachment, tending
to a persecution, of WARREN HASTINGS; and we
suspect, if the truth could be clearly ascer-
tained on this point, that many independent
minds are still deterred from a steady and
severely scrutinising survey of the Indian
problem. They think of the exaggerations of
BURKE, the splendid but impractical declama-
tion of SHER-DAN; and some of them recollect
the last words spoken by Sir PHILIP FRANCIS,
in his last Parliamentary speech in 1804. He
had been listened to, and admired as a sort of
Quixote of the Brahmins, but his twenty
years' crusade on Indian subjects was thrown
away :

The impeachment of Mr. Hastings has cured me of the
folly of thinking that I could serve India, though I devoted
twentv•two years to it. I, in fact, was tried, and Mr.
Ha4tings acquitted. My spirits are exhausted, and my
mind subdued by a long, unthankful, and moat invidious
application to the pursuit, in which I have never been able to
do any good.

A most affecting confession from a man of
such energy, eloquence, and complete com-
mand of his subject.
The long Revolutionary War closing in
1815, and the domestic condition of England,
both commercial and political, from 1815 to