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

THE INDIA BILL OF 18'53.

ACCORDING to the terms of the India Bill of
1833, its provisions were to expire in April,
1854. It became the duty, therefore, of Lord
DERBY, soon after his accession to power in
1852, to propose committees of both Houses to
inquire into and report on the best plan for
the future government of that country. His
Lordship in doing so admitted that he had
personally a less intimate acquaintance with
Indian affairs than with the affairs of the other
parts of the British empire—affairs which had
come more directly under his cognisance as a
Minister of the Crown. On the one hand, he
said the existing sys tem had been highly
applauded ; on the other, it has been as loudly
condemned ; and under these circumstances
he had deemed it best to keep in mind the
judicious advice of Lord ELLENBOROUGH to
himself and to Mr. HERRIE3. This was to
pledge himself in the outset to no particular
system, but to reeommend the appointment of
committees embracing peers and members of
all parties, whose duty it would be to make the
fullest and most searching inquiry into the
past, and thus afford the best means of judging
as to the best possible future system for govern-
ing India.

Nothing certainly could be more wise and
patriotic than this proposal. In accordance
with it committees were appointed, and
various petitions presented to both Houses
by the Earls of ELLENBOROUGH, ALBEMARLE, and
HARROWBY ; Lord MONTEAGLE and others were
referred to these petitions, which were accom-
panied by speeches of the greatest feeling and
highest ability, pointing out the numerous
grievances under which the natives of India
laboured. Matters thus seemed in admirable
train for a really sound and dispassionate ex-
amination of this great question, when the
public exigences required that the Parlia-
ment should be dissolved. On the opening of
the new Parliament, Lord DERBY still being
Premier, the committees were reappointed
with such alterations as the changes in the
representation had rendered necessary. In
all other respects they remained the same,
and they took up their inquiries at the point
where they had been broken off at, the disso-
lution. Shortly after this, Lord DERBY'S
Ministry resigned their offices, and the ill-
starred Coalition assumed the reins of power.
The first acts of the new Ministry had rela-
tion entirely to the consolidation as far as
possible of their own power, and the Indian
Committees were allowed to continue their
labours uninteruptedly. But on the 3rd of
June, before their labours had been nearly

SATURDAY,

completed, and before even the evidence taken
by them had been put into the hands of
members, Sir CHARLES WooD, the new Presi-
dent of the India Board.
.asked leave to bring
in a bill for the govetnment of India, and
leave was granted. Great was the indignation
of the leading Opposition and independent
members at this deliberate sacrifice of all
preliminary inquiry ; but the Coalition was all-
powerful, the was breaght in and set down
for a second reading on the 23rd June. Lord
STANticy, to meet the difficulty, brought for-
ward his celebrated amendment, to the effect
that further information was necessary to
enable Parliament to legislate with advantage
for the permanent government of India, and
that in that bite period of the session it was
inexpedient to proceed with a measure which,
while it disturbed existing arrangements,
could not be considered as a final settlement.
In short, ho maintained that the course
adopted by his noble father, when Premier,
should be adhered to, and that legislation
should not take place till the reports of the
Committee of Inquiry were before both Houses.
His arguments were sufficient to convince any
man open to conviction, and were fully ac-
quiesced in and supported by many members
on all sides of the House. A most admirable
speech from Mr. DlSRAELl—followed but not
answered by one from Lord Jottx RUSSELL—
cIosed on the fourth night the debate.
The division was one of the most curious
that has been ever witnessed. Nearly all the
Ministerial supporters of the highest talent
out of the Ministry entered the lobby with
Lord STAVLEY, while on the other hand many
Conservatives supported the Government on
this occasion. The cause of their doing so is
not very intelligible, seeing that the course
proposed by Lord STANLEY was strictly and
exactly that which Lord DERBY had, when
Premier, laid down. The probability is that
they were partly misled by Mr. HE RRIES, who
seems himself to have been under a misappre-
hension as to the course Lord DERBY'S Govern-
ment had intended to pursue, and partly under
the influence of that spirit of apathy which
always more or less characterises every party
after a defeat which has deprived it of power.
It has been said by some Ministerial prints
that the true reason was the unwillingness of
certain members of the party to enter a lobby
into which had marched Mr. BRIGHT, Mr.
COBDEN, Mr. BLACKETT, Mr. PHILLIMORE, and
Mr. PHINN. Had the motion originated with
any of these gentlemen it would certainl3 have
been not unnatural for members of the great
Conservative party to hesitate before granting
it their support ; though even then the exam-
ple of their leaders might have been enough
to convince the most sceptical, that in doing
so they could not very well be wrong. But to
suppose that any true Conservative could
hesitate, on such grounds as these, to support
a motion framed by Lord STANLEY, seconded
by Mr DISRAELI, and which was entirely in
the spirit of the policy which Lord DERBY had
himself proclaimed, is to suppose what we
may be sure never did and never could take
place. Lord ELLENBOROUGH had, in his speech
of the 13th of May,on the Manchester petition
regarding India, laid down the true light in
which statesmen 'should view such accessions
of aid on any particular point of legislation :

He received such recruits to the good cause of Indian
reform with great satisfaction. A striking change had
certainly taken place in public opinion during the last
fourteen months, with respect to the Indian Government.
The conclusions at which public opinion seemed to have
arrived had always been his conclusions.

For a party to bend its policy to catch oppo-
nents' votes is an art often practised by the
Whigs, but which we have always repudiated.
Independent support, however, when honest
and conscientious, is a tribute to truth which
any connection may fairly accept; and the
more especially when the general divergence
of opiniJn is so great as to make such agree-
ment necessarily casual, and the remotest
suspicion therefore of unworthy motives on
either side impossible.

It has been well observed that there is a
Nemesis in politics which amply punishes,
sooner or later, those who violate political laws•
Thus Sir CHARLES Woon's fulsome eulogies of
the Company in L 853 had to be followed in
1855 by the presentation of the Torture Report,