The Sun.
London, England, 1851-04-04 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY

grave question whether the inquiry into the political
part of the Government of India could bo so well car-
ried on in India as in this country. He thought it
would be easy to come to a rational conclusion on the
subject, without taking much evidence. The great fault
of the present mode of governing India was, that there was
no one office, b aird, or individual in whom that Govern-
ment was vested. The Court of Directors had no control
over some of the most important matters connected
with the Government of India, which were directed from
a back street in the neighbourhood of that House, and
by quite a different set of authorities. The confusion
between these two Governments, which arose from the
conflicting circumstances that are constantly occurring,
made it absolutely impossible that there should be any-
thing like a really good government of a country so dis-
tant as India. The President of the Board of Control
stated in his evidence before the Salaries Committee
last session, that he was the uncontrolled Governor of
India in all matters connected with its political affairs.
He thought the secret committee to which allusion had
been made was one of the most extraordinary bodies in
existence. It was composed of the President of the
Board of Control, e ith the chairman, deputy chairman,
and the senior member of the Court of Directors; and in
their hands was the power of peace and war and all the
great political events connected with India. But the
President of the Board of Control was absolute over his
colleagues; if he chose to say that war should bo de-
clared in 'edit), on the arrival of the mail, they could
not prevent it, but were bound to sign the dispatches
which conveyed such an order, though they might
believe that the results to India would be
most 3 calamitous. That was a monstrous thing to
exist with regard to any country—(Hear, hear)—and
notwithstanding the glowing accounts of the Govern-
ment of India with which the Hon. Member for Honiton
(Sir J. W. Hogg) periodically favoured the House, he
contended that it was contrary to common sense that a
country could be well governed under such an arrange-
ment. The Court of Directors managed the collection
of the revenue, and its expenditure too, for the most
part; then the administration of justice and of the in-
ternal affairs of the country were under their control,
unless the Board of Control chose occasionally to step
in and interfere; and with regard to the enormous pa-
tronage which India must always give to somebody so
long as it is governed from here, it was at the disposal
of the East India Company, with the exception of such a
portion as they gave to, or was token by, the Board of
Control; he had no doubt that was a matter which the
two bodies arranged between themselves to the exceed-
ing comfort of all parties concerned. He thought it de-
sirable that a searching investigation should be made
into this matter. It was supposed, about sixty or seventy
years since, that if that patronage should be vested in the
hands of the Government of the United Kingdom, they
would be enabled to corrupt almost every public man in
the country. He doubted whether it had not corrupted
just as many men under its present administration as it
could have done under any other; but it was a thing
likely to take place, and which he believed had taken
place; between the Court of Directors and the Board of
Control arrangements had been made, the full particulars
of which had not come before the public, but with re-
spect to which sufficient had oozed out to lead him to
the conclusion that the use of that patronage was by no
means so pure as might be hoped, though he did not
mean to say that it was much more impure than might
be expected under the circumstances. His Honour-
able Friend the Member for Montrose seemed to
be of opinion that the great bulk of the East
India directors were intimately acquainted with
India, and had a most profound interest in the well-
being of that country. lie believed that, except the in-
terest which we all took in anything with which we
were in the habit of intermeddling, the Court of Directors
had no more personal interest beyond that of their
patronage in the government of India than if they
were the directors of the Great Northern or Great
Western Railway, and that the Court of Proprietors had
no more of that kind of interest on which a government
should be founded, and on which the responsibility of
government should rest, than if they were the share-
holders in a railway having a capital of twelve millions
sterling. In fact not so much, because in the railway
company the dividend must depend upon the manage-
ment, but the dividends of the East India stock did not
depend upon any such thing. The Hon. Baronet would
have the House believe that improvements went on in
India at an extraordinary rate; but he could not have for-
gotten the statements made to the Committee of which
he was the chairman in 1848; he believed that without
an exception, the witnesses—almost all of whom had
been servants of the Company (able and honest men he
believed they were)—declared that almost without an
exception, the cultivators of India :were in a state of
!Rost abject poverty. They had governed the country
for half a century in some cases, and for a century in
other cases; and if they had governed it well, with its
fertile soil, and admirable climate, and docile popula-
tion, would it be in its present state of abject poverty?
—(Hear, hear.) His Honourable Friend had spoken
of the state of Ireland, which every one knew was
not only a disgrace to this country but to the civilization
of the age; and the state of the population of Ireland
was owing to the same causes that had produced the
present condition of the population of India. In Ireland
the people had no ownership in the soil of the country,
and in India the people had no interest whatever in the
ownership of the land of their birth.—(Hear, hear.) To
that circumstance was to be attributed the state of things
that at present exists.—(Hear, hear.) His Hon. Friend
had spoken of what was doing in the Punj sub with re-
gard to irrigation, but it would be hard, after all the
remonstrances on the subject, and which afforded a com-
plete answer to the extravagant eulogium of the lion.
Gentleman, if some attempt was not made to construct
roads and promote irrigation in that empire.—(Hear,
hear.) The Hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Mangles)
had stated a fact before the Committee of 1848 which
was a complete answer to the statement of the lion.
Gentleman, at least up to that period. The Hon.
Member for Guildford stated before that Com-
mittee that, from the year 1834 to the year
IS4B (the fourteen years that had elapsed from the
passing of the last Charter Act) the sum expended
by the East India Company out of the whole revenues
of the country in the making of roads and
the construction of works for irrigation, canals, banks,
and bridges, amounted to 1,400,0001., or just 100,000/.
per annum; and the Hon. Member for Guildford fur-
ther stated that during these fourteen years, to use the
words of the Hon. Baronet opposite, they had realized
a revenue of not less than 300,000,0001. sterling.—
(Hear, hear.) There was no other body except the East
India Company against whom such a fact could be
stated. They had raised 22,000,0001. or 23,000,000/. a
year for fourteen years from a people that had no me-
chanical contrivances or steam or means of that kind for
creating wealth, being purely an agricultural population,
and yet they had expended only 1,400,0001. in that
period on improvements that were necessary for the
prosperity of the country.—(Hear, hear.) There was
no party in the country but the Government that could
make improvements, and if they were not made by some-
body nothing like prosperity was to ho expected in that
country.—(Hear.) The picture which the Hon. Baronet
opposite had drawn would lead the House and the public
to believe that there was no part of the extended em-
pire of Great Britian, even in the country in which they
stood, that was governed so admirably as British India;
but he (Mr. Bright) believed the contrary to be the fact.
—(Hear, hear.) He did not want to hand it over to the
Colonial-office, in which there was something that was
not altogether Leadenhall-street, nor altogether Can-
non-row—(Hear, hear)—but he wanted to know if there
could not be some government formed for India that
would be responsible to the Rouse ?—(Hear.) The
Hun. Baronet Baronet said they could obtain informa-
tion at the India House, but he (Mr. Bright) had never
heard that the Board of Directors were very liberal in
giving information. They had heard of seeking needles
in a haystack to show the difficulty of an undertaking,
and they all knew when returns were moved for re-
specting India how difficult it was to get them. Though
they could send a letter to India in five or six weeks,
and get as answer in five or six weeks, they could not
get returns in less than two years.—(Hear.) And then
they came in a great variety of such weights and coins
as are to be found in India, for no other purpose he
could see, but to make the returns as incomprehensible
as possible to every person.—(Laughter.) The
Hon Baronet, acting by the direction of the President
of the Board of Control, might send something out to
Lord Dalhousie. The most trifling matter might cause
it to be sent to that most imbecile Government in Bom-
bay ; then it might be sent to Calcutta, then to Lord
Dalhousie, then to the Court of Directors, and then to
Lord Broughton. He (Mr. Bright) did not know what
that Noble Lord was in his young days, but he not
very active now.—(A laugh.) He (Mr. Bright) never
saw a man in such a state of preparation for the House
of Lords, as the Noble Lord had been for a long time
in that House.—(Laughter.) That was precisely the
mode in which the Government of India was carried on.
They heard of thimble-rigging, but they could never tell
in the case of the East India Company under what
thimble the pea was placed, and could not ascertain what
was done.—(Hear, hear.) Amongst some of the most
able and honest servants of the East India Company, it
was a universal complaint that the dilatory character of
the East India Company was such that practically it
came to this—that there was no responsible Govern-
ment at all for this country.—(Hear, hear.) That was
the point to which he wished to call the attention of the
Noble Lord. In two years they would have to enter
into a consideration of the Charter Act, and he would
ask the Noble Lord if he would then undertake this
subject? Perhaps it was cruel to ask the Noble
Lord to undertake anything—(A laugh)—seeing that
it was impossible to judge whether the Noble Lord,
or some other Noble Lord, would have the arrange-
ment of it ultimately. He hoped the Noble Lord at
the head of the Government would have it, and he should
see whether, on consultation, not with the Court
of Directors, or with Lord Broughton, but with the
committeemen connected with India (he was sure there
was a score of as able men returned from India as were
to be found in the metropolis), ho could not obtain the
fullest information respecting the matter.—(Hear, hear.)
Let them take the evidence of those men before a Com-
mittee of the Howe, and see if they could not form a
Government by which they would get rid of the present
want of responsibility—by which they would get rid of the
meddlesomeness of the Board of Control and the submis-
siveness of the Court of Directors—a Government that,
whilst it was responsible to the House for all the great
principles which should direct the acts of its government
of India, would at the same time be sufficiently free to
exorcise its dkcretion with regard to a vast amount of
details that must ever attend the government of such a
country.—(Hear, hear.) As the Noble Lord had given
him reason to expect that an inquiry by Committee would
take place, he (Mr. Bright) would recommend the Hon.
and Learned Gentleman who had so ably brought for-
ward the question to be satisfied with the expression of
opinion he had elicited from the Noble Lord, and not
press his motion, for he (Mr. Bright) conceived that was
the best way of attaining the object he had in view.
Mr. MANGLES begged to observe that, on his ex-