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

they alone can meet them. It is true that
the Directors as a body do not appear in the
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.