The Sun.
London, England, 1855-12-21 00:00:00

Spirit of the Public Journals.

(From the Times of this day).
While a new debating body has just sprung into
existence in the metropolis we have reciordteadnaa
rather remarkable discussion in that en
rather obsolete assembly, the Court of ancient
of the East India Company.
It isseldom indeed
that we find anything worth
where some
comment in the pro-
ceedings of the Court of
Proprietors,disappointed East Indian generally regales the
public with haranguesabout the wrongs of the
Rajah of Sattara, or exposes the flagrant iniquity
of not having invented a new Royal House to take
the place of the extinct family of Berar. The
second subject discussed at the meeting of Pro-
prietors on 'Wednesday was, however, the absurdity
of continuing any longer the system of double
government, and assuredly the speaker did not
lack argument to support his conclusion. He de-
nounced the double government as possessing
neither efficiency nor responsibility, as permitting
gross abuses to grow up and continue, and as
ruinously and unnecessarily expensive. To us it
appears that the three years that have passed since
the last India Bill have materially advanced this
question towards its final solution. During that
time the wants and demands of Indian government
have almost entirely changed. Slowly and reluc-
tantly, with infinite rubbing of the eyes and avert-
ing of the face from the unwelcome beam, the
Home Government and the Indian Government
have begun to perceive that the ideas and prin-
ciples which sufficed in former times for the ma-
nagement of our Eastern empire will suffice no
longer. Energy, rapidity, and decision—principles
of revenue and taxation on a level with those of
the most enlightened European Governments—a
reduction 'of salaries to something which may
more nearly than hitherto approach to the mar-
ket price of the talent that is demanded—an ex-
penditure economical in some things, in order
that it may be generous and liberal in others—a
complete revision of the system of administering
justice which shall combine at once simplicity
and efficiency—a thorough review of the land ques-
tion and all its incidental extortions and enormi-
ties—these and many similar questions are forcing
themselves upon the attention of the Home Go-
vernment, and bewildering it by their magnitude,
complexity, and urgency. In the meanwhile our
object seems to have been to create as many ob-
stacles as possible in the way of rapid and consis-
tent improvement. In India the last act has
placed an additional clog on the movements of
the Government, by enlarging the Legislative
Council, and giving it the dimensions and the func-
tions of a deliberative body. The effect of thus in-
trusting the making of laws to men occupied
already with an overwhelming amount of business
seems likely materially to chock the course of use-
ful legislation, and to raise up an opposition rather
official than constitutional, and thus to delay and
obstruct in a much greater degree than formerly
the progress of useful legislation. The hand that
has held the reins of Government so firmly and for
so many years is about to relinquish them, and the
loss that India will sustain may be estimated by
the slow and irresolute measures which have suf-
fered the Santal rebellion to continue for so many
months the opprobrium and the menace of the Go-
vernment of Bengal. It should be the task of the
Home Government at such critical moments to
breathe its own life and vigour into the flagging ener-
gies of its Indian deputy; but the Home Government
- of India cannot inspire life and vigour into others,
for those are the very qualities which its constitu-
tion forbids it to possess. It is framed on the nar-
rowest principles of jealousy, and the weakest and
most exploded notions of checks and balances. At
the end of the last century the East India Com-
pany had become too greedy, too scandalous, and
too unscrupulous to be any longer tolerated iu the
form of a mercantile association exercising absolute
and irresponsible power over India. The form was
preserved, but the substance was altered. With the
national propensity to adhere to what exists, and
rather to encounter any inconvenience or any ab-
surdity than effect any vital or radical change, it
was determined that because the East India Com-
pany had shown itself unfit to govern it should
continue to exercise all the functions of govern-
ment, only under the control and superintendence
of a Minister of the Crown. Any other nation
would have reasoned that if this body was so in-
competent for its duties that it required another
laxly to take care of it, it were better set aside, and
. the superintending body put in its stead. Tne
notion of treating a Government of a mighty em-
pire as a lunatic requiring the care of a committee,
or a child placed during a perpetual infancy under
the custody of a guardian, was a thoroughly Eng-
lish idea worthy of the nation that had almost de-
clared the Prioce of Orange a Regent for King
James, and still carries on the business of Parlia-
ment in the Norman French of the Plantageucts.
The effect was what might have been expected—a
stagnant and inert conservatism, which seems to
think to this day that it has accomplished all the
objects of a civilised and Christian Government, if
it does not fall very far behind the ablest of its
Manomedan or Hindoo predecessors. Its standard
of excellence has been deplorably low, and, as is
generally the case with people who set up to them-
selves a low standard, humble as its aspirations
have been, they have been far beyond its perform-
ance=. A system of revenue management founded on
inequalities, oppressions, and absurdities which
Akbar would have regarded with disdain is not yet
eradicated from the Presidency of Madras, where
whole districts of the best land remain desolate be-
cause Government exacts a renttoo heavy tobe paid.
Export duties are imposed on Indian produce,and the
tools of the artificer must be taxed before they can
be used. The administration of justice is bur-
dened with every conceivable technicality, and the
practice of the criminal courts seems to rest upon
confessions extorted by torture. But, while moving
thus slowly in the march of improvement, the re-
lations to each other of the constituent parts of
the Indian Government have gradually changed.
The Company has become less, and the Board of
Control more powerful, and now the same jealousy
which invented the Board of Control in order to
fetter the wAion of the Company, seems to retain
the Company in order to neutralise, as far as may
be, the powers of the Board of Control. To us
the whole thing appears to be founded on a confu-
sion of ideas, or rather on the application of that
which is true in one case to another to which it
has no analogy. Because the system of checks and
balances is found to be applicable• to legislative
proceedings it is assumed that it must be equally
valuable to executive Government; whereas, in the
first, circumspection is more valuable than de-
spatch ; and in the second a single mind acting
promptly and decisively is the thing most to be
desired. The double Government is not only in-
efficient, but irresponsible. It wears a perpetual
mask, and nobody can tell whence its measures
proceed, and whether the Company in whose name
they are carried on is the unwilling, victim or the
ready coadjutor of the Board that is privileged to
light behind its shield.