The Sun.
London, England, 1858-04-10 00:00:00

MANCHESTER CHAM.
TBE FUTURE GOTTA

3ER OF COMMERCE ON
'RNMENT OF INDIA.

(From the Timm.)
The views of the Manchester Chamber of Com-
merce on the future government of India, and not
les the language in which those views are expres-
sed, stand iu happy contrast to the wild grasping
at power and libellous garrulity of the Court of
Directors. The merchants of Manchester are not

claiming for themselves a monopoly of knowledge,
of philanthropy, of virtue, of honesty, and of wis-
dom, and the consequent right to a monopoly of
patronage and power. So it is not their business to
denounce the rest of their countrymen as ignorant,
selfish, hypocritical, foolish, and, consequently,
unlit for a voice in Indian affairs. Indeed, as good
men of business, they sly nothing about the people
of England, about the House of Gimmons, or even
about the Directors. They go to the point at once
—which is the proper government for India ?
Their suggestions ace simple, sensible, and free
from that ambition of cleverness and originality

which is sure to molest such discusduns.

they do

not propound an elaborately-selected and neatly-
balanced Council, which may or may not turn
out a masterpiece of political machinery ; on the
contrary, they ask for an Indian Minister with a
competent staff. Now, we are quite sure that
a 3 n merchhnt, any country gentleman with much
business on his hands, anybody with political ex-
perience, who had only to consult his own judg-
ment ou the point, and consider how he could best

get through what he had to do, would desire pre-
cisely what the Manchester people propose. No
reasonable person held responsible for great and
difficult affairs would wish to find himself sur-

rounded by a multitude of advisers and assistants,
selected on the principle of representing antago-
nist interests, different classes, various experiences,
and conflicting opinions. It is an intolerable
hardship and a positive fraud to hold a man re-
sponsible, and yet not only deny him instruments
of his own choice, but put into his hands
weapons certain to baffle, to wound, and
to thwart him. A tradesman can do nothing
unless he selects his own servants ; a general
chooses, or ought to choose, his own staff, and
suffers if he has people put upon him not of his
own choice. The responsible head of every depart-
ment in the public service has one or more assist

ants of his own selection or approval to carry out
his views and act between him and the fixtures of
the office. So it is obvious, if- these analogies
are worth anything, that the Minister for Indian
Affairs ought to have about him the men of his
own choice, or at least chosen in the general dis-
tribution of offices which brings him to power.
It happens, however, that the Minister for India
will have to preside over not one department of
long-settled, united, and well-governed empire in
the metropolis of which he resides, but all the
departments of an empire six times greater in
size and population on the other side of the
world. Hence he will require more than one func-
tionary of a superior class to share his labours, and
assist on terms of intimacy and something like
equality. Accordingly, the Chamber of Commerce
propose that besides a Parliamentary Under-Secre-
tary there shall be four permanent Secretaries out
of Parliament for the different departments of the
Indian Government, with salaries to command the
services of the best men. They put this liberally
at 2,0001. a year—twice as much as was proposed
for each of the eight Councillors in Lord Palmer-
ston's Bill.
We believe this to be a matter, not for con-
stitution-mongering, but for plain common sense ;
and the common sense of the affair is, that when
you have found a good man for the office you should
strengthen his hands, give him elbow-room, andthe
conviction as well as the fact that all rests with
him. In theory an Indian Minister will be respon-
sible enough as the member of a responsible Go-
vernment, always liable to give account of itself to
the British Parliament. All attempts to make him
further responsible to any other body have only
ended in enabling and even encouraging him t 3
evade the responsibility due to his first masters.
We are told on the highest authority that a man
cannot serve two masters, and the maxim never
received so signal a political illustration as in the
successive attempts to make a Minister equally
subservient and complacent to the Imperial Par-
liament and the East India Company. This is by.
necessity a case of imperium in imperio. We can-
not help that. Then, let the Minister have all the
power we can give him, as the nature of the Indian
! people and the Indian Empire undoubtedly requires
—that is, as regards his secretaries and servants—
only responsible, as he is the organ by which the
superior empire deals with the inferior. The sug-
gestion of the Directors, that a despotic Secretary,
able to insulate himself from his Council, may send
out a despatch which any judicious adviser would
stop on the way, but which, once sent out, would
do irrevocable mischief, is worth about as much as
a similar apprehension respecting a Colonial or a
Foreign Secretary. Every year promises to accele-
rate our communications with India, and we have
now something like the prospect of an electric tele-
graph. At the worst, however, the character and
position of the Governor-General, the Governors,
and other members of the Indian Administration
constitute some security that no one presiding in
Cannon-row will send out an order for the decapi-
tation of ten thousand Sepoys, for the forcible con-
version of the Brahmins, for the destruction of the
mosques, or any other suggestion of a despotic
fancy. Parliament will watch more narrowly than
heretofore the man whom it feels itself compelled
to trust, and will withold its sanction from
a Ministry in which the Indian Secretary
is too Indian for the British taste. Should
there be any such mishap, once or even twice, we
cannot think it will often recur, and we need not
weaken and embarrass the permanent administra-
tion of India merely from fear of a Minister doing
a foolish thing two or three weeks before we hear of
it at home. In accordance with the proposal of a
strong Government at home, the Chamber of Com-
merce very properly wish the Governor-General
and the Governors of the inferior Presidencies to
ee strengthened in their own governments, and in-
vested with certain new powers. This would
operate to some extent as a check on the orders
from home, supposing them to fall for a few weeks
to the level of eccentricity or fatuity, or to rise t•
the dizzy height of a preposterous ambition.
The other suggestions of the Chamber of Com-
merce are very much what we have often heard
from the same quarter before, but not the lean
important to be considered at this juncture, when
we are told by the screaming viragoes of Leaden-
hall-street that no Englishman, except a holder
of India Stock, has a right to vote, speak,
write, know, feel, or think anything about ;
India ; and that the interests of England and
India are absolutely incompatible, as well as
the nature of the two races irreconcilably hostile.
It is a downright libel on the whole human race,
and nothing short of blasphemy to an overruling
Providence, to dispute that much remains to be
done, and can be done, and ought to be done, in the
social and material improvement of India. Row
far this is to be done by a direct and immediate
application of the local resources, before toihueeystaigor:•
thrown into the abyss of the Treasury, is a
to be considered apart from the India Bill. There
is only one suggestion of the Chamber of Com-
merce which we are obliged to protest against, as
savouring too much of that constitution-mongering
which the Chamber has otherwise judiciously
avoided. Much as we should wish to see the
different European classes in India drawn nearer
to one another, and readily as we might admit
that the gaps between them are a great bar
to improvement, yet we could expect little good
from a rule compelling one member of Council in
India to be selected from the mercantile or other
indepardeet class. The rule would, of course,
often operate to the exclusion of a good man,—as
honest and judicious a friend to the mercantile
interest as any of their owu body. Would
the merchants, the bankers, the indigo-planters,
and others themselves be always better satisfied
with a representative from one of themselves, with
his bias in favour of one interst over others ;
with friends, with speculations, with localities,
with habits and opinionsof his own class ? Nobody
can deny,—it is really so patent, so confessed—
that trade of every kind has a tendency to
narrow the mental scope and to warp the judg-
ment. With all the talk in this country about
business habits, we have not yet come to wish for
a Cabinet of merchants, and there is hardly any one
in the country who would not rather trust his
pclitical interests to the care of a gentleman wholly
independent of trade than to that of a merchant,
tradesman, or banker in a different line from his
own, or in tho position of a rival. Trade is one
thing, government another ; each cf them special
matters, with their proper education and training.
Lst the selection be left quite open, and then, if
there should be such a man as the Chamber o
Commerce appear to contemplate, we trust the time
will soon arrive when his independence of the Com-
,' party' service or his mercantile character will be no
bir to his serving in the Council ; but do not im-
pose a rule which may even defeat its own pur-
ose

Orsini's children have arrived in London.
The Psis correspondence of the Independence of
Bru,,sel. says :—" S une Russian officers wno are a' out
to 4ccomp,-,uJues Gc:rf.rd, the lion killer, in bie gramd
tinting r xe,r ion in Ati Ica, entertained bimaud same
.the gi-u,letnen at dinner at two (-la) s back ;
Nhon ch, I rt vvas placed on the tatle, Mr. Leon 13- r•
t 'and, one of the guests, brought in a ycung she-prntiloll
belonging to him, which is so t tme that she allow!, hop
self to be ph.yed with like a cat,"